Frost

by Mark A. Garland

"Your eagerness exceeds your talent."

  "Shut up!" Tasche boomed. "Just shut up!"

  "You are insane," Shassel told him. "You don't know what the darkness holds, what beings you would conjure. You are like a boy groping with his hand in a murky pond. You might well catch something, but you will not know what until it is in your midst. That should worry you, Tasche, and you, Haggel, but I fear put together you have not the head to know it!"

  Tasche made a clear and desperate attempt to collect himself. "I have been preparing for this moment for half my life," he said, to Shassel, as far as Haggel could tell. "I have everything I need."

  "And I have been preparing to lead Grenarii for most of mine," Haggel added, supportive.

  "The time is now," Tasche said.

  "The time has come," Haggel said.

  "Your time has run out unless you cease this madness," Shassel said. "If you persist I shall have my revenge one way or another."

  "No more from you!" Tasche boomed, eyes on fire now, obsessed, another look Haggel had not seen before. He growled the final phrases of the spell beneath his breath, keeping them from the ears of Shassel and Haggel alike. Then he raised his staff and raised his voice in a long, low moan that climbed until Haggel thought the sorcerer would strangle himself. Tasche went abruptly silent and the two earthen pots boiled over. They spewed rancid smoke and brown foam that rolled down the sides and steamed up in clouds over the grass.

  A shroud of darkness emanated from the staff, growing to envelope Shassel, the pots, Tasche, and—before he could move away—Haggel and the soldiers as well. The darkness grew further until it was as tall as the forest's oldest trees and far enough across that Haggel could not determine its edge anymore.

  And with that darkness came heat like that of a dozen summer suns; it flowed over Haggel on a harsh, dry breeze and made his scalp and spine tingle.

  Haggel heard Shassel calling out—words garbled by the sound of the boiling pots and the hot wind and as it picked up, causing clothing to flutter and snap and the surrounding bushes and grass to bend. Tasche suddenly faltered as if he'd been struck hard in the gut, and his staff wavered. The darkness grew uneven, thickening here, thinning there, all of it mixing and swirling while the hot winds grew to violent gusts. Tasche screamed as if his voice were being torn from his throat, a sound unlike any Haggel had ever heard—the sound of rage, that was the bulk of it, but seared with something more disturbing, something akin to panic.

  "There!" Tasche shouted, straightening and glaring down at Shassel as the darkness seemed to solidify and the winds again came in a hot and steady stream. "Now I have turned your strength to me, your essence, your life!"

  Haggel looked on in awe as Shassel died, glowing bright white for an instant, then turning a charred and withered gray before her body burst into flames. The brightness flowed to Tasche's staff, followed by the fire. Then the winds ceased, and the air grew suddenly cold.

  Just beyond the pots a great and utter blackness existed now, surrounded by silence, a hole in the universe, and from it stepped the beast.

  * * *

  Tasche shook himself loose from the trance that had gripped him. His heart was pounding as he used his sleeve to draw sweat-soaked hair out of his face. Still more sweat dripped off his chins and ran hot down the rolls of fat inside his robes, making the cloth cling to him. His head was pounding, his hands were shaking, his eyes burned, but he had done it!

  The creature materializing before him was more incredible than he could have hoped. A hideous thing that towered above him, easily as tall as six men, and broad as a building. It glowed like the coals in the heart of a campfire, smoldering black lace over molten crimson that flared ever brighter in dozens of spots as the winds swirled around the beast. Its limbs were massive, like ancient trees, and all four of them ended in claws that appeared more reptilian than any a warm blooded creature might have, and each talon had a dry, dull sheen like freshly fired iron.

  Tasche turned to Haggel and found exactly what he was looking for, a face filled with awe, astonishment, and terror. This was the look that would find the faces of all those who sought to oppose them. The last expression for hundreds, perhaps thousands of fools.

  But for now another task awaited. He must control the beast, and he had carefully prepared the spells designed to do just that. He need only . . .

