hair color was interesting. The shamaness – whose name he learned was Varda the Keen Eyes – said little as Vireon spoke with the King, but she eyed him curiously. If she harbored feelings good or ill toward him, he could not tell.
“Your mother rules the Uduru since Vod has give himself to the Great Water?” asked Angrid. Vireon followed the Udvorg accent easier now, but some words still took a moment.
“Queen Shaira,” Vireon said, “rules the City of Men and Giants.”
“She is… human?”
“She is,” said Vireon. “Yet the Uduru love her. They respect her wisdom. Fangodrim the Gray, my father’s brother, is First Among Giants.”
“Why does your uncle not take the throne?” asked Angrid.
Vireon shrugged. “He loves my mother, too. And I think he does not want the weight of the crown. The Uduru do not care. They… they are dying.”
Angrid put down the joint of mammoth meat upon which he gnawed. His frosty brows furrowed. “What do you mean dying?”
“I told you how my father killed the Lord of Serpents,” said Vireon. He drank a gulp of the bitter black ale. It was not bad, and it was the only thing in this feasting hall that warmed his bones. These Udvorg had become one with the cold over the centuries – they were as comfortable in frigid conditions as he would be on a sunny spring morning. He was glad of his tiger cloak. “When the beast died, he put a curse on Vod’s people. The women are barren. No child has been born to the Uduri since that day.”
The shamaness Varda whispered something in the Ice King’s ear, and the monarch turned back to Vireon. “How many of our cousins still stand?”
“More than a thousand,” Vireon replied. “Perhaps twelve hundred.”
The King did not understand his Uduru numbers, so Vireon rephrased his answer. “Only a fraction of your people. Perhaps ten t {Per
Angrid and Varda conversed in low tones, and Angrid nodded. Varda gave orders to a nearby sentinel, who marched off on some mission.
“This is why our people must reunite,” said Vireon. “It is why I risked my life to win your favor, King of the North.”
Angrid nodded, chewing his meat. A trio of male shamans entered the room, each bearing a staff lit with the blue flame. Udvorg shamans were the guardians of the cold fire; they conjured it and spread it among their people as needed. Angrid told Vireon it came from the Night God. The God visited them ages ago, when they first entered the frozen north. He taught the secret of the cold flame to spare them from the God of Darkness. It was their own hereditary magic.
Twelve clans dwelled in these mountains. Angrid the Long-Arm ruled over them all, and they rarely warred against one another. They thrived in the land of ice and snow, meeting once a year at Spring Thaw to trade wives and barter other precious things. The women of the Udvorg were not hard-bitten she-wolves like those of the Uduru; they were more like human women, despite their great size. Vireon watched them move about the chamber and found them comely, beautiful even, possessed of their own savage grace. The Uduru would find them irresistible.
“Tell me, Great King,” said Vireon, accepting more of the ale. “Why did our people divide? My cousins have never spoken of the Ice Clans. Could they have forgotten?”
Angrid grunted, washing down a mouthful of mammoth flesh with a great horn of foamy ale. That which he spilled froze immediately on the rim of his beard. “It happened long ago… after Hreeg the First led the Stoneborn against the Serpents and brought them north across the Black Mountains.”
The Grim Mountains, Vireon understood.
“Hreeg’s brother, Udvorg the Dreamer, wished to go farther north. But Hreeg saw a great stone city in his mind and set to building it near those mountains in the Southern Forest. Udvorg challenged Hreeg, and they fought for three days. In the end neither could prevail. Both were mighty warriors. So Hreeg called his cousins about him and said, ‘Who will go north with me to find the White Mountains of my dreams?’ There was much arguing, and not a little fighting. After a day, the tribe of Uduru split, and Udvorg’s followers took his name. This was in the days when our skins were all the same color.
“Udvorg led his people into these mountains, for he knew they were the ones in his dream. Here he found the ancient temple of the Night God, and became the first shaman. He called up the first of the blue flames, and it is from that light all our fires are lit. You have seen this in the chamber of my throne. This palace Udvorg’s people built on the very spot of the ancient temple, so that our home is a holy dwelling.
“When Udvorg the Dreamer finished this shrine, the Cold God came on a great wind and gave his people the blue skin and purple blood that makes us strong. Over the ages, we have honored these Gods and kept the holy ways. Our shamans keep alive the blue flames, which are the heart of our kingdom.”
Vireon considered the tale and found hi {anf our kimself drowsy as the drummers kept at their mesmerizing beat. “Then truly we are of one people,” he said. “Uduru and Udvorg – two races that are one, like Udvorg and Hreeg, brothers of equal might.”
The Ice King smiled. “Not so equal if what you say is true,” he said. “It saddens my heart that our cousins bear this curse.”
“Perhaps there is a way-” began Vireon, but the King cut off his words.
“Ah, here they are!” He waved his great arms about the table, and Vireon watched a line of lovely Udvorg Giantesses line up directly across the table. All were of the white-haired variety with skins the shade of a cloudless sky, eyes sparkling vermillion. Some wept gently as they looked upon him. There were six altogether, and behind them stood eight or nine sullen blue-skin children with their heads lowered. The eldest of these young ones stood a bit taller than Vireon.
For a moment, he expected some kind of performance. He had no idea what the King meant by this until Varda the Keen Eyes spoke.
“These are your wives, Vireon the Small,” said Varda, her voice icy yet feminine. “And your children…”
Vireon sat his goblet of ale down hard on the table, spilling it. A few of the warriors laughed, while others scowled jealously at him.
“I do not understand…” he said.
The Ice King spoke now. “You killed five sentinels today… The rest will live and have learned a painful lesson. But of those five, three had wives. Some had more than one. All these wives had children, as you can see.”
Vireon stared at the King.
“It is our custom,” explained Angrid, “that a man’s slayer be given his wives and children. They are yours now. Treat them well.”
Vireon had no words. The Udvorg laughed at his uncomfortable silence. A few rose from the table and stomped away, unhappy with his newfound wealth.
“Forgive me, Majesty,” said Vireon. He stood and bowed to his new wives and their brood. “This is not the custom of my own people. I was unprepared-”
“It does not matter,” said Varda. “The King has declared you one of us. So our customs are now yours.”
“Sit, Vireon, sit,” said the Ice King. He waved a hand, and Vireon’s adopted family went back to their individual chambers. “I think you begin to understand us well, Cousin.”
“Better than I ever thought to,” said Vireon.
“These women are your property… as ill-fitted to their frames as you may be. Still you must serve as master and husband.”
“He cannot handle an Udvorg woman!” shouted a warrior. The table roared. Another spouted something about a “tiny sword,” and more mirth ensued.
Vireon smiled, recognizing the good nature of their ribbing. {eireigThis, too, was common among the Uduru. He must laugh at himself or be ill-mannered. He laughed and drank more ale. Much more.
“The customs of my cousins are my customs,” he said. Glances of approval told him he spoke well.
“Hear me, Cousin,” said the Ice King. “Did you not say your cousins to the south are in need of child-bearing brides?”
“I did,” said Vireon. “Most urgently.”
“Then understand… There are other ways to win the women of Udvorg,” said the King. “A warrior can gain
