SanyareThe Winter Warrior

by Megan Haskell

  Silas frowned. “Unfortunately, no. The lost souls escaped through a gap in the system. They have no thread for the Moirai to weave, and because we only track souls, and not bodies, we don’t know which forms they stole. In a dual-soul situation, the original soul might change course or darken, but we still won’t see the attached lost soul. Depending on the race of the body, it could be centuries before we notice anything wrong.”

  This didn’t make any sense. “But can’t you capture the dual-souled at the death of the original?”

  “Perhaps, but at what cost? Waiting that long will ensure insanity. Wouldn’t it be better to find the lost and exorcise it as soon as possible, to save the good? Not to mention minimize the collateral damage?”

  Judith couldn’t argue with his logic. Saving one made the final death of the other somehow more bearable.

  “So what would you have me do?” she asked.

  “Find Apprentice Sanyare. She and her mentor are the only ones who can untangle a dual-souled without sacrificing the original occupant. They are the last of their kind with both soulspeech and soultouch. You can send the wicked to their final death once it’s cut loose from the mortal coil, but we must save as many innocents as we can.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  RIE JUMPED INTO the room beneath the goat shelter. Without thinking, she tried to stand up to her full height and slammed her head against one of the cross-beams supporting the floor above. Right. Barbegazi were little.

  Daenor landed silently next to her and the trapdoor closed with a soft click.

  “Don’t hit your head,” she warned in a near-silent whisper. But Daenor was so tall he couldn’t even straighten his legs all the way. He quirked a single eyebrow at her.

  Rie rubbed her head with a shrug and a grimace.

  A soft swish of hay being drawn over their hiding place, then footsteps and the bang of a wooden shutter, and their hideout was secure. The shutter continued to bang repeatedly against the back of the building. A few goats meandered across the trapdoor, making the wood shake, but their bleats covered the sound of the creaking hinge.

  With the fire sidhe magic in his blood, Daenor lit a fire in the palm of his hand using a bit of straw for fuel. “I’d pick some of this up for later, if I were you,” he whispered. “Light and easy to carry, it’ll burn too fast for major damage, but it’s good for small things.”

  Rie nodded, only half-paying attention. Her eyes were drawn to the shadows around the room. One of these corners held the tunnel. She stuffed a few handfuls of the straw in an interior pocket while Daenor paced toward the edge.

  “Where’s this tunnel?” he asked, searching the walls, but there was no sign of anything.

  “Here.” Rie pushed back a several bales of fresh grass to reveal a three-foot-round, rough-dug tunnel in the lower wall of the room.

  “You must be joking. Even the barbegazi would have a hard time crawling out of this.”

  Guessing that the barbegazi were about four feet tall on average, Rie couldn’t disagree.

  Niinka poked her head out of Rie’s hood, eyeing the hole in the ground. “We’re not going in there.”

  “What do you mean? For you it’s no problem. In fact, I should send you to scout the way.”

  “Pixies are creatures of the air, not the earth. Dark underground tunnels are not part of our repertoire.”

  “Toughen up.” Gikl pulled himself out of Daenor’s hood to stand on the dark elf’s shoulder, hands on his hips as he scrutinized the tunnel entrance. The tiny warrior still wore a needle-sword at his waist. Daenor had started to teach him basic swordsmanship, as if a pixie had any hope of winning in any kind of sword fight with anyone but his own kind, and no other pixie that Rie knew of carried a sword. “I’ll scout ahead, see where this leads.”

  “Thank you Gikl. The rest of you should probably fly as well. I don’t think the crawl will be comfortable.” Daenor crouched next to the hole and gently pushed his hood back. Possn scurried out, close behind Gikl.

  Niinka and Hiinto were slower to agree.

  “There’s no other option,” Rie whispered, eyeing the trapdoor above them. The guard would arrive any moment, and though the probability of him shifting the goats around and moving dirty hay to find the trapdoor was slim, it was still a possibility. “You have to go through the tunnel to get out of the city or you risk us all being discovered and imprisoned.”

  “We’re too fast for that.” Niinka’s lip pushed out in a stubborn pout.

