The Winter King

by C. L. Wilson

  She scanned the enemy line, then paused as a tall, mounted figure came into view.

  Even from the distance, Khamsin recognized her husband—or rather what had once been her husband—and her heart quailed. A terrible change had been wrought over him. All the warm golden hues in his skin had been leeched away, leaving his skin an inhuman silvery blue that made him look as though he’d been carved from a block of pure ice. A crown of jagged icicles ringed his head, and his unbound white hair blew behind him on the wind, snow falling from it in a mist of white. Where he walked, winter fell in his wake. If anything, he looked more beautiful than ever before—like one of his carvings in the Atrium—but also utterly cold, utterly merciless, utterly deadly.

  “Oh, Wynter,” Kham breathed in horror. Unable to bear the sight of the dread creature that now inhabited her husband’s body, Khamsin shifted the spyglass. Her fingers clenched tight as a blue-lipped blonde riding at Rorjak’s side came into focus.

  “Reika.” There was no doubt in Khamsin’s mind now of who had killed the priestesses at the temple or why she’d found that ice thrall of Elka beside the Ice Heart. And no matter what else happened, one way or another, before this battle was done, Khamsin was going to dispatch what was left of Reika Villani straight to Hel.

  “What is ‘reika’?” Dilys Merimydion murmured beside her. The Calbernan had declared that, since she was the one with whom he had negotiated, keeping her alive was the only way to ensure fulfillment of their bargain. He and one hundred of his fiercest warriors had therefore attached themselves to her to ensure her safety.

  She spared the Calbernan leader a quick glance before putting the spyglass back to her eye. “A vile creature in need of killing.”

  “Ah. Yes, many reika there are.” He leaned on his elbows, the thick ropes of his green-black hair flopping on the snow, and peered through his own spyglass.

  On either side of Reika and Rorjak, the Valik and Galacia ice thralls sat tall and threatening in the saddle. The frozen Galacia no longer held one of Thorgyll’s mighty spears. Reika had commandeered it.

  Dread filled Khamsin’s heart. The ice thralls—man and beast—and Rorjak’s army of Frost Giants and garm outnumbered her own forces three to one. Even with Blazing, she wasn’t sure she and her allies could stand against the power of a god made flesh.

  Across the field, the armies of Summerlea and Calberna had assembled. To the left, the forces of Summerlea flew the Coruscate green-and-scarlet banners. To the right, beneath the blue-green banners of the Isles, Calberna’s tattooed warriors clutched their gleaming tridents and long, coffin-shaped shields. Fleets of archers were assembled before the infantry, while on the left and right flanks, mounted spearman and crossbowmen waited for the order to charge. Falcon rode at the center of the combined forces, the long curve of his Sunbow in hand. He had replaced his helm with the battle crown of Summerlea.

  “That is a large army,” Merimydion observed. “Victory will cost many lives. Many times many. When your husband dies today, if you and I still take breath at battle’s end, then you will come, too, in the summer to the palace by the sea? With your sisters to be courted for marriage, yes?”

  “No.” She put her spyglass down. “That will not happen, Sealord, no matter what the outcome of today’s battle. The likelihood that I will survive this is very slim. But if do, whether Wynter survives or not, my place will still be here in Wintercraig, defending my people.”

  “Hhnn.” He made a noise somewhere between a grunt, a laugh, and a sigh. “This is a pity, Khamsin of the Storms. You are myerial-myerinas, a treasure of treasures. You would mother many great warriors for Calberna.”

  On the field below, Falcon saved her from further discussion when he pulled an arrow from his quiver, nocked it, and raised his bow high. The archers along both flanks of the main army followed suit. Khamsin was too far away to hear the command, but all at once, arrows went soaring. The arrow from Falcon’s bow left a trail of blinding light in its wake.

  “There’s our signal,” Khamsin said, grateful for the reprieve. Merimydion was exotically handsome, surprisingly charming in his own way, and most definitely all male. Had she loved Wynter any less, she might have been tempted to take him up on his offer of courtship. But for her, there would only ever be one man, and his name was Wynter of the Craig.

