For nine days Vireon ran north through the green forest, resting briefly at each sunset. On the ninth day the summer heat was lost beneath cold rains and a sea of rolling gray clouds. On the tenth morning a network of frozen hills arose from the forest proper, a jagged rolling escarpment that was the southernmost bulwark of the White Mountains. The Uduri stared at the sparkling range at sunrise after running all night, and they were breathless. None of them had come this far north, into the realm where their menfolk had gone to join the Ice King’s court.
Despite the loss they had endured, the Uduri were grateful to Vireon. He had opened the way to the Icelands, where the pale Uduru could breed with blue-skinned Uduri of the Udvorg to produce the next generation of Giantkind. These Giantesses with their burning hearts were barren inside, like the iced-over wasteland that ringed the peaks. Their most selfless act was in letting their males go north, where they could find new wives and make families. The barren Ninety-Nine had stayed behind to serve Vireon and the City of Men and Giants.
Now they saw for the first time the sparkling realm that had stolen their husbands, brothers, and lovers. The lonesome vastness of it seemed to humble them. Some dropped to their knees in the snow and gave thanks to the nameless Gods.
Vireon climbed a tor and stared into the distance. He scanned the slopes of the white peaks from horizon to horizon as the sun mounted a blue and cloudless sky. The snowstorms had ceased for a while, yet he stood hip deep in the drifts. He heard the scrambling and cursing of Dahrima as she climbed the slope after him. Always at his heels, that one. She, too, had known his father. Perhaps she saw Vod in Vireon’s face when she looked at him. Whatever the reason for her loyalty, he was glad to have her company, though he was loath to say it aloud. In the back of his mind, he wondered how much of himself Vod had shared with Dahrima in the days before he took Shaira’s hand.
“Majesty,” huffed Dahrima, pulling herself to the top of the hill. She towered over him and squinted at the panorama of wintery mountains. Her golden braids glimmered in the early sunlight Tiny showers of snow and ice fell from her broad back, where her great axe slept. The rest of the Uduri awaited him at the hill’s base, catching their breaths and chewing on strips of dried elk flesh. Vireon shifted the scabbard strap that held his greatsword between his shoulder blades. After so many days running, he was beginning to feel the weight of the blade. The spear he carried helped him to navigate treacherous ground, but the sword was only baggage until he needed it. He chose not to think about exactly how he would use that blade, but deep in his heart he already knew.
“What lies beyond these mountains of ice?” asked Dahrima, her breath a white plume.
“A frozen sea,” Vireon answered. He had seen that sea only on ancient maps in Udurum’s library. Not even the Udvorg Ice Clans roamed that terrific expanse of frozen saltwater. It was the upper end of the world. Here, in these mountains, there was much life. Here the Udvorg made their ancestral home and enjoyed the wild game and isolation of a people at peace. The clans might fight among themselves at times, but the blue-skins had not known war since the Age of Serpents, when they had split with their Uduru cousins and sought the Icelands. Now the two strains of Giantkind were united once again. All save the childless Uduri.
“This devil we hunt,” Dahrima said, her voice lowering. “It is the same one that killed my six cousins?”
“It is,” said Vireon, his eyes caressing the great peaks. Some sign, anywhere, anything…
The mountains breathed cold winds down upon him, as if warning him to turn back.
“It has stolen the Queen,” Dahrima said. “And the little one…”
Vireon nodded. How could he explain to Dahrima that the “devil” was a sorceress who should have died years ago? How could he make her understand that this murderous bloodthirsty thing did not kidnap his daughter, but simply was his daughter? Could that even be true? Was there any truth to Maelthyn at all, or had her existence been merely a disguise? A ruse meant only to provide rebirth for Ianthe. Alua had not burned her from the world as he had so long believed… she had only incinerated Ianthe’s physical form. Had Alua ever been truly pregnant? His eyes welled with salty tears and the wind quickly froze them into tiny icicles. He wiped them away with the back of his hand.
“We will follow you across this world if we must, and into the next one,” Dahrima said. “But how do you know where to find them in all this wasteland?”
