Frost Fire (Frost Series #6) (7 page)

T
heir first port of call was the Summer Kingdom. The Winter Castle had been a nice enough place to stay, if somewhat mitigated by the unending darkness, but it was good to go back to Summer. It was home, after all, and Rose had grown to miss it in their absence. Rose missed her parents, her friends, the neighbors she'd had growing up, all of whom lived in the small village outside the castle walls, near the meadows in the glen. Rose had not seen them since before the battle, and – as they had to pass through the Summer lands anyway to get to the Kingdom of the Dead – Rodney suggested that the group spend the night at the family's old house. Shasta looked shy – after all, Rose noted, she wasn’t sure whether Rodney's parents would accept her – but she tentatively agreed.

It was a three-day journey to Summer – it would have taken them only two days under normal conditions, but their caution in the darkness made the group far slower than they would normally have been. Rose's heart ached as she saw the faint outlines of the Summer Palace in the distance: it had once glimmered bright and golden, but now it was merely dark marble. The beauty of Feyland was obscured beneath this veil of darkness that shrouded the whole land. The flowers that had once grown wild and luscious in the gardens of Summer were beginning to wither and die; already a few leaves had grown black and desiccated. Rose wanted to cry, but she held herself back. She was a Knight of the Realm now! She had to be strong, to be brave. She couldn’t let the others see her tears – even the night wouldn’t be enough to hide her shame if she started blubbing now. But inside, Rose was weeping: to see her home, her enchanted land, her people covered in darkness like this. It was almost more than she could bear.

Seeing her parents cheered Rose up somewhat, however. No sooner had they knocked at their door then it creaked open, and Rose's mother and father enveloped their son and daughter in a great bear hug. A blazing fire in the fireplace kept the entire one-room house pleasantly toasty, and even provided enough light for Rose to look straight into her parents’ faces. A little older, a little more wrinkled, but her mother and father were as kind-eyed as ever.

“We missed you so much, Rodney,” they were saying, wrapping Rodney in their arms. “We were so worried about you! And our little Rose! You were keeping her safe, weren’t you, Rodney? Just like we knew you would.”

“I didn’t have to do much,” said Rodney with a smile. “Our ‘little Rose’ is getting quite big now, and was keeping
me
safe just as much as I was keeping her safe.”

Their mother laughed as she greeted the others. “
Alistair
,” she said, giving Rose a significant look as she shook Alistair’s hand, “It’s so nice to
see
you again!” She winked at Rose, and for a moment Rose almost wished the darkness had extended to the indoors of the house. She greeted Logan, too, evidently impressed by his stature and heroic stance. “I’ve heard
so
much about you, Prince Logan!”

Rose's mother turned to Shasta, who looked as if she wanted to vanish into the floorboards. Rodney and Rose both held their breath. Would she accept Shasta – or would she blame her, as so many did, for all the ill of Feyland, for threatening Rodney’s career, for bringing forth the Hordes?

“You must be Shasta,” she said.

“Yes ma’am.” Shasta looked steadfastly at the floor.

Rodney's mother hesitated for a moment, took a deep breath, and then enveloped Shasta in a motherly hug.

“You’ve been through so much, poor dear,” she said. “We’ll take care of you. You’re family now.”

Rose beamed inwardly.
Of course Mother's taken to her! Mother's incapable of being nasty to anyone!

Shasta smiled sadly, and Rose knew that she was thinking of her own mother the Winter Queen, dead only a few weeks.

“But we knew you were coming!” Rose's mother bustled about, leading the rest of the group indoors. “After all, the King told us!”

“The King?” Rodney looked confused.

But when they entered the house, they found sitting huddled by the fireplace two familiar figures. Older than Kian and Breena, but with equally regal bearing, they were King Frank Flametail and Queen Raine Malloy – Breena’s parents, reunited and remarried at last. They were holding hands, looking kindly and content. Rose made as if to bow, but they waved her to her feet.

“Our daughter told us that you would be passing through this way,” said Flametail. “We wanted to pay you a visit to offer you some support. To give you guidance. I have heard of the Dark Forces you seek, and I believe it falls to me to help you defeat them. All of Feyland is with you – our hearts, mind, and magic.”

“Guidance?” Rose crept closer to the king, still somewhat shy in his presence. Flametail was a kind and generous man, but he was still The King to his subjects, somehow inapproachable in a way Breena had never been.

“Guidance regarding the Dark Forces,” said Flametail, stretching out before the fireplace. “I want to tell you all a story. Sit…” The group all sat on the thick rug before the fireplace, huddling together for warmth. “When I was a young lad, a mere prince, many centuries ago, I was given a task, for this was the old days, and before a boy could be given the crown – before his parents would retire – he had to prove his bravery and worth, lest an unfit boy chance ruling the kingdom. I had to complete a series of challenges, conquering various demons and dark creations that, like the Hordes, had emerged from the Dark Forces. Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter all devised tasks for me, sending me to conquer beasts that scourged the land. And I found this challenge a difficult task. Not because I feared death or battle, but because…these forces had the strangest power. They could make a grown, sane man doubt himself, or even go mad. They fill your head with suspicions and grievances, make you think the whole world is against you. You try to chase these forces and they fill your head with lies and distract you until everything’s gone upside-down.”

