On the Wheel

by Timandra Whitecastle

  His thoughts raced. High King Korrin had been an old wight of the Hound tribe when Diaz left half a century ago. Who in the meritocracy would the strict hierarchy possibly have counted as next in line? There must have been at least two or three different candidates who came into question. Vakar of the Pines, for one. Fedor of the Harefield clan was another. Crap! Diaz had slain Forid, of the Harefields. That could have repercussions. But surely, Rakan would not have been so unfazed by Forid’s sudden demise if the wight was high in the favor of the new High King? Would he?

  “Who is High King now?” Diaz asked as calmly as he could.

  Rakan looked genuinely surprised. “You don’t know?”

  Diaz shook his head, watching Rakan rub the back of his neck.

  “I thought—” the wight started, and his gaze darted back to the small company of humans traveling in the center of the wight patrols. “But the girl? Why else bring the human girl?”

  “The girl?” Diaz turned to look over his shoulder. Nora and Owen were talking in whispers, heads close to each other. He turned back to see the puzzled look on Rakan’s face. “I did not bring the girl. She is a warrior in her own right and protects her twin brother on his pilgrimage. She came by her own choice.”

  “A warrior? Explains the scars, I guess.” Rakan’s eyes darted between Nora and Diaz. “I’ve seen worse pox marks on some of the whores at the docks of Dernberia. Your girl—she’s still…handsome in a way. I thought—”

  “What did you think?” Diaz’s right hand kept gripping air when he reached for the hilt of his sword. It still hung by Rakan’s hip. “Just tell me plainly, Captain Rakan.”

  “I let you all pass through because I thought you might be bringing…an alternative to the daughters of the tribal chieftains.”

  “For the High King?” Diaz snorted. “Why would I bring a human girl as a bride for a wight lord?”

  “The High King’s first wife was a human.” If Rakan had been smiling, Diaz would have thought he was joking. “As well you know, Master Telen.”

  It felt like the snowstorm was taking a turn inside Diaz, freezing him at his core. His foot missed a step and he stumbled, wedging a thought tightly into place in his head. But surely, Rakan didn’t mean—? There was only one among the wight chieftains who had ever taken a human wife. As well you know. It couldn’t be. He heard the queen laughing across the gulf of thousands of miles. His fingers pinched the bridge of his nose against the twisting, spinning world around him.

  “Are you saying my father is the new High King?”

  “I told you before, Master Telen,” Rakan said, still not smiling. “I knew you came in peace. Otherwise you would be dead already.”

  Chapter 10

  Topping a gentle rise, Nora found that Gimmstanhol had crept up on her and taken her by surprise. For miles, she had walked endlessly on, one foot after the other, head stemmed against the constant push of the wind, while the landscape remained the same dreary patch of flat, snow-covered rocks. At first glance, she thought a snowflake had flown into her eye, spotting her vision with a blurry gray blob. When she rubbed her eyes though, the blob persisted. In one moment, they were bounded on each side by a featureless white wasteland, interspersed from time to time with large steaming pools of water; the next moment, the gray blob crystallized into a small hamlet of what she took at first to be stone chimneys. She saw conical houses built of undressed stone, layered without mortar, half sunk into the earth, so that their entrances lay at the bottom of deep shafts in the frozen black earth as though someone had put doors in graves. The sod rooftops were overgrown, with tufts of grass still poking out of the blanket of snow like unruly hair.

  Here was the heart of wightdom on earth, the last refuge of an ancient civilization, superior to their own in all ways, the fount of laws and courts, of arts and crafts no human could ever aspire to achieve. And it looked like a collection of snow-swept shepherds’ hovels. And, probably, the snow covered up a lot of disrepair.

