Beasts of the Frozen Sun

by Jill Criswell

  When all the bodies had been gathered, the priest took a torch and set the heap of corpses and timber aflame. I watched the dead men burn, thick smoke curling into the bright sky. There were no songs, no prayers—a lack of respect that meant these men were regarded more like animals than enemies.

  My sickly warrior would join his dead brethren if I couldn’t heal him.

  I abandoned the pyre and hurried back up the path through the village.

  Stony Harbor crouched on the edge of the Shattered Sea. Shaped like a crescent moon, it was bordered to the north and west by the sea’s gray waters and to the south and east by the towering trees of the Tangled Forest. The rolling hills were dappled with modest cottages. I stopped at one, letting myself in without knocking.

  Tables dominated the parlor, cluttered by vials, bowls, and herbs. Ishleen stood chopping roots at one of the tables, light-brown curls falling into her face. Though she wasn’t god-gifted as I was, her mother, Olwen, the village midwife, had taught her well. Ishleen had a talent for potions—she knew precisely what concoctions could cure any variety of ailments.

  “Lira,” she called. “Have you come to gossip? I hear my uncle Fergus soiled himself when he saw all those dead frost giants washed up on the shore.”

  As soon as I saw her mother was out, and we were alone, I wasted no time. “Ishleen, I need a potion and your discretion. No one can know of this.”

  “Hmm. Rescuing helpless wild animals again?” she asked, teasing me over my childhood fascination for aiding wounded creatures. “Let me guess. Fox? Hawk?”

  “A young wolf,” I said quickly. I thought of the warrior, snarling at me, his eyes blue as a wolf pup’s. “Sick with lung-fever.”

  Ishleen stopped chopping and gave me a worried look. “You must be cautious. Even young wolves can kill.”

  “He won’t hurt me.” Did I actually believe this? So he’d cut my bindings and shoved me off a boat five years ago—could such a thing be called an act of kindness? I’d felt the man’s soul. There was darkness in it as well as light, guilt as well as innocence. “But I’ve my knife, if he tries,” I added.

  “And your fist, it seems.” She gestured at my swelling hand.

  “Will you help me or not?”

  I knew she would, otherwise I wouldn’t have come. Ishleen stared at me, deliberating, and then she nodded. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Lira.”

  “I do,” I insisted, even though I didn’t.

  Ishleen loaded a sack with vials of lung-fever potion and handed it to me. “Put a poultice on those knuckles. Your harmless wolf must have an awfully hard head.”

  I couldn’t return to the hovel until well after dark, so I went about my day like it was any other.

  Our village was home to some two hundred men, their wives, and their children. They were tough, hardworking men, laboring as sentries, fishermen, trappers, farmers. The women supported them, running the households. I’d proved hopeless at cooking and sewing, little better at healing and potions, so I helped in the stables—a boy’s job, but one I loved well enough that Father allowed it.

  I threw myself into my work, feeding, brushing, picking hooves clean. Our clan wasn’t rich, but we had many mounts and treated them well.

  When I finished, my heavy heart led me down the path to the gallows.

  A group of boys, young warriors-in-training, gathered at the foot of the scaffolding. A nervous-looking boy stood on the raised wooden platform, beneath the beam Dyfed had hung from yesterday. Beside him stood Madoc, waving a birch rod. “To fall asleep on your watch,” he said, “risks the lives of every villager. Such negligence will not be tolerated.”

  This boy had been on watchtower duty when the bodies washed ashore. My warrior lived because the boy had fallen asleep.

  “Strip,” Madoc ordered.

  Trembling, the boy removed his tunic.

  “Kneel.”

  The boy obeyed, curling into a supplicant pose. Madoc brought the rod down on his bare back in rapid strokes. I cringed as the branches lashed him, leaving pink welts from his neck to his waist. He endured his punishment with barely a whimper.

  “Rise,” Madoc said when he was done. The boy did, stiffly. “Now go, all of you, and don’t let this lesson be forgotten.” The boy held his head high, descending the stairs. The other young warriors followed, nodding respectfully as they passed me.

  All except one, whose eyes bored into me.

