Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  There was a clink and the scrape of shifting metal, and Raz’s eyes moved in time to see the glint of silver steel beneath the tree. Slowly, steadily, as though drawn up by careful hands invisible to the eye, Talo’s staff lifted itself from the ground where it had lain beside its master. It took several seconds, turning as it rose, but eventually the staff hung perpendicular to the ground, hovering over a point in the earth just to the right of the High Priest’s body.

  For another long moment al’Dor stood there, and Raz watched in silence as the smothered desire to weep shook the man’s body, hand still upheld. He seemed to be preparing himself, bracing his composure for a single, final goodbye.

  Then there was a flash of light, and the steel staff smashed downward in a single, smooth, lancing fall. It crashed into the frozen earth with a mighty crack of breaking and shifting ground, and bits of dirt and frost-tipped grass were thrown into the air. Raz was forced to shield his face with the hand holding Ahna’s haft as a stone whipped past his chin, thunking off the metal of his pauldron beneath the furs.

  When he looked up again, a thin, silver mist lingered around the base of the steel, the staff itself standing erect and straight, like a narrow tower watching eternally over the final resting place of its fallen master.

  al’Dor let his hand fall, and it seemed then that he crumpled into himself. So bad was the shaking of his body that for a moment Raz thought the man would tumble to his knees and start sobbing once more, as he had for much of the night. The Priest, though, only took the time he needed to calm himself. Eventually he straightened, took a long, deep breath, and turned slowly away from the shaded resting place of his better half.

  When his eyes met Raz’s, they were red and swollen, but dry.

  “His staff will stand forever in that earth,” the man said, starting to move carefully down the incline towards where Raz stood on the snow and ice. “Even you couldn’t pull it out now.”

  “Then it will mark the final rest of a great man,” Raz said with a nod, reaching out to hand the Priest his own steel staff—which he had been holding in his left hand—and help the man step off the island and onto the frozen lake. “I’m so sorry, al’Dor. I wish… I wish I could have made it…”

  He had wanted to say it sooner. He had wanted to say it all night, as he made camp along the edge of the trees that surrounded the clearing, building himself and an injured Gale a fire to keep warm by. He hadn’t slept at all, of course, his body and mind too drunk on the shock and grief that kept his thoughts from settling enough to allow him to drift off.

  He wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyways, though. The Priest’s piercing wails of loss, echoing across the lake from where he had stayed with the body of his lover until dawn finally came, were like the haunting screams of some heartbroken ghost through the trees.

  al’Dor sighed at his words.

  “That makes two of us, boy,” he said sadly as he found his footing on the ice and started making for the Woods. “But I don’t blame you. I don’t think anyone could blame you.” He gave Raz a sidelong look, though, walking beside him. “But after all this, if you don’t stop calling me ‘al’Dor’ I’ll be sure to find something to blame you for.”

  Raz couldn’t help it. He cracked a gloomy smile.

  “As you wish, Carro.”

  They moved slowly, as they left the lake. The lacerations across Gale’s right shoulder turned out to be shallow, but they left the horse with a mild limp even after Carro had tended to them as best he could, and Raz was too tired now to have to keep pace with a trotting horse regardless. They chose to walk, at least for a time, giving the animal a rest from his two-week chore of bearing a rider. Furthermore, neither Raz nor Carro was in any hurry to leave Talo behind for good. They took their time packing up, all the haste they’d carried for a fortnight drained away.

  When they finally departed, it was a painful, silent going.

  For a long time they walked, neither man speaking as they kept their eyes on the ground, moving east and north under the light of the single torch they’d cobbled together after Raz found a suitable heft of dead wood and Carro lit it with his good hand. They’d lost the trail in their mad dash the evening before, fleeing its guidance as the terrifying form of the ursalus had descended on them from behind. They’d run west, though—that, Raz had been able to deduce—and together they’d both agreed that an east-by-north plot would eventually take them back to the trail. Worst case scenario, even if they missed it they would reach the foot of the ranges by no later than mid-afternoon, and from there Carro would be able to guide them to the mountain path.

