by Cindy Dees
“Where do these natives live, if the land is a solid sheet of ice?” Endellian asked curiously.
“Do not mistake my description. The Sea of Glass is nothing like a great frozen lake. It is not flat at all. And there are many kinds of ice—it comes in all colors and hardnesses. It can be infused with any number of different substances or magics, and those change its color and composition greatly. It’s actually quite a beautiful and varied landscape.”
She caught the image he projected of an icy panorama tinted in many colors, much like a fiery white opal.
“In answer to your question, Princess, the Sudrekkar carve caves out of the ice and live in those. Some of the ice is exceedingly hard and requires significant heat to affect it at all. Alchemical and magical heat can be necessary to even chip the stuff. I brought back a piece of a particular kind of ice the natives call ever-ice. As its name suggests, it never melts. I’ve carried a piece of it around inside my coat for weeks to see if I could soften it or even make it wet to the touch, to no avail. You can throw a piece into a fire and it will not melt.”
Tyviden rummaged around in the backpack he’d been wearing when he came into the room and pulled out a chunk of beautiful, pale blue ice nearly the length of his forearm. It was jagged and crystalline in shape. “I believe you’ve seen something similar before, Your Majesty, but this ever-ice does not require the spirit of an ice elemental to maintain its cold.”
Of course. Tyviden referred to the ice helm that held a piece of the Hand of Winter, an elemental ice lord recovered from the solinari mage Aurelius. The rest of that spirit still resided in, doing who knew what to, General Tarses, her former lover. The helm sat on a table across the library, made of pale blue ice, never cracking, never melting because of the elemental trapped within it.
But this natural ever-ice of Tyviden’s—she’d never heard of the like.
“Did you find any evidence of Hoardunn himself?” Maximillian asked.
“Nay, Your Majesty. And I searched most diligently. The natives believe he still lives, guarding his Hearth and breathing out the mist in which he hides. I did, however, create a map detailing my discoveries over the course of my travels. Perhaps my humble effort will be of some use to you or your servitors.”
He pulled out a rolled piece of leather and opened it to show an impressively detailed and beautiful map of the Sea of Glass. He appeared to have traversed most of the southern ice cap, assuming his map was reasonably accurate.
“You may find that some of my slaves can fill in more details on this for you. Two, in particular, may be of value. The first one is an Undine Joten—a sea giant-kin—who is said to have served Hoardunn himself. My other slaves fear him, and he appears to have been a creature of no small status among the Sudrekkar if their reaction to him is any indication.”
“And the other slave?” Maximillian asked.
“He is called the Hrimmut by the Sudrekkar. I believe him to be a scion of Alfang, the Great Mastiff of Canute.”
That caused a gasp in the room. The Great Mastiff of Canute had been held captive and bred exclusively by the Emperor’s master of hounds for many centuries. How had one of its offspring found its way south to the icy wastelands?
“Have the master of hounds examine this creature right away and report his findings to me,” Maximillian murmured.
“So shall it be, Your Majesty,” Endellian murmured, already writing down the order in the official record of the court.
“Did you find anything else of interest?” her father asked Tyviden.
“In my caravan are the bones of a giant, and a piece of septallum.”
And there was another word she hadn’t heard in a very long time. The dwarves of Ymir were said to believe the continent’s heart was divided into seven individual metal portions, each composed of a different material. Septallum was a magically created hybrid containing all of the seven base metals infused into a single substance. It did not occur in nature and was said to be made only by giants. Personally, she’d never seen any of it before and had assumed it to be a myth concocted by dwarves as something to brag about.
Tyviden fell silent, and Maximillian stared down at his bowed head for a long time. At length, her father said, “You have done well, Dread High Lord Tyviden, son of Archduke Ammertus. I welcome you back into my presence and my court.”
Ammertus exclaimed in relief and gratitude, and Endellian closed her mind against the great gust of emotion emanating from him.
