Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  There was a long, drawn out silence as Carro’s story came to an end. Finally, after almost ten seconds of allowing the words to sink in, Jofrey found his voice again.

  “When I asked you to take on the High Priest’s mantle…”

  “I couldn’t take it, knowing full well I’d already twice broken the law of our faith,” Carro confirmed with a shake of his head. “That knowledge also made it easy to choose to set Raz free.”

  “All else aside,” Petrük snapped, “that was a foul action. How many men did your lizard kill in his rescue of Syrah Brahnt? In his rescue of one woman? Hmm? One? Ten? A hundred?”

  “You’ll have to ask him,” Carro growled right back, narrowing his eyes at the woman. “I will admit I let Raz out for selfish reasons. For that alone I know what the price is. But for half-a-moment clear your minds of your blind naivety and see what else my and Raz’s actions have brought you. Syrah is alive. The woman who understands the Sigûrth best of all is alive. If there is a way to bring down the Kayle, or even just to outsmart or appease him…”

  “Syrah will be the one to know it,” Jofrey finished, the realization hitting him in full. At the same time, the idea seemed to register with many of the others, because they started talking in muttered pairs and trios.

  Carro smiled grimly, and said nothing more.

  XLV

  “He will be the speaker of his people.

  To leave and then return,

  bearing a woman of ice and snow on his arm.”

  —UHSULA, SEER OF THE UNDERCAVES

  IN THE TIME it took to finish his story, Raz thought he had watched Syrah go through almost every possible emotion. Surprise, grief, horror, fear, anger, sadness. She had fallen back into silence again, and didn’t so much as flinch until he admitted to her that he’d lost control when he’d discovered that she’d been taken captive. Then she’d only gasped in response when he described how Carro freed him from the warded cell the council had sealed him in.

  After that, he trailed off. Syrah knew all that came next. She had seen most of it herself, and had borne witness to the ghastly remnants of the rest.

  For a long time afterwards they sat in silence, Raz watching Syrah as the woman absorbed the entirety of the tale. The distress had long faded from her face, but she still looked pale, the understanding of Carro’s betrayal clearly taking its toll.

  Small wonder, Raz told himself. And it must have taken its toll on Carro, too…

  He was thinking, as he allowed Syrah her time with her own thoughts, of how the Priest had seemed and acted in the days following Talo’s death. Raz had believed, at the time, that it had been purely the passing of his lover bearing so heavily on the man, especially as they’d made their way up the mountain pass. Looking back, though, he realized that there had been other moments where Carro could very well have been perturbed about something altogether different.

  Like committing the most absolute of blasphemies…

  Raz grimaced at the idea. When he’d forced Carro’s hand in order to get them past the mountain men at the base of the stairway, he had known it was a hard decision. He’d laid out for Carro two impossible choices, pointing out that death waited behind either of the doors to be taken at that time. He had thought the Priest would be able to come to terms with this, come to understand that sometimes there really was no peaceful, bloodless option.

  But not for a second, in the moments before or in the days after he had committed the act, had Raz even considered the means by which Talo had passed could be a betrayal all on its own.

  “You would just let him suffer?”

  He hadn’t meant to ask the question aloud but—whether because it bothered him so much or because he wanted to spark more conversation—it slipped out. Syrah started at his voice, shaken from her own thoughts. She blinked and looked at him, for a moment seeming not to understand what he was talking about.

  Then it dawned on her, and she looked stricken.

  “I-I don’t know,” she said, sounding like the answer was a hard truth to cope with. “Sitting here, in the heart of the faith, it’s easy for me to say that the Laorin law would hold me firm. But… I don’t know, Raz.” Her face tensed. “Was Talo… was he in so much pain?”

  Raz clenched his jaw in frustration. He could let loose, could tell Syrah every gruesome detail of the scene that he had managed to spare her. He could tell her about the hollow that had been Talo’s chest before he died, and the ribs that had protruded from torn and bruised flesh. He could tell her of the blood dribbling from her Priest-Mentor’s lips, and how it bubbled as he practically pleaded with Carro to let Raz retrieve his blade from the body of the bear that had so brutalized him.