  That was the only time they spoke for nearly an hour, until Carro’s agitated voice grated across the relative quiet of the winter woodland.

  “What are we bloody well going to do?”

  Raz looked up, jerked from his private thoughts at the question. They were deep in the Woods, now, the last true light of the cloud-veiled Sun having long faded behind them. They trekked once more between the bent behemoths of the forest, guiding Gale across the meandering terrain of the broken hills and thick underbrush beneath the trees.

  “About what?” Raz asked, completely at a loss as to what the man was talking about.

  It was Carro’s turn to start. Apparently the question hadn’t been intended to be voiced aloud, or at the very least hadn’t been directed at Raz. The Priest looked at him, his blue eyes no longer red and irritated, but rather lined now with a different sort of worry.

  After a second, Carro seemed to decide the conversation was no longer worth partaking in alone.

  “The Kayle,” he said in an anxious tone. “What are we going to do?”

  Raz frowned. He’d forgotten entirely about the mountain man, Baoill. For much of their journey through the Woods, in fact, the man had been a mostly unmentioned topic, as though Talo had wanted one last moment of peace before arriving a Cyurgi’ Di.

  Now that he contemplated the original purpose of their passage north, though… Raz could see the problem.

  “Was Talo so integral to the Laorin’s plan on dealing with him?” he asked.

  Instantly Carro blanched, and Raz realized his mistake.

  “I’m sorry, Carro,” he said quickly. “That was insensitive of me. I shouldn’t have—”

  “I-It’s fine,” the Priest said, cutting him off in a shaking voice and looking away. “We don’t have time for grief right now.” He took a moment, breathing deeply again and closing his eyes.

  “He was,” he said eventually. “At least, in a way. Unless Syrah and the council have thought of something either T-Tal—” he tripped over the man’s name, choking on it.

  He threw a hand up, though, as Raz made to duck under Gale’s neck and reached out to console him.

  “No time for grief,” he repeated, this time with a note of anger that transitioned into firmness as he started again. “Unless Syrah and the council have thought of something either Talo or I haven’t, as far as we know the Citadel has no set plan. Talo was the one we would have relied on to make the plans, truth be told. He had the most experience with the mountain tribes—apart from Syrah—and by far the greatest rapport with the valley towns. He would have played negotiator and, if that failed, herald to the towns, communicating and coordinating their people. If anything, we were returning home to start building off whatever Syrah and Jofrey will hopefully have managed to start in our absence…”

  Raz’s frown deepened, but he nodded. He’d been aware of this, generally. And it didn’t bode well at all…

  “What about Syrah?” he asked. “Would she be able to manage the same role?”

  Carro looked skeptical, and shrugged. “One day, most certainly. This day, though… Syrah is brilliant, and she’s strong. She’ll be of enormous value one way or the other, but spearheading a response to Gûlraht Baoill’s madness… I have my doubts. She’s impetuous, even rash. She’ll grow out of it, given time, but for the moment she lacks the experience of the older members of the
Citadel’s council.”

  “Then one amongst you will have to fill the role Talo would have taken.”

  “Yes…” Carro agreed slowly, stepping closer to Gale so as to avoid a thick hedge of spiny shrubbery as they walked. “But none amongst us have near the same pull with the valley towns as Talo did.”

  “The individual might matter little, if Baoill’s intent is to raze the North,” Raz said. “Your god seems to have a firm place in the hearts of many up here, and the Kayle has already burned two cities to the ground if my understanding is correct. The Laorin taking a stand against the tribes might be enough on its own, giving the remaining municipalities a standard to gather around.”

  “You would think so,” Carro said with a sigh, “but again, I have my doubts. For one the valley towns aren’t as tightly knit as you might think. They’re not like your desert cities, interwoven with each other in some way, whether it be commerce or politics—or even your ‘Mahsadën.’ It’s been a hard enough trek for the three of us to…”

  He trailed off quietly for a moment, and Raz let him take his time as he saw tears well unbidden in the man’s eyes. After a few seconds, Carro regained control of himself.

