Winter Door (31 page)

In minutes, the fliers had retreated behind the walls of Stormkeep. Elle lifted Mr. Walker gently from her back and Rage found herself crushed in Billy’s arms. She turned in his embrace to look at Mr. Walker, and the little dog-man’s eyes fluttered open. He smiled and then closed them again. But it was enough.

“They retreated!” called Shona, her face shining with triumph.

“They did,” Elle said as they made their way back to the settlement. “I take it the wizard has recovered enough to cast a spell.”

“No,” Billy said softly. “Don’t you see, Elle? The gray fliers retreated because you and the summerlander rebels came rushing at them so hopefully and bravely. That’s what hurt the Stormlord and his world. We must prove to him that hope and bravery are stronger than despair and hopelessness.”

“An interesting strategy,” Elle said thoughtfully.

The wizard turned away from the sleeping form of Mr. Walker, his lined face grave. “He has pneumonia and he is suffering badly from exposure. He will probably lose two fingers and a toe, but he is clinging to life, and that gives me more hope than his condition should allow because in this world, as Billy discovered, it is hope and courage that are the strongest weapons.”

“It wasn’t me,” Billy said. “It was our friend Logan, back at Winnoway.
He
figured most of it out. I just took the next step when I saw the way the fliers didn’t grab at Rage when she was bringing Mr. Walker back. I remembered how they hadn’t wanted to touch me when I was alone with them on the wall of Stormkeep. They used one of those lances to push me over the edge after the Stormlord woke. I thought I was dead when that flier threw its lance just now, but it only hit my backpack. And that was when it came to me that it had thrown the lance from so far back because it hadn’t dared to come any closer.”

“You were lucky the flier’s aim was not better,” the wizard said.

“Maybe it wasn’t luck,” Rage said, putting her arm through Billy’s. “Maybe Billy is so brave that this world can’t hurt him. Just like Elle.”

“Not like Elle!” Billy laughed, but he looked pleased. “No one is like her. I think Logan is right about her causing the earthquakes here. And by bringing hope and light to the summerlanders as she has done, she is making this whole world unstable.”

“Let us hope she does not shake it to pieces while we are here,” Puck said darkly, slipping through the door. “Anyway, she wants you now.”

The wizard nodded. “You two go. I will stay with Mr. Walker.”

“So, what is your plan?” Puck demanded in his usual bumptious way. He was seated on a table a little distance from Elle. There were many sorts of creatures as well as humans, all the offspring of parents who had been drawn to Null through the gaps. A red-haired foxlike girl with red ears and a great bushy tail sat close to Elle and gazed at her in adoration.

“We can storm the place just like you suggested before,” Thaddeus was saying. “Now that we know the fliers can’t attack us….”

“But they
can
attack, if only from a distance,” Elle reminded him. “They can throw their lances or drop things on us when we are crossing the bridge. And from what Rage and Billy have said of the door, I doubt it could be opened even if we
did
get there safely.”

“Can we not leave this accursed place, then?” asked one of the summerlanders. “We need no longer fear that the fliers would attack us.”

“Perhaps we could leave, but would you leave behind those who would also choose the sun, but for their long, weary life in this place that has sapped their hope? Would it not be a black and cowardly victory to go into the summerlands and leave them behind? And in the end, it would only be a short retreat, for the darkness here would be flowing out into all worlds as darkness and winter and despair.”

No one spoke.

“Aside from all else,
I
must remain no matter what you would choose because I have sworn to stop the deadly winter harming Valley,” Elle said.

“I will stay with you,” the fox-girl cried, jumping to her feet and swishing her great soft tail. The others took up the cry, and Rage saw that this adoration, too, was a power that could be wielded.

But Elle said, “I would urge you to go if I did not truly believe that this is a battle we can win, for I have also sworn that you will see the sun, all of you.” A wild cheer greeted her words. And then the ground twitched so violently that two or three of the standing summerlanders were thrown to their knees. After the first shocked silence, they burst out laughing and cheered again.

“See how this world tries to shake us from its back!” one of the summerlanders shouted.

“They would die for her,” Puck muttered sourly.

“I think they would, but she would not allow it,” Billy said softly. “She knows that she is the greatest weapon we have, and I believe she could face the Stormlord alone and still win, but she chooses to share the victory because it will make them all stronger.”

“So what
are
we to do?” Shona asked. “We can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

“We will not do nothing,” Elle said, giving them all a grin so alight with mischief that Rage felt her own lips curl up. “We will celebrate. You will tell me all the fragments you have heard from your olders that have come together to form the great tale of the summerlanders, the making of which was the first blow you struck against the Stormlord. Then we will feast and sing—”

“What is it to
sing
?” the fox-girl demanded.

Elle smiled. “We of the summerlands will teach you how to sing and then we will make such story-songs between us as to cause the Stormlord in his icy fortress to clasp his hands to his ears.”

“I hope your plan does not mean that we will destroy ourselves as well as the Stormlord,” Puck said tartly.

Elle laughed, flashing strong white teeth. “You have a point, little man. But I think the Stormlord will succumb before his world falls apart.”

“I hope you are right,” Puck muttered.

“What do you think he will do?” Billy asked Elle a little later as the summerlanders dashed about preparing a feast. Elle had them laugh and talk loudly as they worked. Some of the summerlanders were also putting together rough drums and stringing thin lines between chairs, strumming and tapping to test their makeshift instruments.