  “Please, Niinka. Before it’s too late.”

  “Fine,” she grumbled, even as she tied up the wing covers on her coat. “But if we get lost and die in here, I’m haunting you forever.”

  With all four pixies inside, Rie waved Daenor in next.

  “Your vision is better in the dark, so you should lead. I’ll find a way to hide the tunnel behind us,” she said by way of explanation. Daenor had been raised in the Shadow Realm, a land with at most six hours of daylight. He couldn’t see in pitch black, but even a little bit of light would be enough for him to make out the contours of the space around him. Rie could only stay close and follow by touch and sound.

  Daenor frowned but didn’t argue further. He slid headfirst into the tunnel, using his elbows and knees to army crawl through the dirt. He still held a hay-fueled flame in the palm of his hand, lighting his way as he went. As soon as his feet disappeared, Rie crawled in after, pausing for a moment to consider how to cover their tracks. Hunching over into as tight a ball as her body would go, she angled her butt into the hole and pulled the bales close behind her.

  A heavy footstep thumped on the floor above. Rie froze, her gaze drawn upward.

  “Where are they?” a man demanded.

  “G-gone,” the girl replied.

  Quickly, but silently, Rie finished arranging the grass in front of the hole, trying to make it appear haphazard and untouched. She held her breath.

  Rie’s vision had shown the girl pointing out the window to the banging shutter. If this future held true, the guard was alone and would choose to believe the girl, climbing out the window to follow. But he could still change his mind and search the hut.

  The shelter filled with goats, Rie reminded herself.

  Regardless, Rie contorted her body around until she could crawl after Daenor.

  Time passed slowly in the dark of the tunnel. Every so often, Daenor would light a bit of his straw and send it shooting down the tunnel. All it ever revealed was a seemingly endless straight tunnel lined with hard dirt and cut rocks.

  Rie wiggled and wriggled and squirmed her way through the tunnel, her nose just inches from Daenor’s boots. She panted, her breath blowing steam into the frozen air of the passage. The walls felt like they were closing in on her. Dirt crumbled and fell on her head and into her eyes. Her cloak weighed her down and dragged behind her, catching on every rough surface—which basically meant every inch of tunnel—but the space was too cold to take it off.

  “I need to take a break for a moment,” Rie finally admitted. She didn’t know how long they’d been crawling through the darkness, but it felt like it had been miles.

  She lay down, resting her cheek on crossed arms. Daenor stopped squirming ahead of her.

  “I wish I could turn around,” he said.

  A buzzing announced the return of one of the pixies.

  “The end is only another hundred lengths,” Gikl chimed. At least, Rie thought it was Gikl. She couldn’t actually see anything. “The others have gathered around the exit. They’re waiting for you.”

  A hundred lengths might as well be a thousand, but they had to move. There was no other choice but to go forward.

  Daenor started crawling once more, his legs churning his body forward.

  Rie took a little longer to get started. “Okay,” Rie finally said after another few breaths. “I can do this.” Of course she could. This cold dark oppressive tunnel wouldn’t get the best of her.

  Elbow. Knee. Elbow. Knee. One in front of the
other.

  The scent of fresh air motivated the last few feet until her head emerged through the snow.

  “She lives!” Felman grinned.

  Daenor and Garamaen helped pull her the rest of the way out of the tunnel, and the two younger barbegazi pushed a stone slab over the top to hide the space. Then, with a wave of their hands and a rumble of sound, the surrounding snow drifts jiggled and shifted to move snow over the stone, hiding the tunnel from view. No one would even know people had been here.

  “That’s handy,” Rie murmured. Then she saw Daenor and burst out laughing. The dark elf was smeared with dirt, his leathers and animal hide coat caked in grime. The normally spiky white-blond hair was plastered down to his head with dirt and muck. A few pieces of hay stuck out in odd places.

  “Laugh it up. You’re just as bad.”

  Rie glanced down at herself, grimacing at the damage. “Well, at least we match.”

