The Winter King

by C. L. Wilson

  Khamsin saw the birth of that child, who became known as Roland Soldeus. The child of Summerlea’s king but also the god’s divine being, he was the first Summer King to bear the red Rose birthmark on the inside of his right wrist—a mark given him in memory of the time the Queen of Summer had been loved by a god. As her dazed mind processed that, a new flood of memories swept her along like a swift current.

  Roland, now a young man, visiting the lakeside where he’d been conceived. And there, rising from the grass, a great and mighty blade, whose hilt was set with an enormous ruby as red as the roses that had blossomed the day of Roland’s conception.

  Roland reaching for that sword, being swept away at first contact by the same flood of memories that carried her now.

  Along with those memories came the realization that the god had placed into Blazing a part of himself, a connection to his divine power and his own memories, so that through the sword, Roland and his heirs could come to know the truth of their beginnings.

  Never without his golden sword, Roland had lived up to his divine parentage, leading the armies of Summerlea in battle against its enemies, guiding the kingdom of Summerlea to enviable greatness, peace, and prosperity.

  It was that greatness and prosperity that convinced the equally powerful Winter King to offer his beloved only daughter in marriage to Roland.

  Kham stood witness to the day the princess of Wintercraig arrived for her first meeting with her betrothed. It wasn’t love at first sight. Far from it, but Roland was dazzled by her pale, exotic beauty and by the fires that burned beneath her cool exterior. With the patience and determination for which he had become renowned, Roland courted his betrothed until, at last, one cool summer night, on the same shores of the lake where the god of the sun had possessed his mortal queen, the Winter princess surrendered to Roland her heart. And there, in the soft grass, like his father before him, Roland claimed his love.

  But as Khamsin knew, theirs was not to be a happy tale. Alarmed by the threat of a united Summerlea and Wintercraig, powerful kings from across the sea conspired to destroy Roland and Summerlea. They launched their armada, a naval-borne army the likes of which had never before been assembled.

  The sword showed her the very battles she’d spent a lifetime reading about and imagining in her mind. Her imagination didn’t come close to the reality.

  An ocean thick with ships as far as the eye could see. A coast, overrun by foreign invaders, swarming like ants on an overturned anthill. Roland and his defenders being pushed back and back and back again, until only one final line of hills stood between the invaders and the fertile heartland of Summerlea, where Roland’s beloved waited.

  Roland, desperate to save his love, calling upon the power of his sword, and through it, the god’s own power. And thus came the great, blinding explosion of light, the enormous cloud mushrooming into the sky, the feat that ended Roland’s life, defeated the enemy invaders, and forever enshrined his name in legend.

  But Roland had not perished without issue as Khamsin and the rest of the world had always believed. His beloved bride from the north discovered after his death that she was with child. To save her child the stigma of bastardy—and to ensure that Roland’s only child would inherit his father’s kingdom and pass down his great gifts—the Winter princess wed Roland’s brother, Donal. And to keep safe her son’s true heritage, she spirited Roland’s sword away from Summerlea and hid it in her father’s kingdom. She intended to retrieve the sword and present it to her son when he reached manhood, but she died in childbirth with her third child. And her father, fearing that King Donal or his heirs would use the power of the sword to subjugate Wintercraig, never returned the blade to its rightful owner. Instead, he hid it securely away and devised an intricate series of clues to lead to its whereabouts, to be safeguarded until such time as an Heir of Roland was born to the Winter Throne. Those clues had been written in a book passed down from one Winter King to another.

  But though more than one Wintercraig princess wed into the House of Summer, not one Summerlea princess had ever been crowned Wintercraig’s queen. And so the sword remained hidden for many centuries until one enterprising Winter King, having followed the clues to the sword’s hiding place, brought the magic weapon back to his kingdom. Although unable to unlock the sword’s great power himself—as only an Heir of Roland could do—he thought perhaps the sword’s magical, sun-born heat could melt the Ice Heart so he could claim that power, instead. But when he struck Blazing deep into the center of the frozen block of black ice in the Ice Heart well, Roland’s sword melted the Ice Heart so completely that the entire frozen mass of it turned liquid, and Roland’s sword sank to the bottom of the well, there to remain until a young daughter of Summerlea, a princess of the Rose with the soul of a storm, reached out a hand through the cold darkness to grasp the hilt of Roland’s divine sword, Blazing. And at her first touch, the memories stored in the sword poured into her mind, filling her with centuries of history so vivid and real it was as if she’d just lived each event herself.

