Shadow Of The Winter King (Book 1) (2 page)

“Is that death?” Regel clasped the sword under the table. “Because I will gladly give you that.”

Her eyes burned bright in the candlelight. “Another’s death—one we both want.”

“Whose?” Regel hissed. “Who could you possibly hate so much you’d risk facing me? Whose death would I want more than
yours
?”


Mask
.”

The name froze him where he sat.

“Semana,” Regel said. “You mean to avenge Princess Semana.”

Ovelia nodded slowly, seeming to hear his thoughts. “Regel, I need you.
She
needs you. Please.”

Sudden movement stole Regel’s attention. He saw the glint of a casterbolt amongst the crowd, though the casterman took care to hide it. The weapon’s discharge cracked the uneasy silence.

Regel’s mind went silent and his body moved. With his left hand, he drew one of his falcat and cut the bolt from the air a thumb’s breadth from Ovelia’s face. His left arm shrieked in protest at the exertion. The bolt splintered off the scythe-sword, and Ovelia took cover like the trained warrior she was. She had always been fast to react, even without her sword, but without Regel’s block, that would have killed her.

Regel released Draca, palmed a dagger into his right hand, and threw even as he fell to one knee. The fang streaked across the smoky tavern and buried itself in the shooter’s forearm. The man cursed and fell back.

That man was not one of his Tears. What was happening?

Two more castermen appeared to the right. Regel dove to the floor next to Ovelia as she pushed the table over for a shield. With a sharp
crack
, the tabletop splintered, sending wood chips spraying. A casterbolt tented the underside of the table like a blade through canvas.

“They’ve come for me.” Ovelia’s cool voice hardly sounded surprised, much less anxious.

“You knew they were following you,” Regel said.

“I suspected.” Ovelia glanced at her family sword sheathed at Regel’s side. “I can fight.”

“No doubt that was your plan all along.” Regel switched his curved sword to his right hand and flexed his strained left arm. “Two swords cannot defeat four casters. We flee.”

She nodded, conceding the point. “Together.”

He nodded. How easy it was to fall into the familiar matching rhythm of war beside her—how easy it would be to trust her again.

Regel peered around the table. The castermen had vanished into a chaotic jumble of bodies. There were screams and curses, and brawls broke out. He saw his carved dove lying on the floor a pace away from the table, but he could not reach for it without exposure. He would need a new one.

A caster appeared on the other side of the room. Regel palmed a second knife and threw. It stabbed into the caster, sending it wide and setting the weapon off with a crack. The opposite window shattered outward.

“Go.” Regel pointed to the new exit, but Ovelia seemed frozen, eyes wide. “What passes—?”

He heard a click behind him.

The slayer wore plain black leather and a hauberk of rings, well-oiled to keep silence. Unlike the others—amateurs all, to have burned their own attack by being spotted—this one was a veteran. He had waited for his moment, then crept close to catch them unawares. His plain, gutter-born face was not one Regel knew, but he had the red hair and deep gold skin of a summerblood from Luether.

The slayer carried a double-caster, neither bolt of which had been fired. It was a cold, ugly weapon—two bows mounted on a shaft of metal, either or both of which could be fired in quick succession. A caster required neither strength nor much skill, and thus was fit only for a coward.

“You’re fast, old man. I’ve never seen anyone parry a casterbolt.” The man aimed his caster at Regel’s face from a hand’s span away. “Can you block this one, I wonder?”

“Yes,” Regel said.

That startled the slayer long enough for a shadow to move behind him.

Regel’s squire stepped to the man’s side, put steel to flesh, and opened his throat in a crimson waterfall. Regel stood up to catch the slayer as he fell, knocking the caster arm wide. With a splitting crack, the bolts discharged: one jammed, and the other flashed toward Ovelia. She spun aside and down, struck. Fear seized Regel’s throat, even as the choking man struggled in his arms.

Kneeling, Ovelia touched her cheek with her bare fingers, where a line of blood dripped down her face. The shot had slashed past her head, just close enough to cut open her skin. A hair to the left, and it would have torn away her face. She stared at her bloody fingers in confusion.

Then—as though she suddenly remembered how to move—Ovelia drew her bloodsword from Regel’s belt, the light dancing off its flame-like folds, and rammed it through the dying slayer’s chest with a cry. The steel wrenched the man into a statue, its wavy edge tearing his flesh apart. He slumped to the floor, his strings cut.

“Well struck—” Regel started.

Ovelia faced him, the blood-smeared Draca low and deadly at her side. In her hands, the blade blazed with crimson fire, its ancient magic awakened at her touch. There was anger in her eyes, and the assurance of more violence to come. Regel tightened his grip on his sword, ready to move.

Fingers touched his hand. “I think your guest’s ire is for
me
, Lord of Tears.”

A wiry woman in a spattered dress stood beside him: his squire Serris, who had cut their would-be slayer’s throat. She had the build of a hunting cat—all angular, dangerous lines—and a hard expression to match. The candlelight made the long scar on her cheek glow.

Serris directed her bloody knife at Ovelia in warning but looked to Regel for guidance. “M’lord?”

“Hold,” he said.

That she had not attacked meant Serris hadn’t recognized Ovelia. With her most distinctive feature—her fiery corona of hair—hidden under a beaker of silvery dye, Ovelia became a winterborn commoner, not the infamous Bloodbreaker. If his squire had known her true identity, Regel suspected Serris wouldn’t have saved her at all.

