Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  “LYRA, NO!”

  Just as he thought the claws of his other foot would fail him, Raz heard the large Priest’s howled words, and the unrelenting magic vanished in a wink. For several long seconds Raz stayed as still as he could, gauging his precarious situation. One leg hung off the edge of the cliff, scrabbling for a foothold where there was none. The other barely held onto the rocky lip, and Raz could feel the time-dulled edge of the steps on the ball of his foot, not three inches back.

  After he was sure he wasn’t going to tip backwards and off into darkness, Raz slowly, inch by inch, eased his cramped body up, hauling himself onto the stone stairs.

  “That’s twice tonight, Priest,” he growled as he found his feet before the big man standing ashen-faced a body-length in front of him. “Twice, that your people have tried to kill me. I don’t find the irony remotely amusing.”

  The Priest, though, said nothing. He was staring, open mouthed, tilting his head back to watch Raz stand and rise to tower nearly a foot above his head. Behind him every other eye was turned in Raz’s direction as well, glinting in the Moon’s light as they took in the Monster of Karth, wings partially spread, crest still erect.

  “Laor save us…” someone muttered from amid the group, half in awe, half in horror.

  It was precisely at this convenient time, it seemed, that Carro, too, lost patience. There was a brief flash and a dampened boom of magic, and the three men and women that had pinned him to the wall cursed as they were thrown back off their feet.

  “Cullen!” Carro bellowed, shoving his way through the dumbstruck group, all of whom were still staring at Raz. “Dammit, man! What in Laor’s name possessed you to attack without reason? Has Jofrey gone mad?”

  “Carro?” the large Priest standing in front of Raz—Cullen, it seemed—demanded in disbelief as he whirled and recognized Carro al’Dor. “Lifegiver’s mercy. Why are you dressed like a damn mountain man? Where’s Talo? Why is your arm in a sling? And who the bloody hell—” he pointed an unapologetic finger at Raz “—is that?”

  “Raz is a friend,” Carro told him angrily, and Raz didn’t miss his obviously brushing aside of the other questions. “And a damn good one, at that! If it wasn’t for him I would have been dead at least thrice over trying to get back to—!”

  “Carro!” Raz snapped, interrupting the pair. “You can sing my praises later! Your man still can’t breathe!” He pointed a finger at the shaking form of the first Priest who had attacked them, lying on his stomach off to the left where Raz had thrown him clear of the blast. “Help him!”

  For a second both Carro and the newcomer, Cullen, gaped at the prone form of the younger Priest. Then they paled and rushed over, bending down over the man and yelling instructions.

  As the others who had jumped down into the alcove hurried to follow the orders—one lighting a fire nearby as someone drew a slim knife from beneath their robes—Raz made his way carefully along the path in the opposite direction, eyes on the ground. He found the gladius in the snow building up just beyond the warmth of the ward, a dozen feet off. Plucking it swiftly from its own imprint in the fresh powder, he shook the sword clean, making a mental note to stop throwing his weapons away at every opportunity. By the time he turned around again the path beyond the alcove’s entrance was narrowed by a dozen bodies, the Priests and Priestesses who had stood watch over the chaos having leapt down to lend a hand.

  “Back up!” Raz heard Carro shouting. “Give us room! Back up!”

  The group backed away immediately, one young man almost stepping right into Raz, who had moved forward to see if he could assist. The Priest yelped as the heel of his boot struck the steel of Raz’s greave, promptly leaping aside to make room and gawking as Raz moved by him without so much as a glance.

  The sound, though, reminded the others of his presence again, and Raz felt eyes raking him in combined dread and wonder as he shouldered his way into the group.

  “What can I do?” Raz asked as he came to stand over Carro’s shoulder, the old man having eased himself down to both knees beside the injured Priest. A bright ball of ivory fire was seething between Carro and Cullen, the blade of the knife someone had procured resting among the flames, already approaching white-hot.

  “You can hold him down,” Carro said in a hushed voice, glancing up at Raz. “I won’t be able to, with this damn thing.” He waved his left hand pointedly against his chest. “Cullen will take his legs. Can you manage his arms and body?”

