Mallara and Burn: On the Road Read Online Free Page B

you!
    Meddler!
    Intruder!
    Fool woman!
    Mallara smiled and brought her staff down,
hard and fast. There was a brief light, and a rush of air, and a
sound like distant thunder. And then the Words on the staff
scattered, and the runes fell still, and the sky went black and
empty. Mallara's boots sank suddenly into the mud. Steam billowed,
whipped thick about her, and in an instant the air was white with
new fog. White, and heavy with the stench of seared mud, scorched
rock, and the sharper odor of flash-burnt pumpkins.
    "Ouch," squeaked Burn, from Mallara's
shoulder.
    Water sizzled and boiled in the dark,
sputtering and hissing as if it had been poured in a dozen red-hot
skillets -- or twelve hot slabs of stone.
    Burn expanded his volume of blurred air and
flew a circuit about the ruined Round.
    "Nothing here, Mistress," he said. He left
the fallen stones and circled Mallara, his passage leaving brief
tunnels in the fog."What of the King?"
    Mallara peered through the mist, saw nothing,
felt a sinking in her heart. She spoke a soft word to her staff and
sent a handful of tangle-spells twirling up into the settling fog,
sent another handful up when the first three returned and spoke of
stones and pumpkin-shells.
    Then the last tangle returned, and whispered
to her, and Mallara sagged. "Thank you," she said, and the light
was gone from her hand.
    Weariness settled upon her like a cape and
hood of lead."He's gone, Burn," she said. She recalled the cold
smooth touch of his hands, the merry light in his wide, toothy
grin."I killed the Winter King."
    Burn settled in the air before her."No,
Mistress," he said."Some lot of ignorant hedge-wizards did that, a
long time before your grandmother's grandmother was born," he
said."You tried to save him."
    Burn's voice rose suddenly in pitch until it
was inaudible, and his hole in the fog wobbled and spun.
    "Behind you!" he squeaked, and then he flew
over her shoulder.
    Mallara turned, the greedy mud sucking and
pulling at her boots. But she wrenched them free and turned, just
in time to see a tall, tall pair of bony, footless legs rise up and
stride away from her, cutting narrow swaths through the fog with
each long step. Taller than the sky, thought Mallara, and a snippet
of a song sang itself in her mind. The Winter King walks the wide
world swift, back and done in one long night, his footless legs
longer than the sky is tall, his merry eyes shining bright.
    The fog swirled, and Mallara had one last
glimpse of the Winter King before he took a mile-long step, and was
gone.
    "Winds and fires," sputtered Burn."Did you
see that?"
    Mallara nodded.
    "All at once, it was behind you," said
Burn."I didn't see it coming."
    "No one ever does," said Mallara, turning
back to Burn."That's part of his magic."
    "It winked at me, Mistress," said Burn, and
Mallara saw his blur of air shiver."Look in your pockets."
    Mallara frowned."My pockets?"
    Burn bobbed and buzzed."Look in your pockets,
Mistress," he said."It seems you neglected to hang out your
hat."
    Mallara let go of her black staff, which
remained upright, though it did rise up so that its foot rode just
above the mud. She then searched the wide pockets sewn into each
side of her pants, her hands encountering all the usual contents --
a handkerchief in her right pocket, and a wand, and --
    -- in her left, something else.
    Mallara's eyes widened. She withdrew her left
hand, and there it was -- an exquisite Phendelit dancing doll. A
dancing-doll like -- no, identical to -- the doll she'd seen once
in old Purget's shop window as a child.
    Purget had never let her touch the doll, much
less hold it. But Mallara remembered staring at the doll through
the bubbled, dirty shop-front glass, knowing that she would never
have such a thing, never be such a thing. There were other dolls,
of course, but none so lovely as the Phendelit dancing-doll. It had
demure blue eyes and golden-blonde hair and it was tall and thin
and long-legged in a way that Mallara had known