by Cindy Dees
He drew back sharply, appalled. “I would never forsake you or the others for status or appearing to be more than I am. I’m just a kid from Hickory Hollow.”
“Will,” she chided gently. “You’re so much more than that now. You’re becoming a formidable warrior and an important man. Why else do you think Thanon and the Talons of Koth are recruiting you?”
“Oh, him. We merely bonded over fighting Boki together.”
“It’s more than that. Almost all of them are paxan, but they still want you, and you’re human. They know you’re special.”
This whole business of growing up and becoming the man his father had secretly trained him to be felt so strange. Like he was shedding the only skin he’d ever known and transforming into another creature altogether. Or maybe this feeling was Bloodroot’s fault.
Although the tree lord’s spirit was mostly quiet within him these days, every now and then that other consciousness made itself known in no uncertain terms. Sometimes he wondered if Bloodroot weren’t merely biding his time, planning and plotting some new means of manipulating and generally torturing his human host.
A faint rumble of humor from deep in the back of his mind vibrated through his skull in response to that thought.
He cursed at the treant. Obviously, Bloodroot was not done with Will, or the sliver of heartwood containing the tree lord’s spirit would have dropped off his chest already.
Scowling, he glared out across the dull, unpolished steel color of the sea. The next time Gawaine asked him if he’d like to keep Bloodroot’s spirit or get rid of it, by the stars, he was dumping the unnatural wretch.
* * *
Raina sighed in relief when their barge made landfall in Dumaw, a dusty outpost in the process of building up around a new Imperial Army fort and an Imperial Navy contingent that had recently been assigned to the area. The town was being developed by the new governess as the trade terminus of an overland cargo route from Fleuran, outside the Bone Reef, to Dumaw, inside it.
Raina supposed Dumaw could prove strategic as well for keeping out invaders who thought to find a passage through the Bone Reef and enter the Estarran Sea. Of course, the naval contingent might be equally useful for keeping local Merr contained within Estarra and away from the port of Dupree. Either way, the completion of Maren’s Belt around the Estarran Sea should render the Merr kingdom significantly less strategic.
For a few more silver apiece, they were able to stay on the barge and sail up the west coast of the sea to the Sorrow Wold. Her companions expressed alarm when she made it known that was where she wished to go. As if she were not fully aware of the dangers of the Sorrow Wold already. She’d grown up not far from its margins and had heard plenty of stories of the monsters and bandits who lurked within its murky boughs.
It was nearly dawn when the barge’s prow ground against a pebbled strand. Raina roused with her friends, and they waded ashore, woken sharply by the cold water on their bare feet and legs. Shivering, she found a driftwood log to sit on and don her boots.
As the first pink of dawn reflected off the sea like a fine sheen of oil, she turned her back on it to study the dark and forbidding forest looming before her. It looked grim and black under the heavy canopy’s gloom, like the gaping maw of a great beast about to swallow her whole. And somewhere in the belly of the beast was Justin, waiting for her.
“I don’t like it,” Eben declared.
“Me, neither,” Rynn agreed.
Sha’Li shrugged, saying nothing. Raina moved up beside the lizardman girl. “Near this forest lies a place called the Scholl Swamp. It’s said to contain black lizardmen, but I’ve never seen one myself.”
Sha’Li’s gaze lit up. “Really? Can we go there?”
Raina shrugged. “If my errand or Gawaine’s ring leads us there, I don’t see why not. With you among our number, I would feel perfectly safe going there.”
Sha’Li’s guarded expression softened for a moment. “There is no need to cheer me up.”
“I’ve been worried about you. Ever since what happened between you and Eben—”
“It was my fault. Blame him not.”
“What exactly happened?” Raina finally got a chance to ask directly after all these months.
“I betrayed his trust.” She shrugged. “The blame is mine.”
“I’m sure it’s not that bad. If you two talk it out, he’ll get over it. He’s not the kind to hold grudges.”
Sha’Li responded, “I let Kerryl go. Eben had him cornered and was going to kill him. I interfered so Moonrunner could escape. Eben will not forgive me that.”