Vireon spat into the snow. “I know,” he said. He slammed a fist against his black-mailed chest. “Here.”
“This is blue-skin country,” she said.
He nodded. “They know we have come,” said Vireon. “They watch us even now. I’ve smelled them since we entered these frigid hills.”
Dahrima looked about the snowy landscape with wary eyes. “Yet we do not see them.”
“Soon,” said Vireon, running down the hill and heading north. A new day of running had begun. “Soon you will…” he yelled back at her. She and her sister-cousins followed.
The Udvorg met them at the bottom of a snow-choked ravine. Running was next to impossible here, so Vireon slowed his pace while the Uduri caught up to him. His first encounter with the Udvorg had been violent and poisoned by ignorance. He wondered if they would recognize his authority this time. He had left his gleaming crown in Udurum. Yet who else would travel this far into the Icelands with a band of fierce-eyed Uduri?
Several hunting parties had converged to meet him as one. Each of the thirty-two Udvorg stood as tall as the Uduri, a few even taller. Vireon waited between the two bands of Giants as they marched toward one another. The Udvorg wore beards matted with hoarfrost. The dyed pelts of gargantuan tigers and snow lions hung from their shoulders. Their hair, white as the snow itself, contrasted greatly with their skin, which was the color of the sky or a slightly more pale blue. They snuffled with flat noses and stared at the Uduri with eyes red as blood. They had obviously never seen or smelled anything like these pale females. Some grunted like bulls, ready to charge and force a mating. Others stood quietly behind the Leader of the Hunt, a brawny Giant with a chain of iron and icy jewels hanging about his tree-trunk neck. Their spears were longer and thicker than those of the Uduri, the keen heads forged of black iron. Each hunter carried at his waist an iron mace or hammer, as well as a skinning knife. Talismans of bone, bronze, and gold hung from ear, nostril, and earlobe. The Udvorg went barefoot in the deep snow.
If they stood here long enough, the snows would bury them all. How many frozen Giant corpses lay buried far beneath the drifts even now? The huntsman called to Vireon as a light snowfall began.
“Hail, King of the South!” bellowed the huntsman, raising his spear. His fellows stood cautiously behind him, more interested in the Uduri than the tiny King. The day was growing long, and deep shadows moved along the ravine. Soon it would lie in total darkness.
Vireon raised his own spear in a corresponding salute. Trudging forward, he stood within a bowshot of the blue-skins. The Uduri crept cautiously behind him, Dahrima nearly at his back. He could only imagine what went through their heads as they looked upon their ancient cousins and recognized the savage vitality their own tribe had lost centuries ago.
“They stink,” Dahrima whispered. Vireon might have smiled, but he was in no mood.
“Say nothing,” he told her.
The Udvorg huntsman called again in the language of his people, which, despite certain differences and strangeness of accent, was the same as that of the Uduru. “I am Thurguz of the Ivory Seekers,” he announced. “We go to stalk the high plateau where the mammoth roams. Yet before I leave the realm of my King, here I see another King come walking.”
“You know then who I am,” Vireon yelled through the rising wind.
The Udvorg laughed. “Only the King of Udurum would travel with such a retinue. Who are these Uduri?”
The crimson pupils of the Udvorg studied the snow-frosted Uduri with evident lust. The Giantesses stared back at them, unspo
ken challenges flickering in their black eyes. Dahrima lifted the great axe from her back and stepped to Vireon’s side.
“They are my personal guard,” answered Vireon. “The Daughters of Udurum. The Ones Who Stayed.”
Thurguz shared a few rough words with his hunters, then turned his eyes back to Vireon. “We shall accompany you to the Palace of the Ice King, where these Uduri may visit their male cousins.”
“No,” said Vireon. “We too hunt on this day.”
Thurguz blinked and a shower of ice crystals fell from his jutting brow. “Surely there is much game in the southern forest. None but Udvorg may hunt the mammoth, or the moose, or the tiger. The White Mountains are closed to those not of our clan. Even to Kings.”
Vireon drove the point of his walking spear into the frozen snow. “I care not for your game. I hunt for my missing child and wife.”
