Beasts of the Frozen Sun

by Jill Criswell

  “You disobeyed.” Something dark and dangerous twitched inside Torin’s eyes. “Your actions have consequences, Lira.”

  Doyen and Madoc smiled. Madoc’s period of mourning his dead wife and daughter had been shockingly brief. He seemed as callow and cruel as ever.

  “Liars and butchers, all of you,” I said.

  “Careful,” Madoc replied, “or you’ll lose your tongue as your insolent brother lost his hand.”

  I raised my fist to strike my uncle, consequences be damned.

  Torin caught my wrist. “Peace, daughter.” He looked worn, bereft. This was the toll death had taken—the loss of my mother and Rhys, the pain that transformed him long before the Culling sundered him from himself. “Peace,” he said again, watching me like there was something more he wanted to say but the words had abandoned him.

  He called for a sentry to escort me home. I turned my back on him, and on the waning fire and drifting ashes that were once my horse.

  I lay in bed and wept, mourning for Winter and my brothers. When my mind finally released me, I slept, enough to curb my exhaustion and give the village time to retire.

  I rose late, donning Rhys’s clothing. The trousers and tunic were too long, but they would serve. I tied my hair back with a leather thong, strapped on the small sword Garreth had taught me to wield years ago. If spotted, I’d be mistaken for another sentry.

  For a moment, I wrapped my arms around myself, inhaling Rhys’s scent, still clinging to his clothes, and blinking back tears at the fresh wave of loneliness overwhelming me. Once it passed, I slipped through a window and into the forest.

  The hovel was dark.

  “Reyker?”

  There was no answer. Reyker must have left Stony Harbor already. A violent mix of emotions coursed through me—relief, fear, disappointment. Hope that the mystic was wrong.

  I opened the door to leave and ran right into him.

  A second later, I was pinned flat to the ground, with a knee in my spine and a spear at my neck. I mumbled his name through a mouthful of dirt, and he flipped me onto my back. “Lira?”

  Sitting up, I spat out clods of earth. “A fine welcome that was. Stupid bloody Westlander.” He wouldn’t stop gawking. “What?”

  Gesturing at my odd outfit, my dirt-smeared face, he chuckled.

  “Funny, is it?” I grabbed a handful of soil and shoved it into his face. “How do you like it?”

  Reyker’s skin was smudged from forehead to chin. He blinked and smacked his lips, bits of dirt trickling off. Then he threw his head back and laughed.

  I tried to hold it in, but I couldn’t. I lost myself in the moment and laughed with him. Looking at Reyker, I saw the cold-blooded warrior who’d slaughtered men like cattle, and I saw the boy who’d fought to avenge his father and defend his village. He was both: a boy and a beast, a hero and a villain. But only one of them was worth saving.

  Reyker picked up the waterskin he’d dropped and pulled off his tunic, holding them out to me. I rinsed off, scrubbing away grit with Reyker’s tunic. It smelled like him, like salt and sweat, blood and earth. When I was done, he rinsed his own face, missing a smear beside his nose, another below his eye. It made him look even more like that boy he’d once been.

  “Who are you, Reyker?” I asked.

  He wrung out his stained tunic and put it back on, shrugging. “Jai veth enki.” There was pain in his voice. It must have been hard to live as he did, caught between light and darkness, his soul at war with itself.

  I’d only ever used my gift to condemn men. If I could heal Reyker, perhaps I could redeem us both.

  He stood, offering me his hand.

  I hesitated.

  Part of me would always hate him for what he was. But I’d been beside him in his nightmare and watched the man who slew my brother destroy Reyker’s childhood. I could blame him for the evils of his past and the evils of his people, or I could try to forgive him and allow him the chance to prove he was more than just a beast.

  I clasped his hand, letting him pull me to my feet.

  We stood close enough for me to feel his warmth, inhale his scent. I wanted to be sickened by it, but I wasn’t. I wanted to step away, but I didn’t.

