Beasts of the Frozen Sun

by Jill Criswell

  I kicked and struggled, and he shushed me, reaching for something. The tip of a blade slid behind my ear.

  Another voice spoke—younger, gentler. The blade stilled. The two voices seemed to argue, and then a rag was stuffed in my mouth, a sack slipped over my head. My wrists were bound behind my back, and I was thrown over someone’s shoulder. I thrashed, drawing grunts of annoyance from whoever carried me.

  The slap of waves told me I’d been brought down to the shore. I was tossed into what must have been the hull of a boat, wood scraping my arms. I flailed, trying to stand, but hands pushed me down. The younger voice murmured softly. The hood was pulled from my head.

  My captor was tall and leanly muscled, but he was only a boy, not much older than me. Golden hair brushed his shoulders. His face was far too grave for his age, as if the world was a millstone worn about his neck.

  We were in the stern of a small boat, bobbing just offshore. There were three other prisoners lying on their stomachs in the bow, tied up as I was, with sacks over their heads. In the dim moonlight, I could see the men bore no warrior-marks on their hands; they were not from Stony Harbor.

  I scrambled to my feet and spit out the rag. “Don’t touch me.”

  The boy stared at me curiously. His eyes were ocean blue. There were strange black markings around one of his eyelids.

  From his belt, he drew a knife.

  My foot caught on something as I tried to back away, and I tripped, toppling onto my side. The boy hovered above me, too big for me to fight. Maybe if I’d had my own knife, I’d have stood a chance, but it was strapped beneath my skirts, out of reach.

  “Go on then,” I said. “Kill me.”

  He grabbed my wrists, kneeling behind me. There was a long pause, and then the blade bit into me, slicing into the underside of my wrist as I cried out. It went on for a full minute before his palm brushed across the stinging cuts and an almost-pleasant heat simmered under my skin. He picked up the rag I’d spit out, and I felt him wrap it around my bleeding wrist. A moment later, the rope that bound me fell away. The boy hauled me to my feet.

  “What did you do to me?” I motioned to the bloody rag on my wrist.

  His eyes drifted over me again, but he remained silent.

  “Whatever you want from me, you won’t get it.”

  The boy looked up toward the forest, like he heard someone coming. He mumbled something. When I didn’t reply, he jostled me and spoke again, more insistent. “Svim? ” he asked, gesturing at the water.

  Did he mean swim, as in, Can you swim? Confused, I nodded.

  He shoved me off the boat.

  I hit the water, cold seeping into me instantly. I swam hard, staying under as long as I could, aiming for one of the sea caves carved along the cliffs. Once I was inside the cave, I dug my fingers into the sloping rock wall and climbed onto a ledge. I waited there, shivering, until daylight seeped in.

  By the time I made my way through the forest and back home, I was feverish. Father ordered sentries to scour the woods, but no trace was found of any intruders. It was assumed that I’d taken ill, fallen asleep on the bluffs, and dreamed it all. With no proof otherwise, I’d begun to believe it myself. No proof, except the mark on my wrist that could not be explained. Father suspected I’d cut myself out of grief, but I didn’t think so.

  And each year since, on the anniversary of my mother’s death, when I crawled into bed after returning from my prayers at the bluffs, I dreamed of eyes the color of oceans.

  Now, after all this time, here he was. Not a dream at all.

  The ocean-eyed warrior coughed, water trickling from his mouth. No longer a boy, but a young man, exhausted and half-drowned, freezing in the harbor’s cold waters. He was blue enough that I’d thought him dead already. If I did nothing, he would die where he lay.

  If I summoned a healer, Father would know. The man would be sent to the cells. He might be tortured for information or hanged as a spy.

  What if he was a spy? I knew nothing about him. Just because he’d let me go that night didn’t mean he wasn’t a brute. He’d been creeping about in the forest in the company of other dangerous men; he’d cut me with a knife for no apparent reason.

  The warrior clasped my wrist with what little strength he had left. “Hjalp mir,” he whispered through cracked, bleeding lips. I didn’t need to speak his language to understand. He’d suffered. He was no older than Garreth, and I thought of my brothers washing up on a foreign shore—how I hoped someone would take pity on them.

