by Tom Hansen
Synol stood there, a big dumb grin on her face. The sunlight behind her filled her long red hair with a brilliance Ynya hadn’t seen in many women.
She looked so much like her mother in that moment that Ynya’s breath hitched.
Mama had always told Ynya that she was a spitfire and as cute as a snow rabbit. It was a platitude at best, but an accurate one.
But Synol was drop-dead gorgeous. She looked so like Talia Oblique that Ynya yearned to call her Mama. Luckily, she caught herself.
“Synol–” she paused, a dozen replies swimming around in her head, but one stood out among the rest. Given the situation it seemed like the only prescient thing to say.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
They hugged, for the dozenth time since they had reunited.
There was no point in arguing. Each sister looked out for the other in the only way she knew how, and quibbling over slight differences in methodology was a waste of time when the real pressure on them was to find their sisters.
Synol broke off their hug and clapped Ynya on the shoulders much harder than she normally would. “Shall we go torture this guy for information?”
Ynya smiled. “Actually, Synol, I learned something from you. Apparently if you ask the soldiers politely after you have saved their lives from a fiery demise, they will happily tell you where their bosses are keeping your sibling. We’re only a few days’ hike from Reyoarfjell.”
“Oh good,” Synol picked up a small branch from the ground, half covered in snow. “That will make my job a little easier.” She palmed the branch for a moment, seemingly weighing it in her hand before breaking it.
In the distance, the captain’s hoarse profanities cut off with a sickening crunch.
Chapter Four
It took over five days to arrive.
After nearly a three-day journey south and east of Lyraville, they ran into their first of many patrols. New soldiers, of a variety they’d never seen before, policed the area. They wore icy-blue dyed leather uniforms, giving them a unique, but vicious, look. Unlike the hodge-podge men they’d dealt with before, all of these soldiers looked merciless and well-trained. Every one of them walked with a surety and confidence that showed they did this job on a regular basis. A few of them were accompanied by large dogs on leashes.
The sisters spent a day dodging patrols, but once they got close enough, they saw the compound.
Reyoarfjell nestled in a large valley. Along all sides, the hilltops contained guard towers, each spaced a quarter-mile apart.
Dozens of soldiers wove in between the towers, each one with a dog that snarled and barked every time they came near another patrol. None of the soldiers stopped to chat. They looked to be taking their job quite seriously.
“We need to get a better look at this place. I can’t see what is over the hill and there is no way we’re getting past those towers unseen,” Synol said, pointing to a rise to the south. “I think we should head up there. We should be able to see over the hill from that shelf.”
Ynya agreed. They backed away and spent another day making their way around to the south side of the compound.
When they finally climbed up the mountain and came out on the ledge spotted from the ground, the sisters stood in rapt amazement at the sight before them.
Reyoarfjell was huge.
The towers they’d seen from the ground were only the beginning.
Surrounding the entire compound were four massive mounds of dirt, almost a mile on each side. Atop the hill, and still stationed every quarter mile, were more of the same turrets.
“An entire mile-square prison? How many people are they housing?” Ynya’s mind spun out as she tried to process just how huge the place was.
At least they knew they were heading in the correct direction.
Synol frowned. “Those towers are going to spot us for sure.”
Ynya had come to the same conclusion. “It’s like they knew that we were coming.”
Synol shook her head. “It might look like that, but see the three towers? Each of them has two soldiers in the top, and look closely. None of them face outward. That’s what the roaming pairs with dogs are for, preventing anyone traveling the country from accidentally stumbling across this place.”
Synol shivered, despite the large coat she wore. “The three towers are to keep the prisoners in, not out. Getting in will be the easy part.”
“I don’t plan on being in there very long. We just need to find the girls and get out.”
Synol shook her head. “It took us an entire day to come in from the south side, Reyoarfjell is just too massive. Getting in, assuming we don’t get killed, is going to be daunting, but finding them and escaping with our lives is going to be even harder.”
Ynya felt the heated rage under her skin flare. “Are you saying we don’t go in there?”
Synol flashed her own stony expression of anger. “I never said that. Don’t put words in my mouth. I said it’s going to be difficult, I didn’t mean we don’t try.” She clenched her fist and leaned forward. “Just like you told me that there was no way you set fire to Marsfjord, I can’t have you question my resolve. I want to see them just as much as you.”
Ynya’s blood chilled as she remembered that just a couple weeks prior, she’d been accused of brutally murdering her parents and burning down their entire fishing village, killing everyone inside of it.
At the time, nothing had been more important than making sure Synol understood that she was not the monster she was accused of being. Others were, but not her.
A similar guilt nudged at her voice right now. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean–”
“The issue is passed. What is the plan?”
“Plan?” Ynya was surprised Synol didn’t want to talk longer about their last little spat, but she was glad that she wanted to get right back to the mission. “I think the best method to get close is to get rid of some of the roaming packs and get as much information as we can.”
