The spark!
What had taken over a minute to build up was gone in a flash. Blaze struggled in the net. There were flashing red amulets and shaman’s tokens woven into the wire. They pulsed as her fire passed through the net and back into the ground, flash-evaporating a circle of snow all around her.
Blaze tried to throw the net off, but the short circuit had left her dizzy. She gave one pull on the net and fell to the ground, exhausted and drained. The snow sizzled beneath her.
The Rimefrost Orcs stomped and whooped, bellowing terrible cries as they bound the net around her and slung her to a pole. She could not see Dreck.
Had they bound him as well? Had they let him go?
Please no. Don’t let this happen.
The orc troop descended the steep canyon, hauling Blaze on the pole. All too soon, the bonfires of the war camp flickered on all sides.
Horns blared out as they approached. The orcs dropped her onto the hard-packed snow. The cold metal net bit into her skin. She was already shivering with ember afterchill. She couldn’t stop.
The ground shook, and Blaze looked up. “No!” she cried.
Bound to the ground with a tangled array of cables and nets was an enormous figure lying on its back. Glowing red lines appeared in a crisscross pattern where the cables bit into its ice-like, snowy-white skin.
The orcs had captured the jotnar.
Chapter 13: Cernonos
The great jotnar was surrounded by no less than two hundred orcs, all armed with long-bladed spears. The jotnar moved its leg, and immediately a dozen guards jabbed their weapons at it. The jotnar convulsed as the dark magic of the blades flowed into it, assaulting its very nature.
Blaze knew the feeling.
She was withering. She didn’t know how much longer she could survive with the cold net wrapped around her, cutting into her. Its magic cables were draining every degree of heat she could summon.
And then the creature stepped from behind the jotnar. Blaze stared in horror.
She had heard of chimera before—half-man, half-animal demons. Long, obsidian black horns grew upward out of his skull. Ornate metal ringed his horns halfway down their length. His chest was shielded by metal armor plates, and his shoulders were covered in brown matted fur. His hands were massive, nearly the size of Blaze’s entire torso. His feet and legs resembled the hind legs of a goat.
His face was just human enough to make the entire repulsive creature look intelligent. The most disturbing thing was his eyes. They glowed bright blue, stark and terrifying against the dark, wintry night.
Rune tattoos covered his armor, powerful spells that would repel harm and grant him supernatural strength in battle.
“Cernonos.” An orc captain took a knee in front of the demon. “We have the Ember Mage that attacked Hetsa, and last of the Crook-Eye traitors.”
Dreck is alive.
“Good. The sacrifice of these prisoners will only bind the Iron Collar stronger,” said Cernonos. His voice dripped with malice.
Whatever hope Blaze had clung to was draining fast.
“Our Midnight Queen requires an army of dark jotnar. This will be but the first.”
The Midnight Queen. That was the same name that the ice kobolds had mentioned when Blaze first arrived in the Frostbyte Reach. Was that some new sorceress in league with the Dark Consul? Could that be the one who was behind the expansion of dark influence spreading through Crystalia?
Crystalians had turned to darkness before: the Consul, the Usurper King . . . and now perhaps there were some turning to this Midnight Queen.
And how powerful was this being if monsters like Cernonos served her?
“The Frostbyte Reach will soon fall to our might,” said Cernonos. “Then all of Crystalia—and all too easy. The power to destroy them was here all along, waiting for us to claim it. Take the prisoners to the rune marks! Their strength will be mine to command. The binding curse will be unbreakable!”
Two Rimefrost Orcs seized Blaze tightly around the arms and dragged her across the ice. They dropped her into a triangle drawn on the ice with a black substance that looked like pitch.
The jotnar was less than four yards away. To her right and left, four Crook-Eye Orcs bound by thick cords were each shoved into their own triangles. Lines of pitch linked the triangles together in a semicircle around the jotnar.
This can’t be happening, Blaze thought, as she trembled with shivers. Orcs behind her laughed. When the last triangle was filled, the orc captain gave a guttural cry and the soldiers guarding the jotnar stepped back.
