by Ben Galley
‘Let go, Balimuel!’ Korrin snapped.
‘Come, lad. We’ll go together. Like the warriors we are.’
‘If we were warriors, we would be fighting our way out!’ Korrin tried to push him off, but Balimuel was too strong.
‘Accepting death is a fight, Korrin. You should know that!’ Balimuel shouted over the roar. One of his feet was dangling in mid-air now. Korrin pushed and pushed, but the giant kept inexorably dragging him forward. Korrin pawed at the rock.
‘No!’ he yelled. As he felt his own toes meet the edge, he flailed frantically, swinging a fist up at Balimuel’s hand. Balimuel’s great fist came loose, and in a slow, painful moment, the giant toppled backwards, hand raised in a wave to the very last.
Korrin sobbed as he watched his comrade disappear into the hot, burning glow of the volcano. He was shaking like a leaf.
‘There!’ came a cry, from somewhere behind him. Korrin spun around. Black figures were scrabbling over the rocks towards him, steel glinting in their hands, grins on their faces.
‘Spend the rest of my life running?’ he asked, shivering. ‘So be it.
And he ran. He ran as fast as his legs could manage. He ran as fast as the rocks would allow. He ran like the fire that chased him.
Say one thing for the desperate. They can run.
Chapter 19
“The nomads of the ice fields share a striking similarity to the nomads and tribesmen of the Paraian deserts. The resemblance between their stature and bearing is most confusing, for they are two nations literally worlds apart. Were I not a learned fellow, I might assume they were related in some way. But I am no fool. Instead, it is plain to see that their elongated limb configurations are not a result of some common ancestor, but rather the simple result of plenty of walking.”
Excerpt from Gatterfell’s ‘The Body Foreigner’ - a lengthy disquisition on the ‘anatomical peculiarities of Emaneska’s more humanish of species’
‘Can you feel it?’ asked Lilith, as she awkwardly dismounted the spit-flecked flanks of the humongous wolf. She hopped around as she tried to drag her other foot down from its back, but her footing betrayed her and she collapsed in a snowy heap. Lilith could have sworn she heard the fenrir snigger at her. ‘Hmph,’ she sighed, as she got to her half-dead feet and brushed the snow from her anaesthetised legs. The jolting ride had knocked all the feeling out of her bottom half. Now she tottered about like a torso on cumbersome stilts as she attempted to get the blood flowing.
As usual, Samara wasn’t affected by such things. She looked as though she had barely ridden a mile, never mind throughout the night and the following day. Although her cheeks were wind and cold-bitten, she strode about on legs as fresh as only young legs could be. Lilith rolled her eyes and kept kneading her thighs. Her huge wolf leant down and snuffled at her feet, licking the snow for moisture, enormous teeth worryingly close. Lilith hobbled away from it.
The had decided that the fenrir stank. Perhaps it was their sweaty, matted fur. Perhaps it was their diet, whatever that was. Lilith dreaded to think. Either way, the smell of the huge beasts left a sour taste on her tongue. ‘Can you feel it?’ she asked again.
Samara was staring at the sky. The sun and the moon seemed to be jostling for ownership of the sky. One sat in the east, the other in the west. It was one of those rare days when the two pause in their eternal chase, and dare to be seen together. The girl wrinkled her nose at both of them. ‘I…’ she began, concentrating. She stretched out her hands and chips of ice and fallen snow drifted up to touch them. She let them hang suspended in the air for a moment before letting them fall. ‘It’s incredible,’ she said distractedly. ‘It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt. Stronger, sharper. You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Of course not,’ Lilith tutted. ‘So, are you ready?’
Samara closed her eyes and fell silent. Lilith waited for an answer, but none came. Instead she looked around at the white wasteland, the one they had traded for the sandy brown wasteland. It was unbearably cold on the ice fields. Even with the daemon blood still swilling around her veins and joints, the cold was digging deeper and deeper into her flesh, making her shiver.
Behind them lay a shimmering, jagged strip of grey water, dotted with huge chunks of floating ice. At its edges was where the sea met the snow. It was a stark contrast, like a steel axe-head hacking at wool. In the far distance, she could still spot the line where the arid wastes had met the northern snow. Oddly defined; snow rubbing shoulders with frozen dust and scraggly plants. Not a single tree had been spotted since the huge pine.
