Winter Mage

by Tim Niederriter

  “How did you know?”

  She sat down on the floor beside Brosk and closed her eyes.

  “Intuition. Ursar Kiet might not be interested in Kassel Onoi because he isn’t a challenge. He may just follow whichever group we join.”

  Shivering even out of the wind, Edmath pursed his lips.

  “Do you think so, my dear?”

  Chelka looked up at him.

  “If his reputation is correct, yours is the only duel he has ever lost. He may want revenge.”

  Edmath closed his eyes completely, picturing the Roshi Dawkun in his room after their duel. His expression had not spoken to Edmath of a desire for revenge, or even anger. He opened his eyes.

  “I’m not sure.” He turned to the Orpus tree. “Lengbyoi, take us toward the village.”

  Chelka flew to her feet, eyes wide and lips quivering. “Edmath, what are you doing?”

  His stomach trembled. He sighed, realizing how foolish he must seem to her.

  “I don’t know whether you are right or wrong,” he said. “There is one way to ensure Onoi’s escape.”

  She stared at him, trembling in the cold.

  “You don’t owe him anything.”

  Edmath wondered if the former Worm King had ever relied on his father this way. He might never have known what had happened to him, were it not for Kassel.

  “Maybe not,” he whispered. “But even if I don’t, we cannot fight on this lake.” He raised his voice to speak to Brosk. “Tell the village Elder to take his people and follow Kassel Onoi. We can’t use his help now.”

  Chelka clapped a hand on his shoulder and blinked through her frustration. She said nothing but shook her head slowly. Then she released him and sat back on the driver’s board. Orpus Lengbyoi pulled them toward the village at the edge of the lake.

  Edmath stood in the doorway to the lodge with a tear open on either side of him. Each of the tears belched magic that flowed around Edmath. He did not draw any of it in. Not yet. Orpus Lengbyoi’s branches hung overhead, catching snowflakes carried by the wind. That same wind carried the sound of a thousand beating wings.

  Ursar Kiet and his mirache appeared overhead just as Brosk vanished into the small temple across the square from Edmath. The trees he’d grown there earlier must have hidden him from Ursar’s eyes because the mirache descended directly toward Edmath, leaving its flanks open on both sides.

  “Have you defeated all the beasts here yourself?” Ursar called. “You did not seem so bloodthirsty last summer.”

  The mirache landed in the snow between the trees with a crunch.

  “Enemies.”

  “Must kill.”

  “Prey fears us.”

  One of the creature’s huge heads turned and sniffed at the lee of the temple’s wall. Then the head recoiled and hissed, turning to Ursar. The Roshi champion raised his eyebrows and seized the haft of one of the two spears on either side of his saddle.

  “I see you’ve been preparing for me,” he said.

  Edmath met his eyes, watching them narrow again slowly.

  “I don’t know what you mean. Of course, I knew you’d move in when we returned to the lake.”

  “Did you also know I still wanted to fight you?”

  Ursar’s eyes did not burn, but rather chilled Edmath.

  He glanced down at the three bone-and-sinew striker rings he wore on his fingers.

  “Yes, but I suppose that makes you wonder why I came back.”

  Ursar Kiet chuckled.

  “The question came to mind, Saale.”

  The mirache might already know where Brosk was, but the creature hadn’t told Ursar yet. Chelka remained undetected too, and the tears on either side of Edmath weren’t visible to the Dawkun’s untrained eyes. The chance of surprising Ursar was the same as their chance of defeating him. The Roshi’s mirth, feigned or not, faded from his face.

  He glared at Edmath.

  “Are you prepared?”

  Edmath tested the rings in his hands, tapping each upon different fingers one at a time. The tears on either side of him would provide plenty of magic until they sealed, but only if he remained on the threshold of the lodge where magic flowed. He didn’t expect to stay much longer. He flicked now from the rim of his glasses.

  “Are you, my good Roshi?”

  Ursar Kiet’s expression barely changed as he spoke to his mirache.

  “Kill him now.”

  With a leap off the threshold, Edmath landed in the growing snowdrift beside it. He glanced frantically over his shoulder at Ursar Kiet, but neither the man nor his mirache had moved. That meant either the Roshi was mocking him, or Ursar was thinking a few steps ahead. A loud crack came from behind Edmath and he looked up as he backed against the log wall. A man in a red cloak sailed through the air overhead, black hair with colored beads clacking together streamed behind him. Akalok Roshi, the bodyguard from the order, now rogue.

