Frostfell

by Mark Sehestedt

  The creatures fell upon him, rending and tearing. “No!” he cried. “No, I—” then he had no more throat with which to scream, and the gale blew his blood upon the stairs leading up to the Witness Tree.

  The gash in reality slammed shut, and the five devils fell upon Khasoreth and his apprentices.

  Winter howled off the Great Ice Sea. The Road of the Sun, leading from the Royal Colonnade in Winterkeep to the Isle of Witness, could not withstand the onslaught of wind and wave. The wooden bridges fell, their stone supports crumbling. But in their ruin, five shapes, each swathed in a cloak the color of cold ash, emerged from the storm.

  Death came to Winterkeep.

  Screams still filled the night when Arantar returned to Winterkeep. Too late to save the royal city, he knew, but not too late to save those lives that remained.

  He found Isenith just inside the South Wall. She was leading survivors out of the city—servants mostly, but also a few guards, their eyes no less fearful than the others’. Isenith held the baby in one arm while she used the other to issue orders.

  “Where is he?” said Arantar. “Where is Khasoreth?”

  “I don’t know!” said Isenith. Tears streaked her face and froze upon her cheeks. “My brother said—”

  “Where is the emperor?”

  “Dead!” she shrieked, the first hint of hysteria entering her voice. “Oh, Arantar, they’re all dead.”

  “I must find Khasoreth. Together, perhaps he and I can put an end to this.”

  “Don’t leave me! Arantar, the baby—!”

  “Lead the people west. Get them to safety. Trathenik should be headed this way with his cavalry. Tell him what has happened. Tell him to shun Winterkeep until I send word. Allow no one to come near.”

  “But, Aran—”

  A great crash cut her off as the Tower of the Sun toppled into the city, crushing buildings and people beneath it. So great was the storm that even Arantar could no longer distinguish the howling of the wind from the cries of the damned.

  “Go, Isenith! Go! Take our child to safety.” He gave her a last embrace, placed a tender hand on the bundle of his son, and pushed them out the gate. The others followed, the guards last. Arantar grabbed the final soldier, stopping him. He turned him and looked down into his eyes. “See them away. Should any harm befall my wife and son …”

  “My life for theirs, Honored One,” said the soldier, and he bowed.

  Arantar pushed him after the others and turned into the city.

  She watched as if from a great height, seeing and hearing everything, even feeling the cold, though it did her no harm. People fled in every direction, dragging children and carrying what few possessions they could. The Royal Guard and City Watch offered some resistance, but the five creatures in the ash-gray cloaks froze them where they stood, destroyed buildings, and summoned the winds of winter to topple the last of the towers of Winterkeep.

  Following the sounds of slaughter, Arantar at last came to face the destroyers of the capital of Raumathar. They stood before him, the wind whipping their cloaks like banners. One stood foremost. Upon seeing Arantar, he stopped and lowered his cowl.

  Arantar stopped and stared, his mouth hanging open. “Khasoreth? What … I—”

  The thing that had been Khasoreth laughed and struck, sending shards of ice at his former master.

  Arantar rebuffed the attack, then another and another. After repelling the fourth, he struck back, but the five sorcerers absorbed the force he sent against them and used it to fuel their own strength. Spells flew faster than the snows driven by the gale, and shields of magic shattered and reformed themselves. Again and again the five struck at Arantar and he struck back. Their battle raged throughout the city, neither side gaining the upper hand, but Arantar’s stand allowed the last of the survivors to escape onto the steppe.

  The five sorcerers called forth beings from the darkest planes to fight for them, but Arantar bound them and sent them back. He in turn sent fire and lightning upon his foes, but they blocked every strike. Their battle took them into the skies themselves as the combatants rode the winds of winter and magic.

  She watched as Arantar alighted upon the Isle of Witness, now an island in truth since the bridges joining it to the city lay beneath the waves. There, under the winter-bare boughs of the Witness Tree, Arantar made his last stand. His eyes shone forth bright, but with each strike their light was growing dimmer. His foes surrounded him, and she watched as he leaned in weariness against the trunk of the great tree. His hand shook, and his staff fell from his hands to clatter down the stone steps.

