The Frost Fervor Concordance Box Set

by Tom Hansen

She lay the soldier down to the ground, still keeping her magic up to ensure he couldn’t scream and alert others of her presence.

  Still, she had just used magic. It was a matter of time before she was found.

  All part of the plan.

  Talia had committed. It was time to end the hunt one way or the other.

  Padding around to the other side of the cottage, she noted the location of the southern soldier.

  Talia released her hold on the soldier to the north, and sent out a blast of time magic in all directions.

  She wondered if this was easier than catching fish from the sea.

  Talia surveyed the area before making her next move. One soldier lay dying to the north, one soon-to-be victim to the south. Four soldiers, each with their distinctive taint of Reyoarfjell magic lay in beds in the larger home, plus two female companions, she supposed taken from the local population.

  Then she felt him.

  He practically stared back at her through the void. For a brief second, she thought he was indeed watching her, but she shook the thought from her head.

  Talia needed to focus. His time would come, but for now, she needed to take out the other soldier.

  Rounding the corner, she locked on and soon had the female soldier down.

  It was almost too easy.

  She turned and casually walked to the front of the house. Her energy was draining quickly and steadily, but it continued to get easier the fewer guards she needed to hold.

  Talia shrank the circle of influence and grit her teeth through the gurgling of the two soldiers finally breathing out their last, leaving just the building and the seven occupants within under her spell.

  She opened the door.

  It took a second for her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside, but she registered the four cots in the main room. Four cots, six bodies. Three male, one female soldier, plus two female companions.

  She swiftly moved to the first soldier to the left and raised her dagger.

  Talia hesitated.

  If this guard woke right now, she would think Talia a fiery-headed Raven of sorts. The thought worked through her psyche, wavering her resolve like a flag in the wind.

  She was supposed to be stopping the threat, not killing indiscriminately. Did she fully know that this soldier had willingly come on this mission? Was she only here because of her own self-preservation?

  No!

  The thoughts were too much for Talia. The soldier in the cot was part of the system that had taken her and her siblings, had tortured and twisted them beyond recognition, and finally spat them out to wreak their own brand of horror on the world.

  This soldier was part of a war, and she had to die so that Talia may live.

  Talia stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.

  Months of torture poured out of her as hostility for the Queen and her ilk.

  They all had to die for her to live. There was no in-between here. If even one of them survived tonight, they would go back and tell the Queen, then the full army would be back here.

  Talia couldn’t allow that to happen. Not to her, not to the villagers.

  The queen will never have my magic.

  Talia stood, disgust tickling the back of her throat like the scent of rotten food. It was a horrific sight, but she had seen worse.

  She had done worse.

  Talia was just as bad as any of them, and she knew it.

  That is why the Fates had lied to her, lulled her into a false sense of purpose.

  “Hello, Talia.”

  She looked up.

  “Oh, Gods Below.”

  He stood on the other side of the room, cloaked in a long, hooded robe pulled far down over his face.

  Two white hands stuck out of the dark sleeves, like beacons in the night.

  “Caldin.” His name was like poison on her tongue, stinging simply by uttering the word.

  He studied her face. “I smelled you on the way here, you know. I sensed you had stopped just to the south of the village. I knew you hadn’t come in here, but my soldiers were tired, so I stopped. You couldn’t stay away. I knew you would come sooner or later.”

  Talia turned the knife in her hand as she squared off with him.

  “How are you awake?”

  “Oh, you mean not affected by your time magic? You see, it’s a funny thing.” He raised his hands. “I was made this way specifically to counteract you. They imbued me with powers that I’m still learning how to use. You forget that you escaped once already, and that gave them plenty of time to figure out a perfect counter to your abilities.”

  All around her, the rest of the room woke up.

  The three remaining soldiers jumped out of bed, reaching for their weapons. The two naked women screamed, trying to figure out what was happening.

  Caldin waved his hands and both of the women’s necks snapped. They crumpled to the floor without a sound.

  Talia flared her magic once more, stopping time in the building, but just as fast as she could flare it, it fizzled out.

  Three soldiers came at her, swords drawn.

  “I suggest you surrender now, Talia. It will make it easier for all of us.”

  Talia was terrified. She couldn’t figure out why her magic wasn’t working. She took a step back, then another, backing into the wall.

  She glanced down at the woman who she had stabbed. Four perfect stab wounds stared back at her on the woman’s bare chest. She realized now the woman hadn’t been a soldier—she had been one of the villagers, dressed up to look like a soldier.

  “What have I done?”

  Talia dropped the knife to the floor, the metal clattering until it stopped, then she huddled into a ball and cried as the soldier’s blows rained down upon her.

  Chapter Seven

  Talia woke with rope binding her hands, feet, and middle, with a single large leathery belt cinched around her stomach tying her extremities together. A stab wound each in her torso, leg, and shoulder signified that her magic had been taken from her once again by the Skarmyord.

  She lay on her side, the grime of the floor scraping beneath her as she moved. Her head ached something fierce, with waves of nausea racking her body.

