Shadow Of The Winter King (Book 1) (10 page)

“Do not.” Regel’s carving knife scraped against the wood. “Do not speak ill of her.”

Ovelia wanted to. She wanted to smear Lenalin’s name all over the cabin, to strike Regel with her sins and iniquities—all those terrible secrets that she and Ovelia had shared as girls—but it was useless. Fifteen years ago, death had made Lenalin perfect to Regel, and so she would remain.

“I am sorry,” Ovelia said, “that I am the one who lived, and not the one you loved.”

The vast abyss between them grew, and their voices could not span its width. Ovelia hated this silence—hated that it rushed between them so easily.

“Very well,” he said finally. “I thought he was forcing you.”

“He wasn’t,” Ovelia replied.

“I see that now.” He jabbed his knife into the wood, gouging two small furrows.

“My—” Ovelia bit her lip. She almost told him the truth, if only to draw his attention, but realized it would be a fool’s errand. “All my resources must go to this, and my body is just one more.”

“That isn’t true,” Regel said without looking at her.

“You don’t understand how much I
need
this, Regel. The only thing that matters to me is justice for Semana. Let my body be polluted with dishonor. Let war come and the world pass to Ruin. I do not care, so long as justice is done.”

“Justice,” Regel mused. “Was it justice that slew Orbrin?”

“Please.” Ovelia fought the tears welling in her eyes. “Do not ask me that.”

Regel looked up at her, astonished. “Why do you weep when I say his name? Why not bask in your infamy like the monster you are?”

“Whatever you may think,” Ovelia said. “I did love and honor Orbrin. More than you will ever know or understand.”

“Why not me?” he asked, so suddenly that Ovelia jumped. “Why Fersi, and not me?”

“What?” Ovelia sniffed and wiped her nose.

“Why not seduce
me
?”

Because he was not Fersi. Because he was not Paeter. He did not see her as they had.

“I
tried
,” Ovelia said. “Or do you not remember seeing through me so easily that night in the tavern?”

“I mean, why not do it
now
?” Regel said. “Trick me. Charm me into believing you an ally. I will aid you on your quest, and rather than slay you afterward, I will spare you. Why would you not do this?”

Because that would not be justice, she thought but did not say.

“Regel, I—” Ovelia laid her hands against his cheeks. How warm his skin felt—how hard from wind and age. “You and I... Regel, I never stopped. How I felt about you. You know that.”

“No.”

“No?” Ovelia asked. “What do you mean?”

“You never loved me.” Regel rose from the bed and shook his head. “You loved
her
—the woman I saw in you.”

“That’s not true, Regel.”

“Then what of Paeter?” Regel asked. “I killed him, you know.”

Ovelia stiffened. All her memories and doubts and self-loathing fell away. She could hardly credit what she had heard. “You
what
?”

“The prince died at my hand,” Regel said. “It was no less than he deserved, after what he did to Lenalin and to you. Unless you went to his bed willingly, in which case I apologize—”

Ovelia slapped him hard.

Regel slowly touched the blood at his lip. “I deserved that.”

“You—” Ovelia trembled. “You
fool
! Paeter was the named heir. He—” Her cheeks felt hot and her hands shook. “How many died over the succession? How many lives could have...
Semana
.” She raised her trembling hand to her mouth. “Old Gods, he was Semana’s
father
, Regel. He would have protected her!”

Regel laughed aloud. “I doubt that very much.”

Ovelia lunged and knocked him to the bed, fingers scrabbling for his eyes. But he was fast and strong, as he had ever been. He caught her wrists, pitting his strength against hers once more. She scrabbled and thrust her knees at him, but he rolled atop her and straddled her to pin her down.

“Stop,” he said.

Ovelia glared up at him murderously. She writhed but he held her firmly.

“Stop,” he repeated, softer.

“Old Gods, Regel,
why
?” Ovelia looked up through tear-wet eyes. “Why would you kill Paeter? I know you hated him—” She shut her eyes. “You’d not do it for
me
—would you?”

“No.” Regel released her and rolled away. They lay panting, side-by-side. “Not for you.”

