Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga)

by Gail Z. Martin

  “Sounds like a formidable lady,” Dawe said, bending to retrieve another bit of iron.

  Blaine nodded. “She loved my brother and sister and I fiercely, and after our mother died, she did the best she could to protect us.” He sighed. “What happened wasn’t her fault. No one could control father.” He paused. “What about you? We’ve been so busy running for our lives since we got back, I don’t even know what the rest of you need to do now that we’re home again.”

  “My wife ran off with another man not long after I was sent to Velant,” Dawe said, kicking at stones to free a small iron bar. “That was the one letter I received.” He gathered a few more rusted pieces, and then straightened. “Verran’s sister died of the pox before we got our Tickets of Leave. We’ve been talking, Verran, Piran, Kestel, and me. None of us left anyone behind, not that would care. We came back to help you save the magic, and that’s what we aim to do. Like it or not, Mick, you’re stuck with us.” And with Geir, Blaine thought.

  Dawe and Blaine walked back to the rest of the group in silence. Dawe clapped him on the shoulder. “Get some sleep, Mick. I’ll take first watch. It’ll give me a chance to fiddle around with the metal I found and think about what I’ll make of it.” He grinned. “I’ve got the idea of the thing pretty well worked out in my head. By the time I can get a forge fired up, I ought to be able to get it built.” He paused. “Geir’s gone to ground in the storage bins, but he said we could count on him being ready to go just after sunset.”

  “I have the feeling we’ll need your invention sooner than we think,” Blaine said with a yawn, suddenly exhausted. “Wake me when it’s my shift,” he added, finding a spot near the others to stretch out. Aching in every muscle from the ride as well as from the fight with Reese’s men, Blaine was asleep almost immediately.

  It felt to Blaine as if he had just finished his shift at watch and gotten settled when a voice roused him.

  “Get up!”

  It was the alarm in Geir’s voice as much as the command that roused Blaine. Anything that alarmed a talishte was worthy of attention. “What’s wrong?” Blaine asked, getting to his feet and grabbing his sword. Piran and the others were also struggling to wake.

  Blaine looked out over the ruined stone wall. Night had fallen. A full moon hung just above the horizon, but tonight it was blood red, with an eerie white ring. A swath of crimson light below it cast a bloody path to the horizon. Between the moon and the horizon, the sky seemed unnaturally dark.

  “That darkness is a magic storm,” Geir said. “You’ve got to get below, into the granary bins, until it passes over us. Go!”

  A rush of adrenaline drove the last of sleep from Blaine’s mind as he and the others gathered their few possessions and headed for the hole in the floor where Geir had taken his daytime rest. There was no ladder, so Blaine and Piran were the first to swing down, letting themselves drop a few feet to the packed ground below. Dawe and Verran lowered Kestel, then swung down themselves, followed by Geir, who appeared to levitate down effortlessly, drawing the warped wooden trapdoor into place overhead.

  “What now?” Piran asked.

  “We wait,” Geir replied. “You’re just lucky that the storm came when one of us was awake to spot it.”

  They fell silent, huddled in the farthest corner of the cramped bin. A distant rumbling, like the sound of an army approaching at full gallop, grew louder, then became deafening. The air in the bin was alive with energy, the way Blaine had felt once when he’d narrowly missed being struck by lightning. His skin prickled with warning, the fine hairs on his arms and on the back of his neck stood up, and the air had an odd tang that left a bitter taste in the back of his mouth.

  Overhead, it sounded as if large rocks pummeled the barn floor, and Blaine wondered whether their ramshackle shelter could withstand the assault. Wind howled, and the air grew heavy around them. A sudden headache made Blaine reel, and he reached a hand out to steady himself against the side of the bin. His vision blurred with the pain, and his ears throbbed as if they might burst from pressure.

  As Blaine watched, the air in the small chamber began to glow, glistening like snow crystals on a bitter winter’s day. The air grew colder, then frigid. The glistening crystals cast a cold light that illuminated their hiding place. The light gradually changed from clear to a rainbow of shades, rippling and arcing like the Spirit Lights Blaine had seen in the far north of Edgeland. The mist began to swirl around them though the air in the bin had been stuffy and still.