  And then the impulse vanished. Raz looked into Syrah’s eye—that rose-colored warmth—and understood his own wickedness. He could see her bracing herself again, see her preparing for the worst. Like a lit match tossed into water, his anger winked out.

  He shifted the manacles to bring his free hand up, placing it atop both of hers as they clung to his other. He struggled to find the words, working hard to weave at least some kindness into an answer that was ultimately cruel.

  “Talo would have had a hard passing, if he hadn’t asked for the sword…”

  Syrah nodded at this, though it was a shaking, uncertain motion. She seemed in some distant place, her thoughts pulled aside to some dark corner inside her head. Raz was about to draw her back from it, had just started to think of reaching up for her face, intent on lifting her chin to meet his gaze, when she seemed to rise from the misery of her own accord.

  “Thank you.”

  Raz blinked, uncertain he had heard her right.

  “Thank you,” Syrah said again with a sad, broken smile. “I don’t know if Talo had the chance to say it, nor Carro the will to. So… thank you.”

  Raz watched carefully for a moment, almost expecting to see a hint of resentment layered in amongst the woman’s gaunt features.

  When he saw none, though, he nodded slowly.

  Then he remembered, her words sparking memory like a blaze.

  “He-he asked me to tell you something,” he started, stumbling over his words as the recollection came back in a rush. “Talo… Right before he passed. One of the last things he said.”

  He paused, making sure he had the words exactly right as Syrah tensed before him.

  “He told me to tell you,” he said in a slow, careful voice, “‘I will always be there’…”

  A stillness came over Syrah then, so absolutely it was several seconds before Raz realized he couldn’t hear her breathing anymore. She watched him, her eye burning into his, taking in these last words from the man that had been nothing less to her than a father.

  And then the eye began to glisten, and shortly thereafter her cheek was wet once more with a steady stream of tears.

  She didn’t wail, as some might have been prone to do. Syrah Brahnt, it turned out, was made of stiffer stuff than most. Instead she just sat there, silent as she cried, holding onto Raz’s hand so tight it almost hurt, meeting his gaze until she could no longer fight the quaking of her own body and dropped her head as her shoulders shook. Raz sat in silence with her, letting what he could only imagine was a maddening confusion of grief and joy work its way in and out. Soon Syrah’s tears had started to splotch the clean white sheets of the bed bunched about her hips, and when he saw this he instinctively tried to reach up, hoping to wipe her cheek dry and tell her it was going to be all right.

  The motion, though, only resulted in the sudden, harsh scrape and clank of metal on wood as the manacles he’d forgotten about—if only for a minute—wrenched his wrists firmly together.

  “Damn thing,” he snarled at it. “Your council can count themselves lucky I’m keeping my word about keeping this—”

  Before he could finish, though, Syrah had pulled her hands from his, grabbed the paired padlocks that clamped it closed on either side, and made a motion like she were tearing it apart.


  Several things happened at once. The first Raz’s mind registered was the heat. It blasted in a single shocking wave from the Priestess’ hands, chasing a violent flash of white light and almost searing the scales of his arms nearest her fingers. At the same time, whatever magic the woman had summoned seemed almost to backlash, the power thrusting outwards from her arms and causing the bandages—and the fringes of the sleeves of her gown, which ended around the elbow—to curl, burn, and tear, the cloth falling away.

  Their charred remainders settled to the floor at the same moment the scorched halves of Raz’s bindings hit the stone with a crash.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said, dropping the padlocks and the twisted handfuls of blackened wood the magic had burned through, though she still didn’t look at Raz as her hands fell back to the bed. “I just couldn’t bear to see those on you anymore.”

