by Alec Hutson
He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t even remember climbing the hill, and suddenly Chalissian’s manse loomed before him, lanterns strung along the huge veranda that overlooked the beach far below. He paused with his hand on the door, for the first time realizing he was in the exact same spot his mother must have stood, back when she wasn’t much older than he was now. A young girl alone in the world, desperate enough to beg shelter from a stranger. What had she been fleeing?
Before he could push on the door, it swung open and he stumbled inside, nearly colliding with Nel.
“Oh! You’re here,” she said. “I was going out to look for you.” Her face was pale and drawn, and there was a wildness in her eyes. Something had happened.
“What is it?”
Nel licked her lips. She seemed about to say something, but then she shook her head sharply. “Come with me.”
Concerned, Keilan followed her as she led him deeper into the manse. It seemed unnaturally quiet, like the house itself was holding its breath.
“Nel?”
She did not reply until they arrived at the entrance of the room where he had waited to meet Chalissian. The steward of the manse, the hairless man Gen, was outside the room. He also looked like he had seen a spirit.
“Go inside,” Nel simply said, pointing within.
Keilan stepped forward hesitantly, wondering what could have unnerved the usually unflappable knife. He saw Senacus first, standing against the wall, his hand on the hilt of his sword. Sella was there as well, clutching at his shirt. They were both staring across the room, at the curtains which led out to the balcony.
“Senacus?” Keilan asked, coming to stand beside the paladin. “What’s going on?”
The wind gusted, rippling the curtains, and Keilan glimpsed something dark on the balcony.
The Pure reached up and slowly removed the amulet of Tethys; as the chain passed over his head, the radiance of Ama spilled again from his eyes. His expression was grim. “They are asking for you.”
“Who?” Keilan said.
“I don’t know,” Senacus replied softly.
Shapes moved outside on the balcony, coming closer, and then the curtain fell away as if thrust aside by an invisible hand.
Three shrouded figures, their faces hidden, glided into the room.
“Son of Vera Lightspinner,” a voice rasped from the depths of one of the cowls. “You are summoned.”
The prickling warmth of the Pure beside him was uncomfortable, but Keilan drew courage knowing that Senacus stood with him.
“Who summons me?” he said, with as much forced bravado as he could muster.
“The goddess.”
“Why would your goddess want me?”
A white hand with unnaturally slender fingers emerged from a sleeve holding something long and thin. Whatever it was glimmered in the light, stirred by the wind.
A strand of silver hair.
“Because you are the last of her blood. And she loves you, as she loved your mother.”
Keilan gathered his few belongings quickly, buckling on his sword and stuffing the books he had been reading into his travel bags. His thoughts were scattered, and the air seemed to have thickened, as if he were dreaming. He even drew his sword and touched the sharp edge of the blade, just to make sure he wasn’t actually asleep.
He was so distracted he didn’t notice Nel’s approach until her hand fell upon his shoulder. Her mouth was set in a thin line, and her bag was already slung across her back.
“Keilan, are you sure we should go with them?”
He slid his sword back into its sheath. “No. But do we have a choice? We know they have some connection to my mother. This goddess they spoke of—she must be the sorceress we saw in the Oracle’s vision.”
“From what I’ve gathered, your mother fled when these things showed up the last time. She was afraid of them.”
Keilan let out a long breath. “I know. But we came here to find the sorceress. Now she’s found us. Whatever she is—whatever she’s become—we have to convince her to help us stop what is coming.”
Nel still looked uncertain, but she nodded. “Then we follow them.”
“You don’t have to,” he said, his words tumbling out. “You all brought me here, but you heard what they said—they want me. It could be dangerous. You can return to Lady Numil or Queen d’Kara and tell them what happened –” He paused when Nel rolled her eyes.
“Don’t be foolish, Keilan. We’re going with you.”
Relief washed through him. He thought that would be her answer, but he was still happy to hear it. Now to try and convince her about what he had decided earlier.
“And Sella?”
Nel’s small smile twisted into a grimace. “She should stay.”