Ovelia rose and stood trembling in the candlelit darkness. They two had sealed the princess’s fate by striking on the same night. Fate was a cruel thing indeed, not only in what it took but in what it left behind.

“You should not have done that,” she said. “Paeter was a beast but he was Lenalin’s husband, and the only hope the Blood of Winter had.” She laughed mirthlessly. “All this time, I thought mine was the blade that doomed Tar Vangr, but you shoulder as much blame as I.”

“You think I do not know this? You think I do not think about this every day?” Regel looked so old. Ovelia thought he aged a decade in the span of a moment.

“Regel,” Ovelia said. “I did not mean—”

Regel shrugged, and the moment passed. “We should stay in here for a time, lest we cross the crew wrongly. You should try to rest. And—” His eyes left hers. “Let me fix you some tea.”

“Yes.” Her stomach roiled. “Well.”

She was tired—tired of this ship, tired of the calmed winds, tired of wanting a man who would kill her in perhaps a quarter-moon’s time or less. Even now, with Regel in the room, when she closed her eyes, sleep loomed quickly.

And with it came the realization that only once had she seen Regel so angry as when he had kicked in the cabin door—and only that once had she wanted him so badly.

Act Two: Shields

Five Years Previous—Palace of Tar Vangr—Ruin’s Night, 976 Sorcerus Annis

H
eat.

There was heat and shame.

Cloaked in rumpled sheets, Ovelia Dracaris lay on her side, gazing across the chamber into the silvered glass that stood beside the crackling hearth. The pale woman staring back at her—eyes hooded in a haggard face wreathed in hair like fire—seemed like a stranger. She was an old woman almost, aged far beyond this, her thirty-fourth winter. Her hazel eyes seemed almost a dull red in the bloody candlelight.

Movement in the mirror drew her eye to the man donning his clothes behind her in the chamber. Meaty hands slid dark leathers over his once iron-hard frame, now well padded with age. Those same rough hands had been the ones touching her moments before, and she still ached in those places they had been rough upon her. She ached from the urgency of his need and her own loathsome desire.

“Do I have another moon, then?” she asked.

Paeter Ravalis paused. “Eight years, and that is still why you do this? Not for pleasure, or the honor of my seed? Or perhaps to seduce the man who shall be your king?” He made a snuffling sound a little like a laugh. “Certain you’re not a little in love with me?”

Ovelia blinked slowly—her reflection did the same. The lionskins strewn about the floor looked up at her with dead, glassy eyes. “Do I have it?”

“You amaze me.” Paeter scoffed. “You suffer the bed of a man you hate for eight years, simply for the right to see a child not even your own. Why?”

Ovelia pitied him. With his confident smile and his words of boundless arrogance, he might have seemed a conquering king in his youth. But age had weakened the cords of his flesh and stolen his vehemence. He looked almost comical now, with his pronounced gut and too much ungainly hair. She knew older men much more beautiful than he. And yet...

“Assuage my curiosity, woman,” Paeter said. “Why is my Nar-burned daughter so dear to you that you’d whore yourself to my bed simply for the right to see her?”

Ovelia blinked slowly, hoping the world would change when next she opened her eyes. It did not. “Have I another moon with her?” she asked for the third time. “Or must you have more?”

Paeter strode across the chamber and grasped her by the red hair, hauling her face up to his. “Perhaps it is the abasement that you love? Do you long for the awful things I do to you?”

She couldn’t deny that, but to agree would empower him. She hung limply in his grasp.

“Astonishing, that you care nothing for this body you sacrifice to me every thirty days.” He squeezed one of her breasts—the sweet pain both thrilled and repulsed her. “Are you not the last Dracaris, heir of the Blood of Dragonfire? How far the proud she-dragon has fallen!”

“Do I have the time, or not?” she asked.

“You disgust me.” He ran his fingers along her brow. “They should name you Whore’s Get, not Dragon’s. Unworthy of her blood—unworthy of the Winter King.”

She should not have responded but his words struck a deep chord in her. Her spirit could stand any indignity, and though torture might scar her, her body would not break. But to question her loyalty was too much.