  “If you still want my help, it’s yours.” I glanced up at him, bolstered by the flicker in his eyes—the first glimmer of dawn upon the night-black sea. “Lira will hjelp Reyker.”

  His mouth twitched in amusement. “Hjalp,” he corrected. “Lira vil hjalp Reyker.”

  “Help,” I said. “Lira will help Reyker. Now, you say it.”

  We eyed each other stubbornly. I put my hands on my hips. With a groan, he repeated the words; his accent was thick, but his pronunciation was clear.

  Humoring him, I did the same. “Lira vil hjalp Reyker,” I said, “because the gods have willed it. They showed me what happened to your father. Your village. The man who did it is the same one who led the raid on Stony Harbor. The man who killed my brother. Who is he?”

  Reyker’s jaw locked. He shook his head. Again, he said, “Jai veth enki,” as if he didn’t know, or couldn’t understand me, but he was lying. Something in his expression told me I’d get no answers if I pushed him. This truce between us was a delicate thing. Patience was far from my greatest strength, but I would have to bide my time.

  Reyker’s eyes widened suddenly, and he pointed at something behind me. I turned and saw blue lights flitting among the trees. “Sparkflies. You don’t have them on your islands?”

  “Nai.”

  “Well then. Come with me.”

  Reyker followed as I led him through the forest, stopping at a copse of trees so thick and gnarled we had to turn sideways to slip through them. Inside it was dark, but above us, the canopy was filled with thousands of twinkling insects, like a net full of stars. Reyker stared in wonder, bathed in their soft luminescence.

  “In my village, we call this a glow grove. Sparkflies gather where the trees are packed tight. It’s sheltered, so they feel safe. My brothers showed me how to find the groves.”

  I saw them in my mind: Garreth’s brooding observations, Rhys’s patient explanations. They were bookends, balancing each other, holding me up between them. “Safe,” I said wistfully, wondering if I’d ever feel safe again without them.

  “Safe, Lira.” Reyker put his hand over his heart, like it was a pledge.

  I didn’t trust him yet. But I’d have to try.

  Beneath the dancing flares of sparkflies, beneath the steady gaze of his eyes, I placed a hand over my own heart. “Safe, Reyker.”

  The shifting of power from Aengus to Torin was near-seamless, a flip of an hourglass. It was the same sand, only it seeped in a new direction, marking a new hour.

  No one else noticed the change in him, that his words and gestures were laced with hostility, as if another man wore my father’s face, performing insincere imitations. Torin moved into his father’s manor, the largest house in the village. He held council in the great hall. He appointed Madoc as head magistrate to settle disputes over land and labor. Whether Torin trusted his brother or was simply keeping his enemies close, I couldn’t say.

  The village settled back to its old ways, the ordinary routines from before the Westlanders’ invasion and the Culling. Except for those who’d lost too much, tragedy carving holes too deep to ignore. Those like myself.

  Torin said nothing about me moving into the manor with him, so I remained in our family cottage. Every step I took in the village, suspicious eyes followed. The people of my clan had always been wary of me because I was a soul-reader, but things were worse since my confession at the Culling, and Doyen’s spreading theory that my very existence had brought the gods’ rage upon Stony Harbor, in the form of the Westlanders. There were whispers that I was cursed—the fact that I still drew breath would bring calamity to their doorsteps until the mistake was rectified.<
br />
  No one would dare hurt me so long as Torin forbade it, but I couldn’t trust that he cared about my well-being anymore. I was little more than a shiny token to him, a coin kept in his pocket until he found something worth trading it for.

  Every few days I oiled and sharpened my sword with a whetstone until the steel drew blood with a featherlight touch. I imagined the Savage standing behind me. Spinning, I swung the blade and watched his eyes dim, his head toppling from his body.

  It was one of the few things that made me smile.

  For my first attempt at redeeming Reyker, we sat in the grass beside the brook where I’d spoken with the mystic. I reached my hand out, fingertips resting lightly over his heart. “I want to help you, but you have to let me in. Understand?”