  His thumb stroked the inside of my wrist, over the scar he’d left, and it pulsed with warmth in response, as if springing to life at his touch.

  My choice would seal his fate, and I already had one man’s death on my conscience. There was only one way to decide.

  Men could lie. Souls could not.

  Carefully, I began to roll him over. When he gagged, I held him on his side as he retched up seawater. There were tears in his jerkin, traces of blood seeping through from injuries hidden beneath his clothes. Like the corpses on the beach, a warrior-mark adorned his right eye, but his was different. Instead of scales, black tendrils of fire curled across his eyelid—the markings I’d been unable to see clearly that night years ago. Its shape was oddly similar to the scar on my wrist.

  I unfastened the collar of his tunic. There, resting in the hollow of his broad chest, lay a silver medallion. My medallion, attached to a loop of rope around his neck. The medallion was once my mother’s; I’d lost it that night when I was caught by his people in the forest. How had he gotten it? Why was he wearing it?

  None too gently, I pulled the rope from around his neck and slipped it over my own. “This is mine, you bloody thief.”

  Brushing salt and sand from his chest, I pressed my palm against his heart, opening my mind, seeking the core of his true self.

  I did not touch his soul. I fell into it—like I’d been shoved off a cliff. It was all around me, submerging me in its wilderness. Images flickered, rippling like reflections on water; as I tried to grasp them, they trickled through my fingers. His soul was darkness and light, jagged and smooth, smoldering fire and crackling ice. It screamed and whispered. It was every shape, every color. Laden with guilt, buoyant with innocence. It was all things, all at once, and I was lost in it.

  The strangest part was that I sensed him—his consciousness—floating there beside me. Watching me drown in him. Feeling everything I felt.

  As I sank deeper, he pushed back, expelling me. Pain shot through my arms and I followed it, returning to my own mind. Gasping, I opened my eyes and met the man’s furious glare. His hands gripped my forearms, hard enough to bruise.

  No soul felt like his—it defied their very nature. No one had ever been able to shove me out of their soul from within. “Who are you?” I demanded. “Where did you come from?”

  He spit out words I couldn’t comprehend, and then he released me, his head falling back, eyes closed.

  “All right.” I sighed. “You aided me once, so I’ll return the favor. At least until I figure out who in the bloody fates you are.”

  I’d nearly forgotten the lammergeier perched on the spar. As if satisfied, the raptor burbled and took flight, circling high above us, soaring over the living and the dead.

  I steered clear of the sentries, circling the village by way of the forest, over to the stables to fetch Winter, creeping with her back along the same route to the harbor. Motioning for Winter to kneel beside the man, I grabbed his arms and pulled. He was too heavy.

  “Hey.” I shook him. He didn’t move. “Hey!” I slapped him, and he wheezed, his eyes snapping open. I gestured to the horse. “I can’t lift you. If you want to live, you must help me.”

  I thought it pointless to explain, but I saw a glimmer of recognition at my words. I pulled his arms, and he pushed with his legs, until he was draped over Winter’s back. The ef
fort exhausted him. Within moments, he was unconscious again. Winter stood slowly beneath her burden. I led her up the sloping path from the shore to the top of the cliffs, making it into the forest just as I heard the shout of a sentry.

  The bodies had been discovered, but by fate or the will of the gods, we had not.

  Winter reached the old hovel—a shed once used for storage, now abandoned—and knelt beside it. An inch at a time, I managed to drag the man off my horse and inside the shed. The floor was dirt, the wooden walls and roof filled with holes that did little to keep out rain or cold, and the hovel crawled with vermin, but there was nowhere else to hide him. I laid out the supplies I’d taken from the stables: woolen blankets, candles, flint, a waterskin, liniment that healed men’s wounds as well as horses’. I stared down at his shivering form. He wouldn’t last long if I didn’t get him dry.

