Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  It was almost a half hour before the Priests returned, coming back around on the path, by which time Raz had long since built himself up and burned himself out, dancing until he could dance no more. They found him on his knees in the middle of his crude little circle, heaving in gasps of icy air, sword and ax limp in each hand, their blades resting against the ground.

  They didn’t offer any comment on his position, just as he didn’t offer any comment on the sort of stupefied reverence plastered across al’Dor’s blonde bearded face that said that he—like Raz—had been hard pressed to turn away from the majestic, untouched perfection of the Dehn.

  After a hurried breakfast of dried bread and salted beef softened with melted snow, they wasted no time on their departure. From horseback Brahnt dispelled the wards with a few waves of his hand and a flash of white light, then brought his mount around and led them back around the outcropping towards the road. Once they’d returned to the path, the three men slipped into their habit of riding abreast, Raz and al’Dor flanking Brahnt on the left and right respectively. The going was slow, none of them willing to push their horses into more than a steady trot over the treacherously hidden earth, but it was still faster than anything they’d managed in most of the week prior. Today, at least, vertical sleet wasn’t cutting at their hands and faces, nor was the wind buffeting them about so much that they kept running either into each other or off the road entirely. Even the Priests’ quick wards and warming spells, cast periodically throughout the day, never held up long against the blizzard’s constant battery, and a majority of their time had been spent hunched and miserable in their saddles, only looking up every few minutes to ensure they hadn’t strayed far from each other or the road.

  Now, though—while the cold kept slipping through the thinnest layers of their furs and cloaks and their lips were still cracked from the dryness of the air—the mood of the journey could not have been more different. After days of near-constant silence as they rode—not counting the sporadic yelling at each other over the storm to check they were still heading in the right direction—the three companions found themselves overjoyed with the prospect of distraction and discussion. Even Raz had grown tired of the pseudo-solitude, and took advantage of the clear day to strike up a conversation as soon as they found a steady pace.

  “How much farther do we have?” he asked as they led the horses down a sharp incline in the road, one after the other. “Not that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed myself the last few days, but if we get caught in another storm like that I’m turning tail and making for the South again, bounty be damned.”

  Behind him, al’Dor chuckled. “A ways, yet. Another week at least, likely two. And I’m surprised you weren’t warned before making the trek up. If it’s sand and sunlight you were hoping for, you certainly picked the wrong direction.”

  “Oh, I was warned,” Raz grumbled unwillingly, taking his habitual spot by Brahnt’s left again as the road widened once more. “I just apparently couldn’t quite fathom the extent of the natural disaster I was willfully wading into…”

  “Speak for yourself,” Brahnt himself said, lifting a gloved hand from where it kept his staff balanced across his legs to scratch at his snow-flecked beard. “I’ve been in your lands, too, Arro, and I’ll take the cold and all its little bastard friends over the sweltering misery you Southerners call the ‘cooler seasons’ any day, and then some. Cooler, my foot! If it’d gotten any hotter I was afraid the bricks that held the roof up over our head were going to start melting.”

  Raz scoffed. “Then don’t visit the fringe cities in the summer, old man. The days are so hot that women cook their meat on the underside of iron pots left in the Sun. The slummers become more of a nuisance by fighting amongst themselves for shade and water than they ever do just picking pockets and begging for scraps. In the desert, sarydâ wrap the hilts of their weapons in rough cloth, because the pommels and cross guards become so heated they’ve been known to sear the skin right from the hand.”

  “You make my point for me,” Brahnt laughed, ending his scratching and waving his hand about at the Dehn. “Are you really going to insist you prefer that place’s searing misery to this?”

  Raz opened his mouth to retort, all too intent on defending his homeland, but stopped abruptly. Turning, he looked over the sweeping, smooth white bouncing of the Plains.

  He decided silence was the more dignified response.

  “Exactly,” Brahnt said with a smile. “Though truth be told, lad, these hills aren’t the most fascinating thing I hope to show you on this trip. Look north.” He nodded in the direction they were headed.

  Raz looked around, peering into the distance. It took him a moment to make out what he believed the Priest was referring to.

  Then he whistled.

  There, only outlines even to Raz’s keen eyes, the blue and white shadow of mountains cut across the horizon. Like the jagged, broken teeth of some great old wolf they jutted up from the earth into the sky. It wasn’t the first time Raz had made out such things, of course. He’d seen the Crags that dipped into the eastern stretches of the Cienbal on multiple occasions, though never from up close. Regardless, those reddish, arid ranges held little comparison to the titans that rose in either direction—even so indistinctly at this distance—like a line of giant soldiers as far as the eye could see. Their wide, interlocking bases were mixed in and lost to one another, steep, angular slopes mostly hidden among the clouds. Despite this, Raz could most distinctly make out the start of peaks, highlighted against the heavens because of the greyish-white tinge of eternal snow.

  “The Saragrias?” he asked, drawing from what little the Priest had told him of their destination, and still squinting as he tried to make out more of the ragged contours.

  Beside him, both Brahnt and al’Dor blinked and turned to stare at him, the latter leaning around the former to do so.

