The Last Winter (The Circle War Book 2)

by Matt King

  A picture of the war started to form in Bear’s head. Meryn was doomed. With Cerenus and the others joining Amara’s side, she and Paralos had no chance.

  Balenor ran his finger along the control panel on the brothers’ cell, triggering a string of lights around the base. He did the same to Bear’s. “Amara has promised to spare Soraste as part of our deal. I felt lucky that she agreed. In return, I have promised her your life.”

  The god looked away from Bear’s glare. Bear moved down to see his face. “You lied to us. We trusted you and you’re nothing but a damn coward.”

  “No,” he said. “I am a survivor.”

  The glow from the cell walls cast flat blue reflections on the Horsemen’s masks as they stared down Balenor.

  “I must make arrangements for our arrival,” Balenor said as he began to walk toward the front of the ship. He stopped before he left the room and spoke over his shoulder. “I do wish you’d understand. I never wanted to hurt anyone.”

  He left, disappearing through the shadows.

  Bear looked over at the Horsemen. One of the brothers took out a knife and held it up to the glass for Bear to see. He gripped it tight and then slammed it home in its sheath. The message was clear: Get ready to fight.

  The floor rumbled beneath his feet. His stomach lifted as though he was walking through a synapse. After a second, the turbulence steadied and the ship’s humming drone returned. As soon as it did, the red lights above the cargo door started to flash. The loading ramp opened slowly, revealing a tea-colored sky lit along the horizon by the edge of a yellow sun’s light. The ship angled higher. His cell slipped toward the opening.

  “Brace yourselves!” Bear yelled out.

  At once, both cells slid across the hangar floor until they were off the ramp and tumbling through the sky.

  The fall sent him crashing from one side of the cell to the other. For a second, his cell stalled, giving him time to see an island below, a large ring of brown and green broken up by a crescent lake in its center. There was nothing but ocean surrounding it, a sea of black under wispy clouds.

  Just before they crashed into the water, something fired beneath the floor of his cell. A sound like rushing jets roared on all sides of him, steadying the falling cell until it righted itself above the water. When it neared the surface, the jets died away and the cells splashed down into the ocean.

  Bear shook his head to clear the cobwebs. He looked around for the Horsemen. Off to his left, the brothers stood. They started to shed their coats even before the walls of their raft began to dissolve. Bear’s did the same. A rush of wind came with it, warm and thick with salt.

  The island loomed in front of him, covered in a carpet of thick jungle. Giant stone pillars like ant hills rose above the trees.

  One by one, the Horsemen dove into the water and started to swim for shore. Bear triggered his mask and dove in after them.

  The sea was choppy from the wind, making it difficult to swim. He powered through, slowly closing in behind the Horsemen. He’d half expected the fall to be Balenor’s way of killing them, but now that they were still alive, he tried to mentally prepare himself for what the island would hold. As he closed in on the black rocks of the beach, he started to think of Meryn. He tried not to let himself think he’d seen the last of her.

  He fought his way past the rough waves of the surf, finally making it to the shallows. The brothers were ahead of him on shore. They watched as he approached. None of them seemed injured from the fall. Their hair hung over their masks in wet strands.

  “Everyone good?” Bear asked.

  They nodded.

  “I don’t know what Balenor means to do with us, but I don’t like being out in the open like this. We should head inland.”

  If the Horsemen had other ideas, they didn’t show it. They followed in behind him as he started his way up the beach.

  The jungle floor was a tangle of spongy roots that felt like it might give way any second. Vines of large, round green leaves wrapped around the gnarled trunks of trees. The Horsemen moved ahead of him to cut a path through the vegetation with their scythes. Even though the sun wasn’t up yet, the heat was stifling. They must have been boiling in their masks and body armor.

  Eventually, they broke through to a waterfall cascading between four of the stone pillars. The Horsemen stopped when they got to a standing pool of water. They lifted up their masks to drink.