  As the Sunfire arrow flew across the sky, the Ice King raised his sword and slashed it forward.

  The Frost Giants roared. Long, loud, terrible, the roars generated gale-force winds—freezing, roiling clouds of snow and ice that raced across the field, swallowing everything in their path. They caught the arrows in midflight, tossing them away like matchsticks.

  In the Summerlea ranks, a wave of heat swelled up in response, melting snow and ice as it billowed out to meet the howling blizzard winds. Khamsin felt energy ripple across her skin as the two waves of opposing magic clashed on the field. Storm clouds erupted, boiling up high and fast. Lightning crackled across their surface. Rorjak released his Gaze, and the building storm turned into a white wall of whirling ice and snow.

  Ice shot like arrows from massive storm clouds, but Falcon managed to melt the hailstones with his weathergift before they reached the mortal troops.

  The tempest called to her gift, power tingling in her skin. She wanted to reach out and shape the flows of winter ice and summer heat. But to do so now would give away their position. She needed to be much closer to Wynter before she revealed herself. The wind blew in her face, making her hair stream out behind her. So long as Falcon kept the storm in the sky, with the wind blasting in her direction and carrying her scent away from the field, she and Merimydion had a chance to flank the Ice King’s army.

  The Frost Giants roared again. Another wall of ice and snow blasted across the field. This time, on the heels of the howling blizzard winds, hidden from Summerlander view, garm and ice-thralled bears, wolves, and snow lions raced towards the mortal lines.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Even with Sunfire arrows, Falcon’s not going to last long against that.”

  By the time she and her companions circled behind the rear flank of the Ice King’s army, the magic of Summer and Winter were clashing as ferociously in the sky as their armies battled on the field below.

  Falcon’s center line had fallen back, attempting to draw the Ice King’s army in so that the cavalry on both flanks could catch them in a pincer and pick off the garm with cross fire to give Khamsin time to get as close to Wynter as possible. But as boiling blue clouds of vapor poured over the armies, and the fallen rose again to add their numbers to the Ice King’s, it became increasingly obvious that the pincer strategy was going to fail—and fast.

  She was going to have to use the storm to slow them down, but the minute she did, Rorjak would feel her magic and track it back to her. She would lose the element of surprise.

  “Slight change of plans,” she told Merimydion. “Tell your men to brace themselves. It’s about to get very ugly for us. And you might want to give me some room.”

  The Sealord took one look at her face and fell back, shouting to his men in Calbernan.

  She tightened her grip on Roland’s sword.

  “Okay, Blazing,” she muttered, “let’s see what you’ve got.” If there was any small chance she could still save Wynter, Kham intended to take it. But if he was lost to her, if Rorjak’s hold over him was too strong to defeat, then it was her duty to stop him in any way she could. Even if that meant unleashing the same cataclysmic power that had ended the life of Roland Soldeus.

  One way or another, the Ice King would never step foot off this field.

  “Helos, Sunfather, whatever gifts this sword can give, grant them to me now.” She thrust the sword skyward and flung open the doors to her magic, calling to the gods and the sun and the skies with every part of her being.

  What answered was far beyond anything she’d ever summoned before. />
  It was as if a column of fire had descended upon her, igniting her world with heat and flame. Strangely, it didn’t burn. Her skin went hot and tight, her hair swirled around her on a sea of heat-spawned winds, but there was no pain. Only a feeling of extreme warmth and the sensation of strength and vitality filling her body near to bursting. The edges of her vision went bright, golden white.

  The diamond in the sword’s hilt was shining bright as a star, its light near blinding.

  In the sky, she could see the flows of air swirling through the storm, like ribbons of blue and red and electric purple. She reached for them and forced them to her will, swirling the flows of warm air round and round in ever-tightening circles as she fed heat and moisture into the storm.

  The Ice King roared and wheeled around, unleashing his Gaze. Two dozen Frost Giants followed suit. But even the coldest depths of winter could not extinguish the heat of the sun. The frost of Rorjak’s Gaze and the blizzard of the Frost Giants’ howls turned to steam, which Khamsin fed back into the storm. Lightning cracked and flashed. One bolt hit a tree near the Ice King’s army, exploding it in a burst of burning wood and vaporized ice.

