“No.” I looked down at myself, thinking to see whatever she saw, but there was nothing.
She knelt beside the brook. “You were chosen to die. Yet you live.”
“You said my medallion saved me from the Brine Beast. How?”
“The Beast is a feral monster, but it loves its master.”
“Faerran, the sea-goddess.”
“Faerran is a feeble substitute. Veronis is the Beast’s true master. Before he was a prisoner, Veronis was the god of all creatures, great and small. Your clans turned against him, but the animals of this island did not. They remember. At Faerran’s insistence, the Brine Beast came to take four souls that day. When it sensed the symbol around your neck, the symbol of a worshipper of its true master, it hesitated. And when your mother offered herself instead, the Beast took her and let you live.”
I struggled to absorb what the mystic was saying: I’d been spared not just because Mother had taken my place, but also because I’d worn her medallion. A talisman tied to Veronis. Which meant … “My mother worshipped Veronis. She believed the Forbidden Scriptures.”
The mystic cocked her head. “Of course. Why else would she name you after a holy traitor, a woman both beloved and abhorred?”
Why indeed. “How did she hide it from my father? Why didn’t she tell me?”
The mystic held up a hand. “I know much, but I do not know all. Those are your mother’s secrets. The answers died with her.”
Sorrow bloomed in my chest. Maybe I’d never really known her, and never would. “Doyen said what my mother did was blasphemy. That my life insults the gods.” Although Gwylor claimed to care not one bit whether I lived or died.
“All men think they know the gods’ minds. But to know a god, to see his true face … ’Tis a cost few are willing to pay.” She tapped the hollow sockets where her eyes should’ve been. “If the gods are angered, you will not need to be told. You will feel their wrath, and you will have no doubts. Tell me, what do you think of your death god now that you’ve been burned by him?”
I felt the ghost of violet flames and shuddered. “Gwylor frightens me. I don’t trust him.” I sat down beside her on the grassy shore. “You follow the Forbidden Scriptures. You worship the Fallen Ones. How do you know their version of the stories is true?” Were Aillira and Veronis heroes and Gwylor the villain, or was it the other way around?
Her many eyes seemed to laugh at me. “Truth is not what matters, only perception. Whom do you side with? Love or power? Strength or innocence? Which qualities are most admirable? Which qualities do you desire most in your warriors, your chieftains, your gods? You must decide for yourself. The Culling was meant to show you this.”
“Show me what? Why was I drawn into Gwylor’s trial?” My body had been pulled toward the beating heart in the god of death’s hand like iron to a lodestone.
“It was your gift that answered Gwylor’s call. To read a soul is to see the true nature of another being, to observe the beauty and cruelty that exist alongside each other within every one of us. This was what you wished to know. That there is another side to your death god. Another side to your father. Another side to your own heart, and where its loyalties lie.” She gestured at the medallion dangling against my chest. “That is why you entered the trial. It is why I came to find you. To show you another side to a story you only think you know.”
The mystic waved a hand over the brook. An image materialized across the water’s surface: a man rubbing a stone against a shard of wood, whittling a crude weapon. Reyker. He blinked heavily, gold hair falling as his head drooped, blue-gray eyes disappearing beneath fluttering lids. His chin sank against his chest, weapon abandoned in his lap, as he drifted to sleep.
“What has he to do with anything?” I said. “He’s no one. I wish I’d let him die.”
“Lies,” she hissed.
“He’s a monster.”
“Yes.” She traced Reyker’s face along the water. “He is everything you fear, and worse. He is also everything you hope, and more. His soul is a battleground. You’ve seen it yourself.”
I had—the play of light and darkness within him, hidden layers of gentleness among harsh crags and slickened gloom.
