by BJ Hanlon
They were up here because of Suuli and the Foci. Because of them, they had came here and he lost her.
Edin eventually fell into a pain-filled sleep.
He dreamed about her. Days together in the mountains, the night at Tor’s mansion. Then she was gone. Her image fading, even in his dreams.
Her words were muffled and choked by water. “Go on…” she gargled. Her gray-green eyes glittering like stars in the moonlight.
Edin woke with a start. There was a lot of movement around him and he pushed himself up. His arm worked but barely.
He heard hammering. Something beating against the ice. Edin glanced around. The fire he’d been sleeping by was out, covered with snow.
It was night still but the world was bright. To the west, across the raging river he saw movement. Groups of dark figures running toward them. Edin was too weak to move… too weak to do anything.
Dorset called out something in Yechill’s language and the hammering stopped.
Edin saw Yechill chopping at the ice bridge. Then he raced back and reached down for Edin. He turned his back and took Edin’s arms around his neck. “Hold…” he said.
Edin wanted to. He wanted to squeeze and wring his neck. Yechill, the dematians… they were the reason…
He wrapped his arms around and as he was about to choke the warrior… or try to, Yechill spoke and Dorset raised his arms toward the mountains and cliffs to their right. The ground rumbled like a giant was shaking it.
More and more dematians began to pour over the moonlit rise. There were hundreds now rushing in that wild animalistic gait.
A wrenching, grinding noise came from above. Edin looked up and saw small chunks of stone and ice teetering at the edge and cracking.
He noticed some of the dematians were glancing up too. Then as if in slow motion, a blanket of powdery snow began to drop. A moment later, a huge boulder.
“Run,” Dorset called as he got next to Yechill carrying Edin. And they moved, fast, heading east and following the mountain line.
Henny whose arm was in a sling ran toward the sled. He picked up a pack, then another.
“Henny come on you big fool,” Dorset called, his voice nearly drown out by the crumbling sheets of rock and ice.
They passed him and the big man lumbered. There were crunching cries and skittering shrieks. Edin glanced over his shoulder. Gigantic bursts of rock and snow were dropping, careening off the side of the mountain and onto the dematians.
Puffs of white leapt up as the dematians were smothered. In an instant, cries were silent as more and more sheets of white and gray tumbled down.
Then, like a rolling thunder cloud, it began to follow mountains in their direction. It grew faster, a large boulder slashed down the side of the mountain taking with it more gouges of stone and ice. The powdery billow formed a crystalline roof over their heads.
“Gods…” Edin whispered. His heart thumped in his chest as he held onto Yechill’s neck. The sheet smothered the river. Crushing everything. The snow bridge, the escarpment, and everything behind.
Arianne…
They cut around what at first looked like a small boulder trapped in the snow. Then it began to grow, rising out of the land at a quick pace. Then he saw it turned into a rock wall.
One that blocked the south.
They were trapped between the wall and the mountains in a short gorge. The avalanche continued to pulse toward them. Dusts of powdery snow began to drop like they were in some peaceful wonderland.
They ran, the gorge grew thin and behind, he heard Henny struggling to keep up. Edin saw they were being funneled slowly away from the mountains, though not much. No matter how far they’d go, he knew they’d be smothered. They’d be buried with the dematians and the river that took Arianne.
The glaciers were cracking with no end and spreading quicker as it followed them.
“What do we do?” Henny yelled behind him, his voice barely heard over the thunder.
Edin didn’t care about his life… only those of his friends and getting revenge. His arms were around Yechill’s throat. One of the Foci that sent him here… sent him and Arianne to their deaths.
If he could… the thought stopped in his head. Someone or something was there telling him, whispering something. It wasn’t the Foci, it was the dematians. It was Yio Volor…
Edin lessened his grip around Yechill’s neck.
They cut further south around an opening in the cliffs and in front of them, Dorset stopped after about five steps. Ahead of them was a twenty-foot rock face shining and slippery with blue icicle walls and droplets of cold glossy water trickling down.
Trapped.
Edin took a breath. He looked at Dorset’s face, fearful, resilient. He was a good man who’d followed Edin to hell. A freezing hell.
Then he glanced at Henny who appeared next to him. Another man who was content, strong and had all he needed.
They wouldn’t die. Not on Edin’s watch. “Backs against the cliff…” Edin cried over the earsplitting roar of the avalanche.
Dorset looked at him, freight and regret in his eyes.
Edin held his jaw firm and nodded toward the bluff. The group went there and the snow drifts disappeared and they were on crunchy tundra. At the wall, they looked up.
“Impossible to climb.” Henny yelled.
“Drop…” Edin called into Yechill’s ear but the Foci warrior didn’t understand. Then he remembered when they’d first seen the dematian troops at the lake. “Under…”
This Yechill understood and lowered him.
Edin clambered against the wall, holding onto a thick, freezing cold icicle. He didn’t have much energy, didn’t even know if this would work. “Get close…” Edin barked, his voice hoarse and pained, cracked at the last word.
