Then Calen burst into the clearing. He ignored Thackery and charged the three other men in between him and me. The first man doubled over from a vicious blow to the gut. Calen broke the nose of the second and threw the third to the ground.
It wasn’t fast enough. Lord Barkus dragged me to my feet, pulling me by a fistful of hair and spinning me in front of him. I felt the cold, sharp prick of a dagger beneath my chin. The hard edge of it cut into me and I could no longer control my ragged breathing.
Calen paused at the threat, then drew his sword. The temperature seemed to drop as Lord Barkus began to cast, a spell I couldn't decipher in a language I'd never heard. A terrible roar sounded behind Calen and suddenly stopped. Was that ice I had seen moving in the trees?
Calen's face had gone white, but it was shockingly devoid of any emotion. He seemed to be holding his sword at a strange angle, almost as if he was trying to see the reflection of what was behind him in the blade.
“Father, stop!” Thackery yelled.
“Stay out of this boy!” Lord Barkus spat. “She's of no use to me now. If she'd just done her duty and wed you, we could have avoided this mess.”
As if that was my only responsibility to Spellshallow—to marry one of its noble sons and produce heirs. No, I had sworn to protect my kingdom, no matter what it took.
“Let her go,” Calen warned.
Lord Barkus spat on the ground. “Another step and I’ll open up her throat.”
I heard Calen laugh then—low and then louder in a strange cocktail of murderous and bored mirth.
“I’m not sure what angle you think you’re playing,” Calen said. “I suppose you think you’re too smart to be outwitted, but men like the Collector don’t have allies. He only has pawns in his game.”
The edge of hysteria to his voice faded away with the wind. My racing pulse pounded in my ears.
“I play my own game” Lord Barkus replied. “Now stand aside. My men and I are riding out of here.”
“It doesn’t matter what your game is,” Calen said flatly, “the winter world is just behind us—the ice is blocking the way back to the road. There’s no way out. Release the girl and maybe I’ll let you leave this clearing alive.”
It was Lord Barkus’ turn to laugh, “Big words from a drunk, hornless unicorn.”
“He’s not the one you should be worried about.” Another voice said from behind us.
A sword blossomed through Lord Barkus’s chest. He released his hold on my wrist and the dagger dropped to the ground.
Thackery released a tormented cry as I worked out that the voice belonged to Christoph. By the time I turned, he had moved on—killing the other soldiers quickly as Calen rushed to my side.
Calen caught me before I fell. His face was peaceful, powerful, and confident. Thackery’s sat on the ground a few feet away from us, his slumped shoulders twitching with silent sobs. I knew I should go to him, but I didn’t trust my legs.
The air was growing fiercely colder and snowflakes began to land in my hair. Tears stung my face as they leaked from my eyes.
“We have to move,” Calen said firmly.
I tried to stand, but faltered. Cursing under my breath I tried again, but again I failed. It wasn’t shock, I was simply exhausted. I willed my legs to stop shaking, but they refused.
“Damn,” I hissed.
Calen looked at me, eyes frantically asking for silent permission. I gave it and he tossed me over his shoulder to run away from the mountain of ice. Christoph cleaned his sword and easily kept pace. Thackery rose from his pile of grief to follow as quickly as he could.
The horses stood tethered to a nearby tree, thick woolen blankets tossed over the saddles. I was in mine suddenly, it seemed. My head was too foggy, as though I’d been in the cold for a full day.
“She’s in shock,” Calen said.
But that was ridiculous, I could still process everything that was happening. I’d had several bad scrapes in my life, this didn’t make sense. I struggled to keep my eyes open and my stomach suddenly evacuated what little it had been holding.
“She’s been poisoned,” Thackery shouted over the wind. “My father always poison’s his blades.”
“Poisoned?” Calen marched closer to me and tried to pull the blanket from my body, but I protested with the little strength I had left. I’d never been so cold in my life.
“We have to find his horse!” Thackery shouted, “he always has the antidote with him!”
Calen didn’t budge. His fingers pulled my head this way and that, and I was powerless to stop him. He stared at me with cloudy eyes like the sky.
“There’s no need,” Calen said hoarsely. He pressed his fingers into my neck. Forcing them through the layer of skin, and into the wound. I opened my mouth to scream in pain, but then he kissed me.
His mouth opened and I gave into him. There was no pain, no cold—only his kiss. Then he pulled away.
“I hate you,” I coughed.
I couldn’t really figure out why I’d said that.
“For kissing you?” Calen asked, his voice controlled and smooth, “or for saving your life?”
My hands went to my neck and found the wound had closed. The terrible pain in my stomach had stopped and I no longer felt tired or cold.
“You…” I swallowed and it felt completely normal. “You can do magic without your horn?” I asked, angrily.
This information would have come in handy a few hundred times since we’d left the tavern.
“Some.” Calen shrugged, before wiping my blood away on his shirt.
“As I said, I’m not like you. I don’t just do magic, I am magic,” Calen said. Then the wind picked up again, and he turned away to glance at the wintery wall growing behind us.
Chapter 13.
Calen
Every part of me wanted to run the other way. Instead, I walked straight into the wind of the storm.