“Here? On an island of thieves in the manse of an old pirate? By herself?”
Nel’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “Fine. Bring her along. I suppose if Senacus and I have to defend you from an immortal sorceress, we can also protect her.” She stood quickly. “We should go.”
They passed out of the house and onto the veranda. Senacus was waiting beside the door, Sella still clutching at his waist. Gen was there as well—he held a long curving sword now, its point set in the wooden planks of the deck and his hands resting on the hilt. Down the steps and near the path, just at the edge of the lantern light, waited the three robed figures.
“Are you sure you will go with them?” Gen asked.
Keilan nodded. “Yes. This is why we came here. They can take us to someone who has answers.”
Gen fiddled with the dark jewel at the end of his sword’s pommel, his face solemn. “Then I wish you good fortune, and I hope one day to finally get answers about your mother and these creatures. The Bravo will want to know, as well.”
“Where is he?”
“At The Haven, playing chalice.” A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “He will be wroth when he discovers he has lost you, like he lost Vera. So you have to promise me you will return.”
“I will try,” Keilan said, holding out his arm, and Gen clasped it.
“Keilan,” Nel said, a note of warning in her voice. “They’re going.”
The shrouded figures had turned away from the manse and were moving towards the forest.
“Come on,” Keilan said, motioning for the others to follow him. Their steps clattered down the stairs as they hurried after the creatures.
They passed into the tangle of knotted branches and hanging vines. In the darkness, Keilan couldn’t see the serpentine roots that rippled the ground, and he stumbled a few times, nearly falling. He remembered what Seric had said about the giant lizards that lurked in the forest, and he hoped Sella had forgotten about that. He pushed the image of serrated teeth flashing from the shadows from his mind and concentrated on the slices of deeper blackness that were moving through the forest ahead of him. Could those things see without light? Was that why they weren’t stumbling over the roots and rocks?
Keilan was so focused on not falling down or losing an eye to the thorned brambles that he didn’t realize the creatures had stopped until he almost walked into one of their hunched backs. He peered around them; they had reached the edge of the forest. The rocky ground sloped down steeply to a small beach which glowed a faint white in the light of the moon. A long oblong shape had been pulled up onto the sand—a boat, Keilan guessed.
Without a word the figures glided forward, navigating the sharp decline without any apparent effort. Keilan put his foot forward and found the way treacherous, though the slope seemed to be veined with roots or vines.
“Be careful,” he warned, pushing himself over the edge. His boot skidded in the loose dirt and he almost went tumbling forward. “Go slowly.”
It took them quite a while before they were all standing on the sand of the beac
h, but the figures waited patiently while they descended. Then one of them held out his hand, motioning for them to climb inside the long rowboat. Keilan shivered as the tide swirled around his boots, soaking his feet, and he pulled himself up and inside the boat, just as he used to do before his father pushed them down into the water. Senacus lifted Sella, and Keilan helped her the rest of the way, and then the paladin and Nel climbed aboard. They found space on planks of wood, and for a moment Keilan thought the creatures that had brought them here wouldn’t be coming with them. But then with surprising nimbleness the shrouded figures leapt aboard, two of them settling on seats beside where long oars rested. The last of the figures came to stand at the prow of the boat and raised his hand, the long sleeves falling away. In the moonlight Keilan couldn’t see very much, but he noted once again that the fingers were unnaturally pale and long. The figure made a gesture, and the boat slid hissing across the sand and into the water. Nel cried out in surprise and clutched at the side, and Senacus nudged his leg. The paladin once again wore the bone amulet, and Keilan saw that he had changed out of his white-scale armor.
But the artifact of Tethys did not dampen his powers so much, it seemed, even as it hid them. “Sorcery,” Senacus muttered as the boat was rocked by the surf. “Different than I’ve felt before. It feels… old.”
Once the boat had pushed past the breakers, the figure at the prow lowered his hand. The other two robed creatures gripped their oars and silently began to row in strong, smooth strokes.
