Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  “Poor girl,” Atler said sadly. “I imagine it’s not easy, seeing one’s greatest accomplishment ripped away like that.”

  “No,” Talo said with a sigh, the Arena flitting painfully across his thoughts. “It’s certainly not, but we haven’t had much opportunity to speak to her about it, unfortunately. Birds aren’t very conducive to addressing such matters and, since the magics can’t cross that distance, we’re left with struggling to get home in the middle of the damn freeze.”

  “I certainly don’t envy you,” Atler said with a soft laugh, getting up to allow one of the Priests milling around them to take her seat. “I’ve never braved our winters myself. Ystréd has been my family’s home for as many generations as we can count back, and I plan to keep it that way.”

  Let us pray you have that opportunity, then, Talo thought privately as the woman walked away, making for the kitchens.

  They ate the rest of their meal in relative silence, occasionally exchanging small talk with some of the older members of the temple and answering enthusiastic questions from the acolytes about Cyurgi’ Di and all the fabled wonders of the High Citadel and the Arocklen Woods along the feet of the Saragrias. Talo had to admit to himself, by the time they took their leave of the table—he leaning heavily on Carro’s arm to stand up—that it was nice to be among members of the faith again who had little more on their minds than the day’s chores and their duties to the town. He and Carro’s time in Azbar had been spent with the Laorin as well, but it had been a frantic few weeks, filled with planning and deliberation and sneaking about the city to meet with Arro as often as possible. There had been little peace in the stay, and even less joy. In fact, he hadn’t even realized how much he missed the community he and Carro had left behind in the Citadel until the storms had forced them to pause in Ystréd these last couple of days. He almost laughed to himself, remembering how, even before they’d arrived in Azbar, he and Carro had been discussing the possible abdication of his own High Priest’s mantle and returning to a life of wandering, just as Atler’s mentor had.

  I would miss this all too much, Talo thought to himself, looking over his shoulder as Carro led him to the stairs, watching the late risers take their newly vacated seats at the breakfast table. Maybe not at first, but certainly in the long run.

  They had just taken their first few steps upwards, intent on heading back to their room to prepare for their afternoon departure, when the brief peace of the morning was broken by the scream of horses.

  “What was that?” Carro demanded, half turning to look at the temple’s wide main door, shut tight against the cold. Around them, the rest of the Laorin had paused in whatever they were doing, lifting heads at the abrupt sound. For a moment the morning was quiet again.

  Then they heard the shouts.

  “… Help! Help… me!”

  The distant pleas were those of a woman, Talo realized, growing steadily closer, and even as he thought this he began to make out the hard beat of hooves against cobblestone.

  “What’s going on?”

  Atler had reappeared. Before anyone could answer her, though, the shouts started again, closing rapidly now.

  “… the door! Please…! OPEN THE DOOR!”

  There was a frozen silence, Atler looking suddenly tense and unsure.

  Talo decided it was time to step in.

  “Open the door!” he boomed, pulling himself free of Carro’s grasp and hobbling his way back down the stairs as fast as he could. “All acolytes, out. NOW!”

  The faithful of Ystréd seemed at a loss as to what to do, looking between Talo and their own High Priestess.

  Fortunately, Atler was fairly quick to recover her senses.

  “As he says!” she shouted, hurrying forward. “Acolytes out! All others, behind High Priest Brahnt and myself. Doren,”—she pointed at a young man in a corner of the room—“my staff, if you please. Kerren,”—she looked to a pair of women near the front of the room, their arms full of firewood they’d apparently been splintering for kindling in one of the temple’s side rooms—“you and Hemma get that door open! Quickly now!”

  All hesitation vanished from the room. At once the Laorin leapt into action, doing as instructed. In a blink the two women had the front door flung open, just in time for Talo to limp his way outside, Atler and Carro right behind him. Even in the fury of the moment the cold hit them like a solid blow, making them blink away sudden tears as an icy wind tore at their robes and the exposed skin of their faces.