“Do not abuse my hospitality again, Tyviden, lest my punishment be far worse the next time.”
Endellian did not want to imagine what could be any worse than wandering a frozen wasteland for decades, but if such a thing existed, Maximillian would know of it and not hesitate to use it to his own advantage.
* * *
As a White Heart member, Raina wasn’t supposed to fear going into new places considered dangerous by sane people. She was supposed to trust her colors and go forth where the bravest warriors feared to tread, offering healing and hope to everyone she met. At least, in theory.
The practical reality was that she found the Sorrow Wold eerie and frightening. The trees closed in around them as the morning sun rose, its wan light barely penetrating the thick canopy overheard. Patches of sickly moss grew here and there on the dank, black forest floor, and strange, twisted thornbushes reached out to pluck at their clothes. A foul stench of rotting vegetation—and worse—assaulted her nostrils. It was all she could do not to pull a fold of her hood across her nose to block it. And no matter how long she smelled it, her nose never became insensitive to the odor.
Twilight gloom hung over the place even at midday, and the deeper they hiked into the wold, the blacker and wetter it became. Faintly glowing slime streaked the contorted tree trunks, and long strings of moss hung from dead branches.
They found a path, but whether it was made by animal, human, or inhuman was anyone’s guess. The weight of the gloom weighed more heavily upon Raina than her pack, and fatigue set in to her limbs much sooner than it should have. The walking was grueling, and yet she could not say why. The terrain was mostly flat, the path reasonably smooth, but she felt as if she struggled against the living will of the forest as it tried to expel her from this place.
“How long do you plan to wander around in here?” Will asked.
She sighed. “My contact told me to come here and said he would find me. So I guess we just wander until he does.”
Rynn commented, “The way I hear it, this place is teeming with people and creatures. We’re bound to run into somebody. After all, every path leads somewhere.”
Will commented sarcastically, “And some paths lead to the lair of the great monster that will eat us all.”
Who on Urth would voluntarily live in this miserable wood? How awful must their alternatives be to choose this instead?
“It’s not that bad,” Rosana intervened. “Sure, it’s gloomy and damp, but it has probably just rained, and at the tops of the trees, the sun is shining brightly. As soon as we find a good-sized clearing, it’ll dry out and brighten up.”
It was a valiant effort to lighten the party’s mood, but it fell flat, and they trudged on in grim silence. Everyone was edgy. But then, the Sorrow Wold was known to do that to unwelcome visitors in its midst.
They walked all day without stopping, ever deeper into the belly of the living, malignant beast that was the wold. The mood was tense, everyone jumpy, but her misery was nothing compared to what she felt when night fell. The temperature dropped precipitously with the setting of the sun, and her damp clothing became icy cold, clinging clammily to her skin until her teeth chattered.
And then the creatures of the night came out.
If even half the monstrous shapes Raina glimpsed through the trees were pure imagination, the rest were enough to give her nightmares. Green-skinned beasts, walking on two legs but barely humanoid in any other sense, flitted in and out of the shadows. A grotesque, wolflike creature with a hairless,
red face and gigantic, snarling fangs crouched not far from the path at one point.
They lit torches, which lent a hellish glow to the immediate surroundings but did little to hold back the night or its monsters. Creatures darted at the edges of the dark, teasing them with glimpses of laughing, mad visages.
Worst of all was the almost subliminal moaning noise that was their constant companion. Will mumbled that it was likely the trees creaking, but it was unlike any creak of wood she’d ever heard of. It sounded more like a ghostly woman keening in grief.
They walked until every muscle in her body was beyond aching. She’d gotten little sleep the night before aboard the ship, and fatigue dragged at her every step like shackles around her ankles. And yet, terror goaded at her, its sharps spurs digging deeply into her sides. The combination was nigh unbearable.
Eben piped up. “I’ve had enough of this. As we do not appear to be drawing near any kind of human civilization, I say we stop and make camp. A fire will dry us out and warm us up, at any rate.”