The Udvorg stood silent, shifting from foot to foot and studying the Uduri with animal fascination.
Thurguz laughed again. “How could mother and child be so far from home? This land is death to those born in the south. Surely your hunt will find only corpses.”
Vireon ignored the callous words.
“I seek a white flame,” he said.
The Udvorg exchanged a series of grunts and suspicious glances.
“You have seen it,” Vireon said.
Thurguz bent low and rested his weight on one knee. His craggy face loomed near to Vireon. Dahrima’s eyes followed the Udvorg’s movements with a burning intensity. She might kiss his frosty lips or slice off his head. Either was as likely. His voice was a coarse whisper cutting through the wind.
“There is a haunted mountain not far from here,” he said. His breath was like winter itself, colder than the night. “We passed it on our last hunt and saw the blazing of restless spirits about its summit. They burned like white flames in the night. This place is called Kyorla, Mountain of Ghosts. Knowing of its nature, we left these ghosts to themselves as we always do. They are the lost souls of those who died on the ice.”
“Will you show me this peak?” Vireon asked.
Thurguz ran a hand through his wild beard, pulling free the accumulated ice, frost, and snow. It rained down at Vireon’s feet. The Udvorg’s eyes turned to Dahrima. Her jaw was firmly set, her eyes unknowable.
“That depends,” he said, smiling. His teeth were the light blue of a frozen pond. “If this one gives me a kiss… and promises to bring her sisters to my lord’s palace when the hunt is done.”
Dahrima spat at the Udvorg’s feet. “Unwashed savage!” she said. “You ask favors beyond your station! We are warriors, not courtesans!”
Thurguz smiled again, threw his head back and laughed. “You misunderstand me! We invite you as honored guests, not carnal conquests. We are the brothers of your ancestors! We lay our spears at your feet to show our respect.” He tossed his black spear into the snow, and his thirty-one brothers followed his example. Dahrima glanced back at her sister-cousins. They spoke without words, sentiments moving from eye to eye. The blue-skinned Udvorg women had taken their males; perhaps some of the lonely Uduri would take Udvorg males as husbands. Vireon would release them from their oath of servitude if they so desired it. But their great pride would prohibit the asking of such a thing.
“To the second part of your bargain I agree,” said Vireon. “The Uduri will come to Angrid’s Hall before the next moon rises. As for your first request… that is up to Dahrima.”
The proud Giantess looked down at her King, and Vireon wondered how she would choose. He would not order her to debase herself, but he trusted her to support his quest. Alua and Maelthyn were the goal, and this was a small thing to ask. Yet the Uduri’s innate sense of nobility was something no Man or Giant could outguess.
Dahrima sighed, dropped her axe into the ice, and approached Thurguz the Huntsman. The Udvorg’s crimson eyes grew large as she grabbed his great head, knocking the horned helm from his brow. She planted her warm lips on his cold ones, and for a while only the wailing of the night wind was heard in the ravine. When she released him, Thurguz fell backwards into the snow. His fellows roared with mirth and shuffled forward as if they, too, would receive hot kisses.
Dahrima took up her axe and faced them. “The first to touch me loses his manhood, then his head.” The Udvorg redoubled their laughter and ceased their clumsy advance. Thurguz pulled himself out of the snow and stood once more at his full height. He picked up his spear and let his gaze linger on Dahrima.
“I like this pale Uduri!” he shouted to his brothers. “Her kiss brings the heat of the sun to scorch my loins.” More laughter ensued as the hunters regained their spears.
Vireon looked up at the crescent moon sliding from behind the heavy clouds.
“Come, King of the South,” said Thurguz.
He followed the mass of Udvorg, and the Uduri followed him. They tramped up the far neck of the ravine and stood inside a ring of glacial mountainscapes. Thurguz pointed a meaty arm in the direction of the Mountain of Ghosts. East, toward the distant shore of the Far Sea. Yet this far north the sea was most likely frozen, making it part of that nameless ocean of ice that smothered the edge of the world.
