Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  By the time he made it to the top, the growing sounds of battle driving him ever faster, Raz felt as though every one of his limbs was likely to fall off from fatigue

  Initially he had cursed to find he hadn’t managed a straight path, ending up beneath the bowed lip of the Citadel’s outer wall. The mortared granite proved easy to manage, however, and he’d found ample foot and handholds in the eroded joints between the stones. In thirty seconds he was vaulting—or rather tumbling weakly—over the crenellations and onto the ramparts. He’d forced himself shakily to his feet, his breath coming in misty bellows as he looked out over the plateau beneath him, the battle raging like a mad ocean across its edge.

  His vantage had allowed him to find Syrah, her hair distinct along the front lines of a Laorin force that looked to be rapidly losing. At the sight of her, Raz had found the strength to pull himself up onto the top of the wall once more. Taking the ax from his tail and the Kayle’s head from his teeth, he’d spread his wings.

  And leapt.

  “Arro.”

  Raz blinked, pulled back to the present as a familiar voice spoke his name. He was surprised to find Jofrey al’Sen standing before him, flanked on either side by Benala Forn and Cullen Brern. The High Priest looked worn and exhausted, and Raz couldn’t blame him. As new as he was to the mantle—which now hung over his shoulder, the single black stripe cresting the hood that was pulled over his greying hair—Jofrey had just been forced to handle the single most violent event to have ever fallen upon the Laorin.

  And it was clearly already taking its toll.

  “High Priest,” Raz said in greeting, nodding his head respectfully to the man. “It was a splendid ceremony. Her Stars will shine with new lights tonight.” He then turned to Brern. “You have my condolences for the loss of your brother. I did not know him well, but he seemed a strong, good man.”

  Cullen Brern said nothing—indeed, he seemed unable to speak, his jaw clenched and his eyes red—but he nodded in thanks.

  “I’ve come,” Jofrey said in a tired voice, and Raz thought he could sense uncertainty behind the man’s word, “to give you our thanks. You are a true friend of the faith. We knew that the moment you leapt from the cliff.”

  Raz said nothing, feeling that there was more to come. Syrah, too, seemed to perceive something foreboding, because he felt her hand tighten against his arm.

  Jofrey sighed, reaching up to rub his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “I’ve also come to tell you that, come the end of the freeze, you will no longer be welcome within the walls of Cyurgi’ Di.”

  Raz felt Syrah spasm beside him. On his other side, Carro took half a step forward, enraged.

  “What?” the former Priest spluttered. “Jofrey, how could—?”

  “I understand.”

  Raz’s firm words cut Carro off, and the man froze, then whirled.

  “You understand?” he demanded, slamming his stave on the stone in anger. “What do you mean, you understand?”

  Raz didn’t look at him, his eyes on Jofrey as he spoke. “The Laorin and I tread different paths. It would not do for a place of faith to shelter a killer. It would send the wrong message, encourage a poor image of Laor and his followers.”

  Jofrey, for his part, looked almost relieved, and he nodded. “We have suffered a great loss. We are hurting. What aid you have offered us has been unorthodox to begin with, and I won’t be surprised if my name is struck from the faith’s history for allowing it. I must preserve what dignity Cyurgi’ Di has left. You will be welcome through the end of winter. Additionally, our healers—” he indicated Raz’s dressings “—will continue to be at your disposal until such time as you are no longer in need of them, as will any other facilities you might require. When the snows melt, however…”

  “I’m to take my leave,” Raz finished the man’s trailing words. “I will, and I thank you for your hospitality.”

  Jofrey gave him a small smile, then turned to Carro.

  “Carro…” he started hesitatingly, and this time it was obvious what he intended to say was painful.

  Carro, though, stopped him with a wave of his left hand, still strapped to his chest. “I know,” he said with something between regretful glumness and a glower. “I have the same thanks, and the same conditions.” He shrugged. “I’ll be spending most of my time among the clans that haven’t left anyway. There’s a man—Rako the Calm, they call him—who seems to have been sympathetic to Emreht Grahst’s agenda. He seems eager to have my councel, and teach me the ways of the Sigûrth.”

