Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  “Where—Where is she?” he said in a voice of forced calm, speaking between heavy breaths. “Where—is she—Wence?”

  The healer didn’t answer at once. For several seconds more he held the spell firm, watching with a careful eye as though suspecting Reyn were faking this sudden subdual.

  Eventually, though, he let his hand fall, and Reyn felt the magic release him all at once, the arcane fingers slipping off his skin.

  “We don’t know,” Wence said gently. “I’m sorry. The rumors reached us about midday. I don’t want to give you false ho—”

  “Tell me,” Reyn snapped, looking up at him, though being careful not to make any sudden moves lest he be restrained again. “Tell me.”

  Wence, once again, hesitated. It was only after a small, encouraging nod from Emalyn, in fact, that he finally spoke.

  “The word seems to be that al’Dor and the atherian—Arro, or whatever his name is—claim that Syrah is still alive. When they realized it, in fact, Arro apparently went insane. Tried to kill half the council, they say.”

  “Kill the—?” Reyn started, surprised by this. “Why? Why would Arro attack the council?”

  “We’re not sure,” Emalyn said quietly. “There’s a rumor that he was sent here by the Kayle to assassinate the High Priest Brahnt’s replacement, and another that he’s just some wild animal Brahnt and al’Dor freed from the Arena in Azbar while they were down there. I don’t believe either of them, but it doesn’t help that al’Dor won’t speak to anyone. He’s locked himself in his chambers and won’t answer the door. Most of the council tried. I didn’t even think he opened for Jofrey…”

  She looked suddenly nervous, glancing at Wence before continuing. “We overheard a few of Cullen Brern’s students talking, though, ones that were in your group on the pass. They stopped in to see how you and the others were doing.”

  “You weren’t the only one Arro managed to take a chunk out of, in the end,” Vance cut in eagerly, obviously attempting to rectify his earlier slip up. “Loric has enough broken ribs to match yours, and Grees is in worse shape than either of… of…”

  He trailed off slowly, quailing under the look Wence gave him.

  “As Emalyn was saying,” Wence told Reyn, though his eyes didn’t leave Vance for a several moments. “We overhead talk that the atherian was actually trying to leave when the council stopped him.”

  “Leave?” Reyn asked, annoyed by his own confusion. “Why would he be trying to leave?”

  For what seemed like the hundredth time, the healers paused, exchanging dark looks. Reyn was about to insist again when Wence finally answered.

  “Apparently… he may have been trying to go back for Syrah.”

  For a long time after that, Reyn could only stare at the healer standing at the end of his bed, his head still wrenched up at an awkward angle. He wanted to scream again, wanted to shout, to howl and demand why in fuck’s sake the council would want to stop a beast like the atherian attempting to save one of their own. He wanted to scramble up again, to shove past the three standing around him now like a guard, to hunt down his former Priest-Mentor and shake him until Jofrey explained himself.

  But there was no need. After all, it wasn’t hard to guess why the council would have strived to stop someone like Raz i’Syul Arro from leaving their sight. Reyn didn’t know much about the atherian. He had not met him, some six or seven years ago now, back then in the dusty heat of the South. He knew only what he had learned in their ten seconds of brief, eye-opening combat, of which he had certainly come out the worse for wear.

  Mostly, he suspected, because of the deadly, savage edge of murderous instinct he had seen in Arro’s eyes, half-a-moment before the creature’s kick had crushed his side in and sent him flying over the roughened stone.

  There was a ruthlessness there, a hungry, unsettled coldness in that look that Reyn knew suddenly he would never be able to mirror.

  It was the will of a killer.

  Reyn couldn’t even begin to guess as to why the atherian would bother with saving Syrah. He didn’t think they could have formed much of a bond during their brief encounter in the South, nor did he think it was Arro who owed Syrah, rather than the other way around. But if the atherian had been intending to make down the mountain again and attempt to save her, Reyn understood all too well why the council had tried to stop him.