  His eyes narrowed. I’d explained to him, as best I could, what I wanted to do—to enter his soul so I could heal it. In exchange, I promised him supplies, a horse, and a map for his journey home. He’d agreed, and I could tell it wasn’t just about the map. He wanted to be healed. Even so, he remained skeptical.

  “Please, Reyker. Let me see who you are.”

  He lowered his head. I worried he might refuse, but he took my hand and slid it beneath his tunic, pressing my palm to his chest.

  He didn’t pull me into his soul. He allowed me to enter on my own.

  With a deep breath, I opened my mind, letting myself fall.

  His soul was deep. I imagined this was how it felt to leap from a mountain. When I finally touched down, I floated along the surface of an ebony river, surrounded by sheer canyon walls. The river churned, frothed, and … steamed. Black water. Black fire. Two incompatible elements—they merged and became one, cutting through the core of Reyker’s being. I dipped my hands in, lifting curls of liquid and flame that danced together within my cupped fingers.

  Lights twinkled around me like diamonds, studding the rock walls. Some glinted below the fiery river. I reached for one, but the river rejected me, spitting my arm out. When I tried again, I found the surface impenetrable.

  “You’re hiding things.” My words rippled through the canyon. “You don’t trust me.”

  No more than you trust me. His answer came from everywhere: the rocks, the waves, the expanse of red sky high above. But we must begin somewhere.

  A shiny bauble glinted in the rocks at the river’s edge. “Aye. We must begin somewhere.” I plucked the gem. It glowed warm in my hands. Light spilled out, enveloping me.

  When I could see again, it was from behind Reyker’s eyes.

  A cottage-strewn hamlet. Bodies everywhere. The sun is low on the horizon, disappearing behind the steely waters of the sea. My axe is stained with gore.

  I go to the barn to get away from the other warriors, their cheering and celebrating. Horses whicker in the stables; chickens babble and goats bray, but underneath is another sound, muffled. Near. There’s a trapdoor, hidden under the straw. It opens with a groan when I jerk the handle. From the bowels of the barn come soft cries of terror—a cellar, crowded with women, young and old. Children cling to the skirts of their mothers and sisters.

  The blood on my axe belongs to their men.

  A young woman passes the doe-eyed babe she holds to someone else, climbing out to face me, her fear tempered with courage. She pleads, unlacing her bodice as she comes closer. I struggle to make sense of her language, distracted as she bears her milk-swollen bosom. Offering herself.

  I grit my teeth, ashamed. “That’s not necessary. Stay here. Be quiet. I’ll make sure no one finds you.”

  The woman doesn’t understand my tongue. I lift a finger to my lips and usher her back into the cellar, shutting the trapdoor, kicking straw to conceal it.

  I stay close to the barn, watching. As the other warriors sleep, I sneak food and blankets to the women. The trapdoor is still open when the floor behind me creaks. A fellow warrior, a friend, stands in the doorway. He starts to shout for the others.

  I bury my axe in his chest.

  Pressing a hand to his mouth as his life slips away, I whisper, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  I let go and opened my eyes, returning to the brook.

  “You kept them hidden.” This was the last thing I’d expected to find in his soul. He’d defied orders for the sake of people he owed no allegiance, people the Westlanders viewed as enemies. “You saved them.”

  Reyker pulled away. “Jai draepa … I kill …” He searched for a label, coming up empty.

  “Your comrade,” I said. “But if you hadn’t, what terrible things would the Westlanders have done to them?” Reyker had traded his friend’s life for the lives of those villagers. “You did the right thing.”

  His laughter was dark and ugly.

  “Reyker—”

  “Nai.” He rested his forehead on his knees. My fingers reached out to touch him before I realized what I was doing; my hand froze, hovering just above his head. “Go,” he said without looking up.

  I snatched my hand back.

  Walking home, I cursed myself, the mystic, and Reyker. This shouldn’t be my responsibility. I was no savior—I was just a girl who could peer into souls, a paltry trick in the face of the task set before me.

