The Winter King

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Quiet surrounded her, long and hollow. Distantly, a cracking sound echoed, muffled and deep. Then it happened again, but smaller. And again. Little by little, she realized it was a background noise to this place she was in, wherever that was. She recognized the sound from winters on the lake with her grandfather. It was a sound you heard often during ice fishing, the noise the ice made as it settled beneath you.

  She seemed to be standing in the middle of an enormous antechamber. It spanned out around her in a wide circle of thousands of square feet in every direction. She could have fit basketball courts on either side of her without any issues. The floor, walls, and ceiling were white-blue in color, a beautiful arctic hue. In each wall of the massive room were a set of closed double doors, four sets in all, that led to some unknown destinations.

  The palatially high ceilings rose more than a hundred feet overhead, crowning in a huge dome made of an enormous, round pane of glass. This allowed a crystal clear view of the sky above. Through that glass, Poppy could see that the sun that had been merely peeking over the horizon moments earlier was now slightly higher, shedding more orange-pink light into the gigantic room, giving it an otherworldly and warm glow.

  Which was an odd thing for this room to have – since it was a room of ice.

  The walls and floor of the room were constructed of pure, hard, perfectly carved ice. At least, it was either ice or blue-white marble that looked remarkably like ice. But given the sounds it was making, she was betting on the former rather than the latter. Besides, it smelled like ice too, that clean, cold, and hollow scent that was impossible to describe other than to say it smelled like frozen water.

  Carvings in the ice along the walls were deep enough and tall enough that she could make them out clearly even from where she stood at the room’s center. The images that graced the walls were those of majestically detailing dragons and giants, great Viking battle ships atop deadly waves on what was most likely the North Sea, and of lightning bolts on mountaintops and polar bears trekking across vast, flat landscapes of frozen water.

  They seemed to tell a story, these pictures that blended perfectly, one into another, and the story was one that felt familiar somehow. She’d grown up in Canada, so the culture of the north and of the cold were not alien to her. But it was more than that. There was something here so recognizable, she could almost begin narrating, as if the words would simply pop into her head and flow from between her lips with flawless delivery.

  She turned a full circle, then craned her neck and just looked up at the changing colors the sun made upon the crystal of the glass overhead. Now she knew she was either dreaming or dead. “I’m standing in a Viking castle,” she whispered to herself.

  “You’re close,” came a familiar voice, deep and resonant. It filled the massive space of the antechamber and brushed along her skin like a caress. Yet, it also filled her with dread. It was sort of a… delicious kind of dread. Like death by chocolate.

  She turned slowly, her mind spinning, her will reaching out for any and all magic she had left in case even in this dream world, she was going to have to throw down with a Norse god.

  But he stood at ease, his hands at his sides, and though his exceedingly tall frame and broad shoulders were anything but benign, he made no moves to attack in any manner. Instead, he gestured to the antechamber around them. “This is the domicile of a sovereign,” he told her, his glacial blue eyes glinting, no, glowing, in the early morning light. “It lies in the Ice of Time just beyond the Frozen Sea in a realm reachable only by those with Winter in their blood.” He smiled, his flashing eyes catching hers and gripping tight. “It is the Castle of the Winter King. Welcome to my home.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  793 A.D. – The Winter Kingdom

  Erikk pulled his soaking body out of the water and onto the fresh white snow of the iceberg mountain, and immediately got to his feet. For being a dead man, he was awfully cold. Weren’t you supposed to be comfortable once you were dead? His feet were like ice cubes of their own in his boots, icicles were forming on the ends of his eyelashes and braids, and his skin was thrush with tiny bumps that were chafing irritably against his wet leathers. He needed to get moving, find peat moss for a fire, and light it.

  His people always carried flint and iron on their belts for fires. All he needed was something to light. But his expression grew dour as his gaze scoured the landscape to find only thick, bright white. If he wasn’t careful, not only would he not find fuel for a fire – he would go snow blind.

  He gritted his chattering teeth to keep them from breaking and placed his hand under his eyes to block the glare of the snow as he trudged through the white and began climbing the smooth ice steps that led nowhere. He’d expected to slide on them, or at least stick to them, given he was completely soaked, but they actually gripped well, and his passage upward was easy. Why he was climbing, he had no clue. Curiosity, he supposed. Plus, the stairs had to have been built by someone. Maybe that someone would have a fire.

  At least from up high, he would be able to see further.

  He climbed and climbed, and as he reached the top, he slowed before the last two steps. The view from where he stood was vast. The stairs really did seem to lead nowhere, for beyond the final step up ahead, a yawning chasm waited. Erikk could not even see the bottom of it. It was a mighty canyon in the center of an island of ice, and at the other side, far, far way, more white stretched until it once again hit the ocean.

  “What in the name of Ullr….” By gazing down into the chasm, Erikk could see that there would be no peat to burn. There was no earth at all. The island was well and truly one giant iceberg. Beyond the iceberg island stretched nothing but sea, a beautiful clear blue the likes of which he’d never before witnessed.

