Daywinter

I awoke after a long sleep, that I'd been in need of for some time, and stirred about shortly before dawn. Looking out my window, I could see another castle hulking not too far away, and wondered why anyone would build two so close together, what purpose could it serve. It was fairly chilly, but not bad for winter (thought I later learned it was actually summer). I enquired as to where Morgan was being put up and went by his room, but there was no sound from inside so I let him sleep and went in search of breakfast.

When I found the kitchens, they told me that breakfast would be served shortly, but that Princess Fiona was in the other room... I thanked them and went to talk to her, since I'd wanted to do that for some time anyway. I stopped near her, she acknowledged me, I asked if she could talk, she said yes, and I sat down to talk with her.

I was interested in what had REALLY happened at the Grove, as I was not convinced that those who'd told me about it earlier hadn't perhaps had their own blades to sharpen at others expense. She asked what I knew about what had happened, so I explained what I'd heard from Jacob. She said that Dworkin had said that Clarissa's time was up, that it was time for her to die. My opinion was, and I told Aunt Fiona so, that that was a crock, that she'd been fine until Urda'd broken her curse. No, I thought someone had wanted her dead and arranged the situation to suit. She nodded, seemed to agree, then we talked of Urda for a moment or three, agreeing that while he has power he desperately needs to learn control.

Then she showed me a paper that she'd found. It read:

Daywinter

At the bottom, there were a pair of spells written down.

That castle I'd seen was, apparently, Boreas, a reflection of Castle Amber in ice, just as Rebma is a reflection in water and the mentioned Tir na-Nog'th a reflection in air. This reflection, though, would appear only once, ever. She asked if I'd be willing to help get Clarissa back, and I said yes. We started looking over the text that she'd found and trying to make head or tail of it. She suspected, and I figured she was probably right, that the two of us were NOT going to be able to manage this by ourselves alone.

And, just like the proverbial penny, with that some more of my relatives came through the door. Jacob, Celia, Thalion, and Raven, along with Celia's daughter Vialle, were all there. I was oblivious, at least at first, being busy trying to figure out what the couplets meant and so on. Then Raven and I realized we were in the same room and tried to ignore each other and that fact. Wasn't too tough, I was busy working on this, and it had a MUCH higher priority than my running skirmishes with Raven.

The document was passed around and looked at, or read to, people, and it seemed the general consensus that we ought to go look into things. It seemed that Celia had gotten word of this `ice rose' before, now that I think about it. Her plans for them might be different from mine, but if there were four, we could split them if needed. Celia and I went to her rooms to get ready, me to borrow some heavy outerwear (Kal having my cloak at last check), and her to get ready to go outside. There was a brief discussion concerning boots and finishing schools, then we were ready and headed back down.

From there, I teleported us to the gates of the castle. The castle itself was not an exact replica of Castle Amber, being rather more florid in design, parts being `designed' more for ornamentation than for service. The gates were made of ice and seemingly locked or stuck. Not a problem, we could remove it, or bypass it, and the Void seemed tailor-made for this problem, so I opened the pathway to the other side of the door.

As we stepped into the hall of doors, I could feel Celia's attention on me, and she asked, once we were out again, "Andelia, we HAVE to talk. What was that?"
I answered, "It's a new trick I picked up."
"When?"
"In the Mirrorrealm."
"Oh. Because it seems connected with that Trump of Morgan's...."
"Then we will have to talk, yes."

As it turns out, we never did.

Inside, there were the shapes of servants, guards, etc, made from snow, and doors of ice replaced the wooden doors inside the castle. We went through to the Great Hall, which we found laid out as if for a wedding. Interesting coincidence there.... No roses in sight, though.

From there, we went down, to the Pattern Room of this castle, searching for the mentioned roses. Again, no roses. Jacob used a mirror to scry after them, and made some progress, getting an image of the Great Hall and of the kitchen. Celia contacted Madoc and pulled him through to us. Thalion, who was out in the forest, turned up a girl, Sand, who was half-frozen, and Trumped her through to Celia. Celia took her to the Castle's infirmary and returned. From there in the Pattern room, we went back to the Great Hall.

At that point, we realized that it wasn't going to be a mere matter of hunting the roses down, that the couplets were more like spell instructions than anything else. `Vows of love' and a Great Hall decked out for a wedding was too obvious, but we were having trouble with the `Kiss of the star' part of things. Some searching around produced a boy named Random in the castle.

After a bit of to and froing, as Raven and Jacob said that there was nothing left to do and this was just a formality, and Celia caught me by surprise by saying that people wore white to weddings all the time even if they weren't what the color said they were, things got underway with another Trump call to Bleys. As the Regent, he has the authority to conduct marriages, so he was nominated. I would rather have been somewhere else, but.... it wasn't to be. We went through the ceremony dutifully, and when it was done, Random threw an iceball at the kissing couple, drawing a little blood, but Raven remembered the line about not spilling blood and they were careful to keep most of it on themselves. I kept a hand on Random after that to make certain he behaved, a bit of a problem child he seems. After we searched in vain for a rose, Celia had an idea. She and Random brought out wine glasses, and toasts were made, but still no roses appeared. Frustrated, we decided to move on to the next couplet.