In the west a great cloud lay across the horizon, maybe a blizzard or a storm. In the east, the sun had turned the wastes and distant ice fields into ruby gold. It shimmered with the strange heat of its morning glow.
Ahead of them lay the north: a barren, cold landscape, blindingly white even in the weak morning sun. It looked flat at first glance, and then the shadows began to betray ridges and hillocks and hollows. Far ahead lay a band of black and darkest green, where pine forests dared to interrupt the ice and snow. Beyond them lay dark clouds, or perhaps colossal mountains. The Spine of the World.
Lilith shivered. She couldn’t wait.
Samara’s fenrir pawed at the freshly-fallen snow and pounded the frozen ice beneath. He snuffled and sniffed at the wind, and then looked back at the girl, growling. Samara’s eyed snapped open. ‘I think we need to go further,’ she said. ‘We’re barely onto the ice fields yet. The magick is flowing that way, like a river. I can feel it.’
Lilith shook her head. She’d been entertaining the vague hope of being able to complete their mission there and then, no mountains, no black rocks, no destiny. Once again, she was cheated. ‘Lead on then,’ she said, reluctantly returning to her fenrir’s side. With a growl from the beast and a grunt from her, she climbed onto its back, instantly feeling the aches and pains of the ride quickly returning, even before the fenrir had begun to move.
Samara darted northwards without a word. Lilith’s fenrir followed eagerly, springing forward so quickly that the seer was almost left behind. She clung on for dear life once again as four pair of paws pounded the snow, as two mouths puffed and slathered their way towards the distant mountains. To her doom.
Midday found those paws silent, and hidden. Samara lay in a snow drift, eyes sharp and beady. Lilith lay beside and slightly behind her, snoozing fitfully. Half her face was buried in the snow. She was dribbling too.
A pretty sight, thought Samara, as she sneaked a quick glance at the old woman. A snore began to rattle in her throat. Samara gave her a kick, making her mumble, and turned back to her prey.
It still hadn’t moved.
He must have been dead. He was face down in the snow, grey as a winter’s morning. He had stained the snow underneath him a grimy, reddish brown, possibly the first splash of colour this part of the world had seen in decades. Samara decided to watch him for a little while longer.
When Lilith began to snore again, Samara decided it was time to investigate. She slid down the snow drift and out onto the thick patch of ice where the man lay motionless. She had her hands down and at the ready, glittering with light. She needn’t have bothered. It took all of three seconds and a nudge with the foot to find that the man was utterly, completely dead. It sounded as though she were kicking wood. The man was frozen solid.
Samara bent down and unceremoniously prised his face from the ice. There was a ripping sound as some of the withered skin stuck. She raised an eyebrow at the sight of his face, sagging as it was. He was a Skölgard man, and from the look of his complexion, an old one at that. Scarred too. Samara lifted his collar and found ornate steel kissing her finger, cold and solid. She tapped his shoulders with her knuckles, then his back, then his legs, hearing the telltale clank of metal with every tap.
‘What is it, girl?’ called a voice. Lilith had awoken. She was staggering stiffly down to the copse, brushing the snow from her coat and the dribble from her chin. She joined Sama
ra, sitting cross-legged by the corpse’s side. The fenrir kept their distance, lingering behind the drift.
‘Who’s this?’ asked the seer, halfway through a yawn.
Samara was busy staring into the distance, distracted. ‘Not a clue,’ she mumbled.
‘Looks like he’s been dead for a while. How’d he get all the way out here?’
‘How? You’re the seer.’
Lilith fumbled in her pocket for her stones. ‘It don’t work like that, girl, as well you know. That’s past, not future. Past’s awkward to grab at for us seers.’
‘The magick…’ Samara suggested, still distracted.
Lilith nodded. ‘I’ll try,’ she said, as she brought forth her stones and cupped her hands around them. She blew on them to warm them up and then closed her eyes. After some mumbling, she cast them to the ice and watched how they fell and tumbled. A moment passed, full of some muttered swearing from Lilith. She scooped the stones up and tried again. Then a third time. It was then that they finally divulged their secrets.
