by Shae Ford
The falcons swarmed.
The world went red.
A howl ripped from Kael’s throat as he sprinted towards her. A falcon shot down and tried to deal the ending blow. It fell for Kyleigh, talons outstretched — and met the spurred heel of her boot. The falcon’s head was crushed immediately. It seized up and toppled over as if it’d struck a castle wall.
But the damage had already been done.
The combination of Kyleigh’s weight and the sudden jolt of the falcon seemed to be too much for the ice. Time slowed as Kael watched the spider web of blue-green cracks blossom beneath Kyleigh’s middle. Talons came down, thudding into her upraised arms — widening the cracks.
He yelled for her to roll aside, but she couldn’t hear him over the screeching of the falcons. She swung her fists, unaware of the fact that she was about to be sucked into an icy oblivion. The seconds seemed to last an age. Kael’s legs thundered at a speed he never knew he had. His arms swung furiously beside him; his fingers clawed at the air.
But he was still too late.
The ice gave way with a crack and Kyleigh fell through. Kael heard the thud echo inside his head as his body struck the ice. His eyes were on her hands; her fingers dug into the last solid edge, her knuckles stark white with the effort.
He saw the fierce, blue-green monster erupt around her body. Its spray looked like thousands of tiny hands — grasping, pushing, trying desperately to thrust her under and out of his reach. But Kael was far too quick. He dove and grabbed, finally snatching her by the wrists.
The world rushed back. A ghostly cold had already settled into Kyleigh’s armor. His skin ached against it. Her hands stayed curled as he pulled, as if they were so stiff with ice she that couldn’t get them to bend. Her full lips were frozen, parted. White showed around the green in her eyes.
Somehow, Kael managed to drag his feet beneath him. He felt hairline cracks forming around him as he pulled, heard the thudding of boulders as they crashed through the ice beside him, fought against the river’s grasp and against the numbing cold in his hands and slowly, he managed to pull Kyleigh halfway free.
The ice groaned dangerously, and he froze. With even the slightest shift of his boots, it groaned again. It couldn’t support both their weights — one of them was going to fall through.
And as long as he drew breath, it wasn’t going to be Kyleigh.
She must’ve seen the plan forming in his eyes. The battle raged around them. The howls of the wildmen, the screech of the falcons and the river’s roar all seemed distant. His hands tightened around her wrists, preparing to throw her to safety.
She tried to shake him off.
“Don’t,” he begged her. “Please, don’t fight me. I’m not going to let you die —”
The insides of his head slapped against his skull as a falcon crashed into him. Half a breath, a blink, a single thud of his heart — his concentration broke for a shred of time too small to measure. But that was all the opportunity the river needed.
It ripped Kyleigh’s frozen, soaked arms out from between his aching fingers and swallowed her whole. Her hands disappeared beneath the rapids. The white foam swept over her head.
And then she was gone.
*******
The cold was Kyleigh’s greatest enemy. It froze her muscles to her bones, curled her limbs. An ache enveloped her: it seized her joints and made her head pound. She could feel the river’s glee as it dragged her further — as it tightened its icy embrace.
Her lungs convulsed, throbbing against their cage. The pressure of their begging strained the edges of her throat — her last breath of air threatened to burst up and through the feeble seal on her lips at any moment.
Thunder rumbled across the ice above her. It boomed loudly every few seconds — a knock upon the door. A voice called to her, muffled through the ice:
“Kyleigh … Kyleigh!”
Her lungs screamed. Her limbs were frozen solid. She couldn’t open her eyes. She had enough strength left for one reply, and then the river would take her. The icy crust that’d formed across her skin broke as her arm swung upwards. She heard a thump, but didn’t feel anything as her fist struck the frozen ceiling.
Her last breath gave way to the urging of her lungs. Air left her lips in a stream of bubbles and icy water filled her mouth. It numbed her teeth and tongue. Her chest tightened, preparing to expand — and when it did, water would fill her to the brim. The river’s spirit would freeze her from the inside out.
