The Ice King raised his frosted brows. “How… can this be?”
“My father was a sorcerer,” said Vireon. “He chose a human woman because he loved her. He has three sons. I am the youngest son… Vireon.”
The blue-skin monarch looked about his chamber, as if gauging the reactions of his subjects, but Vireon could not tell if any communication passed between them. It was all he could do to stay balanced on his unsteady feet.
“My name…” said the King, “is Angrid the Long-Arm. I am King here. Long ago… we and the Uduru… were one people. That is no more… the truth. Once we warred on the humans together… We drove them past the Mountains of the South… into the great wasteland of Serpents.”
“The wasteland is no more,” said Vireon. “My father turned it into a fertile realm, a land of thunder and rain. They ca craiThell it the Stormlands. There, as in Udurum, the Men and Giants live in peace.”
“Lies,” said the Ice King, his crimson eyes narrowing. He leaned forward in his great chair, cracking his knuckles. “You… are a Southborn… a human… and you invade our hunting grounds.”
“No,” said Vireon, and his coughing cut off his next words.
“Tell me!” growled the Ice King. “Tell me… where are the rest of your human tribe? Where are the invaders? Tell me… or you will suffer!”
“I am alone,” said Vireon. “I am no human! I carry the blood of Uduru in my veins! Only give me food and rest, and I will prove it to you.”
The Ice King waved a hand at his guards. “Tell me… and you will eat. Until then you starve.” The jailers grabbed him by the arms and carried him from the hall. Vireon would have screamed, but his voice broke in his throat. Outside the great doors, they tossed him to the frozen ground again, and he lost consciousness. When he awoke, he hung once more by his wrists over the crevasse.
How long would they keep him here before dragging him to the Ice King again? How long until the King tired of him and sliced him in two with that great axe? Or would he die of hunger first? These thoughts rang through his head as he dangled there, his two guards sitting against the ice walls. Eventually they fell asleep, and he joined them in the bliss of slumber. He woke frequently, his body racked with fresh agonies. Now the cavern lay in total darkness. The moon’s weak glow could not penetrate the depths of the ice here.
Vireon dreamed of his father standing on the sea shore, wrapped in a cloak of black fur, wearing his crown of gold and opals. Vod, standing proudly at his full Uduru height, stared at the rushing waves, listening to the voice of silence. The wind moaned and sighed across the strand. The sky was gray and the sun a leaden ball between roiling thunderheads.
Vod cast off his cloak, his sword and crown, and walked into the surf. Wavelets pounded his knees, and he walked on. Blue lightning flared in the dark sky. The water covered his waist and chest, and still he walked. Thunder shook the world. His crownless head bobbed above the waves, and the sun peeked out for a moment from behind the clouds.
Now Vod was gone, marching beneath the sea toward some mysterious grave.
Vireon woke with a start. A light shape was moving in the darkness. He heard the soft padding of feet and smelled a pleasant scent that had stolen his sanity days ago. Now the sound of a blade being drawn across flesh, quickly and deeply, slicing through cartilage and bone. The same sound repeated. He smelled blood, coppery and strange.
A light flared in the darkness. She stood before him: a radiant Goddess with a white flame dancing in her palm. Her other hand was a fist clenched about the hilt of his long knife. The blade dripped purple gore. The two blue-skins lay with their slit throats gushing cold, dark blood. She stared up at him with night-black eyes.
Vireon laughed as best he could. It sounded more like choking.
The fox-wom c'›Tld. an dropped his knife and used her feet to slide the blue-skin corpses over the edge of the crevasse one by one. They tumbled soundlessly into the dark pit. She turned back to Vireon and raised a key of red iron in her free hand.
Reaching out to grab his legs, she pulled hard at his ankles, and the chain above snapped through the ice. He fell, almost into the pit, but she had the lower chain wrapped about her forearm and dragged him to safety, all under the light of her blazing palm.
