Dawn of the Ice Bear

by Jeff Mariotte

  Outside, ice driven by screaming winds pounded the hut like a thousand fists. Conor’s meal, the furs on the walls, and the fire he kept carefully tended maintained a steady temperature inside, and Kral was warmer and more comfortable than he had been since they’d left Stygia. He was weary, and the idea of sleep appealed to him. But getting the teeth back had boosted his energy. He sat in Conor’s chair and worked the teeth into place, twisting the fine copper wire, originally crafted so many generations ago, around the roots to hold them.

  As he worked, he felt the weight of history, of responsibility, pressing down on him. Retrieving the crown from Shehkmi al Nasir had been an accomplishment, but tempered by the fact that some of the teeth were missing. Now that he finally had them all, he knew the moment of decision was upon him.

  Mang waited back at the Bear Clan village to take over as Guardian of the Teeth, his proper role as village elder. The best thing Kral could do would be to leave now—or in the morning at the latest—and rush the crown back to the cave. He didn’t know how long the storm would continue, and from the sound of it, Conor had not exaggerated its intensity. But he could not stay penned up here in Cimmeria while some unknown disaster loomed over all the Pictish people.

  Alanya would not want to go back into the Pictish wilderness, though. Despite having shed the delicate skin of civilization, her rightful place was in Tarantia. To fulfill his obligation to his people meant giving her up, probably forever. With so few members of the Bear Clan left, he would have to stay at the village to protect the Guardian’s cave once the crown was back.

  The thought of it made him cringe inwardly. He had grown used to being with her. They had never so much as shared a kiss, but he felt as if letting her go would mean losing the best friend he’d ever had—and maybe more. Maybe the woman who could make him happy for the rest of his life. Would he ever find her like again? She was so different from the Pictish girls he had known, not just physically, but in every way. He supposed that some of what he valued in her, ironically, came about because of her civilized upbringing.

  Kral held the finished crown in his hands, feeling an odd vibration from it, a kind of thrum of untapped power. As he did, he looked at his friends, sleeping in the glow of Conor’s fire. Each of them would gladly have sacrificed everything for his quest—as Mikelo had. He was pleased that the others had not been asked to give their lives. Now, it seemed, only one danger remained—the weather. And if he left now, while they slept, then they would not have to face that one. Conor could help them back to Aquilonia when the storm had passed.

  He knew that Conor had warned them against trying to travel during the storm. But perhaps he had simply been trying to spare the civilized ones—and Tarawa, accustomed only to hot climates. A Pict could navigate any kind of weather, Kral believed. With another quick glance around to make sure the others were all sleeping, he went to the door and opened it, just a crack, to take a look at this supposedly impassable storm.

  And when he did, he saw three hooded Stygians looking back at him.

  THE BATTLE FOR Tanasul wasn’t won yet, but Klea was sure the tide had turned. She ran through the streets with her fellow warriors, brandishing a spear that had already been blooded numerous times and looking for more soldiers to use it on.

  All Pictish women would fight if their homes were attacked, and most had no problem with hunting for meat and skinning what was caught. But few went on offensive missions like this one. Klea had found, though, that her time as the “Ghost of the Wall,” mounting solitary attacks against Koronaka, had given her a taste for battle that could not be easily set aside. She felt more at ease with the warriors now than she did with the women who stayed behind, tending to fires, families, and food. They did not know the terrifying thrill of painting their faces and sneaking into the midst of their enemies, with only their own skills, stealth, and strong arms standing between themselves and certain death. They had never felt the power of the kill, knowing that the life of another human was theirs for the taking.

  So she went over the wall with the other warriors, and already four soldiers had fallen before her tonight. It was as if she could feel her own blood coursing through her veins, as if her senses were alive in a way they only were when she was in the thick of action. The soldiers had fallen back from this section of wall, giving it over to the Pictish hordes.