They spent an entire day up in the hills, observing and watching. During the day, the place swarmed with soldiers, and hundreds of prisoners milled about in a large pen in the center.
Tall timber and stone walls, completely covered in ice, prevented the mass of people inside from escaping. Beyond the walls was a zone of razor-sharp ice and rock. It was like a frost mage and an earth mage broke things into the most jagged pieces possible and embedded the remaining detritus into the earth. Shards as big as a person were visible from this distance.
Ynya suspected there was more they couldn’t see.
No one was making it across that strip of land.
Each tower had two soldiers at all times. Roaming below were packs of two to three soldiers with large dogs on leashes.
Then there were the bells. Every hour the bells rang. When guard shifts occurred, the bells rang. Dinnertime, breakfast, inspection; the bells rang.
Ynya was starting to get annoyed when Synol spoke up. “I like the bells.”
“You would.”
Synol frowned. “There is nothing wrong with being organized. Besides, it also means that the soldiers and everyone in there are so well-trained that they might not even think about it if the bells go off at the wrong time. If we can get to those bells, we might be able to manipulate their schedule and perform shift changes closer together, thus granting our exit.”
“And what about our entrance?”
“I think our best method is going to be intrusion as guards,” Synol finally said.
“Only one problem with that.”
“What’s that?”
“Our hair. If we show up with our bright red hair like this, I think they’re all going to know who we are and why we’re here.”
Synol grinned. “It’s a good thing all the guard uniforms have hoods to protect from the cold. Unless you want to cut yours all off, let’s get in there first and worry about things later.”
“Look at you, going in without a plan. Am I
finally rubbing off on you?”
Synol punched her in the arm. “It’s worked so far. Let’s get to it.”
Chapter Five
“The next patrol should be coming around the corner soon.”
“Does this one have a dog?” Synol asked.
Ynya shook her head. “No, that’s at least something we don’t have to deal with, but we’re still going to have to figure out a way to take them out without alarming anyone else.”
Synol pursed her lips to a line. “Other than helping plants grow and moving stone around, I can actually change the makeup of rock.” She pounded her fist into her open palm, signifying a stone. “I can change the stone to sand just as easily as I can do the reverse. I’d like to try something.”
“Okay, well, they’ll be here in about a minute, I saw them just duck around the corner back there.”
Synol nodded, got on her knees, and leaned out over the cliff. She crouched low to the rock and began to cast.
Ynya marveled every time she felt the surge in energy around Synol. It was something else, a restrained power, like being in her father’s strong arms when she was a little girl. While he had never had magic himself, his strong arms were the closest thing she could equate to what she felt emanate from Synol.
Synol kept casting, and Ynya pulled herself back from the edge. A regular pair of soldiers would be coming around the bend in the rock any second and she didn’t want to risk being seen. It was bad enough that Synol had to stick her head out over the cliff to perform the spell correctly.
The clomp of boots on the hard-packed stony ground gave away the location of the two men. Their rhythmic steps revealed the well-practiced routine of a soldier.
There was a gasp from one of them, and a gurgling sound from the other.
Then silence.
Synol leaned back from the edge. Her face was bright red, like she’d just finished running or climbing up something. She huffed and her bloodshot eyes looked around with a frantic excitement.
“You alright?” Ynya knelt down.
Synol nodded, her chest heaving with large gulping swallows of air. “Yeah, just, that was a lot of work.”
“Is it done?” Ynya looked between the cliff edge and her sister, not quite sure which she should tend to.
“Yeah, go check.”
Ynya did, and was surprised to see…nothing. Just a path along the base of the cliff.
But then she noticed a strange swirl in the ground, and a slight movement like wind whipping around sand.
Wait, sand?
That’s what was wrong, instead of hard stony ground, there was a patch of sand directly beneath them. The surface of the sand moved slightly for a few more seconds, then stopped.
Ynya noticed a small black patch and further inspection revealed that it was hair.
“You put them into quicksand?” Ynya turned to her sister. “That’s kind of mean, don’t you think?”
Synol shrugged, a big grin on her face. “What would you have done, overheated their heads until their brains melted? Either way, these two needed to die, and I just thought that it would be easier to get dirt off the uniform then blood. They still moving?”
Ynya looked back over the cliff. “No, but how do we get them out?”
Synol stood, her legs a bit shaky. “We’ll need to head down and pull them out, but I can use the rock to help do that. Then we’ll bury the bodies once more.”
After disposing of the bodies and modifying the pant lengths slightly to ensure they fit the uniforms better, the sisters marched toward the compound.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” It was the fourth time Synol had asked the question since the bells signified a shift change.
“Will you stop asking me that? This is normal shift change, we all come in, and the others go out. If it’s anything like the camp I snuck into a couple weeks ago, they might ask us for reports. Just grunt and say nothing. With as many people as they have crawling over this place, I doubt the guards will care that much.”
