Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  When he turned again, though, his golden eyes finding hers once more, the menace died, the animal fled from his face, and the heartbreaking warmth returned. He approached her, dropping to one knee at her side, falling as though dragged helplessly down by the intense deliverance that painted his alien features, the spear clunking atop the furs beside him.

  “Syrah,” he breathed, the word choked by some mix of joy and misery. “Syrah. Thank the Sun.”

  Raz knelt beside Syrah Brahnt, deaf and blind to all but the woman before him, lying on her back on the layered elk and wolf pelts, chained up like some animal readied for the slaughter. He didn’t know how to feel, how to think. All he could do was stare at her, taking her in, bathing in the realization that she was alive, that she was whole.

  Or almost.

  Raz, helpless in his growing outrage, stared at the woman’s face. His eyes first flicked to the knotted remnant of her right ear, then to the rag, worn and dirty, wrapped diagonally over her right eye. He felt cold fire spring up within him once more when he saw the hint of a vertical scar above and below the frayed edges of the cloth.

  The mark of a blade.

  “What did they do to you?” he demanded with wrenching fury, ignoring the rumble of voices building up and approaching in the distance behind him. “Syrah, what happened?”

  Syrah looked suddenly ill, turning her face away from him to hide the eye. As she did he noticed her shifting uncomfortably, trying to cover herself after the savage had hitched her robes above her hips. Raz made to help, reaching for the tattered remnants of the clothes in the hopes of saving what modesty she had left.

  But before he could do so, he froze.

  He saw the marks, then, all along the insides and outsides of her thin thighs, fiery welts that looked like the flat of a sword overlaying dozens of black and blue bruises. He saw the yellowed imprint of teeth—human teeth—in her flesh, marring the otherwise calm paleness of her skin. He saw the way her legs shook, and the way she spasmed when he took ahold of the bunched cotton around her hips. He saw the way she refused to look at him as he—slowly and with delicate, gentle care—finally covered her up.

  It took everything he had not to drop into the pit that had ripped open inside of him at the sight of the damage that had been done.

  More shouts gathered behind them, and Raz slipped.

  “I need to get you out of here,” he said hurriedly, getting to his feet, lifting his spear in one hand as he did. Syrah turned to look at him again as he took stock of the bindings around her wrists.

  When he grabbed hold of them with one hand, she looked suddenly fearful.

  “What are you going to—?” she started.

  “Cover your face,” he interrupted just as the sound of approaching feet, running towards them at full tilt, became clear over the snap and crack of the fire behind him.

  Syrah, hesitated, then did as she was told.

  When he was sure her eye was covered, Raz gave the post a single crushing kick.

  The timber—despite being as thick as a man’s arm—didn’t have a prayer under the force of the blow. It snapped in two without so much as a fight, partially collapsing the tent around them. Raz started to haul Syrah up, intending to help her towards the slash he’d cut in the back of the tent. As he did, though, he realized with a heavy pitting in his stomach that the woman weighed next to nothing, her tall form almost pulled right off the ground by his assistance.

  She’s so thin, he thought, noticing for the first time the prominence of bone in her arms and legs, and the shallowness of her cheeks. Syrah groaned as she settled onto her feet, swaying dangerously.

  Making a decision, Raz scooped her up in one arm, cradling her against his chest, and sprinted towards the back wall.

  The other supports held, and they were outside in seconds, dashing into the trees. For half-a-minute Raz ran, driving straight north, towards the Saragrias. When he heard voices behind them, though, howling in fury and hooting as they gave chase through the dark, he slowed down, then stopped.

  The Monster reared its head within him, snarling hungrily at their pursuers, and Raz felt the bloodlust rise once more.

  Then something small and gentle came to rest against his chest, and he glanced down.

  Syrah was looking up at him, her one eye bright and tired in the soft blue light of the Woods. She was watching him, her right hand resting against his heart, and it seemed in that moment she knew what was going through his mind.

