by Alec Hutson
“Your Highness, esteemed lords and generals. I have little experience planning for battles, but it seems to me that one must assume an old enemy will not make the same mistake twice. I have heard that a new Skein king rules in Nes Vaneth, and he may be a more wily foe than the last.”
D’Chorn’s face darkened at her words, but before he could respond the queen spoke.
“And I agree with you, Lady Numil. We must not underestimate our enemies.” She looked pointedly at d’Chorn before continuing. “But we must also be cautious, and be sure our strategy favors our strengths.” This she directed at d’Fershing. There was no censure in her tone, but both generals looked suitably chastened. “We will hold our horse back at first, but I want contingency plans devised for if the Skein do not behave as we expect. Tomorrow evening I want to know what we will do if they show uncharacteristic restraint and will not attack us first. We only have a few weeks’ worth of food, and with the Serpent behind us and little enough forage here we cannot wait the Skein out. That is something we must avoid at all costs. How will we draw them out in that scenario, or bring the fight to them, if we must?” She swept those assembled around the table with her gaze. “We will be encamped here for another day, so you have time to prepare. Now go.” She stood, splaying her white fingers on the gleaming black ebonwood. Willa pushed herself to her feet as everyone rose with the queen, wincing as a shard of pain jabbed into her spine. The cold of these lands seemed to inflame her old aches.
“Lady Numil. Vhelan. Lo-Ren. Stay with me for a moment longer.”
“Of course, Your Highness,” Willa said, ducking her head respectfully as the soldiers and magisters filed from the pavilion. Telion caught her eye, clearly unsure what he should do, and she motioned for him to go. The queen hadn’t explicitly said he should remain.
When it was just the four of them in the pavilion, save for the servants and guards, Cein closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. It was barely perceptible, but Willa thought she saw a softening in the queen’s mien, like she had unclenched the strands of authority gathered in her fist.
“That was well done,” the young magister – Vhelan – said lightly, taking a quick sip from his wine glass. “A subtle remonstration to both generals, so neither feels favored.”
The queen began to knead her temple, as if she was suffering from a headache. “They are both good men, and capable. But Lord d’Chorn still sees me as the girl that used to dash around Saltstone in a grass-stained dress, and Lord d’Fershing finds the idea of a young woman questioning his tactics outrageous.” She opened her eyes, meeting Willa’s gaze. “Thank you, Lady Numil. Your support was appreciated.”
Willa inclined her head at the queen’s words. “The pleasure is mine, Your Highness. Though if they do not value the advice of a young woman, I’m not certain they’ll put any more weight in what an old lady says.”
The queen gestured, and one of the servants scurried from the shadows bearing a crystal decanter and half-filled the empty cup in front of the queen with firewine. Cein stared for a long moment at the amber liquid as it roiled like the sky during a storm.
“They know you to be canny, Lady Numil. Since my grandfather’s reign you have outfoxed the ministers and spymasters of Dymoria. They respect your words, of that I am certain.”
Again, Willa ducked her head in appreciation, hoping that the warmth she felt at the queen’s praise wasn’t showing in her face.
“How are you faring?” the queen asked, picking up her glass but not yet taking a drink.
“Well enough, Your Highness. My old bones ache, but they ached in Lyr as well. At my age there are only degrees of discomfort, and this is not the worst I’ve felt.”
“Good,” the queen said, finally tasting the firewine. “I know an army on the march is not where you should be. But I value your advice. And you are the only other person I know who has seen them.”
Them. There was no doubt who she meant: the demon children that would bring about the end of the world, if what the Oracle had shown her was true. They were the reason Cein had brought her army into the Frostlands. The queen had glimpsed them here, in Nes Vaneth, through the scrying pool she had used to track the sorcerer who had escaped Saltstone.
The queen waved her hand to encompass the now-empty chairs. “We speak here of pikes and swords and horses, but the coming battle will likely be very different than what happened the last time I was in the north.”