Ah. Understanding dawned. No wonder Eben had been so furious with her. “Why did you let him go?”
“He pursues some good goal even if his methods are dubious. Evil he is not. After all, Kendrick chose to stay with him. I could not let Eben kill him.”
“I agree completely, White Heart or not,” Raina said firmly. “You did the right thing.”
“Tell Eben that,” Sha’Li replied bitterly.
“He’ll come around. Just give him a little time.”
“Six months he’s had!”
“By the way, is it me, or are you getting better at speaking the way pinkskins do?”
That earned her a great, glowering glare from Sha’Li. “I have been practicing.”
“You’re doing great.”
“Among my people, the most important meaning or part of a sentence is spoken last. But your kind always says the person or thing, the word of action, and then what or who they did it to. Boring it—” She paused, correcting herself. “It is a boring way to speak.”
Raina grinned. “That’s us. Boring pinkskins who never say or do anything interesting.”
“Huh!” The grunt was as close to laughter as Sha’Li usually came.
Raina took it as a small victory to have elicited any sign of humor from her dour friend.
“Any idea exactly where in this forsaken forest we’re supposed to go?” Will asked from the edge of the trees. “I see no trail.”
“There will be paths aplenty,” Raina replied. “And no, I have no specific destination in mind.”
Rosana turned around. “You’re going to drag us into that nightmare forest just to wander around? What’s going on here? Why are we here, and why are you leading us in there?”
Now that they were finally alone, she could afford to fill them in. “The Mages of Alchizzadon have invited me to visit them. They told me to meet their guide in the Sorrow Wold, and he will take me the rest of the way.”
“We’re going with you,” Will declared.
Raina shook her head. “Not the terms of the invitation. I have to go alone.”
Rosana protested, “Sweetie, you know what they plan to do to you.”
“They promised they will let me go whenever I want. They just want to talk.”
Rynn was frowning. “Didn’t you shout something about Alchizzadon when we were in the Dominion lands? During the fight to close the gate, was it not?”
“Correct. The claviger was one of them.”
“Who are these mages exactly?” he pressed.
She sighed. “It’s a long story. They’ve been interbreeding with the women of my family for a very long time in hopes of increasing our magical prowess.”
“If you’re any indication, I should say they succeeded.” Rynn snorted.
Raina rolled her eyes. “Nonetheless, they’re not nice people, and they have secret agendas of their own that they pursue, apparently. I need to find out what they’re up to beyond trying to kidnap me and use me for their own purposes.”
That sent Rynn’s eyebrows sailing upward. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to visit them?”
“No! I think it’s a terrible idea, but if I don’t make nice with them, they will kidnap me, drain my magic, and kill me permanently.”
“That’s it. You’re not going alone,” Will declared.
“Really, I appreciate your concern, but I have to do
this.”
“Is it a White Heart thing?” Sha’Li asked.
Rosana jumped in to declare, “No. It’s not. It’s a stupid Raina thing.”
Raina sighed. They didn’t understand. Justin was tangled up with the mages, who’d already performed some unnatural magic on him to make him part ogre mage. She had to make sure he was safe and rescue him if necessary. He would do the same for her; she could do no less for him.
She hefted her pack higher on her shoulders. “Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER
10
Princess Endellian sat on the raised dais of the Imperial banquet table, looking out across the great feasting hall at dozens of long rows of tables holding the entirety of the assembled court. Her father, directly to her left, looked as disinterested as he usually did at these affairs, but even Maximillian understood the necessity of keeping the nobles and petty functionaries occupied with pomp, politics, parties, and of course alcohol. Lots and lots of that to dull their minds and distract them from the genuinely important matters of ruling the Empire.
The feast would go on for hours still. At least a dozen courses of lavish food had come and gone, and there were a dozen more to go. Everyone would be so gorged when they finally departed the tables in the wee hours of the morning that they would have barely the wherewithal to haul their bloated bodies to bed and collapse until sometime late tomorrow afternoon. And in the meantime, Maximillian would attend to the important affairs of state while they snored.
