Ashes of a Black Frost

by Chris Evans

  The area grew quiet as Jurwan walked over to the body of Chayii. Konowa followed, and knelt down beside his father. “I am sorry. I feel like if I had—”

  Jurwan held up his hand. “She was proud of you. Always. She may not have agreed with the path you chose, or that I helped put you on, but she never once doubted the good in you. Know that. Cherish that.”

  Konowa realized he did. “We must go, Father. She’ll know we’re here.”

  Jurwan stood and faced him. “Yes, you must go. I, however, will stay here with your mother.”

  Konowa opened his mouth to object and then understood.

  “You climbed Her mountain once. Best you stay here and help the sailors. It’s my turn now.”

  Jurwan nodded. He reached out and placed his hand over Konowa’s heart, the palm of his hand resting against the black acorn.

  “When all this is done, you may wish to plant this.”

  Konowa gently removed his father’s hand. “It’s evil. Look what it did to you. Imagine what it could do as a tree.”

  Jurwan nodded. “Perhaps, but perhaps its proximity to your heart all this time has changed it more than it has changed you.”

  “I have to go now, Father,” Konowa said, stepping back. He motioned with his hand and knew RSM Arkhorn would get the troops moving. “Stay here, stay safe, and know . . . know that I love you.”

  “Good luck, my son,” Jurwan said.

  Konowa looked at him one more time, then turned and headed up the mountain, slowing his pace so that Visyna could match his stride. Rallie came up behind them and fell into step. Konowa felt comfort, surrounded as he was, but he knew his place was at the front.

  He spoke to the two women. “Whatever happens, She is mine to deal with.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Konowa—” Visyna started to say, but he just stared her down.

  “She is mine.” He turned to look at Rallie.

  “As you wish. I’ve only ever been along for the ride,” she said.

  Konowa watched her a moment longer then turned back to the path leading up the mountain. He guessed it would take until just before nightfall for them to reach the top, but he planned to sprint ahead long before then. He couldn’t explain it, but the dream was clear. It all came down to him.

  “Major Alstonfar, let’s pick up the pace. The Black Spike did a good job of scaring off anything within a couple of miles of here, so let’s make good time while we can.”

  Orders were passed along from soldier to soldier which didn’t take long as they numbered a little over five dozen. Color Sergeant Aguom ordered the unfurling of the regimental and Queen’s Colors. The two cloth symbols were raised and snapped and rippled in the wind. Konowa took a moment to watch them, feeling a sense of pride and honor. His heart beat faster to see them in the air. He looked around at his men. They were a sight. Clad in black bark with tree branches sticking from their shakos they looked more like the monsters they were about to do battle with than Calahr’s finest.

  His chest swelled at the sight of them. They weren’t his elves. Those soldiers were gone, lost a long time ago. He’d never had a chance to say he was sorry, to try and make them understand why he did what he did, and why, if he had the chance to do it all again, he would do the same damn thing. All this time he’d spent searching for them, believing that finding them would set everything right, only to realize that he’d had his Iron Elves with him the whole time. This ragtag collection of misfits were his regiment. RSM Arkhorn, quite possibly the best and worst soldier to ever wear sigger green. He sought out the soldiers he knew best, looking each in the eye, perhaps for the very last time. Color Sergeant Aguom, Corporals Vulhber and Feylan, Scolly and even Zwitty. He found his eyes searching for soldiers no longer there. RSM Lorian, Privates Meri and Kester and Teeter and the religious farmer, Inkermon, and above all, Private Renwar. He could still see the slender boy looking far too young to be carrying a musket, and how he changed before his eyes into something Konowa doubted he’d ever fully understand.

  He caught himself daydreaming and stomped his boot on the ground. It was time. He motioned to Major Alstonfar and the order went out.

  The Iron Elves shouldered their muskets, and marched forward, and into battle.

  They’d climbed almost two hours without a sign of any living creature except the sporadic carcasses of sarka har. They were all dead, or dying.

  “What killed them?” Konowa asked, walking off the trail to get a closer look at one. It didn’t look like it had been attacked, more that it had just wilted and died.