  Raz nodded, moving around the gasping form of the man at his feet.

  “Carro, are you sure…?” Cullen began, trailing off meaningfully as he eyed Raz uncertainly. It wasn’t a malicious appraisal, to be fair. In fact, it was a far warmer regard than Raz was accustomed to when meeting people who had never seen or heard of him.

  Regardless, the implication of mistrust was there, and Carro put his foot down with deliberate force.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” he snapped, glaring at Cullen, “and that will be the end of any more pointless doubts. Now, both of you, get him on his side.”

  Cullen hesitated only a brief instant, then did as Carro said, starting to roll the young man—Reyn, Carro had called him—onto his left side as Raz knelt down to help. The Priest groaned and hacked as he was moved, and Raz saw with some trepidation that his face was turning slowly blue in the bright light of the summoned fire.

  “Carro…” he said worriedly. Carro looked up at him, then followed his eyes. He cursed as he saw the man’s darkening skin.

  “I need to get at his ribs,” he said anxiously. “Raz, can you—?”

  But Raz was already a step ahead of him. Pulling up the cloth of the white robes beneath Reyn’s armpit so that it was well away from the skin beneath, he gave the thick cotton a quick, careful slash with the metal claw of his index finger. The fabric parted cleanly and—ignoring the gasps from the other Priests and Priestesses behind Carro and Cullen as they noticed, for the first time, the steel gauntlets on each of his hands—Raz wrenched the opening wider, tearing the robes apart. The right side of the man’s lithe torso was revealed, heavy with bunched, quivering muscle. Midway down his trunk his otherwise light skin became suddenly dark, blackening as a massive bruise crept outward before their eyes directly over the last grouping of his lower right ribs.

  Without pausing to gape at the ugly sight, Carro rapidly began to poke and prod at the injured area, clinically ignoring the choked gasps of pain from his patient.

  “Nothing broken away,” he mumbled under his breath as he ran a palm quickly over the back, side, and front of Reyn’s exposed torso. “No open fracture either. Good.”

  His fingers moved again, tapping along the outline of the ribs against the skin. Several times the sound struck dull, like he were hitting solid wood. Then, after a few attempts, it resonated differently.

  Thunk thunk.

  “There,” Carro said in a rush. “Raz, can you keep a finger right on top of—yes, just like that! Perfect!” He reached around with his good hand and grasped the handle of the knife, its blade now glowing bright in the fire. “Alright, when I tell you to move your hand, I need you to hold him down. Cullen, you too. We don’t have time to dull the pain. This is going to hurt. He will fight. Are you both ready?”

  Raz and the large Priest nodded at once, Cullen bending over to get ahold of both Reyn’s legs while Raz shifted so that he had one arm over the man and would be ready to get the other in position when Carro gave the word.

  “Alright,” Carro said again, as though readying himself.

  Then he pulled the blade from the fire and brought it to hover carefully over the marked point, the metal smoldering an orange-white.

  “Now,” he ordered, and Raz snatched his hand away. He had just managed to get ahold of Reyn’s arms, pinning them up over his head and bearing the man’s body down into the stone in a massive, bear-like hug, when Carro drove the knife between the man’s ribs with surgical precision.

  Instantly, despite his condition
, Reyn convulsed, every muscle in his body contracting with agony and shock as the super-heated metal cut through skin and muscle like they were water. Even Raz was hard-pressed to keep the muscular man still as he writhed and choked, trying to scream, and he heard Cullen curse behind him, clearly having difficulty controlling Reyn’s legs. Raz’s snout wrinkled reflexively at the smell of burning flesh and fat, his ears flattening against his head as best they could to muffle the sizzle and pop just behind him.

  “Almost done,” Raz said in a half-soothing, half-tense voice, still fighting Reyn’s twists. “Almost done. Just a little more.”

  And then, as though on cue, the sizzling vanished as Carro retracted the blade, and there was a momentary hiss of briefly escaping-pressure.

  Reyn gasped in a massive lungful of life-giving air, his eyes going suddenly wide as his chest expanded against Raz’s arms. He’d barely finished inhaling when he started to howl in continued pain, screaming profanities the likes of which Raz had never heard, even in the dimmest corners of Miropa’s dirtiest pubs.