  Two dozen garm broke from their attack on Falcon’s forces, spinning around and galloping directly toward Khamsin and the Calbernans.

  “Merimydion!” She shouted to get the Sealord’s attention and pointed at the herd of onrushing garm.

  “I see them! Calbernari! To arms!” At his shouted command, his men stuffed wax plugs in their ears to protect them from the paralytic effects of the garm’s screams and readied their shields and tridents. Behind them others loosened their arrows.

  The garm crossed the ground in land-eating strides. They fell upon the Calbernans in a shrieking pack, claws and fangs slashing and tearing. To their credit, the fierce warriors of the Islands held rank. Moving with the inhuman swiftness of ocean predators, they leapt and whirled and twisted to evade the garm’s slashing claws and attacked with their own brand of savage ferocity. Ice-coated shields bashed. Tridents stabbed and twisted, shredding flesh with their wicked barbs. Several Calbernans leapt over the backs of their brothers to hack and slash at the wounded garm with serrated blades. Red and blue blood ran like rivers across the snow.

  One of the garm made it through the line of defenders and closed in on Khamsin with lethal speed, only to freeze solid and skid to a halt as Krysti stabbed it with Thorgyll’s spear. The boy yanked the spear free and ran to help the Calbernans finish off their lot.

  Seeing his garm destroyed, the Ice King roared in fury and shouted commands on the howling winds. Twenty Frost Giants sprinted towards the Calbernans. The ground shook with the pounding of their feet as the colossal monsters approached. Massive serrated blades swung like scythes, and despite swift reflexes, more than dozen of Merimydion’s countrymen were unable to evade the blades. Sharp, icy steel cleaved them in two.

  Khamsin kept her attention and efforts focused on the storm. She fed it more energy and stirred the rotation of the clouds even faster. Several thick, horizontal, spinning ropes formed in the darkening clouds. The sky turned an eerie shade of dark green. Pressure built in her ears, and the sound of wind grew to a roar. The tops of the trees began whipping about. Branches cracked and ripped free, flying through the air like javelins.

  The spinning ropes in the volatile heart of the storm dropped down, thick, deadly funnels of wind and vapor that reached for the ground like the fingers of a god.

  She sent several of the funnels into the heart of the army attacking Falcon’s troops and directed another at the Frost Giants running towards her position. Garm, thralls, even the massive Frost Giants were no match for her whirling winds. The cyclones swept them up and flung them like pebbles through the air. Khamsin drove the vortexes through the Ice King’s ranks with ruthless abandon, scattering his troops and breaking his lines while simultaneously calling down the lightning. The dark green sky went blinding white as bolt after bolt after bolt of incinerating fire shot down from the heavens, finding Rorjak’s minions with unerring accuracy.

  Lightning hit the ground all around Rorjak as Khamsin tried to thin his ranks of defenders. Khamsin aimed a bolt directly at Reika Villani, but the vile woman flung herself out of the way at the last split second, then scrambled to her feet and took off running into the forest.

  Across the field, Falcon’s forces began closing in on the remaining thralls and garm. Lancers pinned the thralls to the ground, leaving infantry to dispatch them. Archers turned the garm into pincushions. Red and blue blood painted the snowy field an awful shade of purple.

  Rorjak screamed and swept his arms up. Ice-cold wind from the Craig rushed to his call, barreling through high reaches of the sky with incredible speed. The fierce jets of frozen air slammed into the tops of her storm clouds, shearing them away and robbing her storm of its deadliest power. Starved of energy, her cyclones grew thin and ropy, then disappeared altogether.

  Having muzzled her storm, the Ice King turned back to Khamsin. He slammed his free hand in her direction, and razor-sharp icicles shot from his fingertips, flying fast as arrows across, straight towards her.

  “Calbernari!” Merimydion shouted. “Makatua! Poru myerina. Shields! Protect the woman!”