  It was possible he had gone mad. Perhaps Jorunn’s medicine had saved his life but sacrificed his mind, and he was standing on the prow of his little boat, looking down into the water, but mistaking it for an ice canyon. Or maybe he’d survived the wave, but had hit his head. The ocean had been brutal, so it was possible.

  As he thought these things out, he took the final two steps to the top of the stairwell, if for no other reason than to simply finish the climb.

  The moment he reached the very top, however, the view changed. The air before him shimmered. He thought he heard something like chimes, the way ice crystals sounded when the wind blew them where they dangled from tree branches. An odd warmth brushed past him, unfathomably welcome in the terrible cold, and the chasm of ice that was in front of him was replaced by something else.

  At first, he thought it was the Northern Lights somehow recessed into the crater at the center of the island. Shimmering colors pulsed and grew stronger, swirled and moved through the giant hole, filling it up. As they deepened in color, they coalesced, drawing together in lines of solidness. The solidness then took on form and shape, and Erikk found himself wanting to take a shocked step back, one stair down to safety. But Erikk Rangvaldson had never been a man to back down, and he didn’t do so now.

  Instead, he stood his ground and continued to stare in wide-eyed wonder as the shimmering eruption finally settled into the starkly beautiful, starkly clear lines of a massive, larger-than-life castle.

  An ice castle. More beautiful than anything any of the storytellers in his clan could have imagined. More beautiful than a dream. Even more beautiful than Valhalla was said to be.

  “Seidhr…” Erikk whispered shakily. He could feel his eyes in his face, wide as the night was long. Seidhr was the Norse word for magic, it was a kind of sorcery that was all that remained when logic and sense fled. It was the work of the gods, perhaps, or of a force the Norsemen had as of yet to discover or understand. It was beyond him.

  He continued to stare as the castle formed one last set of stairs that led directly from the spot on which he stood to the palace’s front doors. A moment later, those same enormous double doors of the gigantic ice castle started swinging slowly outward.

&nb
sp; All sense of cold was momentarily forgotten in the wake of such a vision. Small bits of ice and snow sloughed off the perfectly carved doors as they lay open, waiting. Waiting?

  Waiting for you.

  A voice whispered, sounding like a winter breeze through tree tops. He turned on the step, but there was no one behind him. He looked back at the castle and its open doors. Little by little, the cold of his environment made itself known to him again, cutting through his astonishment to burn through his skin, muscles, and joints. He could no longer feel most of his feet at all, and his hands ached steadily.

  I must get inside.

  Whatever happened now, whether he was insane or not, imagining this or not, standing there in one place would only hurt worse and worse, until he stopped feeling everything for good either way.

  Yes, come inside.

  The voice again, a gentle hiss that felt oddly warm beside his ear, just as the air around the forming castle had felt.

  Erikk hesitated no longer. He moved off the top step and strode forward on his numb legs and nonexistent feet, traipsing like a frozen fur ball up the walk that led to the front doors – and then striding right on through them.

  The castle seemed to sigh around him. It settled, the sound of ice cracking deep and low and familiar. As he walked, the smooth, crystalline planes of ice reflected his figure back at him. He was in a sorry state, so he steadfastly ignored that reflection and continued through the massive structure.

  “Hello!” he called out. “Who’s there!” His voice boomed through the palatial space, echoing as it then tributaried down various hallways and no doubt through even more various doors. But there was no response. So he kept going, moving further into the castle until he found himself in a massive antechamber. There was no one here, and there were no fires.

  He didn’t even pause, therefore, knowing that if he stopped to admire the diamond-like magnificence all around him, he would surely die. It would not be long now before he would freeze to death. Already, he was certain that his toes were unsalvageable. Maybe his fingers as well. Would he ever hold a sword again?

  Think not on that, he told himself. Keep moving. No one could live in a place like this without a source of warmth. There had to be something. There had to be someone.

  There were four sets of doors that led off the antechamber, but one set was distinctly larger and more ornately carved than the other three. He chose those, hoping his instincts would serve him right.

  His steps were long and purposeful as he made his way across the humongous space, but as he approached the double doors, they cracked open. He stopped in his tracks and watched as, once more, a huge set of doors opened for him, swinging slowly outward to invite his entrance. His gaze narrowed suspiciously at the doors as they passed the half-way mark, but then his eyes slid to the view beyond.

  It was a room approximately two-thirds the size of the antechamber. However, even the floor here was carved intricately, and at the opposite end of the room stood two massive thrones. One was carved in swirling, flowering vines and blooms, which he recognized as poppies – nearly the only flower that bloomed this far north. The other was carved in more direct lines, spikes and hard angles that reminded him of thorns. It rose very slightly higher than the throne beside it, as if the person who sat upon it was taller than the other.

  It was a throne room. The throne room of the ice castle.

  “Where the fuck am I?” he muttered now, speaking in the Anglo-Saxon language his people had always used and that the Romans and other conquering nations would hastily do away with as the language of the “conquered people.” It wouldn’t be long before “fuck” was replaced with “copulate,” and “piss” with “urinate” and “shit” with “defecate.” But he had a feeling that his language would endure… somehow. In some way.