Light struck the backs of her eyes. Something anchored her arm, halting her body’s plunge down the river. The mountain’s voice roared inside her ears. Ice shattered over her head and spilled down her back. When she gasped, it wasn’t water she breathed in:
It was air.
“Come on, Kyleigh!”
The world spun as Kael lifted her onto his shoulders. He moved like wind across the river. She watched in horror as Hundred Bones’ icy flesh cracked beneath his heels. Little holes opened up behind him. The waves slurped and snapped, trying to pull him under. But Kael was far too quick.
“Hold on!” he cried as he ran. “Hold on, Kyleigh! Please — we’re almost there. Just a little further!”
She tried to hold on. She would’ve done anything for him. But the spirit of the mountains raged too fiercely. Its voice shrilled in delight as the wind whipped across her — as the frozen air finished what the river had started. Her vision blurred and dark shapes danced across it. Numbness had so claimed her that she could no longer feel to fight.
Her eyes closed …
“Stay awake, Kyleigh. You have to stay awake!”
Kael’s face swam blurrily above her. Warmth spread across her flesh where he touched, but it was faint — a candle’s warmth. The ice beneath her skin quickly snuffed it out …
And the cold dragged her off to sleep.
*******
“Kyleigh!”
He kept his hands on her face, trying to will her eyes to open, trying to force her back into the light. When they closed, he felt the black beast rushing in. He felt its monstrous jaws about to crush him. He started to panic —
“What do we do?” Gwen gasped. She fell in beside him; the drenched body of a craftsman lay shivering in her arms. “Heal them, mutt! Heal them!”
For some reason, the panic in her eyes destroyed his own. He realized that he couldn’t afford to break — he was the only one left who knew what to do. If he let his panic take him, then the wildmen … Kyleigh …
“Craftsmen to me!” Kael roared, and they stumbled to his side. He put some of their hands on Kyleigh’s armor. “Use your forge fires to keep her warm, heat her exactly how you would heat steel.”
Another group of craftsmen gathered around Gwen and began trying to warm their frozen companion. Their fires would have to burn more gently to keep from singeing his flesh. Kael hoped the heat would be enough.
He heard screams of terror and the noise of splintering wood. Up the slope, the warriors had destroyed the catapults. They ripped the wooden arms apart and hurled boulders at the fleeing backs of the Earl’s men, crushing them. Just when he thought they might have earned a breath, a roar from Silas drew his eyes away.
Titus’s beasts had returned.
They tore from the cover of the mist and charged in a straight line, their blackened eyes locked onto Kyleigh. “Form a ring around the wounded!” Kael said, and the craftsmen moved obediently. “Use your armor, use your blades — don’t let the monsters through!”
They held the beasts off for only a few seconds before one of them sprang clear over their heads. The craftsmen turned to cut it down, and their circle shrank back. Kael ran around its inside edge, cutting down the beasts that managed to leap over their wall, but he couldn’t stop them. The circle shrank further as more beasts made the jump.
Warriors poured down the slope and threw themselves into the fray. The monsters moved too quickly. They found every opening, every gap. If a craftsman stumbled for half a breat
h, he was overtaken. They were punished for every flinch.
It wasn’t possible. Not even the warriors with all their speed could’ve reacted so quickly. Several of the beasts leapt into holes without even turning to look. They moved as if they could see behind them, from all sides. Their collars would flash red and they would jump — gaining advantage. It was almost as if …
Kael tore his eyes away from the battle and saw a handful of falcons circling overhead. They made no move to attack: instead, they kept a looping pattern — their large, glassy eyes locked unblinkingly on the battle beneath them.
All at once, Kael figured it out. He wrenched a melded chunk of armor off the body of a dog and hurled it at one of the falcons. Blood rained down upon them as the iron struck true. The falcon’s body crashed amongst the warriors — who took one look at its wound and began scooping rocks up off the ground.
Stones flew from their hands in such a furious barrage that only one falcon managed to escape. It tore off, squawking at the tops of its lungs, and Titus’s beasts followed. Their collars burned red and they bolted for the slopes, moving as quickly as their twisted legs could carry them.