  It was in this state of numb, hopeless shock that Wence and the others left him, giving Reyn his privacy. He would appreciate this later, though barely so much as noticed at the time. For longer than he knew, Reyn did nothing but lay on his back, staring at the greyish hue of the ceiling, cast in the white and blue light of the Citadel candles. The shadows moved across the mortared shale, reminding him of those that used to dance across the wall of his darkened room, cast from the single line of brightness that was the bottom lip of his doorframe. He thought of them now because he had only ever started to watch them after he’d noticed the flickering shimmer once playing across the soft, pale skin of Syrah’s neck and back as she lay naked in the bed beside him.

  Syrah…

  He loved her. Reyn was all too aware of that, now. He had known it the moment he’d heard she hadn’t returned from her attempts to negotiate with the mountain clan, had known it from the black fear that had pooled up inside of him like ice set aflame.

  And now she was alone, abandoned by her peers and friends, left to die at the hands of savages that would see her—and every last narrow branch of her faith—burned to ash.

  Reyn didn’t notice the tears spilling from the corners of his eyes as he lay there, warm and comfortable in a bed that felt suddenly like a betrayal to the woman he loved. He was there, safe and whole, while she was likely curled up somewhere, shivering in the cold and snow. Slowly, steadily over a long time, his breathing became cracked and uneven, and all at once Reyn found himself sobbing quietly, his mind far, far away.

  He still hadn’t noticed the tears when Cullen Brern arrived. The master-at-arms entered the infirmary like a thundercloud, his mood already darkened by the events of a day he didn’t think could get any worse. He was all too ready to vent some of his anger in Reyn Hartlet’s direction, ready to rage and abuse the man until nothing was left of the fool’s ego but charred cinders from which, hopefully, something better would rise.

  When he found the Priest, however, Cullen felt all the fire sapped from him. He watched for a time, silently from the far corner of the wide room, as his student cried quietly, still on his back, eyes empty as they gazed upward, seeing nothing and everything all at the same time. It didn’t take too many guesses to figure out who the man was thinking about.

  After a few minutes, Cullen turned and left the infirmary again, quietly this time, feeling that in the coming night Reyn Hartlet would likely suffer enough punishment to last a lifetime.

  XXXIV

  “Mountains only fall when they rise too high.”

  —OLD SIGÛRTH PROVERB

  KARETH STOOD beneath the faded blue glow of the Woods’ icy canopy, lounging lazily with his back against the thick roots of a particularly behemoth ash wood. Its great branches were so high and so wide above them that the massive tree had formed a sort of pseudo-clearing all about itself, discouraging other life from growing where it could never reach the light. To one side a wide stream formed a thick stroke of ice through the forest, its steep sides dipping down like a scar in the earth. It was at the edge of this embankment that Kareth sat, waiting, immune to the cold as a dozen Sigûrth warriors moved nervously about him, their torches held high enough to illuminate the other side of the stream.

  Kareth waited with less impatience than anticipation, eager for a sign of the men they were expecting. Elrös of the Grasses had been the one to bring the news of the imminent arrival, and what was expected of Kareth in response. The Kayle was legendary for his patience, among his enemies and allies both, but there was one thing which tested that restraint beyond its limits.

  And the men they were
waiting on were coming to collect proof for which Gûlraht Baoill apparently couldn’t delay another night.

  “They come,” Elrös said quietly from where he was crouched beside Kareth, sharp eyes peering into the dark to his left, west along the stream bank.

  At once the men all about them shifted, every eye turning to follow the Gähs’. For another minute or so there was nothing. Only the wind, distant through the sheet of snow and ice high above their heads, made a sound as they waited. Kareth forcefully tempered his excitement, willing himself not to look up until Elrös shifted at his hip, subtly indicating their guests had arrived.

  When he lifted his eyes, he could make out little more than black ghosts melting out of the dark.

