by K. M. Shea
“Get away!” Rakel shouted, her magic ripping from her. The temperature fell, but all her panicked mind knew was darkness and silence…until something moved.
It wasn’t so much that she could see it as she could sense it. It was an evil presence, one so vile its nearness choked her.
“No!” Rakel screamed. Her magic surged, and she pushed it out from her.
Whatever the presence was, her magic didn’t affect it. It strolled around her, sauntering closer—like a predator circling wounded prey.
Rakel pushed more and more of her magic into the surrounding area. She created ice daggers in her panic—though she couldn’t see them—and pelted them into the ground around her. Several hit her, drawing pain.
The thing grew larger, stirring air as it laughed noiselessly.
She screamed, throwing out as much of her magic as she could.
A smaller hand grabbed her arm. Rakel recoiled and would have blasted it with her magic, but something metal was thrust into her hands. Her fingers traced it, and she recognized the ugly bug-like shape through touch alone.
“Phile?” Rakel asked, shivering so much her teeth chattered.
Phile hugged her. Her warmth and her familiar scent of gingerbread briefly drove away whatever it was that shared the darkness with Rakel.
When Phile pulled back, she took Rakel’s wrists and placed her hands on a warm, solid, breathing surface.
The thing slithered behind her, and Rakel whipped around. “Phile,” she whispered, still unable to hear her own voice. “There’s something here with me.”
Whoever held her pulled Rakel until her back was flush against their chest.
Rakel struggled, but the new person placed one of her hands on the hilt of a sword that thrummed with power. “F-Farrin?”
Farrin held her, his grasp gentle.
Rakel trembled like a leaf in a windstorm as whatever it was—she still couldn’t sense a shape—reached out and grasped her throat. She choked, scratching at her neck, searching for fingers that weren’t there.
Her magic exploded—surging to protect her from the threat. She knocked Farrin away—his warmth disappeared like a lamp being blown out—but the thing remained. It grew harder and harder to breathe.
When she couldn’t bear it anymore and thought her lungs would collapse, someone clasped her limp hands.
“Princess!”
The darkness shattered; the presence evaporated; Rakel took in gasps, the cold air grating her raw lungs. Liv—gazing into Rakel’s starved eyes like the most beautiful thing in the world—squeezed her hands and searched Rakel’s face. “Can you hear me?”
Rakel nodded and kept gasping as she sagged to her knees.
Liv knelt with her and wrapped an arm around her. “Princess, I’m so glad.”
“Little Wolf,” Phile said, dropping to the ground next to them. She sported a few cuts and was a little out of breath, but her smile was just as easy as ever.
The three of them sat huddled for a moment, and Rakel recovered her wits enough to look around her.
She was still in the east flower gardens—or what used to be the flower gardens. Trees were coated with inches of ice—the smallest were encased like bugs floating in tree sap. Most of the hedges had been savagely ripped apart by glaciers and ice spikes as big as cottages. It was cold—cold enough that Rakel suspected it was uncomfortable for Liv and Phile to breathe—and the palace was glazed with ice. Ice swords were impaled in the ground, and some of the paths had bowed and buckled so badly under the pressure of Rakel’s ice that they resembled stairs more than a path.
“What happened?” Farrin asked.
Phile leaped to her feet, standing protectively in front of Rakel, but she needn’t bother. When Rakel had hit him with her last wave of power, she had slammed him into a glacier with such power, his body left a dent. He was moving slowly, shedding bits of ice.
It took Rakel a few tries until her vocal chords worked. “Shouldn’t you already know? You must have approved of the plan.”
Farrin scowled. “Whatever it was that scared you so badly it made you do this, I certainly did not—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Rakel slammed him back into the glacier with another block of ice.
Phile jumped and Liv squeaked in surprise. Farrin groaned.
“Nice work, Little Wolf! You need to take your cheap shots whenever you can,” Phile laughed.
Rakel wasn’t paying attention to her friends; she was struggling to stand and keep her eyes on a pretty woman with chestnut hair peeking from behind a short wall. “You,” she growled.