They did. They lined up along the wall as the billows of snow began to hit the ground at the mountain’s base. It was moving toward them like a wave. Edin closed his eyes and felt for the talent. He didn’t have much, barely anything left, but it had to work. Had to for his friends…
He waited until he could feel the flakes of cold snow caressing his cheeks. Edin gritted his teeth and held his arms before them like a priest giving a sermon.
He felt it growing around him, around his companions. An ethereal bubble, a huge culrian appeared in his mind climbing up and up with the rock face as snow and stone began to pelt it.
The pressure grew, trying to smother him and the culrian but he kept fighting, growing it. Pushing it outward and upward.
The sound of the avalanche was muted behind his concentration, but he could still feel it, still hear it along with the gasps, prayers, and mutterings from his friends.
Pain wracked his shoulders and he felt as if he were holding up a falling mountain.
Then, above and around, everything stopped as the sound continued to move along the range. A thought came through him, what if there were other towns or cities along the base of the mountains? What about other tribes like Yechill’s?
Edin had to put it from his mind. He couldn’t think like that, he had to concentrate on what was happening. Edin felt himself fading under the stress, then when Edin opened his eyes and glanced up, he saw a dome of snow. Pure and white with the sparkle of blue ice. A wooziness came over him, he was lightheaded.
Edin fell and collapsed to a knee with shrieks around him. He’d tried. He did the best he could but the snow would crush him.
But it didn’t. A light blanket flowed over him. Then, there were cries of joy. Someone yanked him to his feet and an arm wrapped around his back.
“You did it…” Henny whispered.
Edin said nothing. He looked up and saw they were in a huge snow cave but it somehow looked solid. “I need to sleep.” He closed his eyes.
Edin felt a tug on his shoulder and blinked awake.
Yechill was above him climbing the icicle wall. At least what had been an icicle wall. Now much of the shards of ice were on the ground near the base of whe
re he was climbing. He held his knife in one hand and was chipping away.
They were in the snow cave with light squirting through from a small hole in the dome like an eye.
Edin’s mouth was dry and his body weak. The Foci warrior had an impossible amount of stamina, Edin thought.
“Water…” Edin said.
Dorset was sitting next to him in the snow and popped the plug on a waterskin. He helped Edin take a few drinks before leaning his head back and looking up at the warrior working.
“You saved us…” Dorset said. “Again.”
Edin pictured Arianne standing on the ice bridge. He gritted his teeth. “Not her…” Edin whispered trying to hold back the pain that would come back momentarily. “Not her…”
Dorset put a hand on Edin’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “She saved all of us.”
“Why did she come?” Edin whispered. He could picture Arianne in that blue gown at the ball, beautiful and regal. A princess in every way. Edin’s heart felt a thousand pounds and his stomach churned. “She could’ve been safe in the castle. Even if she was with that blotard Casitas…”
“She came because she wanted to, she came because she believed in you, and she loved you… she died for the same reason.”
Edin closed his eyes to not cry and tried to let the pain and anger sink away. Edin looked up at the Foci warrior; he’d been sent by Suuli as well. Were they all sent to die? Could he blame Yechill for the path they had taken? Edin agreed to it. Suuli meant what he said… he believed, maybe even saw the power of the object that was now out of their reach because of the dematians.
But he didn’t kill Arianne. The dematians did and after they got out of this icy tomb, Edin would show the dematians a mad magus.
They climbed the wall two days later. Edin was beginning to feel like himself in body though not in spirit. There was no way he’d ever feel happy and hopeful again. All he needed to do was to kill every dematian he could before dying.
Being an Ecta Mastrino meant nothing. The prophecy meant nothing. Edin needed to slay them all and go to meet Arianne in the heavens. She’d be there with her parents. Maybe it would be like that terrible and wonderful vision in the tower.
The next world. That was where they’d live, maybe even start a family together Edin thought halfway up the wall with his fingers clenching ice cold stone.
A foot slipped above him and particles of ice and rock fell over him like a hard rain. He tasted mud and gravel before looking away at the ground ten feet below him. It wasn’t a far drop, but it’d hurt.
He deserved the pain. He needed it, his small finger let go, then the next. It’ll only hurt.
“Edin, come on,” Dorset called from above him.
Edin swallowed and clamped his hand back onto the ledge. He reached up and gripped a small lip a few inches above his head and climbed.
At the top, they stood in a vacant white world. For at least three hundred yards, there was nothing but snow. Then the snow petered off. Beyond it, like a step to nothingness he could see the yellowish fog that hung above the swamp.
“Let’s not go that way,” Henny said and no one argued.
They turned east again. Walking through deep snow drifts that went to the chest and sometimes neck. After going only thirty or so feet Edin stopped. This wouldn’t work.
Edin called for Henny to stop breaking the trail and moved up to his position. They needed to move faster and not tire themselves out before they starved. An idea came and he touched the snow drift in front of it and felt the water particles within it. He concentrated on them, changing them until he felt the coldness between his fingers.
Edin pried his fingers from the ice with a pop and looked at it. In front of them, was a clean, glass like sheet of ice.
“Wow…” Dorset said from behind him.