  “The natural order is so polluted here, and there is nothing of value for them to feed on,” Visyna said, her voice quavering.

  Konowa was worried about her. She appeared weak and ill. He felt it in the ground himself, but it only fueled his desire to get to the top. “Perhaps you should—”

  Visyna glared at him and he closed his mouth.

  “I am going with you all the way. If you even think of suggesting otherwise the Shadow Monarch will be the least of your worries.”

  Konowa smiled in spite of the situation. “As you wish.”

  The snap of a single musket broke the unnatural quiet.

  “Rakkes!”

  The beasts poured out of the rocks like ants from a nest. “Steady! It’s nothing we haven’t seen before,” Yimt shouted, moving quickly between the soldiers and forming them into a double line as the first row knelt and prepared to fire.

  Konowa judged that he was close enough to make his run now, but something gave him pause. The rakkes coming at them were not like those of even a few hours ago. These seemed disoriented, and weak. The first volley of musket fire crashed into them, knocking down thirty and sending an equal number backward where they shrieked and beat their chests, but gave little indication of charging again.

  Soldiers cheered, but Konowa didn’t trust it. This wasn’t right. First the dead sarka har, and now less than maniacal rakkes.

  “Archers!”

  The sky darkened as hundreds of arrows arced toward them. Konowa’s sense of suspicion had been right. He went to grab Visyna to push her to safety, but Rallie stepped into his path and knocked him off balance. The arrows reached their apogee and began to fall straight toward them.

  A sudden wind gust tore along the path blowing most of the arrows astray. The few that fell either hit the stony ground or bounced off the sarka har bark the soldiers wore as armor. Konowa looked to Visyna. She swayed where she stood, but she was weaving. Rallie had her quill poised above a sheaf of papers.

  “Visyna!”

  “We can hold them off,” she said, bravely smiling at him.

  Konowa would have returned it, but the clicking sound of hundreds of pins on rock made him blanch. Dozens of korwirds were scrambling through the rakkes and charging at the Iron Elves. Konowa shivered at the look of the things. They clattered over the rock like armored snakes on hundreds of pointy twigs. Each was easily five feet long and possessed a pair of clacking pincers at its head. He’d never seen one before, but Yimt had gone into great detail about them so that there was no mistaking the nasty-looking things crawling toward them.

  “Fire!”

  Musket shot spewed out of barrels and raced across fifty yards to tear into rakke and korwird alike, blasting them apart in a mess of blood and chitinous plating. More arrows launched skyward and Visyna called up another wind, though not as strong as the last one. A soldier screamed and went down, his hands pressed over his hip where a black arrow had lodged, blood spurting between his fingers.

  The scratch of Rallie’s quill across paper set a hum on the air, and more black arrows went wide of the mark. Konowa cursed. They were pinned down to the spot. They could hold off Her creatures, but there was no way to move forward. Dusk was already tinting the sky, elongating shadows on the ground.

  “Colonel,” Major Alstonfar said, jogging up to crouch beside Konowa. He was sweating and breathing heavy, but he sounded calm and in control. “The men are doing a supe
rlative job, but at this rate of fire they’ll expend their ammunition in the next half hour. I’ve ordered them to wait until they have a clear shot, but that will only buy us a little more time.”

  Konowa reached out and patted the man on the shoulder, taking his hand back quickly as frost fire began to burn on Pimmer’s uniform. To his credit, Pimmer simply brushed the fire out with his hand. A rumbling roar came from somewhere up the mountain. Whatever it was, it was coming this way. “Tell the men to fix bayonets.”

  “What is it?” Pimmer asked.

  “No idea, but it won’t be pleasant,” Konowa answered, sprinting away to check on Rallie and Visyna. The women had taken up station behind a large boulder and were continuing to aid the regiment. Visyna was leaning against the rock, her hands trembling as she weaved. Rallie was crouched down by her side, a large sheaf of paper resting on a thigh as her quill flew across the page. “Do you know what’s coming?”

  Both women shook their heads, too busy to speak as they concentrated on their magic. The hairs on Konowa’s arms stood up and a trickle of cold sweat raced down his spine. He turned and ran back toward the line, growing all the more frustrated that he had no good plan about what to do next. Were this any other battle, he’d order a tactical withdrawal to a more defensible location, but that wasn’t an option, not here, not when he was so close.