  How could I help Reyker when even the lights in his soul were fraught with shadows?

  Two weeks after the Culling, an assembly of warriors rode into the village. Representatives from allied clans had been coming and going from Stony Harbor for days, deliberating with our chieftain over how to best defend Glasnith against further Westlander invasions. This time, Quinlan was one of them.

  I went down to the harbor to wait. It didn’t take him long to find me.

  At the funeral, we’d been limited to formalities, but when Quinlan walked across the rocky beach and joined me, all decorum was abandoned. There was no one else here but the chattering gulls. He put his arms around me, and I huddled in the shelter he offered, my cheek pressed to his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Lira,” he said. “About Rhys. And Garreth.”

  “Has there been any word of my brother?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. We’ll find Garreth, I promise. I still can’t believe Torin exiled him.”

  “The Culling changed him. When you met with Torin, did you notice anything different since you saw him last?”

  “Different?” He paused. “Not really, no. Why? What have you noticed?”

  “He’s become vicious. He carries on conversations with himself. His eyes fill with this swirling blackness.” Quinlan gave me a blank look that solidified my fears. The villagers, the Sons of Stone, warriors from outside our clan—none of them saw it. Was I the only one who did? Was it because of my gifts, or because I’d also gone through Gwylor’s trial?

  I brushed at imaginary flames climbing up my arms.

  “You’re unwell, Lira,” Quinlan said.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him about what happened to me at the Culling, what I’d learned of the Forbidden Scriptures, even the blind mystic’s prophecy. He was my oldest, dearest friend—I should’ve been able to tell him anything—but I couldn’t get the words out. There was a kernel of doubt that made me wonder if I could trust him with such dire secrets.

  Quinlan’s arms tightened around me. “You need someone to look after you. Let me take you away from here. Come with me to Houndsford.”

  “I can look after myself,” I said, but I was too weak-willed to pull away from him. It felt good being in Quinlan’s arms. Familiar. “Besides, I can’t live with your clan unless …”

  He gazed down at me, his eyes full of something that must have been love. “Let me take care of you, as your brothers would want me to. Let me heal your wounded heart. I’m asking you for the third time. The last time. Say yes. Marry me.”

  My throat tightened.

  I looked at the handsome face of the wild boy I’d watched grow into a stately youn
g man. I’d imagined this moment, when I finally said yes to Quinlan—which some part of me always assumed I would. I’d imagined how he’d sweep me into his arms and press his lips to mine.

  It should’ve been easy to say yes. I was lonely. I missed my brothers, and Quinlan was the only one who understood, the only one who’d been as close to them as I was.

  “Quinlan …”

  Part of me still dreamed of a simple life, the one I’d expected to have back before the Westlanders destroyed everything. Before a beast of the Frozen Sun washed up in the harbor and blew my entire existence off course.

  “Quinlan …”

  Why was this so hard? Why couldn’t I say yes and let Quinlan take me away from Stony Harbor, saving me from the wreckage that had become my life?

  “Torin will never give his consent,” I blurted out.

  “Let me worry about Torin. Do you love me, Lira?”

  “I’ve always loved you.”

  “That’s not the kind of love I mean. Am I the first person you think of when you wake, and the last you think of before you fall asleep? Does your pulse quicken when you see me? When I touch you, does it feel like sparks set to kindling? Because that’s what I feel for you.” He pulled away, studying me. “Do you love me?”

  I couldn’t hold his gaze, and I couldn’t admit, not even to myself, who it was that sometimes made me feel such things.

  Quinlan bowed his head.

  “You make me happy.” I reached out, taking hold of his hand. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Not for me. Nor for you. We both deserve more.” He squeezed my fingers. “You cling to me out of fondness and loyalty, but all the while, you’ve been waiting for someone whose secrets and dreams you don’t know as well as your own.”

  I groped for something to say, finding nothing.

  Quinlan released my hand and stepped closer to the water, letting the frothy tip of a wave splash over his boots. “I hope you find the man you’re looking for,” he said.