Snow gathered in my eyelashes, making it hard to see. The edges of the wintery world were a sharp shade of white. Trying to stare into the blizzard hurt worse than looking directly at the sun. I saw the red flash of Wren's hair as she staggered behind me, then slowed my steps as I noticed the gap between us widening.
Farther back was the dark shape of Thackery. I couldn’t help but feel bad for him. No matter how many times I had wished for my own father's death, I doubt I was strong enough to deal with it as well as the boy was.
“What are you doing?” Wren shouted.
She sounded terrible, her voice a half-cough. “Trying to remember the warmth between a whore’s thighs!” I shouted back.
“That doesn’t sound half bad right now!” She yelled through the snowfall before jerking on my sleeve.
“There’s got to be another way,” she said gravely, the wind sending her hair every direction at once.
“There isn’t” I replied. “Going any other direction,” I hissed, “means returning to Spellshallow empty-handed!” I reminded myself I was after my horn, that I cared nothing for these people and was simply using them as they were using me.
I felt the tightness behind my skin harden. A flash, brighter than the awful snowy light whipped past us, and I knew Christoph had winked away—the coward.
He left something in his wake. I snatched the black box from where it lay in the gathering snowdrift and made for the nearest clutch of trees thick enough to provide any cover. Three thick pines stood half-swirled together just to my right. Their branches were already heavy and drooped with a thick blanket of snow. Behind them I could see nothing but an endless, abundant void.
I pulled the fabric that held the box together and pried off the lid. From inside the box, a small red fire rolled around inside stemless glass. A flat black stone piece for its bottom insolated the box and my hand from burning. It was an Eternal Flame from the tail of a dragon—something that didn't even exist in this realm. It would burn forever, with no magic, cold, or wind enough to snuff it out. I shoved the glass Wren's hand and watched as it q
uickly warmed her.
Thackery appeared at her side, eagerly drawn to the warmth. It might be enough to keep the two of them alive.
A leather satchel lay half-covered in the snow—another parting gift from my brother. I slung it over my shoulder before motioning for them to follow me back the way we came.
“Where are you going?” Wren demanded.
“With that type of heat, we can bring the horses. Hurry up you two.” I pointed her the right way.
The horses were shivering by the time we arrived. We spent several minutes warming each of them with the Eternal Flame. The mage’s emptied the saddlebags and covered themselves first and then the horses with every scrap of cloth we had. I doubted either the beasts of their riders could see more than an arms width from their own nose.
“How can there be so much snow?” Thackery shouted. The snow was already dangerously deep.
“Someone moved the damn stone!” I cursed. It felt like the whole of the world was pressing down on us and I knew that the storm would take us if we wavered. We made our way through as quickly as we could, passing our only source of warmth back and forth as we rode. Even with the magical flame, if we stopped, we'd simply freeze to death.
The road was a lost cause, already buried, with no other path any easier. We kept to the high ground to keep from disappearing forever beneath the snow. Had I doomed us to a wintry death?
Anxiety pulsed through my veins, racing the frostbite to get to every inch of my exposed skin. It made the space behind my eyes throb. I tried to focus on my breathing and my heartbeat slowed to a dull thump. Soon the horses began to slow, their hooves sinking deep in the white quicksand beneath them.
The storm only grew worse and soon I couldn’t hear a thing over the howling wind. I dismounted and led the horses forward, the mage’s clinging desperately to their saddles. Every bit of air was filled with snow and snarl and every step an obstacle for my mind and body.
I beat first one hand and then the other against my chest, trying to get the blood to flow through it again. Suddenly, my ears caught a strange sound and I whipped my head back and forth to try and find the source of it. It hadn't sounded like a man, but it hadn't seemed like the wind either. If we were attacked by another mage in this, the battle would be over before it even began.
Then our luck changed along with the wind. One minute we struggled uphill, trying to crest and endless white sea—the next moment the wind was at our backs propelling us forward.
The storm seemed to lose its bite—though it still wailed behind us. A strange stillness suddenly crashed around us as the wind stopped completely. Not a single snowflake fell before us. Light cut through the clouds, warming us and illuminating a huge frozen lake before us.
“We made it,” Thackery grunted, his face red and frostbitten.
“Did we?” I asked carefully.
Uncharacteristically, Wren had nothing to say.
She stared down at the Eternal Flame that had helped us through an otherwise impossible passage. “It feels...” Wren paused, “alive...”
Wren began to inspect the flame at eye level.
No time to open up that can of worms.
“We need to cross the ice,” I said, as though that would be a simple thing. “It looks thick enough.”
And they followed me as if they believed that too. I raised myself higher in my saddle, pressing my knees tighter and urging my horse onto the blue glass surface. My horse took two long strides, enough for the others to follow, and then the surface of the lake shattered.
Chapter 14.
Wren
It was as if the ice was actually a thin membrane of glass. Calen and his horse fell away from us with a horrible cry. Thackery and I had followed, but our horses stumbled, trying desperately to back away. I didn’t even have time to scream.
Walls of snow lined the blackness below where Calen had fallen. I breathed a sigh of relief as his curses filled the air.
