Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  He did so, because Raz could see now the thing that had lain hidden in the dark. He could see the size of it, see its lumbering silhouette charging through the trees.

  Charging, unstoppable and terrible in its might, right at them.

  “Run,” he said over his shoulder, taking another step back, then another.

  Then he turned around, breaking into a panicked sprint back towards the Priests.

  “Run!” he screamed. “RUN!”

  XVII

  ONLY TWICE in his life could Raz remember ever running as fast and hard as he did now. The first time had been nearly a decade ago, when he’d heard the screams of his family lifted up into the night sky on the rising glow of his burning home. The second had only been a few weeks back, when he’d watched Lueski slit her own throat on the harsh edge of Azzeki Koro’s dark blade and he’d caught her before she’d hit the ground.

  Then, though, he had been running towards something. There is an inexplicable pull, in that situation, a distinct, indefinable desire that draws one to new speeds in the desperate haste to be there, to be where they are so hopelessly needed.

  It is an altogether different feeling to run from something, Raz discovered.

  He had known fear before. He was confident in his skills, confident in his strength and his speed, but only a fool faces death without blinking. Raz had known fear, had felt it creep along his spine when he’d understood the situation was dire. It had been a small thing, though, the hint of an itch on his mind that was easily disregarded.

  There was no ignoring what he felt now.

  The terror was so real it was practically tangible. It clung to his neck and back, grasped at his chest as he ran. Raz could feel it on his skin, feel it in his mouth. It gripped him so absolutely it was like he had been submerged, been shoved beneath a black tide of dread. It ripped at him, clawing at his skin, building up as a dark ache in his chest.

  And it pushed him with rough, cruel hands as he and the Priests barreled their way through the Woods.

  Trees whipped by, the branches of the shorter saplings whizzing above their heads. Raz could hear the thunder of the horses’ hooves as they ran, charging heedlessly through underbrush, down slick hills, and over icy streams that glimmered beneath the light of Talo’s single torch. They crashed through bushes and leapt over rocks and roots, twisting around the great trunks that rose above them like indifferent gods, taking in the fear of the mortals scurrying about their feet without so much as a twitch of interest or empathy. Together they careened, unconcerned with the direction or the distance, every thought focused only on being rid of the angry, looming shadow that lurched in their wake, pursuing them with alarming speed.

  And then, all of a sudden it seemed, Raz was running alone.

  He would never recall, looking back later, when he became separated from the Priests. He didn’t know if it was he who had taken a different path, or them. He eventually suspected that it was he who had strayed, falling behind the faster horses, unstoppable in their panic, and failing to follow them around a turn or losing them in the brushwood. Whatever the case, all Raz knew at the time was that in one moment the dark silhouettes of the horses seemed to be only a short way ahead of him, the animals screaming in fear.

  And then he was running alone through the Woods.

  For almost half a minute after this realization, though, Raz still didn’t stop. The terror still gripped him, stroking the skin of his neck like some wicked lover. It drove him ever forward, propelling him over crevices in great leaps, or else sent him vaulting over mossy stones and fallen logs. It whispered in his ears while he fled, teasing him with images of the terrible thing that had followed them from the hill.

  Run, the voice said. Run.

  It took losing Ahna to bring Raz back to his senses.

  It happened in a blink. Abruptly, materializing out of the limited light of the Moon through the ice above, the earth dropped away as if it had been torn away by some titan’s hand, the forest floor breaking off at a ledge before sloping severely downward. Without so much as a pause, Raz launched himself off the ridge of upward jutting earth, aiming for the massive trunk of a fallen tree that extended from the very base of the tall hill he would have otherwise had to slide down. He landed hard on the rotten bark and started moving forward again at once, intending to run the length of the trunk all the way to the flatter ground below.

  He did not expect Ahna’s head to get caught in the tangles of a dead branch that jutted out from the old trunk, just to the left of where he landed.

