The Winter King

by C. L. Wilson

  “And now my wife is gone, Ungar and his men are dead, the sword of Roland is gone, the second of Thorgyll’s spears is missing, and the Summerlanders and Calbernans are still invading. Oh, and Rorjak’s army is on the march, too. What were you thinking?”

  “We were thinking we could save Wintercraig without losing you!” she spat.

  “By sending my wife to retrieve Roland’s Sword from the bottom of the Ice Heart?” Wynter ran both hands through his hair just to keep from wrapping them around Laci’s throat and squeezing tight. He turned a glare on Valik. “And what happened to your suspicious nature? Weren’t you the one telling me all along that Khamsin was in her brother’s service—that she’d betray me the first chance she got?”

  “Maybe I should have listened to myself,” Valik muttered. “Maybe that’s exactly what happened.”

  “No!”

  All three of them turned in surprise as Tildavera Greenleaf burst through the door leading to the lodge’s bedchambers. Clearly, after being dismissed so Valik, Laci, and Wynter could talk in private, Khamsin’s nurse had decided a bit of eavesdropping was in order.

  “Whatever you believe, you cannot think Khamsin would betray you. She wouldn’t. Not to her brother, not to anyone else. I know, because I gave her the chance to do exactly that, and she refused.”

  Wynter scowled at her. “Explain yourself, Nurse Greenleaf.”

  “When they brought me to tend you, I was in communication with Falcon Coruscate. I thought you were planning to kill her at year’s end, so I arranged to bring her to him.” Tildy blurted out all about the birds she’d used to send messages, knocking out everyone with an herb in the evening meal, telling Khamsin to come with her. “But she wouldn’t leave you. And she wouldn’t let me leave without doing everything in my power to save you, either. If she found the sword, the only place she would have brought it was back to you—to defend you. She loves you, for Halla’s sake!”

  “Guard!” Wyn called. To the man who answered his summons, he said, “Escort Nurse Greenleaf to the other room and keep her there.”

  With a look torn between frustration, irritation, and despair, Tildy turned and marched out of the room. The door closed behind her.

  “Wyn, if she’s right . . .”

  “Then Coruscate has the sword, and he has my queen,” Wyn summed up grimly.

  “He must have solved the Book of Riddles,” Galacia murmured. “If he’s got that sword . . .”

  “Then we are lost.” Wynter sank back in his chair. Despair weighted him down. When the only threat was Coruscate and the Calbernans, victory had been questionable. Wynter had resigned himself to giving his life to protect his people. But now with Roland’s sword in play and the army of the Ice King on the march, Wintercraig was hopelessly outnumbered and woefully underequipped.

  “Maybe not quite yet,” Valik suggested. “Roland’s sword is supposed to be the deadliest weapon in the history of all Mystral, right?”

  “That’s what the legends say,” Galacia acknowledged. “And considering that without it, the Ice Heart has turned back into an indestructible block of ice, I’m inclined to believe them.”

  “And you believe it might be effective against the Ice King’s army?” Valik prompted.

  She hesitated. “I don’t know. When I sent Khamsin to get the sword, I was only thinking about using it to repel the invaders since Wynter was so close to turning.” She sent an apologetic glance Wynter’s way. “But I suppose, considering the effect that it had on the Ice Heart, it might be effective against Rorjak’s army.”

  “Then why not use that to our advantage?” Valik said.

  Wynter leaned forward. “What are you thinking?”

  “You said Rorjak’s army could sense your presence right? That they were coming for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, we use that. We use you as bait to lead Rorjak’s army straight to Coruscate. Kill two birds with one arrow.”

  “That could work,” Galacia said.

  “Or Rorjak could just turn Coruscate’s army into ice thralls and double the size of his fighting force in a matter of minutes,” Wynter pointed out.

  A little of the wind left Valik’s sails. “There is that,” he agreed. “But do you have a better idea?”

  Wynter wished he did. “No.”

  The three of them regarded each other in grim silence.

  Valik was the first to break the silence. “So what do we do, Wyn? What’s your call?”