  “I’m sorry, old friend,” Jofrey said with a sigh. Then his eyes sharpened. “That being said, once things are settled amongst the tribes, count on the aid of the Citadel as you need it. You have my pledge of unconditional support.” He paused, then stepped forward, placing a hand on Carro’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he said quietly as a tear fell from Benala Forn’s eye behind him. “We will not forget what you have done for the faith, Carro.”

  Again, Carro shrugged, though he looked a little flushed.

  Giving them a last nod, Jofrey and the councilmembers took their leave.

  “Bastards,” Carro grumbled once they were out of earshot, though he didn’t sound like he meant it.

  “They’re only doing what they must,” Raz said, watching the backs of the retreating trio as they took the steps down from the Grounds.

  “Maybe,” the man grumbled, moving as though to follow, “but they’re still bastards.”

  When he passed in front of Raz and Syrah, he paused, and looked around. He scrutinized Raz for a long moment, the X-shape scar on his face distorting as his features shifted, becoming something like pride mixed with grief.

  “Talo would have been proud of you, lad.”

  Then he left, trailing Jofrey and the others, leaving Raz with Syrah at his side and a lump in his throat.

  For a time Raz and the woman stood in silence, watching the final stragglers say their goodbyes to the dead before taking their leave. Raz knew Syrah would not be able to go until she was ready, just as she knew he would not leave her on her own in this place, full of lives she believed lost by her own foolishness. And so, in silence they waited, her hand in the crook of his arm, his hand on hers.

  When they were the last living souls within the boundary of the Grounds, Syrah finally looked up at him.

  She had kept her peace as Jofrey had said what he’d come to say, which Raz had found distinctly odd. He would have expected her to jump in, more so even than Carro, and certainly to have had harsher words for the High Priest about his decision to banish the men who had bled and sacrificed for the Citadel. When she’d held her tongue, he’d grown curious, wondering what was on the Priestess’ mind.

  Now, as he looked into a face set in resolute desire, he understood why. Her right eye was covered as always, now by tight black wrappings wound about her hair and diagonally across her cheek and forehead. Her left took him in fiercely, her mouth set. He could see a hundred things in that face, experiences and emotions and desires she hadn’t spoken of, but that he suspected. He saw anger, lingering and unquenched and vengeful. He saw confusion, a mix of uncertainty and need that drifted about her features every time she looked at him. He saw doubt, the same doubt he made out every evening as he sat outside her door, listening to the hesitation in her prayers.

  And he saw fear, saw the same terror that ripped at her as she woke up screaming every night, thrashing and kicking until he came running to sooth her and hold her until she fell back asleep.

  He knew what she was going to say before the words left her mouth.

  “When you leave,” she told him, not as a request or question, but almost rather as a demand, “take me with you.”

  Raz said nothing for a time, looking down at her, considering. After a while he reached around her and pulled her to his chest.

  Then he bent his head down, pressed the end of his reptilian snout against the top of her head, and answered.

  EPILOGUE

>   “The greatest empires in the history of any world have always been built by bound hands.”

  —AZZEKI KORO, THIRD HAND OF KARESH SYL

  “AAAWWOOOOAAAHHH!”

  Karan Brightneck woke to the sound of Abir’s moaning scream as one wakes when falling in a dream, jolting and shuddering. At once she pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, scurrying with a clatter of iron on iron between the bodies laying and curled up on the worn wood around her, ignoring their muttering and groans as they, too, were pulled from what little sleep they were allowed.

  “Abir!” she hissed in a hushing tone, reaching the old man’s spot along the far wall of the shack and seeking his hand in the half-darkness of the room. “Abir, hush! Hush now!”

  But there was no helping the man. Sweat sheened his face as he lay on his back, dripping along the tanned skin of his bearded cheeks and balding head. His eyes were shut tight, and he squirmed and writhed in the thralls of the dream. He had claimed, when Karan had first met him some dozen-years ago, that he had been a seer in another life, a fortuneteller that men of wealth and prestige once called upon from all over the realm. He had said that he had made the mistake of giving a Tash a fortune he did not like, and that his punishment had been the stripping of his name, home, and freedom.