  Ennis. Dyfed’s son.

  Madoc remained on the platform. My father’s older brother looked much like him, only shorter, his hair and eyes a darker shade of brown. There was starkness in the lines and hollows of his features, as if his bones were trying to break free of his skin.

  “Did Torin give you leave to birch that boy?” I asked.

  He folded his arms behind his back. “How I discipline my warriors is my choice. I don’t answer to him. Or to you.”

  “They’re Torin’s warriors as much as yours. You could’ve made that boy empty chamber pots to teach him a lesson. Your discipline was cruel.” I shouldn’t have said it, but I was as adept at holding my tongue as I was at sewing.

  “If I were cruel, I’d have made the boy drop his trousers like a child and birched him until he couldn’t sit. I left him his pride and beat him like a man.” Madoc leaned against the gallows. “Why are you here? To pay homage to the thief you killed?”

  “His name was Dyfed, and it was you and Torin who executed him.” My eyes flickered to the beam above Madoc’s head.

  “Yet you’re as guilty as the souls of those you condemn.” My uncle’s smile was laced with poison. “Your mother damned you from the start, naming you after a traitor.”

  Aillira, the first god-gifted daughter of Glasnith, who was so loved by the gods they blessed her with the gift of mind-reaping and vowed to bless her female descendants with gifts of their own. Aillira, who fell under the spell of the Great Betrayer and turned against the gods who loved her, bringing about decades of plague, war, and strife.

  Her name was a curse. She was mother and villain, loved and hated. Many questioned my mother’s sense when she bestowed me with the short form of a traitor’s name. I supposed it a mark of her boldness that she didn’t listen.

  I took a slow breath. “If there’s nothing you want of me, I’ll be going.”

  “You’ve so little to offer, Lira. But I’m sure I’ll find use for you, when the time comes.”

  The anticipation in Madoc’s voice sent prickles along my spine.

  That night I entered the hovel cautiously, as if walking into a wolf’s den.

  Over the years, I’d taken in all sorts of injured creatures. I’d bandaged wings and paws, fed and soothed each animal until it was healthy and strong enough to set free. For my efforts, I’d been growled at, scratched, bitten. I knew the risks of aiding dangerous predators.

  As soon as I stepped inside, I was knocked to the ground.

  The warrior pinned my wrists, bending over me. Naked, glistening with sweat, eyes bright with madness. Even now, I didn’t see a monster. I saw a wounded wolf, alone, afraid.

  I pulled one wrist free, smacking him on the nose, showing I was neither adversary nor prey. “You won’t hurt me. I’m the only one who can help you.”

  Eyes wide, he slouched back.

  I sat up slowly, lifting a hand to his brow. “You’re burning up.”

  He regarded me suspiciously, until something captured his attention. My skirts had bunched at my thighs. In a blink, the warrior snatched my knife from its sheath.

  “You won’t hurt me,” I said again, less certain. I plotted a path around him to the door, the dodges and strikes I could use to evade him.

  He pressed the blade to his own throat. Crimson leaked down his skin.

  “No!” I wrestled the knife from him and tossed it away. The warrior’s shoulders s
ank, as if I’d stolen his last shred of hope.

  Gripping his jaw, I examined the wound—the cut was small but deep. I tore cloth from the blanket, pressing it to his neck to staunch the blood. “What were you thinking?” I asked, even though I knew. Pulling him from the harbor wasn’t saving him, but capturing him. Too sick to leave, he was a prisoner in this hovel, waiting to be tortured, executed. That’s what men did to their enemies. That’s what the Sons of Stone would do if they discovered him.

  “I’m no warrior. I mean you no harm.”

  He stared at the fallen knife.

  “No.” I leaned to block his view. “That is not the way.”

  If he’d had the strength, he would’ve shoved me aside and grabbed the blade. I saw him calculating his odds as it was, but then the fever took hold. He coughed, fighting for breath, the sound wet and sharp, sawing through his lungs. Of course he’d not hesitate to slit his own throat, when he faced death from every direction.

  I thought of Rhys as a boy, ravaged by lung-fever, moaning in his bed. This warrior wasn’t Rhys, but he was someone’s brother, someone’s son. “You’ll be all right. I’ll look after you.”