  Calbernans leapt in front of Khamsin, and Rorjak’s ice missiles exploded against their shields, showering them all in a powdery cloud of shattered ice.

  Rorjak responded with another fierce, bone-curdling scream and an upward thrust of his hand. The ground beneath the Calbernans rocked and quaked, then split as huge columns of ice shot up from the ground, pulverizing rock in its path and throwing the Calbernans off their feet.

  No sooner had the ice columns erupted than they melted down, the water oozing out like clear jelly. It covered the fallen Calbernans, then hardened into an icy shell, cocooning half the men, trapping the others with thick manacles of ice around legs and arms. Rorjak unleashed his Gaze on the lot, freezing them solid.

  His path once again cleared, Rorjak turned the full force of his Gaze not on Khamsin but on the sword in her hand. The sword began to shake, and fire and ice battled for dominance. Rorjak began to advance towards her. Clutched in his right hand, Wynter’s sword, Gunterfys, was now covered with ice and glowing with blue light. She tried to strike it with lightning, but every bolt diverted before it hit, as if some invisible, impenetrable shield surrounded the Ice King and his sword.

  The power of Rorjak’s Gaze grew stronger with each approaching step. Kham’s hand went numb. The muscles in her arm strained as she fought to keep her grip on her now-violently-shuddering sword.

  Several of the ice-trapped Calbernans had managed to hack themselves free. They rose again, but this time as thralls who set upon their countryman in a blizzard of ferocity. A dozen more of Merimydion’s remaining warriors leapt into Rorjak’s path, putting themselves between Khamsin and the vengeful god. They formed a wall of shields, and held the wall as ice from Rorjak’s gaze coated the shields three inches thick. He swept them away with a searing blast of frost and a slash of his sword.

  Krysti, who had been icing garm with Thorgyll’s spear, ran towards Rorjak’s unprotected back. The snowy falls of Rorjak’s white hair stirred like the sensory hairs of a garm. The Ice King turned with the speed of a striking snake. He batted the spear away with his sword and swept Krysti off his feet with a swipe of his left arm.

  “Krysti!” Kham cried.

  The boy flew through the air and landed limp as a rag doll amidst a sea of dead garm and broken Calbernan bodies. He didn’t move again.

  The ice thrall, Galacia Frey, picked up Krysti’s dropped spear and began freezing Calbernans to her left and right as they rushed to surround Rorjak.

  Khamsin lunged towards Rorjak, sword upraised, but Gunterfys slammed into Blazing with stunning force. Sparks and ice showered from the two blades. A second, fearsome blow from Gunterfys sent Blazing spinning from Kham’s gra
sp. Rorjak caught her throat in a tight grip and lifted her off her feet.

  Stripped of Roland’s sword, death mere moments away, Khamsin did the only thing she could think of. She flung open the gates to the source of her power and called the lightning. All of it. Every last ion of energy that crackled through the roiling black storm clouds overhead.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  One after another, thick, hot, blinding bolts of concentrated electricity arced down from the heavens, following purple threads of plasma to their silver-eyed source. Deafening thunder boomed again and again. The ground shook, knocking combatants off their feet. The wild, hot music of the storm sang through Khamsin’s veins, and fire, hotter than the sun, filled her body.

  She thrust out her palms, pressing them against the frozen white expanse of Rorjak’s chest, and released the power gathered inside her.

  Light and heat exploded with a last, deafening boom. Rorjak and Khamsin flew backward in opposite directions and slammed to the ground.

  Breath rasping through her bruised throat, ears ringing, Kham pushed to her feet, retrieved her sword, and staggered across the icy ground to the Ice King’s fallen form. There, her legs gave out, and she fell to her knees beside him. A smoldering, charred black hole was burned through his chest plate, but Khamsin wasn’t fool enough to think a little lightning could kill a god. She lifted her sword.

  “Forgive me, Wynter.” Tears filled her eyes. Killing him would be like driving Roland’s sword through her own heart, but the Wynter she knew would rather die than let Rorjak live. She wiped her eyes resolutely and prepared to strike the killing blow. “I love you. I love you more than I ever knew I could love anyone.”