  “You can see the ranges?” he asked in astonishment. In response, Raz nodded.

  “Impressive,” Brahnt said with his own whistle of appreciation. “But no. As neither Carro nor I can see the mountains as of yet, I was actually speaking of something a little more earthbound. Look down a little, nearer the base of the peaks.”

  Raz did as instructed, and this time he noticed a thick band of black lining most of the horizon, so obvious he was surprised it wasn’t the first thing he noticed.

  Not as surprised, though, as when he made out the trunks and swaying canopy of thousands upon thousands of trees.

  “A forest!” he exclaimed, barely able to keep the glee out of his voice. He’d long since fallen in love with the sprawling woodlands surrounding Azbar, many miles to the south.

  “The Arocklen Woods,” al’Dor agreed with a nod, “though I wish we were intending to traverse it by way of the summer roads. The pines can be cruel in winter.”

  “Have you ever done so?” Raz asked curiously, though his eyes never left the distant tree line. “Either of you?”

  “Braved the Woods in the middle of the freeze?” al’Dor asked with a snort. “Not I. I’ve barely ever left the Citadel once the snows come, and I hadn’t planned on doing so this year either. Someone, though”—he gave Brahnt a sidelong look—“thought it best to give me the opportunity.”

  Brahnt smiled, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge the humorous barb.

  “I have,” he said in response to Raz’s question, slowing his mare down slightly as they reached a wide wooden bridge suspended over a narrow stream that cut a thin line through the snow to their left. “Only once, though, when I brought Syrah from the western towns as a girl to join the faith.”

  Raz was quiet, and Brahnt took the silent hint to continue.

  “In my younger days, in the decade or two after I first received my staff, I made my own attempts to work out a peace between the valley towns and mountain tribes. I never had as much success as Syrah—though there’s irony in that now, come to think of it—but what small victories I managed lent me enough credit in the e
yes of both people to work as a sort of liaison, when the need arose.”

  He frowned, and Raz could tell he was dredging up old memories with all this talk.

  “Baoill isn’t the first act of war the people of the towns have suffered at the hands of the mountain men. About twenty years ago one of the western municipalities, the city of Drangstek, was razed to the ground by a clan from the Fissür ranges to the south. Fortunately the attack was one of brute force, the armies spotted miles off, and Drangstek managed to evacuate a majority of its population before the worst befell them. Most fled to Stullens, a neighboring valley town, but four hundred thousand can’t settle well within walls meant to harbor only half that number, and other problems arose. Sickness, starvation, violence… Before long Stullens and Drangstek both were calling for aid from the faith, and we responded in turn. I was one of many to make the pilgrimage, hoping my diplomatic credit might serve purpose.”

  The frown turned into a crooked smile of amusement.

  “I wasn’t long in leaving, though. Once the tribes had left the bones of the city, most of Drangstek’s people flocked back and started to rebuild. Stullens found its peace again, the plagues died off, and crime fell. As I wasn’t needed, I made for the Citadel.”

  “Though not alone,” al’Dor said slyly from beside him.

  “Oh no,” Brahnt chortled. “No, not alone. Though by the end of our journey I might have wished half a hundred times that I had left the little brat back in Stullens.”

  “Syrah?” Raz asked.

  He barely had time to realize it was the first time he’d ever said her name aloud before Brahnt answered.

  “Syrah,” he confirmed. “The youngest of a family with too many mouths to feed. Her parents had approached me more than once, begging that I might take at least one of their children into the faith. At first I refused, but after a time they convinced me to at least meet the children. When I saw Syrah… well…”

  “Life could have been hard for her,” Raz finished for him, nodding and thinking of what he could remember of the woman, recalling her colorless, smooth skin, and the pretty shine of her rose-colored eyes. “It can be difficult, being different…”

  “Especially when the choice is starvation, the faith, or an over-packed orphanage. And so… I took her, and the tale only gets duller from there.”

  “Oh I don’t know about that!” al’Dor offered up. “Young Syrah was anything but dull, if I recall. She had you fretting about after her like a worried old woman from day one. Always off, scampering about with the other children, convincing them to get themselves into trouble. I thought Talo was going to lose his hair by the end of the first year, if he didn’t pull it out first. She was a troublemaker, that one.”

  “She was a child,” Brahnt retorted, speaking with a note of pride that reminded Raz of how he’d sometimes overheard his own father talk of him. “It wasn’t more than a week before she’d made friends—”

  “Built a gang,” al’Dor muttered.

  “—and went about her business doing all it is that children do.”

  “Causing mayhem and disaster and getting under everyone’s feet.”

  “Well either way,” Brahnt said firmly, giving his lover a hard sidelong glance, “the fact remains that she grew up well enough, and made something of herself.”

  al’Dor smiled. “Oh you know I’m only teasing. I love Syrah like a daughter, and I certainly won’t say she doesn’t deserve the praise. It’s a pity Baoill came to power when he did. If the treaties she’d worked out with the Sigûrth had held for any amount of time, she’d have made history.”