  The temple was on the border of Ystréd’s middle and upper class quarters, a squat little two-story building flanked by the taller structures all around. The road, running east to west in front of the temple, had been cleared of the offending snow. Even the vestiges of the great storm that had hammered them over the last several days were starting to melt away under the merciful appearance of the sun.

  Good thing, too, because icy stone would have made poor footing for the pair of riders barreling towards them from the left.

  At first Talo thought the two figures were together, the foremost of them—a dark skinned woman in traditional Northern garb—having been the one who must have shouted. As they got closer, though, he saw that the woman’s expression was desperate, her frightened gaze only breaking from them to peer back at the man following close behind her.

  A man, Talo realized as he saw the glint of steel in the sunlight, riding with bare sword in hand.

  “Carro, get the girl!” he yelled over his shoulder, limping into the road as fast as his knee would allow him. “Atler, go with him, and help with the horses! Let me handle the rider!”

  If the High Priestess had any problem with taking orders, she didn’t voice it. Instead he heard both of them step out behind him, ready to follow his instructions. Before them the horses still hammered onward, but Talo caught the woman’s eye and waved to the side with one hand, hoping she would catch his meaning. She did, pulling her mount to the other side of the road.

  Leaving the man behind her suddenly very much exposed.

  It was a simple spell, amongst the first taught to budding acolytes, but it was one Talo had found served many uses over the years. Calling on the gifts Laor had lent him, Talo drew a breath. Then, focusing the magic into the motion, he stepped forward with one foot, thrusting an open palm forward before him.

  There was a flash of white. The air in front of Talo shimmered in a rapidly widening pattern. Like an invisible wave crashing across the road, what snow was left between the cracks in the cobblestones and roofs around them was suddenly thrown up and away, shoved by an intangible force.

  When the wave collided with the rider and his mount, it stopped them almost dead.

  The horse screamed as its headlong charge was abruptly cut short, its body moving for a moment as though suddenly submerged in water. The man, too, seemed all at once to flounder against a thickening of the air, shouting in alarm as his body tumbled off the back of his saddle in an almost gentle arc, his sword slipping as though in slow motion from his hand.

  Then the magic passed, and he hit the ground with a crunch of leather and iron armor against stone.

  One horse galloped by Talo’s right, rider in tow, followed a few seconds later by the second, stumbling and tripping in the confusion of attempting to adjust to the shift in momentum it had inexplicably experienced.

  Talo didn’t watch them pass, his eyes staying on the man left behind in the road some twenty feet away.

  The now-horseless swordsman had clearly been winded by the fall, coughing and groaning as he rolled himself onto his side, one hand scrounging about for his blade. When he didn’t find it within easy reach, he started cursing under his breath, forcing himself onto one knee and drawing a long knife from his belt.

  He’d just gotten to his feet, and was turning to face the temple, when Talo’s second wave of magic blew him away again, blasting him another ten feet down the road.

  This time the man didn’t get up again, knocked unconscious by the crush
ing force of the strike.

  When he was certain the attacker had been taken care of, Talo finally relaxed a little. Standing straight, he turned to see how Carro and Atler had fared. The High Priestess had her hands full with the swordsman’s animal, the horse rearing and squealing in fear, driven to its wit’s end by the chase and its rider’s sudden unsaddling. She’d managed to catch it by the reins, and was doing her best to calm it while simultaneously avoiding the creature’s kicking legs.

  “Shh!” she was saying, holding a hand up in an attempt to seem as non-threatening as possible. “Shh, boy! You’re all right. It’s all right.”

  Behind her, Carro was in the process of assisting the woman down off her own horse. She was shivering, clearly shaken by the ordeal, but she accepted his hand without hesitation, allowing herself to be half-helped, half-carried to the ground.

  “Are you hurt?” Carro was asking her as she dismounted. “What happened? Why was that man chasing you?”

  “Give her a moment, Carro,” Talo said, limping his way over to them. “She can talk when she’s ready.”

  The woman nodded at that, head bowed beneath the hood of her fur cloak. One hand was clasped against her chest, the other resting on her horse’s shoulder for support. She was taking slow, shaking breaths, trying—and apparently failing—to calm herself.

