Frostfell

by Mark Sehestedt

  “Gyaidun,” said a strong voice, the voice of the singer speaking through Jalan. “Time for you to trust me.”

  Gyaidun reached out. He grasped Jalan’s hand with his own bleeding palm, and their blood mingled anew. Gyaidun gasped, and the gasp turned into a laugh, for he saw whom Jalan had summoned.

  Over the wind and crashing waves, through the roar of magic and the crackle of the flames, Amira heard something she had never heard nor hoped to hear: a laugh of pure, utter, unrestrained joy—and it was coming from Gyaidun.

  She tossed her hair out of her eyes and looked up from where she’d fallen at the bottom of the stone stairway. The four sorcerers had fanned out in a half-ring at the crown of the hill, and they faced a great wall of fire. But even as Amira watched, the four summoned a great wind off the sea and the flames bent and died.

  Amira pushed herself to her feet. Her skin was a mass of bruises, scrapes, and cuts. Her arm still throbbed from where the sorcerer had held her, and she’d twisted both her right knee and ankle in the fall. Agony flared in every injury, but she forced herself up the stairs. The sorcerer had taken her staff and thrown it away, but she knew she dared not take the time to look for it now. She still had a few spells of her own ready. She had to get to Jalan.

  Amira passed the body of the fallen sorcerer but did not spare it a glance. The sounds of spells and the incantations of the other sorcerers shook the air above her, and she forced herself to move faster. When her knee gave out on her, she crawled up, tearing her clothes on the rough stone of the stairway.

  She crested the hill, pulling herself over the final step and through the rubble of the broken wall, but the sight she saw there stopped her.

  Passing the dead tree in a slow, deliberate walk, the four sorcerers advanced upon … a god. Amira blinked and shook her head. No, it wasn’t a god. It was Jalan, but a power—a living power—beyond anything she had ever experienced filled her son, and through him it held back the devil-possessed sorcerers. But she could see that he was at the limit of his powers, and the attacks of the sorcerers were breaking through more and more with each strike.

  Kneeling beside Jalan and holding his hand was Gyaidun, but Amira scarcely recognized him. He was still covered in blood, he still bled freely from a dozen scratches and scrapes, and his long hair was still unbound and wild down his back. But in his face and behind his closed eyes was an expression that Amira could only describe as rapture.

  Then Gyaidun stood and opened his eyes. They shone like Jalan’s, golden and bright. The weariness was gone from him, and he stood with the strength and power of a warrior in his prime. But in Gyaidun, too, Amira saw that the power was not his own, but came from something inside him. Something other.

  Recognition struck her. In Hro’nyewachu she had seen the last stand of Arantar, watched as these very sorcerers had destroyed his city and murdered him. But there had been that other, that strange power working through Arantar, that being that even the Fist of Winter had been unable to destroy.

  Amira recognized that same presence in her son, and standing next to him, shining through Gyaidun, was another.

  Combining their strength, Jalan and Gyaidun—or the beings in them—began to beat back the attacks of the sorcerers. Spells of darkness and cold met the power of light and life, and it was the cold darkness that broke and shattered.

  A great cry rent the air, and Amira saw the sorcerer who had crouched over Jalan under the Witness Tree, the one who seemed weaker than the others, fall to the ground. The unholy power within him was banished, the black magics that kept his ancient flesh upon his bones shattered, and he was a corpse before he struck the rocks.

  The leader of the sorcerers cried out, an incoherent shriek of rage. He loosed a barrage of spells at Jalan, but rather than block them or turn them aside, Jalan leaped into the air. At his summons the wind bore him up and over the sorcerers. He sailed over the boughs of the Witness Tree and came down upon the stone staircase next to the fallen body of Erun.

  “NO!” cried the leader.

  Jalan knelt beside Erun and took his face in both hands. Erun’s body spasmed, strength filling him, and he and Jalan stood together. The body of Gyaidun’s son was still emaciated, but the corpse pallor was gone from his skin, and his eyes shone with the same light as Jalan and Gyaidun’s.

  The three of them—Jalan, Erun, and Gyaidun—closed in on the sorcerers, who stood back to back. Amira scrambled to get out of the way.