The woman was on her knees—she had been hiding behind a railing of the palace until Farrin spoke. When she realized Rakel had sighted her, she fumbled with a pocket in her dress.
Remembering the paper, Rakel’s panic returned. She has more of those things!
Rakel whipped her hand through the air, and daggers of ice shot at the woman. The woman yelped and drew her right arm into her chest, staring at her wounded appendage with dismay. As Rakel watched, the woman healed the injury.
Wonderful, she’s a magic user.
“What did she do to you, Little Wolf?” Phile asked, observing Farrin as he tried to regain his breath and attempted to dislodge himself from the glacier Rakel had driven him into.
“She put a piece of paper on my forehead, and suddenly I could neither see nor hear. Worse, even though I was surrounded by darkness, there was something there, with me.”
“I was right. It was a curse,” Phile said, scratching her chin with Foedus. “If she used a paper, it means it’s not her magic; it’s from a different person. It’s a good thing you were nearby, Liv.”
“You saved me?” Rakel threw another sword of ice at the woman, frowning when she ducked behind the railing and dodged it.
“With her magic, yeah. It’s easier to steal lint from between a king’s toes than it is to break a curse if you don’t know what you’re doing, but curses are inherently evil things. I thought her purification magic would drown it out.”
Liv blushed as Farrin finally broke free of his icy prison. “I’m just happy I can be useful.”
Rakel slammed the woman with a barrage of snow, making her retreat from the railing and into an open-air corridor that wound snug around the palace. “She has more of those curses. If she pastes those on some of our soldiers, it will be chaos.” Rakel’s voice was cold, like frost, as she forced herself to stand upright and to keep fighting instead of sinking to her knees and crying in panic and fear like she wanted to. She raised a hand—intending to snap an ice cage around the woman, but Farrin stepped in, cleaving one side of the cage with his sword. He cut through it like butter.
“Sunnira,” he said, holding out his hand to the woman. “You need to leave this area.”
Rakel took advantage of his distraction and started shooting ice swords at him. “Liv, the water towers?”
“We can use ’em. They’re still standing.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
Liv ran, scrambling over icebergs and frozen greenery, making her way towards the untouched produce gardens.
“Are you sure you’re alright, Rakel?” Phile asked as Farrin reflected the swords.
They ducked, and the swords soared over their heads, crashing into a weeping willow that was impaled by a giant spike of ice.
“No.” Rakel created a shield of ice—complete with the snowflake and reindeer crest—and slammed it into the woman so she was pinned to the wall. “But she needs to be stopped.”
“You used to run from your fears,” Phile said.
Farrin shattered the ice shield.
“I imagine I still would, if I wasn’t so terrified that she would put those curses on people I know,” Rakel said, hammering at Farrin and his companion with a small glacier.
They were in an awkward spot. It was a tight corridor, so Farrin did not have the full use of his sword and reflective magic. However, it was still easy enough for him to b
reak the attacks.
“Do you see him speaking to her?” Phile said, indicating the pair. Farrin in front of his companion, his lips moving as she cowered behind him. “He’s telling her to run. They’re going to separate.”
“We can’t let her put those curses on anyone else.”
“So I gathered. You ’n Liv take Farrin down as planned. I’ll handle Mistress-Curse-Inflictor,” Phile said, casually tossing Foedus in the air and catching it by the hilt.
“Are you certain?”
“Oooh, yeah. Anyone who makes you that upset is on my to-be-tortured list.”
“Your Highness, enough!” Farrin shouted, fighting his way out of the corridor. He moved his sword in a blur, reflecting the ice chunks, snowballs, and ice weapons Rakel flung at him. His companion followed him closely.
Phile circled around towards Farrin’s blind spot.
“Enough? Are you daft?” Rakel laughed. “She cursed me! And she’ll do it again.”
Farrin looked down at his companion. “Sunnira?”
“She has to be taken out,” Farrin’s companion said, placing her hand on his arm. She gazed around the trashed gardens. “She’s a true monster.” Her voice trembled. “No one should be able to wield as much magic as she has. Her power is unnatural, even among us.”
