Winter Reign: Rise of the Winter Queen

by N. M. Howell

  The farther the pirates sailed into her fleet, the more shots they took on all sides. The middle part of the fleet consisted of ships built with inlaid ribbons of steel, rendering the battering offensive useless. The Norrolai boarded the pirates’ ships when they were close enough and slaughtered the men mercilessly. The Helkar cast spells and transformed into chimera, leaping from ship to ship and sinking their fangs and claws into the brave pirates. Horace stands at the help of the ship, casting black stars for mere sport, laughing all the while as the fearless pirates go down to their final rest.

  And so end the pirates of the Sightless Sea.

  Corinnalwyn and Thea had discussed much while Nevena slept. Thea had told the Queen of her gift and one of the Queen’s scholars gasped as he heard. When asked what troubled him so about the story, he said it was a trick. He said the Almighty had been known to try such things in the past and that the golden world Thea conjured was actually the heart of the Orwirl. It was the magic of vierg’lumière, the purest form of magic and very difficult to create. He told Thea that form of magic could only be born into the world through massive exhibitions of power, or through great a terrible changes to the earth itself. Vierg’lumière is most easily manifested in children because it can only exist in those pure of heart and spirit. After that it was not difficult to realize that the Almighty wanted to use Thea to power the stones.

  The next morning before dawn, while the sky is still colorless, Thea and I arrive at the border of Winterlands. Thea has just finished sharing this story with me.

  “You’re a fool to continue to embrace it,” I say. “It is no gift. And there are no opposing heavens. No rebel Warriors. For all her power and wickedness, Laoren is only human. If the Almighty wants to use the stones it is not for the war.”

  “I listened to you mother well, Nevena, but I cannot believe the Almighty is that evil. What would he use the stones for if not to stop Laoren?”

  “To stop us all. Think, girl. There is no force in heaven or earth that could stop him. He’s slain whatever great evil was locked away and his Warriors, too.”

  “I do not believe he would do such a thing,” she says, turning away from me.

  “This is wartime,” I say. “You have not the time to be a stupid girl. Warriors possess the magic of vierg’lumière. If there were any of them left, why would he need to give you the gift?”

  She stops and turns. For the first time, she looks at me and truly begins to comprehend what I am saying.

  “Thea, if you were the most powerful being in Creation and you hated, above all, the thought of anyone else having power in your world, what would you do to an earth crawling with threats to your reign?”

  “You mean he intends to exterminate us?” she asks, trembling.

  “Why not? Erase us all from history and start over. It’s what I would do.”

  I take Thea’s sack, given to her by the Braelynn before we left. I reach inside and pull out a small piece of crystal in the shape of a rough cube. A Prism. We have reached one of my visions. Ahead of us is a trail of footsteps, and all around them the earth is scorched and dead. If what Corinnalwyn says is true, these are the footsteps of the rebel Warrior Traega, which she left on the final night of that terrible war. I hold the Prism in my palm.

  “How do I use this?” I ask.

  “Simple. Hold it with your fingers and keep it pointed down as we walk. It will work as we journey on.”

  I do as she has said and the Prism works instantly, absorbing the black magic from the ground. The Prism was contrived by one of Queen Maerolwyn’s engineers to hold some of the Queen’s power for the next ruler. For a time it worked, but as the people and the Queens grew weaker and weaker, the Prism became empty. It was given me now that I might have a store of power should an emergency arise. This will have to do until my magic returns, though it will not even begin to do so until I am out of the Winterlands.

  The Prism turns blacker and blacker as we walk and as we near the end of the footsteps, the holder has become blacker than night: so black that I feel afraid to even hold it. When the footsteps run out I drop it into the sack. Soon after we cross out of the Winterlands. I expect my power to come flooding back, but it doesn’t. I do not even feel it stir. For most of the night we sit at our meager fire, waiting and waiting, and when morning dawns and I’m still without magic. I begin to rage. I take my blade in my good hand and swing it at everything, hacking and slicing and cutting like a madwoman. I have never felt so helpless.

  By the night of the following day I have calmed. I am angrier than ever, but I do not touch my blade. Thea, sensing a change in me, comes over.

  “I am sorry for your magic, Nevena, truly I am. But we must move from this place.”

  “And exactly where are we going?” I ask through gritted teeth.

  “It is difficult to tell, but I think our greatest chance lies in seeking the High King. It is only a fortnight’s march to Gardenwall from here. You also saw the Lost Paradise, but as it is lost no one knows where to look for it. You saw a red forest, a desert with wrecked ships, and a realm of rocks, all in Targaross, but that may have been present or past. I cannot tell. You saw Dregathaleon, last of his kind, as he met with the Queen Maerolwyn, but I do not know how that will aid us, for it took place in the last age of the world.”

  “You wish to see the High King?” I sneer.

  “Yes. I know of no other goal for us at present. I do not know where we might find the tablet, for no one has seen it since before the Braelynn sought sanctuary underground.”

  “What good am I in your quest? You should go alone, you who can see and show all time, you who can cheat fate. I have no magic and only one good arm. I shall only get in your way.”