  But in all the time she had known him, Karan had come to realize that Abir’s “fortunes” were nothing more than the ramblings of an aging man clinging to sanity, and that more often than not they just led to nightmares that kept the rest of them all awake at night.

  “Abir!” she said more urgently as angry voices began to rise behind her, shaking the man. “Wake up! Wake up!”

  Finally the man’s shuddering quit, and he opened his eyes.

  His gasps and groans, though, only barely lessened.

  “He comes!” he moaned, his maddened, fevered gaze falling upon Karan. “He comes! He comes!”

  “Who?” Karan asked him in a whisper, trying to sooth the man. “Who comes?”

  “The dragon!” Abir hissed, his body beginning to shake again. “From sand then snow then sea, the dragon comes! He comes to rip the irons from their pegs, to free those who have been shackled! He comes from fire, then from ice!”

  “Enough!” someone grumbled from behind her in a different, harsher tongue, and Karan felt a thrill as she recognized Brahen’s throaty growl. “Shut him up, female, before I do.”

  “Abir,” Karan pleaded, starting to panic. “Please! You’re waking the others! Please!”

  At last, the old man began to calm. Much less than hearing reason, though, he looked rather to be fading back into delirium, dropping once more into sleep as his words faded away.

  “He comes,” he said in a wavering voice, his eyes fluttering. “He comes with a one… who wields the power of the gods… He comes… The… dragon…”

  And then he was gone, fallen back into the peace of dreams, his breathing coming soft and slow.

  Karan sighed in relief, still kneeling beside the man, one hand on his chest. Light, clear and bright, fell down upon her from an open window set in the wall above Abir’s section of the floor. It shined off the iron manacles that had encircled her wrists for almost as long as she could remember, glinting off the scrapes and blemishes in the chains that ran between them. Checking one last time to make sure the man was asleep, Karan got slowly to her feet, intending to return to her own space.

  Before she did, though, she looked out over the sprawl of the city beyond their little room, taking in the glow of the roads and the noise that echoed up at them even this late at night. She pondered, for a moment, what Abir had said, wondering at the life she would have if she was allowed to walk free among the shops and quarters and raised palisades.

  Wouldn’t that be something, she thought, turning her back on the light of Karesh Syl, her clawed feet clacking lightly against the dusty wood as she returned to her little corner of the floor.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  [AKA: THE PLIGHT OF THE WRITER]

  I once again find myself at the point of disbelief, staring in something between awe and delirium at this final draft of Winter’s King. It is such an incredible feeling to see your characters come to life, and yet the prospect of releasing them out into the world is also terrifying. Release them we must, though, and we do so with the hopes of getting them in front of as many eyes as the world will allow.

  It is with this note that I move on to a more personal plea, a cry for assistance from all of you who got to the end of the book and were even just a little bit sad to have to put it down:

  Please, please, consider rating and reviewing Winter’s King on one or two major bookselling or book group sites.

  Many people don’t know that there are thousands of books published every day, most of those in the USA alone. Over the course of a year, a quarter of a million authors will vie for a small place in the massive world of print and publishing. We fight to get even the tiniest traction, fight to climb upward one inch at a time towards the bright light of bestsellers, publishing contracts, and busy book signings.

  Thing is, we need all the help we can get.

  Your positive input into that world, however small you believe your voice may be, makes the climb just a little bit easier. Rating and reviewing books you enjoy gives your favorite authors a boost upward.

  With that all out of the way, thank you so much for picking up Winter’s King. If you’d like to give me feedback directly, have a question about Raz and his adventures, or just want to chat, drop me a message on Twitter or Facebook, or directly at bryce@bryceoconnorbooks.com.

  As ever, it has been an honor to entertain you, and I vigorously hope you continue to follow The Wings of War series to see what becomes of Raz i’Syul Arro.

  Bryce O’Connor