Frostfell

by Mark Sehestedt

  Amira knelt over her son. She brushed the snow away and pulled at the fabric until she could see his face. His eyes were closed—he looked so thin and worn!—but she could see his chest rising and falling. He was alive. If he had been hurt in the fall, it did not seem serious.

  “I will see to him, Lady!” said the belkagen.

  She rose and looked the old elf in the eye. “Your blood if you don’t.”

  The belkagen flinched, but something told Amira it was not at her threat but at something else her words had hit.

  “On my blood!” said the belkagen.

  Amira took two steps up the hill, then turned again. “Tell him …” she said. “Tell Jalan I love him.”

  She looked down at her son, then spun and sped up the hill.

  Flickers of light, like minuscule bolts of cold lightning, flashed along the sorcerer’s blade. Gyaidun stepped out of range and swung his own weapon, putting every bit of strength into it. The sorcerer’s blade flicked down and then up, and Gyaidun felt the leather connecting his wrist to his club part. The heavy weight of black iron flew into the snow-stitched darkness.

  Gyaidun scrambled backward, the sorcerer advancing on him, and on the fourth step his heel struck a rock or tussock buried under the snow and he stumbled. He hit the ground but kept going, struggling like a crab on all fours.

  The thing in the ash-gray cloak lunged, his cloak flaring in the gale, and grabbed Gyaidun under the chin. The grip was beyond cold. It seemed to leech every bit of warmth from Gyaidun’s skull, and he could feel his bones and the fluids in his ears freezing.

  The sorcerer stood, and although the arm that gripped him was thinner than a starved cadaver, he lifted Gyaidun’s thick frame off the ground and brought him close. Even with his elf-blessed sight, Gyaidun’s vision could not penetrate the depths of the sorcerer’s cowl, not even when the sorcerer pulled him close. The wind was at the sorcerer’s back, and Gyaidun could smell the stench of tombs and worse from the thing’s robes.

  The sorcerer inhaled deeply—Gyaidun could just hear it over the wind.

  “Yes,” said the sorcerer. “I know your blood. You might have been the one. Might have—”

  Gyaidun thrust his knife into the robes. He kept the blade sharp enough to shave with, and the point punctured through the layers of cloth. Gyaidun felt the steel hit a rib, turn, and plunge deep. The sorcerer gasped, but his grip did not weaken.

  “You have bite,” the sorcerer said. “Like your pup. He fought, too.”

  Blind rage filled Gyaidun. He stabbed, slashed, kicked, and punched.

  The sorcerer caught his wrist that held the knife, twisted, squeezed—Gyaidun held on through the bones grinding, but when they broke he let go and the knife fell to the ground.

  “Enough,” said the sorcerer. “Time to die. Time to—”

  An avalanche of snarling, whimpering fur hit them. The icy grip under his jaw slipped, and Gyaidun hit the snow and rolled free. A massive paw smashed his shoulder into the ground, then was gone. His body was a mass of pain, but Gyaidun forced himself to keep rolling down the hill. He stopped several paces down and looked up just in time to see white haunches and tail disappearing into the storm. The sorcerer’s winter wolf. It was still blinded by Amira’s spell and maddened by pain. It must have slammed into them.

  Then the shadow was on him again, the life-draining hand gripping his throat and squeezing as the sorcerer lifted him. Gyaidun could feel the blood in his neck freezing, the veins bursting, his skin blistering and cracking from the cold. The grip tightened, and Gyaidun couldn’t breathe. Darkness rimmed the edges of his vision, a pulsing mass of it closing in—

  —and then Gyaidun noticed a change in the light. It seemed golden. Soft. Even warm. And he had time to wonder if he was crossing over into the afterlife before—

  A shard of light struck the sorcerer’s midriff. A shriek louder than boulders cracking struck his ears, and Gyaidun went flying. He hit the ground hard, and his first thought was—Why do I smell blossoms?

  Gasping for air, he pushed himself up and wiped the snow from his face. Not ten paces away, the sorcerer and Amira were engaged in battle, spells flying and Amira’s golden staff shining like summer’s heart. It struck the sorcerer’s blade, and sparks of silver and gold mingled with the blowing snowfall.