The Udvorg fell into their accustomed hunters’ jog, which was somewhat slower than the pace Vireon had set for the past ten days. The Uduri had no trouble keeping up with him. Now they filed along precarious mountain trails where the snows were not so deep. In this way, following trails only Udvorg could see or sense, they moved from slope to slope, on through the night.
Vireon saw the white flame well before they reached the side of the mountain. It danced and flashed like a pale aurora about the ice-clad summit. The white spark in his heart was kindled into a fresh blaze, almost hot enough to dispel the chill in his weary limbs. In the back of his mind he wondered if Ianthe were leading him to this place, and then he decided she must be. Unless it was Alua, calling to him from afar. Yet if she was in the grip of Maelthyn’s spell-Ianthe’s spell-how could she do so? No, it must be the sorceress who stole his daughter’s body, urging him onward to his death. He might die here, but Ianthe would not escape a second time. He put all other thoughts out of his head as he climbed.
Vireon, thirty-two Udvorg, and twenty-one Uduri scaled the frozen slope, digging fingers and toes into solid ice, drawing themselves inexorably upward. The white flame was not constant. At times only darkness lay upon the mountain’s crown, but always the burst of colorless light returned again. A beacon of death, his own or that of his enemy.
Now the earth shook and a vast portion of the mountainside fell away into darkness with a deafening roar. A rain of jagged icicles and avalanches of snow fell upon the climbers. One of the Udvorg lost his grip and fell howling into the lower dark. The winds blew fierce and terrible, driving sleet into their faces as they climbed onward. Vireon scrambled at their forefront, his urgent need driving him faster and faster up the peak. He might have told the Udvorg to stay below. They might even have listened, unlike the Uduri, who would not abandon him regardless of their fate. He supposed the blue-skins did not want to be outdone by the females, so they came along. Vireon was too set in maintaining his upward path to speak aloud of the matter.
All through the night they climbed, crossing sheer faces that no human could survive without the strength and fortitude of Giants invested in his body. The storm never ceased, and the ice at times froze over Vireon’s mouth and nose. He paused regularly to crack it from his face in order to breathe. This was not an issue for the Udvorg; snow and ice were as balmy breezes to them. The Uduri climbed on, painfully yet silently.
Perhaps an hour remained before dawn when Vireon pulled himself onto a narrow tableland within three bowshots of the mountain’s peak. The white flames danced above this great ledge clear and bright as lightning. Now he saw the source of it as he brought his legs up to kneel on the icy shelf. A tall crevice opened in the side of the mountain. A gout of white flame poured from it like a raging spirit, flying about
and disappearing into the sky. Every few seconds another flash brought another flame spilling from the cave into the upper air.
Vireon walked toward the flashing cleft. The Giants scrabbled up behind him, finding their own room on the narrow plateau one at a time. Before Dahrima and Thurguz had finished their climb, Vireon stood halfway to the cave mouth. Perhaps Alua lay within, hurt or dying, sending her white flame out again and again as a message. Could Maelthyn be with her? Could she have driven Ianthe away from this forsaken place? He forced himself to remain calm as he pulled the greatsword from its scabbard on his back.
A frosted corpse lay half buried in the snow before the cave.
Vireon’s heart shattered into icy shards.
Alua…
She lay with eyes open, staring at the cold stars. Her pupils gleamed with that same cold light, like iced gems. Her long blonde hair was mostly lost beneath the snow, and her ribcage was a jagged hole. An empty crevice yawned where her heart had once been. Blood had spilled and frozen into the ice about her, leaving two lines of red from the corners of her mouth to the back of her jawbone. An artificial smile; the death mask of a naked skull. There was little of beauty left in her vacant, blue face.
Vireon’s breath came in difficult gasps now. He blinked at Alua’s dead body, realizing what her missing heart meant. The Giants closed in behind him, wordless, spears pointed at the black crevice.
Another blast of white flame shot from the darkness. The naked figure of a full-grown woman stood limned in the glow of sorcery. A mane of snowy hair flew about her shoulders, dancing in the deathwinds. Her black diamond eyes glowed like twin stars. The light and its flame were Alua’s own… but it was not Alua who stood in the cave’s mouth. Nor was it his daughter. Not any longer.
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