Rakel refused to show that the words affected her. “I believe it could be argued that anyone who hands out curses is a monster.” She kept her voice icy as she mimicked Phile and raised a single eyebrow.
Phile chose this moment to throw Foedus. “Drat,” she said when Farrin partially deflected it. As was becoming custom, the dagger skipped over the blade, this time nicking his knuckles.
“That is an unusual dagger you have,” Farrin said, eyeing it where it had fallen.
Phile rolled and snatched the ugly dagger up. “I received it from a wise old woman who told me it was forged to debilitate dark-haired magic users.”
“I see,” Farrin said wryly as a breeze ruffled his black-tea-colored hair.
Sunnira shivered and stepped closer to Farrin.
Hot anger coiled in Rakel’s belly, and she threw boulders of ice at him.
Farrin fended them off, diverting the baby-sized chunks of ice so two hit Rakel, and one hit Phile, knocking them both to the ground.
Farrin flexed his hand, scowling at the wound Rakel’s brightly-clothed friend had given him. “Go, now,” he said, watching the recovering ice princess instead of Sunnira.
“You have to hear the truth in my words, Farrin,” Sunnira said. “When Tenebris learns how powerful she is, he will order you to kill her.”
Farrin whirled around and stabbed his greatsword into the ground inches away from Sunnira. “You have disobeyed my direct command, Healer Lhava,” he forced out between clenched teeth. He thought he had tight control of his rage, but it must have shown in his eyes and the use of Sunnira’s surname, for she gaped at him in shock. “I told you to stay in our medic unit during the attack, and now I have told you to leave this battlefield. You have failed to comply with both of these orders. If you do not amend your insubordinate attitude, I will speak to Tenebris myself and tell him that front-line service does not suit you.”
“Tenebris is my friend.”
“And I am his best colonel. Stand down, Healer Lhava,” Farrin said. After holding Rakel while she shook with terror, he was close to outright punishing Sunnira for using the curse on her. But although he was one of Tenebris’s favorites, he doubted the leader of the Alliance would look favorably upon Farrin for dealing harshly with one of his closest friends—even if she deserved it.
Sunnira sighed. “I’m sorry, Farrin. I—”
“Just go,” Farrin growled, taking up his greatsword again and swinging it to counter an assault of ice swords.
Sunnira bowed her head and finally followed her orders, slipping into the palace.
“No!” Rakel shouted.
“I got her, Little Wolf. Good luck!” Phile shouted, boosting herself up with an agility and ease that Rakel envied.
Farrin watched Phile go, his face showing no concern, and returned his attention to Rakel. “What did the curse do to you?
Rakel glared, furious with Farrin for herding the curse-happy healer off into the palace. Her magic made the snow at her feet swirl, and her entire body ached, and she had to keep her spine stiff just to remain standing. No wonder soldiers run after getting hit by ice. It hurts! “It made me deaf and blind; my only companion was something…evil.”
Farrin’s face was emotionless, but Rakel did not miss the way his leather gloves creaked when he squeezed the hilt of his sword.
“You shouldn’t be fighting after experiencing that particular curse.”
“Probably not,” Rakel agreed. “But you aren’t going to let me get past you and swipe those cursing papers from your healer, are you?”
“No,” Farrin agreed.
“Then we are at odds,” Rakel said.
“You will agree to retreat, then?”
Rakel laughed. “Hardly.”
“You cannot hope to beat me,” Farrin said.
She briefly remembered the pain and fear of their last two encounters, but her will won out. If we don’t take Ostfold, Steinar will die. “Perhaps, but even if I lose, it will be worth knowing I didn’t roll over and let you march on with your evil scheme.”
Farrin straightened, surprised and a little dismayed at her words. Evil scheme? He countered the ice sword Rakel hurled in his direction, this time taking care to avoid the injured princess.