  “Keep holding him!” Carro shouted, dropping the cooling knife and bringing his right hand over the cauterized hole in the man’s flesh. As Raz continued to fight Reyn’s thrashing—growing only stronger now as color steadily returned to the Priest’s face—he saw a now-familiar golden glow begin to play on the ground beside him. After a few seconds Reyn’s convulsions seemed to lessen. Within ten he was barely fighting at all, and soon he stopped moving altogether, his eyelids fluttering sluggishly, his face slackening. Then the last bit of tension left his body, and the man went limp, eyes closed, breathing evenly against the side of Raz’s chest.

  “Alright,” Carro breathed, sounding relieved. “He’s asleep. You can let him go.”

  Raz extracted himself from around the man at once, hearing Cullen do the same. As he pressed himself back up onto his knees he saw that Carro was still weaving his one-handed magic, the slowly sweeping lines of golden lightning moving inch by inch over the great bruise against Reyn’s side.

  “Can you fix the breaks?” Raz asked, watching the spellwork, the yellowish light reflecting against his amber eyes.

  Carro shook his head. “No such luck. If I could, I would have taken care of this already.” He indicated his slinged arm with a shrug. “Our magics can only do so much. I can stitch the flesh more or less back together, and ensure he won’t die of infection, but that’s about it.”

  Raz nodded, subconsciously twitching his left shoulder as the now-healed scar along his spine seemed to throb at old memories.

  “He’ll be all right?” Cullen asked, looking down at Reyn in relief.

  “He’ll be all right,” Carro confirmed, but he turned to glower at the larger Priest. “No thanks to you lot, I might add. What in the blazes were you thinking, Cullen, assaulting us like that? He’s lucky Raz didn’t rip him into a hundred parts!”

  “Priest Brern didn’t order the attack!” someone—one of the Priestesses—chimed in over Carro’s shoulder, sounding defensive. “Hartlet charged in on his own, against orders!”

  Carro frowned, looking to Cullen. “Is that true?”

  Cullen nodded, a flash of anger wiping the worry from his face. “Aye. You two—” he indicated Carro and Raz “—triggered a ward when you started your climb. When Jofrey heard, he sent us to investigate. If you were a war-band we were to slow you down long enough for help to arrive. If you were envoys—or pretty much anything but an assault force—we were to gather information, send it to the Citadel, and make our retreat back up the path.”

  He blinked suddenly, as though remembering something.

  “And speaking of,” he said, raising a hand, “it’s past time we let the rest of the council know what’s going on.”

  As Raz watched the man begin to twist his finger in a small circle through the air, he felt an unbidden ping of curiosity.

  The council, he thought privately. Syrah…

  The notion was chased away at once, though, as something began to materialize in the space around Cullen’s finger. Like light made tangible, the spell seemed to expel magic out, then pull it back in to weave into a slim length of what looked like thin, tattered silk. At once Raz knew what it was and—as Cullen sent it whipping up the path with a flick of his wrist—he turned to watch the pale glow of the messenger spell zip back and forth along the stairs above them until it vanished into the thickly falling snow.

  “Now…” Cullen started slowly, as though encroaching on a sensitive subject. “Carro… what the hell is going on? Where is Talo? Why isn’t he with you?”

  For a long time, Carro said nothing. For a long time he didn’t lift his gaze from his work at Reyn’s side, the golden glow illuminating the lined face and aging it once again before Raz’s eyes. After almost a half-a-minute he tried to speak, opening his mouth to reply, but seemed unable to. He tried again, and failed again.

  As he looked about ready to give it a third attempt, Raz reached out and rested a clawed hand carefully on his friend’s shoulder.

  Carro looked up, and Raz saw tears building in the old man’s eyes.

  “Let me,” Raz told him gently.

  Carro hesitated, looking torn.

  Then he nodded.

  “Priest Brern, is it?” Raz said at once, letting his arm drop and looking to Cullen. The larger man looked at him quizzically, but calmly, any fear and uncertainly now replaced with more curiosity than anything else.

  “Aye,” he said by way of acknowledgment.

