“Syrah?” he asked. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”
In response, Syrah held up the letter in her hand.
“It’s a report,” she told him through heavy breaths as he took the parchment and unrolled it. “Ystréd sent scouts into the Woods as soon as they heard about the Kayle, trying to figure out where he might strike from.”
Jofrey was scanning the letter quickly, but Brern’s face fell.
“How many casualties?” he asked sadly.
“None.”
It was Jofrey who answered. There was a pause as he finished, then passed the letter on to the furnace master.
“The scouts pushed north along the west border of the Arocklen, all the way to the lip of the Saragrias,” he summarized as the younger Priest began to read. “They encountered no resistance, but picked up the army’s trail heading east, keeping to the bottom of the ranges.”
“East?” Brern asked, perplexed, finishing the letter himself and looking up. “Along the mountains? But what does that mean?”
Jofrey frowned, the worry in his face deepening in the flicker of the forge before them.
“It means that Petrük was right, even though I doubt she thought it at the time,” he mumbled.
“Right?” Brern asked, confused. “Right about what? Explain. If Baoill is heading for Ystréd, why is he going east?”
“Because he’s not making for Ystréd anymore, if he ever was,” Syrah explained without taking her eyes off Jofrey, watching him think. “There’s something he wants more.”
“But what could he want more than another Northern town?” Brern sputtered, clearly frustrated with his own lack of understanding.
“Cyurgi’ Di,” Jofrey said into the furnace fire. “Gûlraht Baoill is coming here.”
EPILOGUE
“It is among the gods’ great pleasures to ensure that a man dies in the same way he lived.”
—Sigûrth proverb
It was Alyssa who found him.
That she came across the man was pure happenstance, perhaps even the cruel humor of some deity or another. Whatever the reason, she almost missed him among the other lumps of the forest floor, thinking him just another log or misshapen boulder beneath the snow.
When the lump shifted, though, her horse had nearly flung her off in fright.
“H-here,” he said, hopeful voice broken by the cold. “H-here. P-please! Here!”
She saw an arm extend towards her then, and she recognized the man for who he was. The fat hand, still bearing its heavy gold and silver rings, was familiar to her, shaking so violently as it stretched in hopeful desperation towards her horse.
Shaking so violently it seemed the thick fingers, every one black and dead from the frost, might fall right off.
For a long time Alyssa looked down at the man from atop her mount. Her breath misted the air through the dark cloth wrapped around the bottom half of her face, vanishing even as the animal shifted nervously beneath her. She searched the curve of his body beneath the snow until she found his eyes, wide and bloodshot as they bulged with relief that someone had finally found him.
Those blue eyes that she had witnessed so often staring with insatiable desire down into the pit.
Alyssa’s gaze traveled over his face. The loose, baggy skin of his cheeks wasn’t as far gone as his hands, but his nose and ears were beyond saving. She had no doubt, taking in the rest of the figure’s quivering bulk, now slowly shaking loose the snow that had piled over him in the night, that other parts of him were done for as well.
Maybe even those pieces of a man one could hardly call himself a man without…
“A-Alyssa?”
Alyssa shifted her gaze to meet his eyes once more. Green met blue, and for a brief moment the woman saw a different face than the blackened one below her, ravaged by the winter night and still-falling snow. For a moment she saw older, kinder features, lined and aged by laughter and smiles.
Then the face of the father was gone, and only what was left of the son’s remained.
“W-What are you d-doing?” the man asked slowly.
There was a sudden fear in his voice that had not been there before, an abrupt hesitation replacing the hope and relief. As she sat there atop her horse, looking down upon his shivering form as the icy morning wind cut through the trees to blow her black hair about her face, Alyssa made her decision.
Wheeling her mount around, she heeled it into a trot back towards the road and the rest of the search party, through the silent pines, in the direction she’d come.
“A-Alyssa?” the man called out in hopeless desperation from behind her. “A-Alyssa! Wait! P-Please! Wait! Wait! WAAAAAIT!”
Pushing the horse into a gallop, Alyssa Rhen left the man and his screams to the cold.
Book III: Winter’s King
PROLOGUE
861 v.S.
“The Stone Gods—it is commonly believed among those of academia—were a theology born of the forces of nature whose brutality mankind, despite all his potential wickedness, can hardly compare to. Mountain lightning storms, blizzards which leave the world only shades of white, avalanches that descend to bury men alive. It seems logical, when considering this, the deities born of such worship could only be as cruel as the events they were meant to emulate…”
—from the libraries of Cyurgi’ Di
Egard Rost shook in his worn boots as he approached the wide leather tent staked out at the top of the hill before him. It loomed out of the dark at him and his paired escorts, illuminated by braziers set on either side of the entrance and by the glow of a hundred cooking fires ablaze about the camp at his back. Above and beyond it, the trees of the Arocklen Woods towered overhead, glowing a dim blue as the ice and snow piled in the thick branches reflected the sheen of the moon and stars somewhere far above them.