  “Enough!” the sorcerer said, and he flew backward out of the lady’s reach. He landed with the practiced ease of a Shou monk, then raised his hands to the storm and shouted, “Uthrekh rakhshan thra!”

  The gale became a living thing, and Gyaidun felt the already frigid temperature plummet. The air in his throat thickened, choking him. The moisture in his eyes began to freeze, and his skin seemed to turn to stone.

  “Kenhakye unethke!” shouted Amira, her staff held high. Warmth and light flowed out from her, pushing back the sorcerer’s spell.

  The sorcerer stood, arms still outstretched, and stared at Amira. Although Gyaidun could not see his face, he could sense that sorcerer was stunned at the thwarting of his magic. Enraged, the sorcerer took to the air again in a great leap, his sword raised above his flying robes.

  Blade struck staff in another shower of sparks, but this time Amira did not retreat and counter. Green fire erupted in her free hand and she reached in, grasping the sorcerer’s robe. Despite the wind, the magic fire caught and ignited in the ash-gray robes, and he fell back screaming. But his cries twisted into an incantation, and the wind gusted, blowing Amira back and extinguishing the flames.

  Gyaidun, his broken wrist throbbing with pain, pushed himself to his feet and lurched forward. His toe struck something hard. His knife! He reached down, grabbed it, and charged. He knew he was most likely done in and nothing he could do could stop the sorcerer, but if he could add his effort to the fight, perhaps Amira could conjure something strong enough to strike him down—or at the very least buy her time to escape.

  The sorcerer stood, blackened holes in his robes and cowl still smoldering, and as his charge brought him close Gyaidun could hear him snarling.

  Amira began her incantation, “Keljan—”

  “Hey!” Gyaidun roared, raising his knife to swipe at the sorcerer’s face.

  The sorcerer turned his attention away from Amira to Gyaidun, and as he did so the wind caught in his tattered and burned cowl, ripping it off his head.

  Gyaidun saw the sorcerer’s face for the first time. Older it was, and gaunt like a man long deprived of food, but there was no mistaking the face and the cant of his eyes. His mother’s eyes.

  It was Erun. His son.

  “—saulé!” Amira finished, and from behind him Gyaidun felt the air ignite.

  “No!” Gyaidun threw himself between them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Endless Wastes

  The wind died near dawn, but the snow kept falling as if Auril meant to bury the world. From the shelter of their camp—at the bottom of a washed-out gully where straggly bushes and long grass sagged over a lip of earth, offering a sort of half roof—Amira watched it come down. Under different circumstances she might have found it beautiful, but now she knew it would be waist deep by midmorning.

  Jalan was still asleep, wrapped in thick blankets beside her. She resisted touching him, fearing she might wake him. The belkagen had done all he could to heal him. Jalan’s body would have to do the rest. Looking down at him, Amira’s heart slowed but seem to beat with twice its usual strength. She had her son back. His cheeks were sunken, dark circles ringed his eyes, his skin had a gray pallor she didn’t like, and his breathing was strained, but he was alive and he was here. Right now, that was all that mattered.

  Amira heard footsteps wading through the snow, and then the belkagen ducked under the overhanging foliage and stepped around the small fire.

  “How is he?” she asked.

  “Gyaidun?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’ll live.” The belkagen sat. His skin looked brittle as parchment and his shoulders sagged under his cloak. �
��Healing the damage from your staff took most of my strength and wisdom. I’ll have to rest before I see to his wrist and other injuries.”

  Amira opened her mouth then shut it again. She was torn between guilt and anger. Battered as Gyaidun had been in the fight, it had been her strike aimed at the sorcerer that had done the most damage. After it had struck Gyaidun in the back, the sorcerer had fled, fading into the deeper darkness of the storm. Gyaidun had lain unmoving in the snow, his torn shirt smoking and the flesh underneath steaming. She’d run to him, finding him breathing but little else. Part of her had wanted to pursue her foe, to finish this once for all, but there was no sign of him.

