Ashes of a Black Frost

by Chris Evans

  “Diplomacy is not the victory of negotiation, but the failure of war,” it muttered to itself. Shards of the life it once lived cascaded through its mind. It saw great halls lit with a thousand candle chandeliers, the light refracting off minutely faceted crystal goblets so thin they sang with just the exhalation of breath. It recalled a map skillfully made by jewelers using the finest gems and metals. It reached out a hand, grasping at something that wasn’t there.

  The hand closed in a tight fist and it dug deep into the agony and found white, piercing pain and clung to it while the rest of its mind spiraled faster and faster into madness.

  I am free! The shackles that had bound it were broken. With that knowledge its anger grew, coalescing into something clear and simple that it could grasp. The Shadow Monarch betrayed me! The elf witch struck a deal with the oath-bound soldier of the Iron Elves. But the creature had sacrificed much to be Her Emissary, not that human. It was . . . unfair.

  The creature felt a new emotion take hold, one more powerful than its rage or its suffering—revenge. “Talk loudly so that your opponent doesn’t hear the assassin creeping up from behind,” it said, seeing waiters in crisp white jackets moving silently behind a line of high-back chairs. A single flash of a knife and a guest’s soup would grow cold. It laughed, hoping it would soon settle the score with the soldier that had usurped it. Rakkes howled as it laughed and the creature became aware of the growing pack of rakkes surrounding it as it moved across the sand. Hundreds now followed it. The simple beasts looked to it for guidance. More and more rakkes joined as they moved in a northerly direction.

  “Diplomacy buys time until the army is in place,” it said, looking around at the ancient creatures brought back to life in order to wreak havoc.

  The creature smiled, revealing a row of black teeth hoary with frost. The rakkes had picked up a scent and were hunting.

  This was an army. Nothing as skilled or precise as the soldiers it had once directed through its efforts at the negotiating table, but these things knew how to kill, and the time for diplomacy was over.

  Distant memories of diplomatic missions broke through the whirling chaos of its mind. Armies were often used as leverage, forcing the enemy to concede without blood ever being spilled. It was a quaint notion, and one the creature no longer understood. Its only reason for living, in fact the only thing keeping it alive, was the need to wreak terrible vengeance on those that had wronged it.

  The pack picked up its pace and began growling in low, guttural tones to each other. Prey had been spotted. The creature pushed itself forward until it took its rightful position at the head of the pack, its pace unnaturally quick as it scurried across the frozen desert. Its eyes, now frozen orbs of black ice, pivoted within its head with a grating noise of granite on glass. Pain flared in its skull as pure light, and it stumbled before regaining its footing. Forcing its head up, it peered into the darkness. Three hundred yards away a group of three wagons pulled by teams of camels rolled slowly along a caravan path. The creature waited, hoping. A moment later, a column of marching soldiers appeared out of the swirling gloom following the wagons.

  The Iron Elves! It had found them. Saliva trickled down what was left of its face as icicle fangs framed its mouth. There would be no ceremony, no elaborate signing of documents, no fake smiles and exaggerated handshakes. This would be a massacre.

  It would have its revenge, and the rakkes would feed.

  Finding control in its pain, the creature wrapped itself tight around its desire to kill. Rakkes slunk away from it as it began to hum with an eerie vibration.

  The creature considered ordering the rakkes to spare its usurper, but there would be no need. Its power was great, too strong for any rakkes to defeat. That task would fall to the former Emissary, and it welcomed it.

  “I have brought you food.”

  The rakkes gave full throat to their howls. They stomped the ground and beat their chests. Hackles rose and eyes slitted as their world squeezed down into a single red-hazed need.

  “Tear them apart!”

  The rakkes raced across the snow-covered sand. All along the column shouts and cries rang out. Camels started and tried to flee as their drivers vainly attempted to keep them under control. The soldiers stopped where they were and began to frantically ram charges into their muskets as the rakkes closed to within two hundred yards. The first shots split the night in a ragged, undisciplined burst. Hot yellow tongues of flames illuminated the hasty line of defense as the column made its stand. Here and there a rakke tumbled and fell, a head shattered, a heart holed, but for every rakke brought down dozens more came after it.