  The rumbling grew louder. Konowa unsheathed his saber, the frost fire sparkling along the blade at once.

  “Steady now,” Yimt ordered, moving behind the line and offering encouragement to the troops. His drukar was clenched in his right fist, and like Konowa’s saber, sparked with black frost.

  A long, guttural scream was answered by a dozen more, and a pack of misshapen dyre wolves bounded from among the sarka har and raced toward the Iron Elves. Each wolf was easily the size of Jir, but where the bengar was sleek muscle, fluid movement, and controlled violence, these creatures were starvation thin and ran with a stilted, drunklike gait. A sickly yellow foam drooled from their muzzles filled with serrated teeth and black pus oozed from their milky white eyes.

  Before the order to fire could be given, Tyul sprang up from the rocks and moved in front of the firing line and began loosing arrows at the wolves. Four went down in a matter of seconds, but not even the elf’s lightning-fast reflexes could take them all before they reached the line.

  “Tyul! Get the hell out of there!” Konowa shouted, running forward.

  Tyul never turned, but continued to fire arrow after arrow as the wolves bore down on him. When the creatures were only a few yards away the twang of many bowstrings reached Konowa’s ears. Arrows whistled past his head, between the Iron Elves, and struck the wolves in mid-jump. The bodies fell and slid along the ground and stopped just inches from where Tyul stood.

  Konowa turned. Elves of the Long Watch emerged from the shadows, their bows still active as they engaged Her elves and the rakkes and korwirds. Jurwan walked among them, still as serene as if he were out for a walk on a warm, summer day.

  “Father?” Konowa shouted.

  “The elves of the Long Watch may not listen to the advice of another elf,” Jurwan said, “but when their own Wolf Oaks saw the rightness of aiding you, they felt compelled to help.”

  More rakkes appeared among the trees, their gibbering calls growing in intensity. Konowa knew he had to act now.

  “Tell them thanks!” he shouted, and turn and ran back to the line. “Major, fix bayonets and on my order, wheel right and clear that line of trees. The elves will cover you. Once you’ve secured that find cover and keep them busy.”

  Pimmer nodded. “And you, Colonel?”

  “Just see that it’s done.”

  Pimmer saluted and passed along the order to Yimt.

  A volley of Long Watch arrows cleared the woods for twenty yards. The Iron Elves stood up and charged, their bayonets ablaze with frost fire. Any rakke or korwird in their path was stabbed to death. The few remaining dark elves stepped forward to plug the gap, but those not killed by the Long Watch fell to the blade of Tyul. The elf slid between tree and elf, slashing and stabbing with an economy of movement and absolute precision. Konowa could have watched him all day, but already a new pack of dyre wolves was racing through the sarka har and more rakkes were massing.

  Konowa ran past the soldiers. He spied Yimt and slowed. “I’ll be back,” Konowa shouted over his shoulder, running up the path. He looked down at his saber as he ran. Stygian black frost crackled along the length of the blade.

  A black blur preceded him up the path and took a rakke by the throat, shaking the beast so hard the head ripped off. Jir dropped the body and launched himself at the next beast, swiping his claws at its thighs and quickly pouncing on its chest when the creature screamed and fell. A moment later there was a snap and the screaming stopped.

  Konowa leaped over Jir and kept running. It was his turn now.

  He wasn’t sure how many rakkes and dark elves and other creatures crossed his path. He slashed and stabbed as he ran, ignoring the arrows that flew past his head and the claws that tried to rip his face. The frost fire arced out from him like lightning, striking creatures five and ten yards away from him. Soon, he had no need to swing his saber at all. As the sun dipped below the mountain and darkness settled in, he followed the path by the light of his own black flame.

  He was well into the thorny thicket of Her forest at the very peak of the mountain before he realized it. He’d expected a ferocious response, but the sarka har here could only flail in mad desperation. He pushed his way through, destroying the blood trees with sturdy swipes of his saber. Instead of feeling emboldened, he grew increasingly cautious. It was a trick, it had to be. The Shadow Monarch was too powerful. Her forest and Her creatures couldn’t be dying, because if they were dying . . . Rallie might be right.