Sha’Li rolled her eyes, showing the whites of them like a prey animal that senses a hunter stalking it.
Which worried Raina. The lizardman girl’s instincts were usually spot-on.
Although there was wood aplenty for a fire, getting the damp wood lit ended up requiring magic from Will to, in effect, explode the wood into flame, but eventually, they sat around a larger-than-normal fire for them. It burned brightly, sending a spiral of sparks up into the blackness of the forest overhead.
“You’re from near here, aren’t you, Raina?” Will asked after they finished eating the dried meat and root vegetables they’d brought with them from Dupree and were sipping mugs of hot tea.
The cheery crackle of the fire seemed to have temporarily driven back the night and its monsters, and she breathed a sigh of relief. “I am. Tyrel lies just a little to the south and west of this forest’s margins.”
“Tell us a story or two of the Sorrow Wold,” he urged.
“They’re mostly horror tales meant to keep children from running away to or wandering into the forest.”
Sha’Li grinned. “Excellent. Tell one.”
Eben cracked a tiny smile, which warmed Raina’s heart to see. Maybe there was hope for the two of them yet.
“Well, one of the most common hearth tales about this place is that it’s the home of a giant spider. She has a huge web woven from tree to tree that she sits in the middle of, waiting for her prey to stumble into it and get stuck. Once they are ensnared, her magic web causes her victims to fall asleep and dream of being in a beautiful, peaceful place. So charmed are they by the dream that they do not wake up as she bites them, paralyzes them, wraps them in silk, and devours them.”
Rynn responded thoughtfully, “I find there’s generally a kernel of truth behind hearth tales, even old and outlandish ones. Have you ever heard tell of an actual giant spider in these woods?”
Raina shrugged. “There’s a woman in these parts called the Black Widow. She’s apparently a spider changeling of some kind. Oh, and before I forget to ask again,” Raina continued, “what was that sheet of parchment you tore off the public notice wall in Seastar, Rynn? Anything we should know about?” She suspected it was some sort of cleverly worded offer by Anton to pay a bounty for their capture.
Rynn’s scowl deepened, creasing his forehead around his uncovered third eye. The paxan always took off his headband the second they left civilization behind. He said the thing interfered with his vision and gave him headaches and dizzy spells. He answered, “It’s an Imperial proclamation having to do with my race. It has been around a long time, but every now and then the Empire likes to remind people it exists.”
“What does it say?” Rosana asked from across the fire.
Rynn pulled out the crumpled wad of parchment and spread it out on his thigh. He read aloud, “‘For the protection of his Resplendent Majesty’s people, all paxan with an open third eye shall be brought to an Imperial Hunter for cleansing by the Imperial Hounds or to an Imperial Censor to receive the Vexarum, a mark denoting the acceptance and protection of the Imperial Koths. Creatures of any race that demonstrate powers of Thought or Dream must also be presented to an Imperial Hunter or Censor for evaluation. Failure to report or present open-eyed paxan, or those who demonstrate powers of Thought or Dream, shall be considered Treason.’”
“Gee. I guess that makes us very bad citizens,” Will commented.
Everyone chuckled, and Rynn continued, “It finishes with a quote from Archduchess Rahl. ‘It is well known that paxan with an open third eye are extremely dangerous to those around them. Such beings manifest powers of the mind that they are incapable of fully controlling. Eventually, the physical transformation that begins with the opening of the third eye gives way to a mental and spiritual transformation that leaves them completely devoid of emotion, unable to control their emotions or maddened. Once a paxan reaches one of the later stages, no known magic, alchemy, or process has been able to cure the condition. Cleansing of the Imperial Hounds will remove the uncontrolled powers of the mind that accompany the condition, but the paxan remains changed, a shell of his or her former self.’”
Silence fell after Rynn stopped reading. Into it, Sha’Li said, “And I thought the Empire hated my kind.”