  “No!” said the leader of the sorcerers. “Mercy! Remember mercy!”

  Jalan’s smile faded, and an expression of great solemnity filled his face. “Today,” he said, “mercy meets justice.”

  The leader’s two remaining fellows forsook him, fleeing in either direction. One leaped over the edge, perhaps hoping to lose himself in the waves below, while the other summoned the winter winds to bear him up. But both ran into a gale summoned by the three beings of light and were flung back. They fell to the ground, writhing and screaming, one of them only an arm’s length from where Amira huddled in the rubble. Like the one before them, the power of the devils faltered, their hold on the mortal bodies broken at last.

  Before her eyes, Amira saw the body age decades in a few breaths. The flesh melted away beneath the skin, the eyes shriveled and sank, the remaining locks of hair blew away in the wind, and finally the skin itself peeled away.

  The leader stood before them, the tattered remains of his robe fluttering in the wind and sudden silence. He glanced at Gyaidun and Erun, then fixed his gaze on Jalan.

  “I will not bow before you, Vyaidelon,” he said. “Nor your brothers. I will—”

  “Silence!” said a voice. It came from Jalan, but Amira knew it was the being inside him speaking. “Speak no more in this world. Go back to the hell that spawned you.”

  Jalan, Erun, and Gyaidun raised their hands, and each of them was singing, a melodic chant in words Amira had never heard. The winter winds died, a few last snowflakes fell, and far overhead the gray ceiling of cloud split, and through it shone the noonday sun. A thick beam of light, almost like a great ladder joining earth to sky, fell upon the Isle of Witness, bathing everyone in its pure light.

  The leader screamed. Not the cry of a powerful sorcerer or a defeated lord, this was the shriek of a beast in agony. He ran, blinded by his own suffering, but tripped over the rubble that littered the old courtyard around the Witness Tree. He fell only a few paces from Amira. His body twisted and bounced on the rocks like grease dropped on a hot rock. Fists and feet hammered the earth, and with each strike Amira could hear bones snapping.

  Vyaidelon—for that’s who he truly was now; he only wore Jalan’s body—stood over the body and sang. The music was strong, but the melody sounded to Amira more like a dirge or even a sad lullaby than an incantation.

  With a final cry that scraped like sharp nails inside her ears, the thing inside the leader lost its grip. The back arched, the body taking in a long breath, then relaxed. There, basking in the light of a sun that was beginning to fade back behind the clouds, Amira caught a fleeting glimpse of the young man he must once have been. A look of peace settled onto his face.

  And he died.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The Endless Wastes

  They walked many miles after the great battle of Winterkeep, the Vil Adanrath, the exiles, and the war wizard carrying their dead over the snow-covered steppes. Tired as they were, many of them wounded, the Vil Adanrath would not burn their dead so close to Iket Sotha. In killing the Fist of Winter, a great evil had been banished from the world, but many foul things still lurked in the dark places of Winterkeep.

  The survivors and their dead gathered in a valley filled with small trees and scraggly bushes. Those not wounded went far and wide, searching for enough wood to burn so many.

  Far away as they were, Amira could still smell Yal Tengri on the back of the north wind. The scent filled her with mixed emotions. She had seen so much horror and sadness there on the shore of the
Great Ice Sea, but she had also regained her son there—and witnessed what she could only describe as a wonder. A miracle. Whatever beings had worked through Jalan, Gyaidun, and Erun … she was glad she had seen them. She didn’t understand them, but in her heart she knew they were … good. There was no other word for it. In a world filled with so much sadness, so much compromise, corruption, so much light mixing with darkness, she had seen what she could only describe as good incarnate.

  Jalan and Erun both slept beside the fire. Watching them, the knowledge she’d gained in Hro’nyewachu was confirmed. Anyone could have seen the family resemblance. The same high cheekbones, the slight cant to their eyes—both of them even slept with one arm outside the blanket. Separated by generations they certainly were, Erun only half-human, their relation distant at best, but the blood of Arantar ran strong in both of them.

  “Lady,” said a voice behind her, and she turned.

