Beasts of the Frozen Sun

by Jill Criswell

  “It’s all right, Lira,” Garreth called weakly, blood dripping from his hand, staining the ground beneath him. “Remember what I told you in the watchtower.”

  I couldn’t think. He’d said many things, and I couldn’t remember a single one.

  The sentry mounted the horse and spurred it. I didn’t dare stab Father, our culled, god-chosen chieftain. All I could do was give Garreth a parting message, the last words he might ever hear from me. “You are my brother! You are my family!”

  The horse kicked up a cloud of dust, carrying Garreth away. I watched helplessly as he vanished over the slope of a hill.

  Both my brothers were gone.

  “How could you?” I shrugged off Father’s hands and turned, seeing the ambivalence he tried to hide. The realization was like salt in my wounds—Father hadn’t wanted to exile Garreth. “Did you do this to prove your power? Did you renounce your own son to set an example?”

  He said nothing.

  I couldn’t assault my father, but I could still hurt him. “If Garreth isn’t your son, then I am not your daughter. I’ll never forgive you for this.”

  Father’s expression crumpled for a moment before flattening into indifference. “You’re a fool to think I care.” His eyes turned black once more. I looked to see if anyone else was watching, if they saw what I saw, but the Sons of Stone paid us no heed as Gwylor stepped from the great hall into the sallow sunlight. Men milled about in the god of death’s wake, afraid and uncertain, all of them waiting to see what Gwylor would do next.

  The god’s eyes scraped over me. This was the god I’d spent my life worshipping. I didn’t wonder why Gwylor was so revered—he was powerful, immense, worthy of every ardent prayer I’d ever whispered in his name. But I did wonder why he enjoyed our fear. Why did it please him, or any god, to play with mortals—to sow discord among us, spawn storms to test us, send monsters to kill us?

  “You’re nothing more than a sacrifice, soul-reader,” Gwylor said. “The question is whose hand will hold the weapon that finally sends you to me.”

  He strutted toward the cliffs, and the crowd of warriors followed. Near the bluff’s edge, two familiar figures walked hand in hand. Brigid and Slaney, Madoc’s pretty wife and daughter. They should’ve been locked inside their cottage. When I was close enough, I saw that their eyes were vacant, as if under a spell. Gwylor licked his lips.

  Madoc came up the path slowly—Madoc, who’d already lost a son to the Brine Beast.

  He looked up. Too late. Gwylor discarded Aengus’s body in a pile of bones and skin. The deity was reduced to a spectral glimmer, slithering straight for mother and child.

  Madoc cried out. His boots pummeled the earth. But a man is no match for a god.

  The women waited. They weren’t pushed, they were carried—up, backward, over the cliff. Landing with a sound that froze my heart in my chest.

  Madoc got to the cliff first, his cry falling silent, fighting the men who pulled him back from the edge. I reached the cliff and looked down at Madoc’s wife and daughter—my kind aunt, my sweet cousin—splayed upon the boulders below, their bodies broken. Lovely, even in death.

  Lammergeiers circled overhead. A few had already landed and begun to pick at the mess of bones and blood. Soon the raptors would swarm. They would feast.

  I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.

  The grass blurred beneath my feet. My burned flesh pulled taut, but I ignored the pain. My lungs sucked in air, spit it back out. I ran across the village, leaving the Sons of Stone behind. In the frenzy of the Culling and the death of Madoc’s family, I slipped away unnoticed.

  I mounted Winter, galloping through the Tangled Forest, avoiding the path so I wouldn’t pass the sentry on his way back. I burst from the trees a few hours later, thinking I’d find Garreth waiting for me.

  My hopes sank. He wasn’t here.

  I searched until dusk, riding along the forest’s southern edge, over heather-strewn meadows and hills, all the way to the foot of the Silverspires, the lofty mountain range that cut across the northern head of Glasnith like a jagged noose. I rode in circles, making wide loops, scouring the land. Calling for Garreth until I had no voice left.

  There was no sign of him.

  I rode back toward the village in a daze. All this death and loss. Doyen was wrong—it wasn’t punishment from the gods because my mother traded her life for mine. The Westlanders had come of their own accord, to kill and conquer. They brought this scourge upon my people. And I’d stupidly saved one’s life—an act I would remedy, if given the chance.