  “It’s done, miss,” Talo said gently, coming to stand before her. “He won’t be waking for a while, I think, much less trying to come after you again.”

  “Y-you’re sure?” she asked shakily, still not raising her head. “You’re absolutely sure?”

  “I’ve yet to know anyone who can stand for long after one of Talo’s spells,” Carro told her with chuckle. “Let alone two. You’re quite safe, my dear.”

  The woman nodded at that. Then, after a moment, she took a final deep breath and looked up.

  The first thing Talo realized was that she was—very, very clearly—not a native member of the Northern realms. If her tanned skin—somewhat more ashen than the skin of the true desert dwellers he remembered from his trip into the sand plains so many years ago—wasn’t enough, the faded grey of her eyes spelled it out absolutely.

  The second thing he realized was that those same eyes had lost none of the panic they had held before he’d stopped the man who’d so clearly been intent on killing her.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “A-All of you.” She looked between Carro and Atler, who had finally calmed the panicking horse and was stroking its muzzle nearby. “I-I don’t know what I would have done if… I have no idea of how to even start repaying you.”

  “You can start by telling us who you are, and explaining why that man”—Talo threw a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the prone figure, now attracting something of a crowd twenty feet down the road—“seemed so adamant on having your head. He doesn’t have the uniform of the town guard, and you don’t look like much of a killer or a thief, so I have my doubts it was a justified pursuit.”

  “E-Eva” she said shakily, glancing behind Talo at the unconscious form. “My name is Eva. And that man—V-Veret, I think his name was—was supposed to make sure I didn’t run for it. When I did, he drew his s-sword and…”

  She shivered, pausing. Then she looked up again, her voice stronger, though her face was still lined in desperation.

  “It doesn’t matter, though,” she hissed, stepping away from her horse towards Talo. “Please. I need your help. My friend needs your help. I’d heard the Laorin would aid those in need. It’s why I ran for the temple.”

  “You’ve heard right,” Carro said, moving to stand by Talo. “But the faith isn’t one to jump into a situation it knows nothing about. Come inside and you’ll be able to tell us what we can do for—“

  “There isn’t time!” Eva practically screamed, hands balled into fearful fists at her side. “Please. They’re going to kill him, if he doesn’t die on his own first. I can’t save him. I’m not even sure you can. But please! Help him! I owe him everything!”

  Talo and Carro exchanged a curious glance.

  “We can try,” Talo said calmly. “But my friend is right, miss. You need to tell us something, anything that might give us an idea of who it is we would be helping.”

  “A friend is in need,” Eva hissed shakily. “Taken prisoner, and dying even as we speak. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I wish it were,” Talo told her just as the Priest Atler had called Doren finally appeared in the temple door, her staff in one hand. “But we’ve known people who’ve chosen to dive headlong into such situations, and barely lived to regret it. You need to tell us everything you can, and be quick about it.”

  “I can’t!” The woman’s voice was panicked, the delay in their assistance obviously causing her great distress. “We don’t have time, I’m telling you! Please! I owe him my life. Please!”

  She looked desperately between the two Priests, who stood silently, watching her expectantly.

  “I can’t,” she repeated after a moment, tears welling in her grey eyes. “I can’t. If you knew… If you knew, you might not come…”

  “Knew what, woman?” Carro asked her, his patience apparently wearing a little thin. Talo shot him a disapproving look, which he returned in equal measure.

  Enough is enough, it said.

  Before them, the Southerner hesitated, clearly struggling with herself, the part that was unwilling to give the Priests what they wanted battling with the side that wanted so desperately to enlist their aid.

  After a time, though, she seemed to crumple, the will to fight fleeing with each passing second.

  “My friend…” she began in a hoarse whisper, eyes on the ground at the Priests’ feet. “He’s not really… He’s not exactly…”

  Eva paused, forcing to take a deep breath. Then she looked up and met Talo’s eyes with newfound determination.

  “He’s not… human.”

