Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  “But…” he croaked quietly. “But… Syrah. What about… about Syrah?”

  There was a silence.

  “Come on, lad,” Cullen Brern said gruffly, though his voice was kind. Moving beside Reyn he put a heavy, hard hand on the young Priest’s shoulder and gently coaxed him around. Then the pair left the room, Brern leading his charge before him like one might guide the blind.

  “Good riddance,” Argo grumbled once the door had closed behind the pair, turning back to Jofrey. “And well said. I’d had about enough of—”

  “Another word, Priest Argo, and I will demonstrate exactly how much I have had of you,” Jofrey growled, his eyes not leaving the spot where Reyn had just been standing.

  Argo almost choked on his words, flushing a vivid-reddish purple in fury, but something in the glassy gaze behind Jofrey’s spectacles stopped him short of blurting out a blistering reply.

  For a long time after that, they all stood quiet, watching Jofrey think. So intent was he on his own planning that the man hardly noticed a few of the council start to whisper amongst themselves, or hear the storm howling against the round wall of the room.

  There were pieces in play on this board, Jofrey realized. Pieces no one was considering, and ones the Kayle could know nothing about. Though he had no faith in any alliance being hastened together at his behest—or even at the need of the Laorin as a whole—there was one individual who might have that ability, one man who might be able to galvanize the valley towns into rendering aid.

  And Talo Brahnt wasn’t stuck inside the walls of the Citadel…

  It was Reyn’s outburst that had brought on the realization. No, Talo was indeed too far removed to have had any chance of influencing the day’s events, but the more Jofrey considered it, the more he saw a greater hand in the High Priest’s sudden trek southward. Perhaps it was the Lifegiver’s will that had taken the man beyond the Woods, taken him beyond the pass and behind the enemy line. Talo had to be returning soon. They’d sent a half-dozen letters to Azbar, some to the city’s council, some to Kal Yu’ri, the local temple’s own High Priest, and some to Talo himself. He was bound to have received word one way or another, even if a few of the birds had gotten themselves caught in the storms.

  And if he was on his way…

  “We will do as Priestess Petrük recommends.” Jofrey spoke to the room, silencing all whispered conversations at once. “I know it might not be the popular opinion”—he raised a hand to stop Kallet and Forn from interrupting him—“but after some deliberation I find it to be the most prudent.”

  “But the mountain men will outlast us!” Re’het said in surprise. “You said so yourself! We’ve only the reserves to last us the winter, and that’s a tenuous guarantee at best. We’d have to start rationing now, and if something should happen to the store… Lifegiver save us.”

  “You’re correct,” Jofrey acknowledged the young woman’s concerns with a nod, “and I hold to that same unease, but I’m not sure it will come to that. We forget: Talo will be on his way back…”

  At once the council began to murmur. Like Jofrey, it seemed the sudden reminder brought to mind other realizations, new options to consider.

  “He’ll be coming from the south,” Priest Elber said thoughtfully. “He’ll chance on the vanguard—or perhaps the majority of the Kayle’s army, depending on the timeline—and come upon them from behind.”

  “Do we expect him to attack them outright?” Petrük asked scornfully, wrinkling her upper lip as though she were the only one to whom such an idea was ludicrous. “Because he will be alone. It’s not as though Carro has ever been much use in a fight.”

  “Of course not,” old Jerrom rasped impatiently from his chair, coughing between sentences. “Talo won’t be fool enough to give them the opportunity. He and Carro will be ahorse—there’s no other way through the Woods this time of year. If he rides hard, he could be back in Ystréd within a fortnight. From there he could rouse all the temples of the North.”

  “Not to mention Ystréd itself,” Elber offered. “The town has always been friendly to us.”

  “And whoever else doesn’t want to let the Kayle dig himself in too deep in the east,” Re’het added, smacking her fist into her open palm in realization. “It might not be the conjoined forces of the valley towns—”

  “But it’ll sure as hell be a pack to contend with,” Kallet finished her thought, smirking the foolhardy smile of a suddenly-confident man. “Five, maybe ten thousand? It won’t be enough to challenge the Kayle himself, but it might be enough for Talo to draw attention away from the Citadel, at least for a time.”