  A more controlled volley slashed through the forward ranks of the rakkes at a hundred yards, scything down over a dozen. The surviving rakkes only howled louder and leaped over their dead. Fresher meat was only a short distance away.

  The creature looked everywhere for the oath-bound soldier that had stolen its place. It tried to marshal its senses enough to search for it, but the smell of blood was in the air and the rising crescendo of the rakke pack overpowered everything until it, too, was consumed with the need to rend flesh.

  Cries and shouts rose above the charging rakkes as the men of the column saw their fate moments away. In a feat of arms made possible by sheer desperation they managed one more volley as the rakkes crossed the last ten yards. Rakkes tumbled at their feet in a spray of blood and flesh and bone fragments, their fur smoldering from the burning gunpowder.

  And then the rakkes were upon them.

  Screams rose and then cut off abruptly as claw and fang made short work of the flesh before them. A few soldiers used their muskets as clubs in one last attempt to cling to life, but their effort only added seconds. Any man who turned and ran was borne down by claws in his back and felt the hot, fetid breath of a rakke in its ear as the beast’s fangs bit down on its neck.

  “Where are you?” the creature shouted, wading through the carnage as the rakkes swarmed over the wagons like scavenger beetles stripping the flesh from the carcass of a dead animal. Camels went down under the weight of several rakkes with a last, defiant braying. Drivers were pulled from their benches and torn into bite-sized pieces.

  “. . . mercy . . .”

  The creature turned, searching for the source of the plea. It spotted a bloody figure a few feet away half buried under the carnage. Part of a gnawed rib cage obscured its view. It strode over and blasted the carrion to pieces. It looked down. The dead were a mix of elves and men. It began lifting and tossing the bodies aside as if they were no more than pieces of wet, dripping cloth. In its haste to get to the survivor it tore arms from sockets and spilled innards in sickening heaps until finally it found a dwarf. It reached down and grabbed the dwarf by its beard and pulled it from the pile.

  “Where is he?”

  Frost began to sparkle along the dwarf’s beard as it struggled to breathe. One eye was closed, and it was missing an arm. The wet socket where its shoulder used to be froze over in a black, crackling mess and the dwarf cried out in pain. The creature looked past it to one of the overturned wagons. Artifacts lay spilled in the snow, the gold and gems going unnoticed by the rampaging rakkes. Something about this triggered a memory in it. Library. Kaman Rhal.

  “Who are you?”

  The dwarf motioned with its one good arm toward its throat and the creature released its grasp, letting it fall to the desert floor. Rakkes moved in to finish it off, but the creature hissed and kept them at bay.

  “My . . . my name is Griz Jahrfel, I am a merchant . . .”

  The creature searched what little memory remained and realized its mistake. “You aren’t the Iron Elves!”

  The dwarf shook his head. “No. Some of the elves used to be, but not anymore. They work . . . they work for me now,” he said, his voice breaking into sobs.

  The creature conjured a spear of black ice and stabbed it into the fleshy thigh of the dwarf, who began screaming.

  “Where are they? Where?”
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  “I don’t know! If they left the valley they probably headed west along the main caravan route. Stop, please!”

  The creature remembered the jeweled map. It had been a thing of much beauty. Precious metals and sparkling gems gleamed before its eyes, tracing borders and marking the limits of the empire it had once helped expand. That the map was worth a fortune meant nothing to it now, but the location of the caravan route did. It saw it clearly and understood. It vanished the spear and walked away.

  “Wait! Kill me, please kill me! Don’t let them—” the dwarf’s words turned into screams as the rakkes moved in.

  With blood dripping from their fur and chunks of flesh still hanging from their mouths the pack moved off with the creature urging them on, a strange phrase stuck like a metal pick in what was left of its mind.

  Suhundam’s Hill.

  Konowa opened his eyes and scanned what little he could see of the desert around them. The acorn against his chest thrummed with a cool intensity. It wasn’t a warning as much as an acknowledgment of power somewhere out there in the dark. He wondered briefly if it could be Visyna, but suspected it was something he’d just as soon never meet.