“His gods—the Ice Gods—marked him as well. He’s a weapon, forged and forgotten, fallen into the wrong hands. His gods cannot help him in Glasnith, where the Green Gods reign. But you can.” The mystic took hold of my scarred ankle. “You did, accidentally, when he took your talisman and was spared by the Brine Beast because of it. And when you dragged him from the harbor, entwining your fate with his. You wield the lost sword of the Frozen Sun. A weapon of the Ice Gods in the hands of the Green Gods’ soul-reader. ’Tis a story poets will pen, a tale fit for the scriptures.”
“Are you mad? I want nothing to do with any beast of the Frozen Sun.”
In the water, the rippling mirage showed Reyker gritting his teeth, murmuring in his sleep. The mystic smiled. “The choice is yours. Even those touched by gods chart their own paths. But before you decide, you must bear witness to the other side of his story. To the nightmares of your beast.”
Her fingers dug hard into my arm. She flung me headfirst into the brook.
I crashed through the surface, colliding with Reyker’s watery image.
The world spun around me. There was no brook, no forest. I lay in an awkward heap on a snowbank in the center of a village dotted with cottages. In the distance, mountains rose up from the white tundra. The sun was a pale orb, little brighter than the moon. If this was Reyker’s nightmare, these were the lands of the Frozen Sun.
In front of me, a man sprawled across the ground, his blood staining the snow red. His sword lay beside him. A gold-haired child huddled over the dead man. “I’m sorry, Father,” the boy whispered. “I failed you.”
I called to the boy, but he couldn’t hear me. No one could. This was past, it was memory, and I wasn’t really here.
There were other corpses scattered across the white field. Warriors swarmed through the village, boots crunching over snowdrifts, ignoring the boy and his dead father. The skin around the warriors’ right eyes was inked with black scales. They herded crowds of women and children into a nearby pen, tied up rows of injured men and made them kneel. This was the aftermath of a battle.
I saw him then, and my knees shook.
Somewhat younger, but no less terrifying, the Savage eclipsed the other warriors; it was the intensity of his features, the assurance in his gait. He circled the captured men. “Your betrayal wounds me deeply, my friends.”
He spoke in his mother language, but within the vision I understood every word.
“You are the traitor, rising against your jarl!” one of the captives called.
“Jarl Gudmund lets his settlements and his people waste away. I fight to make Iseneld the powerful nation it’s meant to be. It grieves me to do this, but you’ve left me no choice. Since you will not pledge loyalty to me, all of you must be fed to Ildja. Summon the executioner,” he ordered one of his scale-marked followers.
From the guarded pen, women screamed and children cried.
The boy hugging his dead father stood. He couldn’t have been more than twelve. There was no mark of black flames beneath his brow yet, but there was no mistaking who the boy was.
In a flash, he claimed his father’s sword. Bruises lined one cheek, and tears cut trails through the dirt smudged across his face. His clothes were stiff with his father’s blood. “If you want to kill them, you must go through me.” It was the voice of a boy but held hints of the man he would grow into.
The scaled warriors laughed. The Savage grinned. “You think yourself man enough to fight me, little lordling?”
The warrior I saved. Not peasant-born, as I’d assumed. Stubborn, proud, chin held high, glaring daggers at the Savage—who was twice his size and a thousand times more menacing.
&n
bsp; “Reyker, no!” the captives shouted. “This isn’t what your father would want!”
“My father is dead.” He pointed his blade at the Savage. “Because of you.”
“And you’re anxious to join him.” The Savage slid his sword from its sheath. “Show me what you’ve learned of swordsmanship among these cowards.”
Reyker let loose a furious roar and swung his father’s sword. He was strong for his age and size, handling the blade skillfully. If his opponent had been smaller, less experienced, perhaps he’d have stood a chance, but the Savage met each enraged strike with effortless parries.
The snow fell hard, glazing their hair and clothing. Over the clash of their blades, the Savage offered advice. “Elbows higher. Widen your stance. Don’t grip the hilt so tight, son.”
“Don’t call me that!” Reyker spat, thrusting the sword. “Don’t you ever call me that!”
The Savage stepped aside, avoiding the blade. Reyker shot past him, and the Savage delivered a sharp kick between the boy’s shoulder blades that knocked him flat. He braced himself with his left arm and it turned beneath him. The bone snapped.