“And what would they name you, fallen prince?” She looked over his fat arms and chest. “Would they call you a speared whale? Would they bow to a walking corpse of a man?”

Surprise flickered in his eyes—and unexpected pleasure. For he loved to suffer as she did, and she had cut open his deepest wounds: the Ravalis were ever creatures of pride.

“Fie.” Sneering, Paeter turned up his nose. “I’ll have no more of you.”

“You’re having me now, or does your memory pass so quickly?” she asked. “
You
are the one who insists on this... arrangement between us.”

At that, Paeter’s face lost its humor and became cruel. “Burn you, Shield-Whore.” He shoved her down onto the bed hard enough to knock her dizzy. “You’ve grown too cold for me.”

“Too old, you mean,” she whispered before she could stop herself.

Paeter sneered and cracked his knuckles. “Speak louder, slut—I didn’t hear you.”

Ovelia contemplated the unexpected anger on her face in the looking-glass. In her blurred vision, her hazel irises surrounded twin embers deep at the heart of her eyes: tiny flames that told her to rise up and throttle this beast of a man who mocked her. But Ovelia was a woman of honor and duty, and so she stifled those twin sparks of vengeance.

“Very well.” Paeter buttoned up his jerkin and crossed to the door. There, he stopped and turned back. His hand went to his belt pouch and came up with two silver pieces. “You should have some coin, whore—to remind you what you are.”

He tossed the coins at her, then slammed the door behind him.

One coin struck Ovelia’s cheek and fell to the bed. The other clinked to the stone floor between the lionskins. Ovelia watched it roll in a diminishing, forlorn circle. Silver light danced in a wandering ring, which gleamed off something bright in the corner. She heard Paeter curse as he shuffled his way down the corridor beyond. Finally, the coin settled.

She had won the battle, but she dreaded the payment Paeter would exact for her victory. She could bear anything for Semana, but would Paeter even give her a chance after tonight?

And was that truly why she had done this for so long?

Another five breaths passed before Ovelia realized what she had seen in the mirror: the glint of steel. Her heart began to hammer like that of a rabbit that has spied a wolf, only too late.

“Gods of the Nar.” She sat and pulled the sheets to her chest. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough.” The man in the darkness moved for the first time, letting her see him. He controlled how much she could see, and to be so completely in his power terrified and thrilled her.

“Regel,” she said. “This—this is not as it seems.”

“As it seems?” He stood, immobile and unreadable. She saw he wore his re-curved sword of blue steel: the scythe-sword called Frostburn. She felt colder simply
seeing
it.

He would not understand unless she told him all, and that she could not do. Some oaths went deeper than what she and Regel shared. “What—” Ovelia swallowed. “What will you do now?”

Regel walked silently toward her. Ovelia thought she could feel his sword sucking at her warmth.

“Will you kill me, Regel?” she asked. “I would not begrudge you. None would.”

His eyes betrayed nothing. He stood before her, his body taut and ready.

“You loved me once.” Ovelia closed her eyes and sighed. “Do not make me suffer.”

His lungs sucked and pushed out air with a shallowness that whispered of barely controlled wrath. His heart raced loud enough for her to hear in the silent room—or perhaps that was only her own heart. Once their hearts had beat together. Would his go forth alone from this day?

She felt it then, quick as lightning and soft as a lover’s caress. Frostburn’s cold steel kissed her throat and warm life flowed from her skin, leaving her empty.

“No.” Regel drew the ancient falcat away and sheathed it.

“No, you’ll not kill me?” Ovelia whispered.

Regel shook his head. “No, I never loved you.”

A cold fist closed around her heart. “But—but we—”

“Never
you
,” Regel said. “When I could pretend you were Lenalin—only then.”

“Please, Regel,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You don’t understand—”

“And now.” Regel laid his gloved fingers against her cheek. “Now you are both dead.”

With that, he pulled away and was gone.

He left her world in ruins.