  Bear scanned the trees, watching and waiting for an attack to come. He looked to the sky. A silhouette passed behind a cloud overhead. “You boys get behind me,” he said. “Something’s coming.”

  The Horsemen replaced their masks and backed away from the water’s edge. Bear kept his eyes on the clouds. Another shape appeared to his right, and then a third streaked over the waterfall.

  With a loud rush of wind from his wings, a Ysir warrior landed on the top of a stone pillar. A slotted helmet hid his face. His feet and hands clutched the pillar as his wings beat slowly, keeping him in place.

  A second Ysir landed on another pillar. Soon, four of the hunters sat perched on the rising stones.

  Finally, Icomedes landed on a rock at the top of the waterfall. Plates of white metal covered his red skin. Fitted to the underside of his forearms were curved blades that extended past his hands.

  Bear took a step forward.

  “Law-son. I have looked forward to this day,” Icomedes bellowed down. “At last, the Ysir have been unleashed in this war.”

  Bear glanced over his shoulder at the brothers. They looked first at the Ysir hunters and then to him.

  “No use in waiting,” Bear shouted to him. “If it’s a fight you want, it’s down here.”

  Icomedes turned to look back at the horizon. When he faced them again, he had a greedy smile on his face. He shouted a single word to the hunters on either side of him. One by one, the Ysir triggered the cloaking devices on their chests and disappeared. Bear heard the sound of their wings pushing them skyward.

  Icomedes spread his own armored wings. “You have until the sun rises, Law-son. When you see the fire in the sky, our hunt will begin.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  After a night spent trudging blind across the plains of Nebraska, the Ministers finally took the hood off August’s head. His hands were bound, leaving him with no way to block the sunlight from his eyes. He squeezed them shut. A drop of sweat rolled down his eyelid, seeping through with a stinging pain. He looked away and blinked until his vision started to focus. Over his shoulder, he saw the group of survivors behind them, barely a dark smudge on the horizon.

  “Don’t look at them,” the Minister said. He backhanded August across the jaw.

  August shook off the blow. It took a minute for his bones to reset.

  The mountains were still there, black and jagged against the dawn. He hadn’t imagined them after all. They had looked like a distant mirage before the cavalry of Ministers arrived through a synapse and threw him in chains and hooded him. He pleaded with them to take him back through the synapse to save time. They didn’t. After hours of slogging through storm after storm with his hood so wet that it stuck to his skin, he relished the warm sun on his face. His eyes took in the massive stone peaks as the Ministers guided him around their base. The ground was cracked and broken like the mountains had fought back when Amara pulled them from the earth. As they neared the point where the range began to taper down, he felt the first pang of nerves about seeing what was on the other side. He hadn’t allowed himself to consider what might be waiting for him, or even whether he’d ever make it out again once he was inside.

  As long as I can convince Amara to save these people, does it matter?

  The mountains ended at the hinges of a pair of massive stone doors. Sunlight poured through diamond windows, casting long shafts of light onto the ground below. The doors were as tall as skyscrapers and looked every bit the scale he would expect for a gateway to a god’s castle. Bordered in yellow stone trim, they were warm and invi
ting, a stark contrast to the darkness of winter behind him.

  Rising behind the open doors was a statue large enough to dwarf the mountains—a woman chiseled from flawless white stone with her arms opened wide, ready to welcome the masses. Her dead stare felt like it was focused directly on him. Behind her, a castle perched above a spiral of buildings. He looked at the open windows of Amara’s fortress, dark despite the rising sun, and wondered if she was watching.

  The Ministers arranged themselves in formation around him as they passed through the entrance. Two held his arms on either side. Two more formed energy staffs in their hands—just as Polaris had—and fell in behind him. His swords dangled from the belt of the one standing to his left. He could hear their quiet voices sing with each step.

  As they stepped into the giant courtyard, a dull murmur floated in on the wind. August looked down the length of the statue to a dense crowd of people building in the shadow of the stone woman. They were waiting for him. A knot formed in his stomach. Had they been promised a show?

