Dawn of the Ice Bear

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Look harder,” Donial urged. “You’ll see it.”

  She looked again. Water. But at the edge of it, perhaps a darker strip. “What is . . . ?”

  “Stygia,” Kral answered. “That, lady, is Stygia.”

  One of the sailors overheard and rushed to the bow himself. After a quick glance, he smiled, clapping Kral on the shoulder. Then he turned back toward the rest of the ship and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Land ho!” he shouted.

  The call was picked up, echoed by others all across the vessel. “Land ho! Stygia off the bow!”

  “At last,” Kral said quietly. “Stygia, at last.”

  2

  WITH STYGIA IN sight, things progressed at an agonizingly glacial pace. Having no official business in that land, they wanted to approach only when darkness would mask their arrival. Kral still had no idea what Gorian and his crew of mercenaries were after in Stygia. Nor did he particularly care, as long as their goals did not interfere with his. He knew he ran a risk—that if he and his friends abandoned the others as soon as they reached Stygia, they might have a difficult time getting home once he had the crown. But he was determined to ignore that problem for now. One thing at a time, and his first job was to get the crown in his hands. After that, he could worry about the next step.

  So they tacked back and forth, wasting time, drawing slowly nearer the shore, until the sun set. Once it had, they doused all their lights and made straight for land. Now the hours passed slowly because they were so close, and even though they made progress, it was not fast enough for Kral’s satisfaction. He was afraid morning would dawn before they were near enough.

  But only a few hours had passed before he was called to the wheel to join Gorian and Allatin, the blond-bearded first mate. When he joined them, he could see that they were skirting the shore. City lights glowed in the near distance.

  “There be Khemi,” Allatin explained. “We dare not put in there, or at any other inhabited place. A ways down there are a couple of big islands offshore—we will want to avoid those as well. But in between is a fair stretch of uninhabited shoreline. We’ll make for there. We should be able to leave the Restless Heart offshore there for days without her being seen.”

  “I think you should move her about,” Gorian suggested. “Don’t let her just sit there. Someone might happen by.”

  “Agreed,” Kral said, not entirely sure why they had called him over.

  Gorian answered that quickly enough, though. “We still are not sure what you lot are after in Stygia, Kral,” he said. “We have reason to believe that we are not too far from our own goal here, but we know not where exactly you want to go.”

  “Nor will I tell you,” Kral said. “But the truth is, I am not yet sure exactly where I need to go either. You get me to Stygia, and I’ll worry about the rest.”

  In the moonlight, Kral could see that Allatin was uncomfortable with his answer. But Gorian just nodded. “Fine,” he said. “You have not asked my business, and I can but do you the same courtesy. You will be alerted when we are about to drop anchor, and we will take the remaining boat over to shore or swim there. You can stay with us as long as you like, or split off at any time.”

  “Very well,” Kral said. He tried to display no emotion before these men, but inside he was nearly bursting with anticipation. What he had told them was true—he had no idea where in Stygia to look for the crown. A clue would present itself, he was sure, even if he had to turn the country upside down to find it. In the meantime, traveling with Gorian and his mercenaries would be safer than striking out completely on their own in unfamiliar and unfriendly territory.

  He excused himself and went to tell the others the news.

  Entering the cabin, he found them crowded around the porthole, watching the lights of Khemi skate by.

  “That’s Khemi, isn’t it?” Mikelo said, when Kral closed the door.

  “Yes.”

  “I told you!” Mikelo exclaimed.

  “My first view of Stygia, and I can see nothing,” Donial said.

  “Which is as much as you want to see,” Mikelo offered. “Trust me. There is nothing there but sand and snakes and sorcery.”

  Alanya shuddered visibly in the moonlight streaming in through the porthole. “I care little for snakes. Or sorcery.”

  “Sorcery is responsible for our being here,” Kral pointed out. “If not for Gorian’s magic . . .”

  “I know,” she said. “But I still don’t like it.”

  “I hate snakes,” Mikelo said, making a face. Revulsion was evident in his voice as well. “Snakes are the worst.”