I swallowed the bile in my throat.
Reyker grunted, struggling to his knees. The scaled warriors heckled him. “Get up,” the Savage said. “Finish your battle like a man.”
“May the Destroyers drag you into the Mist if you harm that boy!” a captive shouted, wrestling against his bindings. “May Ildja devour your soul for all eternity!”
“I am the serpent-goddess’s greatest Destroyer,” the Savage said, his eyes gleaming. “Ildja, eater of souls, blesses and exalts me.”
Reyker climbed unsteadily to his feet, lifting the heavy sword one-handed, broken arm dangling at his side. Something oddly close to pride touched the Savage’s features as Reyker jabbed the sword at his heart. He yanked the blade from Reyker’s hands and gripped his broken arm, bending it behind his back. “You are defeated. Say it, lordling.”
Still the boy fought. Struggling, biting his lip against the pain, he refused to speak the words the Savage demanded. Then the Savage twisted his broken arm, and it was too much. Reyker gasped, color draining from his face.
I thought of Garreth, injured and exiled. I thought of Rhys, staggering into my arms as his life slipped away on the edge of the Savage’s axe. Such cruelties men enacted upon one another.
“He’s only a boy, you bastard!” This scream came from me. No one else heard. I clawed at the discarded sword, but my fingers went right through its hilt. This wasn’t my world. There was nothing I could do.
“Cede, Reyker.” The Savage spoke softly. “Say it, and I’ll let go.”
A spark of defiance burned in Reyker’s eyes. He spoke in whispered gulps, through gritted teeth. “You’ll … never … find her.”
The Savage laughed, the rich rumbling joy of a man tasting victory. “I already have.”
An indescribable sound of horror leaked from Reyker’s throat. The spark inside him guttered. The Savage pushed on his arm, and Reyker finally submitted to the pain. His eyes closed and his limbs went limp.
The circle of warriors chuckled and clapped as the Savage lowered Reyker’s body to the ground, and he turned a murderous glare upon them. “Back to your posts!” he ordered half of them, and they scattered. To the rest, he said, “Bring forth the traitors.”
The first captive was led forward. The doomed man trembled as a hugely muscled warrior appeared with a massive broad-bladed axe. The executioner. He smiled, cracking his knuckles and hefting the axe higher. Something was wrong with his teeth. Instead of being square, they were sharpened into fangs, like a shark’s.
The Savage pulled Reyker to his feet as the boy awoke.
“Kneel,” the executioner said.
The axe rose. The kneeling man prayed. A woman and child screamed in the distance. “One day you’ll thank me for this,” the Savage told Reyker.
The axe fell.
Watching a man’s head being severed from his body was chilling. It was an insult to sunder what was born whole, to cleave mind from heart, leaving them forever divided, eternally broken. Only then did it strike me how vicious it had been for my clan to dismember the slain Westlanders.
The next captive was brought out to a chorus of more screams.
The axe fell again. Again.
The icy ground turned crimson. Families wept. Snow spiraled from gravid clouds, settling like dust upon the growing pile of corpses. The executioner wiggled his stiff fingers, shook his tired arms.
The Savage held Reyker, but the boy no longer fought. What I saw in his expression, when I tore my eyes from the endless stream of executions, was nearly as hard to bear as the beheadings. It was the smothering of innocence, the death of hope.
His nightmare.
I wanted to wash his tear-streaked face, splint his arm, tell him everything would be all right—such was the vulnerability in those damp eyes, the crushing burden weighing upon his shoulders. But it was a lie. Nothing would save him from becoming the half-drowned warrior I found in the harbor. This boy would mature into a beast of war who would swing axe and sword and split men open like animals.
Here was where it began.
The sky above me darkened. The ground bled from white to green; there was no snow here, only emerald hills. The executioner and the headless corpses were gone.
