Winter's Crown

by Alexandra Little

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Zarah kicked and struggled. She tried to light a flame as I had, but all that came from her hands was smoke.

  With a deep inhale, Adhannor claimed the magic that Zarah had stolen. All of Crowndan’s inherited powers flowed out of Zarah’s body in misty tangles. Zarah squealed, then choked.

  When the magic was gone, Adhannor started taking her life. Her body shrunk in on itself, her legs still kicking in futility. Bone crunched, and I spared a tear for my former friend. Her muscles and tissues shriveled until she was as sucked dry as the miners had been.

  When she was nothing but a husk, Adhannor dropped her.

  He seemed to grow in height, and stood taller. His arms bulk and shoulders bulked. His skin smoothed over and grew younger. His sword grew more solid in appearance, until I could have sworn that it was as solid as my own and not some otherworldly creation.

  I lashed out at him with magic tendrils again, but it repelled it with a flick of his sword.

  “Retreat into the trees!” I cried, and ran.

  The armies had not decimated each other. Corpses of dreadwolves and foulings and long-dead elves from both sides littered the landscape. There were only six or seven colossi left, the rest of their companions having falling into crumpled heaps of rock and ice. But abhorred from both sides fought on, aided by what was left of the other creatures.

  We dodged into the trees, and I could feel Adhannor following. I had to but touch the trees, and they uprooted themselves, groaning as they fell into the ground.

  “Thaeglir,” I said.

  “Thaeglir!” Dalandaras shouted. The forest lit itself on fire.

  I heard Adhannor’s frustrated yell. We passed through the trees and into a clearing, where the rift had ended and I had climbed out of it.

  “Form a circle!” Dalandaras shouted in elvish behind me. “Quickly! She needs our strength.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, knowing the elves would hear me. I turned and faced Adhannor as he broke through the fire.

  A colossus threw itself into Adhannor’s path. He hit out with his darkness, and tore the colossus into pieces.

  Aerik and Father came and stood beside me, their swords drawn.

  “This is not safe for you,” I said.

  “You died once,” Father said. “I won’t let it happen again.”

  I stepped forward to meet Adhannor. His sword curled with the tendrils of darkness. He lunged for us. I struck at him, and Father rushed in, but even as Adhannor countered my strikes he blocked Father’s, and sent him backwards with a blow. Aerik cried a warrior’s cry and charged Adhannor, but my sailor had not a foe like this. One of Adhannor’s smoky tendrils struck Aerik in the chest, and bone crunched.

  Behind us, the elves chanted in the old tongue.

  I summoned the light of the old magic, and concentrated it in my blade. I beat back at Adhannor, driving him away from Aerik and towards the rift. My guardian, who I thought had been defeated, came to me once more. She was like my shadow, mirroring my movements and we struck as a double force at Adhannor.

  The elves’ power grew behind me, thick and warm. They drew nothing from the old magic of the rift but from their own selves.

  “Evalandriel,” Dalandaras said. “When you need us, call for us.”

  “Get Aerik,” I shouted to Father. My sword sparked against Adhannor’s as I pushed him closer and closer to the rift.

  “Now, Dalandaras,” I said.

  Their chanting changed into a final cry, and I filled with Dalandaras’ power and the elves’ magic. It strengthened me. I formed a ward. I did not need to sketch into the snow. I formed it with light and fire. The symbols appeared as I called them. The old magic that hung in the air around us began to flicker into view. Adhannor tried to counter with his own binding, his tainted magic slithering out into the air to consume the old magic from the rift. But the magic fought back, and grew agitated when Adhannor tried to grasp it.

  I could use that against him.

  Just has his ward was completed, so was mine. My light blinded even me, but against its purity I felt the chains of darkness tighten around me. He was not going to release me. Not now, and no elven magic was going to counter him. It wasn’t enough to break Adhannor’s bond.

  And then I saw my mother. My beautiful mother, tangled in Adhannor’s blood magic. It weakened me, and he knew it.

  I wasn’t going to allow her to remain his prisoner.

  “Shall we go together, then?” I asked Adhannor. I grabbed his now-flesh arms, and headbutted him once, twice, until he staggered. With my grip strong, I pushed us both into the rift.

  Adhannor kicked and screamed. I did not fight as his tendrils circled around me, squeezing my body in an attempt to crush bone. But he was in a panic now. Kill me, or save himself? This was not his plan. He struck out wildly, drawing in the raw magic around us, using it to slow our descent. I drew in on myself, relying on what the rift had given me when I had died. I didn’t dare take what steamed up from it now, for I knew now what Adhannor didn’t seem to understand.

  You couldn’t take the old magic for your own purposes, unless the old magic wanted you to. It had been Adhannor’s undoing once; it could be it again.

  His oily magic fought to halt our fall. Adhannor thrashed and writhed as he tried to consume the hold magic. But the old magic fought back. To me, it was now a warm comfort, something to be embraced and not destroyed. But it burned Adhannor. His skin singed, the smell rotten and charged. His cries rung my ears and rattled my bones, but I held myself too him, afraid that if I let go, he would escape. My feet scraped at the walls of the rift, and jammed into a crevice, twisting itself. I cried out, but held on to my adversary.

  Adhannor yelled again, and shoved me into the wall. I shoved back, and crushed him into the other side. The black stone splintered beneath his cheek and cut him deep. Flesh could be destroyed, even on an immortal.

  He returned the favor, and slammed my head against the rift walls. I burned him again, his robes catching fire. The flames licked at his face. The scent of rotting eggs filled the air. I reformed my seal. It was not for containment however, but for protection.

