Winter of Ice and Iron

by Rachel Neumeier

  For a long moment, they all stared down at the field, where flights of arrows arced down from both sides toward the close ranks of the Pohorin army, which was once again advancing. But far too many of the men struck by those arrows did not fall, or else fell but got up again. An officer on a red horse rode out of the melee of Pohorin soldiers, bent low from the saddle, and rose again. In his hand, the Pohorin standard swept upright, and a cold wind caught the banner and opened it out. The double-headed Winter Dragon with its bloody jaws seemed to laugh, and far above the true dragon turned again and came down once more.

  A cry went up from the Harivins, and this time it had the sound of despair.

  Lady Viy shuddered, gripping the balustrade hard.

  Tiro turned to her. “You saw how the Eänetén Power supported Raëhemaiëth? Did you see that?” When she nodded, he went on quickly, “That was a very thin tie. Eilin isn’t as strong, and I know, I know it’s supposed to draw strength from Raëh, not the other way around. I know if Raëh draws from Eilin, that’s an Unfortunate bond and—and it can lead to—” He stopped. Then he said, “I won’t let Raëhemaiëth consume Eilinìen. It doesn’t even want to. Raëhemaiëth doesn’t want to be a God. But we need Eilinìen’s strength. If you’ll give me that—if you’ll let me take a deep tie to Eilinìen, anchor Raëhemaiëth here into your land, we can make a tie that’ll stand against even that white Power out there. But you can’t let Eilinìen fight me—no, listen. I know it’s a terrible thing to ask, but I swear, I swear to you, Raëhemaiëth will not force Eilinìen out of this land. We know it’s the rightful Immanent here. Raëhemaiëth will take the tie through Eilinìen—”

  Lady Viy held up one hand: Enough. She stood for a long moment, her attention turned inward, thinking or somehow asking her Power what it wanted to do; Tiro couldn’t tell. Then she blinked, and looked over the parapet once more, and then turned again at last to meet his eyes. “A deep tie,” she said. “Just like the Mad King forced on lesser Immanences so that his Power could devour them. Or worse than that: You want Raëhemaiëth to possess Eilin. That’s what you’re asking for.”

  “They can share,” Tiro said urgently. “It’ll be a Fortunate bond in the end, we’ll make it work, Eilinìen helped me with Raëhemaiëth just now, it’ll be willing to help again!”

  He didn’t say, It had better be. Lady Viy rubbed her face, looking old and uncertain.

  Tiro said, “Listen, before the northern desert was made, there was a town there called Liën. Did you ever hear that story? The Lord of Liën was a friend of the Lord of Tamad. When the Immanent Powers of the sea sent a great wave washing over the coast, Liën gave a tie to Tamad. Together they threw back the weight of the tsunami. Both provinces survived; neither harmed the other. They were allies! They both prospered.”

  “Tirovay . . .” Lady Viy rubbed her face again. “You know the strangest stories.”

  He did. In a sense, all his life Tiro had been studying to advise his sister. But now he had to be king himself, and he did know all the stories. He said as gently and firmly as he could, the way he imagined Kehera might have said it, “Lady Viy, we have no choice but to try this. But you have to know Raëhemaiëth is exactly the right kind of Immanent to try it with.”

  “Well. Perhaps.” The woman looked down at the battle for another moment, then nodded decisively and turned back to the prince. “Very well. It may work. I’ll try to force Eilinìen to yield . . . that kind of tie. I think it will, if the alternative is facing that alone. It trusts Raëhemaiëth.” She took another breath. “And I trust you, Tirovay Raëhema. Everyone knows those of your line can be trusted. We’d better know that.”

  Tiro let his breath out and held his hands out to her. Lady Viy took his hands in hers, and they were both silent for a long moment. Then Tiro said, though he knew it wasn’t necessary to speak aloud, “Raëhemaiëth!” He blinked, his awareness shifting and turning and widening, and murmured, “Eilinìen.”

  Lady Viy swayed. Gereth Murrel caught her and beckoned to one of the guardsmen to help him, but Tiro drew one breath and then another, and then a third, and finally nodded and let go of her hands. The lady sat down right on the stones of the wall and put her face in her hands, but Tiro stepped firmly back toward the balustrade, stared down toward the battle, and said, surprised by the steadiness of his own voice, “You see their standard-bearer. He’s the one with the tie. The rest don’t matter. Let him past. Let him in.”