Seven

Luether—Autumn 981 Sorcerus Annis

A
t first, Ovelia thought
the orange and gray haze on the southern horizon was a storm. As she stretched out her sore shoulder—remarkably healed but still stiff—she realized the truth. The understanding put a hollow ache in the pit of her stomach, confirmed only too soon as the crow-nest watcher cried: “Land!”

Luether, once City of flame, now City of Pyres. Even from this distance, it was obvious to Ovelia how the city had earned its name: smoke rose high into the sky, covering the Dusk Sea in a sickly, burning haze. She thought she could see flames rising from the high cliffs in the far distance, and they filled her with unease.

She wished Regel was there beside her, and hated how weak such a desire made her feel.

Ovelia had rarely felt so alone, though she had hardly known a moment of privacy in days. Since that night with Fersi two days before, Regel had hardly left her side, but he’d been distant and unavailable. He’d spoken perhaps a dozen words to her, but he was always there, watching. What exactly hid behind those eyes, she could not say, and he
would
not.

As though her thoughts had called out to him, Regel appeared at Ovelia’s side. They watched the burning city draw nearer. “It is fate, I think,” Regel said, “that we must face evil at its heart.”

“Perhaps.” Ovelia straightened her spine. “But I have known evil, and I am not afraid.”

Regel said nothing, but she thought she saw a hint of an unexpected smile on his face. She had all but given up hope that he saw her as anything but a blade in his hand. She wondered.

They drew closer, and Ovelia could see the truth: Luether was on fire. Something had broken open the stone near the surface of the water, and the Narfire rose to wreathe the walls in white and red flame. She remembered watching in horror twenty years ago as the Narfire burst free of its bonds and ravaged the city beneath the fleeing skyship
Heiress
. That destruction was still visible, but it seemed the surviving Blood houses of Luether or perhaps the Children themselves had at least partly sealed away the fire in the city proper. The flames seemed to be only partly under control, however: Ovelia could see them chipping away at the cliffs and releasing more burning doom into the air.

“Madness,” Ovelia whispered. “At any moment, the Narfire could boil over and kill them all. Do the Children
want
to die?” She stopped herself. Perhaps she’d answered her own question.

Regel spoke without meeting her eye. “You should garb yourself elsewise,” he said. “Luether is a poor place for a noblewoman like Aniset.”

“I suppose,” Ovelia said. “Though my mother
was
a scullery maid.”

Regel’s eyes lingered on the horizon and he did not reply.

He was looking into Ruin, Ovelia thought—into the death of a world.

* * *

Regel whittled outside the guest cabin while Ovelia dressed within. The carving in his hands took shape as he let his mind lie silent and reached beyond.

Footsteps sounded on the deck behind him. He knew who it was without looking—his years of training saw to that—but Regel glanced over his shoulder anyway. “Hail,” he said.

“Hail, Syr Norlest,” Captain Fersi said. “If it does not offend, you should wear this.”

The captain handed Regel a ragged cloak of stained linen, similar to those the crew of the
Dart
wore. Regel looked at him speculatively.

“The
White Dart
is known in this place, but you are not,” Fersi said. “The sentries on the walls must not mark you for an outsider, or they will cast on the instant.”

Regel nodded and donned the cloak. “You are aiding me for your own interest.”

“Just so,” Fersi said. “There exists no malice between us, my friend. Only coin.”

Regel nodded, though he kept his blade close to hand. That, he trusted better.

The City of Luether stood in the protected heart of an archipelago, with towering cliffs that forbade any attempting to storm the gates. The
White Dart
floated toward twin walls of fire split by a thin crevasse of dark water. They’d had to approach at high tide, else the ship would dash itself to death upon the hulks of galleys that lay just beneath them. Great plumes of steam rose around them where the waves washed up over the vents of the Narfire’s flame. The water around the
White Dart
bubbled and sizzled with the heat, promising a searing death to any unfortunate who fell over the side.

The ship passed between two great guard towers studded with long unused cannon and warded by men in mail of ring and leather, armed with farcasters. Regel saw the dead eyes lodged in their grizzled, ugly faces and knew them for bastard Children of Ruin. The cannon—sculpted to resemble snarling monsters of myth—pointed at the
Dart
. The secret of explosive powder was long gone, but the Children might have found a stockpile or found a way to fire the cannon through magic.