  The wights around them picked up the pace, like horses who had caught the scent of their stables and were eager to get home before night fell. But the hovels couldn’t even house the few wights who traveled as their guards of honor, much less the remnants of an entire civilization. Bashan’s small company had slept in tight spaces already, but Nora had her doubts they would actually fit in one of the chimney houses. Much less the wights, who each stood at least a head taller than even Diaz. Maybe it wasn’t Gimmstanhol. Maybe it was just a…a very far flung outskirt territory of Gimmstanhol? She quickly glanced over to Diaz, his hands folded behind his back while he strolled next to the wight captain, face a painfully expressionless mask. The tense line of his jaw revealed his agitation, though. He didn’t give the impression he was glad to be back around his own people again. However, when she remembered what that wight had said about his half-human heritage, it didn’t sound like these were his people. Even the elder race were assholes sometimes.

  “Oh, well, this place is charming.” Bashan squinted at the stone hovels, trying to keep smiling as he spoke, making him seem maniacal. “Quite, quite charming. Rustic, you know? Quaint. I’m really looking forward to meeting the High King of this place.”

  “If one of the wights says ‘welcome to Gimmstanhol’ in an awestruck voice, I don’t think I can stop myself laughing,” Shade leaned in and whispered into Nora’s ear. His breath tickled her ear as a puff of mist rose from his mouth.

  “You won’t be laughing when they stick you for being so disrespectful,” Owen muttered. “Though I don’t think this is their home. It can’t be. I mean, I’ve heard that the wights were dwindling in number, but there are more with us than would fit in these houses. This is ridiculous.”

  The wight captain waved them forward impatiently, making them descend single file into one of the sunken graves that were poor excuses for entrances. Nora’s shoulders scraped against the solid, packed walls, and the lintels of the doors were so low even she had to mind not to bump her head. Beyond was blackness, lit by nothing but the flickering light of a dying fire, the red and orange glowing in shocking splashes of color after the infinite white.

  She blinked rapidly, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the warm dark below. The press of bodies around her was…intense. She was glad she’d had a bath in the water, even if it was a few days ago. They stood huddled together by the hearth, her cheek brushing against the arm of a wight warrior, who looked down his long nose, his black eyes unreadable, at her touch. Owen was shoved into her from behind.

  “Keep going,” he griped.

  “I can’t. There is nowhere left to go,” she hissed back, other cheek brushing against the wight as she turned toward her brother.

  She heard the sound of someone fumbling a key into its lock, a metal click, and suddenly there was room. The hot, stuffy air in the packed hut grew thick with the smell of smoke and cooking, fish stewing in a pot somewhere, a welcoming scent of freshly baked bread. Nora’s mouth began to water. What she had taken to be a dying fire was in fact the glow from a series of torches along the spiraling stone stairs leading ever downward. A part of the wall behind the supposed hearth had been opened and the wights pushed through, greeting the guards on the other side of a wrought-iron gate jovially.

  “Follow me,” the wight captain said as they passed two long corridors leading from the spiraling stairs. Some of the wights left at those junctions, following the lure of the cooked meal; others stayed with them until they reached the bottom and another iron gate.

  “How far down do you think we are?” she overheard Shade asking Owen in a whisper as they were waiting for the gate to be unlocked.

  Owen shrugged, looking up at the rough stone arch above their heads.

  “No idea. But this place is a fortress. Not with ten thousand men could you take this place if even a hundred lived to defend these gates.”

  “Which was exactly why it was built this way.” Diaz spoke close to her shoulder, making Nora twitch with surprise.

&nb
sp; Past the gate, Captain Rakan led them ever downward by means of wide, curving ramps—wide enough for two carriages to pass each other with ease. None did, though. The barren walls echoed with the flat slaps of their footfalls. Six passageways opened from the ramps, one gaping mouth below the other, and when Nora looked into them, she saw a series of dark, many-pillared halls, with a handful of doors leading somewhere or nowhere, each hall empty, yet filled with shadows. At the bottom of the circular shaft, on the ground level cut through what must have been eighty feet of earth and stone, a birch sapling had taken hold in the dark soil in the center. How and by what freak chance a birch seed had managed to thrive here at the roots of an ancient building, long forgotten by the outside world, Nora didn’t know. A gray light filtered down, dusting the stone walls that seemed poured and shaped along the ramps rather than cut and chiseled, and a fine layer of powdery snow covered the tree’s frail branches. Tender beauty in the hidden depths of the world. Wonders heaped upon wonders. One last passageway, guarded by wights, one last wrought-iron gate that rattled into a slit of the thick wall.