  “Let him in?” Gereth repeated, startled.

  “He wants to break us.” Tiro spoke distantly, listening more to Raëhemaiëth and Eilin than to any human voice. “Let him try. Let him in.”

  And Viy seconded this: “We have this. We hold Eilin. His Highness is right. Let that cursed Irekaïn come in, if that’s what he wants so much.”

  Gereth stared from one of them to the other. Then he turned to the lieutenant of their guard and said, “You heard His Highness. Pass that order down: Get our people out of the way and let the standard-bearer through. Run!”

  The lieutenant started to speak, shook his head, turned on his heel, and ran.

  A quarter hour later the Harivin defenders began to fall back, leaving the way clear for their enemies, straight across the trampled pastures to the city walls and the gates.

  A few minutes after that, the Pohorin standard-bearer jerked his horse back on its haunches, reined it around, and reached out to lay his hand on the gate of Eilin.

  Tiro had thought he was prepared for the massive surging blankness that slammed out from the Irekaïn standard-bearer like a wall of solid fog. But it would have been impossible to be prepared for that. He lost track of himself immediately—he fell straight into the burning white cold. Claws of ice tore great ripping wounds in his soul; blinding frost struck deep into the land. Dimly, he was aware that Gereth Murrel supported his body. Far more real was the furious weight of Raëhemaiëth, fully roused and defiant, throwing back the winter that tried to smother it; and wrapped up within and around Raëhemaiëth, the small bright fury of Eilinìen. Eänetaìsarè of Eäneté was far away, barely perceptible, but Eilinìen was bright and clean and vivid, and Eilinìen was right here. It was in him; it was part of him; it was folded through Raëhemaiëth, and when he reached out he could take its strength so easily.

  Tiro could see—though perhaps not with his eyes—the mist that poured out of the earth around the Pohorin standard-bearer. The double-headed Winter Dragon snapped in a savagely cold wind that raced down from the mountains, but the mist did not disperse. A skim of ice spread across the walls of Eilin, intricate webs of crackling frost.

  Tirovay actually had his eyes closed. He knew that suddenly, but he was aware of his own people flinching back from that racing net of frost, and he knew it when the ice twisted its swift deadly way up their legs like a clinging winter vine and spread across their eyes and mouths. These men did not die. They moved, whatever their allegiance had been, to strike out at the remaining Harivin defenders.

  Eilin was buried, frozen, under its layers of ice. The ice spread deep into the land. Eilinìen was trapped in it, frozen into its white blinding silence. But the Pohorin winter could not reach to encompass Raëh, not all the way from Eilin. Raëhemaiëth remembered the spring, remembered the swelling grain in the fields, remembered rising sap and new-born lambs, and the singing of tiny birds in the trees of the woods and the eaves of the towns. Raëhemaiëth remembered warm springs and rich summers and the long turning years, and rode those slow nonhuman memories out of the blinding silent winter. And it brought Eilinìen with it, out of the winter, into a memory of summer.

  Tiro opened his eyes—he really did this time. He stared down through piercingly brilliant air at the gates of Eilin, and the Pohorin standard-bearer, with the terrible real dragon riding the winds above him in its frozen veil of mist. He could not speak; he had forgotten human language. But he was with Raëhemaiëth when the Raëh Power took the strength of Eilinìen and sent it back again, warm with the memory of summer. It
was Eilinìen that screamed, high and wordless, through the voice of the Lady of Eilin. Blood dripped from the woven fangs of the Dragon on the Irekaïn banner. Eilinìen and Raëhemaiëth together took that blood and changed it, and where it fell smoking on the earth, it sent down deep roots, and the briar rose that was the symbol and the sign of Eilin twisted upward. Slender vining tendrils coiled about the wooden staff and pierced the arrogant Pohorin banner with its thorns.

  The Irekaïn standard-bearer shouted once, letting the banner fall, and his cry was a human sound. The blank white winter had abandoned him, the winter dragon turned and rose, and the black winds carried it away. The bitter winds fell silent, and the standard-bearer tried to rein his horse back, but briars flung themselves up out of the earth and tangled around the animal’s legs. Eilinìen couldn’t have done that, but Raëhemaiëth did it, allowing itself to be guided by the lesser Immanent. The horse tried to rear, screaming, but the briars tore it down. Small sharp thorns tore savagely into the man’s hands as he tried to rip away the briars, and thorny vines coiled about his shoulders and throat, red-veined green leaves rustling heavily as he moved.