“Do you think those demons will join the fight?”
The queen shrugged. “I do not know. My lack of understanding of what these things are and what they want concerns me greatly. Also, I do not know the extent of their powers. It is why I have brought almost my entire Scholia north. Only the apprentices and a handful of magisters remained in Herath. If those demons bring sorcery to the battlefield, they will be met with fire and fury unlike anything that has been seen since the cataclysms.”
The memory of black lightning scything from the child demons to fracture against the wards of the silver-haired sorceress came unbidden to Willa. She hoped these things would not accompany the Skein horde south.
“What are they doing in Nes Vaneth? Why have they allied with the northern barbarians?”
The queen tapped her fingers on the rim of her glass. For a long moment she was quiet, as if considering carefully what she should say. Then she half-rose from her chair, her hand going to the silver sword-hilt at her side, and with a single smooth movement she drew the sword from its sheath and laid it upon the ebonwood table.
Willa found that she was holding her breath. The sword was beautiful; she’d never seen its equal before. In the light of the hanging lanterns the steel seemed to have a faintly blueish cast, and runes were incised along its rippling length. The burning fire opal set in its exquisitely-wrought silver hilt looked like it could ransom an archon. Beyond simply the craftsmanship of the sword there seemed to be a weight to it, as if it was forged of some substance greater than merely metal.
“This was made in the holdfasts, perhaps even in Nes Vaneth.” The queen’s fingers traced the runes carved into the blade. She was gazing at the sword in something like awe. “There is more here than you can see, Lady Numil. Great sorcery is bound within this sword. Nothing like it has been fashioned in a thousand years.”
“Where did you get it?” Willa asked, having trouble looking away from the gleaming sword.
“It belonged to the sorcerer I imprisoned. The same one whose blood infused my scrying. He was Min-Ceruthan, an immortal from before the black ice swallowed the holdfasts.”
“You said he encountered the Shan demons in Nes Vaneth?”
The queen grimaced. “It was the last thing I saw before the link was severed. Jan had descended beneath the city and found a great chamber swirling with sorcery. Even through the scrying bowl I could feel the power.”
“So that was why he traveled north?”
“I believe so. When I first met him, he could not remember his past. But I helped bring his memories back.”
“And you think he was seeking out this lost sorcery of his people?”
The queen nodded, her slim white fingers tightening around the sword’s hilt. “But the demons were there first, and he was captured or killed. Perhaps whatever lurks in the ruins of Nes Vaneth is what these creatures will use to bring down the devastation the Oracle showed you in her temple.”
Willa kept her face carefully blank, but her thoughts raced down twisting corridors. When the queen had first told her she was going to bring her armies into the Frostlands, she had explained to Willa that she had discovered the whereabouts of the Shan demons that threatened the world. But now a worm of doubt was squirming in Willa’s mind.
Had Cein d’Kara marched into the Frostlands to destroy the unholy children . . . or to claim whatever great sorcery persisted in the ruins of Nes Vaneth? What were the limits of the Crimson Queen’s ambit
ion? Would her meddling in the magic of the ancients unleash the same doom the demons wished to bring about? A cold fist clenched her gut as she gazed across the table at Cein d’Kara. How far would she go to reclaim the lost sorceries? Would she risk the world itself?
Willa sought to change the subject before her concerns showed in her face. She shifted in her chair, reaching for something to ask the queen.
“I was curious, Your Highness. This, ah, this sorcerer. You said he was your prisoner, and he was freed by that Shan we saw in your scrying bowl. How did she do that? Was he not well guarded?”
Cein’s mouth twisted ruefully, and she shot a quick glance at Kwan Lo-Ren. “It was my mistake.”
“The Cho girl snuck past my Scarlet Guardsmen, my queen.”