  Here, in the blink of an eye, they lost most of their wight entourage, until only Rakan remained next to Diaz, each of the wights stealing away to curving streets of whitewashed stone houses, leaning into one another over the cramped alleyways. After a while in the twisting, turning passages and torchlit corridors, the smooth stone walls changed, were carved with abstract swirls and patterns much like the tattoos on the bodies of the wights. Nora ran her fingertips over the carved inlays, feeling the texture of the stone. It was as if the earth had a body herself and needed to describe who she was, visual identity. Deeper in, the white buildings they passed became ever grander, nestling into the rocky caverns, now teeming and bustling with life just as the other halls had been void. Everywhere they went, a murmur of surprise followed them, a buzz in their wake that slid around them. Trapping them. They were deep underground, in a well-guarded alien city full of wights, concealed for centuries, maybe even millennia, in the middle of a vast watery wasteland far, far away from home. For a moment, Nora felt breathless panic crawling up the back of her throat.

  But it was the staring that got under Nora’s skin. As though humans were mythical creatures. Dozens of those black eyes were on her at any given time. She bit the inside of her cheek as she stared straight back, daring them to turn their gaze away. But none did. And all of them male, too. She wasn’t sure she had seen a woman yet. But surely, they must exist. She studied the faces and bodies of the wights they passed, but they looked much the same to her as the warriors had: tall, lithe, sinewy, made to endure. Their skin took on different shades of dark brown to olive, and they all wore tattoos, of course, and only the most necessary clothing. No hair, not even eyebrows. It looked…odd. She leaned over to get a better look at a wight standing on the side of the street, but then averted her gaze when she realized she was looking for a resemblance to Diaz in those foreign features. She felt hot. As though it were suddenly stifling in the large cavernous halls under the stony sky.

  Only the whispers ran like a breeze, a cold draft at their necks. One word standing out: Diaz. Her eyes rested on the half-wight’s straight back before her. He must be very well known, Nora thought, but the tone of the whispers, though reverent, was not friendly. She felt like a sideshow spectacle among the grand courts of a king, maybe even an emperor. Her eyes wandered over to Bashan, but even he had his head tipped far back, lips pursed, unmistakably impressed by the grandeur of the structures around them.

  After an eternity of walking through the streets of Gimmstanhol, they ran up against a wall that reached all the way to the rough stone far above. Guards with polearms stood in alcoves to each side of a narrow double door made of ebony, stretching to the artificial heavens of the domed ceilings.

  “Here we are.” Rakan stated the obvious in Kandarin, just in case the humans were too dumb to know it. “The Ice Palace, the heart of Wightenheid on earth. Our last refuge and seat of the High King.”

  Diaz stretched out an arm.

  “How can we thank you, Captain Rakan?”

  Rakan grabbed hold of Diaz’s forearm and squeezed tightly.

  “Put in a word for me with the High King. I do a hard job, and a good one, and I deserve to have at least a month longer off. After all, it’s not every day one gets to escort the son of the High King.”

  The wight captain grinned as Diaz winced.

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Diaz buckled on his sword, which Rakan had returned, and the guards stepped up to open the great doors.

  “What?” Bashan tapped Diaz’s shoulder. “What did he just call you?”

  Diaz couldn’t answer, for they were ushered into a huge cavern with a polished floor that sparkled with gems and veins of ore marbled in white and gray stone. But the real eye-opener was the ceiling. Nora and Owen put their heads back and looked up in awe until their necks hurt.

  “Holy fucking shit,” Nora blasphemed.

  “They must have vents. Vents for circulation,” Owen muttered. “And—and mirrors to reflect the light.”