‘A lord,’ she began, blurting out the images as they flashed before her eyes, ‘an old lord of the Crumbled Empire. Chased from his castle. Banished by pitchforks and fire. Wandered the ice… three weeks. Saw a ship in the distance. Was trying to… to reach her. Ship, all grey and iron. Arka ship.’
Samara’s fist dug into the ice. ‘Them. The ship must be close. He must be close.’
Lilith was pawing at one of the stones. ‘I can’t tell,’ she said, morbidly wishing she could.
Samara’s fist was glowing now. The ice around it bubbled and steamed as it sank deeper into the ground. Her eyes had turned a dark crimson. ‘Snow and ice. Can’t be far,’ she hissed. The girl got to her feet and began to pace.
‘Calm yourself, girl. Farden’s nothing compared to you.’
‘Just you wait. Destiny be damned. I’ll take him down, and then you skin him, while he’s still wriggling,’ muttered Samara. ‘For posterity.’
Lilith didn’t reply. She wanted to, but she couldn’t think of anything good enough to say. All she could do was clear her throat. Her silence got more and more obvious as each second slipped by. Samara stopped pacing. ‘It’s not him, is it?’ she demanded.
‘Who?’
Samara put her hands on her hips. ‘The one you won’t tell me about. Your killer. It’s Farden, isn’t it?’
Lilith drummed her fingers on the armoured back of the frozen copse. ‘Stones never lie,’ she mumbled.
Samara stamped her foot, bludgeoning snow. ‘One more reason to see his head on a plate!’
Lilith didn’t have the heart to tell her that she wouldn’t get that chance. That was another’s duty. She had glimpsed that future too. ‘Damn right,’ was all she said. Samara went back to her pacing, back and forth, burning a path in the snow.
‘Now I see why you were so keen to kill off the Written. You knew one of them would kill you.’
‘Just not which one…’
‘…Until a few years ago.’
Lilith had always wondered at the strange coincidence of it all. Here she was, bringing up her murderer’s daughter. Her only smidgeon of satisfaction came from the fact that Samara had no idea Farden was her father. Vice’s wish, it had been. An old lie, well-rehearsed. It was Lilith’s accidental little dagger in Farden’s side, her lasting poison. She’d cackled when she’d discovered it. ‘The future is a slippery bastard, sometimes, girl.’
Samara grabbed the old seer by the shoulders, and looked deep into her eyes. ‘I’ll kill him for you, Lilith. If I can drag down the stars, I can stop him from killing you. I don’t care what your stones say.’
Lilith’s heart came up short once again. She spared a moment to meet the girl’s crimson stare. She found the ferocity of it somewhat pleasing. Touching, almost. She met it for as long as she could, and then pushed her away. ‘North with you, girl. Or those daemons will beat that bastard to cutting my throat,’ she chided.
Samara just growled.
As they turned around to go back to the fenrir, they found that they were already halfway over the snow drift. They were hunched low and dangerous, their yellow eyes fixed on something nearby, something that had managed to pace through the snow without making a sound. Samara turned, quick as a flash, and confronted their visitor.
The odd man waved at them cheerily. ‘Hullo,’ he said, before babbling something in a language quite incomprehensible.
Samara strode toward him, angry that he had gotten so close without making a sound. She glared at him, taking in his white paper skin with its thick brown hair, his yellow eyes, his long, almost deer-like legs, and the curious shoes he wore, like nets stretched over an oval shape, tied to his hairy feet. Cheap tricks.
What annoyed her the most was that he didn’t show a scrap of fear. Not for her, not for the wolves, not even for the bloody corpse lying skinned in the snow. He regarded the scene with a mild disinterest. Like a passing oddity.
Lilith marched right up to the odd man. She was forced to crane her neck to meet his nonchalant gaze. He was tall, nudging seven foot to her five, but he was thin as a sliver of willow. ‘Who are you?’
‘Systrungur ert. Miknjil skegol?’ came the reply, a whispering, tongue-waggling mess. Samara made a face and prodded the man hard in the stomach. It was only then that his polite little smile faded, and his yellow eyes grew stony. ‘Bashna,’ he said, so clipped and harsh now compared to moments before.
