The Winter King

by C. L. Wilson

  “Any amplification spell—”

  “Would not breathe heat back into the lump of ice that is my arm,” Verdan snapped. Then the anger faded from his expression as he once again focused his attention on the blade. “But like you, I cannot access that power. It is blocked from me. Perhaps the sword only recognizes one Heir at a time. Perhaps, if you’d gotten to it first, it would have recognized you instead of her.” Verdan regarded Khamsin with cold eyes. “Maybe if she dies, the sword will be free to be claimed again. This time, by its true and rightful Heir.”

  Falcon looked alarmed. “You aren’t seriously suggesting we kill her? You’ll call a curse upon our House.”

  “She is the curse. She always has been. Killing her can only set us free.”

  “Or make it ten times worse!”

  Before Verdan could answer, a shrill, ear-piercing shriek rent the air. Another shriek followed the first. Then another.

  Then the screams of men began.

  Falcon ran to the tent entrance and shoved back a flap, revealing a scene of carnage and chaos. Falcon’s small party of men had met up with the rest of their army not long after Verdan’s arrival. An invasion force of many thousands of Summerlanders and Calbernans. But their overwhelming numbers seemed somehow smaller now, as half the camp was running and shouting in chaos while enormous, white garm darted through their midst, shrieking, spewing blue vapor, and shredding men into mangled bits of flesh and bone.

  “Sound the alarm!” Falcon shouted. “To arms! To arms!”

  “Free me!” Kham cried. She struggled and kicked against her bonds. “For Halla’s sake, untie me and give me the sword. Hurry, or we’re all dead!”

  “One of us is going to die,” Verdan growled. “But it won’t be me or Falcon.”

  Kham gasped as Verdan swung Roland’s sword, but instead of biting into her flesh, Blazing sliced through the ropes binding her to the chair. He shoved the sword into his belt to free his hand, then reached down and hauled Khamsin to her feet.

  “Father, give me the—” Falcon broke off in surprise. “What are you doing?”

  “The sword’s useless to us so long as she lives. Time to remedy that problem.” Verdan shouldered Falcon aside and shoved Khamsin through the tent flaps, into the path of an oncoming garm.

  Kham screamed and fell backward, clutching at her father’s arm as she tumbled. Her feet slipped on the icy ground, and the sole of her boots caught Verdan in the ankles, knocking his feet out from under him.

  With a hoarse shout, Verdan fell on top of her.

  She tried to roll free, but he landed on the edge of her leaden cloak and pinned her. The ties at her throat pulled tight against her neck. As Verdan scrambled to his feet, each frantic motion pulled the strings at her neck tighter. Choking, gasping for air, Kham ripped at the ties of her cloak with her bound hands. She managed to free herself and push up to her hands and knees in time to see a glint of malevolent red in a blur of onrushing white. Terror shot through her veins.

  Verdan saw the garm, too. Shouting, he scrambled to free the sword stuffed in his belt.

  The garm leapt. Its paralytic scream ripped through the air, and a cloud of blue vapor spewed from its mouth. Khamsin rolled instinctively onto her belly, dragging the leaden cloak atop her as the cloud of freezing cold enveloped them.

  Frost crackled in her hair and numbed her legs, and the leaden cloak turned stiff as a plank of wood, trapping her inside a frozen cocoon. She heard her father shout, heard the garm scream. Then there was a loud thud, and Verdan collapsed on top of her, his body jerking like a trout on a string. Something hot and wet rained down on the back of her head. She opened her eyes to see blood spurting onto the snow in great, pulsating ruby jets. Roland’s sword lay gleaming in the snow several feet away.

  Broad, taloned paws pounded the ground as an entire pack of garm raced past. More paralyzing shrieks rang out, and the screams of the fleeing Summerlanders and Calbernans cut off in midcry.

  Kham pushed against the frozen lead cape and the crushing weight of her father’s armored body, barely able to breathe, let alone move. Her struggles caught the attention of a second pack, and two of the garm broke from the group to stalk towards her, heads lowered, red eyes glowing with malice.