  The standard-bearer’s blood fell on the earth, watering the briars, and slender vines, heavy with crimson buds, burst out of his eyes and mouth. The buds swelled rapidly and surged open into great brilliant flowers the color of fire or fresh blood, which shed golden pollen into the air. The wind carried the pollen across the land and swirled it high against the wall and through the gates and into the streets of the town. The air turned opaque and golden with it, and a piercingly sweet scent filled the air. Where the pollen touched the spreading frost, the ice melted as though touched by the sun.

  Wherever the pollen touched a man’s skin, it clung. When the man was Harivin and living, it only coated his skin with gold. But when the man was Pohorin, the pollen turned red and dripped heavily like blood, and where it fell on the earth, briars sprouted swiftly out of the ground and twisted upward, clinging, flowering upon the falling bodies of the men they tore down. And when the man was one of the walking dead, the golden pollen blew over his eyes and face and into his mouth, and he died a second death, from which he did not rise. Briars heavy with foliage burst from the bodies of the Harivin dead as they fell and opened their round crimson blossoms, casting more pollen upon the wind.

  “Fortunate Gods,” Gereth said quietly. Pollen streaked his face and hands, like sunlight given form and solidity. He did not appear to have noticed. He stood at the edge of the wall, leaning far out over the balustrade, staring downward.

  Without Gereth’s support, Tiro found himself sinking down to sit cross-legged on the wall. He tilted his head back against the stones of the balustrade, breathing through his mouth. The pollen tasted of roses and summer. When Tiro rubbed his hands over his face, they came away streaked with golden pollen and red blood. He looked at them, puzzled. “Am I bleeding?”

  Gereth glanced down at him and shook his head, distracted. “You wept tears of blood. Just before the briars tore down the Dragon standard.”

  At the moment, this seemed perfectly reasonable. Pollen billowed in the air, a thin golden mist.

  “What now?” Gereth asked quietly.

  “Now?” Tiro blinked into a sky filled with golden clouds of pollen, trying to gather his thoughts.

  Lady Viy accepted a hand from one of the guardsmen, clambering stiffly to her feet. She wasn’t quite looking at Tiro. He didn’t blame her. He hardly knew how to look at her, either. He could feel his new tie to Eilinìen coiling around his heart and mind, weaving in and out around the constant warm presence of Raëhemaiëth. Raëhemaiëth was very much stronger. He held them both.

  But Lady Viy only said, her voice uninflected if a little hoarse, “We may have shut the Anha Narrows for . . . some time. This wasn’t . . . Eilinìen isn’t a Great Power, I don’t quite . . . I think those briars stretch all the way from the walls of Eilin to the mountains. If that’s so, anyone trying that road is going to have a problem. Though I imagine these particular briars will always flower at midwinter, which can only improve the Iron Hinge days.” She glanced down at Tiro, and away again. “I would lose the Narrows three times over to be rid of Pohorir today.”

  “We’ve won,” Gereth said, not quite believing it.

  “No,” said the young king. He rubbed his face hard, blood streaking across his cheeks. He said, “Yes, here, but no. Not in the end. It’s too late. Or maybe not quite, but . . . very nearly.” He glanced up at their puzzled, worried faces. “You didn’t feel it? It’s already halfway to becoming a God. Every Immanent it devours pushing it a little bit further. Very soon, all it will need to do is break its ties with its own place, and then no one will be able to stop it. I won’t. Raëhemaiëth won’t. We don’t have the strength.” He looked at Lady Viy. “Not even with Eilin’s help.”

  There was a short pause.

  Then the lady said, “No. We will stop it. If we have to force every single Power in Harivir into an Unfortunate bond with Raëh, we will. And trust your Raëhemaiëth won’t tear out all our Immanences by the roots.”

  Tiro started to protest that his Immanent would never do that, but Lady Viy held up one hand and went on sternly, “But even if it does, I’d rather see Raëhemaiëth become a God than that Irekaïn Power. At least Raëhemaiëth would become a Fortunate God. Better that than . . .” She gestured wordlessly to indicate the field of blood and briars.