  "Tasche!" Haggel shouted.

  Tasche felt a jolt of annoyance as he turned. "What?"

  "What is it doing!" Haggel said pleadingly, like a child. Tasche winced at a stiffness in his neck. He didn't have time for this. He turned and looked as the smell washed over him, a stench like rotten meat thrown into a fire, but with it came the more familiar, more palatable aroma of a hearth fire, of wood burning. Tasche narrowed his gaze against the wind and blowing smoke and saw that the forest itself was on fire. And the fires were spreading.

  "It is . . . moving," Tasche answered after a long, intense pause. He watched the incredible creature shift from one side to the other, pivoting its whole body to compensate for the lack of any neck. It had no eyes in the normal sense, only two great, blackened holes in its bulbous and glowing head. Whatever it was looking for, Tasche decided, it had apparently not taken notice of Haggel or himself. Not yet.

  "Is this supposed to happen?" Haggel yelled even louder, shielding his face with his sleeve against the growing walls of flames that snapped all around them now.

  "It is the energy from the creature or my spells combined with it that has gone slightly . . . er, awry."

  "Awry? The whole forest is on fire!" Haggel shouted, backing away from Tasche, the beast and the center of the clearing, following his men.

  "Not the whole forest," Tasche said. "A good deal of it, perhaps, but a few trees will not be missed . . ."

  "All of them will be!"

  Tasche tried to breathe and forget the cowardly prince. He had to concentrate. He tried to remember the spells he had so carefully prepared and memorized, yet now they somehow seemed to go missing in his brain. Or parts of them did.

  Tasche watched the beast take several steps, getting its balance, then it began to wander about, apparently aimless. The whole forest will catch, Tasche thought wearily, working at the parts of the controlling spells he could recall. The rest was coming back to him, he just needed a moment. If only the fires would stay away long enough to . . .

  To his sudden surprise, that was what happened. Indeed, the flames began to disappear. As the beast moved about, it was somehow absorbing all the energy from the flames its worldly birth had created. Then, like water down a hole, the fires rushed to it and vanished, leaving only smoke and smoldering remains in its wake. In moments the fires were all but gone. But the beast kept walking, wandering here and there.

  "Is that supposed to happen?" Haggel asked. "Is any of this supposed to happen?"

  Tasche forgot the next line of the spells as he watched wide-eyed with wonder. As the beast walked through unburned forest every living thing around it was turning brown and dying, as if all living energies were being absorbed. And Tasche had begun to notice another effect as well—the farther the creature walked, the larger it grew.

  "It is . . . more than I expected," Tasche admitted, blinking as he racked his brain for the knowledge he had put there. More pieces came to him, reason overcoming the combination of dread and astonishment that sought to paralyze his thoughts.

  "Do something!"

  "I have the controlling spell at hand," he told Haggel with as much determination as he could manage. "It is not too late. We will have this beast at our beck and call!"

  "Good," Haggel said, as Tasche raised his hands, waved his staff, and recited the four final phrases his spell required.

  "At least it hasn't seen us yet," Haggel said, from at least twenty paces behind Tasche, and still moving further back.

  No matter, Tasche thought, as he added his binding phrase and initiated the controlling spell . . . Soon enough now it—

  Tasche swallowe
d as the beast turned, struck by the controlling spell just as it should be, but not slowed, not still, as it should have been. It kept turning—toward its master.

  "Well, it sees us now!" Haggel howled, clearly not as pleased by the result as Tasche.

  Tasche repeated the binding phrase, which was surely the problem. "Do not fear, my prince, the spell is working!" he said. The beast took two giant steps toward them. "In a moment everything we have worked for will be realized," Tasche went on, holding his staff high before him and waving it again. Waving the beast to halt.

  "Are you sure?" Haggel asked, still further away.

  "Yes, I—I—" The words caught in his throat as the beast lumbered toward him, picking up speed. Tasche stepped quickly left behind a tree he knew was much too small. But in a related way the move was a good one. He watched as the beast reached out with one massive, black claw and snatched a screaming, writhing Haggel up off the ground instead of him. A hole opened in the beast's face, somewhere below its eyes, and Haggel vanished inside.