Six orcs pushed an enormous wooden wagon toward the jotnar. They pulled back a tarp covering the wagon, and Cernonos lifted out a black wrought iron hoop—the Iron Collar.
The Iron Collar that Dreck, the traitor, had given to them.
In its center was set what looked like a shining black diamond—the black zirconia.
So it was true. She’d confronted Dreck about it, and he’d refused to tell her. The orc with the raven in Hetsa seeking the black zirconia had been Dreck.
How long had Dreck been planning this? Blaze felt sick to her stomach. She’d been right not to trust him.
A shadow flickered on Blaze’s right and with it a flash of something blue. Blaze had seen that light before, bright against a flame. Could it be?
But the light was gone just as quickly as it had come.
Cernonos raised the heavy collar with his bare hands. His hands glowed red, and the runes carved into the metal glowed. As they did, the Iron Collar expanded and grew, nearly doubling in circumference.
Cernonos gripped it with both hands at the top of the hoop and unlatched it. The collar bent on a hidden hinge, and Cernonos clamped it shut over the neck of the captive jotnar.
Orcs scrambled to latch a chain to the collar behind the nape of the jotnar’s neck, then pulled.
The jotnar struggled against its bonds, moaning a soft, sad cry.
Cernonos stepped forward and raised his arms, speaking in an arcane tongue.
The red-glowing cords that crisscrossed the jotnar’s bound body pulsed with energy. The ice giant gave a great roar that shook the canyon walls, and suddenly the lines of pitch that formed each triangle lit up with red fire. The flames were so close, they warmed the skin on Blaze’s cheeks.
She stretched her hand as far as she could through the metal net’s weave. If she could just reach it, she could use it to charge up. The burning pitch was just beyond her fingertips.
Suddenly the chords of her net loosened behind her, then something unseen shoved her from behind. She scraped forward just a few inches. It was enough. Blaze thrust her fist into the burning flame. It enveloped her hand.
Warmth surged into Blaze.
“On my signal, not before.” The words came to her as if from thin air. Blaze knew that voice. Blaze stifled a cry of excitement. There was hope in that voice.
She siphoned more heat from the glowing flames. The scene turned a reddish hue.
Cernonos roared the words of his spell ever louder, and again the red lines pulsed. The jotnar cried out in pain and terror.
Blaze saw the same flash of faint blue light in front of her. This time it grew, glowing and forming into the figure of a young woman, fully clad in shining, silvery-blue armor, a broadsword with blade edges glowing blue in each hand, her blue hair flowing out from beneath a narrow-slotted battle helmet that shielded all but her fierce blue eyes.
It was just as she had looked on the day Blaze had first met her.
Princess Sapphire.
Only now the princess was so much stronger and more magnificent.
“You’re here,” whispered Blaze. This was exactly what Blaze had come for. Except that Princess Sapphire had found Blaze instead. A surge of joy welled up inside Blaze, and for a split second, Blaze’s vision faded from red to white.
Princess Sapphire was alive. And Blaze had forgotten just how gloriously, splendidly awesome
the princess was.
Princess Sapphire made her move. Her blurred figure, like a moving curtain, raced along the edges of the triangle. Her two blue-edged swords, one afire, flashed like lightning as she severed binding cords and cut through the boundaries of the carefully crafted rune marks.
Cernonos roared his spell, his chant sending a surge of heat into the triangles. “You!” he cried.
“I’ll take that,” Blaze said. Siphoning the heat of Cernonos’s spell out of the triangle, Blaze filled to capacity in an instant. She threw her arms outward, obliterating the metal net in a blast of fire. Fragments of molten cable whipped into the orc soldiers surrounding the ceremony.
Now it was time to play.
Blaze leapt from her triangle. She was immediately thrown back into its center by an unseen force.
The triangle’s binding spell held her captive. I can fix that.
Blaze sent out lines of fire to the neighboring triangles and siphoned their fire into her as well. The Crook-Eye Orcs within were momentarily free.
Drawing in the rest of the fire from her triangle rune mark, she extinguished the burning pitch.