Cein made a cutting motion with her hand, dismissing her captain’s words. “I was the one who decided to imprison Jan in the ruins of Ravenroost and not the bowels of Saltstone. I was . . . dangling him, like a lure on a hook. I hoped the sorceress who had led the shadowblades – the one who had challenged me that night – I hoped that she would come for him. I wove powerful sorceries into the stone of that tower to trap her . . . but in the end, it was not the sorceress who freed him.” She shook her head. “I erred, obsessing over these immortals and ignoring the fact that the ripples caused by the assault would attract the interest of others, not all of whom draw their strength from sorcery.”
“It was not what you foresaw, but he did lead you to the demons,” Willa reminded her. “And they are the true threat.” You do believe that, don’t you? We are not here to plunder the holdfasts, are we?
The queen smiled at her, but it did not seem to touch her eyes. “Of course.”
She had lived her life alone, and now she would die alone.
The Skein had dragged Jan from his cell two days ago. Cho Lin thought he had still been alive at that time, but since he had never returned, she had now given him up for dead. She should have felt some sadness about this, she knew, but it was as if the cold had leached all her emotions away. The despair and sorrow and anger that had once filled her had been replaced by an aching numbness.
When the prison’s door grated open, she was not flooded with fear or hope. She could not even bring herself to raise her head to see who had come. If it was Jan being brought back, it only meant his suffering had not yet ended. If it was her own death that had arrived, at least she would escape this place. And if it was the gaoler, she would have fresh bones to gnaw and water to drink.
Many boots scuffed the stone, and harsh Skein voices she did not recognize filled the chamber. With some effort she finally drew herself back from the darkness, struggling to focus on the figures clustered outside her cell. A key squealed in the lock, and for the first time in what seemed like forever the barred door swung wide.
Once, she would have leapt towards freedom, tearing at her captors like a wild tiger. But there was no strength left in her limbs. Even the Nothing had abandoned her, and she had proven herself unworthy of her family name. The Cho ancestors must be peering at her contemptuously from beyond the veil, ashamed of what she had become.
Rough hands grabbed beneath her arms and hauled her to her feet. Massive Skein warriors loomed on either side of her, keeping her upright. Another stood in front of her, smaller and slightly stooped, dressed in tattered black robes. The hands curled around the staff he leaned against were ancient and spotted, threaded with veins, but Cho Lin could not see the man’s face; he wore a mask stitched of many scraps of skin: some of the swatches were dark as pitch, others pale and cracked like marble. Ragged holes had been cut for his mouth and eyes, though she saw only shadows pooled beneath the mask.
A priest of the Skin Thief, the blackest of the Skein gods. Cho Lin had seen men like him before, when she had dwelt in the Bhalavan as a guest of the Stag thane. Only the White Worm welcomed the chosen of the Skin Thief, though even then the priests had not mingled on the benches or in the great hall.
The priest regarded her for a long moment; then he barked a command, and she was dragged stumbling from the cell. She tensed, trying to muster the strength to resist, but the hands clamped on her arms were like bands of iron.
Flickering torchlight illuminated ancient stone and broken statues looming from the darkness. Twisting passages weathered by the turning of countless ages flowed past as they forced her along. Then the ceiling opened up above her and she was once more in the great hall of the Bhalavan, the vast space filled with long tables and the tiered dais where the king and his entourage feasted. The benches were empty, the fire pits cold. She glimpsed huddled thralls recessed in the shadows, watching her fearfully as the Skein carried her through the silent hall.
Where was everyone? Even on the morning the king had returned from his great hunt, when nearly all the Skein had waited for him on the great avenue that cut through Nes Vaneth, the Bhalavan had not seemed so abandoned.
The priest stumped across the hall, leaning heavily on his staff, and the warriors holding Cho Lin followed. They slipped through the massive bronze doors, and the brightness of the day struck Cho Lin like a slap across the face. She blinked, her eyes burning after so many weeks in her cell with only a thin shaft of light trickling from a single narrow window. Her head reeled, her gorge rose, and if there was anything in her stomach she probably would have been sick. Around her sprawled the shattered white-stone ruins of Nes Vaneth, here and there pocked with gleaming chunks of the black ice that had swallowed the city. A winter storm must have raged while she’d been imprisoned, as fresh snow lay heavy over the city.