  He paused, breathing in the cold air. He watched his breath mist in front of him. It doesn’t matter! You came here to end this. End this!

  Konowa stood up straight and gripped the pommel of his saber so hard that black flame shot twenty feet in the air from the end of it. He slashed through the last ring of trees and emerged on the rocky summit where the Shadow Monarch knelt by Her Silver Wolf Oak.

  The power here was caustic. The acorn against his chest flared, driving needles of cold deep into his heart. He coughed, breathing in the mix of cold, toxic magic permeating the surrounding rocks. The ground beneath his feet groaned. Large fissures crisscrossed the summit from which moans and screams echoed from the far depths. Konowa moved carefully around them, staying well away from the edges. He could make out claw marks where rakkes and other creatures had emerged.

  The Shadow Monarch turned to look at him as he approached, and like the dream, a small, scared, elderly elf woman stared up at him.

  “My child,” she said, reaching out Her hands to him. Her voice grated on his ears. It was high and shaky, far from the commanding voice he’d often heard in his dreams.

  Konowa stopped and looked around the space. Even here the sarka har looked sick. He studied the Silver Wolf Oak and felt revulsion at what he saw. What should have been a tall, straight tree was instead a gnarled, twisted mess of branches sloughing off their bark. Its metallic leaves were either wilting or already fallen, and black ichor oozed from hundreds of cracks in its wood. It was dying!

  He knew She couldn’t stop him. Neither could the Silver Wolf Oak. All he had to do was walk forward the last few paces and strike. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not yet.

  “Why?” he asked, swinging his saber around to encompass everything. “Why? Why do this?” He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. “Why any of this?”

  The Shadow Monarch began to babble. Konowa waited, expecting a trap. Tears were running down the old elf ’s face as She gently tried to piece back together the dying Silver Wolf Oak.

  “She doesn’t have any answers,” Rallie said, stepping into the clearing. “She never did. Her mind is all but gone. It has been for a long time.”


  Konowa spun, the acorn against his heart burning cold. “You? Rallie?” His world was spinning. No, she couldn’t be.

  “All this time, and you really thought She was the power behind all of this?” Rallie asked.

  It felt as if someone had pushed him off a cliff. His muscles grew weak and he felt dizzy. Rallie pulled a cigar from her robe and placed it between her teeth, then brought out a tinderbox and lit it.

  “I don’t understand,” Konowa said, trying to keep his wits. He could hear the slithering and creaking of branches all around him. Something was happening. He knew he was missing a piece to the puzzle, but what?

  “No? I’m not surprised,” Rallie said. Her cigar hadn’t lit so she tried the tinderbox again. Sparks flashed, but the cigar would not catch flame.

  Konowa blinked. In all the time he’d known Rallie, he’d never seen her use a tinderbox. “You witch.” His strength returned in a rush. “I may not be the brightest candle, but I know a forgery when I see one.” He raised his saber and took a step toward the Shadow Monarch. She still knelt by the tree, keening softly now and rocking back and forth.

  “Finish Her, Konowa, and this will be over,” Visyna said, appearing out of the trees to stand beside Rallie. Again the acorn flared and Konowa cried out in pain. He dropped to one knee.

  “You aren’t Visyna,” he said through gritted teeth. “Your parlor tricks won’t work on me.”

  “Then kill Her and be done with this,” Yimt said, emerging from the right. Konowa fell to both knees as the pain pierced through to his back. “Kill Her, and set me free.”

  Branches began moving around Konowa. He forced himself to his feet. He ignored Yimt and turned his attention to the Silver Wolf Oak. “You said me.”

  “Kill Her, Konowa, kill Her,” the Duke of Rakestraw said, stepping out of the trees just a few feet away from him. His long red locks fluttered about his face, and he held his long sword, Wolf’s Tooth, in his hands, but the cold pain squeezing Konowa’s chest told him what he already knew. That wasn’t his friend. Tears filled Konowa’s eyes, but turned to ice as they froze on his cheeks.