Edin pulled himself up. The three followed. Edin reached down and adjusted his sword. Henny thankfully had grabbed it with the packs when they were fleeing the avalanche. Too bad most of the food and the rest of their clothes and bedrolls were gone.
It was slow going over the slippery ice path but at least they weren’t wearing themselves out trudging through the snow.
They slipped and stumbled deep into the night. There was a lot of light with the moon and stars reflecting off the newly formed glacier.
It felt near midnight before ice sloped down into a forest of evergreens. The avalanche had simply stopped.
Under the canopy, they rested with a fire and a few morsels of the remaining deer meat.
For three days, they travelled through the green forest but food was scarce, the winter animals were illusive and there were no fruits in the winter.
Edin couldn’t stop picturing Arianne’s last look. Why didn’t she save herself and let him die?
The big farmhand looked weary and tired before him, his shoulders slumped and his head bent forward. His steps, actually the entire group’s footsteps, were little more than shuffling over the forest floor.
Edin’s stomach was growling like a crillio cat and he couldn’t satiate himself with enough icy water. He was wobbling and weak. His eyes hurt in his head and a bitter wind, somehow penetrating the trees, pelted him and burned his cheeks.
There was little to do. Each day, they travelled less distance than the one before. Edin hoped they’d hit the sea soon. From there, maybe they could find a town or a village… though they were broke. Arianne always carried the coin.
His jaw quivered as he stared at the forest floor. Then his head ran into a big meaty back.
“Watch it,” Henny grumbled.
Edin looked up and then beyond Henny’s bulk. Dorset and Yechill were staring down out over a walled city on the water or more aptly ice.
Wood and stone cottages and larger buildings were partially covered in snow. The streets, on which a few people, carts, and animals moved, were brown and slushy. Near the shore was a small castle, barely a keep with the gates wide open and tall plumed guards resting on benches. Beyond the city walls were farms with cows, horses, and for some reason dogs.
“I smell food…” Dorset grumbled.
“Beds…” Henny said.
Edin nodded. He didn’t know where they were, but it was alive and there was no sign of an attack.
To the right of them was a trail that led down the steep bluff toward a road. They reached the base of the winding trail an hour later and ended up a few hundred yards south of the city. They walked past fenced-in yards with many white, gray, and black dogs. There were long sleds also standing against the fences.
During the descent, he’d felt guards watching them and he hadn’t seen any other people entering the city since they first appeared above it.
As they drew up to the gate, he noticed one of the gate doors was closed and both the guards had their blades half drawn.
Edin strolled, as best as he could, up to the guards and nodded as politely as he could.
“Halt,” one said, a short man, fat around the midsection. His red face bulged in his too tight helm.
Above, on the battlement, were bowmen, two of them with bows out and arrows nocked though the strings weren’t drawn.
The fat guard eyed them all up and down, looking at them as if they were members of a different world.
“What is your business in Coldwater?”
“Coldwater… thank the gods,” Dorset whispered from behind him.
“We’re looking for food and a place to sleep,” Edin said. “We’ve been hiking for days—”
“And the savage behind you?”
Edin raised an eyebrow. He glanced back and saw Henny, Dorset, and then Yechill. It dawned on him.
The tribesman was standing with his chin up and his shoulders back like a proud man. The haft of his axe pointed over his shoulder toward the eastern sky.
Edin glared at the man. “He is not a savage,” Edin spat. “He has been our guide, he has helped save our lives more than once on this trip.”
“And where were yo
u heading to? Why did you come from the west?”
Edin took a breath. “Our journey is our business, we have coin.” Edin lied though he hoped Henny or Dorset did, “and we are looking to spend it. Now let us pass.”
“He can’t enter with a weapon,” the fat guard said pointing over Edin’s shoulders.
Edin tilted his head slightly the way Grent used to and stared. The guard took a step back. He was shorter than Edin and his watery blue eyes looked scared.
“It’s mine,” Henny said stepping forward. The farmer’s arms were bigger than the man’s head. “He carries it for me.”
The guard tried to look up at Henny but the sun was overhead and he blinked in the bright light. Then he looked back over to Yechill. “You won’t be a problem, will you?”
“He won’t,” Edin said.
“Doesn’t he speak the common tongue?”
“He’s learning,” Dorset said. “I’m teaching him.”
“It is your charge to watch him. We do not take kindly to the sav…” The guard met Edin’s eyes and then stopped himself. “If he isn’t civilized, we will hold you all responsible and you’ll be seeing the Baron’s dungeons. Do you understand?”
“We do,” Edin said and walked past the man, his shoulder cracking the fat guard’s.
The bowmen dropped their weapons as they walked beneath the portcullis and onto a thin muddy road.
“Don’t suppose any of you have any coin?” Edin asked hopefully as he passed a nervous looking carter.
“I do,” Dorset said. “Though I’ve never used it here.” Dorset offered a small leather pouch to Edin.
Edin took it and nodded as they ambled down the street being watched by nearly everyone. A group of large-limbed men with muscles bulging from beneath their tunics glared at them. One muttered ‘savage’.
Edin watched the men, his hand beneath his cloak clutching the hilt of his sword. He wasn’t in fighting shape but he doubted those men would take it easy on him.