  I unlaced his leather jerkin and his tunic, pulling off the soaked garments. Though his face was boyish, his powerful build was that of a grown man, and his flesh was etched with blade-shaped battle scars that marked him as a warrior. But all my attention was drawn to the arc of blooming bruises that curved along his collarbones, over his ribs, across his waist. The bruises flared around small, spear-shaped gouges in his skin. Teeth marks.

  He’d been inside the Brine Beast’s mouth. It should have ripped him to shreds like the others. Instead, it spared him. The same way it had once spared me.

  There wasn’t time to ponder this. I pulled off his boots, his trousers, and finally his breeches. I’d seen men naked—the men of clan Stone weren’t shy about shedding clothes after a long day’s work or to bathe in the sea—but this was different. He was not of my clan, and he was unconscious. Stupidly, I felt myself blushing.

  “Pity I can’t build a fire,” I said. I couldn’t risk the smoke being seen in the village.

  I eased one blanket beneath the man, wrapped another around him. I wrung out his wet clothes and hung them to dry, scattering spiders hiding in the eaves. I shook him awake and held the waterskin to his lips, forcing him to sip, but he retched the water back up.

  “Determined to die, are you?” I asked, scowling through my worry.

  Why should I care if he dies? He’s a stranger. He’s nothing to me.

  Except no man was a stranger after I’d touched his soul, and my experience touching this warrior’s soul was unmatched. We’d shared something beyond physical touch, deeper than heartfelt conversation. With him, for the first time, the soul I touched had felt what I felt. It left me shaken.

  His trembling worsened. His breathing was sluggish.

  Concern made me bold.

  “I went through the trouble of saving you.” I pulled off my damp dress and slid beneath the blankets in my smallclothes, cringing at the coldness of his skin. I couldn’t build a fire, but I could lend him my body’s heat. “You owe me answers, and you can’t give them if you’re dead.”

  He shifted onto his side and huddled against me, pressing his face to my breast.

  “Mordir,” he murmured.

  My body was on fire.

  Flames crept along my skin. Soft thread tickled my cheek, smelling of salt and earth. I heard labored breathing next to my ear, and my eyes opened to a flash of gold.

  I didn’t know where I was. Someone lay next to me, an arm slung across my waist—a heavy, muscled arm. I gasped, sitting straight up. The person next to me jolted up too, startling me. Instinctively, I swung my fist out, and my knuckles met bone.

  With a grunt of pain, the gold-haired stranger scrambled away.

  I drew my knife; Garreth had given it to me years ago, trained me how to use it. Slowly, my mind extracted itself from the mist of sleep. I was in the hovel. Across from me, crouching defensively, was the young man I’d pulled from the harbor.

  He snarled, glaring at my knife.

  “I am Lira of Stone, granddaughter to the chieftain. You’ll treat me with proper respect or I’ll turn you over to my father and his warriors to punish as they see fit.”

  His brows rose. Crouching seemed too much effort for him, and he slumped to the floor, holding his head. He coughed, the force of it racking his body.

  “Do you know where you are? Do you remember what happened?”

  He glanced up sharply, rubbing his jaw where I’d punched him.

  I bit back an apology. “Don’t give me that look. My fist feels worse than your face.” I gestured to my swelling knuckles.

  As we eyed each other, I noticed the flush in his skin, the glassiness of his gaze. Another coughing fit overtook him.

  I slid my knife back in its sheath. I was no healer, but I knew what lung-fever looked like—Rhys had nearly died from it as a boy. A nasty illness, reducing even the strongest man to a shivering waste. I held my hand out. “Come here. You need to lie down.”

  He didn’t move. He glared at my hand like it offended him.

  “Stubborn, aren’t you?”

  I shoved him onto the blanket. Between coughs, he unleashed what I assumed were vile insults. I wet strips of cloth, arranging them over his chest, neck, and forehead. “Calm yourself. I’m trying to help.”

  It wasn’t my body that had been on fire when I woke, but his, pressed against me like smoldering coals. The fever struck quickly. Hours ago he’d been freezing, and now he burned. Pale and drained, he stopped fighting and settled into the blankets, closing his eyes. I coaxed some water into him, relieved when his stomach didn’t reject it.