  Forms began to appear in the glistening, shifting air. At first, the images were abstract, difficult to make out. Gradually, they grew clearer. Glowing eyes in baleful faces took form amid shimmering particles. Bent and gnarled shapes with long, sharp claws growled as if to attack. Disembodied spirits loomed up from the mist, shadow people with long, grasping arms. Finally in the nightmare shapes, Blaine saw the face of his father. The face that appeared to him was not that of the older man that Blaine had killed. Instead it was the image of a younger Ian McFadden, disfigured with rage, the way he had looked to Blaine as a young boy.

  Blaine had no idea whether others saw the same shapes he did, but by their expressions, they, too, saw horrors. He was willing to wager that whatever the nightmares the others saw, none but he was visited by the image of Ian McFadden.

  Beside him, Kestel cried out in pain and collapsed. A moment later, Dawe groaned and fell to one side. Their bodies twitched and bucked as if possessed. Kestel’s face twisted in pain, and Dawe’s features grew tight and his breathing shallow. Verran said nothing, but he fell over as if poleaxed and lay very still.

  Blaine fought the headache and the growing pressure that made it difficult to breathe, but in the end, he fell to his knees and then collapsed as consciousness faded. He had no idea how long he was out, but he came around slowly and heard voices nearby.

  Blaine groaned and struggled to sit. Geir helped him up.

  “Do you feel it?” Blaine asked, breathing slowly and deeply against the throbbing pain in his head.

  “Yes,” Geir replied. “In my blood.”

  “Blood?”

  “It burned like fire in every vein,” Geir said, his voice tight with pain. “The old magic of the Dark Gift fights the rogue power of the storm. If I weren’t as old as I am, it could destroy me.”

  Slowly, Blaine’s headache began to ease, retreating from his skull little by little and returning both vision and the ability to think clearly.

  No one spoke for a while. Blaine had no idea how long the storm had taken. He rested against the stone wall, afraid to move for fear of bringing back the awful pain. They waited in silence. The air in the bin had grown stuffy with their breath and sweat, despite how cold it was outside. Finally, Geir stood. He levitated up to the top of the bin and threw the wooden panel back. Sweet, fresh, cold air swept into the bin, chilling after the unnatural warmth of being huddled in such a small space.

  Moonlight filtered into the bin. In the faint light, Blaine could see that Kestel lay near him, but her features had relaxed and her breathing was now regular.

  Dawe blinked several times and sat up, with Piran’s assistance. “I didn’t feel this bad when Prokief had me stuffed in the Hole,” he said in a strangled voice.

  “Count yourself lucky that you survived,” Geir replied. “Had we not been able to take shelter belowground, at least some—if not all—of us might have died.”

  Verran groaned and rolled over on his side, managing to sit up without help. He let out a potent curse. “Torven’s horns! How can a storm leave me feeling as if I’ve been turned inside out?”

  “Because these storms have the power to do just that,” Geir replied.

  Kestel was the last to rouse. It was rare for Kestel to show weakness, unless she feigned distress to gain the advantage of a mark. Now her skin was pale and pain glinted in her eyes.

  “I don’t need help,” Kestel protested as both Blaine and Piran gently eased her to a sitting position, though the fact that
she accepted their assistance gave the lie to her words.

  “Are you all right?” Verran asked.

  Kestel gave a weak nod. “By the stars and the gods, I’ve never felt anything like that, not even when I’d been poisoned.”

  “You were poisoned?” Piran asked, glancing at her sideways.

  Kestel made a dismissive gesture. “It was a long time ago, at court. I survived.”

  “Obviously.”

  Geir held out his hand to Piran. “I’ll get you up to the top,” he said. “I’d like a fighter up first, just in case,” he said. Piran nodded, taking his meaning.

  Blaine was next. A few moments more, and Geir had retrieved the rest of the party from the bin. Geir kicked the door shut and walked over to where Blaine and Piran stood.

  “Let’s see what the storm made of our horses,” Geir said tersely.