  “I’ve never minded snakes,” Donial said.

  “You’ve never seen snakes such as they have in Stygia,” Mikelo reminded him. “They grow them huge here and make no attempt to control them. It is an awful thing.”

  Kral had heard the same thing in stories. “With any luck, we search for a man, not a snake. I doubt that any snake has stolen my people’s crown.”

  “In any other place, I would agree with you,” Mikelo put in. “But here . . . it could be either. Or both, working in concert.” He shivered, wrapped his arms around his skinny frame. “Snakes. Brrr!”

  THE NEXT HOUR found the group assembled on the deck, preparing to venture into night-shrouded Stygia. It had been decided that Alanya, the only female, and Mikelo, the youngest, would go over in the boat along with a single mercenary to help row and all the supplies, weapons, and so on that would be needed on shore. Donial didn’t mind swimming, and it was obvious, from the gear the mercenaries loaded onto the small craft, that they expected serious trouble.

  The little boat pushed away from the Restless Heart, and the rest of the men dove into the water to swim with it. A single mercenary remained on board with the Heart sailors, to make sure they didn’t just abandon those on the shore. If the ship was spotted, they were to take evasive actions, then return to the same place two nights later to check for the onshore party. Donial watched the boat cast off, then the mercenaries splashing into the sea around it. He stood on the deck with Kral, who tossed him a relaxed grin and a nod. Together, they dove over the side.

  Donial had no fear of getting lost in this sea. The water was relatively calm, and the mercenaries all swam around the boat, headed for the dark patch of shoreline ahead. He had taken Mikelo’s warnings about snakes to heart and wondered if there were water snakes in the shallows. But the sheer number of swimmers and the thunder their progress made in the water would doubtless scare away any aquatic predators.

  During the swim, Donial wondered what they would find in Stygia. He knew what Kral was after, but didn’t know how the Pict could expect to find it in such a vast and secretive country. So far, since leaving Tarantia, they had experienced nothing but danger and disappointment. The battle against the Argossean pirates had promised excitement, at first. It proved bloody and horrifying, instead. Donial had—with his sister’s aid—killed a man. His first killing. There had been nothing glamorous or exciting about it. Instead it was brutal, ugly. When the task was done, Donial had felt sick. He had wanted to rush down to the water and bathe in it, as if he could cleanse the action from his memory.

  That had been followed by days of captivity. Never knowing which day would be his last, when the pirate captain might decide his hostages were useless after all. The anxiety of attempted escape had added to his discomfort. Finally, with magical assistance from the mercenary leader Gorian, the surviving sailors and mercenaries rose up against Kunios and his buccaneers, regaining the Restless Heart and leaving the Argosseans stranded on the coast of Shem. They had set sail for Stygia, which should have been cause for rejoicing. But Donial didn’t feel like a celebration. What was ahead seemed at least as hard as that which lay behind them.

  Somehow, for the most part Alanya kept her spirits up. She was not the carefree girl she had been before their time in Koronaka, but she didn’t seem to take the frustrations to heart, as he did. Everything they had experienced had matured both
of them, he suspected. But he was finding it ever more difficult to pretend to be happy and carefree. He could not remember the last time he had actually laughed out loud.

  Donial had been anxious for his childhood to be over. To be treated as an adult instead of a little kid. Now, undeniably, it was.

  He couldn’t help wishing maybe it had lasted a little longer.

  Almost before he knew it, he could feel sandy ocean bottom under his feet. He waded the rest of the way ashore, surrounded by the others. Moonlight washed the strip of beach he emerged onto, seawater running off him. Beyond the beach, he could see only more sand, broken by occasional dark clots that he assumed were bushes or low, stunted trees. Desert ran right to the ocean’s edge.

  The view, such as it was, matched Donial’s mood. Dark, and without much promise.

  He located Alanya and Mikelo, then Kral joined them. The four companions walked over to the edge of the group, where they could speak privately. “What now?” Donial asked. “Where do we go?”

