Cursed by Ice Read online

  Garreth envied him that. He envied the warm home and squirming child that awaited his brother once the cold of fall came calling. Garreth would continue the campaign against the new city until it was defeated, however long that took, but Dethan would leave him to it the moment the weather turned cold.

  Garreth left his brother to his letter and turned his eyes to the missive in his own hands. The paper was folded neatly and sealed with wax, which had been stamped with the intricate image of a dragon of some sort, its wings broad within the circle of the stamp. The letter was addressed:

  TO THE BEASTS AT THE GATE

  Intrigued, Garreth broke the seal and opened the letter.

  You come upon our small city with aggression and numbers. We do not ask for war, and yet you bring it. We will not stand idly by while you rape our home of its innocence and peace. Consider yourself warned. End your folly against us now and we will let you leave unharmed.

  THE CITY OF KITH

  “Brother, I do believe we have been threatened,” Garreth said with thoughtful amusement.

  Again, without a smile.

  Dethan looked up questioningly as Garreth handed him the missive. He read it quickly and promptly burst out in a rich, raucous laugh.

  “Such posturing. They are weak and they know it. Once we lay siege and they begin to starve for lack of fresh game and supplies, they will be welcoming us with open arms. As it is, their mill and butchery are outside the city walls. We have already seized control of them, as well as the farmland and crops, which right now are ripe with growing grain and thick with orchards. They know they are doomed to fall to us. This is mere posturing.”

  “It has spine, you have to admit.”

  “It shows fear.” Dethan scoffed.

  “I think it’s just the opposite,” Garreth said thoughtfully. “They sound very certain that they are not the ones in danger. Perhaps the more important question is, how did this missive reach us? The city has been locked down against us since we arrived, no one in and no one out.”

  “There is always a way in or out, whatever the circumstance. There are always some enterprising sorts willing to risk running a blockade. For profit.”

  “Yes, but the Kithians are violet skinned. Surely we would have noticed one of them in our camp who was not under guard.”

  There were Kithians in camp, all of them prisoners of the army. Mostly farmers and others who had been caught outside the walls of the city. But as Garreth had said, they were all under guard.

  “That is a puzzle, it is true,” Dethan said, a frown marring his features. He walked to the tent opening and yelled out, “You! Page! Where did you get this letter?”

  The courier who had dropped off the missives stepped into the opening of the tent, leaving the conversation he’d been having with one of the command tent guards.

  “A messenger from Hexis brought it only a short while ago,” the courier said.

  “No, not the one from my wife. The other.”

  “Other? I handed you only one missive, your most honorable.”

  “I’m holding both in my hands, page,” Dethan said, showing the letters to the man.

  “I … I only … But there was only one,” the page insisted, looking flustered and very honestly worried.

  “Never mind. Go and get yourself a meal,” Dethan said. Then, once the young man had left, he turned back toward Garreth. “What do we make of this?”

  “Altered perception? It must be some kind of magery.”

  “So it seems. If they have a mage with that kind of power, we will have to be more alert. It was foolish of them to tip their hand though. We will now be on guard against it.”

  “But what can we do against a mage? Especially one who can alter the mind. Your wife is the only mage we know and she is two weeks’ journey away from here.”

  “My wife will remain home with my son,” Dethan said darkly. “We will not even entertain the idea of her coming on a campaign.”

  “Dethan, she is a magess of fire, one of the most powerful of the mage schools—”

  “Enough! We will not discuss it!”

  Garreth knew by his brother’s terrible tone that it was indeed the end of the conversation. Garreth’s sister by marriage, however powerful she might be, would never be allowed from behind the safety of Hexis’s walls. Not for anything, and certainly not for war.

  “Then how are we to prepare for whatever tricks they have planned? This is clearly a mage of some kind of mindcraft.”

  “Perhaps. The best way to battle this is by using deception and great numbers. No mage is strong enough to fool an entire army, but they can do damage in small increments. It is most important that they don’t know where you and I are. As leaders, we are the ones giving commands and we cannot allow ourselves to be tricked into giving false commands.”

  “Not an easy ploy considering your armor is black. It rather stands out.”

  “As does yours with its golden hue. We will have to wear other armor.”

  “But both of our armors are god made. And you are no longer immortal, brother. I do not wish to see you—”

  “I was fighting wars without immortality for a very long time. Do you not trust that I can come away from this alive and well again?”

  “Of course I do. I only meant … I would not wish to take unnecessary chances. Not when such a valuable tool such as our armor is available to us.”

  “It is not ideal of course, but it will have to be. I will call a page to find us suits of common armor. You cannot be killed except with a god-made weapon, and since I am the only one with a god-made sword, you have little to worry about.”

  “I would not say that,” Garreth said with a grimace. He moved toward the opening of the tent. “Dusk comes.”

  Dethan frowned, his clover-green eyes expressing his deep regret, his awareness of what his brother was suffering, and the guilt of knowing it was his folly that had led Garreth to it.

  But Garreth had willingly followed Dethan. He had made the choice of his own free will to go on their quest for the fountain. He had been weak and was now paying the price for not being strong against his brothers’ cajoling coercions.