  The cold of the winter was abruptly nothing to Talo. It might have been full of summer warmth, in fact, compared to the wash of ice that arched its way down his spine and into every limb. He looked around, dumbfounded, at Carro, whose own shock seemed enough to make him have a hard time tearing his eyes away from the dark skinned woman.

  “Arro is here?” the Priest finally managed to sputter. “He’s here? In Ystréd?”

  It was Eva’s turn to stare, looking up at the big man, obviously taken aback.

  “You know him?” she demanded, gaping at Carro. “But how could you—?”

  “Arro?” Atler interrupted, still off to the side with the horses. “Raz i’Syul Arro? What in the Lifegiver’s name is that beast doing here?”

  “He’s not a beast!” Eva whirled on the High Priestess, suddenly irate. “You can’t know—you can’t imagine what he’s been through, what he’s done! You have no idea what he is!”

  “We do.”

  Talo had regained some of the feeling in his limbs. The shock of the news had yet to settle, but he’d deal with it as it came. He met the Southerner’s eyes as she turned again to face him, suddenly understanding the desperation he saw there.

  “Carro and I know him well enough, Eva. We know there’s more to him than ‘the Monster’. Right now, though, you’re right. It doesn’t matter. Right now, you just need to tell us where he is.”

  V

  “There are words that describe those of our faith well, or so we like to imagine. Kind, gentle, compassionate, supportive. These are warm words, words of hope and light and ardor. These are words meant to instill and support peace, to cultivate a love for Laor in all His magnificence, and to breed respect among men for all other men. No one, though, pauses to consider the other words that fit the Laorin just as well. Words such as powerful. As hard. As cunning.

  Words such as fearsome.”

  —PRIVATE JOURNAL OF ERET TA’HIR

  KISSER WAS relieved, looking around, that he wasn’t the only one getting nervous. Albur had pulled out a narrow knife from his boot and was cleaning his fingernai
ls with it. Mihk sat on a rickety stool in the far corner, his knee bouncing beneath him. Les had long since returned from the kitchen where he’d left the physician Sven to melt and boil the snow, and was now standing by the atherian’s wheezing form, staring at Arro blankly, his thoughts on other things.

  Even Garth, still waiting by the door, couldn’t help glancing at the room window every minute or so.

  “Where are they?” he finally demanded, peeling himself off the doorframe and striding into the room proper. “Veret should’a had the bitch back twenty minutes ago!”

  No one answered him—not wanting to give the man a target to vent his wrath on—which didn’t improve Garth’s mood in the least. Naturally, therefore, his ire found its usual mark.

  “Kisser!” he bellowed, turning to glare at the young man. “Get off yer ass and drag the old man out ‘a the kitchen. I wanna know what that Eva woman is up to!”

  Kisser grit his teeth against a response and slid off the counter he’d seated himself atop. Picking his way through the clutter, he made for the back of the room towards the hall down which he assumed the kitchen had to be. Even as he turned the corner he heard Garth shift his wrath on Albur, yelling something about the state of the man’s filthy hands.

  Kisser sighed and kept walking. The back hallway, already a narrow space, was all the more restricted by a set of broad windowed cabinets along the right wall, their wooden shelves sagging sadly under the weight of yet more books and oddities, including what looked to be the better half of a human skull. Slipping his way past, Kisser found a closed door at the end of the hall. Grabbing the handle, he pried it open to peer into the room beyond.

  “Garth says he wants you, old man!” he started. “He’s not happy about—!”

  Kisser stopped midsentence, freezing with one hand still on the door handle.

  The kitchen was a typical thing, a cramped space taken up mostly by a small table and single rickety chair in the middle of the room. A line of old stone counters adorned the two walls opposite, all of which were also littered with various objects ranging from old scrolls to knives to scraps of bread and other forgotten foods. An open fireplace of brick and mortar stood to Kisser’s left, wide and shallow, over which all manner of pans and kettles could be suspended. The iron pot Les had packed with snow was at that moment hung over a bed of smoking coals, in fact, the water Sven had been supposedly boiling having long since evaporated.