  The flood of memories halted as quickly as they’d begun.

  Still clutching the sword, now filled with renewed vigor and sense of purpose, Khamsin planted her feet at the bottom of the well, bent her knees to gather power, and leapt upwards through the long dark of the Ice Heart well, the sword held before her like the tip of a spear.

  She burst through the layer of ice sealing the well in a geyser of steam and melted Ice Heart droplets that refroze and fell back to ground as chips of ice. She landed hard, knees bending to absorb the shock.

  The sound of crackling ice behind her brought Kham spinning around in time to see the frozen woman heave her spear. The creature’s aim was perfect. The spear should have pierced Kham’s heart and pinned her body to the rotunda’s icy wall. Instead, moving with reflexes and speed she’d never before possessed, Khamsin caught the ice spear in midflight with her left hand and threw Blazing with her right. The sword shot across the distance, and struck the ice woman’s chest so hard it sent her flying. She landed twenty yards away and skidded through the rotunda’s arched doorway, leaving a trail of blood that changed from blue to purple to red as it went.

  By the time Kham reached her side, the icy shell encasing the woman had melted away, leaving a mortal Wintercraig beauty who watched Kham’s approach with pain-glazed blue eyes. She lifted trembling hands.

  “Please . . .” she begged on a shallow breath. The word came out weak and thick. Blood was already filling her mouth and throat, making it difficult to speak. Kham’s had been a death blow, striking lung and heart. “Stop . . . her . . . stop . . .” She broke off, coughing blood.

  Kham set the ice spear on the ground, well out of reach, and gripped the woman’s shoulders. “Who are you? Who do you want me to stop?”

  “Reika . . . she never meant to help me get the sword. . . . she wanted the Ice Heart.” The woman’s fingers clutched weakly at Khamsin’s robe. “She has . . . unleashed him.”

  “What are you saying? Did Reika drink the Ice Heart? Did she bring Rorjak back to life?”

  “P-please . . . tell . . . him . . .” One trembling hand dropped to the woman’s chest, fingers closing weakly around the pendant at her throat. “Love . . . him.” Then her body went limp, and her head lolled to one side. The hand clutching the pendant fell away, revealing a gold circle carved with the image of a falcon, soaring through beams of sunlight, a rose clutched in one claw.

  Khamsin sat back on her heels.

  She recognized the pendant. She’d looked forward to seeing it—or rather the man who wore it—every day as a child in Summerlea. It was her brother’s personal crest.

  The presence of that sigil could only mean that the woman Khamsin had just killed was Elka Villani, Wynter’s former betrothed, Reika Villani’s sister—and the woman Khamsin’s brother had started a war to possess.

  “Oh, Falcon.” Her brother mu
st have sent Elka to the Temple of Wyrn to retrieve Roland’s sword. Apparently, Reika had come along, too, only she’d used Roland’s sword as the pretext to gain access to her real goal: the power of the Ice Heart.

  Kham’s heart slammed against her chest. If Reika was the one who’d summoned the Ice King—if she was the reason for the ice thralls—there was still a chance to save Wynter.

  For the second time that day, Kham sent up a prayer. Please, Helos. Please, Wyrn, let him be safe. Let him still be my husband.

  Hands shaking with pent-up emotion, Kham slipped the pendant from Elka’s throat and put it around her own neck for safekeeping. Then she stood, pulled the sword from Elka’s chest, and wiped the bloody blade on the still-damp fur of her coat.

  She cast one final look at the Ice Heart. Without the heat of Blazing hidden in its depths, what was held in the well was liquid no more. The immortal, indestructible essence of Rorjak, the Ice King, had returned to the solid, frozen state that Thorgyll’s spears had put it in so many millennia ago. She hoped it would stay that way for many centuries to come.