Soldiers with lances surged forward to stop the captives from escaping. Blaze had to stop them before their cursed lances reached the unarmed Crook-Eyes.
“Fire Wave!” Blaze sent an entire company of orcs scrambling for their lives as tongues of flame jetted out from Blaze’s fingers. She turned and scorched the line between attackers and captives on the other side.
Claiming the fallen lances, Crook-Eye Orcs began slashing at the jotnar’s bands to free it. An entire company of Crook-Eyes charged forward, leaving the Rimefrost Orcs and coming to their tribesmen’s aid, hacking at the jotnar’s bands as well.
The Crook-Eyes were on Princess Sapphire’s side! It had all been a trick. The Crook-Eye Orcs must have allowed some of their number to infiltrate the Rimefrost camp and betray their tribesmen.
Now all fought side-by-side to free the great ice giant.
But the jotnar didn’t move.
Blaze turned to see Cernonos holding its collar with one hand, chanting a spell. Red fire coursed from the runes on his armor, running down his hands and into the metal. The black diamond shone and flashed as the magic danced through it.
Princess Sapphire raced around the foot of the giant toward Blaze, the last of the glowing blue light fading behind her. She was joined by a group of recently-freed Crook-Eye Orcs, who came charging around from the other side of the giant.
Another burst of red magic coursed through the runes on the Iron Collar. The jotnar’s arms flung outward.
Princess Sapphire leapt backward, dodging. A few of the Crook-Eye Orcs weren’t so lucky.
“Cernonos is using his own strength to seal the spell!” the princess cried. “It’s too late—retreat!”
Blaze leapt to her feet. This was her chance. “No. I can stop him,” she said.
Princess Sapphire turned, her fiery blue eyes staring directly at Blaze. “No. I said retreat, soldier,” said the princess. “That is an order.”
Blaze smoldered inside. She was fully charged up. She could do this. Blaze could show Princess Sapphire that she could fight alongside her. She could win.
She summoned a fireball and hurled it with dead-eye accuracy, right into the black diamond in the center of the Iron Collar.
Cernonos screamed and recoiled, his hands all aflame. Blaze concentrated her blast, holding it until the fireball turned into a column of flame. She focused that column into a narrow blast on the black diamond. The jotnar screamed.
“No!” Princess Sapphire cried.
Princess Sapphire smashed into Blaze, knocking her aside and breaking Blaze’s column of flame.
But it was too late. The black diamond had melted in the collar.
Melted? That’s impossible. Ember fire was hot enough to turn molten rock into lava, but never melt a diamond.
“Black zirconia!” roared Cernonos. “A hidden dampening spell! The Crook-Eyes betrayed us!”
“He knows,” grunted a huge orc that looked strangely familiar—a larger version of Dreck. “It’s all for naught!”
Rimefrost Orc soldiers surrounded Cernonos and interlocked fire-repelling shields in a circle around him.
“What have you done?” Princess Sapphire said, her blue eyes staring into Blaze’s. “That was our last chance to sabotage the spell.”
“I didn’t know!” Blaze gasped. She didn’t quite understand what she had done, but a cold, sinking feeling dropped into her stomach.
With a roar of anger, Cernonos jammed a clawed thumb into what was left of the melted black zirconia and tore it from the collar. He pressed his palm to the broken fitting. The collar began to glow.
“Don’t let him seal the spell!” Princess Sapphire cried.
The princess raised her flaming broadsword high, rallying the soldiers. She charged forward, ready to throw herself into the heart of the battle. But suddenly there was a noise like a blanket being thrown over the world, damping all noise. For a moment, Blaze again seemed to hang in a space apart from her surroundings.
A blast of sparks erupted from the giant’s collar where Cernonos held it between his hands. A crack of thunder boomed over the chaos of the battle.
“No!” Blaze cried.
“Fall back!” Princess Sapphire ordered.
A wave of retreating Crook-Eye Orcs pushed Blaze back from the jotnar. Blaze watched in horror as the jotnar’s eyes opened.
Red.
“Run!” said a voice. Blaze felt herself yanked up under the arm of an orc wearing a long robe.
“Dreck?” Blaze asked.
