Memories of Ice

'Leave me. I am beyond taunting. I circle my own chain, here in my mind. This place is not for you. Perhaps, in finding it, you think you've defeated my last line of defence. You think you now know all of me. But you've no power here. Do you know, I imagine seeing my own face, as if in a mirror.

'But it's the wrong eye — the wrong eye staring back at me. And worse, it's not even human. It took me a long time to understand, but now I do.

'You and your kind played with winter. Omtose Phellack. But you never understood it. Not true winter, not the winter that is not sorcery, but born of the cooling earth, the dwindling sun, the shorter days and longer nights. The face I see before me, Seer, it is winter's face. A wolf's. A god's.'

'My child knows wolves,' the Mhybe said.

'He does indeed.'

'Not he. She. I have a daughter-'

'Confusing the rules defeats the game, Seer. Sloppy-'

'I am not who you think I am. I am — I am an old woman. Of the Rhivi. And my daughter wishes to see me dead. But not a simple passage, not for me. No. She's sent wolves after me. To rend my soul. They hunt my dreams — but here, I have escaped them. I've come here to escape.'

The man laughed again. 'The Seer has made this my prison. And I know it to be so. You are the lure of madness, of strangers' voices in my head. I defy you. Had you known of my real mother, you might have succeeded, but your rape of my mind was ever incomplete. There is a god here, Seer, crouched before my secrets. Fangs bared. Not even your dear mother, who holds me so tight, dares challenge him. As for your Omtose Phellack — he would have confronted you at that warren's gate long ago. He would have denied it to you, Jaghut. To all of you. But he was lost. Lost. And know this, I am helping him. I am helping him to find himself. He's growing aware, Seer.'

'I do not understand you,' the Mhybe replied, faltering as despair slowly stole through her. This was not the place she had believed it to be. She had indeed fled to another person's prison, a place of personal madness. 'I came here for death-'

'You'll not find it, not in these leathery arms.'

'I am fleeing my daughter-'

'Flight is an illusion. Even Mother here comprehends that. She knows I am not her child, yet she cannot help herself. She even possesses memories, of a time when she was a true Matron, a mother to a real brood. Children who loved her, and other children — who betrayed her. And left her to suffer for eternity.