  Between being nibbled on by a goat and dragged through the dirt, her cloak had seen better days. She hoped Plink would be able to repair it. But as she continued to brush it off, the dirt seemed to fall away. While it had lost some of its luster and still carried a few smears of dirt, the fabric had held up surprisingly well to the abuse.

  The amlug hide leathers, on the other hand, would take some serious work to get clean.

  Garamaen helped brush the bigger clods off Rie’s shoulders, while the barbegazi worked on Daenor.

  “We’re just lucky that tunnel exists at all.”

  “And you’d better not reveal it to anyone,” Felman said. “That tunnel represents the emergency evacuation of all barbegazi in the city, if the frost sidhe ever turn on us, or the city gets overrun. No one else is supposed to know about it.”

  “We’re honored that you gave us access. We would certainly have been caught otherwise. And we swear to keep the secret,” Rie assured.

  “The city’s going to be on alert now,” Garamaen added. “You’d better get back before you’re questioned.”

  “Agreed.” Felman pulled on his long white beard. “Now, you’re going to need these.”

  The son and grandson held out six oval hoops wrapped with a cross-stitching of leather.

  “They’re old, but in good repair. They’ll get you up the mountain.”

  Garamaen dipped his head, accepting two of the contraptions. Rie and Daenor each took a pair as well.

  “Just one more thing,” Felman said after the gifts were handed out. “If you find Fenrir, this time kill him.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  WIND AND SNOW whipped at Rie’s face, stinging the skin of her cheeks despite the deep fox fur of her hood. The trek to the barbegazi mountaintop village would take five hours on a clear day. Today was not that day.

  The pixies had taken refuge deep within their hosts’ hoods. For Rie, that meant she had Niinka and Hiinto fighting behind her neck.

  “Stop kicking me,” Niinka complained. Something small and sharp thudded into the base of Rie’s skull. Probably an elbow or knee.

  “I’m trying, but your wings are in the way,” Hiinto replied. His wings fluttered, getting tangled in Rie’s hair.

  That was the last straw. “If you two don’t settle down, you’re going to have to travel on the outside of my hood. Trust me, you’ll enjoy the trip a whole lot less out here.”

  “How are we supposed to get comfortable in such tight quarters,” Niinka asked. “Plink really should have made this hood much bigger.”

  “Don’t blame this on Plink.”

  “Are we there yet?” Hiinto asked. Clawed fingers pricked the skin beneath Rie’s ear as Hiinto pulled himself forward to look out the front.

  “No,” Rie snapped. “We’re not there yet.”

  Daenor turned to look over his shoulder, an amused question in his gaze, which was the only bit of his face she could see.

  Rie shook her head and rolled her eyes. Or tried. The muscles of her face were stiff and slow, her cheeks frozen and nose completely numb.

  When they’d started up the road to Bjergtopp, Rie had thought the storm was bad, but it was only getting started. The higher they progressed, the worse it got. Now the sun had begun its descent, and temperatures were descending right along with it. If they didn’t reach the village soon, Rie wasn’t sure they’d make it at all.

  Rie stared at Garamaen’s back. He led the way, the only one who knew the path they traveled. But his back was hunched against the wind, his arms crossed tight against his chest as the broad snowshoes trudged in slow steps up the hill. She hoped the weather was the only thing weighing him down. She’d seen the guilt in his eyes when he talked of Fenrir. And they couldn’t See the outcome of this venture. Was he making the right decisions? Was she?

  She turned her eyes back to the ground, putting one foot in front of the other as she waded through the snow drifts, the snowshoes helping just enough to keep her from getting stuck.

  Garamaen had demonstrated the proper foot placement and walking technique for the contraptions, but Rie continued to struggle. She was spending more time fighting with the shoes than walking up the mountain, and yet if she took them off she would sink waist deep in the snow. She gritted her teeth, determined not to fall behind.

  Daenor and Garamaen’s unmoving feet came into Rie’s narrow view. She looked up. They’d paused on the crest of a small rise in the terrain.

  “How much farther?” Rie asked, sucking in great lungfuls of air. She gazed out on the serene yet empty terrain. A few scraggly stands of trees managed to survive at this high altitude, but the rest of the scenery was limited to ice and snow and rocky cliffs in the distance, barely visible through the falling snow.