They rowed through the night, never resting, their pace never slackening. Keilan tasted salt on his lips as the spray reached up over the sides of the small boat. Beside him, Sella dozed into his shoulder, but Keilan couldn’t even imagine sleeping at this time. Where were they going? What would they find?
The sky lightened, darkness giving way to tattered strips of pink and blue. A pod of dolphins passed the boat, their sleek silver shapes gleaming in the dawn light. Some great bird floated high overhead, then dove with jarring speed towards the water and plucked a wriggling shape from the waves.
Still the figures rowed, untiring. A mist descended, so thick and clotting that nothing was visible more than a few dozen span from the boat. The figure at the prow did not stir, staring ahead into the murk. Keilan shivered. These creatures seemed so unnatural, like simulacra of living things. He was reminded of the clockwork toys that Halix, the son of one of Seri’s artificer lords, had shown him back in the Scholia. A few quick twists of the keys sunk in their backs and the automata would perform their tasks with mindless efficiency.
“Look!” Nel cried, pointing ahead. Something huge and dark loomed deeper in the mists, swelling as they grew closer.
“Land?” Senacus asked, standing up to get a better look.
“Yes,” Keilan said, just as the mists swirled and parted. They gazed upon a beach, and beyond this curving scimitar of black sand a misshapen tumble of a mountain brooded. There were some buildings also, pressed up against the flank of this mountain, slender turrets and graceful archways built of black stone. But that was not what drew Keilan’s gaze.
Upon the black sand a woman watched them approach, leaning against a staff of pale white wood. She wore a blue dress, and her long silver hair rippled in the fitful ocean breeze.
The Frostlands. For the Shan, it was a place as distant and exotic as the dark jungles of Xi or the skirling wastes where the Qell hordes roamed. Once, a mighty sorcerous queendom had ruled here, but the same magical cataclysm that had fractured the south and flooded it with the Sea of Solace had wrapped these lands in endless winter, entombing the holdfasts of Min-Ceruth in black ice. The stories Cho Lin remembered spoke of ancient dragons nesting in lost ruins, mountains hollowed out to become lairs for the gaitunpan, and powerful artifacts infused with sorcery waiting to be dug from snowy barrows. The tales had stirred her imagination as a child, and she’d dreamed of one day visiting this realm.
Yet after days of riding north through the Frostlands, Cho Lin could only agree that the stories contained one incontrovertible truth: there was, indeed, a lot of snow. It stretched in every direction, a seamless white plain, until finally it would break upon a line of trees or mountains—both of which were also, inevitably, draped in snow.
By the afternoon of the third day since the warriors had rescued her, she was well and truly sick of it all.
The Skein captain Verrigan seemed intrigued by Cho Lin and spent much of the days riding close and asking questions about her homeland. What did her people wear? And eat, if not spiders? Was it true that the Shan king had his manhood removed when he took the throne? Had the Shan really sailed across the ocean on the backs of monstrous turtles? Why were their eyes not shaped the same as other people? How could a woman carry swords and travel on her own and fight a pack of wraiths?
Cho Lin answered as best she could considering the tenuous grasp Verrigan had on Menekarian—though he did show surprising improvement the more they spoke together. It amused her that the barbarians of these lands told breathless stories of the empire in the same way the storytellers of Shan spoke of the Frostlands. When she finally got questions in edgewise she asked about the massacre she had stumbled upon, and if war now gripped the Skein.
“War is finished,” Verrigan said with obvious satisfaction. “A small war, really. Just one battle at Nes Vaneth.”
“Nes Vaneth. That is the big city of the Skein?”
“Aye. It is where the king and his clan always live. Used to be the Raven held the city. They did for hundreds of years, then the old king went mad and many clans fight and throw him down. I was just a boy at the time, but old enough to come along with the warband and help the warriors put on armor and care for axes. The Bear thane became the new king after that, ten years past. Agmandur. Strong warrior—I saw him wrestle an aurochs to the ground at the…” The Skein warrior gestured with his hands, as if he could conjure up the word he wanted. “Happy time when fighting finished.”