  Her comrades thinned out as they worked their way deeper into Tanasul, branching out into different streets. Klea found herself on a quiet lane with three others. They had tried another street, but found it clogged with women and children, noncombatants, cringing in terror at the Pictish advance. Instead of wasting time with them, they had tried a few side streets, looking for the soldiers who had run back this way.

  The whole town smelled of smoke and blood and the sweat of unwashed mobs afraid for their lives. Klea tried to breathe through her mouth as she hurried through it, longing for the clean air of the forest. An unbelievably cold wind whistled through the streets as if joining with the Pict warriors, and that wind was the only thing that kept Klea from choking on the stench surrounding her.

  Suddenly seven soldiers erupted from an arched doorway, swords flashing in the moonlight. The nearest Pict went down immediately, fountaining blood from the neck. Another fell back, stabbed through the chest. Klea thrust her spear into the midst of the armored men. It grazed metal but did not pierce flesh. The Pict beside her swung a war club at the closest soldier. It connected with his helmet, and the man crumpled.

  In just moments, Klea stood alone, facing three soldiers. Before her, a wounded Pict lay on the ground, clawing at the paving stones. He would live, she thought, if she could get him help. But the soldiers would as soon see both of them dead.

  She weighed her chances. Three, and all of them wearing mail shirts and helmets, armed with short swords and a single halberd.

  Her, in ragged skins with her spear, its edge dulled by use. A bone knife at her belt.

  They were soldiers, though. Aquilonians, most likely, or some such who had thrown in with them. Civilized folk.

  And Klea was Pict.

  Shrieking a war cry, spear clutched in her fists, she charged.

  A flashing web of steel. She felt her spear penetrate mail, felt pliant flesh and organs beneath it. Heard the cries of those she wounded. Smelled their fear, the fresh blood that spattered on her.

  Barely felt, in her bloodlust, the cuts, the stabs. Steel opening her skin, her veins.

  As the life ran out of her, as her soul prepared for its final journey, to the Mountains of the Dead, Klea knew that she died as a Pict and that her soul would not travel alone.

  “CONOR!”

  Kral knew he would only have time to call one name, so he chose the one likeliest to rouse everyone. He was standing in the doorway, holding the Teeth of the Ice Bear, and the three Stygians advanced upon him. He barely noticed that the snow and ice melted where their feet touched the ground. He could not close the door—some force seemed almost to have paralyzed him on the spot.

  Behind him, commotion told him that the others were awake. “Crom’s blood!” Conor swore. Tarawa added something in Kushite that Kral couldn’t understand. He heard steel clearing scabbards, then the spell that held him in place broke.

  “We would have the crown,” one of the Stygians said. His voice was deep, sonorous, and Kral realized he could understand the words although he could not have said what language they were spoken in. The hooded men were interchangeable, as far as he was concerned—of similar size and coloration. They could have been the acolytes he had seen deliver the crown to al Nasir, with a new one added to replace the one the mage had killed, or three different ones of the same type.

  Kral still held the crown in front of him, with both hands. From behind, he felt Conor nudge past him, then Tarawa and Donial. Alanya stopped at his side. Each of them held a sword.

  “Think you that steel is a threat to us?” one of the acolytes asked.

  “If you live, it can
gut you,” Conor answered. He charged them, swinging his huge broadsword with a stroke that would have sliced the head off a bull. But the frontmost Stygian waved his fingers at Conor and uttered a few incomprehensible syllables, and Conor stopped short. He screamed and dashed his weapon to the ground. His sword had become a red-and-black-striped serpent, which flicked its tongue at him and wriggled off across the ice.

  “Again, we would have the crown,” the acolyte repeated.

  Kral’s mind whirled. He could not let them have it. But so far the Stygians had only performed their magic against a weapon. He had seen what it could do to a person, in al Nasir’s temple hideaway. If he did not give them the Teeth, then his friends would surely die—and he, as well. Then who would protect the crown from them?