  When she spoke, it was in a quiet, comforting whisper.

  “Leave them, Raz,” she said, the broken, dirtied nails of her hand digging lightly into his skin in subtle supplication. “Please. For me.”

  There was a long moment as Raz stared down at the woman in his arms. He met her gaze evenly, feeling as though he were ready to fall into the depths of her one good eye. He remembered the last time he had listened to this same request, recalled the price he had paid for it.

  Then, like her words had been a lullaby, the animal retreated back to where it had come, settling into sleep.

  “If you’re sure,” he said softly, turning away from the sounds of approaching men. Syrah smiled at him as he did so.

  The warmth behind that smile was all Raz needed to spur himself to new speeds through the Woods, out of the trees, and over the carnage at the base of the path before taking the wide stone steps of the mountain pass two at a time.

  XL

  “We are fortunate, in the end, that Raz’s actions were not cordoned in with the facts of my own betrayal. He was an outsider, a man of the world, not of the faith. His choices—while still his responsibility—were not governed by the laws of the Laorin, and so he was not bound by the same restrictions, the same expectations and punishments. It is for this reason, I think, that his return to us that day was the first great step in earning the trust of the faith. Instead of running, instead of fleeing the men and women who had held him prisoner, he returned to us willingly, bearing with him proof that he was not the soulless contraption of mayhem and butchery so many have tried to paint him out to be.”

  —PRIVATE JOURNAL OF CARRO AL’DOR

  JOFREY FELT he had only just gotten to sleep when the summons came in the earliest hours of the morning, well before first light. It had been a late, restless evening, he and the rest of council having retired well after midnight had come and gone. Carro had been interrogated to every possible extent, half the council seeking some reason to forgive him his folly, the other half demanding he be Broken immediately and cast out into the snow. Valaria Petrük and Behn Argo had—of course—been particularly virulent, both of them raging the night away about the “madness” of setting an untamable brute like Raz i’Syul Arro free upon the world.

  And all the while Carro had only smiled, looking—For the first time since he returned, Jofrey thought—at peace.

  It was towards this troubling realization that Jofrey’s mind had wandered as he fell asleep, the heavy series of poundings on his room door serving to rip him out twisted dreams of an old, bloodier life best left behind. Unused to the spaciousness of the High Priest’s quarters—which he had been hastily moved into permanently the previous afternoon—at first Jofrey’s groggy mind had been mostly convinced it was the sound of sudden hail hammering the wide window set beside the bed in the circular wall. When the pounding came again, though, he started up from his mattress, intent on shouting a tired “Come in!” as he made to swing his legs over the edge of the bed.

  Before he could get the words out, though, the door was thrown open, swinging inward so hard it hit the inside wall with a crash, bathing the dark room with a wedged stroke of the brighter light of the hall. In its wake Cullen Brern practically tripped inside, looking desperately in all directions before finding Jofrey. Behind him Priest Elber did the same, rushing in as though chased. Both men’s faces were white, their eyes wide when they fell on their new High Priest.

  “He’s coming back!” Cullen was the first to get the words. “He�
��s coming back! He’s got her!”

  For a full five seconds after these words, Jofrey sat stunned, still halfway in and out of the bed. Slowly, eventually, his eyes went to Elber’s, seeking confirmation of the impossible.

  “T-two!” the older man gasped, struggling to catch his breath. “Two people! Coming up the pass! When the first ward broke we wanted to wait, to let you sleep. But now the second tells us there’re two people and—!”

  “He has her,” Jofrey hissed in incredulous, disbelieving shock. “Arro found Syrah.”

  “It’s the only explanation,” Brern insisted. “If the Kayle were sending a response, it would be more than two. Jofrey, please! Let me take a group and meet them! Let me get to them and—!”

  His words were cut short, though, as Jofrey scrambled the rest of the way out of bed, snatched his robes from where they hung on the corner post, and dashed right at the two men.

