Ashes of a Black Frost

by Chris Evans

  Chayii’s eyebrows went up and Visyna tilted her head. “Well, faith that he doesn’t want to get left out here all alone.”

  The elf smiled. “In that case, my faith in him equals yours.”

  Visyna paused, listening to more musket fire. Before she could stop herself she blurted out the question she knew she had to ask. “Do you want me to save them? The elves?”

  Chayii stood up straighter. Her eyes peered deep into Visyna’s and for several seconds she said nothing.

  “No,” Chayii said. Her voice was free of any emotion. “They are beyond our help.”

  “But Konowa . . .” Visyna started to say, then paused. She wanted to say that Konowa’s whole life had been about finding his elves. And now that they were so close, they were about to slip away.

  Chayii smiled at her. “I think you already know the answer. These are not Konowa’s elves. They were once, but not anymore. If by some miracle they were to survive, Konowa would have no choice but to court-martial every one of them. You know what the penalty for their crimes is? He would have to sign their death warrants.”

  Visyna knew it was true. “Is there nothing else we can do?”

  “We can save ourselves, my child,” Chayii said. “That will be difficult enough.”

  There was a cold logic to what Chayii said that Visyna couldn’t dispute. Hrem strode up to them with the other three soldiers close behind. The musket fire began to pick up in intensity again, and this time it didn’t slacken off. Rakkes roared and called to each other all around them.

  “We really need to go,” he said.

  Visyna looked one last time at Chayii, who turned away to face the fort. It loomed before them like a dark block. It seemed impossibly far away. She knew she was cold, tired, hungry, and scared and did her best to ignore it. The snow swirled around in patches, providing sporadic views of the desert. She caught glimpse of packs of rakkes and bodies sprawled in the snow.

  “Stay close.” She began to weave the air, pulling at the threads around her. Musket fire crackled all around her, making it difficult to concentrate. The responding screams and roars from the rakkes only made it worse. She shook her fingers and rolled her head from side to side. She went deeper into herself, ignoring the chaos and searching for something solid to hold on to.

  Konowa. She smiled and growled at the same time. He was less base and more a potent element in an alchemist’s cauldron, but he was energy and life. The key, and one she wasn’t sure she’d ever fully comprehend, was to get the mixture of who he was just right. She had no illusions that she could ever change him . . . at least not completely, but however far he’d drifted from his origins he remained a creature of the natural order. That was enough.

  Visyna pictured him in her mind, seeing the elf that he was. She accepted the darkness and the violence that was in him, knowing the choices he’d made had been as difficult as they had been necessary. It didn’t mean she agreed, and it certainly didn’t mean she wasn’t going to help him become a better elf, but for now she found it in herself to accept him the way he was. She’d killed an elf this night because he couldn’t change. The regret weighed heavy on her heart. She would move heaven and earth to help the elf she loved find the strength that Kritton could not.

  The ground around her erupted in a geyser of snow and sand. A single column of tightly swirling snow a foot thick climbed twenty feet into the sky. She gasped and slowed down her weaving, allowing the column to settle at a height of six feet.

  “The Creator be praised,” Inkermon said, wonder and fear evident in his voice.

  Visyna wanted to say his so-called creator had nothing to do with it, but that wasn’t helpful.

  “Could you ask him for a little help?” Visyna said, turning her concentration back to the column of snow.

  “What, pray to him? Now?” Inkermon asked.

  “I could use it. We all could.” She risked a quick look over her shoulder. The soldier appeared stunned.

  “No one’s ever asked before,” Inkermon said. He stood up. His knees wobbled, but he stayed upright. “I’m always ridiculed. I have only ever tried to spread the word and offer them a path to redemption.”

  “Mercy, Inkermon, don’t get all weepy on us,” Hrem said. “I can’t speak for the rest of them, but I admire a man with firm convictions. Just maybe keep in mind other men might have different ones.”

  “There is only one true . . .” Inkermon started to say, then let the rest of his words get taken by the wind. “A prayer right now would be appropriate. Yes, I will call on his aid that we may yet live to do his bidding.”