  No, he thought. No matter the price, he would not turn it over. If he went down, at least it would be holding a weapon, and with some Stygian blood on his hands. Having nothing better to do with the crown while he drew his sword, he lifted it and set it on his own head.

  Scarcely had the sacred crown touched Kral’s scalp when the world fell away beneath him, spinning, a whirl-wind of color and sound and smell where moments before had only been fields of white, the Stygians, and his friends. He seemed to spin faster, ever faster, the colors blurring into solid black, then it was all gone, Cimmeria and Conor’s hut and the ice, Alanya and Donial, Tarawa, everything that had been there had vanished, and Kral found himself in . . .

  ... where?

  SMOOTH ROCK UNDER his feet, solid and unyielding. Kral took comfort from that. The feel of a stone floor was familiar, at least.

  Nothing else was.

  He seemed to be in a cavern, but one impossibly vast. He could see one wall, stretching toward what should have been sky. No stars shone there in the darkness, though, and from the shadows he could see what appeared to be the bottoms of stalactites, looking wet in the dim distance. The wall was also stone, but looked slick, viscous. All the colors of the rainbow were trapped within its layered surface. Kral turned, slowly, but the other walls were as far away as the ceiling. All was dark. He sniffed the air and found that it reminded him of the aftermath of lightning. The only sound was his own heavy breathing.

  On an impulse, he reached up. The Teeth of the Ice Bear still rested on his head.

  “Hello?” he asked. Then, louder. “Hello!”

  They came into view gradually, as if a lantern were being turned toward them. Or else his eyes were just growing accustomed to the dark. But one minute he could see nothing, and the next, he could see men. Picts.

  First two, then ten, then a thousand. Ten thousand. More, in numbers beyond counting.

  They were ranked against the far, dark walls, where he knew his vision could not penetrate. They filled the cavern before him. They stood where he did—when he moved his hand, it passed through them. They milled about, their bodies without substance, walking through him as if he was not even there.

  Ghosts, then.

  “Where am I?” Kral demanded, even though he thought he already knew.

  “Where do you think?” a voice asked.

  He looked for the speaker, in the midst of all the others. And saw him. He stood in a line with four others, not far away, on a kind of dais. A golden glow fell on those five, although not on the rest. Of all the Picts Kral could see, only these five looked at him with anything like awareness, recognition.

  The five—two women, three men—all wore cloaks of fur worked through with filaments of silver and gold, and decorated with multicolored feathers bigger than any ever worn by eagle or vulture, in Kral’s experience.

  “I think . . . I fear that I am dead,” Kral said. “The Stygians have slain me.”

  One of the women smiled, as if Kral had told a joke. “Wrong,” she said. “Not far off, but wrong nonetheless.”

  “Enough riddles, then,” Kral said, anger bubbling up in him. “If I am not dead, then tell me where I am!”

  “You are, as I believe you suspect, inside the Mountains of the Dead,” one of the men told him. “But you are not yourself dead.”

  “Then why . . . ?” he began, confused. “And what gods are you?”

  “No gods at all,” the woman who had spoken before answered. “We are your ancestors, Kral. A thousand years after our deaths—or more—you came from our children and our children’s children. That, and the fact that you wear the Teeth of the Ice Bear crown, are the reasons that we can talk to you. We know of your quest, and now you have succeeded in retrieving and making whole the sacred crown.”

  The man took up the narrative. “But we must warn you that time is short. The Ice Bear is on the move, and all Pictdom is in jeopardy.”

  “The Ice Bear?” Kral echoed.

  “You have seen the storm that rages down from the north,” the man said. “It shows no sign of lessening in power or severity as it moves south, out of Vanaheim and Cimmeria. This can only be the result of the Ice Bear’s reawakening because the crown was taken from its rightful place.”

  “But . . . if it has already begun,” Kral asked, “then can anything be done to stop it?”

  “It can be stopped,” the woman said. She had an expression of the utmost contentment on her face, as if there were no brewing crisis at all. “Here is what you must do. . . .”

