The Winter King (56 page)

As the men walked off to tend the horses, Kham measured the location of the sun. They’d traveled another thirty miles since breaking camp this morning. The Llaskroner Fjord couldn’t be more than another day or two away. They must be meeting up with the rest of Falcon’s army near there.

A careful glance around the camp told her that wherever Falcon had gone, he’d gone alone. For what purpose, she couldn’t even begin to speculate, but his absence gave her the chance to draw upon her power without alerting him. Time to make a move.

Krysti was chained to a tree fifteen feet away, but Falcon’s men were mostly ignoring him, too. That was a mistake. She saw his fingers working at the hem of his tunic and hid a smile. He kept a set of picks sewn into the hem of each of his tunics because, “A boy never knows when they might come in handy.”

She nodded when Krysti glanced her way, then lowered her eyes and reached out to the source of her power, gathering the sun’s heat and concentrating it inside her. Her body began to warm beneath its lead blanket. She gripped her chains in both hands, preparing to melt them as she had the chains Valik had tried to hold her with.

Once Krysti got safely away, Khamsin would be free to teach her captors the true meaning of her giftname.

The sound of galloping hooves and the feel of hot, angry weathermagic on the wind made her gasp and release her power.

She turned to see her brother leap off his horse almost before it came to a stop. He crossed the short distance to her side in five long strides and yanked her up to her feet.

“Where is it?” His face was contorted in fury, his eyes wild. “What did you do with it?” He shook her so hard she was surprised her head didn’t flop off her neck.

“What did I do with what?” she exclaimed when he stopped shaking her enough that she could speak.

He opened his mouth, then after a hard look at his companions, thought the better of it. Instead, he grabbed her by the arm and frog-marched her into the woods. When they were out of earshot of the camp, he spun her around and yanked Blazing from its sheath.

“No more games, Storm. You tell me what you did with it, or you die right here, and to Hel with any curse on my House.”

“Did with what? What are you talking about?”

“The sword! The real sword of Roland! Not this weak-spelled forgery you put in its place!” He shook the sword furiously and flung it aside. It sank into a drift of snow.

Kham’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t believe he had just thrown the greatest treasure in the world away like so much rotting garbage. “Are you mad? That
is
Roland’s sword.”

“Liar!” He slapped her hard, knocking her to her knees. “Where is Blazing? The
real
Blazing?”

She raised manacled hands to her throbbing cheek. “That
is
Blazing. You’ve felt its power. You called on it early today, during that first stop. You melted everything around us.” How could he even think the sword was a forgery? Had Blazing not conveyed to Falcon the same history of its creation as it had the moment she first touched it?

Helos bestows his greatest gifts only on the worthy, Heir of Roland.

The low, multilayered voice boomed in her mind, resonating through every cell in her body. She didn’t hear the voice so much as she
felt
it. Each vast and terrible divine tone. It made her tremble in her boots.

Falcon just kept shouting. “Roland’s sword was capable of calling phenomenal power! All this does is amplify my weathergift. Any half-witted wizard capable of boiling water could lay an amplification spell on a sword!”

He had not heard the voice.

Falcon had not heard the voice. And if he had not heard the voice, that meant . . .

“You are not the Heir,” she breathed.

Falcon stopped in midrant. His body went stiff. His face went hard. “What did you say?”

She stared at Falcon as if she’d never seen him before. And perhaps, until now, she never had. He
had
tried to call on Blazing’s power that morning. He hadn’t just tried to scare her—he had tried to call upon the sword’s magic to kill her the way she had killed the ice-thralled Elka in the Temple of Wyrn.

And the sword had not answered.

She climbed slowly to her feet, never taking her eyes off her brother.

“You are not the Heir,” she said again. “Blazing doesn’t answer you because you are not the true Heir of Roland.”

Her eyes flashed purest silver in an instant. She didn’t even need to summon a storm this time. The power she’d gathered earlier came roaring back to life. In an instant, she melted the chain binding her hands and punched through the lead-lined fabric of her cloak like a hot coal through silk. Electricity shot from her palms, striking Falcon on the chest and sending him flying into a nearby tree. His skull cracked against the trunk, and he slid down into a crumpled, motionless heap at the tree’s base.

Khamsin ripped off her lead cloak and dove for Roland’s sword, snatching it out of the snowbank. Her fingers closed around the hilt. She stared at her reflection in the gleaming blade—the wild, lightning-kissed hair, the quicksilver eyes—and thought,
Fire
. The clear diamond flashed blinding bright, and flame engulfed Blazing’s blade.

“Summer Sun,” she whispered. “It’s me.
I
am Roland’s Heir.”

“Over my dead body.”