  “Time we will use to our advantage, whenever that may be.” Jofrey leaned over the desk, extending both arms and placing the tips of all ten fingers on the wood. “We won’t need to weather the winter. Even in the freeze, with travel slowed by the snow, it won’t be more than three months, four at most.”

  “If Brahnt is returning, and if he bothers with seeking help at all,” Priest Argo grumbled nastily, casting a doubtful glance across the council. “Who is to say he won’t save his own skin?”

  “Don’t be a fool, Behn,” Petrük told him coolly, giving him a sidelong look. “Even you and I can’t argue that to be the case.”

  The older Priest flushed an embarrassed pink, and fell silent again.

  “Are we all in agreement, then?” Jofrey asked the group, meeting each gaze one after the other. Most nodded at once. Jerrom and Elber took a moment of reflection before doing so, as well as Petrük and Argo—though Jofrey suspected their delay was more out of stubborn willfulness than any thoughtful deliberation.

  “Unanimous,” Jofrey said with a nod after the old Priestess had finally indicated her agreement, feeling a sort of chilly relief fall over him as the plan settled into place. “In that case: Petrük, get me the most recent census of our residents. Re’het, wake some of your older acolytes and make me a detailed inventory of what exactly comprises our winter reserves. Argo, go with her, and see to it that we’ve enough of everything else we might need. Wood, blankets, medicine, everything. Kallet, fetch your brother, and return here. I’ll need his input on the readiness of our Priests, and yours on the state of the furnaces. Elber and Forn, take as many of the most gifted you can find and set to casting the wards. And Jerrom… Go to bed. In the morning, help with the spellwork.”

  The orders were given, and each member of the council hurried off to their own tasks, leaving one after the other out the room door. When they were all gone, Jofrey sat down heavily, falling back against the chair as the rush of strength and confidence he’d momentarily found drained away. Suddenly he felt cold, shivering despite the warmth of the chamber, and turned to look out the diamond-paned window into the night. The storm raged, ever present even in the darkness, melting slush streaking the glass like grey paint against a black canvas. It had started to hail, the ice striking the window with staggered pink pink pinks that were rapidly intensifying in both volume and frequency. By morning Jofrey suspected the air itself would be nothing more than a churning white sea falling ever downward.

  His greatest fear, though, was that the storm that assaulted them from above was nothing as compared to that which threatened them from below.

  Lifegiver, he prayed, closing his eyes and seeking out the power that lay behind the raging wind outside, lend us your strength. See us through this, so that we might know another cold winter, another cruel storm. See us through this, so that your greatest Gift is not extinguished from these halls that have, for so many of us, been a home when no other place could satisfy.

  When he was done, Jofrey sat for another minute, listening to the groan of the coming blizzard.

  Then he got up, and set off to prepare Cyurgi’ Di for war.

  XI

  “Despite breathtaking mountain ranges, magnificent coastal seascapes, and even the wondrous dark reaches of the Arocklen Woods, the Dehn Plains are perhaps the most enchanting of the Northern lands. A sprawling sight danc
ing with rolling hills of grass and flowers in the summer months, it is no less beautiful in the freeze. A singular lolling slate of white against the swirling grey of storm clouds in the heavens above, one feels almost suspended over an angry ocean, churning and calling out its hunger with thunder and wind. There are times, in fact, when it is difficult to keep at bay the irrational fear of falling up up up into those ravenous dark waters…”

  —THE ELOQUENT’S GUIDE TO NORTHERN GEOGRAPHY, AUTHOR UNKNOWN

  RAZ BARELY kept his feet, all strength drained from him as he stared out at the queer reflection of a world he had so long ago left far behind.

  He stood along the precipice of the tallest hill he’d been able to find in the dark within easy walk of their small camp, having just crested its highest ridge. Ahna was at his side, hanging loose from one hand with her blades sinking down into the foot of snow that surrounded him, and the thick hood of his heavy furs was pulled up so that only his snout suffered the abuse of the buffeting, biting gales. Above him the sky was streaked with the white of thin clouds against the interlacing colors of dawn, themselves shifting like water as the Sun began to show itself over the eastern edge of the world. For a time, it seemed, they were going to get a reprieve from the storms that had dogged them for the last week, slowing their horses and making it impossible to bear witness to the scenery about them.

