by Sarah Hawke
“What the…?”
“Something’s going on outside,” Sehris told him. “Can’t you hear it?”
He rubbed a hand across his face and nearly fell over again, but then the shouting beyond the walls of the inn finally grew loud enough for his human ears. “Damn it. It’s not even dawn!”
“I noticed. Now help me up!”
Zin cleared his throat and rolled out of the bed, frowning the whole time. He put on his armor and threw his blue-gray cloak over his shoulders, then gently stuffed Sehris’s leather gag back into her mouth. Despite their haste, the voices had still probably doubled in volume by the time they shuffled through the inn and stepped outside into the cold.
The crowd was both larger and angrier than Sehris had expected, especially given the hour. Several dozen of the locals—mostly hunters and militia, from the looks of it—were encircling Major Thorne and someone else she couldn’t quite make out, and Pact soldiers were slowly stumbling out of their tents to investigate.
“Maiden’s mercy, what in the bloody void is…?” Zin trailed off. “That’s General Galavir.”
Sehris frowned at the circle of locals. One of them eventually shifted enough that she caught a glimpse of a sinewy, middle-aged man with a stern face and gilded armor speaking with Major Thorne. The general’s fur cape was covered with splotches of blood and snow.
“I thought he was attending the feast at Whitefeather Hold,” Zin whispered. “What is he doing here?”
He led Sehris toward the commotion, and she stayed as close to him as she could to ensure that one panicked when they saw her. Thorne turned once they approached within a few yards.
“Sir Keeper, good,” the major said, nodding. “We have a problem.”
“A problem?” one of the nearby hunters blurted out. “This is a bloody nightmare! You’re supposed to—”
General Galavir cut them all off with a curt wave of his hand. From this close, Sehris noticed even more blood on his armor and cloak than she had initially thought, and it wasn’t black just because it had seeped into the fabric and dried—it was black because it hadn’t been spilled by a human.
“Oh, gods,” she gasped into her gag, her stomach clenching in horror at the sudden revelation. It couldn’t be…
“The Chol attacked Whitefeather Hold,” General Galavir said. “High King Thedric is dead.”
“What?” Zin gasped.
“We don’t know where they came from or how they got inside, but they stormed the fortress and overwhelmed the guards,” the general explained. “His Majesty never stood a chance.”
“Guardian protect us,” Zin rasped, every ounce of color draining from his face. “How…what about Sir Velis? What about—”
“No one else made it out that I could see,” Galavir said. “I would have died, too, if not for the valor of the Lord Protector himself. He fought back the horde with a single arm and shepherded me to my griffon. Without it, we never would have escaped.”
Sehris stumbled away from Zin, and her knees became so weak she nearly toppled over in the snow. The Chol were supposed to be gathered on the north side of the lake. How could they have possibly attacked Whitefeather Hold? How could they have gotten inside the castle?
How can Rohen and Delaryn be dead?
“The scouts,” Zin muttered as he shook his head. “How did they get past our scouts? And why in the bloody void did they break off from the main horde?”
“We don’t know,” Thorne said gravely. “It’s possible that—
“Of course we know!” one of the Dorelas hunters shouted. “It was that Whitefeather witch! Everyone tried to warn the king, but he wouldn’t listen! Those monsters could smell the vile magic on her!”
A chorus of shouts erupted amongst the hunters as they all agreed with their comrade. They were wrong, of course, but they were too terrified and angry to care about the truth. They wanted someone to blame…and Delaryn was the perfect target.
“Whatever happened, King Thedric is dead and cowardly tharns across Darenthi will try to bury the Pact alongside him,” Galavir said, his deep voice booming as he turned and spoke to the crowd. “We cannot let that happen—we will not let that happen. The people of Torisval have suffered long enough. We must fortify the north until more reinforcements arrive.”