“But you beat them…” Shasta said.

“I did, Shasta. Because one night, when I was at my very lowest point, I had a dream. A woman came to me – an old woman who was shimmering with the pure ancient magic of Feyland. And she whispered these words into my ear, words I will share with you now: ‘Fey are not perfect. Fey are not pure. We are born with dark and light magic within ourselves, for all nature is composed of light and dark. You must conquer the darkness within before you tackle the darkness without.’” He sighed. “And from that day forth, I learned to conquer my own inner demons, and soon I was able to defeat all the plagues of Feyland. I tell you the same.” He took our hands and joined them together. “My message to you is this: encourage one another. Support one another. Believe in yourselves, and in this quest that you undertake for Feyland. You must not allow the darkness to overtake you, for it is within, and not without, that it has its first victory. Perhaps you too will have the vision as I did, from Feyland’s past or future – I do not know. But I do know that Feyland’s magic supported me in my quest, and I have no doubt it will support you, too. Be strong, my dear heroes, and believe.”

Chapter 7

T
he light crackled in the fireplace. It was not a great light – only a few flickers of flame to illuminate the room – but in contrast to their customary darkness it was enough to make them wake. Rose and Rodney had curled up together on a pile of pillows, as they had done when they were children; Logan, Shasta, and Alistair shared another pile of blankets closer to the door. It was far less luxurious, Rose knew, than their accommodations at the palace had been, but she did not complain. She knew that many more cold and sleepless nights awaited them – and, once they started their journey into the wild edges of Feyland, they could no longer expect to wake up to the smell their parents cooking oatmeal over the fire, as Rose’s mother was now doing.

This was to be the last family gathering they would have in a while, Rose thought mournfully, as her friends and family ate their breakfast in silence. Soon they would be setting off on a journey from which, in all likelihood, at least some of them would not return. Did her mother know that – as her eyes settled first upon Rose, then upon Rodney, then back again? Was she, too, afraid? Or was that even greater fear too strong – the fear that the suns of Feyland would never return, that all would eventually be consumed by darkness?

The journey was slow and sad. Even Alistair, normally so jocular and full of wit, was silent as they rode onwards. Rose wanted to say something to him – to whisper words of comfort, to seek some solace from him – but she found that she could not. If she opened her mouth, even for just a moment, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop herself from crying – for Feyland, for that poor fairy who had died on the floor of the Great Hall, for her mother and father. And she couldn’t cry, not in front of the others. Logan and Shasta and Rodney had all seen worse – they’d all done braver things and more difficult things and she had never known any of them to shed a tear before her. They’d killed men in battle, and slain dragons, and defeated monsters – and somehow they still had the courage to keep soldiering on. Queen Breena had knighted her now, made her responsible for being a hero, just like the rest of them. That meant that they had to stay strong.
She
had to stay strong.

Logan led them onwards. It was to Logan that Breena had told the secrets of the trail she took when she had once, many months ago, taken Kian’s lifeless body up that same mountain. By now Rose had heard the story – how Breena was so desperate to save the life of her beloved Prince that she was willing to sacrifice herself to do it, throwing herself headlong down the side of Feyland’s most ancient mountain, tumbling into the Kingdom of the Dead. It was a story, Rose knew, that haunted Logan at every moment – she could see, as he announced to the group to take this trail or that, go through this stream or under this waterfall, how much it pained him to recollect that Breena had once been willing to die for another man.

But not for him. Rose knew it, and Logan knew it. Breena had known a great and terrible love, a love strong enough for her to risk her own life, but it had not been for the Wolf.

And yet here they were, tracing those same paths again, searching for the mountain that Breena had once reached on the back of a Pegasus. Rose had half-wished that they, too, could ride Pegasi to the mountaintop. Logan had shaken his head and refused the request.

Now Rose knew why. They had come to a field that had once been green, but by the faint twinkle of starlight had turned to a sort of desiccated brown. The flowers that had once grown in wild abundance on the bushes and in the trees had now dried out – they looked, Rose thought, like the flowers Rose had once seen left unattended in a vase in the study for a few weeks: beautiful, but tragic, their ripe petals turning to crispy, ashen, darkness. One touch was all it took – one touch, and the brittle petals scattered and turned to dust.

And in the field were at least one hundred bony horses – unicorns and Pegasi alike, their creamy white skin now jaundiced, their ribs protruding beneath their dull, once-shimmering flesh. Their eyes were full of sadness; the wings of the Pegasi looked worn and ragged; the unicorns’ horns no longer shone. Heavy mist cloaked the land.

“Without fresh grass,” Logan said bitterly, “they’ve started to starve. None of them has the energy to carry himself any distance – let alone another Fey. It’s cruel to make them work – without the sun, it’s every Fey for himself.”

Rose looked stricken. Could it really be that these once-noble, once-powerful beasts she had loved and feared since childhood had been transformed into sickly, near-starving creatures? Without the suns, living creatures, living things withered away. There was no life without the Suns. She reached into her pocket for an apple – one of the few her mother had been able to spare and press into her hands. She held it out, and one of the unicorns caught her eye, staggering over. She knew unicorns did not often like to be touched by outsiders’ hands, but this unicorn was desperate; it laid its head in her arms and rested there as she fed him pieces of apple, bite by bite.