  Now, though, for the first time in what seemed like a small eternity, the day was clear, and Raz reached up with his free hand to pull his fur hood slowly down, not wanting so much as a strand of hair between his amber eyes and the quiet country spread out before him.

  “By the Sun…” he whispered hoarsely.

  Time, by its own strange plans, had returned him to the desert. Instead of sand there was snow, and instead of devouring heat there was nothing but a cruel, cutting chill, but in all other respects it was as though the Cienbal had painted itself across the land, drawing inspiration from Raz’s own memories. The sway of the earth, up and down like the fluttering of cloth left to dry in a lazy breeze. Lines on lines of distant hills layered atop themselves, so that the horizon was interrupted by the bump and sway of the earth. There were even edges along the ridges of those hills where snow had caved under its own weight, tumbling into the valleys in small avalanches just as the sands had from atop the dunes. Icy wisps flicked like lines of smoke over the otherwise perfect stillness, pale and white rather than the reddish brown of dust, but carried off by the wind all the same.

  Even had Raz found more words to express his awe, he would have tamed them in reverence.

  For a long time he stood alone atop that hill, shin deep in the snow, welcoming the steadily brightening light of the Sun that marked the new day. al’Dor’s woven magic—reworked every other day or so—held in Raz’s boots, keeping his feet and legs warm and dry, and the thickness of the furs did the rest. His ears, vulnerable to the cold in their bareness, ached before long, but he ignored the pain, allowing the delicate membranes to stiffen and eventually go numb.

  The memory was worth suffering for, if even just a little.

  The Sun had risen in truth when Raz decided it was time to return. The oranges and yellows of the early morning were rapidly giving way to clear, calm blue as he turned and made his descent carefully down the hill, digging his claws into the hardened earth and dead grass he could feel beneath the white. Ahna he threw over one shoulder, shifting to step sideways down the slope, trying not to slip as he moved.

  About five minutes later he found the road again—visible only by his own tracks along a winding path of suspicious flatness between the hills—and followed it north. Soon he came to a particularly sharp bend and, still following the trail of his boots and tail, made his way up and over the outcroppings of rock that had sheltered their little party for the night. Coming to the stone’s edge Raz leapt down, spreading his wings momentarily to slow his twenty-foot fall, and landed lightly in the shallower snow at the mouth of their little hollow.

  The shelter—which he’d found them the afternoon before when the storm had become too violent to brave any longer—was mostly of natural creation, a sort of divot in the earth beneath an overhanging ledge of slate and loose roots. Icicles, hung suspended over their heads when they’d first entered, were now long melted away within the heat of the complex protective wards the two Priests had spent nearly an hour working around the little nook and their horses. Even now the magic cut an odd line against the earth, the invisible, shifting sphere of warmth made distinct by a circular line of ice in the snow, the other side of which revealed brown grass and damp earth.

  Stepping into the ward, Raz felt the tension of the cold leave his neck and shoulders, and he sighed audibly. Leaning Ahna against the earthen wall to his left, he smirked down at the pair of men still sleeping soundly beneath the low ceiling of stone, their bedrolls pulled close together, hands laying only inches apart atop their shared furs.

  When they’d first set off, Raz wasn’t quite sure what to make of the men’s relationship, being largely unfamiliar with such romances. Similar inclinations existed in the South, of course, but were largely shunned, or kept very quiet. The only remotely similar comparisons he’d been able to make had been the comforts some men discreetly bought from others of the same sex in brothels and whorehouses in and about the South’s fringe cities, or the predatory perversions animals like Ergoin Sass had harbored for younger boys.

  Rapidly though, he’d realized such comparisons couldn’t have hit further from the mark.