  Visyna smiled. She had no idea who or what might exist beyond this world, but if they wanted to throw a little help their way she wasn’t going to turn it down. She shivered and lifted her hands out in front of her. With a flick of her right wrist she began to tease apart the column, unfurling it like one of Rallie’s scrolls. As she did she coaxed it into a curving wall, bringing it around to fully enclose them in a five-foot-diameter space.

  “Not a lot of room in here,” Zwitty muttered.

  “Can you ever give your mouth a break?” Hrem asked.

  “Look, I’m not saying I want to be on the other side of this thing,” Zwitty said, his defensive whine in full pitch. “I’m just saying it’s tight quarters is all. She’s the one that said we can’t touch her while she’s doing her spells. That’s not going to be easy trying to get to the fort now, is it?”

  “It will be challenging,” Chayii said, her grip loosening on Jir’s mane as she crowded in to stand in front of Visyna. The bengar sniffed at the swirling snow a foot away from his muzzle, but had the sense not to touch it. The soldiers shuffled close to stand beside and behind her in a crescent.

  “This is the best I can manage,” Visyna said. It truly was. The dawning realization that she now had to maintain this wall while walking several hundred yards over increasingly difficult terrain and surrounded by rakkes made her question if she could really do it.

  “Not much though, is it,” Zwitty said, clearly unable to contain himself. “Now that boulder of ice you used to crush Kritton, now that was some good magic. This, though, it’s just a bit of snow swirling around, isn’t it?”

  Before she could shout a warning, Zwitty yelped.

  “That could have scoured the skin right off my bones!” he shouted. “It’s scalding!”

  Visyna felt his hand briefly touch the wall without having to see it. “Do not touch it. The longer the wall is maintained, the hotter it will become. I should warn you, it will likely become very warm in here.”

  “I’m still freezing my—Well, it’s freezing right now so a bit warmer would be just fine,” Hrem said.

  Let’s hope that’s all it becomes, Visyna thought, easing back on the pace of her weaving. It was going to be a delicate balance. The rakkes would sense the use of magic, so all the swirling snow in the world would only mask them for so long. She’d need to keep them hidden with enough of a barrier to dissuade any curious rakkes from trying to see what was inside.

  “Hrem, you’re all soldiers. We need to walk at a steady pace.”

  “That I can help you with. All right, ladies and gentleman. Nice and easy. I’ll give the cadence and you just follow along. Ready? By the right . . . and by that I mean your right foot . . . forward . . . march.”

  As Hrem called out a soft “left, right, left, right” Visyna used the tempo to help her weaving. She soon had a comfortable rhythm going. Chayii kept her hand on Jir, but for now he seemed perfectly content to pad along with them. He still favored his wounded shoulder, but it didn’t seem to be slowing him down.

  “Left, right, left, right, I see the fort straight ahead, left, right, left, right,” Hrem said, saying the words at the same tempo as the cadence.

  “Any sign of rakkes?” she asked. “I have to concentrate on this. It’s difficult to see beyond it.”

  Hrem didn’t answer right away. “Well,” he said, dropping the cadence, “we’re about t
o find out just how hot that snow is. Can you brace yourself?”

  Visyna risked a quick push of her senses beyond the wall and immediately regretted it. “There’s hundreds of them!”

  “I can’t see all that, but I can see enough. We don’t even have any damn weapons,” he said.

  Sweat began dripping off the end of Visyna’s nose. She blinked and more drops stung her eyes. She couldn’t afford to wipe her hands across them so she rubbed her face into the cloth of her sleeve while still maintaining her weaving. It was already hot inside the circle and they had barely traveled twenty yards.

  “Just stay close . . . and keep moving,” Visyna said, really talking to herself. She already knew she couldn’t keep this up all the way to the fort.

  A rakke howled from just outside the swirling wall of snow.

  A moment later, Visyna felt the creature impact the wall. Its screams were cut short as the small group continued moving forward and over the rakke’s smoking body. Jir growled and barred his fangs at the sight of the rakke, but other than giving the corpse a good sniff, he left it alone. Visyna stepped over it while doing her best not to look, but the smell of singed hair and flesh made her gag.