  “Like hell,” he half-snarled, half-yelled as he pushed past the pair, running in nothing but his nightgown in the direction of the temple gates. “Cullen, get your brother. Elber, find Benala. We’re going to get them ourselves.”

  Not fifteen minutes later, in the dark of the early hour, Jofrey, Cullen, Kallet, Priest Elber, and Benala Forn were dashing across the Citadel’s inner courtyard, taking turns to blast aside the piled snow and ice as they ran. They made their way through the outer wall quickly, the hammering of their boots echoing eerily in the tunnel, the light of the glowing orbs hovering above their shoulders shivering against the stone that curved overhead. After that, their course took them out over the plateau and towards the top of the stairs. Jofrey led the charge, now, his magic fueled by his hope and need, his spells blowing the path ahead clear thirty feet at a time.

  For hours the five of them descended, sometimes yelling to one another to watch their footing, or else shouting concerns about what would happen if it wasn’t Syrah and the atherian, or what state the pair might be in if it was them. Jofrey had no patience for doubts, at the moment, and so didn’t deign respond to any such concerns thrown his way. He knew—he knew—that Arro had succeeded. In the same way he had felt—though told no one—a sense of calming relief as he’d watched the atherian’s fleeing footprints fill with snow beyond the frame of the Last Door, so did he feel an absolute certainty that it was the man and Syrah fighting their way back up the mountain in the night. He could sense Laor’s hand in that confidence, could sense the Lifegiver feeding that conviction.

  And so for almost three hours Jofrey ran in focused silence, refreshing and warming himself only when he had to, leaving the others far behind more than once. Around the next corner, he kept telling himself. Around the next one.

  And then, just as the sun began to make itself known over the distant eastern horizon, his anticipation bore fruit.

  Whether it was coincidence or by some godly decree, they met in the same place Cullen Brern had first encountered Carro and the atherian. Jofrey had descended the winding path, back and forth across the mountainside, vaulting down and cutting every corner whenever he could. He had taken the bend, hurrying down the steps and past the entrance to the alcove he knew the two men had rested in only a few nights ago, when a shape came around the ledge in front of him, large and dark against the orange and purple of the new dawn. Jofrey felt a thrill wash through him as he made out the black silhouette against the backdrop of the sunrise behind it, watching it lumber in staggering, uneven steps, one after the other.

  Then the figure caught sight of him, and it stopped.

  Jofrey said nothing as he continued his descent down the last of the steps, rushing along the flat part of the path as he reached it and hearing the others hurdling along above and behind him. As he ran forward, the massive shape fell in exhausted relief to its knees.

  When the High Priest finally came to halt before the man, he felt his heart stop.

  Raz i’Syul Arro knelt, worn and beaten, half-hunched over the still, spectral, form of the woman curled up against him. The atherian was a terrifying sight, glistening and streaked with dark stains that looked almost black in the morning light. The dried and frozen blood clung to everything, from the great spear hanging limp from one hand on the ground beside him to the reddened teeth along the snout that hung wearily down, shielding the woman from the cold and the snow as it began to fall again. He was heaving, his eyes closed, his breath blowing out of his mouth and nostrils like smoke to rise and wreath his head. The man shivered, his body shaking even beneath the layered pelts of the crusted mantle hanging over his shoulders.

  When the atherian spoke, though, his voice was firm, his words audible over the crunching sounds of booted feet coming to a halt behind Jofrey.

  “Lead the way.”

  XLI

  “Cruelty is, simply put, an accepted medium of interaction among the mountain tribes of the North. It is, in some ways, a limitedly quantifiable measure of power among a people who value strength above all else. A man who can be cruel is a man who must be strong, for cruelty requires a hardness of the heart and soul through which a man can stand firm even under the greatest of threats. It is for this reason, perhaps, that the Stone Gods were born, for if a man’s strength can be measured by his cruelty, why not his gods’?”

