by Tom Hansen
Nora grabbed Ynya’s face with her icy hands, and poured her magic into Ynya.
Beside Ynya’s heart, next to the hardened time magic, and the hot fire magic, grew another magic, a sparking, jumpy source of power.
With a grunt, Nora Oblique died frozen to the ground.
Ynya wiped her eyes of tears and turned to warm up her sister.
She worked quickly and efficiently, warming up Synol’s body, then making sure Meki was warm and awake. She helped melt the ice so that both beasts could break out of their cages, then melted a hole through the ice to allow them to escape the room
“I will take Meki. You and Synol will ride Pain,” Finny told Ynya.
Ynya didn’t argue. She and Meki hoisted Synol to Finny’s back, then Meki climbed up on the other beast. And together, they all exited the dining room.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Finny crept down the hallways, growling and snapping at any maid or servant they found. Most of them hid in corners as they saw the beast coming at them.
Ynya followed behind, holding onto Synol’s lifeless body.
Hang in there, big sis, we are going to get you out of here.
Whenever they came across a guard, Ynya froze them in time for long enough that they could slink past.
Handling the guards one at a time with her magic turned out to be the easiest method for leaving the castle.
No guards had to die, and they walked out with no casualties.
Except my Aunt sacrificed herself to help us escape. Never forget Nora.
Ynya fought back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her.
The entire time, Ynya held the Queen frozen, but as she got farther and farther away, the thread binding them grew more difficult to maintain.
Ynya was tired. Meki was barely conscious, and the beasts couldn’t fight well enough with them on their backs.
They arrived on the ground floor of the castle.
Dozens of workers looked up, confusion on their faces as they tried to make sense of the two dark beasts and the girls riding them.
Ynya yelled to the group of tradesman. “The Queen is frozen for a short time, if you want to escape, now is your chance! Her heartbeat magic that forces you to work tirelessly and to her rhythm is gone, so run while you can!”
Some ran, but some still stood there, dumbfounded.
Finny took a step toward the exit, but Pain didn’t move.
Finny turned around, growling.
Pain whimpered, but turned toward the staircase that led to the underground area.
“What is going on?” Ynya asked.
Finny growled. “The army is out front, and they are still loyal to the Queen. If we go out the front, you will need to stop time on all of them, or we will need to fight. He says he knows of another exit through the side that they used to bring him in weeks ago.”
“Do you trust him?”
Finny looked over at Ynya, narrowing her eyes. “I do.”
Ynya nodded. “Then I do, too. Pain, lead the way.”
Pain led them down into the basement, stopping to sniff at the laboratory. He grunted and Finny translated. “He said there is a book down here with a lot of their experiments. He thinks we should take it. There is also food for the workers that you should grab to keep your energy up.”
“What about you?”
Finny opened her mouth, showing off her teeth. “Pain and I can hunt, but we won’t be able to cook anything till we are far away, so grab what you can now.”
Ynya did, finding a stockpile of hardened rolls and salted meat, along with a small keg of wine. She also found the book Pain had talked about, and stuffed that into a bag before remounting the beasts.
She also managed to find some rope and leather straps to bind Synol to Pain easier. They would need a better long-term solution, but for now this would have to do.
Ynya munched on one of the rolls and took a swig of the wine to help replenish her power. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. Given her depleted state, the wine went straight to her head and Ynya had to concentrate all the harder to keep all her spells up.
Pain then led them through to the back of the animal pens.
Far behind them, the shouts of the soldiers wafted over the sounds of the animals.
We’re being followed! Regardless of the Queen’s incapacitation, she still had her army.
They needed to hurry.
Pain came to a large iron door set in the back wall.
“This leads up to the surface and dumps out on the east side of the castle, about a mile away. They have to know we’re going for this but they will have to fight the snow and we can run faster than them. If we hurry, we can make it there before they defend it.”
They opened the door and entered. The tunnel was surprisingly large. A small wagon could easily fit through there, making it easy for them to bring in animals without having to take them through the main gate.
Before leaving, however, Ynya hopped off and melted parts of the door, fusing the corners to the frame and bending the door such that it couldn’t move without an immense amount of effort.
“This should buy us some time.”
Time.
It had all been down to time, hadn’t it? From the moment her mother gifted her magic, it had always been about discovering and using the newfound ability.
Now that Ynya had it, she wondered how different her quest would have been if she had managed to figure it out sooner.
Ynya shook her head, clearing the haze in her mind. She needed to pay attention to what they did right now, in this moment.
The beasts were incredibly fast. Even with the small party on their backs, they ran up the slope with ease, bursting through the door up top and into the blinding snow.
Ynya hopped off and incapacitated the two guards who had been stationed at the entrance. She took all of their supplies and their swords. She also stripped them of their coats and bundled up her sisters so they wouldn’t freeze.