“Where are you taking me?” she rasped, her throat feeling like it was coated with crushed glass.
She hadn’t expected an answer – not many of these barbarians even spoke a southern tongue – but the priest in his tattered robes suddenly halted, turning back to her.
“He demands you,” the old Skein said in rough Menekarian, his frozen breath trickling from his mask’s mouth-slit.
“Who?”
“The servant of the Skin Thief. He spoke to me.” The fervor with which the priest said this chilled Cho Lin. “Soon he will wriggle inside your flesh and eat your soul, and I will be favored above all others for bringing him to you.”
The Betrayers. They must have decided to finally punish her for what her ancestor had done to them. The Sword of Cho was broken, and now the last daughter of Cho Xin would spill her life-blood in the snow.
They turned from the central artery that linked the distant collapsed gates to the Bhalavan, starting on a smaller road that wended between sundered pillars and the remnants of once-mighty buildings. This surprised her – she had been told several times that the Skein avoided going into the ruins of Nes Vaneth, believing the city haunted by the ghosts of the cursed people that had perished here long ago. Most of the barbarians instead dwelt in longhouses outside the tumbled walls, save for the king and his favored warriors, who ruled the Frostlands from the Bhalavan in the manner of the Min-Ceruthan sorceress queens of old.
Yet the priest was leading them deeper and deeper into the corpse of this dead city, wading through knee-deep drifts, muttering to himself in his twisted northern language.
A low roar came from further ahead, many voices speaking at once. The snow here was churned, as if a great number of people had passed this way recently. The footsteps funneled through a large doorway set into a high wall, still standing among the devastation. On the other side of this entrance Cho Lin saw movement, dark furs, and the glint of metal.
Again she strained to escape the warriors, but she was too weak. She controlled her breathing, reaching for the Nothing within the Self, praying to her ancestors to feel that flood of strength. She scrabbled helplessly, unable to find the calm and focus she needed.
Without hesitating, the priest of the Skin Thief preceded her through the entrance, and she was forced to follow.
They stood high up on
the lip of a great half-bowl sunk into the side of a slope. Tiered white-stone benches rippled down the side of the hill before dropping abruptly into a snowy pit bounded by stone walls. Dozens of Skein were clustered upon the benches, and a roar went up when those closest to the doorway saw her standing there. It looked like a place for the spring-blossom theater or the acrobatics that wandering troupes performed in Shan during the solstices. Though that sunken pit did not so much resemble a stage as . . .
An arena.
A lone figure stood in the center of the snow, and even from this distance Cho Lin could see who it was. The knot in her stomach tightened. The southerner’s head was tilted up, watching her, and though she couldn’t see his face she was sure he wore the same blank expression as when she had seen him before. There was no tension in the way he waited, as if whatever was to come this day was of no real consequence. But Cho Lin remembered the yearning hunger she had felt in the presence of this man; she knew he waited down there for her. And he meant to kill her.
“No, no,” she murmured, redoubling her efforts to tear herself from the Skein. Terror sluiced through her. This thing, this creature . . . it was not a man, of that she was certain. It was a servant of the Betrayers, enticed from whatever dark place they drew their power.
Laughter erupted from the watching Skein when they saw her feeble struggles. Cho Lin dug in her heels on the stone, but the warriors easily lifted her as they started to descend. She thrashed in their grip, trying to look anywhere but the demon in the pit, her eyes sliding over the jeering Skein as she desperately searched for any who would help her.
There! A familiar face within the crowd.
“Verrigan!” she cried when she caught sight of the Stag captain. He had saved her from the wraiths in the Frostlands, then brought her to Nes Vaneth and vouched for her before his thane. They had ridden together over those endless frozen leagues, sharing stories of life in the north and the south. He had been kind to her. A friend.