She used the key to unlock the chain and carefully unwound it from his body. His shoulders and wrists ached unbearably, and his stomach growled. She smothered him with her body, transmitting warmth across his chest and limbs. He reveled in the sheer ecstasy of warmth, blessed warmth… for now he understood what cold truly was. The flame in her hand faded, and she rubbed his arms, fingers, wrists, sending heat throughout his body. In the dark, as his senses came back to life and the pain receded to a dull roar in his ears, her lips brushed his and lingered. He wrapped his arms about her gently… more gently than he had ever touched a woman. The surge of his great strength had always made him a careless lover, but he did not have that strength now. They kissed tenderly and urgently, until suddenly she moved away from him.
She helped him to his feet and conjured the white flame back into her palm. He picked up the stained knife and stared into the deep wells of her eyes. How could he thank her with mere words? She pressed into his hand a piece of dried meat, and he ate it voraciously. It did not even begin to quell his hunger, but it aroused his metabolism and sharpened his senses. He could not place the flavor of it, but he did not care. It was delicious.
“What is your name?” he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.
She looked at him curiously, tilting her head. He asked again in the southern dialect of Uurz, again in the tongue of Shar Dni. She blinked at him, wordless, and kissed his neck lightly. She spoke neither Giant nor man language. Perhaps she spoke only the language of foxes. What was she? He grabbed her, more urgently this time, but she slipped out of his grasp, motioning toward the end of the cavern. She wanted to escape now. He nodded. There was no time for romance.
They ran by the light of her palm-flame through glistening halls of chilly gloom. She seemed to know the way as he did not, so he followed her. He was used to that, having chased her for days into the frozen north. They came at last into the great plaza of the blue-skins, where the light of cold azure flames flickered on the ice. She snuffed her flame, and they peered into the plaza, across a landscape of sleeping blue-skins wrapped in furs and blankets.
Looking at him now, she placed two fingers against her lips.
Yes, we must be quiet.
They crept through the sleeping plaza, stepping between the snoring bodies of blue Giants. She was silent as a fox, even in her girl form, but he was less so. At the crunch of every icy pebble he halted, holding his breath. But these Giants slept deeply. They made it to the center of the plaza without waking a single one.
She led him toward a great open corridor at the far side. He trusted her implicitly – that must be the way out of this glacier-fortre clacowass. He stalked past a slumbering Giantess, her arm wrapped about a snoozing infant half as large as a full-grown man. Never had he seen an infant Giant, and it struck him as odd. Then he remembered the Uduru could no longer have children. This is why they were dying out. He stopped, glancing about the chamber. Two more blue-skinned babies lay swaddled in furs and masses of pillows. There, a half-grown boy… there a young girl. There were more Ice Clan children than he could count. And this was only one chamber. How many existed in other clans outside the King’s roof?
The fox-woman grabbed his elbow, pulling him toward the corridor. They moved swiftly now, more sure of their invisibility. Crossing the threshold, they ran along a wide passage. She led him through a series of twists and turns, arched tunnels of solid ice, and came at last to a great wide stair. At its top they emerged into the open freedom of a starry night. Behind soared a sheer wall of emerald and indigo, the cold moon reflected on its lucid surface. There were no guards stationed at this outward gate, or she had already slain them and hidden their bodies.
She grabbed his hand, and they ran. He could only move so fast, but she slowed herself to stay with him. Into a frozen landscape they plunged, knee-deep in crisp snow. Scattered Uygas rose about them, branches dripping with millions of icicles. After a while Vireon looked back and caught his breath. She leaned into him as he enjoyed a full view of the Ice King’s palace, a mountain of crystal and sapphire looming against the stars. Towers, domes, and battlements of living ice. Ultramarine walls bathed in starlight. Its size was not quite that of Vod’s palace, but the nature of its glimmering substance was infinitely more impressive. It was a marvel of audacious, impossible beauty.
Then they ran again, until the Ice King’s domain was lost among the frosted peaks. The golden glow of dawn