  “She made history either way,” Talo said, still sounding a little irritated. “The fact that any Kayle at all—even the former Kayle—was willing to put his name to a true peace is unprecedented. All I ever managed to do was build accords for truces, and establish a trade route between the Fissür and Stullens that didn’t last more than two summers. Syrah’s successes are of a different caliber.”

  “I’m not arguing that, handsome. I’m merely addressing the unfortunate circumstances. If Baoill hadn’t risen so quickly—”

  “Then someone else would have. The new Kayle isn’t a coincidence, he’s a complexity of Syrah’s success. If anything, the desperation with which he amassed his forces seems to me only to indicate exactly how much of a threat he saw in her. You’re not giving her the credit she—”

  “She sounds like an incredible woman.”

  Brahnt stumbled over his words as Raz spoke, interrupting their argument, and both he and al’Dor seemed suddenly to remember that they weren’t alone on the road. The High Priest coughed in embarrassment and al’Dor leaned around him again, a little pink in the face, to address Raz.

  “She is, and I would never say it any other way.” He gave Brahnt a quick glare. “In fact… you remind me a bit of her, Arro.”

  That took Raz by surprise, and he blinked before looking around at the blond man.

  “Me?” he asked with a confused laugh, utterly unable to keep the disbelief out of his voice. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone I would less relate to. You make this woman sound—”

  “Dependable?” Brahnt asked him as they took a bend in the road and found themselves fighting their way uphill. “Driven? Caring?”

  Raz scowled at him, though he didn’t miss the attempted compliment.

  “Peaceful,” he said simply, tugging on Gale’s reins to keep the stallion from aggressively overtaking the more plodding mares. “I was going to say ‘peaceful.’”

  “Ha!” Brahnt turned to al’Dor as though looking for someone to share a joke with. “’Peaceful,’ he says! ‘Peaceful’!”

  And then the High Priest was laughing in truth, the sound dampened by the heavy snow.

  “If someone wants to explain the joke to me?” Raz muttered, looking between the two men.

  It was al’Dor who answered him, though he too couldn’t seem to help from smiling at Brahnt’s continued guffaws.

  “Syrah is… interesting. I fear we’ve painted a poor picture for you, lad. She’s not some nun who’s locked herself in a tower to pore over old scriptures and offer wisdom via letters and birds. She’s… direct.”

  “She’s fiery!” Brahnt said loudly, still chortling. “Peaceful, my ass! Syrah’s got a tongue like a lash, mind like a razor, and fists like stone—though that last one she might have got from me. Oh she can be all prim and proper when need be, but give her half a chance and she’ll put you in your place, Arro, mark my words.”

  Raz couldn’t help it. He was suddenly very much intrigued.

  He was remembering, as it happened, the first time he had really seen Syrah Brahnt. Though he’d put eyes on her in the Karthian markets, he’d thought her likely mad then, all covered up in silks and leathers that must have felt like an oven in the Southern sun. No, the first time he’d truly taken her in had been some minutes later, in the moments after he’d butchered the men who’d snatched her off the street, intending to sell her off at a good price.

  He had a better memory than most men, but even he was surprised to realize he remembered every detail of the moment.

  Her face had been clearly comely, despite the bruising around one eye. Torn robes revealed the almost luminescent skin of one shoulder, hinting at indecency, and yet despite this she’d stood tall and composed, demanding his attention with a commanding presence. Her voice had been smooth, clear as crystal, cutting through the battle fog and bloodlust to rip Raz back from the edge of murderous instinct as she vied for the life of one of her would-be kidnappers.

  That was what he remembered the best out of all of it. The abrupt, precise return to his senses, pulling him firmly back from the edge of the abyss that had since become a constant stain upon his soul.

  Whether it had been the circumstance, the timing, or just the woman herself, no one and nothing had ever been able to pull Raz back from the edge with such absolute force.

  He realized suddenly that he’d bee
n silent for almost a minute, and he looked up sharply. Brahnt and al’Dor were watching him, rolling along with the gait of their horses, matching grins adorning both bearded faces.

  “What?” Raz demanded defensively.

  “Oh, nothing, boy,” Brahnt said, the grin not falling from his face. “It’s just like Carro says, though, isn’t it? You’re a bit like her. A good bit like her.”

  Raz decided not to respond, which only earned him a chuckle from the two older men.

  The rest of the day’s ride kept on and completed in pleasant fashion, the Priests catching up on conversation lost to the storm and telling him all about the Laorin, the Citadel, and the North as a whole. They made good time, as well, after crossing paths with what looked to be a patrol of Ystréd scouts returning from reconnaissance. Brahnt and al’Dor did nothing more than give the dozen mounted soldiers polite nods as they passed, not wanting to draw attention to Raz’s presence, but as soon as they could they set their mounts along the clearer trampled path left by the south-bound horses, almost doubling their pace. By nightfall, in fact, Brahnt said they weren’t more than a few hours ride from the edge of Arocklen, and that they’d reach the tree line by mid-morning the following day.

  Despite this, despite the wondrous curiosity he held for the coming Woods, despite the magnificence of the Dehn under the bright, welcoming light of the Moon and Her Stars, and despite the stories of magic and intrigue the Priests had filled the day with, Raz dreamt of no such things that night.