  “I am but a girl, Nevena. You must fight for me. I should never make it far without you.”

  “You are but a girl. I am no more than a shadow.”

  “You must give up self-pity,” she says, taking my hand. “I cannot go on without you. I won’t.”

  “I am nothing!” I explode. “I am a phantom, a plague! Three hard years I fought for the freedom of the earth and see how it ended! My allies dead, my army mutinying, myself removed from commanded and court marshalled! My own men hunt me! And my people languish underground throwing thousands of years of hopes and expectations on my shoulders, while my own mother denies me the very title I had grown to take comfort in. This is my world now, this is the life I have been given! My truest friend a cruel murderess across the sea! My magic gone! The man I love taken to some fate worse than death! An entire world on the brink of war!”

  I drop to my knees. I have no fear of tears. All that I know inside is rage and hate. Thea kneels next to me. She touches my shoulder and I shrug her off violently.

  “This is your darkest night, Nevena. I daresay it shall be darker yet. But the world is at war. And even if you are no Queen now, someday you shall be. What will you say to your people then? You children?“

  “Enough!”

  This makes her jump back. She backs away from me, slowly, looking as if I had hurt her worse than even she imagined possible. For some moments she stands back, thinking. She comes forward again.

  “Very well. If you will not do it for me or for the people who welcomed you home, do it for vengeance. If that is all you know.”

  After the great war, the mighty Aiglon grew downcast. All the females of their kind had perished in the fight and this meant the end of their race. It was a sad, and hopeless time for that mighty crew, but there was one among them who sought the preservation of his kind. Knowing there could never again be born a true Aiglon, Dregathaleon took council with his peers and proposed a radical future. It was, at first, disregarded as an insult to their kind, but they soon came around to acceptance. Thus encouraged, he begged audience with the Winter Queen and when she accepted, he took flight and headed for the Winterlands.

  The Winter Queen had come out to welcome him in person and with his keen eyes he spotted her from the sky. H
e alighted in front of her, his massive form casting a great shadow on the Queen and her court. He bowed low before her and she bowed to him in return.

  “Great Queen,” Dregathaleon thought, for in those days Aiglon were not able to speak like men and instead communicated with the power of their terrific minds. “You honor me greatly by granting me audience.”

  “On the contrary,” replied Queen Maerolwyn, “It is you who honor me. My people and I supported Traega. You flew for the Almighty. I know what shame it must cost you to come to me for aid.”

  “Your land shames me not, Winter Queen, for I know the terrors behind the Almighty’s façade of kindness. Too late did my brothers and I discover the treachery, but well we know it now. I come here not in shame, but in true faith.”

  “You speak like the master I know your race to be. Ask what you will of me.”

  “I ask but a spell. A man and woman I have found who have agreed to do me and my kind a great service. The females of the race of the Aiglon have all been killed. We cannot ensure our future as have the generations before us. I humbly request that you take of my blood and give it to the man and woman, along with a spell of your own design, that we might continue our species.”

  Queen Maerolwyn thought hard on this request. She decided to help Dregathaleon and his kind. She asked only one thing in return.

  “Word has come to me that the High King means to attack this land. Aavon and his forces march toward us as we speak. I will lead my people to safety underground, but I must ask a favor of you.”

  “No matter the quest, if by my life or death I may achieve it you may consider it done.”

  “There is a tablet on which I have written a spell to restore this land and its people. Sometime in the future my heir may find it safe to return to the surface and I wish for them to have the means to begin again. But this tablet cannot stay here. If you will take it away to some safe place and keep the secret even from me, making sure its location is passed down through only one family line, I will be eternally grateful, as shall my people.”

  “It is done, Queen.”

  Dregathaleon nods and Maerolwyn calls for the tablet to be brought forth. Across the top is written a single word:

  Sauvetalywn’ge

  He took the stone in his talons and was about to take flight when he turned around to ask the Queen a parting question.

  “This word that runs across the top. What does it mean?”

  “It is written in Old Braelish. It means ‘salvation.’”

  Chapter 14

  On the Sightless Sea, Laoren and her massive fleet continue their triumphant voyage. The battle with the pirates lasted into the night and many thousands were killed, though little dent it made in that sailing force of millions. At this moment Laoren sits in the luxurious cabin of her ship. Horace enters.

  “Mistress.”

  “Horace, come in. Sit with me.”

  The prince sits down.

  “Is something wrong, mistress?”

  “Yes. Something is very wrong. I sense vierg’lumière.”

  “Well, that is what we hoped for, isn’t it? It is no secret that Delara holds no fondness for me. She would not have lain with me if she were not certain of this plan.”

  “You did not let me finish. I sense vierg’lumière across the sea, in Glassenross. The Almighty has decided to show his face again.”

  “That is impossible,” says Horace, scared for the first time in four hundred years. “You said yourself that creating pure magic or even giving it requires--”

  “He has cheated. I believe he used the power of the destruction of the Doomed Mountains to bring the pure magic about. He used my own work against me. I see he remains clever and absolutely unwilling to have power in any hands but his own.”

  “Why would he not use a cataclysm of his own making?”