  “Well, that’s all right then,” Zwitty said, his voice startling loud inside the small area. “Any rakke stupid enough to try to get through this is in for a nasty surprise. Good. But could you turn down the heat a bit?”

  “I can’t,” she said, wiping her eyes again. She licked her lips and tasted salt. Her skin felt like she was lying in the sun at high noon. “I’m sorry. It’s only going to get hotter.”

  There was a commotion on the other side of the wall and several rakkes began screaming in pain. Fortunately, none of them fell down in their path, but now the snow and sand beneath their feet was turning to mud. Walking was becoming increasingly difficult. If anyone slipped they would fall through the wall. If that didn’t kill them, the slavering beasts on the other side would. They were all walking a tightrope with just one wrong step meaning a horrible death. “I’m going to have to stop,” she said. Her legs were shaking and she was having a hard time walking. Between the fear and her exhaustion it was becoming a challenge just to stand upright.

  “Are you mad? We’ve barely—” was all Zwitty managed before the sound of a thump suggested Hrem had knocked him off his train of thought.

  “The fort is still quite a piece away,” Hrem said.

  “I know,” she said, lifting her sandals out of the mud one at a time only to sink back down again. “I just can’t keep this up. I’m sorry, I thought I could but I can’t.” It was as if the muscles in her legs had been replaced with solid lead.

  “You’ve done everything you could, child, no one is blaming you,” Chayii said, her voice calm and without a hint of accusation.

  I am, she thought to herself. Her hands were cramping and her hold on the spinning wall was faltering. If she didn’t dissipate it soon, she might lose control of it completely and risk all their lives.

  Her right foot caught as she pulled it from the mud and she stumbled. She fumbled her hold on the storm. She struggled to get it back, but it would take more strength than she had left to pull it in tight and keep it strong. The best she could do now was focus it outward, pushing the swirling snow and heat further away while still keeping it swirling around them. Visyna knew before long she would lose even that ability, and when that happened, they would be completely exposed.

  And when it happens, I will have killed us all.

  Viceroy, I want another exit, now!” Konowa shouted. His right knee was throbbing after jumping the last six feet off the ladder, but pain could wait. He limped across the courtyard of the fort, his mind a whirl of conflicting emotions.

  Visyna is alive! And his elves . . . he sped up his gait and to hell with the stabbing sensation in his knee as he tried to process everything. After all this time, they were just a few hundred yards away. Everything and everyone he’d wanted and searched for were now on the outside of the fort.

  But it wasn’t what he expected.

  The soldiers he thought of as his sons and brothers weren’t the elves out there, but the raggedy-arsed collection of human misfits he’d led into battle from Elfkyna to the Wikumma Islands to here.

  The smell of leather, polished copper, and sawdust snapped him back to the here and now. He’d come to a stop under a tattered canvas awning tacked to the inside of the fort’s west wall and held up by two broken cart shafts at the other end. It created about the saddest, leaky, and sagging roof he’d ever seen, but it did serve to keep most of the snow off Pimmer, who had taken refuge underneath it. The spot had clearly been a workshop at one point. Everything from boot soles to leather and canvas straps, bits of brass and pewter, and clay jars littered the ground. Pimmer sat on an overturned bucket while his ever present map was spread out on a door resting on bricks, which created a more than adequate table. His small brass lantern gave off a surprising amount of light.

  RSM Arkhorn sat off to the side on a tangled mound of coiled rope, chain, and burlap sacks. He was turning the handle of a small grinding stone set upright in a wooden yoke while holding a piece of copper sheet to it. A rat-sized pyramid of copper dust already filled an earthenware basin set at the base of the grinding wheel.

  “I think Kritton’s dead,” Konowa said, “Visyna killed him. Or at least, I think she did. Dropped a huge chunk of ice on him.” The image still shocked him. Between the snow, the dark, and the distance he couldn’t be sure, but even if his eyes couldn’t confirm it, something in his heart did . . . or at least, very much wanted to. That huge chunk of ice had come plummeting from the sky and hit someone. He had no idea she could do that.