  A line of Pyrian guards funneled him toward a wide street where the people stood ten deep on either side beneath high-rises of narrow apartments. Despite having escaped the cold, most looked ragged and worn. The murmur of voices silenced as soon as he set foot on the stone street. He had a hard time meeting their stares, not because he was truly the Gemini, but because he was no better.

  The guards slowed as they reached the edge of the crowd, giving them plenty of time to take in the sight of him. There was a feeling of electricity coming from the sea of people, a growing sense that he was walking into a minefield. His heart beat loudly in his ears.

  A man shouted something in the back that he couldn’t make out. It sparked a murmur of chatter. More started to shout. He looked back over his shoulder. The crowd filled in behind the Ministers, who looked back at him with cold blue eyes.

  “Killer,” a woman snarled as he walked by. She spit in his path.

  “I hope you burn in Hell!” another yelled.

  Soon, the crowd was shouting at him from both sides. Their eyes were wild. Some held up pictures above their heads of wives and husbands and children. All of them said some version of the same thing as he passed: You robbed us of them. You took them away.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated as he walked, though no one could hear him. By the time he could see a closed gate at the end of the road above him, the crowd was frenzied, ready to explode. His ears rang from their curses.

  A boy who looked barely old enough to be a teenager came running out of the throng of people to his right with a broad rock in his hand. He threw it before the ministers could stop him and the stone smashed into the side of August’s head. His legs buckled. A sheet of warm blood fell across his cheek.

  As soon as the crowd saw what happened, they stormed forward. The ministers could barely keep them away. Punches and kicks came from everywhere, some glancing off his armor, others connecting with full force. He lost his breath as a flailing punch caught him in the windpipe. Another re-opened the wound above his cheek.

  “Move back!” one of the Ministers ordered. “By the command of Lady Amara, move away!”

  Their words were lost in the melee. The Ministers huddled on all sides of him, gradually moving him through the sea of shouting people. The cyborgs ignited the shields around their shell to protect them from the flying rocks and debris. August kept his head down. He momentarily lost consciousness as something hard slammed into the back of his neck. The ministers caught him before he was absorbed into the mob.

  “Move! Move!” he heard a woman shouting. He looked around, disoriented. “Move!” she said again.

  “Let her through!” others yelled.

  August looked up to see two women fight their way to the front of the crowd. One of them carried a TV camera.

  “Let me see him!” the younger Asian woman said.

  The Ministers stopped, creating a small cavity in the mob. They held him up by the arms to present him to the women. His legs couldn’t support his weight, leaving him hanging like a corpse.

  “Are you the Gemini?” she asked. She thrust a microphone in front of his face.

  He coughed through a film of blood in his throat as he tried to speak.

  “Are you?!” she yelled. Her eyes were fiery, echoing the mood of the crowd.

  “Yes,” August forced out.

  The mic trembled in her hand. She dropped it and reached back to slap him across the cheek. As soon as she did, he saw something shift in her eyes, like a pang of guilt washing over the anger. Tears formed, shining the surface of her eyes.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  The woman slapped him again, but her conviction was gone. She backed away, burying her face into the shoulder of her friend.

  The Ministers dragged him past.

  “It’s going to be okay,” August called back. “Tell them it’s going to be okay!”

  They pushed him through the last of the crowd until they met with a throng of Pyrian guards at the gates. The guards ushered them through, slamming the heavy metal doors behind them. The shouts of the people became a dull memory. He healed gradually as they rushed him along the empty street. By the time they got to the castle entrance, his wounds were nothing but the faint smell of blood on his face, though nothing could fix the memories of the faces he saw in the crowd or the things they’d screamed at him. Those were going to stay with him until the end.

  The Ministers’ footsteps rattled down the hallways. They dragged him up a curved staircase to a wide veranda overlooking the city below, stopping at the door to a round arena topped by an ivory dome. A pair of Pyrian guards dressed in white metal armor pulled the doors open.

