Last Battle of the Icemark

by Stuart Hill

  If she was to defeat her opponents and win her right to remain in the Darkness she would need to concentrate.

  CHAPTER 3

  For Kirimin, this was the best part of Samhein. All of the rituals were finished, all of the ceremonies performed, and now the ghost stories and games could begin. As she walked towards the eaves of the Great Forest she could clearly see the jack-o’-lanterns hanging in the trees, the candles inside the hollowed-out pumpkins making the faces grin and flicker weirdly in the gathering shadows. In the sky the first stars were only just beginning to appear, whisper-thin and pale like polished silver through mist, but under the trees, night had already gathered like black drapes drawn across the window of the world. Kirimin shivered, enjoying the gentle stroke of fear that ran all the way down her spine to the tip of her spotted tail. This was the very spirit of Samhein: dark shadows, the fluttering of cool winds that somehow sounded like whispering voices calling your name, and tales of the dead visiting the lands of life again. But best of all, on this special night of magic, there was a new moon. It rode in the slowly darkening blue above her, cold and brilliant like a strongly drawn bow of ice just before its arrows of light are released.

  Looking around her she could see others from the city of Frostmarris scuttling through the gathering darkness, some already trying to hide from their friends, others still in laughing whispering groups, and some completely alone, on some private business of their own on this Samhein night. Hugging the ground close, she slid over the terrain like a bank of mist blown by a wind. There was no sign of Sharley or Mekhmet, but she knew they were following nearby. This time she was determined to give them a scare. All night they’d been making her yowl with sudden fright as they leaped out of the shadows at her, or told her hideous stories of corpses coming back from the dead for revenge.

  A light sprinkling of snow had already fallen, the first of the season, and the dusting of white over the shadows and contours of the land blended perfectly with the spots and rosettes of Kirimin’s coat. Every now and then she paused and became invisible as fur, snow and shadow blended into one. Her brilliant amber eyes scanned all about her as she searched for the boys. They wouldn’t startle her this time; she was ready.

  She moved swiftly on, reaching the first trees of the forest and sliding beneath their shadows to hide and watch. Soon her hunter’s eyes narrowed as she spotted them. They were dressed all in white and moving cautiously through the dusk, hoping to spot her before she saw them.

  “Too late,” she whispered to herself. “I have you already.”

  One of the other human revellers from the city trod heavily on her tail, but she didn’t make a sound or move a muscle. In the deepening gloom of twilight she looked exactly like a snow-sprinkled bank of earth, and with a bit of luck, the boys wouldn’t notice her until it was too late.

  She narrowed her glowing eyes until only the merest glimmer could be seen, like embers gleaming beneath white ash. “This way,” she urged as Sharley and Mekhmet drew closer. “I’m waiting for you.”

  Soon they were near enough for her to catch their scent, and she held her breath. Any moment now!

  “I saw her come this way, I’m sure,” said Sharley.

  “You must be mistaken,” Mekhmet replied. “There’s no sign of any paw prints.”

  “Oh, that means nothing with a Snow Leopard; they can move as lightly as mist if they need to. I’ve seen an entire squadron of them walk over a muddy field and leave no trace at all.”

  “And yet they must be as heavy as warhorses,” said Mekhmet, moving towards the trees.

  “Heavier,” said Sharley, joining him. “Anyway, she’s given us the slip. Let’s go back to the city and hide there. She’s bound to show up before too long.”

  Suddenly the ground beneath his feet rose up roaring into the sky, and his gammy leg, which had been badly weakened by polio when he was little, gave way, dumping him hard on his backside. Mekhmet leaped forward to his defence and ran into a solid wall of fur and muscle. Again the huge monster roared, and then began to giggle.

  “Yes! Yes! I got you! I scared you witless! Admit it, you were pooing your pants!”

  “Not at all!” said Sharley, struggling to his feet. “We knew you were there all along.”

  Kirimin giggled again, knowing full well that he was lying. “Yeah! I got you good! Sweet, sweet revenge!”