  The wagon continued its rocking motion as Rallie steered the camels, and Konowa let his eyes close again, telling himself he’d rest them for just a few minutes.

  “Double bloody hell!”

  He was standing among the Wolf Oaks of his homeland.

  I’m dreaming. Again.

  He fought the urge to shout or kick or even try to rouse himself from sleep. Based on his previous visits with the Shadow Monarch there didn’t seem much chance that he was going to enjoy this, but perhaps he could learn something useful.

  All right then, he said to himself, let’s have a look around.

  The forest blurred and suddenly the birthing meadow spread out before him. The sun sat low in the sky casting long shadows from the towering Wolf Oaks surrounding the meadow. Saplings rose arrow straight above the dark, green grass, their leaves unfurling before his eyes as they oriented themselves toward the sunlight. He took a deep breath and was surprised when he didn’t feel the crisp cold of a late frost. He took a couple of steps then stopped and looked down. His boots glistened with dew. There was no frost anywhere.

  This didn’t make sense. The Shadow Monarch bonded with Her Silver Wolf Oak during a late frost. He glanced around the meadow trying to find Her.

  A figure sat huddled by a sapling near the edge of the meadow on the far side.

  Konowa shrugged and started forward again. He went to shift his musket to his shoulder but his hands were empty. It was just a dream, but all the same, he wanted a weapon in his hands. He reached for his saber, but his scabbard was empty. He stopped and looked down. A twin-headed dwarf battle-ax lay in the grass at his feet.

  “Well that’s odd,” he said, shaking his head as soon as the words came out of his mouth. This was a dream. Odd was merely the starting point.

  He reached down and picked the ax up, grunting at the weight. It felt good to hold it, but a guilty feeling kept him from enjoying himself. Axes were viewed as evil incarnate by the elves of the Long Watch. Anything that harmed trees was seen that way. The elves of the Long Watch weren’t known for their sense of humor. Konowa knew his father’s choice to transform into a squirrel was partly due to the old elf’s desire to tweak their noses and partly because his mother would have disowned him or worse if he’d chosen the form of a beaver instead.

  “What are you planning to do with that?”

  Konowa turned. Regimental Sergeant Major Yimt Arkhorn stood among the saplings a few feet away. Unlike Konowa he was fully armed with his shatterbow cradled in his hands and the wicked-looking drukar knife hanging from his belt.

  “You’re dead,” Konowa said.

  “And a good morning to you, too,” Yimt replied. He didn’t smile, but looked around the meadow. If he noticed the figure in the distance he paid it no attention.

  Konowa gathered his wits. “What happened to you?”

  “Think, Major, think. How would I know that? I’m not really me, I’m you, or rather the part of you remembering me. All I know is what you know . . . more or less.”

  Riddles, lovely. The conversation looked dangerously similar to ones he had with his father, at least until the old elf turned into a squirrel. Konowa decided to try a different approach.

  “Any idea why a dwarf ax would be lying around here?”

  Yimt shrugged. “Got all my weapons here. Guess that’s for you.”

  Konowa rested the end of the ax handle on the ground and tilted the weapon away from his body to get a better look at the twin half-moon-shaped blades. “So why do dwarves use axes? I never understood that. You’re born miners for the most part. Wouldn’t shovels make more sense?”

  “Ever try to bash a man’s head in with a shovel? It can be done, but it ain’t pretty, and it usually takes more than one swing. But that’s not why. It’s like you said, we’re miners.”

  Konowa waited for an explanation, but none was forthcoming. Apparently, Yimt thought it was obvious. Konowa didn’t.

  “That doesn’t make sense. There’s no way you swing these things down in a mine shaft,” Konowa said, flicking a finger against one of the blades. A sharp ting rang out that echoed far longer than it should have.

  Yimt nodded. “True enough. But mines need shoring up, and that’s done with big, thick timbers, and that means dwarves spend a lot of time chopping down trees to use in their mines.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Konowa said, but now that he thought about it, it made sense. “Is that why elves and dwarves don’t get along?”