“I'll throw you a rope!” Thackery shouted.
I felt useless from on top of Juko's back. So I dismounted and tried to help with the rope. I glanced around nervously, but there was no sign of life around us.
“Give me a minute,” Calen called up. “Snow broke our fall, but my horse has a broken leg. I’m going to try and heal it.”
That raised a good question. How were we going to get the horse out of that hole?
“That’ll have to do,” Calen said from below. Let me see what I can do about getting us out of here.”
We heard the sound of metal hacking ice. After several minutes, there came a loud scraping sound.
“Are you okay, Calen?” I asked. “What are you doing?”
“I need more snow,” he replied. “Push as much into the hole as you can.”
Thackery and I began throwing snow into the hole as the scraping sound continued.
“He’s building a ramp,” Thackery said.
It took nearly an hour, but eventually Calen constructed a high frozen ramp. We tied our end of the rope to our horses as Calen secured his rope around his. Then we slowly pulled them out using the ramp.
My shoulders relaxed as I saw the horse’s ears and Calen's silver crown emerge from the darkness.
Once we had hauled them to safety, Thackery bent to examine the back leg of Calen’s horse. “It’s swollen and weak, but it should be able to take some weight.”
“Let’s head to that river and tie the horses up on the bank,” Calen said, pointing off in the distance.
I squinted, barely able to make out a snaking trail of blue cutting through the white. We walked the horses slowly and eventually I heard the sound of running water.
I exhaled as we approached the banks, smoky wisps of hot air escaping through my lips like jets of steam. I strained my ears again, but I could only hear the water and the sound of my own heartbeat.
Calen pushed his hair from his hidden eyes to glance back at me. He looked like he was made to rule the winter. I could almost picture a crown of glassy ice on his head. It would be made of wicked spikes sharp enough to draw blood—beautiful, but deadly—just like him.
“Calen,” I began, thinking back to the strange meeting with his brother, “If you are the oldest son and your father is a King, doesn’t that make you the heir to the throne?”
Calen’s shoulders seemed to sag, his neck arched painfully as if he was trying to pull himself back up with nothing but the strength of his chin.
“I am not the oldest, no,” Calen said, but he did not elaborate. The river caught the light as we crested a swell in the snow. The snow cushioned what I am sure would have been sharper edges and steeper hills. It was impossible to tell the actual shape of anything. Everything seemed soft and muted. Like a spiny serpent, the dark river cut through the high snowbanks on either side. The water was much wider than I had first thought and moving much faster.
A river was not a living thing, but that didn't always stop them from having a spirit, and the soul of this river seemed enraged. As though the cold and snow had forced it to bend against its will.
Moving downstream to a calmer section, we watered the horses and tied them up. Thackery produced a small bag of apples we split with the horses. I paused to fill my waterskin, but as soon as my fingertips touched the icy water, everything went black.
“She’s waking back up,” Calen’s voice rang softly in my ears. My eyes fluttered open to see his face looking intently down at me.
“What happened?” I asked.
“This world is Magic,” he said, moving a strand of hair gently out of my eyes. “It’s powered by a magical artifact like your own rune in Spellshallow. You must have drawn some of the magic into yourself.”
I gasped. “I can feel it.” The emptiness inside me was filled with magic. I closed my eyes and muttered an endurance spell. Almost immediately I felt the exhaustion fall away. I sat up, my muscles strengthened and the coldness was forgotten.
“Why can’t I draw any in?” Thackery asked.
“He’s right,” I said. “The magic does feel... just a little off.” Calen helped me stand and I favored him with a warm smile.
“You said this world has a rune stone too. That's where the magic comes from?” I asked. “Is it a heart of ice?” I joked.
“I doubt it's a heart at all,” Calen said, “it could take any form—a pebble, a snowflake, even a—SNOW LEOPARD!”
We heard a low growl, and suddenly the horses were straining against their bridles and whinnying in distress. I followed the line where Calen’s finger was pointing.
“There's three of them!” Thackery shouted.
They were the biggest cats I'd ever seen. Their fur was white, with a faint set of spots the color of grey tree bark. The camouflage almost completely hid them in the snow except for the orange eyes locked directly on us.
Kicking up powder as they sprang forward, the snow leopards ran toward us at an alarming speed. Large teeth poked from gray mouths as they closed on their prey—us.
“We can't outrun them,” I cried, half to myself as Thackery and Calen drew their swords.
“We'll have to make a stand,” Thackery said—easier said than done.
I tried not to let the image a large snow leopard ripping me apart cloud my vision. My pulse thudded in my temples as the cats closed on us. I didn’t draw a weapon though. I didn’t need one.
Envisioning the Eternal Flame, I hurled a spell at the nearest snow leopard and it immediately caught fire. It took most of the magic I had somehow managed to draw, but the cat screamed and sunk into the snow in a blackened heap.
Calen ran forward to meet another of the creatures head-on. They both leaped into the air, the claws and blade alike slicing out. Calen landed with bloody lines along his arm and back. The cat landed lightly. Instead of continuing the attack it backed away warily, limping slightly on its front paw. Calen grinned.
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