  Wynter took a deep breath. “Send word to Gildenheim. I want every eye in the forest looking for Coruscate and his men. We’re going to lead Rorjak’s army to the invaders. And along the way, we’re going to come up with a plan to rescue my wife.”

  For the next several hours, as she rode in fully hooded darkness, Khamsin replayed the same scene over and over in her mind. Falcon pulling the sword. The diamond in Blazing’s hilt flaring to life. The blast of heat that had knocked her back and melted every ounce of snow and ice near Falcon.

  Clearly, he’d called on the power of the sword. Just as clearly, he’d released that power at her.

  So why was she still alive?

  A little flicker of hope flared in her heart as she recalled the angry way he resheathed Roland’s sword, and said, “It seems we’ve both read too many legends, Storm.” Maybe Falcon wasn’t quite as ruthless as he tried to appear. Maybe that’s what he’d been angry about—that for all his talk, he didn’t have it in him to kill her. Or maybe he’d been mad because remembering their hours of discussion about Roland, all the legends of his heroic tales, had reminded him of the vital aspects of his character he’d sacrificed on the altar of ambition.

  Maybe she was getting through to him after all.

  Kham hugged that possibility to her heart. He’d loved her once. She was sure of it. Surely some part of the brother she’d idolized still existed inside him. If she could reach that Falcon, make him listen, make him understand what was at stake, maybe there was still a chance to save Wynter.

  But the next time they stopped, her brother was no longer with them.

  “Where is Prince Falcon?” she asked, but the only answer she received was a flask of water shoved in her face and a curt command to “Drink and be quiet, or the hood goes back on.”

  Anger flared at the man’s impertinent rudeness. Prisoner she might be, but she was still Queen of the Craig and a princess of Summerlea. Kham narrowed her eyes and considered setting a fire in the seat of the man’s pants. That would certainly teach him to mind his manners when dealing with an Heir of the Rose. The thought of it made her smile.

  “What’s so funny, princess?”

  Kham’s smile winked out. She cast a withering glare upon the scarred, mean-eyed Summerlander standing to her right. “Your Grace.”

  “What?”

  “The proper form of address when speaking to a queen of Wintercraig is ‘Your Grace.’ ” Each clearly enunciated word ended with a sharp clip.

  “How’s about I give you the proper form of my fist right across that mouth of yours?”

  She smiled, eyes flaring liquid silver. “Oh, by all means, do try.”

  “Leave off, Blackwood,” another Summerlander advised. “Get her mad enough, and that one will fry your balls like eggs on a griddle.”

  Blackwood shook his fist under her nose. “Saved for now,” he muttered, adding with a sneer, “Your Grace.”

  As the men walked off to tend the horses, Kham measured the location of the sun. They’d traveled another thirty miles since breaking camp this morning. The Llaskroner Fjord couldn’t be more than another day or two away. They must be meeting up with the rest of Falcon’s army near there.

  A careful glance around the camp told her that wherever Falcon had gone, he’d gone alone. For what purpose, she couldn’t even begin to speculate, but his absence gave her the chance to dr
aw upon her power without alerting him. Time to make a move.

  Krysti was chained to a tree fifteen feet away, but Falcon’s men were mostly ignoring him, too. That was a mistake. She saw his fingers working at the hem of his tunic and hid a smile. He kept a set of picks sewn into the hem of each of his tunics because, “A boy never knows when they might come in handy.”

  She nodded when Krysti glanced her way, then lowered her eyes and reached out to the source of her power, gathering the sun’s heat and concentrating it inside her. Her body began to warm beneath its lead blanket. She gripped her chains in both hands, preparing to melt them as she had the chains Valik had tried to hold her with.

  Once Krysti got safely away, Khamsin would be free to teach her captors the true meaning of her giftname.

  The sound of galloping hooves and the feel of hot, angry weathermagic on the wind made her gasp and release her power.

  She turned to see her brother leap off his horse almost before it came to a stop. He crossed the short distance to her side in five long strides and yanked her up to her feet.