  They had slept through the day in the safety of the barn before the storm struck just after sunset. Now they looked across the moonlit landscape at terrain that had changed dramatically since they sought shelter the day before. Balls of ice larger than a man’s fist littered the ground, thick as fallen leaves. Trees had been uprooted, split down the middle, burned as if by lightning or just reduced to a scattering of wood chips. The far corner of the stone barn had also collapsed, and the remnants of its roof had torn away completely.

  Piran wrapped a rag from the barn around a broken board and struck flint to steel to light the makeshift torch. He held it aloft, giving them a better look at the devastation. Verran made a second torch and lit it from the blazing rag.

  “Dear gods above and below. Look there,” Kestel said in a strangled voice, pointing to a bloody heap. Blaine ventured closer and found what was left of one of their horses. At first, Blaine thought the animal had been skinned alive, but when he dared venture closer, he saw that it had been mangled.

  “What about the other horses?” Piran asked.

  “Over here,” Verran shouted, scouting around to the other side of the barn. In a copse of trees outside of the circle of damage inflicted by the storm, the other five horses grazed peacefully, totally unscathed.

  Scattered across the ruined landscape, Blaine saw grisly examples of the storm’s effects on living creatures. Pieces of the ruined barn roof had been flung with such violence that they were impaled through the trunks of trees. Formerly level ground had buckled into a rippling obstacle course, and large rocks had been thrust up from below the ground’s surface.

  “Can you bring a torch over here?” Dawe called. Piran and Blaine walked to where Dawe bent to look at a small carcass. “That’s interesting,” he said, pointing to the dead bird. “It’s a coteril, a bird that only lives in the high mountains in the north of Donderath. I heard a man, an adventurer, talk about them once. They don’t migrate out of their area. But look,” he said, sweeping his arm around the circle of devastation. “There are dozens of them.”

  Geir walked up behind them. “No one knows how the magic storms work, but what you’re seeing isn’t uncommon. Things disappear in the storms and are never seen again. People and animals, too. But it’s just as common for the storm to set down the bodies of strange animals, people no one knows, and plants that grow nowhere in the vicinity. Once or twice, the person left behind by the storm has been alive.”

  “Could they say what happened to them?” Dawe asked.

  Geir shook his head. “Nothing coherent. The most anyone could coax out of them was a name or a place and ramblings about the lights. It was enough to prove that they’d been taken by the storm a great distance from where they appeared. Unfortunately, the experience drove them mad, so there was very little useful information to be gained from them.”

  Blaine stared at the clear line between the storm-damaged circle and the unaffected land just beyond it. “How often do the storms come?” he asked.

  “There’s no predicting them,” Geir replied. “But I can tell you that they’re happening more frequently with each month that passes.”

  “Is the magic trying to heal itself?” Dawe asked.

  Geir shrugged. “Perhaps. Maybe, left to itself, the energies will balance themselves and the storms will cease. But with the storms happening more often and in growing strength, none of us may be alive to see that day.”

  “Is it safe to travel to Glenreith?” Blaine felt restless, impatient. Whether it was the aftereffects of nearly dying or just a wish to end the uncertainty about his home and family, he could not be sure. All he knew was that he was anxious to get moving.

  Geir nodded. “As safe as anything is these days on the Continent. It’s not impossible for more than one storm to pass through an area in a short time, but it is uncommon. We’d best get going. Storms aren’t the only danger, and the longer we stay still, the more likely it is for another problem to find us.”

  “But we’re short a horse,” Dawe protested.

  “I’ll leave the horses for you,” Geir said with a trace of a smile. “I can move as quickly as a horse, though it drains me and I’ll need to feed more often.” At Dawe’s worried look, Geir’s smile widened. “Don’t worry. I can find suitable animal ‘donors,’ unless we run into a deserving brigand or two. And with all the farm animals running free, it shouldn’t take long to find a replacement for the horse.” He looked up at the sky. “I’m more concerned about making sure we’ve got shelter before dawn. Best we get going.”