  Before Gûlraht had given him command of the vanguard, Kareth had never seen the Goatmen move as a pack. In truth, in fact, he had always thought little of the clan, even scoffing privately at his cousin’s penchant for using them as scouts and flankers. They had seemed weak, frail things, of little use except as hunters and foragers when game was scarce.

  It was an assumption Kareth had quickly discarded.

  The group of Gähs shifted out of the Woods as though they were a part of it, their mottled furs and bleached skulls all but indistinguishable against the brown vegetation, dark bark, and the thin layer of frost that patterned the ground in uneven patches. It seemed in one moment that nothing moved between the trees through which the Sigûrth’s torchlight permeated, and then all at once the Goatmen were there, standing in a staggered half circle some thirty feet away, just at the edge of the clearing.

  Kareth felt a chill of appreciation.

  “Tell them to come closer,” he told Elrös.

  Elrös nodded, standing up and raising a hand. Slowly the Gähs moved forward, almost cautiously, as though hesitant to step within the revealing boundary of the firelight.

  “Welcome, friends!” Kareth boomed, grinning wide but still not moving from where he lounged between the roots of the great tree. “How fares my cousin?”

  “The Kayle wishes you to substantiate your claims, Kareth Grahst,” one of the Goatmen said in response, ignoring the question. “He wishes we tell you that he hopes you understand the vastness of the rewards you stand to earn should you speak the truth, and the horror of the punishments you face if you are found a liar.”

  Kareth’s grin slipped into a wide, crooked smirk, and he waved the comment away with a lazy hand. “Whatever ideas of torment Gûlraht can weave will have to be saved for another man, I’m afraid. I know too well how my cousin would take false hope in this matter.”

  “Then you have her?” the man asked, eager now, taking another step forward. “You have the Witch in truth?”

  Kareth, still smiling, nodded once.

  “Then bring her to us,” the man said quickly. “Bring her forward, that we might return to the march with news of this great victory.”

  Kareth made a great show of hesitation, as though contemplating whether he truly wanted to show the Gähs anything. He pretended to study them, looking each one up and down with slow deliberation, enjoying the subtle shift they made as his eyes found theirs, as well as the building impatience that was almost palpably emanating from their leader. Kareth considered delaying even more with further questions after his cousin’s health and wellbeing, but ended up thinking the better of it.

  Lifting a hand, he flicked a finger, and there was the rustle of dead leaves shifting beneath booted feet.

  The Witch didn’t fight as she was dragged forward from around a tall weaving of roots on the other side of the tree. Two men pulled her along, one by each arm, carelessly trailing her legs and bare feet across the icy ground, uncaring of the torn cloth of her white robes, or the bloody state of her knees and shins.

  They were the same two men Kareth had sent earlier to beat her senseless, ensuring her submission as she was tendered to the Kayle’s envoys.

  There was a collective inhalation from the Gähs pack as they recognized the woman. Though it was doubtful any of them had actually ever seen the White Witch before, there was no mistaking the pallor of her skin, nor the bone-pale color of her hair. Her hands, still shackled behind her back, were almost luminescent in the bluish rays pouring through the ice above, then ashen as they came into the light of the torches. Her bare legs were the same, though marred by bruises and cuts. As the Sigûrth dropped her unceremoniously to the ground at the feet of the Goatmen, rolling her over with a rough boot on her shoulder, her face was revealed, ivory skin smooth despite the weeks of abuse she’d suffered.

  Kareth watched the leader frown as he looked down on the woman, now in a limp heap on her back before him, hands pinned beneath her.

  “Her eye,” he said, bending down to trace the dirty cloth that ran diagonally across her forehead, covering the right top-half of her face. “What happened to it?”

  “We asked her to make a choice,” Kareth said, his voice almost a laugh. “It would be something of an understatement to say she chose wrong…”

  The Goatman’s frown only deepened at that, but he said nothing else. He stayed kneeling over the woman for another half-minute, turning her head this way and that on a slack neck, opening her good eye to peer at the pink orb, examining the ugly scar of her right ear, and even checking for a pulse. As he did his own eyes traveled down her body, noticing the large tears in the robes and the feminine parts of her that might otherwise not have been exposed to the cold.