Egard knew he had no real reason to fear the place, just as he had no real reason to fear for his life. He was valuable, and these nightly visitations to Grahst’s tent were a small price to pay for the general’s protection.
Even so, as the man over his left shoulder shoved him towards the front flaps once they’d crested the hill, Egard couldn’t help but swallow, the chafed skin of his throat rubbing against the heavy loop of thick, patterned steel that encircled his neck.
He might be valuable, but a slave will always feel fear when within reach of the whip…
Egard moved haltingly forward, spreading the leathers that kept out the cold air of the Woods, and stepped inside. The general’s tent was nothing overtly impressive. Grahst had packed light, favoring speed over comfort as the vanguard under his command moved quickly east with each passing day. Still, it was spacious, warm and bright, the smoke from the foursome of torches set in each corner dragged up and away through ventilating holes in the peaks of the ceiling. Most of the ground about Egard’s feet was the grass of the forest floor, but to his right a number of pelts had been piled, forming a makeshift bed.
And there, seated upon it, his sword across his knees and an oil cloth in hand, sat Kareth Grahst.
The youngest general of the Kayle’s army did not even raise his eyes to his visitor, finishing the meticulous task of caring for his blade. Egard, in turn, said nothing, watching his master warily as the Sigûrth shined the steel, checking his reflection in the sheen of the metal. Grahst was a large man, even by the standards of the mountain tribes, with the thick arms and legs of one born to swing a sword. He had dark blue eyes, much like his cousin’s, but Grahst’s hair was blonde rather than brown. It was braided in the same fashion as all of his clan, beaded and ringed with baubles and trinkets, as Egard had been forced to do with his own hair. A smile played at the general’s lips even as he continued to work his weapon, like he were amused by something.
Of course he is, Egard thought with a chill. He’s amused by me.
Kareth Grahst would have been considered a cruel man in the world outside his mountains. He enjoyed exerting control where he could, thrived on rising abo
ve and stomping down on the men below. From killing to pillaging to raping to enslavement, the general drew passion from blood and violence, excitement from battle and death. In the world outside his mountains, he would have been an exile, cast out as savage and wicked.
Amongst his own, though, such qualities only made him strong.
When Grahst was finally tired of playing his little game of making Egard wait on him, he set aside the sword. His blue eyes came up slowly, settling on his property’s wan brown ones, and immediately Egard felt his heartbeat pick up.
“Van ys, skav.”
The general spoke in the rolling, rough mountain tongue, but Egard understood it perfectly. In a different life he had been a man of another place, another god and purpose, and he had spent much time dealing with both the mountain clans and the civil government of Metcaf, the valley town east of Harond.
When Metcaf had fallen under the boot of the Kayle, though, Egard had only been among the more valuable pieces of loot.
Come here, slave, Grahst had said.
And Egard did as commanded.
He approached, stepping onto the furs, then brought himself down to sit across from the general. Grahst continued to watch him all the while, the maddening smile still hinted at on his face.
Egard had a feeling the danger was only real when the man smiled in full.
For a few seconds, the pair looked at each other. Egard knew what was expected of him, but he waited for his master to give him the command. It was his small defiance, the only rebellion he could manage without risking losing a finger, or more.
“Eyst,” Grahst said eventually, eyes narrowing.
Begin.
And so Egard brought up his hands, willing the flames to come.
The magic poured into his palms and over his fingers like liquid, licking upwards from his skin in tendrils of white fire that danced and spat back and forth. With nothing more than thought he crafted the simple spells, his will causing the flames to shift and grow, then shrink and separate. It formed patterns over his hands and wrists, and he turned them slowly, allowing the fire to move across his knuckles like living ivory spikes.
All the while, Grahst watched with wide eyes.
There was no hunger in that gaze, surprisingly. Egard had thought, on the first night he had been summoned to the general’s tent and told to perform his spells, that Grahst was somehow after the power. He had thought the general desired the magics, desired the strength they could bring him.
Instead, he had only watched, studying the fire like a man studies a battlefield.
Which is exactly what he’s doing, Egard thought to himself.
He had considered, more than once, bringing the full force of his magic to bear as he’d sat there, alone with the general. He had considered demonstrating the potency of a stunning spell, then later even wondered if he had it within him to kill the cruel man. He had made plans, formed ideas, crafted escape routes in his mind and told himself he was waiting for the right opportunity.
In the end, though, Egard had proven himself too much of a coward to go through with any of them. The laws of his old faith had bound him, and his fear of being caught—or worse, trying and failing to strike down Grahst himself—had paralyzed his hopes and dreams of freedom.