  Lendri and Gyaidun stood there. Mingan the wolf lingered not far away, and Durja perched on his master’s shoulder. Both warriors still bore the wounds of battle—both in the haunted look in their eyes and the many cuts, scrapes, and bruises behind their bandages. Amira had done what she could for them, mixing potions for which she could find ingredients, but she was no cleric, and her knowledge of healing went little beyond dressing battle wounds.

  “What is it?” she asked, keeping her voice low so as not to wake Erun and Jalan.

  “We must prepare the belkagen,” said Lendri. “For the fire. At sunset, the pyres must be lit.”

  “We?” she asked.

  “The duty falls to us.”

  “But … but you’re exiles and I’m an outlander. The Vil Adanrath—”

  “The belkagen died fighting by our side,” said Gyaidun. “The duty falls to us.”

  Amira looked to Lendri. “And your father, he approves of this?”

  “It is our way,” said Lendri. “The omah nin will not help us, but he will not interfere.”

  Amira stood. “Show me what to do.”

  The three of them swaddled the belkagen in the remains of his cloak, wrapped him in one of the spare deerhide blankets, and bound it all with tough leather thongs. When they finished, only the belkagen’s head could be seen. Dried blood and dirt still smeared his face and caked his hair. Amira used a little water and the hem of her cloak to clean it off.

  Amira looked down on the face and laughed sadly. “A ghost of fire.”

  “What?” said Gyaidun.

  “The first time I saw him,” she said, “I was wounded. Half dead, more likely. And delirious. I woke with him bending over me, chanting beside the fire. My first thought was, ‘A ghost of fire.’ Looking at him now, I see no ghost, no fire.”

  Both warriors exchanged a look and scowled, probably thinking it some subtlety of Common that they didn’t understand.

  “Our people believe the body is only a home for our ghost,” said Lendri, “and our word for ‘ghost’ is uskeche.”

  “Uskeche?”

  “It means fire,” said Gyaidun.

  Amira looked down at the belkagen’s face. There was no fire there. Not anymore. Only a vague remembrance of it, like cold ashes.

  “I …” said Amira, and found tears welling in her eyes. “I never thought … it would be him. Going after my son, chasing his captors, I thought I might die. I half-expected you two to get yourselves killed, but I never thought … not him.”

  They stood in silence over the body a moment before Lendri spoke. “I think he did.”

  “What?”

  “I have thought long about this,” said Lendri. “All belkagen are given wisdom in Hro’nyewachu. It is said it is the source of much of their power. But Belkagen Kwarun once told me that his blessing was just as much a curse. ‘The one burden no warrior should ever bear,’ he told me.”

  “What was it?” asked Amira.

  “He never told me, but I think Hro’nyewachu showed him his own death. It is the one thing every warrior risks but the one thing he never knows. But I think the belkagen knew.”

  Gyaidun nodded, his eyes distant and a cold fire burning in them. “Yes,” he said. “On Arzhan Island, when he heard Amira’s tale … she awoke a great fear in him. I think it may have been why he balked at first.” His face clouded, his nostrils flaring, and he looked away. “I shamed him. And myself. I … should have—”

  “No,” said Amira. “No, I think you made him proud. He was afraid, yes. Who wouldn’t be? But you reminded him of courage and woke it in him. I only knew him a short time, but I think he was proud—very proud—of both of you.”

  The Vil Adanrath built dozens of pyres, arranging them in a wide ring on the hilltop. Finding enough wood for so many had been no easy task, but the survivors had roamed many leagues and brought every scrap they could find. When that was not enough, they dug through the snow, cut the grass beneath, and bundled it into tight sheaves. The heavy snowfall—already melting with the return of autumn weather—made everything damp, but the Vil Adanrath had lived in the Wastes for many generations, and building fires in the snowfields was the least of their skills.

  The belkagen’s pyre was the tallest of all, a waist-high bed of grass and sticks that stood in the middle of the great ring of dead Vil Adanrath. The belkagen lay upon it, his staff beside him.