  In his frenzied, panicked mindset, all Raz felt was a massive tug on his left hand, the one that had gripped Ahna so tightly as he ran. In the next instant the dviassegai was torn from his grasp and Raz—suddenly off-balanced by the abrupt loss of her weight—only managed a few stumbling steps before he plummeted off the side of the tree, tumbling to the ground some seven or eight feet below. He hit the hill with a crash, his armor crunching against the frozen earth before he started falling, rolling and tumbling down the incline. He grunted and winced as he fell, cursing and trying his damnedest to get his feet under him. He couldn’t manage it, though, the impetus of his mad flight through the Woods sending him head-over-heels, kicking up earth and ice and leaves around him as he spilled headlong downward. For ten long seconds Raz could do nothing more than swear and roar and pray to the Twins that he wasn’t going to break his neck against some boulder or root.

  Then, at long last, Raz’s tumbling form reached the bottom of the hill and he spilled out onto his back, wings and limbs flopping around him to lay stiff against the icy ground.

  For a while Raz just laid there, breathing hard, staring up at the dimmest blue light that was the canopy high, high above him. He listened, straining his ears as hard as he could, waiting for the expected sound of the beast’s screaming roar that meant it was lumbering down the hill after him. He knew he would hear it, knew the thing was coming for him. The terror wouldn’t allow him to conceive it any other way, wouldn’t allow him to pause and seek out rationality. It tore at him, wrenching at his chest as his heart pounded so hard it hurt.

  But nothing came. After thirty seconds Raz began to calm, feeling his breathing start to slow. Another half-minute and the world around him fell into clarity, no longer dimmed by the fear-induced tunnel vision that had driven him headlong through the trees.

  Soon after that, Raz forced himself to sit up, groaning as the muscles of his back—stiffened by the beating of the hill and the coolness of the ground—stretched and ached in protest. His groan seemed to echo through the gnarled evergreens looming around him as he rolled himself onto one knee.

  And it made him realize, once more, that he was alone.

  Raz froze, looking up suddenly. Again he listened, this time seeking out the voices of the Priests, or at least the whinnying of the horses or the pounding of their iron shoes against the hardened floor of the forest. The fear hadn’t dissipated completely yet, but it had removed itself enough to allow Raz to focus on other things, on other sounds.

  Sounds that were just as absent as those of the beast.

  “Shit,” Raz hissed, shoving himself up onto his feet with another grunt. His head spun, and he stumbled over roots to a nearby fir, resting a hand against it and supporting himself as he closed his eyes, waiting for the dizziness to pass. When it did, Raz looked up again, feeling things fall into place, and starting to assess his situation.

  He’d managed to keep the gladius, somehow. He checked it, half-drawing it and rattling the blade in its sheath before snapping it down again, satisfied the sword was in one piece. His ax, too, he still had, safely snug in the loop on his belt. His knife, though, was gone, lost in the tumbling fall.

  As was Ahna…

  “Shit!” Raz groaned again, scrambling back towards the massive form of the fallen tree. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  The leviathan was barely more than a silhouette in the dark. So little light penetrated the trees here that even Raz could bar
ely see more than a few feet before him.

  Despite this, it didn’t stop him from clambering up onto the trunk, then rushing up its length back towards the top of the hill, using his steel claws and lithe tail as anchors as he climbed.

  He found her waiting right where he’d lost her. He thanked every god in the book when he made out the barest outline of the dviassegai’s twin blades, caught in the Y-shaped split of branches that had torn her from his grasp. He pulled himself up the last few feet carefully, claws digging into the soft, decaying wood beneath him, not wanting to risk dislodging her head from the branches.

  “Sorry, sis,” he muttered as he freed her gently, sliding her out of her perch.

  Once he was sure the weapon was undamaged, Raz eased himself onto his feet, clawed toes gripping bark and splinters well enough for him to find good purchase despite the slope. Looking up again, Raz could make out the ledge he had leapt from. There seemed to be a bit more light the further he went up the hill, and after a moment’s hesitation Raz began to climb, one foot carefully after the other, up the trunk. When he reached the top, the wood beneath him tapering to a rotten stub of moss and wilting mushrooms, he paused again, listening.