  “It’s been a hard enough trek for us,” he kept on, ducking under tendrils of browned, leafy vines that hung from the lowest branches of an old spruce. “And we had horses. Imagine trying to get a trading caravan through the freeze. The winter essentially cut the towns off from each other for most of the year. Even when a message must be relayed, it’s common practice to send three, even four birds into the storms, as there’s always a chance they won’t find their destination.” He shook his head. “There’s no guarantee the towns would—or even could—come to each other’s defense.”

  “Some did,” Raz pressed, thinking back to what Talo and Carro had told him as they’d caught him up on the situation in the days before they’d departed Ystréd. “Stullens, was it? And another… Drak-something?”

  “Drangstek.” Carro nodded. “It’s true, they did, after Metcaf came under attack, but Stullens and Drangstek are close—closer even than Azbar and Ystréd—and it was the very earliest weeks of the freeze when their combined forces pushed north. Beyond that, Stullens and Drangstek had more ties to Metcaf and Harond than typical. Drangstek and Harond were both fishing communities. They traded boat timber, metals, tools, and even workmen on a regular basis. Stullens and Metcaf benefitted from their respective proximity. In comparison, Ystréd is a tiny municipality, too far away to be worth any notice, and Azbar is the opposite, a titan of commerce, capable of complete independence from Northern trading due to its general monopoly on border exchange.”

  He grimaced at some thought. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Quin Tern made an attempt to unite the forces of the other towns to him, while he lived. It might have been worth the attempt.”

  Raz spat in the grass. “Tern was smart enough to make the attempt, but cruel and greedy enough to have then used the army to his advantage. I can practically guarantee he would have left Ystréd to its fate to start with, as it’s further north than Azbar and in the direct path of the Kayle’s march south. I admit I hope your council doesn’t intend to use another town as a sacrificial pawn in its plans.”

  “I can think of one or two members who might consider it.” Carro grimaced. “But the majority? No. It would never be allowed. Still, that brings me to my other concern: even if the towns would be willing to band together and form a standing force capable of stopping the Kayle, the Laorin wouldn’t be the ones to raise the ‘banner,’ as you called it. The Priests and Priestesses of Laor won’t fight the Kayle. They can’t. You know this.”

  Raz raised a brow at that. “All I know is that you can’t kill,” he said, crouching and leaping the eight-foot span of a wide frozen stream as Carro began crossing the uneven ice carefully, Gale following dutifully behind. “What was it that Talo intended to do, then? When you said he would be herald to the towns, coordinating them?”

  “He would have been the intermediary,” Carro responded, reaching the far side of the stream and leaning his staff against a nearby tree momentarily to turn around and guide the stallion the last few feet by the reins. “The peacekeeper, for lack of a better word. The Laorin might take the side of the valley towns in this war against the Kayle, given Baoill’s atrocities, but they are absolutely neutral when it comes to matters between the towns themselves. Talo would have been the arbiter, the known and respected face and name, who could ensure the fairness of whatever pacts and alliances had to be formed. He would have eventually drafted the Priests and Priestesses as well, but as healers and negotiators, not as soldiers. War is unavoidable, in this world. We of the faith will struggle mightily to ensure that Laor’s great gift of life is not spat on by man, but when we inevitably fail in this task it is up to us to take on the secondary duty of saving as many as can be saved. Syrah and Talo weren’t the only ones to have worked with the mountain clans in their day. Others have as well—if with less success—and were taught the tribal tongue by the clans. Even more—myself included—have a good grasp of the mountain tongue gained through practice. We can serve as translators, as mediators between forces seeking terms, or surrender. Important roles in a war between people who don’t have a common language.”

  Raz didn’t disagree. He had an odd thought, in fact, at the Priest’s words. It rose, as abrupt as a snake preparing to strike.

  “A pity no one has thought of that to the south,” he muttered as they took a decline of hard, mossy-eaten earth.

  “Why is that?” Carro asked curiously, using his staff to steady himself as he descended uneasily down the hill.

  Raz shrugged. “The atherian. The others of my kind. Southerners themselves don’t keep them, but plenty are enslaved all the same and carried off down to Perce and the Seven Cities.” He grit his teeth in sudden anger. “I hate slavers.”