  The sun touched the rim of the world in the west, and a great howling filled the air. The surviving Vil Adanrath, elves and wolves, stood just outside the ring of pyres. Each stood over a fallen comrade, brother, sister, or lover. Some few of the older elves stood over the body of one of their adult children. All stood honor’s distance away from the hrayeket, Lendri and Gyaidun, who stood witness over the belkagen. Amira had chosen to stay with them, as had Jalan and Erun.

  “It is time, Lady Amira,” said Lendri. “The sun sets, and the song of the people will sing their brothers home.”

  Amira raised her staff, the gift of Hro’nyewachu that the belkagen had named Karakhnir, and she spoke the words of power. Fire roared to life beneath the belkagen’s body, flames the same color as the sunset consuming the shell of her friend. She forced herself to watch. The old elf’s hair, the hoary gray mixed with glistening silver, lit at once, curling and blackening in bright, tiny blue flames that produced a thick, black smoke. The skin tightened, shriveled, and blackened. Amira could hear it sizzling. Bile rose in her throat, but she would not let herself look away. The old elf had risked his life for her and died protecting her son. She would not look away from his death. The flames quickened and soon she could see no more than a dark form amid the flames.

  Lendri half-spoke and half-chanted a long string of words in his own tongue. When he was finished, Gyaidun translated for Amira and Jalan.

  Flames of this world, bear our brother’s flame to our ancestors.

  Kwarun burned bright. His exile is ended, his rest assured.

  The five of them stood in silence, watching the smoke in flames, then Lendri spoke again. “Lady, someone must take fire to the omah nin, that the other pyres might be lit.”

  “Me?” said Amira.

  “Gyaidun and I, we are hrayeket. We cannot.”

  Amira tore her eyes away from the fire and looked to the omah nin, standing several dozen paces away over the body of his younger brother. Leren stood beside him.

  “After all you did,” said Amira, “risking your lives. Still he stands behind his honor”—she made no attempt to keep the bile from the last word—“rather than beside his firstborn.”

  “Your ways are not our ways, Lady.”

  “Indeed,” said Amira. “Let the omah nin get his own damned fire.”

  Lendri scowled. Amira looked to Gyaidun and caught the flicker of a smile before the sternness returned to his face.

  “Lady,” said Lendri. “That is … most discourteous.”

  “My ways are not his ways.”

  “Lady—”

  “I will take it.”

  Everyone turned to look at who had spoken. Erun. He still b
ore the scars of his … ordeal. Amira felt stupid calling such torture an “ordeal.” Monstrous, she had named it to Gyaidun. Blasphemous. Even those words seemed to fall short. Yet already the young man showed signs of recovery. Whatever being had come to him—no, Amira corrected herself—through him, much of that strength remained. Yes, his cheeks were still sunken like a corpse—far beyond the natural thinness he’d inherited from his mother’s people—his bones showed under his skin, and much of his color had not yet returned, but there was a light in his eyes. Not burning, precisely. But smoldering. A glow of promise, perhaps, like the bright sky before sunrise. Looking at him now, standing next to his father, Amira thought it would be a wonder indeed to see what would happen when the sun fully rose in him.

  Erun stepped forward and pulled one of the larger sheaves out from the bottom of the pyre. Half of it was already well ablaze. He stood, his back straight, and looked to his father. “My grandfather will take fire from me,” he said, and Amira heard a deeper meaning in his words.

  She watched him walk away, strength and confidence in his gait, and in that moment an image struck Amira—Arantar, wise and powerful, walking the steppes. She turned to Gyaidun and saw a dark look on his face.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “What is what?”

  “You look as if you just saw your own death.”

  Gyaidun looked her in the eye. “No. It …”

  “What?”

  He returned his gaze to his son, walking without fear to the omah nin. “Things happen quicker than I thought they would.”

  “Things?”

  It hit Amira then that in the past day—the joy at being reunited with Jalan, the grief at finding the belkagen, funeral preparations, not to mention being tired beyond all rational thought—she had forgotten to ask Gyaidun exactly how he had turned up on the shore of the Great Ice Sea knowing what had to be done. Standing over the pyre of her friend, she remembered Gyaidun’s argument with the belkagen, asking why he could not seek Hro’nyewachu if she knew something about Erun.