  “I am still not sure,” Kral answered, his voice low. “But I have an idea.”

  “What is it?” Alanya wondered.

  “Look at what we know of Gorian and his soldiers,” he replied. “They came here from Tarantia, at the same time as we did and with the same sense of urgency. They are in league with a magician back in Tarantia. They seek something here in Stygia and expect to have to fight for it. All these things make me believe that their goal is the same as ours.”

  “They are after the crown?” Donial asked, surprised.

  “I think they may be,” Kral said. “We know that some Stygian mage had it stolen from the thief who took it from your uncle. Lupinius was trying to sell it, so he would not have kept its existence a secret. We know, also, that numerous parties were aware of it, probably including those strangers we saw creeping away from your father’s home the night we found Lupinius wounded. We assumed that the thief who took the Teeth stabbed him and killed the Ranger, but it could as easily have been those men, who were empty-handed when they left. My thinking is that those men included Gorian, or someone working with him. Probably trying to find the Teeth on behalf of the sorcerer who gave him that magic stone he wears around his neck.”

  “You make many assumptions, Kral,” Alanya pointed out.

  “Yes, Alanya,” he said. “But the facts are the facts. How would a Stygian sorcerer have known the whereabouts of the Teeth in Tarantia? He must have heard about it from someone. There had not been time to send a message by any of the usual means, and then for those priests to have arrived to take the crown from Tremont. But one wizard to another might have been able to do it—they have ways of communicating that we cannot comprehend. If there are mages competing for the Teeth, is it not reasonable to expect that the Aquilonian one might have sent an armed force after it, once the Stygians had taken it?”

  Donial listened to Kral’s theory with disbelief. Had they spent all this time at sea with people who were after the same thing they were—and would fight to keep it? But the more he considered Kral’s words, the more he realized that they made sense. Surely there could have been some other reason for Gorian’s hasty journey to Stygia. But any other reason would be almost too coincidental to be believed. Given the timing, and the nature of the expedition—especially, as Kral pointed out, the connection to some unknown Aquilonian mage—the obvious answer was most likely the correct one.

  Gorian and his men were here for the Teeth of the Ice Bear. And, since they had the assistance of some sorcerer—who had presumably told the Stygian responsible for its theft about the crown in the first place—they would have some idea where to find it.

  Not much to go on, he knew. But better than nothing, which was what they had had only moments before.

  “So we stay with them?” Mikelo asked, just as Donial was about to.

  “Yes,” Kral replied. “And when they find the crown, we take it instead.”

  “There are more of them, and better armed,” Donial said. “And they have magic on their side.”

  Kral chuckled, without humor. “Did I say it would be easy?”

  3

  KUTHMET WAS A day’s hike from the coast where they had landed. The sun blazed down on the little party, making Kral glad he was not, like the mercenaries, burdened by a shirt of mail, a helmet, and a shield in addition to his weapons. Though the sun of his Pictish homeland was rarely so hot, his flesh was still accustomed to its rays.

  With no time to lose, they had to take the chance of walking during the day. This was an unpopulated part of Stygia, the bulk of the nation’s people having made their homes in cities along the River Styx, where water was plentiful. Here there was nothing but buff-colored desert cut by low ridges of rock. Scrubby pale plants erupted from the dry ground here and there, most bearing thorns or long, spiky leaves. A few birds, primarily vultures, wheeled about in the cloudless sky. Lizards and small snakes sunned themselves on rocks or scuttled away at the approach of the group.

  Everyone carried as much water in skins and bladders as they could handle, since no one knew if there were oases between here and Kuthmet. Even if there were, those were the likeliest spots to run into Stygians, which they hoped to avoid.

  As they walked, Kral tried to subtly interrogate one of the mercenaries, a Corinthian named Galados. The man was leaner than most of the others, with a more cultured air than Kral expected from mercenaries. Or at least it seemed that way to him, although being a Pict, he realized he could have been mistaken about that part. The man seemed curious about him, though, and had asked him questions from time to time about Pictish customs and beliefs. He allowed Galados to begin the conversation now, answering a couple of questions about his clan’s hunting practices, then tried to turn the subject around.