  Both boys leaped on her, and soon they were all rolling around in the dirt and snow of the forest floor, laughing and screeching and throwing handfuls of dead leaves at each other until they were all completely filthy.

  Eventually they sat down together and surveyed the damage. “We’d better try and sneak in by a back way – Cressida’s bound to notice and get snotty,” said Sharley. He was sixteen years old now and spent most of his time in the Desert Kingdom with Mekhmet. But even though he was now recognised as a great warrior, and had fame and standing throughout all the known lands after his role in the last war with the Polypontian Empire, he still didn’t like to get on the wrong side of his sister, Cressida. Neither did the other two, and Kirimin also had to remember her mother, who would think her behaviour ‘unladylike’. After a quick discussion, they decided to go back to Frostmarris and try to get in through one of the small postern gates that were set into the perimeter walls.

  For ease and speed, the two boys climbed on Kirimin’s back, and soon she was running swiftly and silently through the gathering night. The effects of their wrestling match in the leaves could soon be wiped clean from her coat by the use of her tongue and paws. But if the boys got into trouble both her mother and father would naturally assume that she was partly to blame, and that could mean she’d be sent to her quarters early so she’d miss the ghost stories and huge supper.

  Her mother, in particular, was always telling her that she must be more ladylike, especially as she was now almost fully grown at more than two years old. But she found it so difficult to behave in the way Krisafitsa wanted; she wished that Snow Leopard ages and human ages were the same, and she’d once tried to argue that a two-year-old human child could behave more or less as it liked without anyone complaining. But her mother had pointed out that there was a difference, as she well knew; humans grew up much more slowly than Snow Leopards, and in real terms she was almost the same age as Sharley and Mekhmet.

  The walls of Frostmarris stood in black silhouette against the polished brilliance of the moonlit sky, and as they approached they could clearly see the tiny figures of housecarle and werewolf guards patrolling along the battlements.

  “Go to the eastern wall, Kirimin,” said Sharley. “There’s a postern gate about halfway between the gateway and the corner tower.” The small entrance would be guarded, of course, but Sharley knew almost all the housecarles and werewolves who were likely to be on duty, and it would be easy to slip inside without anyone being told.

  An icy wind had followed from the Great Forest, whipping around them as Kirimin galloped through the darkening night, bringing with it a scent of leaf litter and approaching winter. Mekhmet shivered and drew his cloak tighter around himself. As much as he loved the Icemark, there were times when he thought the weather must have been created by the One as an exercise in extremes. It never occurred to him that the climate of the Desert Kingdom could be described in exactly the same terms, being equal and opposite to the conditions of the northern country; fire to its ice, dry to its wet. To Mekhmet almost permanent drought seemed perfectly normal, whereas the lightest shower was a thing of endless wonder.

  “We’ll have to hurry if we’re going to be ready for the banquet,” he suddenly said. “The other guests on the top table will be expected to be seated long before the Queen and the Thar arrive.”

  “I know,” Sharley answered. “But as long as there are no hold-ups we should make it in time.”

  “There’s the postern,” Kirimin interrupted, her keen night vision easily spotting the small gate amongst the shadows. “I’ll have us there in a moment.”

&n
bsp; The curtain walls of the city stood on a huge rocky outcrop which rose out of the Plain of Frostmarris like an island out of a sea, and each gateway was served by a path that zigzagged up the steep incline at an angle that made it possible for carts to climb up with ease. But ignoring this, Kirimin leaped up the almost sheer wall of granite, her claws finding holds amongst the rocks, and her powerful legs driving them up to the small gateway in a matter of seconds.

  The boys scrambled down from her back, and Sharley limped over to the gate, where he knocked with the hilt of his dagger. The gate suddenly burst open and the ferocious face of a werewolf guard thrust itself out at them.

  “It’s us, Sergeant Moon-Runner, let us in, quick.”

  “You’d better hurry, Crown Princess Cressida’s been wondering where you are. And your mother’s been asking for you, Princess Kirimin. It’d be wiser to take the back way into the citadel.”