  Edmath made the sign of the branch with his ringed hand. Wood formed and grew, carrying him up from the ground and bending to deposit him on the sloped roof of the lodge.

  Akalok looked up at him, eyes blazing.

  “A coward to the end I see. Are you bothered by my appearance, Donroi?”

  “My name is not Donroi any longer.” Edmath panted and caught his breath before striking the air beside him for magic.

  A jet of fire shot from before Akalok’s eyes and seared the air just inches from Edmath’s arm. His sleeve singed from the heat.

  He straightened his back and glared at Akalok.

  “You are never going to forgive, then?”

  Akalok shook his head.

  “For the actions of your father against my order? Never.”

  He intensified his glare. Edmath fell into a defense art stance, trying hard to keep from slipping on the tiled slope of the roof. Ursar’s mirache took to the air again, its eyes fixed on Edmath as it rose. The creature’s voices came out in a sing-song as it flew over Orpus Lengbyoi, who remained still as any other tree, blending in easily without his leaves.

  “Monster.”

  “Vile enemy.”

  “Foul one.”

  The mirache charged towards the rooftop. Edmath threw himself back onto the wide branch he’d just grown to carry him up. Ursar’s spear slashed through the air behind him, narrowly missing. The Roshi descended fast, crashing into the building beside the lodge. Timbers flew through the air. Edmath ducked as small chips of debris pelted his coat.

  Had Chelka had been inside the building? He hoped she’d kept moving. Edmath gritted his teeth and made the sign of the thorn.

  Without the stethian, his spell made only the green and brown vines with ordinary thorns he had been used to growing before going to war. The rope-like strands looped around a few sets of the smaller wings that made up the mirache’s larger ones and Edmath let them go. His life burned hot along with the magic in his chest.

  He made the sign of the branch and grew a tree diagonally so its roots quested for the ground. Racing down a new tree’s trunk toward the snow, Edmath made the sign of the thorn once again. The magic fled him.

  Akalok moved before Edmath could strike. He slashed through the air with his open palm. Fire bloomed over his skin and raced across the frigid square toward Edmath.

  Edmath dropped onto his back, spine aching as he hit the bark. He rolled off the branch and fell. Akalok yelled with frustration.

  He landed in a cold, but sheltering snow drift.

  Above him, the branch burned. Embers fell into the snow all around. Edmath pulled himself out of the snow and turned to face Akalok. The Roshi charged towards him, drawing a sword made of burning flame from empty air.

  “Lengbyoi!” Edmath shouted.

  He took a few paces from the burning branch to the sound of the mirache growling to his right. He’d gotten slow lately, slower and slower the whole year. Mirache jaws behind snapped behind him. Akalok closed the distance before h
im. Edmath found himself frozen in between.

  Orpus Lengbyoi surged into action. A rush of motion to his side announced the tree’s movement. Akalok swung his sword at Edmath. The fiery blade scored and blackened Lengbyoi’s trunk. The tree squealed with pain and swung its whole bulk and lower branches at the former bodyguard.

  Akalok flew across the square past the building the mirache had just ruined with its landing. He howled in pain as he landed. Edmath leapt onto Lengbyoi’s lowest branch, not daring to look back to see if the mirache still pursued.

  Ursar Kiet shouted something he couldn’t make out over the sound of the wind and Lengbyoi’s movement through the snow. A root reached out to Edmath and snagged him, lifting him up to a middle branch. “That was the plan, right Edmath?” Lengbyoi said.

  Edmath patted the tree branch with his unringed hand. “Of course it was.” He tore open a ragged gash in the curtain and this time the magic flowed into him all at once. “Now, let’s go for that mirache.”

  “Edmath,” Brosk’s voice came from just inside the temple door. “Leave Akalok to me.”

  Edmath stared at the Roshi, who had his eyes closed and seemed to be mumbling to himself, arms crossed over his chest. Whatever he was doing it couldn’t be good.

  “We can’t let him finish that incantation,” Edmath said. “We do this together.”