  It seemed cruel to leave him, but I had to return to the village. Rhys would assume I went riding and cover for me as long as he could, but I needed to get back before Father noticed my absence.

  I brushed my fingers over the black flames of the man’s warrior-mark, feeling the slight ridges of the inked skin above his eye. The near-matching scar on my wrist tingled. There were secrets behind these markings. This man, with his prismatic soul, was full of secrets, and I wanted to unravel them.

  “Try not to die while I’m gone.”

  The village was abuzz over the corpses.

  Rather than go home, I went straight to the harbor and stood on the cliffs beside other villagers, studying the commotion. Father and Madoc paced the shore, shouting at each other. Sons of Stone—my brothers among them—dragged the half-eaten bodies into a pile, tossing them atop the ship’s wreckage.

  “Westlanders,” someone near me mumbled. “Giants with hair like straw, eyes like water. The beasts of the Frozen Sun.”

  I remembered sitting cross-legged between my brothers, listening raptly as Mother told this tale: Long ago, pieces of the sun broke free, landing in half-frozen seas. The sulfurous rocks spat fire and belched smoke. The leviathans dwelling there—the only creatures that could survive in realms of fire and ice—birthed monsters deceptively covered in human skin.

  Beasts.

  “Bollocks,” I said. The warrior I’d saved was strange, but he was a mortal, not a monster.

  An old man pointed at the corpses. “Their warrior-marks prove it, flaunting the serpent scales beneath their skin.”

  A tattoo proved nothing. Besides, my warrior’s mark was fire, not scales.

  I wanted to hear what the Sons of Stone were saying about the dead men, so I grabbed a jug of whiskey from the great hall’s kitchens and lugged it down to the harbor, winding my way through the tired warriors, refilling their flasks. “A drink to usher the dead,” I called.

  “To the otherworlds with you,” each man replied, raising his flask and taking a swig. An old superstition, meant to remind any lingering spirits that they must move on.

  Our village priest had come to examine the bodies. I caught him scowling at me, and I wondered if he saw through my guise of tradition. My brothers certainly did. Garreth pursed his lips, and Rhys tilted his head—silently asking where I’d been last night—but neither of them tried to stop me. Meanwhile, the Sons of St
one circulated the same rumors as the villagers: these men were frost giants from the Frozen Sun.

  My skirts billowed in the breeze as I shuffled toward my father and uncle. The wind carried their voices across the sand. “Another clan of mercenaries looking to settle on our island,” Madoc was saying. “As if we don’t have enough barbarians already. The Kelpies wedding their horses, the Ravenous eating their own dead. The bloody Bog Men, those mud-wearing, serpent-loving savages.”

  I thought back to books I’d read in Father’s library about the history of Glasnith. It was said that the mercenary clans weren’t descended from Lord Llewlin and the first men of Glasnith, as clans like ours were. Their ancestors had been dispossessed barbarians from the Auk Isles who had settled in southern Glasnith, taken Glasnithian wives and lands. They had their own clans, their own cultures. Most mercenaries believed in the Immortal Scriptures and the True Gods, as we did, but it was their own barbarian gods that they worshiped and prayed to.

  Madoc never missed a chance to complain about the mercenaries.

  Father sighed, weary of this argument. “The mercenaries keep us free. No one wants to cross them. Without their backing, the clans of Glasnith could be influenced to disband and appoint a High King. Do you want to bow to some rich, foppish nobleman? We’re meant to rule ourselves, as Lord Llewlin before us, as the True Gods intended. Look what happened the last time some fool got it into his head to declare himself king.”

  The Great Betrayer—a god who came down to Glasnith wearing a mortal’s skin and tried to take our country from us before he was defeated. We’d burned his name from the pages of our history, but we all knew what he’d done, how he’d nearly destroyed our island.

  “I bow to no one,” Madoc said.

  “Then we’d best hope all the frost giants want is women and land.” Father nudged one of the bodies, an ox of a man, with his boot. “Especially if they’re as fierce as stories portray.”