lit up the pristine mountainsides. Vireon and the fox-woman fell into a bank of soft snow. The sun warmed their skins, and they made fierce love beneath the beaming sky. She gave herself to him with an animal urgency; he took her as a parched man takes cool water. A rush of mad sensations staggered him with pleasure, erasing all his agonies. Afterward they slept for a while on a carpet of green grass beneath melted snow.
Before midday she woke him, and they drank fresh snow turned to water in her cupped palms. Hunger still gnawed at him, but he ignored it. There would be game when they reached the lower climes of these mountains.
“What is your name?” he asked her again.
She gave no response.
They ran down the mountainside, toward green woodlands that still held sway below the white snows. Eventually, coming into a warm and verdant valley, he found roots and walnuts to eat. She wandered off and came back with a fresh-killed hare. She ate it raw, but he declined. He would have to teach her the art of cooking meat.
He set up a pile of tinder and motioned for her to call up the white flame. She did, and he guided her hand to the woodpile, setting it alight slowly but steadily. She marveled at this, laughing like a child. She must have never done this with her flame. Then he built a spit and cooked the rest of the hare over it. She sniffed at the smell, and he grabbed her about the slim waist. They made love again, this time on a bed of leaves the color of her golden hair, and when they were do c th She looked at him strangely but indulged his request. She enjoyed it no more or less than she had raw. He laughed.
They rested in the valley until the sun sank behind the white-capped mountains. The Ice King’s mountains… realm of the Ice Clans.
“ Long ago… we and the Uduru… were one people.”
Did Fangodrim know about these Udvorg? Did any other Uduru know? Did they remember at all their lost cousins in the north?
Vireon thought of the blue-skin babies, the Udvorg children sleeping in their icy home.
He thought of his uncle and all his Giant cousins, aging and resigned to extinction. He thought of the Uduri, barren of womb and empty of hope. Did the Udur u really have to die out?
Could this mean hope for Vod’s people?
My people.
He stroked a hand across his lover’s cheek, pulling her close.
“I have to go back,” he told her. “I have to make peace with the Ice King.”
She blinked at him, pink lips forming a half-smile.
He kissed her again and pondered his impossible task.
9
The sky was an inverted landscape, rolling hills of gray and black, an upside-down world given form by continental stormclouds. Every now and then a ravine opened in the cloudscape, a fissure of blue sky, or a crevice pouring rays of sunlight onto the green fields. Rain fell in unbroken sheets, at times hard and angry, at others calm and gentle. Thunder moaned from one flat horizon to the other, occasionally clapping terribly, but usually distant and wreathed in echoes. Flares of lightning turned the gloom of a Stormlands day into whitewashed noon for seconds at a time, then disappeared only to spring up in some distant corner of the cloud kingdom. The wind blew meek or fierce, depending on its mood, but always wet, cool, and haunted by creeping fogs.
For days the jagged silhouettes of the Grim Mountains grew taller on the northern horizon. Now their immensity blotted out half the sky, a wall that separated two worlds, the ramparts guarding the Giantlands. The cohort of mounted Uurzians followed the Northern Road alongside the Uduru River, all the way from Vod’s Lake. The farther north they went, the fewer villages they passed. Tonight the company camped in the shadow of the peaks, where no settlements had dared take root. The northern winds blew stronger where the land rose into a swathe of grassy foothills divided by the silvery ribbon of river.
D’zan had grown used to the perpetual damp, the cold winds, and the biting rain. This was the land of storms after all. It was the colossal darkness of the mountains that worried him.
All the way from Uurz, ten days at the front of these four hundred warriors, the Stone’s greatsword hung heavily between his shoulders. It was the physical embodiment of his challenge. Dairon had given it to him after Olthacus’ funeral, thinking he actually wanted it. D’zan would rather have seen the blade interred with the Stone’s body; he had never seen Olthacus without it. It seemed a part of him. What’s more, it was too large and heavy for D’zan to wield. All his training had been with Yaskathan longblades, lighter and quicker weapons of bronze half as tall as himself. The Stone’s two-handed broadsword nearly matched D’zan’s height. Its iron blade was twice as wide as a longblade at the hilt, though it tapered gradually toward its point. D’zan could lift it using both hands, but swinging it effectively was another matter, one in which he displayed little grace. To fight with the greatsword required an entirely different technique, and more raw power than he could muster.
So he carried it on his back in the way the Stone had done, but it was only a symbol of his legacy. Another, slimmer blade hung at his waist, one he could use with some basic skill if pressed. The jade dagger that had killed Olthacus he kept shoved into his boot, its blade scoured clean of poison. It was a constant reminder that he could never be truly at ease, never take for granted his safety no matter where he lay his head. It reminded him also of Khyrei, a nation of enemies. He thought of pacts, infernal and political, that must have sealed the Empress of Khyrei to the service of Elhathym the Usurper. Another twist in the long road he must follow back to the rule of his own people. Another evil to burn from the world, when the time came. Or another source of death that might be winging its way toward him even now.
Prince Tyro led the cohort. He professed friendship and dedication to D’zan and his cause. Prince Lyrilan had become D’zan’s shadow, riding next to him through the rain, pitching a pavilion next to his own at every dusk, and peppering him with endless questions. Questions about D’zan’s upbringing and his life in the royal courts of Yaskatha. Questions about his father and the conquests he made before and after D’zan’s birth. Questions about his mother, whose face he could not remember. These and more questions, to the point of triviality. Lyrilan took mental notes during the days of riding, and each night scribbled his musings into a leather-bound tome carried in a waterproof bladder. He was wholly dedicated to chronicling the life of D’zan, and at times his attention was wearisome. But it kept D’zan from dwelling on the futility of his own task, or from brooding too deeply on his losses. He found that he enjoyed Lyrilan’s company, if not his queries.
Tyro rode always at the head of the cohort, next to the standard-bearer with the gold-and-green banner. D’zan spoke with him only at the evening meal, where they drank wine – Tyro in great quantities. He told second- hand tales of the Old Desert and the Ancient North. Every night was the same: Lyrilan’s pavilion on one side of D’zan’s and Tyro’s on the other. Tyro displayed a protectiveness for him, and D’zan saw him as a smaller, if no less martial, version of the Stone.
“Now that is a fine weapon,” Tyro told him on the first day of their journey. “Takes a powerful arm to swing that blade.”
D’zan sat glumly in his saddle, soft rain pelting his hood as Tyro and Lyrilan rode on either side. “More power than I have,” he admitted.
“Is that s k›his saddo?” said Tyro. “You have skill with smaller blades?”
“Some,” said D’zan. “Olthacus trained me… I have three years.”
Tyro chuckled. “Three years! You should be a master of the longblade by now.”
Lyrilan jumped to his defense. “Not everyone is as single-minded as you, Brother.”
Tyro glanced at the scholar, not quite sure if he had just been insulted. He turned back to D’zan as his horse tramped through a mud hole. Behind them the cohort wound across the green-gray plain in four parallel columns of a hundred riders each. In their midst rolled a trio of canopied wagons carrying servants and supplies.
“Lyrilan has never cared for weapons,” said Tyro. “Such is the privilege of a high-born lad – nobody forces you to fight and bleed. He chooses books over blades… as if they could fortify the walls of our kingdom.”