As if in answer to his thoughts, one of the cannon emitted a thunderous clang, and he ducked by reflex. The wall shattered opposite and fifty paces above the ship, sending shards of stone cascading down into the murky water. The crew of the
White Dart
scrambled to steer them clear, and super-heated water splashed up and over the sides. Regel lunged forward to snatch back a crewman, who suffered only a scalding spray to his arm, rather than his body. The ship trudged on, swaying in the disturbed water, while the barbarian who had fired at them cackled madly.

A heartbeat later, a casterbolt sizzled across from the other tower and exploded into the stone near the cannon. The watcher roared in outrage, and a dozen other guards took up hoots of laughter. This was what passed for humor among the Children—the proximity of death.

“Madmen,” Regel murmured.

Captain Fersi nodded.

Past the watchtowers, the
Dart
navigated a narrow channel, among stone edifices and the bulks of ships left to rot in the shallows. Before, Regel had seen thousands of murder holes and watch posts, but here, he saw none. It was an eerie feeling, being so alone. “No more watchers?” he asked Fersi.

“These are the Hellfire Straits, my friend. When loosed, the Narfire gushes from pipes laced through the stone, filling these waters with doom. Any guards caught in that blast would simply be more ash, and the fires would spread through the rest of the posts.” The captain offered him a gallows-grin and held up a hand. “Ah, but have no fear—the Children have lost that particular secret of Luether’s defenses. What you saw at the front towers is the result of their effort to unlock the Narfire, but they could not control it. They could not stop it even if they wanted to. Beautiful, no?”

Regel felt ill, actually, to think of the world’s fiery lifeblood and soul gushing into the open air. There was something perverse and ugly about the thought. Fersi was wrong—it was not the Children who had loosed the Narfire, but the old king of the Ravalis, father to he that ruled Tar Vangr. The mage-city of Luether was an oozing, festering wound, and he feared it would never close. He had to remind himself that he and Ovelia had not come to save the world. They’d come for vengeance and nothing else.

“Besides,” the captain went on, “even if the Children could wield the fire, they’d be protecting a graveyard.” Fersi gestured to a floating hulk of broken wood rocking idly in the water. A figurehead of a lithe woman, now scarred with age and blackened with flame, marked its ship’s wreckage. “Few navigate these waters—only the mad or the skilled.”

“Which are you?” Regel asked.

The captain grinned.

They floated into the largely empty Luether harbor, which proved a relative respite from the harrowing journey through the straits. Many of the docked ships were burned out and barely seaworthy. Some of them looked familiar, and Regel wondered how many had fought in the Children’s conquest only to sit for twenty years rotting in their mooring.

As the
White Dart
approached the dock to tie up, gears creaked and whined as a rusty steel arm from the dock reached for their halting ship. Regel tensed, expecting an attack, but instead the crane closed its pincers around one of the moldering crates on the main deck. Regel eased his taut legs and resolved to accustom himself once again to the mechanical wonders of the southland.

The dock warden stood at the foot of a gangplank to the
Dart
and exchanged words with Captain Fersi, and then they spat in their hands and shook on the accord. The metal arm shuddered into operation and carried the crate back to the dock. The crew and the men on the dock began unloading the
Dart
’s cargo, the nature of which Regel did not care to know. His task had nothing to do with coin, after all.

“Norlest,” said a voice at his elbow.

Ovelia wore breeches and a man’s tunic. With her dyed hair pulled back under a lumpy cap, her womanly body buried in bulky clothes, and even a dusting of false stubble over her lip, she became someone not herself. “Well?” she asked.

“Passable,” Regel said, with his usual aplomb.

“Such a flatterer,” she said. Even her
voice
was convincing. “Does he have his coin?”

“Waiting in his cabin.”

Fersi traded words with the dock warden, and both sneaked glances at them. Ovelia touched the handle of Draca, which she’d wrapped in cloth. Shadows began to leak from its hilt, and Regel became acutely aware of the dozen or so dockhands eyeing them with ambiguous intent. Now that the coin was paid and the deal complete, one word from the captain and they would turn on their former passengers.