“You can’t take your army away from us, General,” another hunter put in. “If the Chol head this way—”
“These brave soldiers will stay and protect your village, don’t worry,” Galavir said, pointing out to the scattered tents. “If the horde does come this way, the soldiers will escort you to Rimewreath where you will all be safe. I swear on my life that I will not allow the north to fall to darkness, not again.”
The knot in Sehris’s stomach refused to stop twisting even when the hunters cheered their agreement. She kept telling herself that she must be dreaming. None of this made any sense. How could it possibly be real?
“Maiden’s mercy,” Zin breathed, his cheeks still colorless. “I still don’t understand—”
Galavir turned and clapped his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “The people here are going to need strong leadership, now more than ever. They will look to men like you for guidance—they trust that symbol on your chest, and they trust the man beneath the armor. The Lord Vigilant has told me countless times that you are one of his best young Keepers, but I need to know that I can count on you.” He stared Zin right in the eye. “Can I count you, boy?”
Zin swallowed and nodded. “Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir.”
“Good,” Galavir said with a crisp nod. “Then I want you to ride for Rimewreath with the artificer right now. The sooner she starts enchanting our weapons, the better.”
Zin turned back at Sehris. The pain and shock in his eyes mirrored her own, but somehow he found the strength to steel his expression in front of the others. “She will get the job done, sir.”
“Good,” the general said. His eyes never flicked to Sehris, not even for an instant. “I will send a message to Griffonwing and the Galespire for reinforcements. With luck, they should be able to arrive within a week or two, but there’s no guarantee the horde will wait that long before striking again. We may wish to attack while their forces are scattered.”
“Reinforcements from the Galespire?” Zin asked. “You want to bring more sorcerers here?”
“No, of course not,” Galavir said, turning and looking at Sehris for the first time. “This tragedy has once again proven that devastation always follows in the wake of her kind.”
Zin grimaced. “The Keepers are already stretched thin. I don’t think we can afford to deploy—”
“The Galespire won’t require as many Keeper stewards once the Purging begins,” Thorne put in, the faintest smile on his lips. “The Faceless can protect us from the Chol far better than more of her kind. It’s a pity how many people seem to have forgotten that.”
“Faceless?” Zin breathed. “But Purging was outlawed after—”
“King Thedric is dead, and the Sevenfold Accord died with him,” Galavir said, raising his voice and glancing between the hunters surrounding them. “The Lord Protector and I agree that the last Culling was a disaster precisely because Thedric’s father refused to wield the most powerful weapon in our arsenal. Many brave Templar paid the price for his misguided mercy. We cannot afford to repeat his mistake. We will not allow the Chol to ravage Darenthi again!”
“Besides, the Lord Vigilant insisted that her skills will serve us well,” Thorne said to Sehris. “So long as she behaves herself like a good little sorceress, she has nothing to worry about.”
A dark chill rippled down Sehris’s spine. No Faceless had been forged in almost thirty years, not since the last war against the Crell Sovereignty. The golems were a relic of a dark age where sorcerers were treated even worse than they were now. If the Brand was a tool of control, the Faceless were a tool of fear and domination…
“Get the artificer to Rimewreath, boy,” Galavir said, clapping Zi
n’s shoulder again. “Take a horse and ride west. Major Thorne and I will organize the defenses here, then meet you in the fortress as soon as possible.”
Zin nodded, still stunned. “Yes, sir.”
“The Galespire will contact you with new orders soon, I’m sure,” Galavir said. “For now, good luck. May the Maiden shelter the souls of the dead, and may the Guardian grace the living in the battle to come.”
7
Winter’s Bite
The old path leading out of the crypts and into the mountains may have only been half a mile long, but to Delaryn it felt as though they were trekking across half the country. The trail was covered in snow and frozen dirt, though there were plenty of patches of concealed ice as well. She and Rohen both slipped and fell several times, and without the rocky ledge acting as a natural barrier, they could have easily tumbled to their deaths.
The Wailing insider her head had stopped, mercifully, but the cold was now a far greater threat than the Chol or the treacherous footing. Delaryn had started shivering so violently her bones hurt, and even the faint warmth-trapping enchantment of her white cloak was no match for the fury of a Torisval winter. She could feel her hair and eyebrows freezing on her face.