  “A barbaric practice,” Carro agreed with a sort of tired resignation. Then, out of nowhere, he gave a mirthless laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Raz asked him.

  “I was going to joke,” the Priest said, still smirking wryly as they reached flat ground again, “that if you find some way of ridding us of this damn Kayle, oh great ‘Scourge of the South,’ that I’ll bloody well make it my life’s purpose to learn the lizard-kind language for you.”

  Raz chuckled. “You volunteering to be my… ‘arbiter,’ was it?”

  The Priest smiled, the first real one he’d managed all morning. It was a hard grin, lined with sadness and grief, but there was at least some small hint of true amusement there.

  “Raz i’Syul Arro. You find a way to free the North of Gûlraht Baoill, and Lifegiver take me if I don’t volunteer to be anything you damn well need, boy.”

  XXI

  THEY SPENT a pleasant morning joking and devising cruel ways to rid themselves of the offending Kayle—or as pleasant as they could manage while trying to shed the weight of Talo’s death, even for a time. They’d eventually concluded there was realistically nothing either of them could do or come up with in their present situation, trekking steadily northeast through the Woods, and so their conversation took the amusing turn towards venting their grief and frustration in Gûlraht Baoill’s unfortunate direction. With some coaxing—or perhaps just succumbing to the need to think of anything but the man he had been forced to leave behind on that frozen lake—Carro had shed what remained of the stiff shell of authority and piousness he had held since Raz had met him. Though this may have been due to the Priest’s need to simply confide in someone—even if that someone was the Monster of Karth—Raz came to suspect, as the morning went on, that he had finally won the man over entirely in some form or another. Maybe when the head of the great ursalus had fallen to the ice.

  Or maybe it had been when Raz’s blade had ended Talo’s pain with a merciful rapidity Carro could never have managed…

  Regardless, the man that emerged—though obviously heavy with sadness and sorrow—turned
out to be an excellent travelling companion, capable of crassness and amusingly vindictive thoughts Raz would not have credited him with the day before. When Carro had suggested tying the Kayle up, dropping him up to his neck in a barrel of water, and letting it freeze overnight outside before seeing how far the man would bounce down the side of the mountain, Raz had actually laughed aloud. The sound, so odd to his own ears, had frightened a pair of ravens slumbering on a branch high above them and sent them off with shrill repeated caws that imitated dull, fading echoes as the birds sped off southward through the trees.

  They continued on like this for several hours, content in the distraction from less pleasant ponderings. They became so engrossed, in fact, in a particular conversation in which Carro was giving Raz his most blatant opinion of some of the members of the High Citadel’s council, that Raz almost missed the first true patches of dim light that cut down through the canopy of the Woods. When he noticed them, though, he saw too that the snow—only frosting or thinly layered on the forest floor over the past ten-day—was growing steadily thicker as they walked. Within a quarter hour, in fact, it was piling up in heavy mounds beneath trees that seemed to be shrinking before their very eyes the further they pressed. For several minutes Raz was taken by the bizarre impression of sudden, immense growth, as though he and Carro were sprouting to gigantic proportions with every step they took. The blue-green evergreens of the Arocklen had towered over them so absolutely for so long that seeing these odd, diminutive specimens start to surround them was as incredible an experience as entering the Woods in the first place, if less mystifying.

  And then they stepped out of the final edge of the forest, and Raz’s awareness of his own size and meaning was flipped yet again on its head.

  They’d missed the trail, he realized at once. At some point, likely distracted by conversation, he, Carro, and Gale had crossed the narrow strip of worn earth, already hard to make out in the undergrowth and frost of winter. They’d continued on—very likely too far east now—until the Arocklen came to an end, spilling them out once more into knee-high snow, the sky a blur of greyish-white as more fell heavily around them. There was no wind for the moment, though, and so the flakes descended in lazy, enticing patterns, accentuating the sparse examples of trees that still lay before them, jutting from stony ground at increasingly higher points as the ground rose in a steady incline, steeper and steeper until Raz felt the earth were trying to fold over itself.