A commotion at the hall’s entrance, at the base of the gigantic double doors made of solid gold and inlaid with every precious stone imaginable, caused her to look up sharply from her pâté of fatted quail’s breast served with white truffles, a sauce made of five-hundred-year-old brandy, and garnished with edible gold tissue.
She spotted the source of the commotion and came half out of her seat she was so shocked. “He’s back,” she breathed. “Dread High Lord Tyviden is alive. He has returned.”
Her father had sent Ammertus’s hotheaded son across the Bridge of Ice nearly twenty years previously to cool his heels and redeem himself after an embarrassing incident with King Regalo of Haraland. Of course, the catch to that was no one had ever successfully returned from the southern continent on the far side of the Sea of Glass, over which the Bridge of Ice crossed. For many years now, Tyviden had been presumed dead like all the others who’d ever attempted the crossing.
The bridge itself was not actually made of ice but of ancient titanwood. However, the southern sea that it crossed was horrendously stormy and cold, and the bridge was so often coated entirely in ice that it had become known as the Bridge of Ice.
“Indeed? Tyviden in the flesh?” Maximillian asked.
A rush of movement from down the high table turned out to be Ammertus leaping up from his seat and charging down to greet his long-lost son, his court robes sailing out behind him to reveal his trousers beneath. Always so impetuous, Ammertus was. No decorum whatsoever.
“Tyviden looks if not older, perhaps a bit wiser,” she murmured to her father.
Maximillian’s consort and Endellian’s mother, Archduchess Iolanthe, heard Endellian’s comment and laughed aloud. “If only wisdom and moderation in temperament went hand in hand in the line of Ammertus.”
Even Maximillian smiled at that observation. From up here on the dais at the far side of the great feasting hall, Endellian still caught whiffs of the emotional reunion between father and son. It was sweet, if one was the sentimental sort, she supposed.
Maximillian folded his silken napkin beside his plate. “At least the whelp had the decency to interrupt this interminable affair and give me an excuse to leave.”
“You can’t leave,” Iolanthe chided. “The meal’s not even half over.”
“I would hear of young Tyviden’s adventures. As I recall, I ordered him to bring back something interesting. I should like to see what he managed.”
And after all, it wasn’t like he needed Iolanthe’s permission to do anything.
“Korovo. Iolanthe. Endellian,” her father murmured, “to my library, if you please.”
When the Emperor rose from his seat, a hasty scraping of chairs and benches arose from the floor as everyone awkwardly leaped to their feet also, mouths full of food and glasses of wine in hand. Surprised as they were by her father’s unexpected departure, the result was an indecorous scramble that she found more than a little amusing.
Rising somewhat more gracefully, she followed Maximillian and his closest advisors through the private exit behind the dais. They moved down a short hall and through a secret doorway into her father’s library, a great, hulking chamber filled to bursting with treasures from all over Urth. Accumulated across thousands of years, the collection was awe-inspiring even to her.
He moved to the priceless desk made of wood from all the great tree lords felled over the millennia. An intricate inlaid pattern on its top depicted Maximillian chopping down the great trees and standing upon their great trunks brought low.
Ammertus and his son, Tyviden, were announced by the chamberlain and ushered into the room. Endellian was shocked at the changes in Tyviden. He was leaner, his face tanned and windburned into a leathery texture, his eyes permanently squinted as if against the glare of sun off snow. His hair was long and wild, and he wore a great fur coat all the way to his ankles. A deep fur hood was pushed back at the moment, and a long knitted scarf was wrapped round and round his neck. He was the very picture of a wild explorer returned from some icy wilderness.
“So, young Tyviden. Have you brought me a new bauble for my collection?” Maximillian asked pleasantly enough.
Clearly, her father was signaling his willingness to forgive and forget. Tyviden had been smart to time his arrival for the middle of an event Maximillian was known to despise.
“I have brought you several, Your Resplendent Majesty, in hopes that one of them might please you greatly enough to forgive my undeserving self for old indiscretions, for which I am abjectly apologetic.”