“No — stay together!” Kael bellowed when the warriors started to give chase.
They’d managed to beat the monsters back for now, but he wasn’t going to let the wildmen split up again. That was all the opportunity Titus needed.
He pushed through the large clump of wildmen that’d formed around Kyleigh and Gwen. The Thane’s eyes burned red. She clung tightly to the now-frozen body of the craftsman, her teeth bared in a snarl.
“Dead,” she managed to whisper.
Kael tore his eyes from the wildmen’s crumpled faces and fell on his knees beside Kyleigh. Her skin was blue and she shivered miserably, but the heat from the craftsmen’s hands had kept her from freezing to death.
She was alive … but fading quickly.
Chapter 38
Double-Edged
A deer lay on the ground before Kael. There was a fist-sized hole over its heart: the jagged mark his stone had left behind. The deer’s dark eyes were vacant; its tongue lolled out of its muzzle. Though the bare trees creaked with the wind and the shadows of the clouds roamed across the slopes, the deer was eerily still.
It had once been a part of this world. There had been a place for it in the mountains’ song, somewhere among the notes that bounded high and fast. Now the hooves would clatter no more. The body wouldn’t dart and the eyes wouldn’t close against rare glimpses of the sun. It was still, empty — lines on a page that would never again be sung … dead, for lack of its voice.
The deer’s tawny head flopped suddenly as Gwen lifted it onto her shoulders. “A good shot,” she said.
She waited for something. Gwen stared, her brows arched high and expecting. Was she waiting for Kael to reply? To offer something in exchange for what she’d said? Wait a moment … what had she said? The longer he thought about it, the less he remembered.
Gwen shifted the deer across her shoulders, making its head flop again. “A shot like that’s got to make you feel better about things. Don’t you feel better?”
Better? He wouldn’t have known what better was even if it’d splattered across his boots.
Kael was stung and sore, but living. He was prepared for the pain, but longed for the impossible. His hope was double-edged: it cut him deeply, but the agony kept him alive. Perhaps there would come a day when he would hurt no longer, when he either healed or died.
Perhaps he would feel better, then.
The mountains dragged out of corners of his eyes. His boots drifted down the path that had become so familiar the last … well, he didn’t know exactly how long it’d been. He wasn’t sure if he should measure it in terms of days or weeks. The clouds still hung above them, threatening and gray. No snow had fallen, yet. But it didn’t matter. It had been half an eternity, by his reckoning … and Kyleigh still wouldn’t wake.
No matter how many pelts they draped across her, or how warm they kept her shelter, she lay shivering through all hours of the day and night. Her limbs trembled pitifully. The red was gone from her lips, replaced by a purplish blue. When he’d touched the side of her face, he found all the warmth was gone. There was only cold.
Kael had spent his every waking moment flipping through the pages of his memory. He poured over the words he’d read in Lysander’s library, drew up every lesson Amos had taught him about the cold. None of the remedies had worked. None of the broths, herbs, or warmth had done anything to calm her shaking or bring the color back to her face.
Sometimes, sleep shut his eyes and he spent a few hours in darkness — but even then he saw the pages in his dreams.
His legs stopped moving suddenly. He realized it was because Gwen had grabbed him by the shoulder. “This has to stop.”
Stop? What had to stop?
Gwen’s brows dropped low, but there was something in her eyes that Kael hadn’t remembered seeing before. A softness … a sad sort of softness. “Her bones are frozen, mutt. There’s nothing you can do to thaw them.”
Pity. That was the softness in Gwen’s eyes.
Her hand tightened on his shoulder. “I lost one of my craftsmen to the river. He shook himself to death, died right there in my arms … you saw him pass. Now listen to me closely, mutt: it’s been ages and she hasn’t so much as cracked an eye. The wildmen are depending on you, and you haven’t spoken a word to anybody in days.”
Gwen stopped. She was waiting for something again. Her brows rose hopefully for a moment under Kael’s gaze. Then they snapped down low.