  Tasche heard a fresh scream—a sound that seemed exotic and strange as it found his ears, as if it belonged to someone else—then he realized it was him, and he screamed again as the beast tore the tree out of the ground and stared down at him. Tasche felt his throat seizing up. He tried all the same to repeat the last two phrases of the controlling spell, changing them slightly, hoping . . .

  It should have worked! he thought. He had done everything right. Had done all that was required. He should be in control of the beast by now, completely.

  He repeated the spell and fed it everything he could. Felt the fat on his body melting off as he let go of any constraints and let the spell feed freely on his reserves.

  The beast raged as it reared back. It howled with a sound that seemed to come from the earth itself, a sound like the ground opening up. Yes, Tasche thought, straining desperately. But then the beast came around again, fighting the spell off. It reached out, and Tasche felt himself swept away just as Haggel had been, felt the hot claws of the beast wrap around him and tighten unmercifully.

  Darkness met searching pain for an instant as he was consumed, but suddenly the pain vanished. He waited, but the end Tasche expected did not come after that. He still existed, but where?

  Then he knew. He felt himself a part of the mind of the creature—a dim seething mind much like its body—and though he could not remember much about whom or what he had been, he knew he still lived, somehow.

  The spell! He remembered that much. My spells were not a total loss, he thought, gloating, aware of the spell itself still resonating around him. Some part of his former mind knew this was perhaps not the happiest of results, but he tried not to dwell on that. There was much to think about.

  Already he found it difficult to tell which parts were of him, and which were of the dim consciousness of the creature itself, but that seemed to matter less and less the more he thought about it. The creature burned with strength and magic, it seethed with fire, with life and death. It called itself . . . Tasche? Yes, that was it. Or that would do. The thing had too little a mind and too vague an identity to argue. They were all and one, whoever they were. Tasche will do!

  Tasche could not recall precisely who had summoned them here, but they had been summoned to take life, all life, everywhere it could be found. Everything, every bit and breath. That was why they existed. And as long as they could find more life they would not die.

  There had been another, though. A prince? The term meant nothing. That other's essence had been dismantled and made a very small part of the whole.

  And yet—there had been another before that . . . hadn't there?

  Yes. They remembered . . . a someone. Tasche remembered. Someone much larger.

  Another whose voice Tasche could hear somewhere deep within the nether reaches of his consciousness. But who?

  No name came forth, no true memory, not now at least. But a part of Tasche was sure this other had been there when they had been given birth from one universe into another. This other, she is . . .

  A she?

  Tasche's mind began to reel at the vastness of such thoughts. Tasche needed simplicity, needed to move on, needed to do what they had come here to do. A welcome distraction caught his attention, and he strode toward it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Captain Durret's eyes were raw from rubbing them with his fingers. He couldn't help it. He couldn't believe what he had seen. Not to mention the smoke. Finding their quarry had not been difficult. Durret had asked about them, and travelers through these woods were rare enough that they were most often remembered. There were also few places his quarry could go where the eyes of others would not be about, busying themselves with everyone else's business. Durret expected Prince Haggel and Tasche would desire secrecy, whatever they were up to, and he had been right; it had taken him very little time to turn them up once he had the direction down. But then he'd come upon them . . .

  Whatever they were doing, Durret was certain it was horribly evil. He thought it ever since he'd crept near, taking care not to be seen, and began to watch the strange goings-on in the tangled clearing, a place not far from the old castle's eastern wall. The onset of dusk had concealed too much detail at first, but then the burning giant had appeared, glowing deep red and spewing smoke, and setting the forest on fire. Durret had been ready to order a retreat when the giant suddenly began to suck the flames off the trees and ground cover, until all of it was gone.