  They nodded their thanks and hurried across the courtyard to the service entrance of the Great Hall. After that it was easy to lose themselves in the winding passageways of the citadel, and soon they arrived at the boys’ room. “Wait for us, Kiri. We won’t be long,” said Mekhmet.

  “All right. But hurry.”

  Within seconds the sound of splashing water and the slamming open of clothes chests could be heard beyond their closed door, and Kirimin started her own cleaning-up process while she waited in the corridor. After only a few minutes of careful washing and grooming, her coat gleamed in the torchlight and she relaxed. No one would have anything to complain about now. Not even her mother . . . perhaps. She just hoped the boys were as successful in their sprucing-up.

  On cue, their door was wrenched open and they stepped out into the corridor. Kirimin gasped. They were both dressed in the robes of the Desert Kingdom, Mekhmet in a beautiful blue embroidered with gold, and Sharley in his usual black, but so expertly picked out with silver stars that he seemed to be wearing a fragment of midnight that had somehow been captured in fine cloth and beautifully tailored. She purred deeply in appreciation, but she’d have sooner died than actually tell them they looked wonderful. “Not bad,” she said after a moment. “Come on, I think I can hear people on their way to the Great Hall.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Medea turned her gaze outwards over the tundra, watching for the enemies’ advance. She needed to concentrate if she was to finally win her right to stay in the Darkness.

  Orla stood a few paces away from her mistress, her twisted and misshapen body trembling with a combination of cold and fear. The enemy were formidable, and with countless aeons of magical experience to call upon, they would surely sweep Medea aside and destroy her. Orla’s soul would once again be frozen to a shard of ice and drift forever in the winds of the Darkness.

  But Medea showed no such fears. Throwing wide her arms, she exploited the Power of the Darkness and drew on the surrounding materials to transform her body.

  Power! Huge bolts of power were needed to transform her slight frame into the hideous fighting creature she was making. She grafted the crystalline structures of stone and ice to her bones, and stretched and moulded their shapes so that her arms and legs, her spine and skull, and all of her skeleton grew and strengthened; she enmeshed the cosmic dust of stars and meteors, comets and suns to her skin, weaving it in and kneading it to form diamond-hard scales that covered her growing form.

  Now her teeth grew as the molecular structures of iron and steel were added to them, and they sharpened and expanded until they burst from her mouth like swords. Then finally she moulded wings on her back, their span reaching wide over the tundra below her and beating the air with a rumble of thunder. Medea had become a huge glittering dragon, ferocious and powerful. Her massive body quivered with pent-up strength, and heat pulsated from her scales as the fires within were stoked to greater and greater temperatures.

  At last Medea was ready, and throwing back her head she let out a blast of fire that illuminated the wastes of the Darkness with a bitter golden light. A huge sense of strength and power flowed through her magical form. She was invincible. Medea the dragon stepped into flight and swept across the sky. She was calling them out, laying down a challenge of personal combat.

  The world of the Darkness fell silent as the entire domain waited for Medea’s opponents to appear. Only the low moaning of the wind gave voice to the tension that filled the air. Then at last a deep rumble, like distant thunder, rolled over the plain, and six gigantic figures loomed on the horizon, their bodies hulking and enormous, each one a threat to Medea’s dragon form. She watched as they approached, and counted each monstrous body as its details came into focus. Giant wolf and bear, eagle and bat, troll and boar. These were the shape-shifted companions of Cronus himself, who, many ages ago, had stood before the Mother Goddess and rejected Her offer of forgiveness. The reward for their loyalty was to fall with the Arc-Adept, and they had helped to rule the Darkness ever since.

  But in the heat and excitement of battle, Medea had chosen to forget their loyalty to her grandfather and what they might mean to him. All she allowed herself to remember was the fact that it was the Adepts who wanted to stop her taking her rightful place alongside Cronus. With a great roar she swept over the tundra to meet her enemies, landing a few metres ahead of them. But now she shocked all who watched as she returned to her natural form, sloughing away the magical additions of metal and mineral, cosmic dust and ice to stand before the Adepts unarmed and undefended.