  “You’ve defiled her,” he said plainly, reaching down to drag away what little modesty the woman had left, revealing the bruises and bite marks along the front and inside of her legs.

  For the first time, Kareth’s smile faltered.

  “And what of it?” he asked defensively, suddenly questioning his assumption that Gûlraht would care little for the state his gift was in when he received it.

  The Gähs, though, merely shrugged.

  “Just an observation,” the man said, reaching down to draw a long, slim knife from his hip. “The Kayle welcomes you to any amusement you can take until he arrives. He only requires that she be able to speak when you present her to him.”

  Then, quick as the wind, the Goatmen gathered a handful of the frayed braids of the woman’s white hair and lopped them clean off with a single quick slash.

  “That being said,” he went on as he sheathed the knife and got to his feet, “I recommend you allow her to keep her other eye, if only for the time being.”

  Kareth’s smile returned with confidence, and he gave a small nod. “I’ll take the suggestion under advisement. I hadn’t intended to claim anything else from her just yet, regardless.”

  The Goatman smirked at that, but said nothing in reply. Only after he had torn a long piece of thin string from his chest piece, looping it quickly about the bunching of braids before stowing the whole thing carefully in some hidden pocket of his cloak, did he speak.

  “The Kayle will be pleased with your triumph, Kareth Grahst. I imagine you have just gained yourself much favor in his eyes.”

  And with that he whirled about and vanished back into the Woods, the rest of his pack no more than a moment behind, their footsteps less than whispers before they were gone.

  After the last hint of them had disappeared among the trees, Kareth breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Still smiling, he allowed his head to tilt back and rest against the rough root behind him. He had essentially just hand-delivered his cousin’s greatest desire to his feet. Kareth had little doubt he had just made himself the favorite, had little doubt he had just won himself Gûlraht’s ear.

  In one move, he had forged himself into the second most powerful man in all of the North…

  He couldn’t help but grin even wider at the thought.

  There was the sound of crunching snow, and Kareth looked around. The men who had brought out the unconscious Witch were picking her up again, turning to head east once more. They started back at once, towards the very edge of the camp where fear of her sinful magic didn�
��t have quite the same effect as imprisoning her amongst his men had.

  But this night, Kareth found he cared little for the weaknesses of the superstitious rabble.

  “No,” he said aloud, directing the command at the pair. Immediately the two men froze, half-turning as Kareth finally got to his feet, pulling himself up by the roots around him.

  “No,” he said again, lifting a hand to indicate a more southeast line. “My tent. Leave her atop my furs.”

  The two didn’t so much as hesitate. Nodding together, they shifted course, making for the distant twinkle of firelight that was the Sigûrth clump, separate from the rest of the encampment.

  Kareth felt a surge of anticipation as he watched them leave, dropping his hand down to toy with the pommel of the sword on his hip. He had much to do before his night’s work was done. Elrös had assured him Gûlraht would be arriving before noontide the following day, and he had many things and more to prepare to ensure his cousin was impressed with the siege he found on his arrival. When that was done, though, Kareth would break a fast he had forced upon himself for nearly two weeks. He had allowed the Sigûrth free rein of the woman in that time, granted them their pleasures and their cruelties.

  But, now, as the White Witch’s last night pulled darkness across the ice and snow above them like a closing eye, Kareth wanted to ensure it was his face she cursed when the Kayle arrived to take her head.

  XXXV

  “I have often wondered, looking back, why we so easily criticize the rashness of youth, the impunity of immaturity and the imprudency of children. When I consider many of the things made to bear fruit by such ‘ill-judged’ acts, I cannot help but wonder if it is—rather than a growth of the mind and spirit—simply the innate fear and cowardice that is the unfortunate harvest of years that stops an old hag like myself from having the guts to do what boys and girls not even a quarter my age will do without doubt or hesitation.”