  I was scarcely aware that I’d steered Winter toward the hovel.

  Dismounting, I drew my knife, not sure why I’d come here, but compelled to see it through. I shoved the hovel’s door open.

  My eyes adjusted to reveal an empty room. No man. No beast. I bit my lip, swallowing bitter disappointment. Of course he was gone. Surely he’d joined his fellow monsters during their invasion, or at least run off with them when they retreated.

  Behind me, the door creaked shut. A figure unfolded from the corner, clamping a hand across my mouth. A body pressed firmly against my back and a blade pricked my side. He was taller than I’d realized—the top of my head rested on his collarbones. I felt the strength in his muscles, the heat of his skin. “Lira?” he whispered, lowering his blade.

  I spun and kneed him in the groin.

  He grunted. I saw his weapon, a crude spear he’d fashioned from a heavy stick and rusted nails from the hovel’s walls. He was a clever brute, I’d give him that.

  I kicked him in the ribs where the Brine Beast had bitten him, and he groaned. “It’s your fault. You come to my village, kill my brother, murder our chieftain. You tore my clan apart!”

  I aimed my knife at his stomach and lunged.

  He dodged and twisted behind me, locking his arm across my throat. My fingers squeezed the knife’s hilt, but I didn’t use it. I let my knees slacken, let my body sag, so my neck pressed harder into the crook of his elbow.

  Was this what I’d truly come here for—hoping I’d find Reyker, not to kill him but to goad him into killing me?

  Bright mosaics burst along the edge of my vision, washed away by a swamp of darkness.

  The hot ache in my skin fizzled beneath a mantle of frost. I smelled the balm of sunflower, aloe, and mint. My eyes slid open. I was on my back, a blanket beneath me. A candle glimmered, tossing shadows along the hovel’s walls.

  “Duma soolka,” Reyker muttered when he saw I was awake. Whatever it meant, it wasn’t a compliment. He knelt over me, tending my burns with liniment, his hands gliding in slow trails across my blistered flesh. I wore only my breeches and shift.

  “Get away from me.” I jerked upright, a wave of dizziness clubbing me over the head as I stumbled toward the door.

  Reyker blocked my escape. In a panic, I screamed and shoved him.

  “Jai vil nai skad thu, Lira.” His words were soothing nonsense. He held up his hands as if to show he meant no harm.

  “Move.” I found my knife lying on the floor and pointed it at him.

  He shook his head.

  I attacked again. He caught my wrists and spun me, so my back was against his torso, my arms crossed over my chest. My knife was still in my hand, the blade pressed against my own throat. Under different circumstances, I’d have been impressed.

  “Do it,” I said.

  Reyker bent his mouth close to my ear, his breath rustling my hair. “Nai.” He disarmed me and turned me loose. With the warmth of him gone, cool air slapped my bare skin. Reyker pointed to the blanket. “Sittja.”

  I spat at his feet. “I don’t take orders from beasts.”

  “Sittja! ”

  I glared at him. He had my weapon. I couldn’t get past him to the door. If he wanted to kill me, I couldn’t stop him. So I sat.

>   My dress was draped across the rafters. He’d taken the time to hang it up—a considerate, unexpected gesture that was undermined when he yanked the dress down and threw it at me.

  “You had no right to undress me.” I pulled the charred dress over my head, though the ruined garment barely covered me. “No right to touch me at all.”

  He crouched on his heels, cocking an accusatory brow. Beside me sat the tin of liniment he’d rubbed on my burns. The same liniment I’d rubbed into his wounds. After I’d stripped him. And bathed him. While he was unconscious.

  Well. I was trying to save his life. And if my hands had strayed a bit farther than necessary, it was innocent curiosity, nothing more.

  “You choked me.” My fingers grazed my tender neck.

  His brow rose higher. “Thu stukketh a mir.” He lifted my knife and mock-jabbed himself. “Tvisger,” he added, holding up two fingers.

  “Not like you didn’t have it coming,” I shot back.