The wind from the east bit into Ynya’s skin, but she had poured so much magic into the thread of the Frost Queen that she couldn’t keep herself warm any longer.
“Ynya, you should drop her. She won’t be able to escape and track us down fast enough. We’re free.” Meki wrapped her arms around Ynya.
Ynya hugged back.
“I know.”
Ynya took a few steps back, looking up at the sheer cliff face that had been her latest prison.
“There’s no way we are going to make it past the army now, and we need to head west to get home.”
Finny growled. “We will have to head south and go around them.”
Ynya sighed. “She’s going to come after us.”
Meki squeezed harder. “Don’t worry about it, my big sister will figure out something for us to do.”
Ynya smiled down at Meki. “I’m glad you think that. We have a long road ahead of us still, but we’re all together finally, and we will figure out a way to stay that way.”
Ynya mounted Pain once again.
She looked back at the massive rock, hearing the shouts of the soldiers in the distance.
Ynya dropped her time magic on the Queen as Pain turned toward the west and bounded through the snow.
“Come after me, you bitch. I’ll be ready for you.”
Epilogue
Imryll Farora sat in her icy prison for a long time as she contemplated the events that had led to her defeat.
She wasn’t mad that she had been betrayed by one of her own Skarmyord. Humans were emotional and reactionary creatures by nature.
She wasn’t upset that Ynya’s magic had been so close to her grasp, but now bounded off into the east. Ynya couldn’t escape the Feond, so she wasn’t going anywhere.
She wasn’t bothered by the fact that four human girls had managed to thwart her efforts.
She was irritated with herself. She had let them get the best of her, and she knew it. She had spent far too long believing she was untouchable.
She would not make that mistake again.
She had been bested by four untrained, and barely bloomed girls. The irony was heavy in her mind. She’d been so young and untrained herself back when she discovered her father’s true plans for the elves.
She had been very similar to Ynya in that matter. She was young and unafraid, willing to take un-calculated risks that sometimes worked out for the worst.
Young people could be so surprising.
Humans, for that matter, could as well.
Still, there were natural orders to things, rules that needed to be enforced.
“My lady.” Khatar stood at the entrance to the dining room.
She growled. She was enjoying the silence. For once the constant howl of the wind hadn’t penetrated into her cocoon of ice. For once she relished in the sounds of silence.
Perhaps she would construct one of these chambers for meditation later. Right now, it was time to wrest control back from her disheveled minions.
Imryll shattered the ice holding her against the wall.
She stood, dusting the small ice chips off her dress.
“Khatar, send word to the commanders of the army. I need them to pull their troops back so we can plan properly. I expect all five of them to be back here shortly.”
Khatar hesitated, looking like he wanted to second guess her instructions. Normally, she would have punished such a delay in her commands, but right now she had other things on her mind.
Seeming satisfied, Khatar nodded his head and replied. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
“Oh, and Khatar, I want all their lieutenants to come as well.”
“Of course.”
Imryll walked over to the stiff, lifeless body of her head captain. She stared down at the woman for a while, taking in every line of her face. Nora had been a beautiful woman, a troublemaker her entire life, always doing things of her own accord, regardless of the consequences.
But she had been effective. Her betrayal had been inevitable, but her role in the larger plan had been fulfilled.
Talia’s magic had been exposed.
Imryll bent down to stroke Nora’s frozen face. “I knew you hid Talia’s magic from me all these years, Nora. I knew, and I never pressed you on it. I hope you know that I could have tortured it out of you at any point, but I trusted that you were holding back on me this whole time, and I was right.”
Imryll stood. “And now I have Talia and your magic closer than ever to me. Ynya doesn’t even know what seed of magic she carries within her, nor do the other two, but I will get it back, and it will be the key to my eventual reign.”
Imryll used her magic to stomp her boot into Nora Oblique’s chest, shattering the frozen body into thousands of fleshy red chunks.
“At least your sacrifice wasn’t in vain. I see my mistakes now and will correct them.”
She stood there for what seemed forever, mulling over the possibilities. She took time to explore how each betrayal came about, and formed plans to prevent those in the future.
“My Lady. They await in your study.”
Imryll looked up.
“Ahh yes, thank you, Khatar.”
She contemplated her new reality for a bit longer before heading up. She needed to make sure her message was conveyed in just the right manner.
Her top commanders stood at attention in the center of her study. Their immediate subordinates directly behind them.
“Captain Nora’s death was unfortunate, but necessary. I see that now. I see that I hadn’t been paying close enough attention to the most trusted among me.”
To her side, one of the captains began to choke as ice filled his lungs.
Beside him, the next one choked.
In a matter of seconds, five commanders, each in charge of their own contingents of soldiers stood in place, their bodies having been frozen from the inside out.