A pretty enough speech. It would please her father.
“Let us see what you have brought me, then.”
“If you would permit me to remove my coat, I fear I am not properly dressed for this warm climate.”
Maximillian nodded, and Tyviden shed the greatcoat, revealing a heavy leather vest and thick, woolen sweater below. Just how cold was it where he had been?
Maximillian was leaning forward in his throne, more interested than she’d seen him in a long time. “You are the first person ever to return from across the Bridge of Ice. Tell me what lies beyond.”
“As you know, Your Majesty, the bridge itself is made of ironwood. Great storms cover the bridge with seawater and snow, which freeze into a thick layer of ice. I walked for weeks upon the bridge, melting snow for water and fishing for food.”
“How did you melt the water?” Maximillian asked.
“Fire magic. Without that, I would have perished in a matter of days.”
“Continue.”
“The bridge leads to the Sea of Glass, which is a great frozen wasteland of ice upon ice upon ice. I do not believe there is an actual continent there, but rather a massive, frozen ice cap resting upon the sea.”
“Why do you think this?” her father asked.
“Because in the interior of that place, there are ranges of icy mountains crisscrossed by fault lines. When the seaquakes happen, instead of earth rising up out of them, seawater surges through the cracks. I believe massive sea currents and tidal forces beneath the ice cap fracture it and thrust up the ice mountains from below.”
Endellian commented, “It sounds violent and uninhabitable.”
“Violent, yes. Uninhabitable, no,” Tyviden answered.
“Do tell,” Maximillian responded quickly.
“Certain types of ice in the sea can support plant life. These areas are called Beardlands and are said to be made from the beard of Hoardunn.”
There was a name she hadn’t h
eard in a long time. The Undine Jarl, Hoardunn, had been one of the great giants driven out of Koth by the coming of her father and his companions to the continent of Koth, which had been called Ymir in the Age of Giants.
Tyviden was speaking again. “Barbarian tribes of hydesmyn who call themselves Sudrekkar live throughout the Beardlands. I brought several Sudrekkar back with me, in fact. They are slaves I acquired in my travels. It would be my pleasure to gift them to you and your High Lord Inquisitor to examine their minds and memories.”
“Excellent.” Maximillian glanced over at her. “If you would let Laernan know I have several subjects for him to empty, Endellian? I want all the images, all the knowledge, all the information he can glean about this place and these people.”
“Yes, Father.” She dutifully made a note recording the order to her half brother, the High Lord Inquisitor Laernan.
“Continue, Tyviden.”
Her father was using his first name and dropping titles. Maximillian was well pleased, indeed, with the report he was receiving.
Tyviden bowed his head and continued obediently, “Beyond the Beardlands lies a rift in the sea. It appears to be a bottomless hole of some kind. I was not able to enter it or examine it too closely, for great superstition surrounds it. The Sudrekkar call it Hoardunn’s Hearth after the great gouts of heat that rise out of it nearly continuously. The area near this rift is constantly filled with a thick mist the locals call Hoardunn’s Breath. I expect it comes from the meeting of heat and ice around the rift. Above this great rift is a continuous and magnificent display of a phenomenon…” He paused, obviously searching for words. “I can best describe it as skyfire. It is as if great waves of fire of every color swirl and dance across the sky. The Sudrekkar call it Glimrosud.”
A vague visual image of spectacular colors swirling through a black night sky reached her from Tyviden’s vivid memory of it.
“It’s hot.” Tyviden continued, “When the Glimrosud burns, it warms everything and even melts the surface ice. The combination of heat from Hoardunn’s Hearth and the skyfire causes everything to melt slightly. Then, when the Glimrosud ends, the layer of standing water freezes over everything into a perfectly smooth, clear layer of new ice that looks just like glass. And,” he added ruefully, “it is just as slippery.” He lifted one of his boots and showed how the bottom of it was studded with many sharp spikes designed to dig into ice. “I took more falls than I can count until I managed to take a pair of these off a Sudrekkar.”