  “Brother …” Dethan began.

  “Dusk comes every night,” Garreth said quietly. “Will you flagellate yourself every time?”

  “Yes,” Dethan said simply.

  “I wish you would not” was all Garreth could say. Then he left the tent and began to head toward the orchards that stood a little ways away from the encampment. He headed for the section of marjan trees that had turned from a healthy white to a sickly brown, the only trees in the orchards not bearing leaves or fruit. Both had fallen to the ground the day after they had first come to Kith. The day after his first dusk in the orchard.

  He stood among those barren trees and slowly removed his armor. Piece by piece, he set it down onto the ground a few feet away from where he eventually stood waiting.

  The moment the first touch of darkness bled into the sky, the grasses beneath his feet began to turn white with frost. The frost crept outward in an ever-widening circle, overtaking the dead trees, climbing up the bark and into the branches. Had there been leaves left, they too would have frosted over.

  He began to feel the cold seeping into his bones and he could not help but shudder. He tried not to brace against it, tried in vain to just let it come without his body resisting it and causing him even more pain in the long run. But he tensed just the same, his heartbeat racing as his breath began to cloud upon the air.

  He dropped to his knees, falling forward onto his hands, as pain screamed through his freezing muscles. His body shuddered again and again in a futile effort to try to warm itself. He felt everything within him turning to solid ice, from bones to sinew to flesh. The insides of his ears, his eyes in his sockets, his scrotum and his penis. Eventually his lungs and heart froze solid and he could no longer breathe. When that happened he fell, a solid block of iced flesh, to the ground.

  And aft
er an hour he began to thaw …

  … only to freeze again.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  They laid siege to the city the very next day.

  The city walls had pots of boiling oil atop them, which would be dumped upon the soldiers who tried to scale them. The trick was to ascend where the pots were not; the pots were so large and so heavy that they were fixed into the battlements and could not be moved. Unfortunately the soldiers could learn their placement only by trial and error. When the first wave of soldiers attempted the walls, which Garreth had ordered to be attacked from every quarter at the exact same moment, the pots were dumped immediately upon them, scalding every man the oil touched … and showing exactly where the pots were positioned and where they were not.

  Garreth then pulled the men back, and the wounded and burned ones were cared for, the camp mems—priestesses who had the ability to heal—making their way through the injured ranks and giving solace wherever they could. Dethan had done likewise on the opposite side of the walled city, looking for weaknesses that could be exploited.

  The city of Kith’s walls were eight-sided, the octagon large and protective of the inhabitants inside. They rose up at least a hundred feet high, making scaling them a true challenge.

  But when the soldiers attacked again that afternoon, they brought in scaffolds, placing them beyond the reach of the oil pots, and began to scale them by tens and by twenties. Archers came into play, shooting from the city battlements down into the climbing men.

  Garreth walked up to his best archers, a contingent he had set aside for this one purpose.

  “Aim for every archer you see,” he instructed them. “Make every shot count and take your time. Let them show themselves and get overconfident. Then pick them off one by one.”

  “Yes, my lord,” they said in unison.

  And so they did. Archers began to drop from the walls, their bodies falling into the ranks of the advancing men. Either that or they fell back behind the battlements. In the camp, Garreth watched everything with a steady eye and a magnification scope.

  And that was when he first saw her.

  She would have been hard to miss, standing openly on top of the city wall facing him. She did not duck and cover, did not dodge the arrows flying all around her. She was dressed in a brilliant jewel-blue, like the blue of a diri’s egg. She wore a long scarf, which blew in the wind, trailing behind her like a banner—a magnificent plumage for a brave and fearless bird. Her hair was down, it too blowing in the wild wind, the fiery red of it a color unlike anything he had ever seen—deep and dark in some places, light and coppery in others. And of course there was her lavender skin, marking her as Kithian, if being on their battlements was not proof enough.

  Then, like some kind of powerful goddess, she reached her arms up high and wide, tipped her head back, and closed her eyes. She seemed to breathe in the world around her.

  That was when a shadow, swift and dark, skimmed over their forces.

  Garreth felt himself go cold through the center of his body, as if it were dusk already. He looked up at the sky and there it was, an enormous wyvern, its wingspan massive and magnificent, the scales along its reptilian body gleaming with a blue iridescence. Its dragon’s head was immense, the whole entirety of its body so huge it was a wonder it could be airborne, even in spite of its wide, muscular wings.

  The men began to cry out in fear and Garreth hardly blamed them. To see such a thing bearing down on them, it was no wonder they began to run.

  “Hold steady!” Garreth bellowed, unwilling to lose the ground they had gained. “Archers!”

  The archers immediately turned their arrows on the great creature. But they bounced off ineffectively as the wyvern reeled around and began a low-flying pass.

  And then it breathed a massive plume of fire down upon the men.

  The screams were horrendous, men cooked within their armor, while others fell to the ground, their hair and clothing and weapons on fire. Garreth swore and wondered frantically where his brother was. Dethan was the one with a god-made sword. If anything could penetrate the hide of such a creature, it would be that sword.

  As the beast reeled around again, readying for another pass, a banner of blue caught his eye.