‘Where did you come from? Hmm? Did you come with him?’ Samara pointed at the dead mage behind her.
The man did not move. He just looked down at the girl and narrowed his eyes.
‘Answer me,’ she demanded. ‘Did you come on a ship? Are you following us? Are you with Farden and the rest?’ The questions came like pellets. ‘He’s a halfwit,’ spat Samara.
‘He’s a wanderin’ type,’ said Lilith. ‘Snowmad. Icetreader.’
‘I don’t give a shit what he is, Lilith. He must know something about the ship. Where else could he have come from?’
Lilith sighed impatiently. ‘They live on the deep ice, girl. Probably never even seen a ship in their lives. Come, let’s leave.’
Samara scowled at the man, hands itchy for fire and the knife at her belt. His yellow eyes were cool and stony now. They goaded her. Her fury had found an unwilling target. She pined to teach this snowmad a lesson in manners. Take her blade and show it to his throat, she thought to herself. See if those yellow eyes don’t drain white. Samara sneered and turned away.
‘Veglold. Bik,’ came the garbled reply. It sounded like a jibe, but she kept walking. Lilith met her halfway and then fell in behind her fuming strides.
‘He can count his lucky stars we’re in a rush…’ Lilith was saying, right before an enormous boom shook the frozen ground. The seer collapsed to her knees as a brittle shower of cold snow rained down.
Samara was frantically wiping the snow from her face. She blinked like a blinded owl, half-expecting to see a smoking crater where the snowmad had been standing. Instead, there was a big dragon standing in his place. Something pink oozed from under its front claws.
Samara raised her hands, ready to show the dragon what she was made of, but to her surprise, it bowed its head to the snow, its gnarled metallic scales clanking like armour. It even closed its eyes, showing complete deference.
Two more dragons dropped from the sky. They fell a little less dramatically, but still the ground rumbled and shook as their claws touched down. One was a dull, rusty red, the other a milky brown. Each had a bare-chested rider on their back, wrapped in ice-bear fur. Some bore scratches and missing scales. One had a missing eye and a burnt patch where it had once been. They too bowed, and waited for the final dragon to land.
It was slightly smaller than the others, ever-so-slightly. It was a charcoal black with red mottling. Its horns had been painted red. As it landed, its rider, a muscled man with a ridged and scaly scalp, jumped effortlessly from its back and ran across the snow towards t
hem. He bowed, albeit very briefly, but his dragon did not. Samara kept her spells simmering in her hands, dying to be unleashed, and waited for the man to speak.
The man approached her confidently. Samara found herself frowning. He too was tall. She was beginning to get annoyed by tall people. ‘Here she is,’ he was saying. ‘And even younger than I had even imagined.’
Samara was about to spit something in reply when the man bent to one knee. It looked a foreign and odd movement for him, but somehow he pulled it off. ‘It is an honour to meet you, my lady. Your ancient friends have told me all about you.’
Samara was still wary. ‘Valefor?’
‘And Hokus, yes. I asked them to meet me, and we bargained,’ he said, somehow making such a meeting between a rider and a pair of daemons sound so casual.
Lilith had found her way to her feet. ‘Bargained? What for?’
The man shrugged. He answered her, but kept his eyes on Samara. ‘Our new home. Allegiance. The chance to prove ourselves. Not everyone on this rock prays to the gods. Quite the opposite, I hear.’ A toothy smile, full of far too many teeth for any one mouth, spread across this man’s face. Samara somehow found herself liking him. She crossed her ams, quenched her spells, and smiled.
‘Quite,’ she replied. ‘And you are?’
The man got up from his knee. ‘Saker, my lady. Lord of the North, master of Hjaussfen and the Castle of the Winds.’
‘Hjaussfen, the Siren capital?’ Lilith piped up again.
Saker flashed her a smug look. ‘Until recently.’
‘Not a very peaceful transition, was it?’ Samara said, nodding to the blood on his arm and the marks on his comrades, both rider and dragon.
Saker flashed a look to the skies. ‘It was, until we had some guests. Turned the Old Dragon loose and sent us on a wild wyrm chase north. Fortuitous, now that I have found you, but not finished. I shall bleed them ten different colours when I find them.’
‘Mages, right? These guests’ she muttered darkly.