  The crack and tinkle of splintering ice behind her chimed a warning. She spun back to find the corpse of Elka Villani once more fully encased in ice and rising to its feet. In an instinctive response born of memories not her own, she stabbed Roland’s sword at the rising corpse and cried, “Burn!”

  The diamond in Blazing’s hilt flared with sudden light. The rose on her wrist went red-hot. A great gout of flame shot from the tip of the sword and engulfed Elka. The Winterlady’s arms lifted like a startled babe’s, and she burst into flames. Within moments, the body of Elka Villani turned to char, then crumpled to the floor as a formless pile of ash.

  “Wyrn and Helos protect me.” Kham stared at the sword in her hand. Bright and golden in hue, with a clear, brilliant white diamond the size of a goose egg in its hilt, the Sword of Roland was everything the legends had foretold.

  And now, many thousands of years after Roland’s death, Khamsin Coruscate Atrialan held the same sword the god Helos had forged for her legendary ancestor and prayed the sword would grant her the power to save her Winter-born love, just as Roland had saved his.

  Though, hopefully, with a happier outcome.

  He walked through a field of fresh snow. The world was white, crisp, pristine. The sky a blue so deep and rich it dazzled him.

  The sun shone high in the sky. A bright, golden white globe.

  All around, the trees grew tall and strong, their evergreen branches laden with snow.

  He moved silently through the powdery snow. It swirled around his calves, deep enough that he could not see his feet when he walked but so powdery, it was like walking through fog.

  Ahead, on the crest of a small hill, stood a large snow wolf. Its fur riffled in the breeze. The wolf howled.

  The call caught at a place deep inside him, singing to him in wordless communication, urging him to follow. He walked towards the wolf.

  The snow grew thicker. It was up to his knees now. Then up to his thighs. His waist.

  The wolf was just ahead now. Its call wrapped around Wynter like a fisherman’s net, hauling him closer and closer still.

  The snow had reached his chest.

  More wolves began to howl. Their howl was a song of warning, sharp and fearful, made up of many voices. He glanced to his left and right, then behind him. Dozens of wolves had gathered on the surrounding peaks. All were barking, howling, baying at him.

  He turned back to the wolf he was walking towards.

  The snow was shoulder deep now.

  The wolf on the hill turned with shocking swiftness.

  Only it wasn’t a wolf. It was a garm.

  Malevolent red eyes gleamed. Rows of sharp, pointed teeth gaped in a ferocious snarl. Past the garm, down in the valley on the other side of the hill, he caught a glimpse of a mighty army. Frost Giants. Garm. Ice thralls. They looked up at him and roared.

  The garm shrieked, and a cloud of blue vapor billowed forth.

  Wynter shot up out of bed, abruptly and completely awake. The bandage covering his eyes was still tied around his head. He reached up to rip it off.

  He was sitting on a wooden table by the hearth in one of the hunting cabins that scattered the mountains of Wintercraig.

  At his sudden movement, several guards and Galacia Frey came running. Galacia held one of Thorgyll’s spears, ready to strike.

  Wynter held up his hands. “It’s me. It’s still me.”

  But he wasn’t so sure. His chest felt tight and cold. As if everything inside had turned to solid ice.

  “Get Valik,” Laci instructed one of the guard. The man nodded and sprinted for the door.

  “What happened?” Wyn asked. “Where are we?” He glanced down at his body, examining the bandages around his waist, realized that whatever was beneath those wrappings hurt like a Feury.

  Quickly, Galacia filled him in. She told him about the Great Hunt. How he’d followed the garm track and gotten separated from the rest of the hunters. That the tracks had led him to Khamsin, and between them, they’d killed at least two garm. That he’d been hovering on the brink of death or worse ever since.

  As Laci spoke, the memories came tumbling back.

  “Four,” he said. “It was four garm. I only managed to kill two of them.” He’d fallen after dispatching the second, leaving Khamsin to face the remaining two on her own. Alone and injured.

  Khamsin.

  “Where’s my wife?” He grabbed the edges of the table, bracing himself for the worst. “Laci, where’s Khamsin?”