  “Draepa,” he wheezed, pointing at the knife, then me, making a stabbing motion into the side of his neck. “Draepa mir.”

  “You want me to kill you?” I shook my head. “I won’t.”

  “Draepa mir! ” His shout made him cough again. Between coughs, other sounds rose. Laughter. Sobs. He laid his forehead in the dirt, hacking and gasping, crying and laughing, fingers clawing at the earth. Had the fever cracked his mind?

  “Shh.” I eased his head onto my knee. At my touch, he tensed. He coughed, growled, and wept, face buried in my skirts. One hand curled around my ankle, as if searching for an anchor to hold fast to in a storm. His fingertips traced the ring of scars there.

  To distract him from his misery, I moved my leg closer and told him my story.

  “I was nine years old, playing with my brother and his friends in rowboats just beyond the harbor. I’d begged Garreth to take me along, and he took pity on me. The weather turned foul, and a wave as high as a horse capsized our boats. Something circled us in the water.”

  The sensations came back fresh: the churning sea, Garreth’s arm around me, slick scales brushing my leg. “It was the Brine Beast. A giant sea creature that sinks ships and devours fishermen. It took three other children first.”

  I couldn’t bear to speak their names. Their bodies had washed ashore in pieces, just like the Westlanders’ corpses. My cousin, Madoc’s only son, had been one of them.

  “Then it came for me.”

  I slid my fingers under his, feeling the indentations of needle-sharp teeth. “I remember fangs closing around my foot. My brother screaming as I was snatched from his grasp. The cold, dark heart of the sea as the Beast dragged me down. Staring at the slithering shape of my own death. I didn’t realize the Beast had let me go until Father pulled me to the surface. The men had run for boats when they heard our cries. Mother …”

  I swallowed hard and tried again.

  “My mother was on the shore. After the Beast pulled me under, she walked into the sea. No one stopped her. No one knew what she’d done until she didn’t resurface. They searched, but never found her body. Many in Stony Harbor believe the Brine Beast came that day to steal one child from each of the wealthiest families in the village as payment to the sea goddess Faerran, who provides for our people. My mother offered herself to Faerran in my stead, and the goddess accepted.”

  I looked at the warrior lying quietly in my lap, listening. I didn’t wipe away the tears flowing down my cheeks. “Now we’ve both bared our pain.”

  He’d shifted onto his side, hair falling across his face. One of his hands still held my ankle, rubbing the scars. The other touched the matching bites on his torso. “Sjaeskjir? Beast?”

  “Beast,” I confirmed, watching him. Did he understand my language?

  “Mordir? ”

  “Yes. The Beast took my mother.” Easing my legs from beneath his head, I fetched my satchel. “Medicine. To cure you.” I held up a vial of bright-green liquid. He eyed it dubiously. “If I meant to harm you, I’d have done it already. And so would you, when you had the chance. We must learn to trust each other.”

  His stare was unrelenting. Seconds passed.

  Finally, he gave a slight nod.

  Before he changed his mind, I opened the vial and held it to his lips. When he gagged, I clapped a hand over his mouth until he swallowed. With his last bit of strength, he crawled onto the blanket and submitted to sleep.

  The teeth marks the Brine Beast left on him were inflamed. I bathed his fevered flesh with what was left in the waterskin, rubbed liniment into the wounds along his stomach and chest to stave off infection. “Not an ice-hearted beast under there, are you?”

  He grabbed my wrist, startling me.

  “Lira.” My name sounded beautiful and strange on his tongue, swelling from a drop to an ocean between the cradle of his mouth and the space separating us. He folded my hand into his, rapping my knuckles against his chest. “Reyker.”

  Ray—like a sunbeam. Ker—like a kerchief.

  “Reyker,” I repeated.

  His lips twitched. Not a smile; more like a tiny flame in a dark cavern. It was the smallest of gestures. But it was a beginning.