Jacob scryed again, this time getting the Pattern room. Down we went, and this time things were not so difficult. `Virgin on ice' we read as me on the Ice Pattern. It seemed to be right, and as I walked I encountered Clarissa's consciousness at the Veils. She couldn't speak freely, but could answer one yes or no question at each one. I messed up my third question, so didn't get all the info I'd have liked, but that's all right. At the center of the Pattern I buried the ring Mother gave me just before she vanished into Corwin's prison. From it grew a rose of black diamond. I picked it, but my ring was gone. From there I had the Pattern transport me to Celia's side.

There, we considered the third couplet, and what was mock ice, and where we would find this rose of mock ice. Glass is mock ice, we realized, then things fell into place: an etched rose, an etching of a rose done on glass, with a thorn of the black diamond rose that grew from my ring. The couplets were DEFINITELY sets of instructions, what to do, rather than where to go. I broke off a thorn and gave it to Celia, who settled down to work on Jacob's mirror with it. While she did that, I watched and helped as I could, while Raven went back up to the surface of the Castle. After a bit, she returned, saying that she'd found Delwin, who was amassing a small army of the snow-servants, using his blood to animate them. I wasn't too worried by this, I must admit, figuring that I could deal with them one way or another. Finally, Celia was done etching the rose onto the glass, and then she somehow reached into it and drew out a rose made of glass.

She and I had a short conversation on what we were planning on doing with them, what we intended to heal. She knew what my intent was, to recover Clarissa, while her plan was to heal the twin-bonds in the family, which she described as cursed. She asked me if I'd been put in a quandry, and I said I hadn't, she somehow seemed to think that that showed some sort of lack of devotion to Mother. Not really, after all I CAN count: there's at most 3 sets of known twins in the family at this point - Mother and her sister, Jacob and Thalion (who could use it, they're as bad or worse than Mother and my aunt), and Delwin and Sand. 1 rose for Clarissa, and 1 for each bond, no problem.

The last couplet we pondered for some time, being tangled in the `drowning star' phrase. Eventually we came to the conclusion that it meant the sun reflected in a pool of water, the `molten ice' mentioned in the poem, with a rose held above the pool of water casting it's reflection into it, the reflection being the `twin'. So, we went BACK upstairs and found an area of the courtyard where the sun was shining in and a depression that could be filled with water. Once that was done, Fiona had to hold the one rose over the water steady so that the water-mirror would stabilize enough for Jacob to "open" it and Fiona could withdraw a rose made of ice from it. While we were waiting, Thalion found Florimel, and Trumped through to Celia with her. Celia took her on to the Castle Infirmary, then returned.

We still needed the last rose, and this time Thalion came through. Better head on those shoulders than I'd thought, apparently. Celia had noticed that there were many other things in the kitchen, things that you'd expect at a wedding, but no wedding cake (apparently they have that custom here too). Thalion's apparently a cook, and went to work in the kitchen making and baking a cake out of snow, with one of the other roses laid on it, and little rosebuds of snow icing at the corners. When it was `baked', he took it out and we saved the corners, eating parts of the rest. Then the corners were put together, and a rose made of icing was pulled out of the cake.

All four Ice Roses, finally. Back downstairs, because we figured we'd need to walk the Pattern again to revive Clarissa. As it turns out, maybe and maybe not, though it did work. Then we made what was probably a mistake: we, for some reason, made a body for her out of snow instead of recovering her old body. It hasn't been dead long enough for that to be much of a problem, and by the sounds of things it wouldn't have mattered much anyway. Stupid error, but too late now. When I tried to walk the Pattern, though, it wouldn't let me. So Thalion had to. When he was at the center of the Pattern Celia passed him the glass rose, and he used it to awaken the body (though her soul was still within the Pattern). We brought Mother through, and she was asked whether she'd rather have the twin-bond healed or her eyes. She passed on making the decision, putting it in my hands. Great, just great..... Then Celia was going to heal Thalion and Jacob's twin-bond, but Jacob objected, Madoc and she conferred, then she started to have second thoughts. Raven wanted the bond cured, Thalion rather did, but Jacob didn't and Madoc seemed to think that they could deal with it, and might be better if they did so. Eventually, that was what was decided, over Raven's objections. Mother, Fiona, and I were silent through this, not our problem. Celia went and healed Sand's twin-bond with Delwin.

Then either Celia or Madoc proposed using one rose on Mother's eyes and the other on her twin-bond. This sparked something that could easily have turned very ugly: Raven, the little bitch, objected that Mother was getting too much from this. And Jacob started babbling about who knows what, some sin of omission. I was seeing red, about to burst into action, but Mother and Celia kept their heads. Celia got the two idiots shut up, and Mother suggested healing the twin-bond first, so the healing of her eyes could flow to Deirdre. I've my doubts that it would work like that, because even if Mother lifted her curse, as she agreed to do, it was NEVER Mother's curse that took Deirdre's sight. Deirdre did that to herself, all that Mother's curse did was make recovery or substitution of other means impossible. Whatever. Anyway, it was done that way, and Mother's eyes were back and functional, and all the other hurts she's suffered over the years healed as well.

All the roses had been used for their healing powers, now they were destined for use as spell components. Raven volunteered to cast one spell, and I, not trusting her not to intentionally ruin it, volunteered to cast the other. Somewhat to my surprise, she didn't make a `mistake', and Clarissa's new body moved in Thalion's arms. We were timing out, though, and Thalion took the direct route home: having the Pattern send him and Clarissa to his suite in the Castle. The rest of us Trumped to the Grove, just in time to see Boreas collapse behind us and Delwin marching his little army of snow-soldiers down towards Rebma. The Grove being in danger of being awash soon as the snow melted, we went back to the Castle.