  Seeing his foes approaching, Arantar smiled, closed his eyes, raised his face to the heavens, and called out, “Father!”

  The fabric of creation seemed to vibrate, as if a great bell had been struck or clarion sounded. The gait of the five sorcerers faltered, and when Arantar opened his eyes, they shone a white purer than the noonday sun. Again she looked, and it was as if two beings stood in Arantar’s frame, one a man of Raumathar, wanderer of the steppes, and councilor of kings, and the other … beyond all that, one who looked down on the petty bickerings of kings and laughed.

  The five sorcerers howled in fury and struck, calling upon every spell they knew as they charged up the hill.

  Arantar and the Other struck back, and it was as if she could see beyond reality, see every note and harmony within the song of reality. The five were darkness and shadow infusing the bodies of Khasoreth and his four apprentices, and they drank in all warmth and corrupted all life around them. The attack from Arantar and the Other did not strengthen that disharmony, but rather fed it, pouring holy light and life into the never-ending hunger. The five screamed, and four fell to the ground. The dark infusion, the thousands of tendrils of unlife burrowed into their souls, twisted, frayed, and broke.

  The thing that had been Khasoreth fell to his hands and knees upon the ice-slick steps and looked up at Arantar. In the light cast by Arantar’s countenance, the shadow lifted from Khasoreth’s face, and his eyes cleared. “Master … please. Remember. Remember … mercy.”

  The exultant smile upon Arantar’s face faltered, and his countenance deepened to what she could only call a profound pity. The light dimmed—

  —and Khasoreth struck, sending a thick arm of darkness crashing into his former master. The thing within him shrieked in unholy delight.

  Arantar stumbled against the tree, and the thing that had been Khasoreth leaped, falling upon his former master with fist, tooth, and spell.

  She watched as the Other within Arantar gathered and concentrated his strength to strike.

  No! said Arantar, though his lips did not move. Mercy.

  The pure light in Arantar’s eyes evaporated, and the Other began to lift away—

  —but the thing that had been Khasoreth struck, its great arm of darkness seizing the Other, tearing at him.

  For an instant—she knew it was no more than that, though it seemed to stretch for an eternity—darkness warred with light, then light surrendered. Arantar breathed his last, a small smile upon his lips, and the Other fell.

  The five creatures of darkness seized it, and she watched as they battered and tore at it. Again and again they tried, but to no avail.

  The Other sought the last bit of warmth, the last living thing upon the island—the Witness Tree—and fell into it. With a cry of triumph, the five struck, unable to destroy the now-hallowed tree, but sealing it with their darkest spells so that the Other could escape to oppose them no more.

  Her vision followed them throughout the years. Winterkeep lay fallen and shunned by all people, but true victory had been taken from the five devils. The last attack by Arantar and the Other had warped their spell. Not only were they trapped within the bodies of the five sorcerers, but much to their dismay the bodies of Khasoreth’s apprentices grew old, weak, and approached death as all men do. Filled with the dark powers, their bodies lasted many generations, but die they did.

  In their desperation t
he five devils refined their spells and sought the ancient magics of the people of the world in which they found themselves. Try as they might, they could find no way to free themselves from their imprisonment nor stop the decay of their mortal homes. But they did find a way for their fell spirits to seize other mortal forms.

  But only a chosen few.

  She watched as the years passed and the ruins of Winterkeep blew away with each passing winter or were buried beneath soil and snow. Powerful as the dark arts of the five were, they could not overcome one flaw. No mere mortal could contain them, but only those in whom the blood of Arantar and Isenith flowed.

  She watched as Isenith learned the life of an exile, watching her son grow up, often in hunger and want. But he grew to a man that made his mother proud, though the sadness never left her eyes. Her son married, had many children, and his children had children, the royal blood of Raumathar mixing throughout the years with the peoples of the steppes. The first did not disappear until Arantar’s great-grandson was a young man. The second a few years after that—and then two others. Then no more for three generations.