  “Those cliffs are our destination,” Garamaen pointed toward a wall of dark rock beneath a heavy lip of snow. “But we won’t make it before nightfall.”

  “It can’t be more than another mile,” Daenor argued.

  “Night comes fast in the mountains,” Garamaen replied. “And distances are deceiving.”

  “Well, let’s push on. We can always light our way.” Daenor opened his palm to reveal a small flame, then clenched his fist to extinguish it.

  Garamaen shook his head. “Too risky. We could still die of the cold. Better to find shelter nearby and conserve our energy.”

  “Shelter?” Rie gazed out over the near barren landscape. “What shelter?”

  She’d never been much of an outdoors person, her travels always taking her to cities or at least inhabited locations with buildings to sleep in. Was it even possible to sleep outside in negative temperatures without freezing to death?

  “We have about a bell until full dark. We’ll build it over there, below that rise.”

  “Build it?” Rie’s eyes widened.

  Garamaen didn’t answer, and instead began trudging over to the indicated hill. The rise turned out to be a rocky outcropping covered in snow, a few areas swept clean by the wind.

  “Perfect,” Garamaen said, hands on hips as he examined the site. “We’ll build a fire there, a few feet off the rock wall, and the shelter will go here.” He indicated a spot downhill from the boulders, where snow had gathered in a high mound. “We’ll take turns digging to avoid overheating.”

  He strode down the mountain to his chosen shelter site. After a few heartbeats consideration, he nodded his head. “Yep, this will do fine. Rie, you need the practice, so you can get the fire started while Daenor and I start digging.”

  Rie looked around the slope. With the exception of the few handfuls of straw in her pockets, she didn’t have any fuel for the fire. There were no trees nearby, no dry deadfall to collect.

  Seeing her consternation, Garamaen huffed a laugh. “Those twigs lead to bushes under the snow,” he said, pointing out the obtrusions poking up out of the white. “The base layer is at least five feet thick here.”

  Rie grimaced, but commenced digging for the wood using hands and knives. Luckily, the snow was fairly dry and light, and it didn’t take long to chop away enough
branches for a small fire. The activity quickly warmed her up, letting her pull the hood back.

  “Hey!” Niinka complained.

  Rie had forgotten for a moment that the pixies were wrapped up inside. They’d been still and quiet for far longer than usual. In fact, now that she thought about it, she was surprised they’d managed not to fight for more than a quarter bell.

  “We’re sleeping here.”

  “Well, I’m trying to get a fire started so we don’t all die of hypothermia overnight. Care to help?”

  “Us?” Hiinto asked, incredulous. “What are we supposed to do? We can’t even fly in this cold.”

  Rie frowned, but chose to ignore the pixies, rather than engage. It was easier to do the work herself, anyway. She started the fire with a touch, pushing the flames into a merry dance that quickly warmed her hands and drew the pixies out of her hair.

  “Mmm, what is that?” Niinka asked, crouching on Rie’s shoulder. “Do you see it, Hiinto?”

  “What?”

  “The white furry creature hiding in the rock over there.”

  “It looks delicious. Do you think we can catch it?” Hiinto clacked his teeth together.

  “Worth an attempt.”

  The carnivorous pixies hitched up the wing protectors on their cloaks and buzzed their wings experimentally. Of course, now that they had something interesting to do, they were happy to try their wings in the cold. A fraction of a heartbeat later they were gone, disappearing into the rock outcropping to hunt whatever critters they could find.

  The pixies would have the advantage on speed and ferocity, Rie was sure, but the prey had the home advantage. That being said, Rie hoped the pixies would be successful in their hunt. They were always in a better mood when well fed.

  Brushing off her gloved hands and tucking them back into the fur lining of her cloak, Rie made her way back over to the men who were now panting and out of breath. Daenor had removed his coat and thick leather tunic, and Garamaen was down to a single long-sleeved t-shirt.

  They’d built a mound of snow on the hillside and were alternating digging their way inside.