  She threw up, the smell from the vomit triggering a second wave of nausea.

  One of the soldiers wrenched her to her feet by her hair and tossed her. She landed roughshod into a wooden chair.

  “Well, looky here who woke up. You feeling alright, little princess?”

  Talia tried to open her eyes, but one was swollen shut. After some struggle, she pushed through the pain to open the other one. Dried blood coating her face cracked and fell to the floor.

  Her dagger was stuck in a desk five feet away, but otherwise the rest of the room looked largely the same as when she had confronted them.

  A glance outside told her it was probably still nighttime.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Not long enough, with your prattling tongue. I hope they rip it out so we don’t have to listen to your griping all the way back.”

  “Enough.” Caldin spoke up from the doorway to the back room. “Wake up some of the larger villagers and supervise them to bury the dead.”

  “Yes, sir.” The soldier who had pulled Talia to her feet saluted, and headed out the door.

  “Do they hold it for you when you piss?” Talia spat the words out, anger simmering just below the surface.

  Caldin flashed her an indignant look before turning. “The world has changed, Talia, and all of us are merely swept along in the surge. Struggling against the down current serves no purpose but to end up exhausted and dashed along the rocks. Don’t you see that it’s best to just give in and allow it to carry you off to parts unknown?”

  Talia spat blood on the floor. “Is that was helps you sleep at night? Knowing that it’s not really your fault? Knowing that all the hurt and pain you cause everyone else is somehow her fault, and not yours?”

  Caldin studied her face for a moment, but she turned
away, refusing to look him in the eye.

  He disgusted her, and she would never give him the satisfaction she knew he wanted.

  How am I going to get out of here?

  “Oh, Talia. One of these days you will grow up and realize the world doesn’t work like you think it should. Though I admire your gumption, you are but a small fish, swimming against the torrent of the Concordance.”

  “Fuck the Concordance.”

  He chuckled, a small smile adorning his cocky face. “Such language, but I can understand where you come from. The Concordance gives and takes as it will, but if you embrace the power that resides within you–”

  She swore. “I want to know how you broke from my spell.”

  That gave him pause, and he paced around the room in a small circle.

  It wasn’t any more irritating than the last hundred times she had seen him do this, but she hoped it would give her more time. Most likely, the group would leave at first light, so she had scant few hours to figure out a way to escape.

  She touched the magic deep inside herself, but found it still dormant. A quick assessment of her body told her the injuries she had sustained from the beating were more extensive than originally thought, but not life-threatening. She bled from her shoulder, torso, and forearm. Her right eye was swollen shut, and she most likely had some broken ribs on her right side. Her ankle also pained her even though she had no weight on it. She worried she wouldn’t be able to walk even if she managed to escape.

  On top of one good eye, her head swam and pained her at the same time, and she didn’t have access to her magic anymore.

  Dammit.

  She tested her ropes, hoping she could at least slip one off.

  “There is no use struggling, dear Talia. The ropes have been infused to keep your magic at bay, a slightly more couth method than stabbing you, I suppose. You should be grateful for tender mercies.”

  “Like those used to beat my face until I can’t open my eye?”

  Caldin raised his eyebrow. “That was unfortunate, but you can’t fault their irritation at you for killing their own. You will come to understand that the Queen’s will is absolute.”

  “I’m not going back there.”

  Caldin huffed, almost chuckling as his gaze locked onto her, grabbing control of her attention. “Oh, you definitely will, Talia Oblique. I will not stop. We will not fail her again. After unlocking such incredible power within you, you don’t think I won’t present you myself before Her Majesty?”

  He picked up a small book on the desk, something she hadn’t noticed till now.

  She tensed. She knew that book.

  He tossed it into the air a couple times before palming it and holding it up for her to see.

  Talia’s heart practically leapt out from her throat.

  “Is that…?”

  Caldin smiled in that crooked way he always had. He flipped open the book and casually thumbed through a couple of the handwritten pages. “Yes, it’s the notes you tried to smuggle out of Reyoarfjell. Nora handed them over to me as soon as you escaped. She came directly to me, Talia, no one else. I think she would want you to know that. You forget who cares for you the most in this world.”

  Talia mulled the words over in her head. If he hadn’t told anyone about the book then it was possible that other things also hadn’t been reported. “So, the Queen doesn’t know anything yet?”

  He glared at her, slamming the book closed and dropping it on the desk beside him. “She will know soon enough. I will be there to present you to her as my greatest achievement.”

  It was time for Talia to laugh. “You know nothing of her nature, do you? You delude yourself into thinking that you will somehow gain favor from her. But if you think that is the case, you don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

  Talia licked her lips, scraping off some of the dried blood and spitting it to the floor once again. “The fact that you haven’t told her about the magic I wield tells me that you will be the next one on the wall for all to see. There is no rationalization you will be able to make to quell her anger. She will mete out vengeance on you for this wrong for centuries to come, and I will be there watching, laughing at your silly mistake, as she brings her full fury to bear on your pitiful life.”