  He responded with a nasty string of noises I could only assume were words.

  “How do you understand so much of what I say? Do you know Glasnithian?”

  Reyker held his thumb and forefinger close together, confirming my suspicions. He gestured at me and twisted his features into a series of dramatic expressions. Mocking me. What he missed in my words, he interpreted from my face and body language. It angered me how easily he could read my emotions.

  “Why did you come to my village all those years ago? Why did you let me go? What do you want from me, Reyker?” I’d not meant to say his name—I’d meant to call him beast, monster, invader—but it slipped out.

  He scowled. “Reyker.”

  “That’s what I said. Reyker.” I couldn’t do it justice. From his mouth, the name was a purr and a hiss, a kiss and a strike. But it dropped leadenly off my tongue.

  “Rrrey-kerrr,” he repeated, drawing out each syllable so it curled and danced.

  “Rey-ker,” I echoed in a whispery growl, scrunching my face into a snarl because it was the only way I could get my lips to cooperate.

  Reyker laughed, and the sound startled me. For an instant, I saw the boy beneath his warrior’s guise. For an instant, I laughed with him. Until I remembered the Savage’s axe slamming into Rhys.

  I fell silent, pulling my knees to my chest. Reyker was a beast, not a boy.

  When he reached for my hand, I jerked away. “Treyst mir, Lira,” he said, cupping my right hand like an injured bird, rubbing liniment over the blisters. For some reason, I let him. He tore strips off the blanket, winding them over my palm. When he finished, he did the same with my left hand.

  “Hvurdig?” He gestured at my burned skin, my singed dress.

  “I tried to hold a god’s fire.”

  Reyker glanced up from his work, taking my measure. “Thu aer trubbel.”

  “What does this mark mean?” I pointed at the scar of flame on my wrist, but I was thinking of the one behind my ear. “Is it a mark of ownership? Because I don’t belong to you, Westlander, so if that’s what this symbolizes, I’ll cut my bloody arm off right now.”

  “Nai. Skoldar,” he said, tracing the scar lightly with his finger. It pulsed with heat in response, like a molten heartbeat. He spoke in gestures—pretending to hold a shield, then circling his hand around my head.

  “Protection? From what?”

  He shrugged, as if he didn’t know how to explain.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked again.

  Using my knife, he dug a square into the dirt floor, filling it with shapes. As he added details, I realized the waving lines were rivers, the triangles mountains. “A map?”

  He nodded. “Reyker go. Lira hjalp?”

  “Why should I help you?”

  Reyker sawed the knife across the air in front of his throat, pointing toward the village. He’d seen the string of Westlanders’ heads hanging there. I ignored the twist in my gut that came at the thought of his head joining theirs. “It’s what you deserve. You’re one of them.”

  “Nai meer.” He waved a hand like he was erasing his past, erasing anything that connected him to the men who invaded my village.

  “I wish I could believe you. But a deer cannot trust a wolf.” He gazed at me blankly. I acted it out, spreading my fingers into antler-like branches, then growling, my hands astride my head like pointed ears.

  He smirked at my impressions before doing his own, touching his heart after snarling like a wolf, standing tall and proud after lowering his finger-antlers. His meaning was clear enough: The wolf must be kindhearted, and the deer must be brave.

  “No.” I rose and faced him. “I shouldn’t have saved you, but you let me go when your people captured me. Consider my debt repaid. This is the last time you’ll see me.” He tilted his head, struggling to understand. “Goodbye, Reyker.”

  His eyes widened. “Lira—”

  “Your kin killed my brother! He died in my arms!” My fingers balled into fists.

  Reyker paled. “Jai kleggur,” he said softly.

  “I don’t speak your stupid beast language.” The Culling had drained me past the point of fear. I stepped closer, only an arm’s length away. “Kill me or let me go.”

  He smiled. It wasn’t the boyish smile he’d worn earlier; it was a cold twitch of lips, a tightening of his jaw. Reyker held my knife out. I took it, the blade hovering between us. I could kill him. He could kill me. That’s how it was meant to be—as a Glasnithian and a Westlander, there could be nothing else between us now.

  “Thank you,” I mumbled, holding up my bandaged hands.