She eyed each of her new subordinates. “As you see, I will stop at nothing to achieve my goals, so I want you to take this little demonstration back to your troops with a message. We will succeed, or I will personally go down the rank of every one of your troops and freeze their lungs until they die.”
She snapped her fingers and the five commanders shattered. Each of their frozen heads landed in the arms of their successor.
“Now go, my new commanders.”
Khatar stood for a long time while she watched the new leaders of the army sprint out of the castle and into their troops.
She looked to her sides, taking in the figures on spikes. How long had it been since she had put them up there? She thought that by leaving them up as a testament to their failures, she would have instilled the proper fear in her soldiers, but clearly humans forgot too easily. They needed to be reminded sometimes of their own fallibility.
“Khatar, I think it’s time we brought down my old lieutenants, don’t you think? It’s time for some new leadership in my ranks.”
THE END
I hope you enjoyed this book! If you did, please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews help others find my books, which means I can continue to write more like this!
Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you check out the next episode in The Frost Fervor Concordance!
- Tom Hansen
December 2018
Kindling Vengeance
Chapter One
Talia Oblique huffed as she came over the wind-blown rise, her body near to the point of collapse as she trudged through the darkened landscape. She expected to see more of the same snowdrifts and rocky outcroppings that had been her life for the past few days, but was pleasantly surprised to see a small town, nestled against the water up here in the northern-most corner of the continent.
She paused to catch her breath and take in the sight. Two-to-three dozen small huts dotted the wind-swept landscape, with nothing tall enough to even have a second story. It was a fishing village with a spattering of hand-built boats tethered in the bay. Despite the howling winds, the small hamlet remained largely protected from high cliffs on three sides, having been built inside a cove along the rocky beach. A small road led through the cliff into the center of the town from the east.
Being this nestled into the cove not only protected them from the brunt of mother nature’s ferocity, but from prying eyes along the road, especially at night with blinding snow.
In fact, had she not been traveling off the side of the main road north from Holmslatr, and in this non-stop snowfall, she might have completely missed the place as she headed north into the storm.
In the distance, the constantly-growing Razorclaws were now obscured by a medium shower of snow that started an hour before and didn’t look like it would let up anytime soon. She hadn’t exactly wanted to head this direction, but the pursuing soldiers had forced her hand.
She turned to survey the road, looking for signs of the dozen soldiers who had been hunting her for the last few weeks.
An intense shiver wracked her spine, partially from the ever-pressing cold, but mostly from the memories that would never fade.
I’m not going back there, no matter what.
She knew they tried to corral her back in the direction of Reyoarfjell, but she would rather brave the frigid ocean than turn inland and face even more soldiers.
Her mood wandered for a moment as she stared once again at the hamlet.
No, I will not go back.
She heard the clanging of the soldier’s swords before she saw them.
Ducking behind a small rock formation, she watched as the dozen enemies came over the rise, scrutinizing every inch of disturbed snow as they searched for her.
In the center of the pack, she sensed him. His finely attuned senses sniffed the air, searching for her scent. A tug deep inside her heart begged to be used, but she tamped down the yearning. Using her magic now would simply leave an indelible trail for him to follow. It would be like lighting a beacon for all to see.
She
knew she couldn’t. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t use her magic now.
Talia secured her pack and tensed her muscles should it come to something more. Right now, she needed to hide the old-fashioned way, by huddling behind a rock in the blinding snow and hope they walked on past.
She was an idiot for stopping and allowing them the chance to catch up.
Now she had to hope the Gods were on her side for a time.
It seemed they were, despite the soldiers’ best efforts. They fanned out, searching in earnest for any track, footprint, or broken branch they could possibly attribute to their escaped prisoner. One had come dangerously close to her, by the sound of feet on the other side of the snow-covered rock. Luckily for her, the soldier saw the town over the rise, and rushed back to his commander. They must have thought she had entered the small town because shortly thereafter, they rounded up all the soldiers and headed north to find a way down into the cove.
Talia sat for a long while, watching the soldiers wind slowly up the road, finally finding the path down the small cliff and into the harbor town.
It occurred to her that she could just turn around at this point and head back the way she came. It would be easy enough to do so. They had walked right past her without seeing her, a God-blessed first since her escape. Something about the freezing wind must have confounded his senses, giving her a rare opportunity to slip behind them.
She was free! She could double back now on the road and head to Holmslatr. From there, she had options. She could continue on foot, or charter a boat to leave the coast. They would have no choice but to split their search party in order to suss out where she had gone.
A broad smile beamed across her freckled face. She’d been on the run for so long that she could hardly remember the last time she felt free from the overbearing tyranny of the Queen.
Certainly the farther away you ventured from the Skarfanes in the center of the continent, the less the Queen influenced day-to-day life, but there was still no denying that the Frost Queen ruled with an iron fist, particularly against mages.