  Medea’s enemies raged aloud in triumph, assuming she had surrendered in despair. Then, just as her senses were overwhelmed with the stench and power of the enemies’ gigantic forms, she shifted her shape again. Medea was risking a clever strategy, and the enemy quailed and fell back before her as she paced gently over the frozen souls of the tundra. She’d taken on the form of Cronus, the Arc-Adept himself. And such was her power that not even the enemies’ most incisive probing of her mind could reveal her true identity.

  Immediately the companions of Cronus’s original exile returned to their natural unprotected forms. Medea gazed at them in fascination. The endless years of their time in the Darkness had twisted their already foul minds still further until it showed in their outward appearances. All six were hideously ugly with white, bloodless skin stretched thinly over a deformed skeleton. Their heads were huge, and nodded and lolled on their bony necks, and their mouths were lipless gashes that could barely contain the tangle of broken and jagged teeth. They gazed on Medea’s shape-shifted form and bowed.

  “Dear companions in power,” said the cold and cruel voice emerging from Medea’s shape-shifted throat. “This confrontation has continued for long enough; hear now my pronouncement, and prepare yourselves to obey my orders.”

  The six enemy Adepts bowed obsequiously before what they believed to be their lord and commander.

  Medea was jubilant; she’d tricked them. Completely fooled by her deception, they’d laid aside all of their shields and defences, proving that she really was the most powerful Adept but one.

  She drew a deep breath and smiled. “Die,” she said quietly. “Die in agony.” And she released the pent-up energy she’d so carefully gathered in a raging fire of destructive power. Flames and white-hot plasma spewed into the atmosphere, blasting a crater into the ice, and engulfing the unprotected Adepts in an explosion of searing destruction.

  Their bodies began to rip apart; blistered skin was flayed from the flesh and muscles beneath, which then began to scorch and burn until their blood started to boil. Then, at last, with Medea’s final cries of rage echoing on the frozen air, the Adepts’ bodies were blasted apart with a sound like sheets of saturated leather being split open.

  But even though their bodies had been destroyed, the Adepts still hadn’t been defeated. Slowly they began to link mind to mind, and their power and confidence grew. As one they called on the energy of the surrounding ether, conjuring a cascade of liquid ice that flowed and undulated high in the blackness of the sky, like a curtain stirring i
n a breeze. All who saw it knew its touch would mean death, as every last drop of warmth and life was drawn away by its deadly cold.

  Medea watched as the scintillating sheet slowly descended and draped itself over her slender form. The liquid ice then flowed over the surface of the tundra, dragging Medea down to the ground and oozing over her slight form so that soon there was no sign that she’d ever stood in defiance before her enemies. The six Adepts let out a shriek of triumph, their voices echoing over the frozen wastes.

  But if Medea truly was dead, then her corpse was not lying quietly, and soon the surface of the pool of liquid ice began to shiver and creep like the pelt of a huge animal. Gradually, stealthily, the movement gathered pace until the liquid began to roll and flow; then, incredibly, it started to give off steam, and bubbles began to burst and pop all over its surface. The Adepts’ freezing curtain of ice was beginning to boil.

  The Adepts tried to probe the mass of liquid below them, searching for Medea. But there was no need; Medea exploded from the boiling mass in a crescendo of flame and steam. She had become a Fire Wraith, a creature of pure flame that incinerated anything it touched, and her brilliant light blazed out over the frozen tundra like a sun. She screeched a challenge in a voice that roared and crackled like a forest fire, and shot across the sky like a comet. She smashed into the conjoined minds of her enemies with a mighty explosion that drove all who heard it to their knees, and the shattered spirits of the Adepts were flung across the sky like wind-blown leaves.

  Medea now slowly resumed her true form as a teenage girl. Then she watched with quiet satisfaction as the broken remains of the Adepts’ souls floated gently down like a scatter of snow to join the countless millions of ice crystals that made up the tundra of the Darkness.