  Columns and pillars and lit chandeliers hung from the ceiling like a frozen waterfall, like oversized sculpted icicles, each one more wonderful, twisted, and fluted and formed into dreamlike shapes. Beads of crystal hung between them, casting the soft candlelight in spots of silver all over the white hall. In the vast and airy marble cavern, they walked between patches of gray daylight, dappled as though they were treading through the light and shade of a forest floor.

  A still lake, its waters an electric blue, mirrored the glory of the stony dome above it like clear glass, giving the lake a depth that reached beyond its sandy floor into time and ages long past. A thin stone walk led over the water to an island, and a silk runner of the same unnatural blue ran from the ebony benches that stood on the lake’s shores to the throne. The throne itself was fashioned of a dark blue steel so that Nora could see the same swirls and curving patterns that etched the walls. The throne itself was empty.

  Instead, the pews were filled with about three hundred wight warriors, feasting and arguing loudly over tables, each wearing leather armor with huge shoulder pieces and seeing nothing wrong with carrying weapons into a throne room. So unlike the Temple of Fire, but the thrum of power could be felt here, too. No one had noticed their entrance so far, but that was about to change as those warriors closest to the great doors saw them being shut.

  “Stay close, regardless of what happens,” Diaz told Bashan, touching the hilt of his sword. “Do not under any circumstances draw your weapons, but stay close.”

  “Understood.” Bashan licked his lips.

  As they were led toward the rows of pews, some wights rose to see the humans better, blinking their eyes rapidly. Musicians faltered into dissonant cords as a murmur set in. It spread like a bow wave where they walked, like a contagion, yet still Diaz led them on until he reached one of the benches nearest to the throne. Nora’s fingers itched to reach for the comforting touch of iron, but she resisted. The murmur died away in a last ripple and all fell silent, except for the crackle of flame from the wrought-iron fire baskets standing between the benches. A tall wight, his skin the color of blackened oak, slowly rose, a simple iron band sprouting thorns denoting his rank among his peers. When he stood, he easily dwarfed the other wights beside him, though he seemed too astonished to speak. For a moment, Nora wondered how she could tell—wights had no eyebrows to raise high. Diaz gestured for them to stay where they were in the middle of a wight warrior crowd while he ran the gauntlet to stand before the dark wight alone.

  Diaz had balls, she had to give him that. The wight before him was broad chested, and had a hard face. His nose was the most prominent feature; long and originally straight, it betrayed the crooked line of having been broken. He was dressed in a fine sealskin robe dyed a dark blood red, the color of royalty everywhere. The bracers on his arms were interlaced with gold, but no finery could hide that he was first and foremost a warrior.
Two fingers were missing from his right hand, struck off in some long-ago battle probably. Nora had no difficulty imagining him taking quick revenge on his enemies.

  He finally spoke one single word, and his voice was rough, like a man drowning on dry land.

  “You?” Owen translated the obvious. Showing off his intelligence, as usual. That much she had gathered from her own meager command of languages.

  Diaz inclined his head respectfully, his voice an echo of the High King’s rumble and whatever “greetings, O High King” sounded like in wightish, Nora doubted it sounded like “father.” She heard Bashan’s sharp intake of air, but it was nothing in comparison to the gasp that ran along the lakeshore.

  “Sneaky son of a bitch,” Bashan growled. “He never said.”

  Nora looked back at Diaz and his father, now recognizing the elegant lines of face they shared, the same stance as they stood opposite each other. The High King moved and placed both hands on Diaz’s shoulders.

  He started to say something, but a drawling voice cut through the king’s.

  The speaker was the wight who had been sitting next to the High King. He speared a piece of meat on his long, thin blade and put it in his mouth, talking while he chewed. Opinions erupted forcefully from all around the small island of humans, who instinctively huddled closer together.

  “What’s the bad news?” Nora whispered to Owen.

  “He says they don’t receive messages, no, um, maybe messengers from half-wight tribes, and any humans who are foolish enough to cross into these lands are killed.”

  “Thought so.”

  “Lots of approval from the others.” Shade glanced around at the tall and imposing warriors.