  Brosk reached the base of Orpus Lengbyoi in his partial whale tosh. He took a survival stance. His striker chain lashed around him, opening three tears where he stood. He focused on the mirache with huge, dark eyes. “As you like,” he said.

  Ursar stopped mumbling and hefted his spear. “You Saales are always hiding from us.”

  “I am not hiding now,” Edmath said. “Come here and fight.” He struck twice more and one of the rings on his finger broke. The two halves of the ring fell into the snow below. The loss of the striker made him nervous. Now he only had the two on his fingers, and no stethian. Edmath glanced at Brosk. “One of us needs to stop Akalok.”

  Brosk nodded back. The fingers of the hand holding his striker chain flexed and then tightened.

  Ursar leaned down in the saddle and urged his mirache forward. The fox-beast’s wings flattened against its sides. Ursar’s eyes turned black. The well of magic flowing from above his temples glowed above the oblivion of his gaze. Budding twigs along Orpus Lengbyoi’s branches wavered and bent, but they bent with the wind, not against it. The death gaze would not break wood like bone. Edmath swung around behind the tree as Ursar closed in. Orpus Lengbyoi’s ghost roots flew into the air between its trunk and the Mirache. Ursar roared with laughter.

  “Well done, good Saale.”

  His mirache launched itself into the air and circled over Orpus Lengbyoi.

  Edmath grew a wooden shield from the magic flowing through him and slung it over his head.

  “Brosk!” he shouted.

  Brosk sprang into action, forming a series of hand-signs while murmuring an incantation. The snow in the drifts around him melted and flowed into a pool. Brosk kept his last sign together. Magic poured into him from the tears all around. The water rose, huge and unreal, flowing upward with Brosk atop it. The tiny animals he had created allowed him to control the water by moving at his command.

  The whale prince drew his sword as he approached the mirache from below.

  His first thrust opened a gash on the mirache’s leg, but the creature flew higher, escaping from his steadily growing tower of liquid. Edmath made the sign of the branch and leapt from Orpus Lengbyoi onto the new tree rising from the ground. He rode it upward toward the mirache. He had no weapon, but guiding the branch might be enough to take it down. As he approached the end of the steadily climbing branch Edmath made the sign of the thorn.

  He grew a few hand-lengths of plant and then Ursar somersaulted onto the branch before him. He raised his unringed left hand in front of his face as Ursar sought his eyes. The bones cracked and broke along the familiar lines. The pain ran through his whole arm, searing his frigid nerves. Edmath stumbled, falling backward down the branch with a cry.

  Ursar followed him at a leap even as Orpus Lengbyoi broke Edmath’s fall with a pair of roots. His back ached, resisting his next movement. He threw himself onto his belly. Ursar’s spear-thrust stabbed into the roots behind Edmath’s back, tearing off his cloak in the process.

  Edmath rolled over and desperately grabbed for the spear-haft as Ursar fought to free the weapon. His right hand closed around the spear’s shaft and Edmath gritted his teeth, determined to hold on.

  “Brosk,” he shouted. “Get Akalok.”

  With his left hand broken, he couldn’t make the sign he needed to push Ursar off the branch. Ursar’s gaze moved toward him, cracking Lengbyoi’s bark all the way to trunk. A loud screech issued from the seal eye. Edmath released the spear, but too late. Ursar’s gaze swept toward him. The pain in his left hand exploded as he used it to make the sign of the fist.

  A fist of green plant matter shot upward. It smashed against Ursar’s chest and sent him stumbling backward, spear raised. Spared the execution but agonized, Edmath pushed himself to his feet with his right hand. Brosk’s striker chain wrapped around Ursar’s arm from above, cutting into his sleeve.

  Edmath grimaced.

  “What happened to Akalok?”

  “What happened to fighting together?” Brosk asked.

  The whale prince’s strength in his tosh over-matched the Dawkun’s enhanced muscles. He ripped Ursar off his feet and dragged the man into the air. Edmath climbed to his feet with his right hand, his left arm hanging useless and full of pain at his side. The cracks in his bones must have run all the way up his wrist.

  Orpus Lengbyoi groaned.

  “Edmath, it hurts.”

  “I know.” Edmath glanced back at the tree, his own vision clouded by pain. The crack in Lengbyoi’s trunk ran deep. He could not see how deep the damage went with his naked eyes. “I’ll see to you once we drive them back.” He couldn’t help but wonder where Chelka was at that moment. “We will drive them back.”