  “How do you know that whatever you seek is in Kuthmet?” he asked. “Stygia is a big place, is it not?”

  “That it is,” Galados replied. “But as for how we know, I go where I am told. Gorian is the one who pays me, so Gorian decides my destination.”

  “Then Gorian is the man behind your whole expedition? Or does he represent someone else?”

  Galados smoothed down his brown mustache. He also wore a neatly trimmed, wedge-shaped beard. His eyes turned down slightly at the outside corners, giving him a sense of perpetual sadness. “He has a sponsor,” he said after a moment’s pause. “A magician of some sort, I’d wager. I know the man not at all, and saw him but once, ere we left Tarantia.”

  “So you are all in search of some object that a magician would value,” Kral pressed.

  “I am in search of the coins that Gorian agreed to pay, when the task is done,” Galados answered. “No less and no more.”

  Kral could tell that the man had answered all the questions about their mission that he was going to. But he had heard enough to confirm his suspicions. An Aquilonian mage was behind Gorian’s quest.

  It had to be the Teeth, then. No other explanation made sense.

  Before the Corinthian could question him further, Kral rejoined his friends. “They are definitely after the Teeth,” he said when he reached them. In hushed tones, he explained his reasoning.

  “How long will they let us stay with them?” Mikelo asked.

  “I know not,” Kral said. “But until they force us away we should stay close and try to learn whatever we can about their destination. Having narrowed it to Kuthmet is good. But this lot knows more than that, and if there is a way we can find out what they know, then the Teeth is as good as ours.”

  “I will try,” Mikelo offered. “They know that we have become friendly, these last several days. But they also know that before the Argosseans attacked your party, you knew me not. Perhaps I can persuade them that I would rather join their quest than yours.”

  “That could be dangerous, Mikelo,” Donial observed. “If you are found out.”

  “I know,” Mikelo replied. “But I see no better way to learn what they know.”

  Alanya considered for a m
oment. “It might be more believable if you had an argument with us. Some reason to want to leave our group and join theirs.”

  “That makes sense,” Mikelo said. “About what?”

  Alanya made a pondering face, but inspiration struck Kral. “Stop staring at her!” he shouted. He realized as he did that some of the anger he feigned was real—Mikelo did have a habit of gazing longingly at Alanya, and Kral found it annoying in the extreme. “You’re always staring at her, and she doesn’t like it!”

  Donial broke into a huge grin as he realized what Kral had started. “That’s right!” he added loudly. “My sister is sick of you, so just leave her alone!”

  Mikelo’s face collapsed. Kral thought the young Zingaran was about to cry. He still had not caught on. Perhaps it was the genuine emotion that Kral and Donial were expressing, or maybe the whole thing simply felt too real to him. Maybe he even thought the attention he had been paying to Alanya had gone unnoticed, until now.

  If that was the case, he was sadly deluded. Kral had not spoken with Alanya about it, but he and Donial were both aware of Mikelo’s feelings for her and had talked about it between themselves. He could not have been more obvious if he had tied himself to her with a scarlet sash.

  “Alanya will never love you,” Kral put in. “So you might as well give up.”

  Alanya had stopped dead, dumfounded. But as she watched the others, a sly smile crept across her lovely face. “Mikelo,” she said in a low whisper. “This is the fight you need. But you need to respond as well.”

  Mikelo’s visage noticeably brightened. Kral could see that he finally understood. “Well and good!” he shouted back. “If she truly feels that way, then I want nothing to do with her!” He balled his hands into fists and stomped on the ground in a fashion that Kral found overly dramatic. He hoped onlookers—for some of the mercenaries were watching now—did not realize he was performing for their benefit.

  After a few moments of glaring at the others, Mikelo stormed away. Kral, Alanya, and Donial watched him go, then turned back to one another, shrugging and pretending to make small talk. They could hear Mikelo ranting to the mercenaries when he reached them, but not what he said.