  The beast had wandered about after that, for a moment. Then, as Durret watched in astonishment, it had turned and gone after Prince Haggel and the wizard Tasche, snatching them up and popping them down its maw like so many grapes.

  He wasn't sure whether his Lord Kolhol would be pleased or not when he learned of all this, but there was little to be done about it either way. Durret's mission had ceased to exist.

  He would have a hard time explaining this, no matter what else happened. Kolhol had been counting on him. But what he was witnessing defied explanation. As he kept watch, Durret became fascinated by the effect the beast was having on the forest. Everywhere it walked, everything alive turned brown and seemed to die. He'd never seen the like, or the like of the horrible burning beast itself. The scene was mesmerizing. Until he realized the beast was turning toward them . . .

  "Get out of here!" Durret commanded his troops. "Run!"

  He turned and followed as the men scurried away to their horses. Then he led the retreat that began in a thunder of horses' hooves, but those sounds started to thin almost at once, replaced by sounds of men shouting out or screaming in terror. Durret looked back over his shoulder and saw the giant right behind his troops, loping along at an easy gait, methodically scooping up horses and riders and sucking them down. He heard the horses' shrill whines, heard his men call out as they were consumed. There was nothing he could do except keep riding, and hope the creature tired of the chase before Durret ran out of men.

  In fact, to Durret's hysterical relief, it did. At last, slowed by the thickening of the forest or simply because it had changed its mind—to Durret it didn't matter—the creature fell back and stood on top of a long, steep hill, where it watched its quarry pick their way through the trees. Durret counted three men still with him. Three of thirty. Kolhol would be even less pleased than Durret might have once imagined possible.

  But there was still more bad news. The creature might turn any which way—who could tell?—but if it stayed on the course Durret had clearly, and unfortunately, set for it, if it followed the road at the bottom of the hill, it would end up in Lord Kolhol's lap. The Grenarii kingdom, or most of it, would perish in a matter of days.

  Durret reached the road and set off at a gallop. He kept pushing his mount, riding it to death. He had nothing to lose. Or everything.

  * * *

  Kolhol sat tightening his grimace as he listened to Durret try his best to recount what he had seen in the forest, and what happened after that. Kolhol had already decided no
disciplinary actions would be taken against the commander—the man was white as a ghost and shaking so badly he was having a hard time speaking clearly enough to be understood—and the story he told was too incredible to be contrived, even by someone good at it, let alone a trusted, loyal, simple soldier like Durret.

  Besides, the news wasn't all bad; he was finally rid of that poor excuse for a sorcerer, Tasche. His son was dead though, and that was something Kolhol had mixed feelings about. He was glad to be free of the worry over how traitorous the boy's heart truly was, and the disappointment at having already learned most of that answer. Haggel had been Kolhol's only son, after all. Which was a pity, in more ways than one.

  "And what of the demon creature?" Kolhol asked. "Where is it now?"

  "It is—uh, we think it is, uh, it could be—"

  "Out with it!" Kolhol boomed, suddenly short on patience.

  Durret hung his head. "It may be . . . on its way here."

  Kolhol swallowed. Here? Durret nodded as if he had heard the thought.

  "My lord," one of the royal pages called from the doorway. "A visitor is at the outer gates. He wishes an audience at once."

  "Who is it?" Kolhol barked, in no mood for this, either.

  "A sorcerer. He says his name is Frost."

  By the Gods! In large part Kolhol had hoped for a visit from Frost at some point, but this was not that point. If everything his well-paid visitor from Worlish had said was true, Frost was here looking for his aunt, Shassel; and for justice to be dispensed upon those who had taken her. All of which was a very large problem, in light of what had just happened. Kolhol was not a great talker, he was a warrior by trade. But killing Frost, or attempting to, was probably unwise at best, even if half his reputation was true. He was too dangerous, and potentially too useful. Then there was the matter of the mythical, legendary Demon Blade he supposedly had . . .

  No, there was but one course of action. Lie.

  "Bring him here at once!" Kolhol commanded.

  "What of the two warriors with him?"