“Mmmph,” Dreck grunted in reply.
“To Foruk’s Falls,” Princess Sapphire cried, sprinting—in full armor. She kept pace with even the largest orcs. “The city has only a few guards now. We must evacuate the dwarves and freyjan before the jotnar reaches the city.”
Four huge snow bears with two Rimefrost Orc riders each charged between the trees, closing in from either side ahead of the Crook-Eye tribe.
“Snow bear,” grunted a nearby Crook-Eye. “Orc up!” The Crook-Eyes were quick. One by one, the Crook-Eye Orcs joined hands and launched their tribesmen into the air. The airborne Crook-Eye Orcs smashed into the snow bear riders, knocking them off their mounts and taking their places.
The Crook-Eyes took the reins of the muzzled snow bears, slowing them enough for a half-dozen more Crook-Eye Orcs to climb aboard each gigantic bear. Dreck tossed Blaze onto the last snow bear and hauled himself up its fur.
“Ride!” Princess Sapphire called, standing atop the lead bear. Her blue-tinged sword flashed briefly, and the snow bears charged out of the Rimefrost camp as a great moan rose up from behind them.
It was a sad sound, like the north wind itself dying. The jotnar had fallen to darkness.
Blaze clung to the matted white fur as the great bear lumbered down the canyon toward Foruk’s Falls. She shivered violently. She spent every last spark. Dreck wrapped Blaze in his arms and held her while the afterchill claimed her once again. She wanted to struggle. She wanted to push him away. But she was just too tired.
They had failed. The Frostbyte Reach was doomed.
Chapter 14: The Torch Road
The snows bears slowed to a halt after a few miles.
“Looks like they’re out of steam,” said Princess Sapphire. “No matter. This is our stop.” She called to a Crook-Eye shaman. “Orktag, I do not want to see these creatures in battle again, especially sneaking up behind us—knock them out.”
The orcs dismounted, and Blaze leapt down, glad to be off the back of something that considered her a modest snack. They were lazy creatures anyway. The snow bears should have taken them at least as far as Foruk’s Falls.
Orktag the shaman drew out a ball on a cord and swung it in turn at the noses of the bears, releasing a puff of sparkling dust. A moment later, each bear collapsed in a
heap.
Princess Sapphire held her sword aloft, a bright blue glow emanating from the gem in its hilt. Her eyes were a deep, almost ocean blue, piercing and discerning. She looked, for all the world, like she could command the whole kingdom at a word. She peered into the deep woods, as if searching for something.
“How long will they stay down?” she turned and asked.
“They’re in their winter sleep now,” said the shaman. “I broke the Rimefrost spell that kept them awake.”
“Hibernation—excellent,” said Princess Sapphire. She turned aside and into the woods, leaving the trail behind. “This way.”
Blaze poked Dreck in his rock-hard abs. “See, that’s how it’s done. You need to get some of that shaman powder, Dreck. Then you might actually be useful.”
“Dreck have allergies to shaman magic,” said Dreck.
“Oh.”
“Kidding.”
Blaze looked up to see Dreck making his horrible, open-faced, smile-gape thing. It was ridiculous. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of laughing at his jokes. “Wipe that smile off your face, orc. You look like you swallowed a dragon egg.”
Blaze looked around to see if anyone was watching. “Come on, let’s keep up with the princess. We don’t want to be here when Cernonos shows up with the dark jotnar. They can’t be far behind.”
For a moment, Blaze’s conscience pricked her. Shouldn’t I be grateful? He had saved her from freezing. She pushed the thought from her mind. Hadn’t Dreck been the one to help Cernonos? He had been part of some grander plan. But did that mean she could trust him? She still wasn’t sure.
Between the leafless branches of the aspens, Princess Sapphire’s dark blue hair waved in the breeze, the tips wrapped in silvery bands as she hurried into the forest. Her armor shone in the faint light of her blue-glowing gem, glittering as though reinforced with hundreds of tiny diamonds. She carried on her back a large shield bearing the royal crest. It looked the same as the one she had lost in the fire. Perhaps she had retrieved it or had it remade.
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