  “She’s safe, Wyn. She’s fine. You need to calm down. Now.”

  Laci hadn’t lowered the spear. Her body was taut as a bowstring, her blue gaze watchful and unwavering. The eyes of a hunter, ready to strike. She smelled of fear, but her expression and posture exuded pure, grim resolve.

  That’s when he realized the wood around his fingers had turned to solid ice.

  Wyrn save him. He closed his eyes and tried to push back the glacier running through his veins. He stood on the lip of a precipice. One fraction further—or one crack in the crumbling ground beneath his feet—and he would fall, tumbling into ruin and taking the world with him.

  Not today. Not yet. Wintercraig needed him strong enough to defend them. Save Wintercraig first.

  He could feel the heat of the fire against his back. He concentrated on that, willing the warmth to infuse his flesh and melt the ice so hungry to claim him.

  Where was Khamsin? She could have pushed back the ice with a single touch.

  Lacking her presence, he filled the darkness behind his closed eyes with his memories of her face, her smile, her laughter, the silver flash of her eyes when she was angry. The feel of her skin, so warm and soft, smelling of jasmine and wildness, so exotically dark against his own golden flesh. The reassuring warmth of her body nestled against him through the long, dark hours of the Craig’s winter nights.

  The tightness of his chest had loosened. He drew a breath, then another. The fingers curled so tight around the tabletop relaxed. Moisture gathered as the frozen wood began to melt. He took another, longer breath, and opened his eyes.

  Laci was still poised to strike, and Valik had just come in from outside. Wynter looked around the cabin. That woman from Summerlea—the spy, Khamsin’s nurse, what was her name? Tildavera Greenleaf—stood beside a table covered with all manner of herbs and pharmacopeia. Half a dozen armored White Guard were also in the room, looking as wary and watchful as Laci. But the face he wanted to see most was still nowhere to be found.

  “Where is Khamsin?” he asked.

  “I sent her to Gildenheim with some of the White Guard.” Laci must have realized that the immediate danger had passed because some of the tension faded from her body. She straightened from her crouch, and the tip of her spear lowered a few inches. “So it
’s true, what Khamsin said. She really did incinerate two garm with her lightning.”

  Wyn frowned. After he fell to the garm, everything got hazy at best. But he remembered the smell of lightning and garm vapors. And he remembered sight of his wife running, ropes of lightning shooting down from the storm-tossed heavens, finding her unerringly. Her body, lifting up in the air, lit from within. Two garm close on her heels. The devastation of knowing he’d failed her.

  “I . . .” He remembered the lightning crashing so close it shook the ground. One deafening crack after another. The smell of scorched flesh. “Yes, she did. She killed them both. With no weapon but her weathergift.” He looked up at Laci. “She survived? The garm didn’t kill her?”

  “She survived,” Laci said. “She burned them until there was nothing left, which is why some of us didn’t believe her at first.” Laci cast a disgusted glance at Valik, who had just joined them.

  “How are you feeling?” Valik’s gaze raked Wynter from head to toe. “You look like Hel.”

  Wyn gave a choked laugh, then groaned when pain streaked across his belly. “Always full of compliments, you are.”

  “Thought we’d lost you a time or two. Or four.” There was a look in Valik’s eyes Wyn had never seen before. And a shimmer of betraying brightness.

  “I’m fine.” For now. Wyn rubbed his chest. The ice there had softened, but it was far from gone. If he put his hand in Laci’s flame right now, the fire would probably remain bright and blue. “How long have I been here?”

  “Since the hunt? A week. But we don’t have the luxury of staying much longer. Coruscate is making his move.” Valik brought Wynter up to speed. “We’ve only got days—a week at most—before they reach Gildenheim.”

  “We’ve got less time and more trouble than that,” Wynter said. “The Ice King’s army has gathered.”

  “What?” Valik stared at him in shock. “How is that even possible? Rorjak may be close, but you’re still you. We’d know if you weren’t.”

  “I don’t know how. But I know that they’ve gathered. And they know where I am. They’re on the way here.”