  Yimt lifted up the brim of his shako to get a better look at Konowa. “What, you mean any better than elves and humans, or humans and other humans, or perhaps you mean you and just about everyone else?”

  “Point taken, point taken.” This wasn’t quite the jovial dwarf that Konowa remembered. Or maybe it was the best he could remember. Dreams were tricky. He knew he’d missed something, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  Yimt tugged on his beard and looked around. “Look, we’re being watched, so I have to make this fast.”

  Konowa looked around the meadow. Dusk had fallen, though he could have sworn it had been early morning only a minute ago. The figure still sat at the far side of the meadow. Something about it looked naggingly familiar to Konowa.

  “What?” Konowa asked.

  Yimt motioned with his shatterbow toward the distant figure. “Use the ax.”

  Konowa looked down at the ax, then back up. “That won’t solve anything. This is a dream. I know it’s a dream. Nothing I do here is going to matter when I wake up.”

  “Then the sooner you get on with it, the sooner you can wake up,” Yimt said. “Use the ax.”

  Mist started pouring between the trees, blanketing the meadow in a white down. A pain began to grow in Konowa’s chest. He tried shrugging his shoulders and taking a deep breath, but it didn’t help.

  Konowa looked at the ax again, then out toward the figure still sitting by the sapling. “Look, I hoped I’d figure something out by this—” He stopped talking. He stood alone, and night had fallen. Konowa gripped the ax in both hands and started walking. The mist swirled around his knees. The pain in his chest wouldn’t go away. He rolled his shoulders and got a better grip on the ax. Yimt is right and Rallie is wrong, he thought, there is no other choice. She has to die.

  He reached the Shadow Monarch long before he was ready. Though She was still shrouded in mist he could see Her clear enough that he wouldn’t miss.

  He raised the ax, ready to swing.

  She turned to look up at him. Konowa was now looking at himself.

  The ax hung still in the air as he stared at his double. He knew this was a dream, and that it had to mean something else, but what?

  “Do it,” the Konowa by the tree said. “Swing the ax.”

  Konowa shook his head. “You aren’t real. I know that. So
what the hell does this mean?”

  His double was gone, and now Kritton sat by the tree. Konowa’s hands gripped the ax harder.

  “You won’t have the guts when the time comes, I know it. You know it,” Kritton sneered. “All of this, everything you’ve been through, and you can’t finish things, even when it’s just a dream.” Kritton started to laugh, his mouth growing large and filling with sharp, black teeth covered in frost.

  Konowa swung the blade.

  Konowa leaned forward, opening his eyes and ready to strike. “Hell and a handbasket,” he said, trying to shake the sleep from his head. His dreams just kept getting weirder. He looked down and saw his hands gripped tightly around his musket. He pried them loose and flexed his fingers.

  “You wouldn’t believe the dream I just had . . .” he said, then trailed off, realizing the wagon wasn’t moving. He blinked and sat up straighter and looked over at Rallie. She was looking straight up. The acorn pressed against his chest was ice cold and he understood what the pain in the dream had been. He looked up as well.

  “What—” was all he managed to say before Rallie turned and shoved him hard. Konowa reached out to Rallie to steady himself and managed to grab a scroll of paper from her robe before he was falling off the wagon, face-first into the snow. The shock of the snow against his flesh brought him fully awake. He scrambled to his feet cursing, only to be knocked flat again when Rallie landed on top of him. Before he could try to get up, an ear-splitting noise of rending, splintering wood shattered the night followed by the rush of wind and screams. He drove himself up using his elbows and flopped over onto his back. The backboard of the bench on Rallie’s wagon was in pieces. Two seconds later and that would have been him.

  Soldiers ran and stumbled to get away from it. Two of the camels had broken free from their harness and were galloping off into the night. The other two were little more than bloody heaps on the road, staining the snow a bright red. A single wheel from Rallie’s wagon broke loose and rolled down the road like a drunken sailor.

  The acorn flared a biting cold, and he heard the thrum of air on wings accompanied by the creaking of wood he’d only ever associated with a ship’s masts. He followed the sound and his legs began to tremble of their own accord at what he saw.