  “Oh . . . Gods Fortunate and Unfortunate.” Tiro pressed his hands over his face. “They’ll hate it,” he said. He already knew he was going to have to demand exactly this risk not only of his own people, but of as many Emmeran lords as still held ties to Immanences. “They’ll hate it,” he said out loud, meaning the lords of Emmer and Harivir both. “They’ll hate it, and they won’t do it.”

  Gereth asked, “Will they like it less than they like that?” Echoing the lady’s gesture, he pointed over the balustrade at the red and bloody field where flowers bloomed from the corpses of men.

  Lady Viy nodded, her expression set and grim.

  Gereth added, “And if all your northern Harivin Powers are willing to forge Unfortunate bonds between their lesser Powers and Raëhemaiëth, Your Highness, I wonder whether those in the south . . .”

  Though the foreigner didn’t complete the thought, it wasn’t a question. Tiro nodded. “Whether those in the south might yield the same to your duke, you mean.”

  “For the protection of us all,” Gereth said quickly.

  “Yes, I’m sure your duke would be glad to take a third of Harivir into his hand and force all the southern Immanences into Unfortunate bonds with his.” Tiro heard the edge in his own voice, though he had to agree that it might be the very best any of them could do, now.

  “You can’t hold the south, Your Highness. . . .” Gereth hesitated. “Your Majesty. But Innisth terè Maèr Eänetaì might.”

  Tiro nodded. He understood that. He didn’t need Gereth to explain it to him. He said, “I’ll write to General Corvallis. And my sister. And you’ll write to your duke. Lady Viy.” He waited for her to meet his eyes. Then he said, “Perhaps you would write to the lords and dukes of southern Harivir yourself.”

  The Lady of Eilin looked out on the silent fields, filled now with crimson-flowered briars. At Irekay’s banner, buried beneath thorns and flowers. At the air, hazed with golden pollen. She said slowly, “I lost a lot of men out there. But Eilin didn’t lose them. Because Eilinìen took them up, in the end. I’ll tell them that. You get Taraä Leiörian to write as well, and they’ll do this. If it’s a choice between losing their Immanent Powers and then their lands and their people to one of the mad kings, or yielding a deep tie and an Unfortunate bond to Eäneté . . . they need to understand that the Eänetén duke is your ally.”

  Tiro nodded. “I’ll say so. It will be true.” He looked at Gereth. “It had better be true. Despite what he’s forced on my sister. I would kill him for forcing marriage on Kehera. I will, if the chance comes my way
.” Though that didn’t seem very likely. But it didn’t matter. Tiro added, “But for all he’s done, you’ve sworn he’s not our enemy, not as the Mad King is, not as Methmeir Irekaì is, not as the Irekaïn Power itself is. You’ve sworn that.”

  “I do swear it,” Gereth said earnestly.

  “And I believe you. It has to be true. It had better be true.” Tiro pried himself up, accepting a hand from the older man in order to make it. All his joints hurt. His back hurt. His head ached, though that might have been Raëhemaiëth’s glitter, which he still saw in his mind’s eye. But he said, with all the decision and determination he could muster, “We’ll summon them all. And then we’ll see what we can wrest out of the jaws of the Winter Dragon. Hopefully more than briar-choked fields and hollow provinces—” He stopped.

  “Tiro?” Lady Viy asked.

  “Your Majesty?” Gereth said, just a little pointedly.

  Tiro hardly heard either of them. He said slowly, “All those empty provinces.”

  All those hollow lands, where the Irekaïn Power had torn out and devoured the lesser Immanences. But Methmeir Irekaì hadn’t made any effort to create new Immanent Powers in those lands, had he? Because even if the King of Pohorir would have thought of it and dared take such a risk, it wasn’t him, was it? Not really. It was the Immanent Power of Irekay. And Immanent Powers didn’t think the way people did. Creating new Immanences . . . that was something an ambitious king would think of, wanting to take their ties and possess them and rule them and their lands.

  Catastrophe. That was how catastrophe had fallen across the southlands: because of the king who held the tie to the lost land of Sierè. He had cast out the proper Immanences of neighboring lands in order to make new Immanences that he could rule. He had succeeded, perhaps. Or failed. It hardly mattered, after all those cast-out lesser Immanences ascended into Godhead and the Great Power of Sierè, unexpectedly tempted to follow them into apotheosis, destroyed all the southlands.