Cursed by Ice Read online

  Cursed by Ice is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original

  Copyright © 2015 by Jacquelyn Frank

  Excerpt from Bound by Sin by Jacquelyn Frank copyright © 2015 by Jacquelyn Frank

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Bound by Sin by Jacquelyn Frank. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  ISBN 978-0-553-39341-5

  eBook ISBN 978-0-553-39342-2

  Cover design: Carolyn Teagle

  Cover photo: © Michael Grecco/ImageBrief.com

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Pronunciations

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Bound by Sin

  PRONUNCIATIONS

  DAVINE (Dah-vēn)

  DETHAN (Dē-than)

  ISAELLE (Is-ah-el)

  JONA (Jō-nah)

  SARIELLE (Sah-rē-el)

  VINQUA (Vin-kwah)

  WRENA (wren-yah)

  PROLOGUE

  Garreth stumbled and fell for what had to be the thousandth time since this journey had begun. His brothers, each a mighty warrior in his own stead, had been forging the way up the mountain for hours, more determined than ever to reach their goal. But Garreth … He was frozen through, and a horrible sense of foreboding had settled on him. Finally he voiced aloud what he had been thinking for the past few hours.

  “This mission is cursed,” he said, falling to his knees in the deep, hard snow, the painful cracking of his skin ripping around his mouth with every spoken word. His breath clouded hard upon the air, and his moustache and beard were laden with icicles. The air was so thin up on that high mountain point that it was a wonder he could breathe at all. Several of his fingers were turning black, and he had already lost some of his toes. All for what? For the promise of a fantastical prize that could easily not even exist.

  His brothers were convinced it existed. They were convinced it was atop this very mountain. They had only a little farther to go, they said. All Garreth knew was that if they didn’t find the font of immortality at the top of this mountain, he was going to die upon it. He was already maimed by this frigid venture; his hands had been ruined, and he would never swing a sword again. And since his sword was how he made his way in the world, he didn’t know what he would do. He was a fighter. A man of honor who fought for those who could not fight for themselves. He may not be the golden warrior his brothers Maxum and Jaykun were or the great conqueror his eldest brother, Dethan, was, but he held his own in a fight and his sword was highly valued. He did not sell his sword as Maxum did and he did not sit at Dethan’s right hand as Jaykun did, but he chose the noblest adventures out there to be found.

  This was not a noble venture. It was a selfish one. His brothers were cheating the gods, seeking a shortcut to immortality. They sought the waters of a magical fountain that would give them health and longevity for the rest of time.

  He had come with them only after much cajoling, as brothers were wont to do to their youngest sibling. He had thought the mission to be pure folly and had long since been convinced of it. He had been on many noble quests in his young lifetime, but never for his own selfish ends. He should have known better.

  “Come, brother. Don’t be such a woman. Get up and move on. We are almost there,” Dethan said, coming to take his arm and pull him up out of the snow. But Garreth’s legs would not work. They were two frozen stumps that he could no longer feel or force to his command.

  In the end, the blackness rushed up on him so suddenly that, in spite of Dethan’s hands on him, he fell forward, his face planting in the snow as if all that was needed was a spring sun to grow a flowering bush in the spot.

  The next thing Garreth was aware of was the feel of being jogged hard against a body, his head hanging in the open air as he swung about. One of his brothers had thrown him over his shoulder. A brother who was now running across the frozen mountaintop. Suddenly Garreth was pitched onto the ground, his body so cold he didn’t even feel the ice and snow he was sure was seeping into his clothing. He was sick and dizzy, unable to breathe.

  “Look, brother!” Dethan called excitedly. “We have found it! The fountain! It will restore you!” Dethan hurried to take a drinking horn from his pack and filled it with water from a jeweled fountain, which flowed freely in spite of the frigid temperatures. The gems encrusting it were large and fine, glittering in the glaring sun.

  Dethan could have drunk from the horn first, but all he was concerned with was Garreth’s well-being. It was so very much like his brother, to care for him first, above all others. Dethan had raised him from boyhood to a man after their parents had died, orphaning them all at very young ages. Dethan had always felt responsible for him, often funding his expeditions and ventures of honor.

  And yet Garreth questioned the wisdom of what they were doing. He warned his brothers one last time that he had an ill feeling about this. That perhaps it was better to freeze to death on that mountain than to flirt dangerously with the fountain of the gods.

  His brothers ignored him.

  When Dethan pressed the cup on him, he had no strength to fight him. The water flowed past his cracked lips and onto his tongue. He could not swallow, so Dethan massaged his throat until the water slid down. It was refreshing at the very least. He knew it was of the gods, else it would not flow so freely in the forsaken place, but would it do what his brothers thought and hoped it would do?