  The woman.

  It could be no coincidence that the beast appeared the moment the woman had. Perhaps she was somehow controlling it, he thought wildly. Perhaps she was the magess they had wondered about and she was using some kind of mindcraft to bond with the creature.

  Or perhaps it wasn’t even real at all. Perhaps it was all an illusion and she was laying waste to them with merely the power of her mind. Garreth grabbed one of the archers, ripping a crossbow from his back. He began to run, his heavy armor unlike the god-made pieces he usually wore. It weighted him down as he tried to make speed toward her.

  He stopped hard in his tracks, raising the crossbow to his shoulder. He aimed at the witch and fired.

  The crossbow bolt struck her hard, throwing her off her feet. She disappeared behind the battlements, but he was certain he had struck her in the heart.

  The wyvern screamed and stopped its latest fiery run, reeling hard and heading back toward the city, as if in search of its mistress. It perched itself on the wall, its claws digging into the stone, and screamed again. It had turned its back on the advancing army, looking down into the city instead, into the place where the woman had fallen.

  Garreth took the opportunity to rally his men, to focus them back where they belonged. It was hard though, because that great beast had cast a pall of fear on them that even the deepest of loyalties could not fight against with ease. The wyvern stayed on the wall, but turned back toward the advancing army, belching fire down at them, even as they made progress. Garreth ordered his men to avoid the fire accordingly.

  “Up the scaffolds, men!” Garreth commanded of them.

  They were so close to breeching the walls. If they could make it over, then they would have made a great advance.

  Garreth nearly shouted with triumph when he saw his first man climb over the top of the wall. Then another. And another.

  It was slow going, one man at a time, but it was happening.

  Then the wyvern leapt away from the wall, its scream curdling blood as it sprayed the breeching men with fire. But even as Garreth cursed the thing, he realized that men on both sides were burning. The beast was out of control, perhaps only acting on instinct. The top of the wall was utter pandemonium. Chaos ruled as burning bodies fell to the ground from a hundred feet up.

  “Catapults!” Garreth cried, suddenly remembering the best weapon he might have against the beast. The burning balls they usually sent over would not burn the wyvern—it was said that the creatures were immune to fire—but perhaps the impact of the ammunition would be enough. There was no real way of aiming the catapults, but the men did their best and Garreth ordered them to rain hellfire down on the wyvern and the city as a whole.

  The beast was actually quite nimble for something so incredibly big. It dodged almost all the projectiles fired from the great catapults. But then one hit it square in the head and the beast went crashing into the city walls, tearing a huge hole in the top of the stone façade.

  And so it went, the catapults raining ammunition onto the city and the wyvern until it was clear the buildings beyond the walls were heavily ablaze. The wyvern was clutching a wall, crouched upon it, screaming down at Garreth’s forces. Dethan came running up to Garreth a short while later.

  “The city will be ours in spite of the beast!” Dethan cried.

  “Give me your sword,” Garreth demanded of him. “I’m going to scale the walls and kill the thing myself.”

  “That’s madness!” Dethan said fiercely.

  “For you maybe,” Garreth said, meeting his brother’s eyes. “But for me … I am immortal. What can it do to me that I cannot heal from?”

  Dethan seemed heavily reluctant, but he slowly unbelted his sword and handed it to Garreth.


  “Change your armor at least,” Dethan said.

  “I will. I want them to see the wey flower on my chest,” he said, referring to the emblem engraved in the breastplate of his armor, “so they will know I conquer them in the name of Weysa.”

  He turned and hurried to the command tent, Dethan hot on his heels.

  “Its fire will burn you,” Dethan warned him. “It will be like no pain you’ve ever imagined.”

  Garreth laughed mirthlessly. “Tell me that when you have been frozen to death over and over again.”

  “I tell you that because it was once my burden, to burn to the bone every night, just as it is yours to freeze. You may think you are prepared for it, but—”

  “Let me do this,” Garreth snapped at him impatiently, “for I am the only one who can.”

  Dethan fell silent, then nodded. He moved to help Garreth out of his heavy armor and into the god-made armor Weysa had given him the day she had freed him from that mountaintop. In some respects it galled Garreth to have to fight in the name of the goddess who had seen to his punishment—saw to it even now—but he would do what he must and be grateful for what little freedom she had given him.

  When he was ready he strode out of the tent, Dethan once again fast behind him. Dethan followed all the way to the base of the city walls. Then Garreth turned to him.

  “Stay here, brother.”

  Dethan scoffed. “I will not! Do you think to leave me behind like some delicate wife?”

  “I think the men need leadership, and if we both fall, the army will be a beast without a head. You must control them from the ground. Continue to batter the city with catapult fire. It is falling. I can feel it. The beast is the only thing that stands in the way. Now go.”

  Garreth turned away from him and started up the scaffold. He knew it rankled Dethan that he, the younger brother, was now the stronger of the two of them. Although he had been a strong man and powerful warrior in his own right, his brothers had always and would always perceive him as the weakest of them all. He was the baby. He was in need of protection. And he supposed that his performance on the mountaintop had solidified that truth. Another thing that galled him.