The power of the Pale can shepherd you to safety, her mother’s voice said. It is always there for you, patiently awaiting your call.
Delaryn closed her eyes and tried to ignore the haunting voice in the back of her mind. If not for the lingering wrath of the Flensing, she might have been able to weave a barrier strong enough to block out the cold. Unfortunately, every time she reached out to the Aether and allowed its warmth to permeate her body, a racking pain followed in its wake.
The Pale had no such limitations. Just like back in the crypts, she could call upon its power and weave magic without triggering a backlash. If the Aether was fire in her veins, then the Pale was a soothing stream. It never fought back, never protested her mortal meddling; it was like drinking from a clear lake when all she had ever tasted was the brackish sea. In theory, it offered all the power the Aether without any of the consequences.
In theory.
Even now, at least half an hour since she had healed Rohen, she could still hear the haunting whispers of demons yearning to escape. If she had channeled any more energy back in the crypts, some of them might have clawed free of their prison. That was the problem of cracking open a door between worlds—Delaryn had no way of knowing what horrors could be waiting to sneak through from the other side.
The Tel Bator preached that the Pale had once been a paradise for the souls of the honored dead. The faithful had been rewarded with an eternity of peace…until the Avetharri had turned against the gods who had created them. Their sorcery had warped and twisted the heavens, transforming the souls within the Pale into ravenous demons who desperately wanted to return to the physical world. And then, in the last act of their great betrayal, the elves had imprisoned the Fallen Gods within the very realm they had created.
Delaryn had always questioned the old stories. Her father had resented the Tel Bator and the influence of its immutable doctrines, and her mother, a Roskarim princess, had come from a culture with different beliefs about almost everything. Whatever the truth about their origin, though, the demons of the Pale were quite real. They rarely possessed the strength to linger in the physical world after they crossed over, and then only while possessing a mortal host.
But the fact that she could hear their whispers right now was a stark reminder that no power, even one that felt pure, came without a price.
Biting down on her lip, Delaryn glanced back over her shoulder to her ancestral home embedded within the mountains behind them. The silhouette of the main keep was only visible thanks to the scattered fires in the courtyard and upon the walls, and she couldn’t help but wonder if this was the last time she would see the castle that had sheltered the Whitefeathers for the better part of five centuries. For all of Thedric’s efforts to scrub her family from history, the Chol may have finished the job for him in a single night.
“I think I see the path down!” Rohen cried out over the howling winds. “Come on!”
He took Delaryn’s hand and helped her along the icy trail. His strength seemed to have mostly returned; he was moving much more vigorously than back in the crypts despite the cold and the wind. Her healing magic had countered the Godcursed steel, just like the voice of her mother had promised.
If only it could erase the horrible things he must be thinking about me right now.
The runes adorning Rohen’s wraithblade had almost completely faded by the time they reached the narrow, winding path down the mountainside. Hopefully, that meant the Chol weren’t following them, though the sudden darkness was almost as dangerous.
“Just take it slow, one foot after another,” Rohen said, as much to himself as to her. “Once we reach the woods, we’ll head straight west. The trees should at least give us some shelter from the wind.”
Delaryn nodded and followed. She stumbled and nearly fell half a dozen times thanks to the hidden ice, and by the time they reached the bottom, she could barely feel her arms or legs. Bracing herself for the inevitable backlash, she reached out to the Aether again, allowing its warmth to permeate her blood and flesh, if only for an instant. Feeling pain was better than feeling nothing, she discovered, and every few minutes she chose to barter a moment of agony for a moment of heat.
The ground between the mountain and the forest’s edge was just as frozen as the trail but significantly less perilous, and Rohen dragged her along behind him at a near sprint. The chill of the winter wind barely diminished when they reached the fringes of the woods, nor did it relent when they were completely enveloped by trees. After slogging forward a bit longer, he paused near an overturned tree and a frozen stream and took a moment to catch his breath.