  “Where is it?” His face was contorted in fury, his eyes wild. “What did you do with it?” He shook her so hard she was surprised her head didn’t flop off her neck.

  “What did I do with what?” she exclaimed when he stopped shaking her enough that she could speak.

  He opened his mouth, then after a hard look at his companions, thought the better of it. Instead, he grabbed her by the arm and frog-marched her into the woods. When they were out of earshot of the camp, he spun her around and yanked Blazing from its sheath.

  “No more games, Storm. You tell me what you did with it, or you die right here, and to Hel with any curse on my House.”

  “Did with what? What are you talking about?”

  “The sword! The real sword of Roland! Not this weak-spelled forgery you put in its place!” He shook the sword furiously and flung it aside. It sank into a drift of snow.

  Kham’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t believe he had just thrown the greatest treasure in the world away like so much rotting garbage. “Are you mad? That is Roland’s sword.”

  “Liar!” He slapped her hard, knocking her to her knees. “Where is Blazing? The real Blazing?”

  She raised manacled hands to her throbbing cheek. “That is Blazing. You’ve felt its power. You called on it early today, during that first stop. You melted everything around us.” How could he even think the sword was a forgery? Had Blazing not conveyed to Falcon the same history of its creation as it had the moment she first touched it?

  Helos bestows his greatest gifts only on the worthy, Heir of Roland.

  The low, multilayered voice boomed in her mind, resonating through every cell in her body. She didn’t hear the voice so much as she felt it. Each vast and terrible divine tone. It made her tremble in her boots.

  Falcon just kept shouting. “Roland’s sword was capable of calling phenomenal power! All this does is amplify my weathergift. Any half-witted wizard capable of boiling water could lay an amplification spell on a sword!”

  He had not heard the voice.

  Falcon had not heard the voice. And if he had not heard the voice, that meant . . .

  “You are not the Heir,” she breathed.

  Falcon stopped in midrant. His body went stiff. His face went hard. “What did you say?”

  She stared at Falcon as if she’d never seen him before. And perhaps, until now, she never had. He had tried to call on Blazing’s power that morning. He hadn’t just tried to scare her—he had tried to call upon the sword’s magic to kill her the way she had killed the ice-thralled Elka in the Temple of Wyrn.

  And the sword had not answered.

  She climbed slowly to her feet, never taking her eyes off her brother.

  “You are not the Heir,” she said again. “Blazing doesn’t answer you because you are not the true Heir of Roland.”

  Her eyes flashed purest silver in an instant. She didn’t even need to summon a storm this time. The power she’d gathered earlier came roaring back to life. In an instant, she melted the chain binding her hands and punched through the lead-lined fabric of her cloak like a hot coal through silk. Electricity shot from her palms, striking Falcon on the chest and sending him flying into a nearby tree. His skull cracked against the trunk, and he slid down into a crumpled, motionless heap at the tree’s base.

  Khamsin ripped off her lead cloak and dove for Roland’s sword, snatching it out of the snowbank. Her fingers closed around the hilt. She stared at her reflection in the gleaming blade—the wild, lightning-kissed hair, the quicksilver eyes—and thought, Fire. The clear diamond flashed blinding bright, and flame engulfed Blazing’s blade.

  “Summer Sun,” she whispered. “It’s me. I am Roland’s Heir.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  She turned to find Verdan Coruscate standing at the edge of the clearing, Krysti held before him, a knife at the boy’s throat.

  CHAPTER 26

  Strange Bedfellows

  “How can she be the Heir? It’s supposed to be me! It was always supposed to be me!” Falcon paced back and forth across his father’s tent. Roland’s sword, still sheathed in Falcon’s scabbard, lay on a table against the side of the tent. Falcon had thrown it there in disgust earlier. “I’m the one who spent years reading entire libraries of books, tracking down every fragment of a lead. I was the one who followed the trail to Wintercraig and that damned Book of Riddles! I’m the one who spent the last three years traveling from one corner of Mystral to another, risking life and limb to follow the clues in that book! I risked everything to find that sword! It’s supposed to be mine! I’m the true Heir of Roland!”