They fell in line with other soldiers. Half a dozen dog patrols waited at the rear, probably to march in together.
As they passed by the large towers, Ynya couldn’t help but look up at the massive structures. Each one was twice as tall as Synol’s old house, with thick stone bases and timbers poking out of the plaster-smoothed sides for support. She still had a hard time believing that buildings could be this tall.
They crossed through a path barely wide enough for one through the massive chunk of jagged land that surrounded Reyoarfjell. It was scary enough to see these razor-sharp hunks of stone and ice from a distance, but up-close was even worse. Bits of uniforms caught in the thousands of barbs showing that even the soldiers had to be careful.
This whole place was unforgiving, and they were willingly walking into it with no plan on how they were going to even find their sisters, let alone help them escape.
Chapter Six
Approaching the gate was surprisingly easy. No one stopped them. No one asked for a report. No one bothered looking at them closely enough to realize they didn’t belong. They all just filed behind the soldiers before them.
Ynya and Synol were deathly silent, as were the rest of the soldiers. This group didn’t seem to be nearly as chatty as the previous soldiers Ynya had met.
She watched the pair of soldiers in front of them. They stood at an easy attention, but one of them kept fidgeting with his hand.
He must really need to get to the bathroom.
A man carrying a bunch of papers was lowered in a basket down a pulley system. Once he reached the bottom, he shuffled his pages and walked down the ranks checking things off on the sheets, mumbling various names to himself as he did so. Once he got to the end he shouted back to the soldiers at the top of the gate. “All accounted for!”
The wall soldier yelled. “You may enter!”
A grinding noise started up behind the huge wall, then a massive stone door melted away from the endless expanse and the line started up again.
The sisters followed the dozens of other soldiers two by two.
Ynya’s skin crawled with each step. She hated having to come here, hated being here. She hated that all of this had come to her family because of the Frost Queen, and here they were infiltrating the scariest town in the realm to try to find their little sisters.
Every step reminded her just how daunting of a task it was going to be. Reyoarfjell was huge, and there was no way they could just ask around for their sisters without raising suspicion.
Once they made it past the huge wall, there was a blank patch of ground, then another wall. The outer and inner walls must have been a dozen yards from each other, providing a stark nothingness between them. A sign placed prominently on the wall warned them not to deviate from the path or risk losing limbs.
Ynya swallowed. What have they done to the rest of the path?
Guards roamed along the tops of both walls, watching the groups of soldiers enter in.
After going through the flat ground part, they entered another massive doorway and the view was unobstructed from here on in.
We’re finally inside. We made it!
Despite making it past the walls, Ynya’s heart refused to stop pounding in her chest. She couldn’t decide if that was too easy, or just hard enough. Either way, she was inside the Frost Queen’s internment camp for all the mages in the land.
No one wanted to come here.
But here they were.
Ynya and Synol were either very brave, or very stupid, and Ynya currently leaned toward the latter.
As the dozens of soldiers entered, they split off and began chatting. The moment they entered Reyoarfjell, the tense nature of the soldiers changed.
But it didn’t change for Ynya. She was here on a mission and her stress was only beginning.
She finally got to look at the place up close for the first time.
They’d seen it from the rocky outcropping, but since the inner walls were so massiv
e, they had really only been able to see rooftops and a bit of the pen where the prisoners spent most of their day.
Inside, it was like an entire bustling city half a mile square in each direction.
Dirt paths laid out most of the area in a structured and orderly manner. Most buildings lined the outside, leaving the center open.
The large square reminded Ynya of the town market in Holmslatr.
Around the perimeter were dozens and dozens of structures larger than Synol’s old house, but none of them had any charm that a home would have. They were all just massive stone buildings with wooden roofs.
This was a place built for an army, not family. It was built for efficiency, nothing more.
Each side of the compound had differently-painted buildings. The south side they entered from was white, and going clockwise around the compound was yellow to the west, brown to the north, and finally, red to the east.
Since all the soldiers milled about, clapping each other on their shoulders and heading off in various directions, no one seemed to be paying attention to the two newcomers.
Synol grabbed Ynya’s arm to pull her off to the side. She pointed to the massive fenced-off area in the center. “Prisoners.”
Ynya had noticed there were people just past the fence, but the sheer scale of the place overwhelmed her. Now that she had gotten past the towering buildings and rigid construction, she started to notice the details.
Hundreds of people milled about the large open square. All ages, genders, and varying states of dress. They were all terrifyingly thin, and most of them huddled together for warmth.
This inland Skoro district wasn’t nearly as cold as the western Hyndalskyr district where Ynya hailed from. Still, the whole area got pretty cold at night and maintained a cool edge in the shade, even now in summertime.
Ynya shuddered. How do the prisoners manage to survive the harsh winters if they aren’t given clothing to keep themselves warm?
Synol sniffed, and Ynya grabbed her hand to give a reassuring squeeze. “We need to find Finny and Meki.”