I stood at the gallows in Stony Harbor. Dyfed dangled from a noose, his face a swollen purple mess, his tongue protruding from his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” I said, as if it did any good.
And then, in a flickering blur, the figure changed. It was no longer Dyfed who hung from the noose, but Reyker.
“Not so pretty like this, is he?”
I spun to see the mystic behind me. “Is this what’s going to happen to him?” I asked.
“Or perhaps this.” She snapped her fingers, and Reyker lay in the grass, a gaping sword wound in his chest. “Or this.” Another snap, and Reyker’s chest was whole, but his head was some distance away, eyes still open, aimed blindly at the stars. “There are a thousand ways he could die. He is a trespasser in these lands. Many forces seek to destroy him.”
“Please,” I said. “I’ve seen enough.”
The mystic snapped her fingers, and the gallows vanished.
I blinked up at the tangled trees of the forest, wavering high above me. I was underwater. Spluttering to the surface, I wiped my face, pushing my hair back. The mystic sat on the brook’s shore, waiting, as I climbed out of the water.
“Darkness claimed your beast and sharpened him into a weapon for wickedness,” the mystic said. “He was lost long before you found him. The only way for him to find redemption is to reach whatever light remains within his soul. Who better to lead him to it than a soul-reader?”
“Me?” I shook water out of my ear. “I’m not … I can’t …”
“’Twill be no easy task. You must reignite the spark of hope within him and send him back to his own gods before the darkness finds him once more. There are dangers. Consequences. Tolls you may deem far too steep.”
I twined my fingers in the rope my medallion hung from. “Why should the Green Gods or a daughter of Glasnith care about the redemption of this Westlander?”
The mystic skimmed her fingers across the water; it boiled and frothed at her touch. “Because the wars of the west have spilled onto our soil, and the Ice Gods’ lost sword is the only weapon that can end the reign of the Dragon.”
Two greenish-gold spheres took shape on the water—calculating eyes, alluring and terrifying. I stared at the eyes of the Westlander who killed my brother.
The Savage. The Dragon. They were one and the same. Inside the mirage of his eyes, other images emerged. Fires burning. Armies colliding. Blood spilling.
If I couldn’t bring Reyker into the light, the Dragon would crush us all.<
br />
The mystic mounted Victory, promising the mare would come to no harm. At least I’d managed to keep Rhys’s horse safe.
“Heed me, soul-reader,” she said. “When the time comes that you’ve need of us, enter the forest. Seek the grove and you shall find it. The Fallen Ones await your offering.”
Travel to the Grove of the Fallen Ones, where the portal to their prison-realm was located, and make an offering of flesh to the fallen gods? Never. To do so meant gifting them a piece of my soul. Nothing was worth such sacrifice.
I’d not spoken aloud, but the mystic shook her head. “Never is not so long as you think, and nothing is worth far more than you’ll admit.” She nudged Victory’s haunches.
Choking back sadness, I watched my brother’s horse disappear.
I walked home as dusk unfurled. Around me, the night came alive. Animals howled in unearthly intonations, prowling among the trees: boars, coywolves, catamounts, and other, stranger beings. They let me pass, sensing kinship. I was the forest’s child as much as they were. Or perhaps it was my medallion, bearing Veronis’s symbol, that kept them at bay.
When I reached the village, the Day of Sacrifice had ended, but Torin, Madoc, and Doyen still hovered around the dying fire. They moved aside as I approached.
Coils of smoke drifted from the carcass lying in the embers. A dead horse, its shape as familiar to me as my own—even though the body was charred, I knew it had been a mare with a coat the color of sea pearls, slaughtered and sacrificed in Victory’s place.
Sorrow threatened to stifle me, but my anger took over first. I ran to where our chieftain stood. “You killed Winter!”
“We had to give the gods their due,” the priest said. “It’s unwise to leave Gwylor and his kin unfulfilled.”
I ignored Doyen, focusing my fury on the man who used to be my father. “She was my horse. I loved her. How could you do this?”
Beasts of the Frozen Sun Page 10