“The celebration?”
Verrigan clapped his hands loudly, the sound sending a white-furred hare bounding from its burrow. “Yes! Now the last of the Bear are dead, we can have celebration again. You and the skald are lucky!”
“Did the Bear thane become mad as well?”
Verrigan shook his head. “No. Much worse. He showed he was weak.”
“What happened?”
The Skein’s face darkened. “We are strong people. We want something, we take it. Beneath the mountains are many lands with fat sheep and soft women. We go over the mountains or the River Serpent and fight and take these things. It is the way.” Verrigan shook his head, as if disgusted by what had happened. “A few years ago, the red queen of one land came into the north. She was angry because we had taken many cattle and gold things. Agmandur led clans south to kill her for this, but he lost the battle and many died and he ran back to Nes Vaneth. A coward, and weak.” The Skein captain spat in the snow. “After that the clans are angry. The White Worm clan live far away, but they hear about this. Hroi send a message to my thane, Kjarl son of Kjartan. Join him to throw down the weak king, he say. So the Stag and the White Worm and the Crow come together, kill all the Bear. Now the Stormforger is pleased.”
“And the Skin Thief,” growled another of the Skein warriors who had been riding nearby and listening to their conversation.
Verrigan narrowed his eyes and his hand went to a silver hammer hanging on a string around his neck. He said something harsh and tumbling to the warrior who had spoken.
“Who are the Stormforger and the Skin Thief?” Cho Lin asked.
Verrigan rubbed the haft of the hammer and muttered something in Skein under his breath. Then he tucked the amulet under his roughspun shirt and looked at her again. “Stormforger is the strongest of the gods. Great warrior. Many clans give thanks to him. But the Skin Thief…” He shot a reproachful glance at the warrior who had mentioned him. “Only the White Wor
m hold him most high.”
“Gundeschkal! Gundeschkal!”
Verrigan twisted in his saddle as another Skein cantered towards them. Cho Lin recognized this warrior as one who ranged far away from the warband during the days, hunting and scouting.
When he finally reined in beside them, his horse’s breath misting the air, he unleashed a torrent of guttural Skein words and gestured back the way they had come. Verrigan listened, nodded, and asked a few pointed questions that the scout then answered. Finally, the Skein captain dismissed the warrior with a wave of his hand. As the scout galloped away again he turned to Cho Lin.
“Algren say we are not alone.”
“What?”
“He say someone follow us.”
Cho Lin glanced behind her, beyond the sweeping li of snow they had ridden through, at the Bones looming in the far distance. Could they somehow have passed Jan over the last few days? The Sword of Cho was still vibrating as they rode, though, which suggested he was to the north, in the direction they were traveling. But who else would be following them?
“Maybe someone from the Bear clan? Someone hunting for revenge?”
“Algren just see him once, quickly. But he say this man wears clothes from the south. He try to ride to him but the man –” Verrigan paused, holding up his hands and spreading them wide as if to show her they were empty. “– he not there. Like he is ghost.”
A servant of the Crimson Queen? Surely Cein d’Kara would not let them escape so easily… but to send a single man? Could he be a sorcerer?
“I don’t know who he is,” she said truthfully, and Verrigan seemed to accept this.
“Very well. But I tell Algren, next time he see the man he put an arrow in him. Then we see if he is ghost.”
The first indication that they were approaching the great city of the Skein was the haze of smoke smearing the cloudless blue sky. It drifted up from the shadow of a craggy mountain, and to Cho Lin it seemed there was something strange about the cliff-faces high up near this peak—they drank the sunlight rather than reflecting it, as the sheer rock walls of Red Fang had done. It was almost like a layer of oily blackness covered the stone… Realization came to Cho Lin, and she felt a little flutter of apprehension. This must be the black ice that had enveloped the holdfasts and destroyed the ancient Min-Ceruthans. How could sorcery remain so potent after a thousand years? And why would any people choose to live in such a cursed place?