  He had his answer almost immediately. His body began to warm from the inside out, as if he had drunk a horn of mulled mead. The warmth spread through his veins with a peaceful perfection. There was no pain, as there had been every night by the fire as he had tried to warm his frozen fingers and toes. He had welcomed that pain when it came, knowing it meant there was still life within those digits. It had not come the last time they had camped.

  But now feeling was creeping into his fingers and his toes. He could feel the bitterness of the cold—was still frozen by it, he knew—but sensation was returning.

  And that was when the pain hit him. He cried out with a bellow of agony, his body jerking into spasms. His brothers could do nothing to help him, for as soon as he had drunk, they had drunk, and now they too were writhing in agony. He knew his body was changing, that he was never going to be the same, but changing into what? How would he be different?

  The pain subsided and a wondrous sensation was left in its place. A sensation of being more alive and healthier than he had ever been before. He leapt to his feet, shaking off the remaining cold from his limbs, and laughed.

  And then a mighty clap of thunder rocked the mountain, shaking it to its bedrock. Angry lightning streaked the nearly cloudless sky.

  That was when the gods appeared to them.

  He knew they were gods because they were much bigger than any mortal man might be. And the goddesses were so beautiful it hurt to look upon their faces. At the forefront was a goddess dressed in a warrior’s armor, with a breasted chest plate and a golden skirt that reached to her knees and no farther. She stepped forward, a golden spear in her hand and a wey flower tucked into her hair behind her ear.

  Weysa, the goddess of conflict. He would have known her anywhere. The statue depictions in her temples were wrong, for they could never truly match the pureness and grandness of her beauty, the fierceness of her posture.

  “You dare to steal this reward when you have not deserved it in our eyes?” she said in a deep, booming feminine voice. “You dare to do so without permission, without honor? You will pay for your folly, foolish, arrogant worms. You will pay for your immortality with blood and bone and flesh. We cannot take this gift back, but we can see to it you wish you had never dared to think you could push the hands of the gods to your will and your liking.”

  And in the next instant his brothers were whisked away, taken from his sight. Suddenly chains sprouted from the icy ground and manacles seized his wrists and ankles, yanking him down to the ice and flat on his back. Hella, the goddess of fate and fortune—a goddess with beautiful blond hair t
hat flowed down her back, her legs, and then onto the ice, where it curled around and around into a golden puddle—moved over to him and bent down to hiss words into his face.

  “This is your curse, a curse given to you by the gods. Now you will pay for your insolence, freezing here in this wasteland again and again, within sight of the very fountain that gifted you with immortality. And so your fortune will be until the end of time. I once smiled upon you for your heroic deeds; now I will spit upon you for your hubris.”

  And then, before he could say a word in his own defense, the gods were gone, leaving him there to do exactly as Hella had said. To freeze.

  Again.

  And again.

  And again.

  OVER TWO HUNDRED FULL TURNINGS LATER …

  Dethan had done it. He had gambled everything and won. He had his mortal life and his beloved wife, and soon they would have their child. He had bargained everything, and now his brother had been freed. Weysa had freed Garreth from his chains on the mountainside, which had seen their folly all those many turnings ago. Now, as Dethan sat in front of the fire, warming the block of ice that was his brother, he tried not to think of the curse that would still follow Garreth for all the rest of his days and to focus instead on the freedom he had been given … the reprieve.

  He bent over Garreth, rubbing warmth into him briskly, impatient for him to awaken … to speak to Dethan for the first time since all this had begun. What would Garreth say to him? Would he hold him responsible? He should. Dethan deserved nothing less than to be held responsible for the entire folly. He was glad Weysa had chosen, out of his three brothers, Garreth to be freed from the bulk of his punishment. Of all of them, Garreth deserved his punishment the least. He deserved his freedom, however piecemeal it might be.

  “Garreth … speak to me,” Dethan urged his brother.

  Garreth began to quake and shiver. Shavings of ice became droplets of water. His frozen lashes fluttered. Suddenly his eyelids pried apart and his pupils contracted sharply in the light of the fierce fire they sat near. His teeth began to chatter. Life shook into his body in fierce, quaking trembles.

  At last he spoke. “Brother,” he said. “Am I free?”

  “For the moment,” Dethan told him gently. “For the moment.”

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  Garreth walked into the command tent and immediately dropped his burden on one of the cross-legged tables within. He wore full armor, so every time he moved the sound of metal striking metal was made. It was a sound he had grown to love over his lifetime. The sound of a man ready for whatever battles might come his way. A sound he once thought he would never hear again.

  “Well, little brother, how goes things with the troops?”

  Garreth turned to face Dethan. “Well, elder brother,” he said with a tight-lipped smile, “they are bored out of their skulls.”

  “I thought you were sending out hunting parties.”