  —LEGENDS BEYOND THE BORDER, BY ZYRYL VAHS

  FOR A long time Gûlraht Baoill stood silent over the shaking forms of the three Sigûrth warriors kneeling in a line before him. Their fear was palpable, like a stench they couldn’t shake, emanating from their helpless shivering and the breaking pitch with which they’d spoken as they’d delivered their report. Any other time the Kayle might have had the men lashed for displaying such blatant enfeeblement in his presence. Any other time he might have just killed them himself, demonstrating once more that he would tolerate no frailty within his army.

  As it was, the words they’d brought with them had stilled his heart, head, and hands.

  And pointed his rage, with all distinction, in another direction.

  “Take me to him,” he told the three men simply.

  The messengers jumped at the deep sound of his voice, but didn’t pause. At once they clambered to their feet and turned to hurry east through the forest. Gûlraht gave nothing more than a small nod to the man beside him before following, his great ax held in one hand at his side. As he moved away he heard Agor Vareks shout the order to march, and the rumbling sound of twenty-five thousand men lumbering forward behind him chased the Kayle through the trees.

  None of it reached him, in the frightening place he was descending to, the place of whirling darkness dragged forth by the news he’d been brought as soon as the camp sentries had made out their approach through the Woods. For several minutes he followed the messengers along their winding path through the underbrush, keeping his eyes on their backs. He didn’t take note of them slowing down when they realized their Kayle was in no rush to keep up with them, nor did he notice the terrified glances they gave each other as they glanced curiously up into his face.

  If he had, he might have measured the wrath he felt slowly building up within, consuming his heart and soul, leaking out to paint his features in violent detail.

  It wasn’t long before he started to make out the sound of men in the distance, then the glint of flames through the trees. A minute later the Sigûrth led him out of the forest into a circle of tents, and he felt warmth bathe him as they moved into the light of a great fire in the middle of the ring. All about, dozens of men from every tribe were standing, their voices an angry rumble, their faces rough and fearsome in the orange dance of the flames. At first, when the three messengers started to push their way through the gathering, warriors turned to snarl and challenge them, wondering who dared attempt cheat a glimpse of whatever it was the crowd encircled.

  When they saw the towering form of their Kayle, however, their threats died in their throats and they slunk quickly out of the way.

  Word spread through the men as a silent wave, washing ahead of Gûlraht like s
ome spell across the ranks. Where a minute ago the air had been thick with the buzz of hard and curious voices, by the time he reached the center of the ring the only sounds that could be made out were the crackding of the fire and the whistle of the wind as it battered the tops of the trees far above them.

  When the last line of men parted, the three who’d led him there quietly vanishing into the crowd, Gûlraht was left to stand over the proof of his first true defeat.

  Of the bodies lain out before him, few were intact. They waited, mangled and ugly, in two curved rows of over a dozen each, wrapped partway around the fire. Gûlraht’s sharp eyes took in their state as the shadows leapt about, and for the first time since his father had called him a man of the clans he felt something like fear prickle up inside him. He had been warned in the story he’d been told by the messengers, but the words and tally had been drowned out by the greater loss they had informed him of. As he stood now over the corpses of the fallen, he heard them again.

  Then, as though to echo his thoughts, someone behind him whispered the one thing they were all thinking.

  “Dahgün.”

  As hard as he tried, Gûlraht couldn’t find fault in the fear while he stood looking down at the dead. His men hadn’t just been slain. They hadn’t just fallen in battle, or been claimed by the sword. His men had been ravaged. They had been torn apart, limbs wrenched clean of sockets, heads twisted the wrong way, backs bent almost in two. Those that did bear blade wounds showed more familiar signs, but they were no less alarming. Arms and legs missing. Innards and gore emptied from opened cavities, the stench kept at bay only by the cold. Bodies cleaved almost in two—and one that had been cleaved in two.