She didn’t seem to notice—or care. She hit him with ice chunks the size of a reindeer, dumped a mini-avalanche on him; she even shattered all the ice in a section of the gardens, filling the air with fingernail-sized shards of ice that tore through clothing and ripped at skin.
She’s going to injure herself in her anger, Farrin realized.
Farrin lunged forward, grasping the fabric of her shirt. Rakel tossed him backwards by pulling up the ice under his feet. He tapped his speed magic and regained his footing, but Rakel was running, zig-zagging through the ruined gardens.
He sighed, tapped his speed magic, and was on her in an instant. Rakel tried to throw an avalanche of snow at him, but he ducked, and it missed him completely. This needs to end.
He crouched, then leaped forward and shoved his shoulder into her stomach, tossing her over his shoulder. “Your Highness, you need to rest—” he broke off with a hiss when Rakel froze her skin to an icy cold temperature that was difficult to bear.
He grit his teeth as his skin prickled. Rakel pushed off him, and when her feet touched the ground, the wind flared, tossing light snowflakes in the air and creating a screen of snow.
When the snow finally settled, Farrin spotted her climbing through a hole in the wooden fence that surrounded the produce gardens. He shook his head in disbelief and followed her.
She’s going to get herself killed in her stubbornness. She can’t be moving this easily after experiencing one of Tenebris’s curses. They’re lethal, just like him.
Rakel scrambled for the three water towers at the back of the gardens, her heart pounding in her chest. I was wrong. I was so wrong to think I could manage him alone! If I don’t hurry, he’s going to grab me. Rakel ran under the wooden trough system that ran from the water towers. The troughs, supported by strategically placed pillars, made a miniature aqueduct system—joining in a massive central chute.
Footsteps crunched behind her. Trembling with fear, Rakel covered Farrin’s feet in ice. He shattered it immediately and drew closer. Rakel snapped a cage around him, using the same three-layered pattern she had used on the shapeshifter in Glowma.
Farrin stared at Rakel then swung his sword, shattering the wall. “Your Highness, you need to stop,” he said. “Give up.”
Rakel swallowed hard and backed up under the main chute. “You haven’t caught me yet.” She kept her eyes on Farrin instead of glancing at the water towers as she tapped her magic and started cooling the
water.
“Because I’m choosing not to push you. If your soldiers were in the area, you would be more careful with your magic, and I would have nabbed you moments after our fight started.”
It is odd that he is so observant of me and yet missed the most important part of this plan: Liv.
Rakel threw another round of ice arrows at him, using his counter-attack reflection as an excuse to back up. The noise of the fight also covered the groans of the wood that protested as she brought the temperature of the purified water lower still. Her heart pounded in her throat as Farrin drew closer and closer, stopping when he was one step away from the chute.
One more step, just one little step! If he doesn’t take it, I’m as good as captured—and Ostfold, Steinar, the rebellion, everything will be lost!
With her resolve keeping her standing, Rakel flung a boulder of ice at Farrin while simultaneously throwing a snowball at his back. He reflected both, of course, but whirling around to parry the snowball put him smack dab under the chute.
“Now!” Rakel shouted.
Farrin blinked. Now?
There were three metallic clicks—like levers being pulled.
Farrin heard water gushing from the water towers. He looked up to see water flood the network of troughs overhead and dump down through a chute directly above him.
I didn’t know she had a water user among her allies. Did she think a surprise attack would catch me off guard? He shook his head and swung his greatsword up to deflect the pointless attack.
The water didn’t reflect at all. It splashed across Farrin’s sword and rained down on him, freezing the moment it touched his cloak and clothes. The water kept gushing until Farrin was thoroughly drenched. Not all the water froze on contact, but Farrin felt the familiar minty flash of Rakel’s magic. The air grew colder, freezing what little water there was left.
He frowned and turned to Rakel, his clothes stiff with ice. What does she hope to accomplish…he stopped thinking when Rakel reached out and touched his shoulder.
Ice grew around him like the trunk of a tree, pinning his arms to his side and his legs to the ground, and understanding finally dawned on him. How very clever.