  Raz, though, didn’t reply. In fact, he hardly registered that she had said anything at all. Two thoughts occurred to him at the same time, each of equal and opposite weight. First, like an echo from the past, a great emotion welled up in Raz as he looked at his freed hands. Something clicked, an understanding that the woman had just thrown away some part of herself to give him back a part of himself, had cast aside the desires of her own people and the command of her elders to allow him his freedom. It was a strange, breathtaking realization, which might have seemed negligible to most men, but is of great magnitude to one that remembers the feeling of being bound in iron.

  Sadly, it was tempered by a horror Raz realized he should have expected.

  As the seared bandages fell from Syrah’s wrists and hands, they revealed the damages that had been hidden beneath. Raz had seen the bruising and marks on and between the woman’s legs, could see even now the hint of the cut that had claimed her eye, and the ugly scar of the half of her ear that had been cruelly sawed away. He noticed again the uneven, rough chopping of her hair, and the thin frailty of her body.

  But he had not been by her side when they’d removed the manacles from her wrists.

  Raz knew there were limits to Laorin magics. Carro had been unable to heal his broken arm, nor do much of anything for Talo as he lay dying. If he had thought about it, though, Raz would have certainly assumed whatever the rough metal of her bindings had done to Syrah’s wrists would have been mendable.

  It turned out, though, that two weeks of rubbing metal and weeping sores left scars that not even magic could resolve…

  Syrah began to shake as Raz, slowly and tenderly, took her hands in his again. She seemed at first to want to pull away, but he made sure, gripping them firmly, that she knew he wouldn’t allow it. She surrendered, her breathing coming a little faster as he turned her hands over, studying the marks. They were a little narrower than his, but no less pronounced, the angry, blotchy red standing out against the white of her skin. Some sort of spellwork had certainly been spun, Raz was sure, otherwise the wounds would still have been raw and scabbing

  But not one strong enough to rid her of the reminder…

  “I thought I wouldn’t be afraid to see them…”

  Raz blinked and looked up. Syrah was gazing down at her wrists as well, eye red but dry, turning her hands over herself now, flipping them slowly in his.

  “I thought I wouldn’t be afraid,” she repeated. “I thought, after seeing yours, that I wouldn’t be ashamed or saddened by them.”

  At that, Raz looked down again. Like a shadow, his wrists mirrored her injuries, reflecting the painful stories there. Her red rings about white skin, his pale over black.

  “You will always be saddened by them,” he told her, reaching with his clawed thumbs to rub the line of her blemishes lightly. “You will always be ashamed of them, in a way. But they will become a part of you, just as everything does eventually. In time, they will become nothing more than a reminder of something that shaped you, something that has served to make you into what you’ve become…”

  He ended at that, unsure if he wanted to draw Syrah’s mind to what it was that he had become.

  Once again, the woman seemed to know what he was thinking. She brought a hand up slowly, hesitating only a moment, then rested her fingers against the side of his face. Raz nearly closed his eyes at the warmth of her touch, feeling himself melt into it.

  “If these help me become half as strong as you, then they’ll be well worth the pain,” she said quietly, her eye boring into his.

  Raz snorted.

  “Maybe then you could convince your council to forgive Carro for letting me out.”

  Syrah frowned, pulling her hand from his face. “I would count it victory enough if I could convince them to just listen to you. They should. They must. If Carro had no other way—”

  “He didn’t,” Raz insisted, growing frustrated again. “Your law infuriates me, Syrah. It’s as though none of you have ever seen the world. Your faith seems to exist with a skewed concept of the states in which the world—the real world—exists. Your god leaves you no place for certain mercies, or even self-preservation.”

  “Laor’s gift is the greatest treasure one could possibly hope to—” Syrah began, responding in reflexive defensiveness, but Raz interrupted here.

  “If you’re talking about life, then I agree!” he stressed. “But it is a gift that you have the right to defend, as well as one you have the right to protect when it comes to family, to friends!”

  Syrah said nothing, and Raz continued.

  “Maybe I should try to make them see sense,” he muttered. “How do they plan on defeating the Kayle’s men without killing? By punishing Carro for seeking to help? What sort of idiocy is that?”