  Looking down at Gyaidun, Amira had known he would die without help—and might well die with it. So she’d used her spell to take them both back to the belkagen. Even after the old elf’s first attempt to heal him, Gyaidun had been almost insensate, tears streaming down his cheeks, raving and screaming. Amira had seen wounded men, some on the verge of death, trying to hold in their life’s blood as they watched it pouring between their fingers, and she’d understood Gyaidun’s cries were from no physical pain. She’d known others like him in the war. He could’ve swallowed hot iron with a smile. No, this had been something deeper, the cry of anguish, of a broken heart.

  The belkagen had poured a syrupy concoction down Gyaidun’s throat. A shudder had run through him, followed by a violent bout of coughing. Gyaidun had looked up at her, and his eyes seemed haunted. He told the old elf what he’d seen. Amira had been standing nearby, and she heard it all.

  “Erun!” he said. “It was Erun. My son! My son, my son …”

  “Erun?” said the belkagen. “That thing had Erun?”

  “No!” Gyaidun grabbed the belkagen’s shoulders. “It was Erun. That thing was my son. My son!”

  That had shocked Amira as much as anyone—and filled her with a cold dread. So much of the past several tendays—Jalan’s abduction, that damned sorcerer’s dogged pursuit of him, the vision in Hro’nyewachu—was beginning to come together in her mind.

  Now, with Gyaidun off somewhere else, she voiced her concerns to the belkagen.

  “Gyaidun’s son …”

  “Erun,” said the belkagen, his voice thick. “Erun is—was his name.”

  “Erun. He was taken, just like Jalan?”

  “Fifteen years ago.”

  “Out there …” said Amira. She stopped, gathering her thoughts. “In the darkness, in the storm, Gyaidun was … beyond hurt. I’ve seen the carnage of battle, and I’ve seen few men take a beating like that and still remain on their feet. But Gyaidun was still fighting. He must have been running on will alone. Is it possible that … that—”

  “That he imagined the whole thing?”

  “Yes,” she said, her hope gathering strength. “His search for his son has consumed him for so long. It’s been the one thing that kept him going. Finding Jalan … I knew from the beginning, since that night by the lake when we first spoke, that Gyaidun was after Erun, not Jalan. Is it possible he wanted to find his son so much—maybe too much—that his mind saw what it wanted to see?”

  The belkagen sat in silence for a long while. When he spoke, his voice was cold and hard. “You think Gyaidun wanted to see his son warped and twisted into that … thing? That horror?”

  “No,” said Amira. “But if the heart wants something strong enough …”

  “You told me what you saw in Hro’nyewachu. The road of years you walked. You saw the fate of Khasoreth and his apprentices. Jalan’s forefathers. Did your heart … imagine that?”

  “No. Mystra help me, no. If anything, I would want to believe it was all some twisted dream. But I know it wasn’t.”

  The belkagen gave a deep sigh and nodded. “I know it also. I never walked that road, but I have walked many others. Long roads through doubt, darkness, and worse. I believe what you saw in Hro’nyewachu was truth. I do not doubt it. But my question is: Why?”

  Amira scowled. “Why?”

  “You went seeking aid for your son, not … what you would call ‘a history lesson.’ ”

  “The staff—”

  “Was given to aid your fight. But it was not the help you sought. Hro’nyewachu told me the staff would ‘sharpen the bite’ you gave your enemies, but that it was for another to save Jalan.”

  “Sharpen the bite?” Amira’s mouth opened and closed twice before more words would come to her. “Hro’nyewachu … told you? She told you? What else did she tell you?”

  The belkagen looked up, and again Amira felt herself caught in a hunter’s gaze. “Many things, sacred things for her and me alone. But she told me that for you. The staff is meant to aid your fight, not win it. That task is for another.”

  “Another?” she said. “Gyaidun? You mean Gyaidun?”

  “I mean no one,” he said. “They are the words of Hro’nyewachu, not the words of the belkagen. Is the other Gyaidun?” The belkagen shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Who can tell?”

  “Then what damned good is it?” Amira said. “If we can’t understand any of it, what does it mean?”

  “It means this fight is not over.”

  “What?”

  Amira could not look away from the belkagen’s wolf stare. He’d run last night while she stood and fought, yet here she sat feeling like a snowblind hare caught in the open.