  He inclined his head, his expression unreadable as I brushed past him. I stepped out into the quiet night, shutting the door behind me.

  Mounting my horse, I took a last look at the hovel, ignoring the conflicting urges inside me—to go back and bury my blade in his chest, to go back and sit with him and tell him stories until he fell asleep. I clucked my tongue, and Winter headed toward home.

  “May your gods have mercy on you, Westlander.”

  The next morning, the air was thick with the stench of death. Torin declared a Day of Sacrifice to honor the gods for helping our clan defeat the beasts of the Frozen Sun. A massive bonfire was erected near the sanctuary. Doyen handpicked the best of our animals: lambs, goats, pigs. He slit each animal’s throat, throwing their corpses into the flames.

  I was sitting with Ishleen near the edge of the forest when a chestnut mare was led to the fire.

  Rhys’s horse.

  Ishleen and I shared a look. “They can’t hurt Victory,” she said. “We can’t let them.” I was already pushing my way through the crowd, Ishleen right behind me.

  We stepped between Doyen and the horse. “What are you doing with Victory?” I asked.

  Sunlight glinted off the priest’s bald pate. “Your brother longs to be reunited with his beloved mare. We honor him by granting his wish.”

  “Rhys would never wish for this. He wants Victory to live.”

  “Do you speak for the dead?” Doyen challenged. “Your brother calls out, asking for a blood sacrifice to send his horse to the otherworlds.”

  I knew my brother’s heart. Rhys would despise this. And that meant Doyen, whom we relied upon to tell us the will of the gods, was a fraud. “Liar!”

  Gasps and protests surged from the crowd.

  “Blasphemer!” Doyen hissed back.

  From the other side of the fire, Torin moved toward us to put an end to our squabble. The man he’d been before the Culling might have listened to me, but the man who’d exiled Garreth was someone I no longer trusted. He’d side with Doyen. Victory would be sacrificed.

  I wouldn’t let that happen.

  Neither would Ishleen. With dramatic flourish, she put a hand to her forehead and moaned before flopping to the ground in a mock faint. Heads turned toward h
er, several people moving to see if she was all right.

  While most of the crowd’s attention was on Ishleen, I leaped onto Victory’s back. Kicking the horse’s haunches, I braced my thighs around her flanks and braided my fingers into her mane. Victory bounded forward, scattering villagers, and we flew past the fire, past the sanctuary, into the Tangled Forest.

  I could ride southwest to Ballygriff, or southeast to Houndsford, where Quinlan lived—they were the closest villages to Stony Harbor, on the southern border of the forest. I could find a kind family in need of a horse. But even as I thought of it, I knew it would never work. Victory bore the brand of three swords, marking her as property of our clan. No one would accept Rhys’s horse without proof of my chieftain’s permission.

  The trees grew thicker, enough that we had to slow down. “What am I to do with you, Victory?”

  A shape appeared in front of us.

  Victory reared, and I clutched her mane to keep from being thrown. A dark-haired woman stood beneath the trees. She tipped her chin up, revealing her empty eye sockets. “Mistress of souls,” the mystic said in greeting.

  Victory danced sideways nervously. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “I am not the death god.” She reached out and rubbed Victory’s muzzle. “Pretty horse. You will give her to me.”

  “Pardon?”

  “A gift. The horse becomes mine, and in exchange, I will give you the answers you seek. ’Tis why I was sent.”

  “Sent?” I asked uneasily, reaching for my medallion. “By whom?”

  She only smiled.

  “What answers will you give me?” Garreth, I thought desperately. “I need to find my brother. Can you tell me where he is?” Sliding from Victory’s back, I came face-to-face with the mystic. I forced myself not to stare.

  “I cannot tell you of your brother’s fate, only your own. If you want to know what the gods have shown me, you must come with me to the water.”

  The mystic walked deeper into the trees. Though I was afraid of what she might tell me, curiosity compelled me to follow her. She stopped at a narrow brook burbling over moss-slicked stones. The eyes studding her flesh were green and blue, brown and gray, and all of them regarded me critically. “The gods’ fingerprints are all over you,” she said. “Can you feel them?”