  “Falcon!” Her brother was standing in the tent entrance, watching her struggling to crawl free of their father’s corpse. “Help me!” she screamed. “Help me get the sword!”

  But instead of rushing to help her, Falcon ducked inside the tent. The flaps fell closed behind him.

  “Falcon!”

  The scene was far too familiar for her liking, and this time there would be no Wynter riding in to save the day. Panicking, Roland’s sword well out of reach, she shoved and pushed against the heavy, immobile weight of her father’s body, but it wouldn’t budge. Her heart pounded faster than Hodri’s galloping hooves. Think, Khamsin! Calm down, and think! You haven’t been helpless a day in your life—for Halla’s sake, don’t pick now to start!

  The closest of the approaching garm growled. Blue slime dripped from its fang-filled mouth.

  Kham clawed and kicked at the ground, grunting with effort as she raised herself up on her elbows. Her father’s body shifted, sliding down her back and freeing her torso. Now only her hips and legs were pinioned beneath its deadweight.

  She reached out a desperate hand towards Roland’s sword, hoping the sword’s proximity would aid her. A trickle of energy flowed into her veins—a far cry from the heat she could channel from the sun—but it amplified her weather magic, so she wasn’t about to complain. The wispy clouds overhead plumped and grew dark with gathering moisture. She fed more energy into them.

  The garm crouched, hind legs tightening as it prepared to pounce.

  Khamsin swore a long string of inventively foul curses she’d learned from Krysti. There wasn’t even a hint of the lavender glow around her hands that preceded her ability to summon lightning. And the electrical charge she could generate without tapping into the power of a storm might have tossed a man off his feet but probably wouldn’t do much to a garm.

  Still, it was all she had until the storm brewing in those clouds got going.

  Kham focused the energy in her hands until sparks crackled and popped between her fingertips, then let it fly. The electrical charge zinged the short distance to the garm and zapped the creature in its nasal slits.

  The garm yowled in surprise and vigorously shook its massive head. But instead of convincing the garm that Kham was more trouble than she was worth, the zap only seemed to anger the beast. Red eyes fixed on her with renewed malice.

  She grimaced. Well, that wasn’t exactly the result she’d been hoping for.

  The garm charged. Its gigantic mouth, with all those rows of jagged, dagger-sharp teeth, gaped wide. The long, curved claws dug into ice and gravel. The creature leapt, and Kham braced herself for the killing blow.

  To her shock, in the middle of its leap, the garm suddenly and inexplicably froze. Literally. The furry body fell out of the air and slid across the frozen ground, crashing into her with a brittle crack. The jolt knocked Verdan Coruscate’s body to one side. Kham kicked free and scrambled to her feet.

  Only then did she see the ice white spear protruding from the creature’s side and the young boy five yards away, bent over, hands on his knees, as he tried to catch his breath after throwing a spear more than twice his size.

  The second garm, which had been stalking towards her, now fixed its scarlet gaze on Krysti and began to charge.

  “Krysti, run!” she cried. He bounded for the closest tree while Kham dove for Roland’s sword. Her fingers closed around the sword grip. She rolled to her feet, and cried “Fire!” just as the garm shrieked.

  Flames engulfed the sword. She swung at the garm with all her might. The searing blade of fire halved the garm’s body and cut off the cloud of freezing vapor in
midexhalation. The small, abruptly terminated cloud of blue vapor wisped harmlessly away on a puff of wind.

  “Well, that’s something you don’t see every day.” Krysti, who had leapt up a nearby tree with his typical agility, dropped back down to the ground and ran to her side. “I thought you were done for.”

  “Me, too. If not for you, I would have been.” She pulled him close for a quick hug. “How did you get free?”

  The boy grinned. “It’s a gift.”

  Despite everything, she laughed. “A darned useful one, too.” She ruffled his head. “And the spear?”

  “The Summerlander holding it was distracted when the garm attacked. I hit him on the head with a rock and took it. I figured we needed it more.”

  Kham’s smile faded. “That we do.”