  Nothing. Not a sound or hint of the Priests, nor of the thing that had been chasing them. The Woods were quiet save for the creaks of the trees and the rustling of branches overhead. Raz was alone among the pines, lost in the steeps of the forest.

  “Shit.”

  Help wasn’t long in arriving.

  Raz had just finished heaving himself back up onto the apex of the ridge, leaping after Ahna, who he had tossed up first. He’d almost failed in his jump for the lip, some four or five feet in front and above his head, the darkness making it hard to see where he could grab and where he could push himself up over the torn earth with his feet. In the end he’d managed it, though, hauling his bulk onto the forest floor and shoving himself back to his feet with a grunt.

  He had just recovered Ahna, half-hidden in the underbrush, when a pale glow bloomed through the trees far to his left, distinct in its white, dancing rays that spilled in flickering lines through the trunks as it approached.

  Magic.

  Brahnt, Raz thought in relief, thinking of the torch the High Priest had managed to hold onto. Starting towards the light, though, Raz frowned as he realized that this glow was an unfamiliar one, too dim and gentle to be cast by the rippling flames of the Laorin’s fire spells. It was moving, also, in an odd way. It seemed to flow, almost, weaving its way through the Woods, drifting hither and to, an indistinct orb of light dancing back and forth across Raz’s vision.

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t the Priests.

  But it seemed to be searching…

  “Here!” Raz yelled, not hesitating, hastening towards the spell. As soon as his voice broke the relative silence of the dark he saw the light stop then shift direction, making directly for him at alarming speed.

  It was twenty feet away when he finally saw what it was.

  It looked like a strip of silk, fraying tail washing back and forth lazily behind it as it moved. Like a stroke of white painted by some arcane brush in midair, the spell slipped over the brush and between the trees, illuminating the Woods for several feet in all directions as it moved. When it came to a stop before Raz it floated before him, like the white silk had been suspended in water, twisting slowly about in some intangible current.

  Raz paused, unsure of what to do. When the spell made no indication of resolving on its own, though, nor any effort to move or guide him through the trees, he slowly reached out a hand.

  The magic descended, as though drawn to him, to settle and hang across his palm.

  As it faded, he was made to understand the message. No words came to him. No disembodied voice of Brahnt’s or al’Dor’s or any other sorts. Instead a feeling enveloped him, an absolute understanding of what he had to do.

  Follow, the feeling said. Hurry.

  As the message was relayed the magic subsided, the silk fading in a glister of white until Raz was left holding an empty hand out into the air. Despite this, the light it had radiated lingered, existing without source, without center.

  But when the light moved, pulled back through the trees in the direction it had come, Raz chased after it with all haste.

  For nearly a minute he ran flat out, following the glowing orb of magic. He was experiencing the pull again, the desperate need to be in a place. He didn’t know exactly why, this time, but the feeling the messenger spell had given him had left little doubt that there was no time to waste. He rushed deeper into the Woods, his path illuminated now by the light. He leapt over fallen branches, dashed around trees and sprinted up and down the rolls and break of the land. His clawed feet pounded the frozen earth, the feeling of desperation growing with every second.

  And then the magic faded, melting into the greater glow of a much brighter light as Raz charged between two massive trunks and found himself hurtling into thigh-deep snow beneath the inky black of the night sky.

  XVIII

  THE CLEARING was a shocking sight after so many days beneath the sheltering boughs of the Arocklen. It seemed so strange, so out of place, taking Raz by such surprise he might as well have looked up to see two Moons arching above him in the night. About fifty paces across, it was an oblong space, borders edged by the Woods, as though the trees stood sentinel about the place. A single pine, small but knotted in a way that spoke of great age and beauty, stood slightly decentered, raised up on what seemed to be an odd mound of earth beneath the snow.

