Melting Ice

By Laura Schiller

Series: Books of Pellinor

Copyright: Alison Croggon

For an immortal, Arkan had never been particularly patient. It was very irritating to wait for someone you wanted very much to talk to, especially when that someone was a mere human girl. Elednor had a way of defying him and his powers that he found both infuriating and strangely attractive – whatever else she might be, she was a brave woman.

Elednor fascinated him. In some ways, she was as ignorant as most humans, with their simplistic notions of good versus evil. However, something about her was beyond his reach – unlike his servants, he could not manipulate her as he wished. And she was beautiful in that fragile, ephemeral way mortal creatures had, all the more poignant because they would die soon.

Her fiery, flickering emotions were hard for him to understand – he had done everything he could think of to make her happy and comfortable, yet still she resented him and called him evil for things beyond his control. She acted as if he had personally murdered her cousin and her friend, when all he had wanted was to bring her to him. To protect the Treesong, and its carrier, from the Nameless One. The disobedient actions of his servants were not his fault.

He did not understand her, and for Arkan, the Winterking, not to understand a young human girl made him angry. And even a little hurt. He only wanted to protect and cherish her, this lovely Fire Lily, to show her all the breathtaking wonders of his icy home. Still she walled herself off from him with magical shields as if he could not be trusted. What was she up to in her room anyway?

Arkan stood up from his throne and gazed down into his pool, where the glittering black-and-white splendor of his hall was mirrored in water as still as if it were frozen.

Show me the girl, he commanded.

The water rippled and the image changed, to reveal the small stone room where Elednor slept. She was curled up in a bundle of furs and blankets, her ink-black hair scattered around her, glinting in the faint light of a single torch. Her skin was nearly as pale as his, but her lips were a bright, healthy pink. She was so alive, in spite or perhaps because of her mortality, in a way he could never be.

As he watched, she rolled over slightly, revealing something white on the blanket beneath her. A piece of paper.

Then she vanished.

Arkan was stunned. He stood there for a long moment, fighting the truth of what he had just seen. The blankets were empty. The room was empty. No pack.

She had created a semblance...and run away.

Taking the Song with her.

She had deceived him in his own palace, under his very nose. Old scars opened up and bled in his memory; how could he ever have thought to trust a human again? Nelsor. Sharma. Friends who had betrayed him, had taken away the very core of his being, the Song. Would he ever get it back now?

She was just like them...she had left him alone.

Arkan raged across the land with all the force and fury he possessed, unleashing a horde of stormdogs, tearing apart everything in his path. Then he wept, as he had not done for centuries. As soon as a tear left his eye, it froze to a tiny ice chip, like a diamond, and shattered on the floor. He sat there on his icy throne for a short time, with his hands over his face.

"Now I know the answer to my question," he thought ironically. "Fire melts ice."