“I think that at first the Stormlord will do nothing, because he will expect us to try to attack or leave. When he realizes that we don’t intend to go and he realizes
how
we are attacking him, he will seek to parley with me. Before we will agree to that, he must release all the prisoners in his machine,” Elle said. “If nothing else, that will reduce his power and the flow of winter through the door.”

“Nomadiel—” Rage began.

“She and Rally and all the others will be released,” Elle said.

“Then what?” Thaddeus asked.

“Then we will talk about those wanting to leave for the summerlands being permitted to do so, and then about how we might deal with the winter door.”

Rage said worriedly, “If Billy is right about it being a gap that was turned into a door by the firecat, then—”

“He was right,” the wizard interrupted softly, coming over to join them. “I realized the truth during my imprisonment.” He looked at Billy. “You are very clever to have seen what I did not. I suppose the firecat happened on the gap, for it is ever sniffing about anything that smells of magic. It would have conjured the door because it wanted to explore the world beyond the gap in its never-ending search for a soul. But once it had magicked the door, it would have been terrified by the darkness of Null, which would have begun to leak through into Valley.”

“How did the firecat reach you, once the manacles were on?” Rage asked.

“It dreamed its way to me.”

“Can the winter door be closed?” Elle asked.

The wizard shook his head. “No, but it could be dismantled. However, it would take more power than the firecat possesses. We need to widen the gap. Once the door is removed, the Stormlord can close the gap quite simply.”

“The Stormlord might still refuse to help,” Rage said. “He could just wait us out.”

“That is why we must not merely oppose him passively. We must fight with the weapons that are best for this battle,” Elle said. She stood up and in a ringing voice commanded that the celebrations begin.

And so began the strangest, most wondrous war ever waged; there was no anger and no bloodshed or fear or death. There was only flavorful food, stories, songs, and dances, all of which the summerlanders excelled at, once they understood what these things were. It was Puck who taught the summerlanders to sing. He had a voice of surpassing beauty, and he sang of the witch Mother, Rue, and of Wildwood. Thaddeus sang a comical song that required hand-slapping and foot-stamping, and the summerlanders sang the nonsense chorus back at him with laughing relish.

Then Elle was begged to sing. She obeyed, but her voice was so astonishingly bad that Rage gaped to see such a sound come from such a fair face. Incredibly, the summerlanders began to sing the same dreadful croaking song. Thaddeus began to laugh because Elle had stopped singing and was staring in amazement. She hadn’t known how bad her voice was. But rather than being hurt or resentful when she understood, Elle announced solemnly that having discovered that her voice was so unusual as to require listeners of an unusual degree of sensitivity, it might be better if she demonstrated dancing.

And dance she did, with such fiery grace and beauty that Rage felt she would never see anyone dance again without remembering this. Soon the summerlanders were inventing their own dances, hammering out a rough, surprisingly musical racket on their crude instruments. And throughout it all, the ground shuddered and sometimes quaked with such force that everyone stopped and looked up warily at the roof. The celebration seemed endless, and in the lulls where everyone was exhausted from reveling, there was storytelling. Afterward, Rage always said that it was the stories, most of all, that had won the battle.

Elle told of roaming in the highest hills of Valley on bright summer afternoons. She told how she had tramped over hills bare but for grass that blew and hissed and swayed over the hills like a sea, and of climbing mountains whose peaks were ever wreathed in mist.

Thaddeus told an exciting story of the days in which he had been a renegade keeper rescuing animals intended to be conserved. When he came to the part about being captured by the wicked High Keeper, Rage was taken aback to hear herself described in such flattering and flowery language that none of the summerlanders could possibly have imagined it was her.

Puck told a wicked tale of two lovers who had got muddled up with another two lovers in a forest, and of his riotous role in the confusion. Halfway through, Rage recognized the story of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

One of the summerlanders shyly told a modest tale of how he had heard about the summerlands from his old grandmother.

Shona rose to tell a grave tale of her first meeting with the great summerlands lady warrior, Elle. “I did not know whether the stories she told of the summerlands were true, but I desired to believe they were,” she said at last. “It seemed to me that if they were not true, then I had better die fighting for them anyway, rather than accept that this blackness was all that there would ever be.”

Her story proved so popular that in the hours to come, a number of other stories about meeting with Elle were told. Each teller vied to clothe their heroine in more magnificent and beautiful words, until she laughingly called a halt to it, saying she was having trouble recognizing herself under such finery. When at last the spontaneous storytellers faltered, tales were requested, and at length Rage found herself called upon.

Feeling shy, she rose and told the story of her coming to Valley and of her search for the lost wizard. When she came to the part where Bear passed through the night gate, never to return, she faltered. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told this story. It’s sad,” she said huskily.

“Sadness is not dark,” the wizard said from his seat against the wall. “Or it does not need to be. Sorrow can have great beauty in it, when it is a remembering.”

“Bear’s story is a story of courage,” Elle said. “True courage is always beautiful.”

“Beauty erodes this dark world more than laughter or love or hope because, in a way, it is the opposite of all that this world represents,” the wizard murmured. Rage saw how his eyes lingered on Elle when he said these words.

Prompted to finish, Rage gathered her wits and did so. She was surprised when the summerlanders applauded at the end, several of them dabbing at their eyes and blowing their noses.

“You told it well,” Billy said huskily as she sat down.

Before Rage could respond, the ground trembled and shook more strongly than it had at any other moment. At the end of the long rumbling, there was a terrific
crack.
Everyone fell silent, and in the sudden absence of noise came the sound of running feet. An outer door banged opened, and a summerlander boy came running in with a swirl of snow and a chill gust of wind.