  Blaine began to recognize landmarks, confirming that they were getting close to Glenreith. He grew quiet the closer they got to his old home, letting the others keep up the conversation. Doubts gnawed at him, making him question whether or not going to Glenreith was a good idea. Kestel said nothing, but she had let her horse drop back to ride beside him, and he suspected that she guessed the direction of his thoughts.

  Twice they left the road at Geir’s warning to circle cross-country to avoid small groups of armed men. Both times, they were able to dodge the patrols without incident, but after the second time, Geir led them off the main road to a wagon trail that was hardly more than a path. Doing so slowed their progress, but there were no further sightings, and the patrols appeared to have remained on the main highway.

  “A few candlemarks’ ride and we should be at Glenreith,” Blaine said at last. He looked at Geir. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to circle around to high ground before we ride up to the manor.” Blaine pointed to a rise in the distance. “I’d rather know how much of it is standing, and whether brigands have taken over.”

  Geir nodded. “It would be good to know if it’s inhabited, or even habitable.” He met Blaine’s gaze. “And even better if we can assure that its residents are who you believe them to be.”

  Although it broke Blaine’s heart to admit, it was quite possible that his family was dead, and that the manor stood empty or was claimed by squatters. “We’ll know soon enough,” Blaine said tightly, mounting up.

  Before long, they reached the crest of the hill. Clouds hid the moon, and Blaine was thankful that they would not be silhouetted against the sky atop the rise. He dismounted and walked with Geir up to the edge of the overlook, staying low so as not to be seen from below.

  “It looks like some buildings survived while others didn’t,” Geir observed.

  In the valley below them, Blaine saw the manor compound. Glenreith’s original manor house, abandoned long before Blaine’s birth but still standing when he left for Velant, was now a heap of rubble, as were the old outbuildings and the ancient fortifications. The “new” estate, which was farther from the river, had been built over one hundred years ago. It was still standing, along with the stables and dependencies and a high, solid wall that encircled them. The buildings that remained and the wall were several centuries newer than the original manor. The high wall around the perimeter of Glenreith’s grounds was also standing—a good thing, since at that moment, there was a force of twenty armed men camped outside the manor’s gates. “Damn.” Blaine swore under his breath.

  �
��Any idea whose men those are?” Blaine asked, an angry undercurrent in his voice.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say Pollard’s,” Geir replied. “They’re not wearing livery. We’ve seen more militia units since the Great Fire. Most of them are nothing but brigands.” He paused, straining for a better view in the faint moonlight, and Blaine wondered just how much the talishte’s more acute vision and hearing could make out.

  “It appears to be a small occupation,” Geir said. “They don’t look bent on attacking. There aren’t any catapults or battering rams. Odd. They just seem to be waiting for something.”

  “Or someone?” Piran asked with a glance toward Blaine.

  Blaine frowned. “Pollard thought he’d taken care of me back in Edgeland, remember? Unless he had a spy on the ship…” He paused, thinking. “One of the talishte we fought at Penhallow’s crypt made a comment about how I ‘should have stayed in Velant.’ ”

  He shook his head. “If Pollard knows I’m back, it’s not unlikely to assume I’d return to Glenreith.”

  “Whoever they are, they’re not friends,” Geir replied tersely. “And if we want into the manor, we’re going to need to take care of the problem.”

  “There are twenty of them,” Dawe protested.

  Geir grinned, making his long eyeteeth plain. “Good odds for us, I’d say.” He grew serious. “They don’t seem to be worried about attacking; seems to me, they’re focused on keeping everyone bottled up within the walls. We could be on them before they know we’re even here.”

  Piran nodded. “We’re fairly well armed. It’s several candlemarks yet before dawn. I’m with Geir. I think we can take them.”

  Blaine considered the situation for a moment. “What if they’ve got talishte, too? I’ve had my fill of fighting vampires.”

  Geir looked back toward the encampment, his eyes narrowing as he thought. “If they were talishte, they would have already struck. It’s nighttime. They have no reason to wait. They wouldn’t have to break down the gate; they could fly over it. And there’s precious little cover. Talishte wouldn’t play a waiting game. They’d take a small force and strike quickly.” His smile became predatory. “As we will do.”