  He gritted his teeth as the wind buffeted him and he turned. Blood dripped from his fingers where the bone had torn through his skin. Looking at it made him gasp with dizziness. Brosk tossed his striker chain away and Ursar with it. The Roshi fell toward the snowy ground. Brosk leapt from his water spout and landed on Edmath’s fresh tree’s branch near Lengbyoi. “Are you alright, Ed?”

  “Not exactly, Brosk.”

  The mirache circled, crying out in the fox-language.

  “Master falls.”

  “Prey. Prey must die!” Then it released a mighty shriek, like the hawk that half of it was, and dived towards the snowy ground.

  Edmath staggered back down the branch and Orpus Lengbyoi carried him off of it with its roots. The tree gently placed him on a branch. Brosk leapt down beside him.

  “I couldn’t find Akalok. Did you see him?”

  “No.” Edmath glared at the ground below, where Ursar stood, recovering from his fall. He unwrapped the striker chain from his bleeding arm. “Is Akalok moving again?”

  Brosk shrugged.

  “Must be. Do you have strikers?”

  The pain in his hand jolted as the wind tugged at his fingers. Edmath shook his head. Brosk swore.

  “Only one.”

  Ursar Kiet sprang up toward them, dodging several of Orpus Lengbyoi’s lethal roots. He landed on the branch above them, but the deadly black had faded from his eyes and no spear in his grip. A pair of slender daggers appeared from unseen sheathes, one in each hand.

  “You two fools,” Ursar said lazily. “Do you really think you’ll beat me a second time?”

  Akalok fell from above and landed on the branch beside Ursar. The former ambassador’s eyes glowed with pent-up magic. He would never give up this fight. Edmath’s eyes narrowed as he met Akalok’s gaze.

  The rogue bodyguard gave a grim chuckle.

  “Your eyes have chan
ged. Once so lively. Now so dark.”

  Edmath’s broken hand hurt less than those words. Still, he held his head high.

  “The opposite of your champion, then.”

  Akalok shrugged his shoulders.

  “You Saales venerate even the smallest life,” he said. “Your emperor would have you take many for him.”

  The monks had always been people of peace. Sampheli had taught Edmath and Zuria to fear war after her husband’s death. Lexine Park prized progress, not violence. Edmath scowled, blinking through the pain of his hand.

  “You. Akalok. Is honor worth death?”

  Akalok closed his eyes and thought for a moment.

  “Sometimes. Yes.”

  Ursar smirked. He flipped the blade of one dagger between two fingers to throw.

  Then his hand vanished in a burst of blood and fire.

  Ursar dropped his other dagger and clutched at his charred stump. He fell to his knees but he did not scream. His eyes fixed on a point over Edmath’s shoulder and tears of rage appeared in his eyes. Chelka’s voice rang out from the top of the lodge behind Orpus Lengbyoi.

  “Edmath, you and Brosk get back.”

  Edmath swung down on the branch with his right hand. His chill fingers slipped free and he fell to the ground. Brosk dropped down beside him. “Let’s go, Ed.”

  Edmath looked over his shoulder to where Chelka stood on the peak of the lodge’s roof. He nodded. Brosk charged under Akalok and Ursar’s branch and pulled his striker chain up from the ground. It opened a small tear as he picked it up, but the magic flowed upward and out of reach on an unseen current.

  Ursar dropped down between Edmath and Brosk, apparently recovering from the sudden loss of his dominant hand. An instant later, Edmath saw why. Glistening black material flowed from the burned stump and hardened into the shape of a long blade. He swung to the left as Brosk lashed out with his striker chain. The weapons clashed and Ursar snaked out of the way of Brosk’s next swing.

  “Do you really think that weapon can match the powers of my sphere of almighty Roshi?” He snarled as he lunged at Brosk, slashing across his side with the blade. Blood ran along the blade.

  Edmath winced in sympathy for his friend. He made the sign of the branch and used the last of his magic as he broke into a run. The branch formed behind and raced alongside him. Above, Akalok shouted in triumph. Orpus Lengbyoi moved gingerly towards the lodge, roots roiling despite the deep gouge in its trunk.