  Talia sneered at him. It was good to know that knowledge of her abilities hadn’t made it back to the Queen yet. Given her unique talents, each time she manifested, it had simply frozen all the testers in place for a while, so it looked like she never responded to their stimuli.

  When it had been discovered what she had been doing, they were too busy trying to take the credit for the discovery than to properly restrain her. That had allowed her to kill them and walk right out of the compound undetected.

  Now she was having the last laugh. “You are so pathetic.”

  He stared at her, his eyes unblinking. “We shall see. You underestimate just how precious you will be to her. Even if I am tortured, or worse, turned into another Stitched, then I will still have time on my side, as will you.”

  He walked up to her, cradling her chin in his frigid hand. “It’s all about time with us, isn’t it? We will know each other for a long, long time, Talia. No Queen will ever take that away from us. But for now, you and I have conversed far too long. We must prepare to travel to the Skarfanes, and I can’t have you conscious for that trip. We all know how slippery you can be when given the chance.”

  Pain wracked her body through his touch. Heat drained from her flesh, funneled through his fingers. Inside, her well opened up and dumped its contents as all of her energy poured out of her. She shook and convulsed as the pain consumed her consciousness.

  Outside, an alarmed solder’s voice was cut off with a gurgling crunch.

  Caldin turned and stormed out of the hut, shouting.

  All around, a cacophony of noise surrounded her as the entire village seemed to awake at once.

  Screams, yells, and grunts came at her from all directions, muffled by the walls.

  Talia tried to move, but the pain still lingered in her body, along with the unbelievable amount of power Caldin had just drained from her, preventing her from being able to do anything but fall to the floor in a heap.

  The door burst open, and a large shape hovered over her.

  “Oh lass, I told you to allow me to come help ye.”

  Borym huddled over her, taking in her form. He went to pick her up, then noticed the shackles about her body.

  With a dark frown, he grabbed the one about her middle and pulled, stretching the leather to its breaking point until it snapped and fell off.

  He did the same to the rest of her bindings, freeing her one strap at a time.

  Talia was vaguely aware of how incredibly strong he had to be in order to break leather and rope like that, but her mind was still too consumed by pain to truly understand what was going on.

  Before she knew it, she was standing. Pain lanced through her ankle, but she was able to walk.

  A soldier burst through the door, sword raised as he came directly at her.

  Borym grabbed his axe and parried the blow.

  “Run, lass! Run!” His eyes were wild, helped by his crazy curly red hair floating about his face. “Go! I’ll be right behind!”

  Talia ran.

  Chapter Eight

  Outside was pure chaos. Villagers fought back with kitchen knives and fishing spears, while soldiers parried and stabbed with perfect coordination.

  It was a complete and utter bloodbath.

  And it was all Talia’s fault.

  She had not only overestimated her ability to handle the situation, she underestimated Caldin’s abilities.

  If she managed to make it out of here alive, she would never do that again.

  Never again.

  Her mind continued to swim as she followed a voice in her head. Farther out she stumbled, barely cognizant of where she was in the world.

  Then, cold.

  She fell off the dock and sp
lashed into the frigid water.

  The enveloping chill jolted her senses and she blinked, trying to rid the water from her eyes. Her headache still pounded, but the cold from the water shocked her system and allowed her to focus on escaping, ignoring the pain in her body.

  She didn’t know what compelled her to do so, but she swam. She swam for her life out into the darkness, cold, and alone. A part of her knew she wasn’t thinking right, but she was also powerless to act upon that feeling.

  Shouts of a child crying behind her gave her pause. The pitch of the little girl’s voice cut through the haze of her mind, striking true at her core. It reminded her of when she had been a child, alone and afraid, powerless to those around her.

  She turned, focusing on the sound.

  The scream sounded again, but this time somewhere to the right. She continued to follow it, paddling like a dog as her limbs lost more and more sensation.

  The reality that she was alone in the water became more apparent as she couldn’t feel her arms anymore. After having so much of her own power sapped by Caldin’s touch, she might end up losing everything due to the weather.

  How the mighty have fallen.

  No.

  She would not go like this, not while there was still some fight left in her. Not while the people were dying around her. This was all her doing, and she needed to be around to finish it.

  She turned—the baser, more animalistic part of her brain guiding her to get out of the water as fast as she could. Her magic flared, an automatic response to her core temperature drop. Still, with most of her magic drained, there was very little available, and her subconscious warred. Was it was better to spend her valuable reserves heating her body, or halting time on herself, thus preventing more heat loss?

  Either way, she needed to make it out of there, and find some place to hide.

  She followed the dock to the shore, the moon and stars guiding her away from the fighting.

  Behind her, the shouts receded. She didn’t know if they were growing quieter, or if she was moving farther away, but in her state, she didn’t care. Nothing mattered.

  Keep moving.

  Memories of Borym bursting through the door echoed through her mind over and over. “Run, lass. Run!”