  “I did. And we’ve game aplenty now. But these men have come for a fight and they are itching to do battle. I cannot say I blame them. The summer wears on, and soon you will be returning to your wife and child, taking half our forces back with you to winter. They want to see at least one more glorious battle before they go.”

  “Outside this tent and a few strides away is that glorious battle to come.” Dethan moved to the front of the tent, looking out the opening and toward the city they had chosen to sack in Weysa’s name.

  That was their part of the bargain, the deal that had freed the two brothers from their torments after they had drunk from the fountain. Dethan, Garreth had learned, had been thrust down into the darkest, hottest pit of the eight hells, cursed to burn to the bone over and over again, just as Garreth had been cursed to freeze. But almost a full turning of the seasons ago, the goddess had freed Dethan.

  Weysa needed warriors to fight in her name. She and the other gods had grown weak as the people turned away from their faith and belief in them, for they needed the love and devotion of the people in order to gain power. And now that the twelve gods were at war, split into two factions of six, they desired power more than ever. Weysa’s faction consisted of Hella, the goddess of fate and fortune; Meru, the goddess of hearth, home, and harvest; her brother Mordu, the god of hope, love, and dreams; Lothas, the god of day and night; and Framun, the god of peace and tranquility. They warred with the opposing faction of Xaxis, the god of the eight hells; Grimu, the god of the eight heavens; Diathus, the goddess of the land and oceans; Kitari, the goddess of life and death; Jikaro, the god of anger, deception, and storms; and Sabo, the god of pain and suffering.

  However, Kitari, the queen of the gods, was being held by Xaxis’s faction against her will, a fact they had discovered only last winter, when Dethan had traded away his immortality in order to discover her true intent. It had been a risky proposition, one that could easily have backfired and meant a permanent end to Dethan, but instead it had freed him fully from his curse, made him mortal, and allowed Garreth to be freed from his icy hell as well.

  Somewhat.

  For every night, between dusk and the juquil’s hour, Garreth was cursed to freeze again. A reminder, he thought grimly, of what he had done and of the gods’ discontent with him. Weysa had only freed him to fight; she had not been willing to release him entirely from his curse.

  But that did not matter. All that mattered was that they and their army perform well. They had Hexis, the city where Dethan’s wife ruled with Dethan, and they had conquered one other city already, this past spring, erecting temples to Weysa within its walls and filling their army with more soldiers from that city. Now it was coming on the end of summer and out there, only a short distance away, was the next city.

  The city they had conquered in the spring had been easy. Almost too easy. Dissatisfyingly easy. Garreth had wanted a pitched battle, a fight to vent his anger and frustrations on.

  Both of which were great and many.

  But more than that, he wanted to please the goddess. Not from fear of her, although that was most certainly present, but in the hopes that she would see what powerful warriors the brothers were, what great assets they were … and maybe it would compel her to find and release the remaining two brothers from their torments.

  Garreth and Dethan fought and conquered just the same, in the hopes that one day their brothers would be free. Yes, most of all, that was what they both fervently prayed for.

  Just then a courier ran up to the tent. He handed a pair of dispatches to Dethan.

  “Ah! A letter from Selinda!” Dethan said eagerly, moving back into the tent and handing the second dispatch to Garreth, unread. Dethan clearly did not care what was in the other message. The letter from his wife meant more to him than anything else.

  Rescuing their brothers was a very close second to that.

  “Look! Look how he’s grown!” Dethan showed a paper to Garreth excitedly. It was a very skillfully rendered and life-like miniature sketch of Dethan’s infant son. The child was nearly five wanings old, and Dethan had been campaigning for three of those wanings. Garreth and the army had conquered their city in the spring alone before Dethan had joined them at the turn of summer, as was agreed by Weysa. Dethan’s summers were hers, when he would fight, and the remaining wanings he belonged to his beloved wife, Selinda.

  These wanings had been difficult on Dethan, Garreth knew. He had wanted to be with his wife and child, and the separation had often taken its toll on his mood. But Garreth had easily forgiven Dethan his surly moments. He would have felt the same had he a wife like Selinda and a child like Dethan’s fine son, Xand.

  “She writes that they are both healthy and well. That—” Dethan broke off.

  “Yes?” Garreth prompted.

  “Well, I cannot repeat this part,” Dethan said with a wolfish grin, his eyes bright with delight as he looked up at his brother. “She would never forgive me.”

  “Say no more, brother,” Garreth said, amused by the besotted man.

  He was amused, but he did not smile.

  He had thought he would never live to see the day his brother was in love. Of all of them, Dethan had never professed to love a woman—even in his youth, when boys tend to be reckless with giving away their hearts. But he was completely around the bend over Selinda, his devotion to her intense.