  “Yes, you are,” King Verdan agreed. “With my sword arm ruined, you are indisputably Roland’s rightful Heir.” He stalked over to the corner of the tent, where Khamsin was sitting, bound securely to a chair, gagged, and once more draped in a heavy lead-lined cloth. He grabbed her face, squeezing her cheeks and jaw in a hard grip. “What vile magic did you work to make the sword recognize you instead of your brother, girl?”

  She glared up at him. The thick wad of cloth tied over her mouth rendered her incapable of response.

  Verdan loosened the cloth and let it fall to her chest. “Answer me, girl.”

  “I did nothing. Clearly, Blazing judged Falcon and found him lacking.” She switched her glare to her brother, and added, “Maybe he should have spent more time trying to emulate Roland’s noble qualities—like honor, generosity, and self-sacrifice—instead of murdering, thieving, and whoring his way to the sword’s hiding place!”

  “You traitorous little bitch!” Frothing with rage, Falcon lunged forward, fist raised.

  Kham’s chin jutted out, and she braced herself for the blow. “Do it,” she dared. “My hands are tied, my magic bound. Hit me and prove once and for all what a fine, brave hero you are.”

  Falcon swore, and his fist stopped midswing. Perhaps because he still retained the ability to feel shame. Or maybe, just because he remembered what happened the last time he assumed a lead cloak rendered her powerless.

  “Do you see now?” Verdan said, waving a hand at Khamsin. “I warned you to send her to Hel with the rest of Atrialan’s lackeys. I told you she’d betray her family, her country, and her king at the first opportunity.”

  “You aren’t my king, Verdan Coruscate,” she snapped. “And you aren’t my family, either. You lost all claim to that the day you dragged me into the depths of Vera Sola and beat me near to death. All the loyalty and devotion I would have given you, if you’d loved me even a little, belongs to Wynter now.”

  “Love? You? I’d sooner love a plague on my own House! I should have drowned you at birth. If I had, my Rose would still be alive.”

  “So you’ve said my whole life,” she scoffed, “but that’s just a cowardly lie.” For the first time, his
hatred didn’t hurt. He had nothing she wanted, nothing she needed, and he had lost all power over her. “Tildy told me the truth. The doctor warned you to stay away from my mother, but you didn’t. You couldn’t. And do you know what? I don’t blame you for that. I know now what it is to love someone so deeply you can’t stay away. But do you think for one minute my mother would love the vile, corrupt monster you’ve become? A man who would plot to kill his own child—her child? She would despise you! She would cringe from you in revulsion. She would—”

  Verdan’s fist shot out. Unlike Falcon, he didn’t stop midswing. His knuckles struck a hard blow to her jaw.

  Her head snapped back from the impact. She and the chair she was tied to fell sideways onto the floor. Kham lay in the dirt, working her jaw, and regarded him with narrowed eyes. “That is the last time you will ever lay a finger on me.”

  “Or what? You’ll call your weathergift, Storm?” Verdan laughed. “Go ahead and try. Did you truly think I would be fool enough to repeat Falcon’s mistake? This entire tent is lined with lead.”

  She clamped her lips tight and watched in mute silence as he sauntered over to the table to pick up Roland’s sword with his left hand.

  “It really is quite beautiful,” he murmured. He turned the sword from side to side, watching with almost hypnotic fascination as the light of the tent lamps reflected off the razor-sharp blade. “The weapon of a king.”

  He closed his eyes and tightened his hand around the grip. When the diamond in the hilt flared with light, Verdan opened his eyes again and smiled.

  “I don’t know how you could ever have thought this blade was anything but the true sword of Roland, Falcon. Could you not feel the power surging inside it? Trying to connect?” He pulled back the right cuff of his coat, revealing the dark red Rose birthmark on the wrist of his ruined arm. He laid his left forearm across it and gave a small, dazed laugh. “Even though my arm is frozen, my Rose is hot to the touch. The sword knows my blood, and my blood knows the sword.”