  Not that it mattered just then at that very moment. His mind was babbling. Because he simply could not wrap it around what his eyes were seeing.

  Take a seat.

  Erikk jumped and spun. There had been that voice again, that cold sounding whisper that was warmer than it should have been and that moved through his head and by his ear and seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Once more, there was no one behind him. He was alone.

  You are not alone. I am with you.

  “Who are you?” he asked aloud, perhaps a bit too boldly.

  You will see. As soon as you sit down.

  Erikk looked at the thrones, his eyes skirting from one to the other. Then he moved toward the larger of the ice-carved chairs. There was no way in Hel’s Niffleheim he would sit in the flowery one, after all. He approached it, realized with some odd sense of ambivalence that it was the perfect size for him, and then turned around to face the throne room.

  He was freezing on the inside now. He could feel the cold reaching his heart at last. He knew it was happening because his fingers and toes were starting to feel warm. It was the last thing that happened to a man before he froze to death.

  You’d best hurry, said the wintery voice.

  With an exhale of final surrender, he sat down.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Present day, the Winter Kingdom

  “Your home?” Her expression was a befuddled mixture of anger and confusion.

  He could tell she was trying to process things. He could tell she was wondering whether she was dreaming or even dead. She was wondering why her magic had brought her here, of all places, rather than her apartment. She was wondering why she was having such a ridiculous day.

  He knew. He knew why her coffee had been cold and why when she’d told her magic to take her “home,” it had directed her to the castle. The castle was hers. It knew she was the queen long before she would most likely accept it herself.

  He could see every single one of her emotions spelled out across her lovely face as she jumped from one to the other. Hell, he himself was trying to process things. This was happening fast. Very, very fast.

  And at the back of his mind, he had a growing uneasy feeling that something was wrong, something he needed to tend to and take care of.

  Poppy shifted in place, her weight moving from one leg to the other as she looked from him to the icy walls around them, and finally to the glass-like ceiling up above. It was ice, too, actually. Crystal clear ice.

  “As in, you’re the Winter King?” She touched her head as if it hurt and she were dizzy. “Of the Thirteen Kings?”

  He was betting she hadn’t even noticed that she wasn’t cold. He could tell she wasn’t, because any other human sucked into the Winter Kingdom and deposited right smack dab in the middle of the Winter Castle would have had frostbite by now. She seemed completely unbothered by the temperature. It was yet another sure sign, if ever there was one.

  Not that he needed anymore proof. He’d known the moment he’d locked eyes on her in that coffee shop.

  He nodded a confirmation, and her eyes grew wide.

  She licked her lips, then touched her forehead again. He wondered if, rather than feeling cold, in fact, she was beginning to feel uncomfortably hot. Feverish with confusion. She was a hard mortal to read, much more difficult than any he’d encountered so far, which he would attribute that to her being a queen, strong and shielded. But if he was reading her right at all, she was a sensitive soul. All of the queens seemed to be. Which would mean she was feeling very anxious right about now, and that had a very physiological effect on the body.

  He reached out with his magic, letting it touch ever so slightly up against her face, kissing it with the most tender brush of cold he could manage. A moment later, she blinked a few times, placed her fingers to her head again, and straightened a little.

  “I’m… How did you get me here? How did you….” She shook her head and closed her eyes, holding up her hands. “No. Wait.” She opened her eyes and centered them on him. “What do you want with me?”

  Kris sort of froze. It was a fair enough question. He’d unconsciously assumed she would ask it eventually. But
when it came down to it, any answer he could give her that would be even partly true would sound creepy beyond belief. He’d only met her minutes ago. He knew so little about her, and vice versa. And he was supposed to tell her she was his queen? How exactly did that go?

  Um, well, you see, all of the kings are just sort of finding their queens these days, and I just took one look at you and knew that you were destined to be mine, so here we are! Now, let’s go have sex!

  Kris almost laughed. But if he’d laughed out loud just then, it would have made him appear even more insane than he knew he already looked, so he kept it inside and squared his shoulders. “Okay. The truth is, I want only one thing from you, and I swear I mean you no harm. And I also swear I didn’t bring you here. Your magic did that.”

  She stared at him for a moment, and it was hard to tell whether she was believing him or not. But then she straightened a little and blinked. “My magic?”

  He wanted to crow. She was listening to him, and that meant she could be reasoned with. “Yes, your magic. I’m guessing you’ve been experiencing strange phenomena during your casting lately. Tell me,” he posited, shifting the attention to her so expertly, he could almost feel her defenses falter, “have any of your spells gone inexplicably awry? Frozen over? Gone cold, so to speak?”

  Now those aquamarine eyes of hers widened nearly imperceptibly and she took a step back. “How did you know that?”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’”

  Poppy ran a hand through her thick, luxurious multi-hued light brown hair and glanced around herself at the massive antechamber Kris almost never spent any time in. It was strange that it was the center of his home, the “heart,” so to speak, and yet it was so large, he normally left it vacant. The only time he really came here was when the bears were here and wanted to play, or when Neve felt like kicking his ass at a game of one-on-one hockey. Otherwise, he remained in the cozier wings of the palace.