  For a moment Raz could give no reason for the existence of the place. It made no sense, in the lushness of the forest, for such a gap in the greenery to exist.

  Then his feet cut down through the thinner snow at the very edge of the clearing, and he felt his claws clack and slip against a cold hardness he was all too familiar with. He had learned the feel of it beneath his feet, practicing in the Arena, had memorized where the muddy puddles turned to deathtraps as winter came.

  Beneath the snow was solid, ungiving ice.

  A lake.

  Raz’s shock at the prospect nearly tripped him up, but he caught himself before stumbling. As he plowed over the ice though, barreling through the snow, any worries he might have had for his footing vanished. There was no room for such concern, as he looked past the single tree sitting atop what must have been its own tiny island.

  Because there, playing against the white and black of snow and Woods, terror itself had manifested from the darkness of the night.

  Brahnt’s mare was down, body and throat torn and shredded, half buried against a backdrop of splattered and pooling red. The old High Priest himself stood his ground as best he could, slowed by the snow and his bad knee, his steel staff held defensively before him with one hand, the other aglow with the white flames of his faith. al’Dor, still mounted atop Gale, circled around behind him, supporting as best he could as the stallion kicked and reared in fright. As he hurtled towards them, moving in great, bounding leaps through powder, Raz watched the pair dance skillfully, striking out at the hulking form of their opponent, fighting to keep it at bay.

  “Sun take me…” he couldn’t help but swear as he took in the animal.

  The ursalus was massive, gargantuan. Even on all fours it couldn’t have been more than half-a-foot shorter than him, its thick brown and white fur dirty and frozen into patches, as the wolves’ had been. It was a feral giant, yellowed teeth the length of a man’s finger, grey claws twice that size. Hungry black eyes gleamed in the white flames the Priests were throwing at it, reflecting more hunger than pain. As powerful as they were combined, it seemed the two men were struggling to do more than keep the creature at bay, their magics and Brahnt’s staff barely enough to stop it from charging.

  It was just as Raz reached the tree between them, though, that those minor defenses failed.

  “Back, beast! BACK!”

  Talo knew Carro was drawing strength from his fear as he guided Gale w
ith his knees behind him, the white flames in the Priest’s hands flaring as he slung a ball of fire directly at the bear. It caught the animal in the shoulder, searing the fur and skin but otherwise doing little to press it back. Instead it roared, swiping at the air. Taking advantage as it settled again on all fours, Talo jumped forward between the paws, smashing the creature across the face with his staff and shooting three consecutive bolts as he threw himself back over the snow and out of range again.

  The magic fizzled and died in the same way, winking out in a tendril of smoke over the animal’s thick, patchy hide.

  “Lifegiver’s mercy,” Talo muttered, more in anger than in prayer as he pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the screaming pain in his bad knee that was building even through the adrenaline of the fight.

  He’d only ever seen a few ursali in his life, and he’d been careful to avoid them every time. Even those, though, as big as they’d been, were nothing in comparison to the size of the beast before them now. He’d heard the females could grow to massive proportions—a ‘small house’ had been the exact terminology, in fact—but he’d paid the legends no attention.

  Now, though, he was wishing he had.

  He stumbled back as the bear pushed forward. Summoning another ball of flame, he threw it half-desperately, catching the animal a lucky blow in the head. The beast screamed, taking several steps back, but didn’t retreat further. Instead it paused a little ways away, already devouring the two men with dark eyes that were aged with vicious intelligence. Turning slightly, it circled them, moving like a cat through the thick snow.

  More like a wolf, Talo corrected himself, thinking of the pack they’d left dead on the hill as he watched the animal move. For its huge form the bear moved fluidly, almost gracefully. It was the king of predators, the master of the Woods.

  And clearly it didn’t like intruders.

  “It’s too big!” Carro shouted from behind him, drawing more flames into his hands. “Talo, we have to run!”