  She watched as the five sorcerers fled into the dark north, seeking the coldest lands they could find, forever shunning lands of light and warmth.

  Her vision narrowed as she followed the strain of Arantar and Isenith’s blood down through the ages. A king, warlords, shepherds, farmers, sorcerers, thieves, and slaves—all these and more were the fates of Arantar’s offspring. In most, the blood of Arantar grew weaker with each passing generation, the golden eyes fading, the gifts of his heritage becoming only distant melodies in dreams. But in one line the blood ran strong and true, and her vision followed that line through the ages, seeing it mingle, dilute, and fade, only to gather strength as the bloodlines mingled again.

  Then came the Horde, and one man’s ambition that would bring nations to war and change the fate of Amira Hiloar forever. The young war wizard fought in many battles, killing and almost being killed so many times that she stopped counting. War became her life. Every day different but torturously the same. Until the day of the battle near the Well of the Broken Antlers, when a Tuigan warlord fled his camp before the Cormyrean troops. The warlord’s warriors slaughtered every servant, slave, and captive in camp, leaving nothing for the westerners to take. One of Arantar and Isenith’s descendants hid her child amid a collapsed tent before her lord’s men cut her down. The Tuigan galloped off eastward. The dust of the horses’ passage settled, and the little boy crawled from the tentcloth to find his dead mother. He looked up, and his eyes were golden.

  Jalan.

  Amira’s eyes snapped open and she sat up. She was still in the cavern of Hro’nyewachu. The stone pedestal, still drenched in blood, was not far away. The remains of the deer carcass and the heart were gone. How long she had lain on the stone floor, how long she had … dreamed, seen, whatever it had been. But her hair was dry, and the blood from her grisly meal felt hard and dry on her skin.

  You found what you sought?

  Amira turned. The oracle was standing behind her, the pale eyes no longer lit with hunger but with … what? Amira wondered. Was that sympathy?

  “Was it …?” Amira said. Her throat felt raw. Burned. “Was it real? What I saw? What I heard?”

  The oracle canted her head—a thoroughly inhuman gesture that reminded Amira of a bird. The dreamroad, she said, her lips still not moving, the voice coming straight to Amira’s mind, the waking world, sleeping, waking … who is to say where reality begins and ends? The same mind that sees the world around you, that loves and hates and wars and creates, is the same mind that dreams. Why cling to one and discard the other?

  “So Arantar, Khasoreth … Gaugan, all of it. I saw it as it happened? It wasn’t some dream inspired by the belkagen’s fireside tales.”

  The words of a belkagen spoken by fire are not to be taken lightly. A smile flickered across the oracle’s face, faint and fleeting, but in the instant she saw it, Amira thought it looked a little sad. It has been many turnings of the world since Arantar last came to me. This world has not seen his like since, nor will it again.

  Amira considered all she had seen, and the urgency hit her all at once. “I must go,” she said. “Jalan …”

  The scion of Arantar is in grave danger, said the oracle. His life teeters on the precipice.

  Amira stood and brushed the sand and grit off her bare skin. She looked up at the oracle, and she was struck by how tall the oracle really was. She would not have looked down upon Gyaidun. She would have towered over him.

  You have a cold road ahead of you, said the oracle. Out of affection for a friend long gone, I grant you one last question.

  It came to Amira at once, the only question worth asking, the only answer she needed. “How do I beat them?”

  The oracle smiled, and again it was the hungry gaze of the predator. The Witness Tree. There, all will be decided. Beyond that, I give you no assurances. Death and life will meet. Only those who surrender will triumph.

  “Surrender?” said Amira. “ ‘Death and life will meet?’ What does that mean?”

  The oracle’s smiled broadened, her full lips pulling back over teeth that were pointed and sharp, fangs that seemed to glisten in the cavern’s blood red light.

  “Never mind,” said Amira. She looked around. There was no sign of the pool where the belkagen had taken her. “How … how do I get out of here?”

  I said one question, said the oracle. Now, you owe me.