  Yimt stopped grinding. “Blast. I was looking forward to putting a permanent crimp in his spine myself. You’re sure he’s dead?”

  “If he’s not, he’s at the bottom of a crater with his head in his boots.”

  Yimt let out a low whistle. “I owe that lass a pint. Is she okay?”

  “As far as I can tell,” Konowa said, starting to pace then stopping when the pain in his knee flared up. “I saw a storm. She weaves weather so it had to be something she made. It hid everything from sight, but that’s about all it’s probably good for. There are a lot of rakkes between her and the fort. We have to find a way to help her.”

  Pimmer looked up from the map. The expression on his face wasn’t encouraging. “We’ve gone over this a hundred times from a dozen different angles and there’s no other way in or out except the main gate and the entrance we used.”

  Konowa wasn’t satisfied. “They must have built more bolt holes. There has to be another way.”

  Pimmer shook his head. “I’m sorry, Major, but I don’t see it. And even if there were . . .” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Meaning what?” Konowa asked, the pain in his knee forgotten.

  “Meaning,” Yimt said, “what would we do with it? There’s hundreds of yards between us and them, and then there’s a vertical climb to get up here. And that’s not counting the rakkes. There’s precious little we can do for them by charging outside these walls without a plan.”

  Konowa couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “This isn’t like the regiment. They have the Darkly Departed. They’re trained soldiers. Rallie’s with them. They’ll be fine. Visyna’s out there alone.” As soon as he said it he paused and rubbed a hand against his forehead. “Visyna and your squad and my mother and hopefully Jir are out there alone. They’re the ones that need our help.”

  “As I was saying, Major, we’d be little more than fresh meat for the rakkes if we venture out without a plan. However,” Yimt said, looking over at the Viceroy, “we’ve been working on something that should put a lit fuse up their keisters. We were concocting it with the lads in mind, but now that Visyna and her group have arrived I’d say they could use it more.”

  The two of them smiled. Konowa found his hand reaching for his saber of its own accord. Yimt Arkhorn and Pimmer Alst
onfar had come up with a plan to inconvenience hundreds of rampaging rakkes.

  And they’d done it together.

  “Tell me,” he ordered.

  When they finished, both looked at him for his response. For several seconds, Konowa was absolutely speechless. Finally, he nodded and took his hand off the pommel. “Let’s do it. Now, explain to me again why I’m the one who’s going to be set on fire?”

  Kritton.

  The elf’s shade appeared before Alwyn. It was a dark spectral being in searing pain, yet it wasn’t like the other shades of the deceased Iron Elves. Kritton’s shade exuded an awareness and a presence the others did not, not even RSM Lorian.

  “Take your place among the fallen and defend the regiment,” Alwyn said. He phrased it like an order, but would Kritton obey? Alwyn’s relationship with the shades was a precarious one. He walked on the edge, just one slip away from joining them wholly. But as long as he still lived he wasn’t one of them. He did command the dead, but only because they chose to follow. He had bargained with the Shadow Monarch and won them a freedom of a kind, but they remained dead, and in servitude. Alwyn saw the futility of it. “Rakkes have encircled us and Her Emissary approaches.”

  Alwyn turned from the shade, expecting it to obey, and focused his attention on Her Emissary. It took him a moment to realize he was wrong. Her Emissary no longer serves the Shadow Monarch. The realization would have filled him with hope a few days ago, but now he knew the cost behind it. The Shadow Monarch’s former servant was utterly mad and destroying itself in the process. It was literally and figuratively flying apart, and growing more dangerous in the process. How do you destroy something like that?

  “I have always defended the regiment,” Kritton said, his voice an icy tendril worming its way into Alwyn’s mind.

  Alwyn blinked and turned back to Kritton’s shade. “Then do so again,” he said. “As the oath bound you as you lived to the regiment, and through it, the Shadow Monarch, it binds you now to me. You must feel this.”