Not to mention that he would be alone in the Woods, among the wolves and bears and winter snows…
Egard continued to provide his magical game of show for some time, as he’d expected to. Every evening it was the same: arrive, demonstrate the powers of his old god, then work late into the night on Kareth’s mastery of the Common Tongue. This last part was the true purpose of the nightly visits, of course. Ever since he’d found out that the Kayle had been having his slaves teach him the language of the greater world, Grahst had taken the interest on with fervor. He had always emulated his cousin in that fashion, lesser man that he was, though Gûlraht Baoill’s slaves were all young women he had dragged from the burning skeletons of Metcaf and Harond, not a single beaten, defeated man like Egard.
Eventually, the general had had enough of the magics. He held up a hand, and Egard ceased the show at once, waiting. It was always Grahst who began their conversation, but it often took him some time to find the words and wrap his tongue around their strange pronunciations.
“Tonight,” he finally got out, “you teach of the faith. Teach many words, as many as can remember.”
Egard nodded.
“Do well more, and perhaps a slave I make you not, one day,” Grahst continued.
And he said it with a smile.
CHAPTER 1
“By the vast majority of those familiar with his legends, Raz i’Syul Arro is a misunderstood soul. To that greater populace, the unstudied masses who repeat the tales of the Monster to each other around the campfire flames, Arro embodies nothing more than righteous violence. He was a being of savage morality, the creature spat forth by whatever gods laid claim to his world to cleanse it of the filth that festered upon their creation. To these people, those enthusiastically retelling of his conquests in raised voices under waving arms, Arro’s path left behind nothing but justly charred earth. To these people, he was a paladin of virtuous fury, untouched by anything but the burning vengeance that drove him through his crusade against the evils of the Common Age.
It is only those few of us who’ve looked deeper, who have sought out the truths that time has so casually cast aside, that ache with some echo of the sorrow and suffering the Monster of Karth must have carried with him for the better part of his life…”
—Born of the Dahgün Bone, author unknown
It defies all reason, the way winter can be so quiet. When the winds die and nothing is left of the storm but still-falling snow, sound seems to vanish altogether from the world. What remains is not true silence, per se—there is an inexplicable heaviness to the air, a denseness that bears down upon the ears—but it is as close as one can come in all the noise and vigor that is life.
And it is more than enough to pull an already feverish mind towards madness.
It was on this cusp that Raz i’Syul Arro was hovering. His whole body was simultaneously wracked with cold and yet burning up from the inside. He’d been on horseback for three days straight, barely pausing to let the animal rest and graze on what little grass could be found along the clearer bases of the trees that lined their northbound road. He himself had no appetite. It had fled from him much like his awareness of time, leaving only an unrelenting thirst he kept sated with the snow that fell thickly upon his hunched shoulders.
That, and the pulsing sensation of bone-deep agony lancing through his back with every wheezing breath he took.
It was an unfamiliar sensation for Raz. This was illness, he’d realized, true disease. He’d seen it before, but never experienced it. He’d always caught the summer colds less often than the rest of his cousins growing up, and—even when they did find a way into his chest—his body very often fought the ailments off far quicker than the other Arros.
Not this time, though. This time, the infection had taken firm hold of his flesh, and appeared to have no intention of letting go.
When he’d first started to fall ill, Raz had cursed the names of the men who had put him in this predicament. In particular he’d held himself together for a while by wishing every malediction on Quin Tern—the Azbar councilman who’d had him stand against a small army of mercenaries for Tern’s own pleasure—and Sury Atheus—the West Isler who’d driven a blade through his back in the process. But Atheus was dead and Tern not far behind if he wasn’t already, and Raz’s mind had long since slipped away from anger towards thoughts not so firmly anchored in reality.
Slumped over the neck of the horse trudging along beneath him through the snow, Raz’s amber eyes gazed unfocused upon the road ahead. Though some sane part of his conscience knew well that there was nothing there, the rest had long since betrayed him to the fever. At first they had been nothing but shapes, dark splotches against the snow. Over the course o
f the last day or so, however, the shadows had taken form, and now Raz watched as the distinct pair gallivanted around him and his horse. The siblings’ laughter seemed to echo through the hollows of his mind as he watched them duck and dodge between the trees, crossing back and forth before him, chasing one another through the snow. They seemed happy, now, free of the burdens that had weighed on them in life. Out here, in the woods beyond the binding walls of Azbar, they had finally shed all worries and cares, and for the first time Raz got to see the pair in truth for the children they were.
It was an odd comfort, a sense of pseudo-tranquility, witnessing the dead in the peace that follows life.
One of the shades strayed closer, and as she grew more distinct in proximity Raz extended out a shaking, tentative hand. The girl stood on tiptoes in the snow to reach up for his clawed fingers. Raz hoped, for what felt the hundredth time that day, that when they met he would feel the pressure of her skin through the gauntlet, the softness of a child’s touch against the leather.
The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1 Page 71