  His breath quickened as he passed through the entrance. Polaris stood at the bottom of the steps. Behind her in the center of the arena was a woman with silver hair, joined by a man to her right and a woman to her left.

  “I will take him,” Polaris said as she met the Ministers near the bottom. She took his swords, slipping her other hand around his arm as she guided him onto the floor. She had a warm, welcoming smile on her face, same as she had when he first saw her talking to the survivors. He wondered if Dondannarin saw the same before Polaris struck her and the rest of the Vontani down.

  “August Dillon,” she said as she presented him to the three standing in the center. She let go of his arm.

  Amara, he thought as he met the silver eyes of the woman in the middle. It had to be her. She commanded attention without saying a word.

  “It is not often that I am caught off guard,” she said. “Once again, Meryn surprises me.”

  “I’m not here for her. I came on my own.”

  “Of course.” She smiled and looked to her companions. “You may remember Galan.”

  Galan looked a lot different than the hazy figure of light he’d seen during their fight in the mountains. He was bald with pale skin. A streaking red pupil matching the color of his clothes divided his black eyes. “We’ve met before,” August said.

  Galan gave a slight nod.

  “And this,” Amara continued, “is Anemolie.”

  Another god. He’d heard Meryn mention her before. Anemolie looked at him with a hungry smile. He could smell the ambition on her and saw right away what kind of snake she was. She stood slightly closer to Amara than Galan did with her lean body canted toward the woman in white. She was dressed in a loud bundle of colorful robes that clung to her thin frame. A high collar wrapped around her long neck. Her skin was the color of Meryn’s, a light chestnut brown, made even darker by the chocolate shade of hair cascading over her shoulder.

  “You’ve already met Polaris.”

  August gave the cyborg a quick glance. “Briefly. How’s the arm?”

  Polaris stared straight ahead.

  At the back of the auditorium, a flash of red caught his eye. Amara followed his stare to the doors leading to the castle. Something moved in the shadows. He recognized the color. It was bright red, glowing wi
th strength. Gemini.

  With a slight wave of her hand, Amara pulled the doors shut, sending an echo through the arena.

  “Now,” she said. “What is it you want, son of Meryn?”

  He pulled his eyes away from the shuttered doors. Standing under the stares of the three gods, he struggled to put together a sentence.

  “You need not worry,” she said with a soothing voice. “We cannot hurt you or see into your thoughts. You should feel free to speak.”

  “Perhaps the Ministers were too hard on him,” Galan said. “He may be too weak to respond.”

  “This wasn’t from them,” August said. “I can handle your toys. This was a message from the people, not meant for me.”

  He glanced toward the doors, then back to Amara.

  She answered with a wry smile. “They are sometimes confused in their anger. You can hardly blame them. They were thrust into the middle of a war, defenseless against the aggression of others.”

  “He’s stalling,” Anemolie said. “If you have a purpose, champion, state it.”

  Polaris looked down at him with piercing, lifeless blue eyes. His swords hummed at her side.

  “Like I said, I came here on my own.” He addressed Amara. “No one knows I’m here. Not Meryn and not Paralos. I’m here to warn you about what’s coming.”

  “A warning,” Amara said. “And what is so grave that you would risk sacrificing your life to warn us about?”

  Her words weren’t lost on him. She must have seen the effect they had because her eyes seemed to swell in intensity. “I know what my being here means.”

  “Then give your warning so we can get on with it,” Anemolie said.

  He kept his eyes on Amara. “Paralos’s champion is coming. He’s going to kill everything in his path, including everyone down there who survived Gemini’s attack. I can’t let that happen.”

  Amara’s fire settled. “Go on,” she said.

  “His name is Velawrath.”

  She looked away for a brief second, but it was enough for him to see that she recognized the name. Galan and Anemolie traded a look. Only Polaris remained unfazed.