“It’s time. She’s never going to wake — she’s just going to get colder and more miserable. She was a decent creature. But it’s time to put her out of her —”
Kael’s palms slammed into Gwen’s chest and she went flying backwards, crashing into the trunk of a tree. The force slung the deer’s body aside; the branches trembled dryly. They were silent for a moment. Gwen stared in shock while Kael tried to glare a hole through the middle of her head.
“She isn’t a creature. She’s my friend.”
Gwen held up her hands. “All right, all right — she isn’t a creature.”
“And I’m not putting her anywhere.” The wind picked up as Kael spoke, as if the mountains were agreeing with him. “I’ll stay beside her until she wakes or Death claims her. If you don’t like it, then you’re welcome to …”
They caught it at the same moment: a familiar, moldy scent on the wind. It brushed across Kael’s face and made the insides of his nose itch horribly.
“Magic!” Gwen cried. She was on her feet in an instant, tearing through the woods. And Kael followed close behind.
He knew Titus was keeping an eye on them — watching and waiting. He’d known it was only a matter of time before the Earl sent another group of soldiers after them. This time it smelled as if he’d also sent one of his mages … and that was a mistake.
Thorns scraped his face and arms as Kael charged through the brambles. He burst from the thorny wall several paces ahead of Gwen and spotted the mage immediately. He was a thin man wearing a robe of furs. There was a pair of rounded spectacles perched at the end of his long nose …
Dirt sprayed from beneath Kael’s heels as he ground to a halt. He saw his own open-mouthed shock reflected in the mage’s thin, familiar face.
“Kael?”
“Jake? What are you —?”
“Arrrr!”
Gwen burst into the clearing and tore for Jake, her fists clenched and ready to strike. Kael yelled for her to stop. Jake stumbled backwards. Gwen kept coming. She was an arm’s reach away when a black blur slammed into her shoulder, knocking her aside.
It was Elena — the strange forest woman who’d traveled with Kyleigh into the plains. Rage must’ve blinded Gwen. She tried lunging for Jake even though Elena had a knee in the middle of her back. She was pinned with an arm twisted behind her in half a blink
“Wait — stop!”
&nbs
p; Elena’s black dagger halted just as it was about to glide across Gwen’s throat. She glared at Kael from over the top of her mask. “A friend of yours?”
“A friend of mine, actually,” Silas purred.
Sometime in the middle of all the chaos, the halfcat had appeared behind Jake. He strode barefoot across the rocky ground, wearing nothing more than a plain set of trousers. His glowing eyes narrowed as he took in the scene before him.
“Take your hands away from my Thane, you stupid Elena.”
“Tell your Thane to keep her hands away from our mage, cat,” she growled, “or I’ll slit her throat.”
“Cat?” The purest, most fearsome red Kael had ever seen bloomed behind Gwen’s paint. Her eyes traveled up his bare chest and at last came to a stop at his haughty eyes. “Silas?”
“We have much to discuss, my Thane,” he said with a smirk.
Elena released her, and Gwen’s arms shook as she pulled herself to her feet. Red spread across the bridge of her nose and down her neck — a scarlet storm that raged in a hundred different shades of fury.
Kael wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d throttled Silas. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d screamed at him or burst into tears. What did surprise him was the fact that she chose to do none of those things.
She simply turned and clomped away.
Silas’s shoulders fell heavily with his sigh. “There are too many eyes that have seen my shapes, too many mouths who might reveal my secret. I knew there would be no more hiding it.”
“What do you mean?” Kael said. He was still trying desperately to grasp it — still blinking, afraid that Jake and Elena might disappear, terrified that it’d all been a dream.
“I’ve returned from my hunt, Marked One,” Silas said, giving him a rather haughty look. “And I’ve found some game that I think belongs to you. The holes your battle left behind made the journey more difficult, but I managed to lead it up the river and across a frozen path.” His voice dropped to a growl. “Now you will deal with it while I look after my Thane.”