Rynn shrugged and smiled, but Raina didn’t think the smile reached any of his eyes. She said stoutly, “Of course, that is all nonsense.”
He nodded in gratitude.
Eben said drolly, “You will let us know when all that madness and loss of control happens, though, won’t you? I would hate to have to try to subdue you. Your hands and feet scare me.”
Everybody laughed heartily at that. Rynn crunched the ridiculous proclamation into a ball and tossed it into the blaze, where it caught fire and satisfyingly turned to ash.
“Tell us a real story, Raina,” Eben asked.
Instead, she turned to Will. “Perhaps Bloodroot would tell us one. I’ve heard tales of a great willow tree who once lived in the wold. Its name was Moonshade. Something happened to it that destroyed it, and its ghost is said to haunt the wold now. Apparently, on a moonlit night in a clearing in the wold, a worthy person can catch a glimpse of the ghostly form of a magnificent, white willow tree.”
“You do know Bloodroot doesn’t actually speak to me, right?” Will replied. “I just get impressions and emotions from time to time.”
“So how does he react to the name Moonshade?” Rosana asked.
Will frowned for a moment, concentrating. “Derision, mostly.”
“Because the story isn’t true?” Raina followed up.
Will was silent for a moment more. “No, I don’t think that’s it. I get the impression that his derision is aimed at Moonshade.”
“As in Bloodroot didn’t like Moonshade?” Raina asked curiously.
Will grunted. “It would make sense. The cranky old shrub dislikes most everybody.”
Raina grinned. A shrub, huh? The great tree lord of rage, destruction, and death? Will was, indeed, getting confident in his old age.
The party fell silent, and her mind drifted to other tales of the Sorrow Wold from her childhood. Stories of misshapen monsters with hideous faces and forms, hordes of goblins, gangs of bandits, cutthroats, and killers. And then there were the tales of hauntings and madness, of the wold itself being sentient … and unfriendly to intruders. After watching Will struggle to get along with Bloodroot, she was more inclined now to believe the hearth tales of the wold having consciousness and of it having a bad attitude. Although she supposed anyone who lived long enough to watch the full scope of mankind’s folly would likely develop a poor opinion of humankind.
The fire was burning low, and Eben was just stacking a pile of thick logs onto it for the night when she thought she saw a movement in the shadows just beyond the light of their fire. She peered into the darkness and for a fleeting second thought she saw a pair of glowing yellow eyes, but it could be a trick of the firelight on leaves.
Or maybe a forest creature drawn to the light of their fire.
She glanced around and spied what looked like a wrinkled, half-human, half-canine face peering out from under a bush at knee level. She gasped and looked again, but the face was gone.
“Everything all right?” Rynn asked her quietly.
“For a second, I thought I saw something. It was nothing. Just my imagination working overtime after our talk of dream spiders and ghost trees.”
Sha’Li looked up from where she was laying out her bedroll on an oilskin and took a long, slow look around the little copse. Will also appeared to be examining the forest, but he tilted his head as if listening to it. As one, Sha’Li and Will moved casually toward the fire.
They’d all been together long enough to know when their companions sensed a threat. Raina threw back the right side of her cloak to free her magic casting arm. “At least it’s not as cold here as it was in Dupree. Sleeping outside won’t be nearly so miserable as it would have been there.”
Will pulled out his staff to use its metal-clad end to poke a log that had rolled free back into the fire. “As long as we can stay dry. It must rain a lot here for this place to be so pervasively damp.”
And that was when a horde of green-skinned creatures the size of preadolescent humans charged into the circle of firelight, howling like banshees and swinging short, rusty swords.
Will and the others laid into them methodically. Although her companions made short work of every goblin they could reach, there were a lot of them. Wave after wave of the creatures charged the camp, and Raina spied her friends’ arms growing battle weary and nicks and cuts beginning to blossom on their bodies and faces.