  At first he’d found it odd, being around the lovers in their element, enjoying the relative seclusion the road allowed from what he imagined were very busy lives. Raz had felt uncomfortable in his own skin, watching the pair, not quite sure how to act around them, or what to say. Quickly he’d learned, though, that there was no special way to act, no secret to keeping himself from interrupting or offending their relationship. They were simply two people, very much fond of one another, and with no desire or need to hide it from the world. Soon after he’d realized this, Raz had learned to take the relationship in stride, even going so far as to tease the Priests as one might tease young lovers caught in their shyness.

  “Oy!” Raz shouted, shoving Brahnt’s exposed shoulder with a clawed foot. “Lovebirds! Time we’re off! Sun’s been up long enough as is!”

  The Priest jerked awake, bleary eyes blinking open as he lifted his head to look about before squinting at the brightness of the Sun reflected off the snow outside the hollow. He grumbled, rolling himself onto one side and reaching up with both hands to rub at his face, muttering something about “mouthy reptiles” and “lizard soup for breakfast.”

  Raz grinned, turning away to ready Gale and perform his morning exercises in the warmth of the Sun as al’Dor awoke in turn, yawning and stretching his wide frame to its full extent. The man called out “Morning!” after him, and Raz raised a hand in reply without looking back.

  “Storm’s finally gone and blown itself out,” he heard Brahnt say, huffing and grunting as he struggled to get his feet on his bad knee. “Laor’s mercy… Carro, come see. Come see, dammit!”

  There was the grind of stone and earth, followed by the crunch of snow caving underfoot.

  “Oh my…” Raz heard the Priest breathe out in wonder after a short inhaled gasp of awe, and he knew the men were taking in the Dehn in all its wintery wonder.

  “It’s a better view from the hills,” he called back over his shoulder as he hefted his saddle up with his good arm from where it had been draped over a small boulder by the entrance overnight, at the edges of the sphere of magical heat. “Go. I’ll get the horses bridled.”

  Amusingly, neither of the Priests had to be told twice. They set off as soon as they’d finished scrambling to get their boots on, Brahnt leaning on al’Dor and his staff as usual, making use of the path Raz had already cut around the outcropping and wading their way through the snow in the direction he’d gone not an hour before. They took their time, which Raz neither
minded nor intended to blame them for. Apart from having a good understanding of the sobering wonderment both men had to be experiencing, the solitude let him get Gale and the two mares ready in quick succession. The horses, originally skittish around him, had become accustomed to Raz’s form and presence within a few days, and even tilted their broad heads into him now in appeals for pats and scratches, which he obliged. After this, Raz set about his new morning ritual: working the cold out of stiff and sore muscles.

  The ache in his back hand’t completely dissipated even after a week of travel, but it was far removed from the piercing discomfort it had been when they’d left the stunted walls of Ystréd behind in favor of the northern road. The makeshift sling Eva had supplied him with had been discarded three days prior, and Raz had since been working to recover the surprising amount of strength and dexterity that had wasted away during his illness and subsequent recuperation. Using his tail to clear himself a rough circle in the sunniest—and therefore warmest—spot he could find, Raz began with general stretching and flexing of the larger muscles in his legs, arms, chest, and back. Once he’d sufficiently warmed up, he drew the gladius from over his shoulder with his right hand and plucked the war-ax from his belt with his left. For a minute or two he went through the motions, building up a burn in his hands, wrists, and forearms with the slow, deliberate manipulations of the weapons’ weights.

  Then, allowing himself a steady ramping up in speed and strength, Raz began to dance.

  He moved with all the efficiency a life of the sword had managed to instill in him. The edges of his blades whistled as they cut the air in everything from long arcs to short, complex maneuvers kept tight to the body. His legs glided beneath him like liquid, his footwork carrying his weight back and forth, twisting his bulk about effortlessly even as he started moving faster and faster. Within a minute Raz was in full swing of the battle trance, spinning and jumping and somersaulting and pirouetting in order to dart and dodge out of the way of imaginary blows dispensed by invisible foes. Before long he lost himself completely, allowing instinct and experience to take control bit by bit, brushing away the pain between his shoulder blades until he felt it no more, ignoring fatigue and the burn of tiring muscles until they ached no more. Silently he waged war against his thoughts, kicking up snow and ice to glimmer in the air of the bright morning, settling around him like a drifting rain of shattered glass as he moved.