“We should be far enough away to be safe,” he said, briskly rubbing his hands together.
Delaryn pushed herself right up against the overturned log in a last-ditch effort to shield herself from the buffeting chill, but it didn’t really help much, either. “How…how far…” she bit out between shivers, “how far away is Dorelas?”
Rohen winced. “Too far,” he said gravely. “It’s about twenty miles from the Hold to the village and another twenty-five or thirty to Rimewreath.”
“Twenty miles?” she gasped.
“Sehris and Zin left this afternoon, and they probably only arrived a few hours ago. It would take us until morning.”
The unspoken despair lingered in the frozen air between them, as thick and haunting as the cadaverous stench of the Chol. They would never make it twenty miles through the snow; they might not make one more mile. Delaryn closed her eyes and tried to fight back the tide of tears that had been threatening to drown her ever since they had left the castle.
“I could try to start a fire,” Rohen said, blowing into his gloved hands. “But with this wind…”
Delaryn glanced at the overturned log behind her, wishing she could flick her wrist and conjure a puff of flame or even a spark of lightning. With the power of the Aether, a trained channeler could shape and manipulate energy into practically any form they desired, but she didn’t even know where to begin. All she could do was freeze the air and make them even colder.
“Maybe there’s another option,” Rohen said, peering off through the trees. “Most of the farmsteads out here are still abandoned, right?”
Delaryn plucked the frost from her eyelashes. “Y-yes,” she said through another shiver.
“I saw the barns and silos when I rode in with the Lord Protector,” he said. “There were quite a few along the southern edge of the woods.”
She nodded, wondering what he might be thinking. The threat of the Chol had driven most of the holdouts in this part of the duchy south to Tor’s Crossing for the winter. Many were planning to return—or even build new farms—once the monsters were defeated and the planting season arrived. Thedric had promised generous coin to anyone
willing to sow the cold fields and begin the restoration of Torisval.
But none of that helped she and Rohen now. Her homeland remained broken and desolate in the wake of her father’s death. They weren’t going to stumble upon any old, kindly farmers willing to take them in. Dorelas was the closest thing to civilization in these parts, but they would never make it that far.
“We need shelter,” Rohen said. “If we can warm up for a while…I don’t know.”
Delaryn looked up at him. Whatever doubts he was holding, whatever fears he might have been suppressing, she could still see the resolve on his face. Earlier, she had told herself that he was the same boy she had fallen in love with three years ago, but she had clearly been mistaken. He was stronger, more confident, and more disciplined.
He hadn’t just become a Templar—he had become a warrior.
“Come on,” he said, offering her his hand again. “The edge of the woods isn’t far.”
Delaryn slid her fingers into his leather glove and followed. Her limbs threatened to go numb again as they slogged through the dirt and snow, and she allowed the Aether to course through her one last time to drive away the cold. The Flensing nearly knocked her flat on her back, but she clenched her teeth and pushed on. If they couldn’t find shelter soon…
But by the grace of the Guardian, Rohen’s gamble paid off. He had been right about the abandoned farms along the forest’s edge; they spotted a massive old barn silhouetted in the moonlight just a few minutes after they emerged from the woods. Delaryn willed her legs to keep moving even as bitter blasts of wind threatened to freeze her solid, and the moment they arrived, Rohen Pale-shifted his wraithblade and seared the locks off the barn doors. The eerie blue light from the spectral fire banished the shadows inside, revealing several piles of old, frozen straw and little else.
“Thank the gods,” Rohen breathed as he shut the door behind them.
Delaryn stumbled forward, still shivering but immensely grateful for a reprieve from the wind. Her enchanted robe might have been able to warm her up eventually, but she still watched with bated breath as Rohen rushed over to the chimney in the hopes of starting a fire. There were a few logs left amidst the bundles of hay, mercifully, and he wasted no time in tossing them into the pit. If only his blade shed actual heat…