“We should go,” Ovelia said. “Now.”

“Agreed.” Regel looked around for a distraction. “Perhaps—”

Before they could move, a great racket filled the dock. The loading machine whirred crazily and its talons closed too hard on a crate, splintering out its half-rotted sides. The claw shot back toward the ship, flinging the remains of the crate—as well as broken glass and showering foodstuffs—out into the harbor. Two men rushed toward the control box, but the arm swept them aside like ants.

As Fersi shouted orders and the deckhands looked for a way through the arm’s arc, Regel and Ovelia slipped away from the dock and up the street. After ten paces, no one cared about the accident at the dock. Regel would not easily forget it, however—particularly how it had occurred precisely when they had needed it. He did not trust coincidence or fate.

He stepped closer to Ovelia and kept close watch on their trail.

* * *

The first thing she noticed about Luether was the heat: within a breath, sweat coated the inside of Ovelia’s clothes. Ruin’s sun above was oppressive, and the Narfire burned below to heat the pavement as in Tar Vangr. She wondered if she could even stand the heat during the actual summer season.

Ovelia remembered Luether’s heat from her youth, but it had seemed gentler. She recalled a city tinged by the haze of wine, swelling music, and the cacophonous bouquet of hundreds of flowers. She couldn’t stop sneezing, but she had been happy, because Lenalin had been happy.

That passionate innocence was gone in these latter years, however. Smoke billowed from foundry stacks above them, while inside engines rumbled hard enough to shake the very street beneath Ovelia’s boots. The air tasted not of flowers but of burnt flesh and corroded metal. Below, the forges of the Narfire churned out increasingly powerful casters, great siege engines, mechanized war machines, and other monstrosities. It had been thus before the coming of the Children of Ruin, and even after that fateful day, the barbarians maintained the forges, twisting their constructs to match their own dark whims.

Even fallen into madness, Luether remained a city of metal and of fire.

But even under the oppressive rule of the Children, Luether was still a living city that did trade with Tar Vangr, its supposed enemy. The self-styled King Pervast seemed unlike other Children in that he lived for something other than murder and destruction: coin. Even if hatred pushed men apart, greed always seemed to pull them back together.

In the market, they lost themselves in a crowd of folk: Luethaar, Vangryur, Free Islander, all clammoring for position and shouting orders or greetings to one another. All the while, coin changed hands. Horseless carriages rattled up the crude streets, and soot dripped on them from clanking ornithopters high overhead. Ovelia was impressed and a bit unnerved to see the Children so fully in command of Luether’s mechanical wonders. She wanted to think of the barbarians as little more than animals, but to see what they had accomplished in twenty years made her nervous.

Across the way, four chained men worked to scrub white-wash markings from a nearby, burned-out building. They had only just begun the work, so most of the message remained:
Summer Da—
and the ghost of one more letter that might have been a U or a Y. Supervising the work was a big man with bits of blade thrust through his cheeks. Such self-mutilation marked him as a Child of Ruin. He stared across at them and actually growled like an animal.

They took shelter beneath an awning of an open-air shop that peddled broken gears and machinery. The smell of rotting fish mingled with the ever-present stench of burning and the smell of something that had died here not too long ago. Ash hung thick in the air and trash littered the grimy cobblestones. “What was that?” Ovelia asked. “That message?”

“The liberators,” Regel said. “Loyalists to the Ravalis, who resist Vultara and the Children at every turn. Rumor says a lesser cousin of the Ravalis leads them. One Garin by name.”

“Garin Ravalis, the Fox of Luether.” Ovelia pursed her lips in thought. “I’ve met the man, and did not think him as bad as his cousins. Though that was decades ago, and folk change.”

“Indeed.” Regel gestured again to the marking. “They paint the words ‘Summer Day’ where they have done their lord’s work.” He gestured to a burned out building across the street, where at least two bodies sat propped against the bricks. “They still fight, even after more than twenty years of occupation.”