  Snarling, the oracle struck.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Hro’nyewachu

  The belkagen’s concern had long since deepened to worry, and his worry was becoming true fear. Lady Amira had been gone for too long. It had been near midnight when she’d entered the pool, and in his heart that knew the turning of the seasons and the paths of the stars like a husband knows the curves of his wife’s body, the belkagen knew dawn was not far away. Amira had been gone too long.

  He stood at the water’s edge, leaning upon his staff, its green light reflecting off the water. After Amira had gone, the ripples left in her wake had caught the staff’s light and painted the cavern in dancing light and shadow, but it had long since returned to a calm broken only by the minuscule plipping of water droplets falling from the ceiling. Now, save for one spot several paces out where the light of his staff floated like a tiny green moon, the water was black as slate.

  The belkagen stood waiting, his eyes open but no longer really watching. Alone in the darkness, the words he had spoken to Lady Amira came back to him—

  “Hro’nyewachu has a mother’s heart. You have a mother’s need. Your hearts will beat the same song, I think. I could brave Hro’nyewachu again, and if you refuse, I will go.”

  He had said it, had he not?

  I could brave Hro’nyewachu again … I will go.

  … I will go …

  … I will go …

  … brave Hro’nyewachu again …

  His words came to him again and again, almost as if they were the echoes of the water drip-drip-dripping into the pool before him.

  Should he go after her? In his heart, he knew there was nothing he could do for her. He’d told her that, as well, and he knew it to be true. But neither could he just walk away. Not without knowing. Even if he couldn’t help her, perhaps there was something he could learn to help them, some new vision that—

  He heard a splash. Not of something falling into the water. Nothing that hard. But he heard something breaking the surface of the water out beyond the reach of his light.

  “Lady Amira?” he called.

  Nothing. Just the steady plip-plip of water droplets hitting the pool. But as he watched, the small globe of light reflecting on the surface rippled. Something had disturbed the water farther out.

  He listened, his ears straining, but there was nothing more.

  The belkagen raised his staff and spoke an incantation. The flames flickering along its tip roared to new life, a green beacon
in the darkness.

  There!

  Something was floating in the water. It wasn’t moving.

  The belkagen tore at the ties of his cloak and left it piled on the shore. It would soak in the water and weigh him down. His clothes would as well, but he didn’t want to take the time to remove them.

  Staff held high, he charged into the water. The shape floated several paces away, the waves caused by his passage pushed it farther out. He could make out no distinct features, but even in the dim light he could see long, dark hair and fair skin. He cursed and pushed his legs harder.

  The water was splashing up his chest and over his shoulders when he drew close enough to reach out and grab the figure. His fingers closed around wet hair and he pulled. It was Amira, floating facedown in the water. The belkagen got a better grip on her forearm, then dragged her back to shore.

  He threw her down and turned her over. Her skin was pale, cold to the touch, and her lips were blue. Long, wet tendrils of her hair spread over her bare breasts, and the belkagen saw that her chest did not move. She wasn’t breathing.

  “No!” He threw his staff aside and knelt beside her. Closing his eyes, he sent his senses through her body, washing over and through her skin, down into muscle, blood, and bone. There! Life still flickered within her, faint and growing weaker with each passing moment, but it was still there.

  She is not dead.

  The belkagen started and looked up. A great she-wolf, fur gray as clouds laden with spring rain, stood before the entrance, staring down at him with eyes the color of moonlight.

  “Hro’nyewachu!” said the belkagen.

  The she-wolf walked toward him, and with each step her form blurred and swirled, and motes of light and darkness danced before the belkagen’s eyes. When she stopped a few paces away, a tall, lithe woman stood over him. Whatever color her skin was, it was hidden beneath a dark, slick wetness that by the smell the belkagen knew to be blood, though not from any creature that walked in this world. Her hair was made up in scores of tight braids that hung to her waist, and bits of bone, feathers, and spring flowers peeked out from among them. In her right hand she held a staff almost as long as she was tall. It was made from some golden-red wood flecked with darker grains of brown and black. The belkagen had never seen its like.