She turned to find Verdan Coruscate standing at the edge of the clearing, Krysti held before him, a knife at the boy’s throat.

C
HAPTER 26

Strange Bedfellows

“How can she be the Heir? It’s supposed to be me! It was always supposed to be me!” Falcon paced back and forth across his father’s tent. Roland’s sword, still sheathed in Falcon’s scabbard, lay on a table against the side of the tent. Falcon had thrown it there in disgust earlier. “I’m the one who spent years reading entire libraries of books, tracking down every fragment of a lead. I was the one who followed the trail to Wintercraig and that damned Book of Riddles! I’m the one who spent the last three years traveling from one corner of Mystral to another, risking life and limb to follow the clues in that book! I risked everything to find that sword! It’s supposed to be mine! I’m the true Heir of Roland!”

“Yes, you are,” King Verdan agreed. “With my sword arm ruined, you are indisputably Roland’s rightful Heir.” He stalked over to the corner of the tent, where Khamsin was sitting, bound securely to a chair, gagged, and once more draped in a heavy lead-lined cloth. He grabbed her face, squeezing her cheeks and jaw in a hard grip. “What vile magic did you work to make the sword recognize you instead of your brother, girl?”

She glared up at him. The thick wad of cloth tied over her mouth rendered her incapable of response.

Verdan loosened the cloth and let it fall to her chest. “Answer me, girl.”

“I did nothing. Clearly, Blazing judged Falcon and found him lacking.” She switched her glare to her brother, and added, “Maybe he should have spent more time trying to emulate Roland’s noble qualities—like honor, generosity, and self-sacrifice—instead of murdering, thieving, and whoring his way to the sword’s hiding place!”

“You traitorous little bitch!” Frothing with rage, Falcon lunged forward, fist raised.

Kham’s chin jutted out, and she braced herself for the blow. “Do it,” she dared. “My hands are tied, my magic bound. Hit me and prove once and for all what a fine, brave hero you are.”

Falcon swore, and his fist stopped midswing. Perhaps because he still retained the ability to feel shame. Or maybe, just because he remembered what happened the last time he assumed a lead cloak rendered her powerless.

“Do you see now?” Verdan said, waving a hand at Khamsin. “I warned you to send her to Hel with the rest of Atrialan’s lackeys. I told you she’d betray her family, her country, and her king at the first opportunity.”

“You aren’t my king, Verdan Coruscate,” she snapped. “And you aren’t my family, either. You lost all claim to that the day you dragged me into the depths of Vera Sola and beat me near to death. All the loyalty and devotion I would have given you, if you’d loved me even a little, belongs to Wynter now.”

“Love?
You?
I’d sooner love a plague on my own House! I should have drowned you at birth. If I had, my Rose would still be alive.”

“So you’ve said my whole life,” she scoffed, “but that’s just a cowardly lie.” For the first time, his hatred didn’t hurt. He had nothing she wanted, nothing she needed, and he had lost all power over her. “Tildy told me the truth. The doctor warned you to stay away from my mother, but you didn’t. You couldn’t. And do you know what? I don’t blame you for that. I know now what it is to love someone so deeply you can’t stay away. But do you think for one minute my mother would love the vile, corrupt monster you’ve become? A man who would plot to kill his own child—
her
child? She would despise you! She would cringe from you in revulsion. She would—”

Verdan’s fist shot out. Unlike Falcon, he didn’t stop midswing. His knuckles struck a hard blow to her jaw.

Her head snapped back from the impact. She and the chair she was tied to fell sideways onto the floor. Kham lay in the dirt, working her jaw, and regarded him with narrowed eyes. “That is the last time you will ever lay a finger on me.”

“Or what? You’ll call your weathergift,
Storm
?” Verdan laughed. “Go ahead and try. Did you truly think I would be fool enough to repeat Falcon’s mistake? This entire tent is lined with lead.”

She clamped her lips tight and watched in mute silence as he sauntered over to the table to pick up Roland’s sword with his left hand.

“It really is quite beautiful,” he murmured. He turned the sword from side to side, watching with almost hypnotic fascination as the light of the tent lamps reflected off the razor-sharp blade. “The weapon of a king.”

He closed his eyes and tightened his hand around the grip. When the diamond in the hilt flared with light, Verdan opened his eyes again and smiled.

“I don’t know how you could ever have thought this blade was anything but the true sword of Roland, Falcon. Could you not feel the power surging inside it? Trying to connect?” He pulled back the right cuff of his coat, revealing the dark red Rose birthmark on the wrist of his ruined arm. He laid his left forearm across it and gave a small, dazed laugh. “Even though my arm is frozen, my Rose is hot to the touch. The sword knows my blood, and my blood knows the sword.”

“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.