  “Then, Priest Brern,” Raz said, pushing himself to his feet with the dull clink of steel beneath fur, “I would appreciate it if you would follow me. It seems my horse requires calming, and I could use the help.”

  Indeed, Gale could still be heard whinnying in confusion and fright from inside the alcove, his hooves clacking against stone. Brern, to his credit, took the hint at once, and as Raz made his way through the other Priests and Priestesses—an easy feat, as each and every one seemed absolutely intent on staying well out of his way—the older man picked up his staff from where it lay beside him and made to follow.

  Raz looked over his shoulder in time to see a few of the others start to tail them hesitantly.

  “I would recommend,” he said quietly, falling back to move with Brern into the carved shelter of the recess, “that we keep what I have to tell you between us until I’ve finished. After that, you can feel free to share what you see fit, as you see fit.”

  Brern frowned at that, but only paused briefly before half-turning and motioning for his group to stay where they were.

  It took Raz a minute or so to calm Gale, and he used the time to gather his thoughts. As the stallion finally relaxed, ducking his head in his habitual request for stroking, Raz turned to speak.

  “Talo Brahnt is dead, Priest Brern.”

  The effect of the words was instantaneous and expected. The Priest gave a sharp intake of breath, his already pale face losing all color in the darkness of the night as he absorbed Raz’s news. For a long moment he just stood there, looking almost lost, one hand wrapped around the haft of his steel staff, the other hanging limp by his side.

  To his credit, though, the man recovered quickly.

  “How?” he asked shortly.

  “He was killed by one of your Northern beasts—some form of bear, Carro tells me. It happened barely a day ago, now.”

  “A day?” Brern demanded in subdued disbelief. “So recently?”

  Raz nodded. “Hence my preference that you would hear it from me. Talo was a friend, and growing rapidly in esteem in my eyes, but more to the point I believe you will understand why Carro doesn’t wish to speak of it if it can be helped.”

  Cullen nodded slowly, raising an eyebrow as he did.

  “You must be familiar with them, if you’re aware of that,” he said, almost as though admitting something to himself. “Where did it happen?”

  “As we passed through the Woods,” Raz told him, absently sliding his leather palm along Gale�
��s snout as the horse huffed. “But the details aren’t what’s important. I can give you those, in time. For now, let’s keep to the essentials.”

  “Starting with the obvious,” Brern said, eyeing Raz. “I would still like to know who it is, exactly, you are…?”

  “My name is Raz i’Syul Arro. To keep a very long story very short, Talo and Carro took me in after their undertaking to Azbar was abandoned for your more pressing threat, this ‘Kayle’ of yours. I shared a brief history with Talo, from when he was last in the South.”

  Cullen looked surprised by that.

  “That was the better part of a decade ago, if memory serves. I admit I don’t know much of your kind other than the name ‘atherian’, but I wouldn’t guess you to quite be of the age to have had many dealings with Talo and his entourage while they were in the fringe cities.”

  “I was fairly young, you’re correct.” Raz nodded.

  “If what you say is true, though,” Cullen said, sounding incrementally uncertain, “then you would have seen Reyn Hartlet as well. He was with Talo—in Karth, I think it was?—on the same expedition. You didn’t recognize him tonight, when he—?”

  “The man who attacked us?” Raz cut in, surprised. “No, I didn’t. I never met or even saw him. My encounter was actually mostly with Syrah Brahnt. Talo I only noticed in passing.”

  At that, Cullen’s frown deepened.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize your man, but how was I supposed to?” Raz asked, responding to what he assumed to be disbelief. “He attacked us without warning. Carro is right, he’s lucky I didn’t—”

  “No, no, it’s not that,” Cullen said quickly, waving Raz’s defensiveness aside. “You were well within your rights to defend yourself, Master Arro. If anything I hope it teaches Hartlet a lesson. Maybe the idiot will realize now that he’s not invincible.”

  He paused, then, looking as though he wanted to continue along his original train of thought. Then he sighed, and seemed to think better of it.

  “It’s nothing of import, right now,” he grunted. “Nothing that can be fixed, anyway. As you said: keeping to the essentials. Please, continue.”