  “You are thinking about taking Jalan back to Cormyr,” he said. “Back to the safety of your knights, wizards, and castles.”

  “And if I am?”

  “Your knights, wizards, and castles could not protect him before.”

  “They cau—!”

  “And they will not protect him now!” said the belkagen. “Nor you. You did an amazing thing last night, Amira Hiloar. You hurt … the sorcerer. You did something that no one has done in many ages, I think—not even your own precious knights and wizards. But now he knows it. And he knows you. He will come upon you when you least suspect it, when you are tired or alone. Whatever Erun has become, it is a thing of cold and darkness. He does not care for honor or fairness. He will come upon you when you are at your weakest. You will not survive that, I think. You will die, and he will have Jalan again.”

  Amira said nothing, but she did not look away. Wolf’s gaze or no, her Hiloar pride would not permit it.

  “You saw the sorcerer,” said the belkagen. “If that’s what he is. It was Erun, twisted into something … vile. Unholy. Think, Amira! It was Erun.”

  “We’ve established that.”

  “Erun. Gyaidun’s son. Erun, who was taken just like Jalan.”

  The reality of it hit her. How could she have been so foolish? All she’d seen! All the oracle had shown her. How could she not have seen this herself?

  “What happened to Gyaidun’s son,” she said. “They mean the same thing for Jalan.”

  “You saw Khasoreth’s fate. You saw him and his pack of devilspawn walking through the years, not living but never dying, taking new vessels to contain the darkness within them. You saw this, Lady. You told me so.”

  “I did.”

  They sat together in silence for a long while, the belkagen watching the snowfall while Amira watched nothing at all. She sat looking inward, going over every detail of the oracle’s visions, looking for some flaw in the elf’s reasoning. There was none. Her shoulders slumped and she sighed.

  “Have you,” she said, “have you … told Gyaidun?”

  “Told him what has happened to Erun?”

  Amira nodded.

  “Not yet. You said it yourself. The hope of finding his son has been the one thing giving him life and purpose all these years. If we take that away …”

  “Hope,” said Amira, wishing she could find her own. “You think he has any left at this point?”

  “Hope is for those who seize it,” said a voice above them.

  Lendri leaped off the lip of the gully and landed in the snow. Mingan followed. Elf and wolf looked at Amira and the belkagen, then joined them under the ove
rhanging grass. Lendri sat down beside the belkagen while his wolf-brother sat with his head on his paws and watched Jalan. The wolf’s ears twitched, and he let out a long whine.

  “How long have you been there, pup?” asked the belkagen.

  “Not long,” Lendri answered, though his eyes were fixed on Amira. “I heard you discussing my rathla. I listened.”

  The belkagen scowled. “You listened to a private conversation of the belkagen. Very rude. Almost dishonorable.”

  Lendri shrugged, not seeming the least bit chagrined. “She is not belkagen, and I am hrayek. My honor is sullied already.” He looked at both of them and steel entered his voice. “If you know something about Erun, something you are not telling Gyaidun …”

  “How much did you hear?” asked the belkagen.

  Lendri looked at Amira a long moment, then turned his gaze back to the belkagen and said, “Have you ever haggled with the merchants along the Golden Way?”

  The belkagen scowled. “What does that have to do with—?”

  “They are liars,” said Lendri. “Unrepentant liars. I learned long ago that the best way to judge the honesty of someone is to ask them a question to which you already know the answer and see what they say. I have yet to meet a merchant who does not make a practice of lying.”

  The belkagen’s eyes narrowed to slits, and his voice became soft as velvet over a knife. “You accuse me of lying, Lendri hrayek?”

  Lendri shrugged. “I accuse the belkagen of nothing. But I’m not going to answer his question until he answers mine.”

  “Where is your resp—?”

  “Please!” Amira cut them off and looked to Lendri. “Do we know what happened to Gyaidun’s son?” She cast a quick look at the belkagen, who was scowling. “Yes,” she continued, “gods help us, I think we do. But what you are really asking, I think, is, ‘Have we found a way to help him?’ And the answer to that, Lendri, is no. Damn it all, we haven’t. I swear by my gods and my House that I’m telling you the truth.”