  Together, they turned to face the carnage taking place around them. Screams and shrieks rang out from every direction, and blue vapor hung like a mist in the air. A knot of Calbernans were huddled back-to-back, throwing spears at a circling trio of garm. A group of Summerlanders were firing arrows on the run. And everywhere, the fallen were rising again, covered in ice.

  “We should just leave them to the garm,” Krysti said. “They came here to kill us.”

  “They came here because of Falcon and my father. I can’t leave them all to die.” Invaders the Summerlander and Calbernans might be, but there was no way she could just walk away and let the garm slaughter them. And not just because the fallen were rising again as ice thralls.

  “They’d leave us in a heartbeat.”

  “Perhaps. But that doesn’t make it right.” She took a deep breath. “Stay here. Find a place to hide.” She pulled Thorgyll’s spear out of the fallen garm and handed it back to Krysti. “Keep this. If the garm come back, use it.”

  “I’m not letting you go off to fight garm without me,” Krysti protested.

  “You’re not letting me do anything,” Kham snapped. Then she winced. She hadn’t meant to bark at the boy. “I’m sorry, Krysti. It’s too dangerous. I need to know you’re safe.”

  “Safe? Do you see what’s out there?” Krysti pointed to a pack of ice thralls attacking two Summerlanders while a garm leapt up a tree in pursuit of a third. “I’m a million times safer near you and that sword. And you’re safer with me guarding your back.”

  He looked so small, so young, holding a spear more than twice his size, but so determined and brave as well. She wanted to kiss him. More than anything, she wanted to keep him safe. But he was right. There was no such place in this forest. Not now.

  “All right,” she conceded. “But don’t stick too close. My lightning is dangerous, and I really don’t know everything this sword can do.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Then let’s go.” Kham gripped Blazing in one fist and started running towards the knot of Calbernans battling the circling garm.

  With Blazing in hand, the power that had tingled so tantalizingly out of reach when she was pinned beneath her father’s body now came in an effortless rush. It filled Khamsin and the sword in an instant, warm and revitalizing. Heat filled her and radiated out on all sides, melting the snow for six feet on every side. She seized the warm, moist air swirling around her and drove it up into the dry, cold winter skies above. Clouds blossomed and began darkening rapidly, and she laughed at the familiar cool, fresh, electric taste on the wind.

  “Stand your ground!” Kham shouted to a half dozen fleeing Summerlander soldiers. “These creatures can be killed! Use ranged weapons! Bows, arrows, spears! Don’t let the vapor touch you—and cover your ears against their screams! Fight, sons of Summer! Sons of the Isles! Fight!”

  The storm overhead was brewing with power. Lightning crackled and raced across the clouds. The purple glow of plasma gathered around Khamsin. Ahead, one of the garm circling the Calbernans froze. The long receptor hairs pointed her way by the dozen.

  The garm spun and leapt for her, teeth gnashing, blue froth flying from its snarling maw.

  “Burn!” she cried, and thrust Blazing towards the beast.

  Three bolts of lightning shot down from the sky. In less time than it took to blink, the electric charge passed through her, down her arm, then shot out from the tip of Roland’s sword into the garm as a single, concentrated flow of power. The lightning slammed into the garm, lifting the massive creature off its feet and sending it flying backward through the air. The garm burst into flames and landed at the feet of the Calbernans. The flames promptly turned inward, and within less than two seconds, all that remained was a pile of garm-shaped ash that collapsed in upon itself and blew away in the next gust of wind.

  The second of the dead garm’s companions now turned its attention to her, and she dispatched it with similar ease, while the large, blue-tattooed Calbernans threw their viciously barbed tridents at the third, pinning it to the ground. Another island warrior—this one a huge, broad-chested man with long ropes of black-green hair and massive biceps circled by bands of hammered gold—brought an enormous sword arcing down and decapitated the pinned monster with a single, mighty blow. Blue blood spilled out across the snow.

  Behind her, Krysti skewered first one, then a second ice thrall with Thorgyll’s spear. The thralls froze solid as stone and didn’t move again. Just to be sure, Kham stabbed each of them with Blazing’s fire and reduced them to ash.

  “The garm will die,” she told the Calbernans, “but you have to burn the ice thralls with fire.”