  AGAIN THE NAUSEATING spinning sensation, the vertiginous whirl of color and light. When his feet were back on solid ground, Kral felt a sudden sensation of cold and realized that, while he had been at the Mountains of the Dead—if in fact it had not just been a strange, waking dream—he had been briefly out of the elements.

  But when his vision cleared, he realized he was right back where he had been, and no time at all had passed. The Stygians glared at him and his friends. The snake that had been Conor’s broadsword was still in sight, slithering away. Alanya’s arm brushed against his. Had he really been away?

  “We would—”

  “I know!” Kral interrupted. “You would have the crown. Well, I would not give it to you, so you will just have to do without.”

  The Stygian in front began to raise his hand toward Kral, as he had done toward Conor’s sword. Kral knew that whatever he had in mind would not be good. He had only seconds, if that, to decide if he would follow the instructions given to him by his ancestors.

  He knew, too, that Mang was the right person to take over as Guardian of the teeth. Mang was the village elder now. He deserved the role and was expecting it. But if Kral were to try to deliver the crown to the cave, it would likely never make it. He didn’t have the magic to defeat these Stygians, and it looked as if steel alone would not do the job.

  But Alanya! He would never see her again.

  He looked at her. Her clear blue eyes, her golden hair reddened by henna, her creamy skin. More than anything, he wanted, at that moment, to draw her into his arms, to feel the warm bulk of her body against his, to taste her cherry lips.

  “Kral . . . ?” she asked, surprised by his sudden, intense gaze.

  “Alanya . . .” He couldn’t finish the thought. Not for the first time, his grasp of the Aquilonian language failed him when it was most important to choose the right words.

  But ultimately, there were no words that would help. He snatched the crown off his own head. Turned it over, so the jagged teeth faced down. As two of the Stygians broke into a run, trying to grab it while they could, and the other one finished whatever spell he planned to use, Kral jammed the crown back down on his head, upside down. The teeth gouged his flesh. Blood ran from the lacerations, streaking down his face, his neck.

  And then darkness. . . .

  23

  ALANYA’S STOMACH LURCHED.

  One moment, Kral was there, facing al Nasir’s acolytes. The next, a strange sensation swept through her, but it was nothing she could define. Then everything seemed normal again, but after sharing a brief glance, Kral had reversed the crown on his head, ripping his own flesh in the process.

  And then . . .

 
And then he was just gone. “Kral!” she shouted. She heard Donial and Tarawa both call him as well.

  The Stygians stopped in their tracks, staring, snow and ice turning to liquid beneath their feet. One of them uttered something that sounded like a curse, except she realized she could no longer understand their words. Tarawa rushed them, her steel lashing out like sudden lightning. She drove it through the nearest one’s heart, then wrenched it free and swung at the next. Alanya saw the third prepare to cast some kind of spell, but before she could even react, Donial was there with his own sword. Almost as one, he and Tarawa struck down the remaining two Stygians. Where their blood ran, the snow steamed.

  Once they had fallen, an almost supernatural quiet descended. Three dead men melting the snow. Kral, disappeared.

  Alanya felt a deep, powerful sense of loss. She seemed to know, somehow, that he was not coming back. A tear sprang to her eye, and she wiped it away, lest it freeze there.

  “Where did he go?” Tarawa asked.

  “You saw what we did,” Donial reminded her.

  “Accursed Stygian magic,” Conor said, snarling at the dead acolytes. “Where have you sent him?”

  Alanya put a restraining hand on the big Cimmerian. “It wasn’t them,” she said.

  “How do you know? You can’t trust a Stygian,”

  “I just . . . I just do,” Alanya replied. “I cannot tell you how, but I’m certain of it. Kral is where he needs to be.”

  “What does that mean?” Donial asked. “Where he needs to be?”

  “Back at the . . . at that cave? Where the crown came from?” Tarawa guessed.

  “I think so,” Alanya said. “That’s the only thing that make sense to me.”