  “They’ll say there is another way,” Syrah said after a second. “That there was another way, in Carro’s case. They’ll insist on it, in fact.”

  “They can insist all they want, right up until the moment Baoill’s axes fall upon their necks. Your law may have held your faith firm since the beginning of time itself for all I care. It’s about to get every one of us killed and cast to the vultures.”

  “And they’ll Break Carro long before that,” Syrah groaned, hanging her head and clutching at the cloth about her chest again.

  “Break him?” Raz thundered, outraged. “They would go that far? They would cast him out?”

  Syrah blanched. She looked at him, and Raz only had time to register the odd sort of fear that was there, swimming in her eye.

  Then they heard a shout of surprise from the hall.

  Both of them looked around. Whatever happened, the commotion was kept short. There were more yells, what sounded like a brief scuffle and grunts of effort, and then the door to the room flew open with a crashing bang as it smashed into the wall.

  Through it, in a flurry of white cloth and blond hair, ran a young man Raz recognized immediately.

  “Syrah!” Reyn Hartlet cried out, seeing the woman and rushing towards her even as two other figures in the robes of the faith chased him in. “Syrah! Thank Laor!”

  What occurred in the next few seconds happened so quickly, Raz’s speed became the subject of impressed and fearful rumors alike within the hour. Syrah’s face shifted first, her eye going wide in horror as they took in Reyn’s paired hands, reaching for her, seeking to embrace her. For Raz, this was enough. In a blink he was over the bed, his great form vaulting across the mattress to land nimbly between Reyn and the woman. In the same motion his left hand snapped around the closest of the Priest’s wrists, his right catching him about the throat.

  Then, with a snarl that made the two men chasing after Reyn stop in their tracks, Raz lifted the Priest clear off his feet and slammed him into the wall behind him.

  “YOU NEVER LEARN, DO YOU HARTLET?” he raged into the man’s face, neck crest flaring over his head as Reyn grabbed at his arm with his free hand, choking for air. “THAT’S THE SECOND TIME YOU’VE ELECTED TO BARGE IN ON ME UNANNOUNCED! HAVE YOU ALREADY FORGOTTEN HOW THE FIRST ENDED?”

  The Priest didn’t respond, his breathing comin
g out in spluttering hacks as Raz’s fingers tightened.

  “Raz, no!” came Syrah’s voice over his shoulder. “Let him go! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to let him frighten me like that!”

  Raz only hesitated briefly, then did as she asked. Reyn tumbled to the floor, hacking and wheezing, one hand rubbing at his throat, the other clutching at his side where his broken ribs could only have just started healing.

  “Idiot,” Raz grumbled, not moving from between the prone Priest and Syrah. “How you haven’t gotten yourself killed already is a mystery to me.”

  “Our apologies!” one of the Priests—who was now standing over Reyn as he coughed and hacked at their feet—said with a fearful glance at Raz. “We told him the High Priest gave orders you weren’t to be disturbed, but he wouldn’t listen!”

  “I just-just came to see Syrah!” Reyn managed to croak out, getting his knees under himself and pushing up to kneel with his shoulder against the wall. “They said—in the infirmary, they s-said you’d returned, that the lizard had—had rescued you!”

  Raz’s crest twitched again at the slur, and he let a deep growl build in the back of his throat.

  It died, though, as he felt Syrah’s slim fingers grasp his forearm lightly from behind, calming him.

  “I’m sorry, Reyn,” the woman said from the bed as Reyn got to his feet in front of Raz. “You just gave me such a fright, and Raz was just—”

  “Trying to kill me?” Reyn demanded, glaring up at Raz with a shocking amount of defiance for a man who had just been partially flattened against a wall. “After what I did for you?”

  Raz frowned down at him. “As far as I know, you did just enough to keep yourself from being tossed out of the faith. If Carro hadn’t been there to stop you I doubt you’d be free to have this conversation right now.”