  The huge Calbernan who had decapitated the garm gave her a savage grin and whirled to slice an ice thrall in half, then dismembered what was left with a few enthusiastic chops of his blade.

  “I guess that will work, too,” she muttered. A flash of white darting through the trees caught her eye. “Watch out!” she cried to the huge Calbernan. She guided a crackling bolt of lightning that incinerated the garm just before it struck the Calbernan’s unprotected back. The shower of hot ash washed harmlessly over the islander, turning his blue-tattooed skin a dull, dusty gray. The man’s golden eyes blinked, and he lifted a hand in a wordless salute of gratitude.

  She pointed to another knot of the embattled Calbernans not too far away. “Your friends over there look like they could use some help. I suggest you grab a few of those bows and quivers over there if you know how to use them. They give a better range than those tridents.”

  The big, green-haired man barked something in musical Calbernan. The rest of the group plucked their tridents from the dead garm and ran to help their comrades, several of them grabbing bows and quivers as they went. The big man sheathed his sword and snatched up four quivers and a long bow.

  “Many thanks, myerina. Good hunting to you.” With a smile, he bowed his head in her direction, gave a graceful, waving salute of thanks, then sprinted after his men.

  Kham and Krysti headed off in a different direction to find another target of their own. It didn’t take long. All around the camp, the scene was like something from a nightmare. Bodies strewn everywhere. Blood and blue garm slime mixing together in noxious purple puddles. Frost prickled across every surface. Garm were leaping, shrieking, and spewing blue vapor at everything that moved. Ice thralls were hacking at the living.

  The storm overhead boiled with energy. Kham called the lightning and incinerated garm and ice thralls left and right. The ease of it stunned her. The storm was so strong now, she should have been fighting desperately to control it, but she wasn’t. She could feel and shape the flows of air, summon the lightning or disperse it. The diamond in the hilt of Roland’s sword shone like a beacon, and she knew the power of the sword was helping her maintain control over the wild power of her weathergift. With Blazing in hand, she truly was the master of storms.

  She and Krysti fought their way across the encampment, dispatching garm and thralls with sword and spear and bolts of lightning. Along the way, she caught the scent of another magic on the wind. Bright flas
hes that had nothing to do with lightning illuminated the bottoms of the dark clouds to her left.

  Kham followed the scent of magic and the light flashes to their source, bracing herself to dispatch whatever was there, only to stop in surprise at the sight of her brother engaged in battle.

  She’d thought, when he’d left her to face the garm, that he would remain hiding in his tent. Instead, he’d retrieved his bow and quiver and was shooting Sunfire arrows at Rorjak’s minions. Despite everything, she could not help but feel a measure of pride as each of Falcon’s magic-imbued missiles found their targets, exploding garm and thralls as his fire clashed with their ice. Grimly handsome, deadly, full of grace and skill, he fought like the Hero of Summerlea she’d always thought him to be.

  A tug on her arm pulled her attention away.

  “Come on,” Krysti said. “Doesn’t look like he needs our help. Not that I’d want to give it to him even if he did.”

  Kham’s throat tightened a little. Why couldn’t Falcon have been the admirable man he should be? The noble man she’d thought he was? Was it a weakness in the Coruscate blood that made first Verdan, then his son, lose all sense of right and wrong? Though nothing in her mourned the death of her father—the wounds he’d inflicted were too deep, too many, and far too painful—every part of her wept at the realization that the heroic brother she’d adored and idolized her whole life no longer existed. If, indeed, he ever had.

  “Kham?” Krysti’s small, white-freckled face looked so earnest. So concerned. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s all right.” She forced a small, reassuring smile and ran a hand over his spiky white hair. “I love you, Krysti. You are the brother to me Falcon should have been.” She bent down to give him a hug and a kiss.

  When she pulled back, Krysti’s eyes were suspiciously bright, but the boy merely cleared his throat and declared like a true, gruff Winterman, “Well, come on, then. I see more garm in need of killing.”

  Despite everything, she laughed, and a little bit of the heaviness pressing down on her heart lifted. “Lead the way, noble warrior.”