  “Because it would cost him a great deal of strength and he cannot risk being weak. For I would not miss an opportunity to kill him. No, he would never be so obvious as I have been. Once mor’lumière entered the world, it placed a dark stain on every spirit. And with every newborn child that darkness passes on. That is why it is so easy to fall under the seduction of the black magic, for its allure is already in every heart. All that is missing is the magic itself. It rare for a child to be born whose spirit is clean enough that pure magic can manifest in it. I waited many centuries for you and your brother, and it seems that strutting despot in the sky has waited, too. But who?”

  “You are too hard on yourself, mistress--”

  “Enough of your worthless flattery, boy,” Laoren explodes, raising her hand and pinning Horace to the ceiling. “I called you here to read your spirit so that I might be first to know if you struggle with Eduard. You live now only by my grace. I allow you life because you are powerful and ruthless, but do not mistake my tolerance for friendship. You will never be my equal and you will never presume to be. The most valuable you could ever be to me is to father the necessary child for my future. You have already done that, so your thoughts should now turn to being quiet, strong, and clever, for anything else will surely find you eviscerated and rotting.”

  With that she flicks her wrists and Horace is sent crashing up through the ceiling of the cabin and through the ceiling of the storeroom above. He burst into the air above the deck of the ship and crashes back down against a cannon. When he regains his senses, he makes for his own room, decapitating a deckhand who had the audacity to laugh at him. Upon finding that Delara is not there, he locks the door behind him.

  “You must be terribly embarrassed.”

  Horace starts and turns. He looks all around, but sees no one. He tries to calm himself.

  “Can’t find me? What a pity. I should like to speak with you.”

  Once again the prince starts and tries to find the voice. Now he is checking the closets and the adjoining room. He looks into all the corners of the ceiling and even under the bed.

  “Of course I’m not there. You know where to find me… brother.”

  This time there is no denying it: Eduard is there, in Horace’s mind. The sheer thought of it causes Horace to scream, to beat his head against the dresser. He collapses onto the bed, a bleeding cut on his temple and the room spinning before his eyes. He tries to drown out the voice with a pillow over his face. Not only does his brother’s voice drive him mad like the darkest hex, it also causes immense pain, as if a hundred burning knives were at work inside his skull.

  “I am not so easily quieted, brother. There is no harm you can do me in here, in this place. You may have my body, but I hold your mind. I leave the wager to you as to who may cause the most damage.”

  “There may be harm for you yet, weakling,” said Horace. “Mor’lumière makes me strong. And I know of spells you cannot imagine. There are tricks to the mind you’ve yet to discover. See now.”

  Horace places a hand on either side of his head and lightning crawls from his fingertips. He screams, as does Eduard inside. This makes Horace smile. More and more power he gives to the lightning, relishing his brother’s scream. When he himself can no longer take the pain, Horace uses another spell. He closes his eyes and concentrates; a red smoke flows from his mouth and curls around into his ears. It moves through the inner tubes and clouds across his brain. This is old magic, very strong, and Eduard has no defense against it. He is trapped there inside his brother’s mind and can do no more than suffer. Of course Horace is so ruthless that he opens his mouth wider, pouring more and more smoke until finally Eduard quiets down. Horace stops the spell and listens to the silence. He finally lies down again on the bed. He begins to be at ease.

  “My apologies, brother. Did you think it was over? Strong magic, indeed, but I have no form here and thus no need of healing. The minute you stop your spells I rise again. And like a phantom haunting the imagination of a child, or legend running through the hearts of a people, so am I to you, my blood, my kin. There is no land, no castle, no dark corner, no high stair to which you can
flee. Forever and always will I be here, just behind your eyes, playing in the place where you cannot catch me.”

  “Get out of my head! Get out of my head!”

  “No. But perhaps you should come in.”

  How he does it is a mystery in itself, but Eduard draws on the magic of the Fulcrumnai and in a matter of moments the physical body begins to writhe. Eduard has pulled his brother’s consciousness into the deep, dark well of his own mind. What happens there, none can tell. Inside the mind, Eduard is master and commander, leaving Horace powerless like a child at battle with a mighty Aiglon. There is certain to be pain. There is certain to be fear. But for now both are locked away inside. The body, however, continues to writhe and tremble and twist until Delara bursts through the lock sometime later that night and finds it there.

  The order is given to chain the writhing body in the cage on the bottommost level of the ship. There it remains, for now, twitching and flinging itself against walls and chains, Horace’s screams rising through the ship night and day as if in the midst of some terrible torture.

  Chapter 15

  By the time we reach the kingdom of Gardenwall, our energy is mostly spent and we have hardly spoken since the night we reached the end of Traega’s footsteps. I have covered myself with a hood, for without my magic I have only my blade, poor defense in this the very fist of the Hundred Kingdoms and I cannot risk being discovered by my hair. It is a rich land, to be sure, lush and green and untouched. The people here seem at ease and unworried. It is sickening. I know without doubt that when war finally arrives these people will not survive; too long have they lived in the safe, looming shadow of the High King and his Guard, too long have they known only peace and ignored the battles raging all across the land as the rest of the hemisphere takes sides and battens down the hatches.