  Adhannor’s dark magic reached out and tried to destroy it. But I only cocooned myself in my own power, and let Adhannor battle uselessly against it.

  The old magic trembled in the rift beneath us. It was roiling now, like a sea churning in a storm. I remembered the sea as it was six months ago, with mother struggling at the helm and Aerik climbing the rigging to tie up a whipping sail. And then we crashed, and split, and sunk, and mother drowned. But this wasn’t six months ago. I wasn’t swimming after mother. She was here, and I could hear the seagulls’ calls and smell the salt in the air.

  Adhannor was the ship, and I would drive him onto the rocks, even if I had to go down with him. I died once; I was not afraid to do so again.

  “Three thousand years, and you have not learned,” I said as the old magic churned wildly. It was almost time.

  “I will consume you,” Adhannor breathed. “And with your power, I will consume all that is here.”

  “It will burn us first.”

  “I will destroy you first.”

  “Then we will both burn,” I whispered.

  Adhannor grasped my neck, and I felt him drawing the magic out of me. My seal cracked. The power ignited. The old magic rebelled. And the world exploded around us.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  When I awoke, the sky was bright and blue. I breathed, and treasured it.

  I heard clapping, and turned my head. I was lying on the ground once more. But I wasn’t in the rift, as I expected to be. Instead, I was in a large crater. Scorch marks emanated from where I lay. I had burned so hot that I had melted the rocks into black glass.

  Adhanel stood a ways away, clapping at me. She smiled; it was a beautiful look on her.

  “Well done, pet.”

  I looked to my left. Mother stood there, and smiled at me. “ I was rather
worried about you for a moment. But you’ve done all right in the end.”

  “Am I dead?” I murmured once again.

  Far behind Mother, I saw Father crest the crater wall. Dalandaras was close behind. Father barreled through Mother’s ghost. With a last smile for me she faded from view.

  Father skidded to his knees next to me.

  I tried to sit up, and failed. “I’m not dead, then,” I said as much to myself as Father.

  He grabbed me in his arms and squeezed me tight.

  I was happy do let him do the hugging. Tears pressed at my eyes, but I didn’t have the strength to let them flow. Dalandaras did seem to have he strength for it though, and his eyes were bright with them.

  “Help me up,” I said at last. Father and Dalandaras each took an arm, and set me on my feet.

  My legs were unsteady, and I wobbled like an infant learning to walk. Aerik and Firien stood atop the crater wall, my keeper leaning heavily on the elf.

  “We have a little problem,” Firien said calmly. “I am truly glad you are alive, inheritor, but you had better come see this for yourself.”

  Father and Dalandaras guided me up the steep crater slope, the black rocks crumbling underneath my feet. Firien used his free hand to leverage me over the near-vertical peak of the wall, and I nearly tumbled down the other side. By the time Father and Dalandaras steadied me again, I saw our little problem.

  The elves had survived. They were all bleeding in some form, and Eliawen and Malarin were both prone on the ground, but their swords were in their hands.

  And surrounding us all, in a wide-sweeping half-arc, were all of the old magic creatures. The colossi, the corrupted foulings and dreadwolves, the risen abhorred that had fought for both Adhannor and myself, all had regained their strength and appeared again.

  “We won’t live through this,” Dalandaras murmured.

  “Can we outrun them?” Aerik whispered.

  “Not in our state,” Father replied.

  Among the mass of creatures, I saw my guardian, my ancient ancestress. I felt her strength, her energy, and just the slightest hint of impatience.

  “Take me down there,” I said.

  “You cannot—” Dalandaras said.

  “No arguments,” I interrupted.

  We made our way cautiously down the slope, passing by the elves. When we were a mere twenty feet away from the sweep of the old magic creatures, we halted. I disentangled myself from Father and Dalandaras, and stepped forward.

  My guardian stepped out from the crowd of creatures.

  Cautiously, I drew my sword, and saluted her as she had first saluted me.

  She drew her own, and saluted back. And then she knelt, her head bowed. “Lady,” she murmured with the power of the old magic.

  One by one, all of the other creatures knelt—the colossi, the undead, even the foulings and the dreadwolves lowered themselves in supplication.

  “Lady,” they murmured as a whole, their voices trembling the ground.

  I heard the elves shift behind me, and turned.

  “Inheritor,” Firien murmured, kneeling in the snow. “Lady.”

  Malarin and Nogoriel bowed their heads. The others—Lorandal and Eliawen included—followed Firien’s lead. Dalandaras was the last to kneel, but he bowed more deeply than all the others. “Lady,” he murmured.

  Father and Aerik stared.

  I could do little but stare back. “Oh,” I murmured. “Right.”

  EPILOGUE

  I made the long way down to Adhanel’s tomb one more time.

  Father and Dalandaras protested the loudest, but I insisted that I go alone. Even though the magic had finally faded from me and I could barely stand, it was something that they could not help me with. I think Adhanel would protest as well, but she had not come to me since Tal Aesiri.

  In the great hall with the ghostly light and swirling wind, I found Adhanel’s body once more. And by the pillar, hiding the shadows, was her five-pronged crown. After a very long hesitation, where I doubted why I was even there, I picked it up. After three thousand years, it was still as solid as any object. The metal warmed in my hands, a metal that was neither silver nor iron nor steel, which sang with the hum of the old magic. I thought I heard Adhanel’s contented laugh echo through the cavern.

  Crowns, inheritors, colossi that obeyed, abhorred that still needed to be free, old magic and blood magic…there was still so much that made my head spin. They were still things that I needed to figure out.

  With the crown firmly in my grasp, I bowed to Adhanel’s body, and departed her tomb.

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