  REYKER

  Once, when Reyker was a boy, he let his brother, Aldrik, stuff him in an empty ale cask and roll him down a steep hill. His body bounced inside it, and as he stared past his feet, the world spun—grass and sky, mountain and stream. Reyker passed out. He woke inside the cask, covered in his own vomit, too dizzy to walk. Aldrik nearly had to carry him home.

  That was nothing compared to this.

  Everything was spinning. Scattered. Time twisted, forward was backward was sideways. Thoughts and memories and nightmares intertwined. Reyker couldn’t make it stop.

  Was it the world or his head that was broken?

  A boy in a rowboat, screaming that I’m a monster. Or am I the boy in the rowboat?

  A boy covered in blood, kneeling in the snow, in the shadow of a monster.

  I am the boy. And I am the monster.

  A girl in a boat, screaming at me, words I almost understand. I know what the warlord wants her for. I cut her free, push her into the water. She glides like a fish.

  Sometimes when the warlord punishes me, I think of her swimming away and smile.

  Pain. Skin and muscle and bone. Splintering. Throbbing. My head is trapped in a vise. My lungs are filled with knives. How is it possible to swelter and freeze all at once?

  A veil-dweller sits beside me, a spirit guarding the cusp between the living and the dead. She can free me. Help me, I beg her. Release me.

  Kill me.

  I rip my sword from the chest of the young warrior at my feet. My first kill. I am nine years old. My brother puts a hand on my shoulder. “Now you are a man,” Aldrik says proudly.

  Now I am damned.

  I scrub the tears from my face before he sees.

  Lira. The veil-dweller’s name is Lira. Her hair is violet; her eyes are green—bright as the unearthly fires that flare across the skies of my homeland. Her whispers are balm; her fingers are gentle. I cannot trust her.

  She won’t let me die. I hate her for this. She makes me feel broken and whole.

  The warlord slaps me hard enough that I spit blood. I disobeyed his order to slaughter an entire village that dared to speak out against their sovereign.

  I only killed half of them.

  “You’re worthless.” Draki sighs, circling me. “If you had a woman, I would throw her to my dogs. If you had a child, I would toss it into the sea. They would be better off.”

  I will never have a woman. I will never have a child. I won’t give Draki the satisfaction of destroyin
g something I love.

  Never again.

  Dragonmen will come here. They’ll burn Lira’s village, murder her people. I thought I was dead inside, beyond caring.

  I’m not.

  Days passed. Slowly, my warrior healed.

  A fragile trust formed between us. I forced doses of Ishleen’s potion into him, fed him cold broth, tended his wounds. When coughing fits racked him, I rubbed his back until they passed. He no longer flinched at my touch. I sat beside him by candlelight, reciting stories from the Immortal Scriptures—of my forefather Lord Llewlin and his daughter, Aillira, and the terrible rift she caused among the gods.

  “The Great Betrayer didn’t understand why his immortal brethren loved Aillira. So he went to her, first as a lammergeier, then a deer, then a hound.” I moved my hands as I spoke, using gestures and shadow shapes to animate the story. “He experienced her kindness and purity firsthand, and he became covetous of the beautiful maiden. Finally, he went to Aillira inside the flesh of a man, seducing her with sweet words and promises. In her innocence, she didn’t see him for what he was. He wed her, and she bore him sons and daughters. When her love ran so deeply she would not dare question him, he asked her to use the gift of mind-reaping the gods had blessed her with to enter their thoughts and steal the secrets of their power.”

  How much of the stories Reyker understood, I wasn’t sure. Misery fractured his thoughts; sometimes he shivered, staring at nothing, barely aware of my presence. Other times he watched me, face wrinkled in concentration, listening to my voice if not my words.

  “Aillira told her husband everything she’d heard inside the gods’ heads. The Great Betrayer used it against them, and his own power grew. He declared himself king of Glasnith and built a grand kingdom in the center of the island. When the gods discovered what Aillira had done, they came for her, but the Great Betrayer would not give up his prize. Some of the gods joined him, and others fought him. Thus began the Gods’ War. Their battles caused seas to rise and lands to shake. The skies broke open. Fire swathed the earth. The gods had no time for mortals, so they were abandoned. People froze, starved, endured terrible plagues. They fought their own wars, and much blood was shed.