Heedless of the battle near her, Serris knelt over the body of the casterman. “Summerborn,” Serris said with disgust. “Poorly trained. Else I’d think Demetrus had decided to take his vengeance after all.”

“Vengeance for what?” Ovelia asked.

“This is the mark.” Serris glared at Ovelia, her expression unimpressed, then looked to Regel. “Why not kill her and have done?”

Ovelia lowered the sword. “Woman after your own heart.”

Fresh casterbolts shot toward them, and the three crouched behind the battered table. The chaos in the Burned Man had reached a new furor, and steel shrieked in the night.

“I’ll handle the slaying, Serris,” Regel said. “Return to the fight. Take one alive if possible.”

Serris gave them both an uncertain look. “Very well. Flee while you can.” She nodded toward the window, then sprang back into the brawl.

Regel crouched against Ovelia behind cover. Now that she held her bloodsword again, Ovelia’s limbs were tightly corded and her head up, eyes open and confident. They pressed close behind cover. He breathed in the smell of her hair, and felt momentarily dizzy. She
did
smell like he remembered.

His mind drifted, for a mere instant, to the last time he had seen her, and he’d seen the image over and over in his dreams. He watched as she stood amongst a dozen foes, gleaming in the moonlight like a blood-stained goddess with hair of flame. She looked so sad.

He remembered also this same tavern—remembered rage and blood and justice. He remembered the feel of another carving in his hands—a beast to slay a beast. He remembered the power in his arm, the righteous fury in his heart. His great mistake.

“Regel, we have to go now,” Ovelia said.

Regel nodded. His Tears would win the day, but the Ravalis Guard would soon arrive. He heard watch horns in the distance outside, and from the sound of creaking metal down the street, they would be bringing at least one ironclad. They had to end the fight now, and Regel and Ovelia could not be here when the Ravalis arrived.

“It is true, then?” he asked. “This quest of yours?”

“Will you trust me?” Ovelia put out her hand.

No
, he thought. “We do what we must,” he said as he took her hand.

Keeping low, they scurried across the open common room. Two more casters fired, but the shots went wide: one split a chair, the other cracked a wall. Regel and Ovelia tumbled out the window into the darkened alley behind the Burned Man amid crunching glass and mud.

Burning rain fell heavily, cutting into them like knives.

Act One: Shadows

Five Years Previous—the Burning Man Tavern—Ruin’s Eve, 976 Sorcerus Annis

S
izzling rain cut into
the Burned Man’s roof. The corroded metal held for now, but in time it would buckle under the acidic rain and collapse in a great sigh of surrender. Such was the way of Ruin.

At the table in the corner, the King’s Shadow sheltered under his gray cloak and cut a ribbon of golden wood from a carved jackal that fit in his palm. The artistry that went into such a delicate piece was impressive, honed over decades of service to the City of Winter. Its snout curled almost in a smile, after the fashion of that beast, but he did not share its mirth. The figure was nearly finished, as was the task for which he had made it. He focused upon its rough fangs and let his mind and senses wander free.

Paeter Ravalis sat across the way, flushed and swollen, bristling with the red hair that marked his Blood. Around the crown prince sat four of his boon companions, lesser lordlings of weaker Bloods allied with the Ravalis: Saras, Rolan, Vortusk, and one he did not recognize. They had employed about a dozen fresh-faced lads and lasses for hire to blanket their laps and table in young, smooth flesh. It was hardly strange on a fate-cursed Ruin’s Night to spend the darkness in revelry and celebration of continuing life. In hiding from Ruin on its own night, the living indulged in all those things that the Children of Ruin feared, and love was one such. The lordlings were pleased, one and all, but for Paeter Ravalis.

His smile once had commanded legions, but Paeter scowled more these days than he smiled. Perhaps a part of his once keen mind recognized how far he had fallen: a warrior prince become a beast, lounging among slaves and ale. The wrinkles edging his eyes that many had once thought intriguing had become sagging folds of weathered skin. Beneath his jaw, a livid ridge of scar glowed in the ruddy candlelight along the left side of his throat. Paeter would find no love this night, and from his face, perhaps he knew it. Outwardly, he cared nothing for his crumbling world, but inwardly, he was in pain.

Good.

Regel Frostburn—the King’s Shadow—nursed a tankard of ale and watched through his expanded awareness. He took in the minutiae of Paeter’s presence: his appearance, his depth of drink, which saleable flesh he eyed most. No—this was not even honest prostitution. The Ravalis had introduced slavery to Tar Vangr, and treated all who lacked a name as bodies they either owned or had yet to purchase. Even those who had bought a name through good works or earned one through bold action meant little in the Ravalis’ eyes, and Paeter was the most contemptuous of the Blood. He insulted, belittled, and took anyone he wanted without consequence.

Regel’s hands trembled, and he told himself he had come not to kill a man so much as put down an animal. A rabid jackal.

It was not long before the red-haired lordling selected one of the slaves to take upstairs: a blonde stickling who wore childish timidity like a mantle. She had a forgettable peasant’s face, but her pale hair and her age reminded Regel of his beloved Lenalin—as she had been when Paeter murdered her.

Ten years,
Regel thought.
Ten years, and so he honors her.

Pity for the slave coiled in Regel’s heart but he forced it away so he could focus. He counted their steps: twenty on the stairs, eight on the landing above. Regel heard the slave’s nervous voice, and Paeter’s deeper, commanding reply. A door opened and closed.

The memory came to him of Ovelia from not three hours earlier. He saw her, naked and pleading, her taut body framed against the sweaty, black-sheeted bed. He hated her, yes, but also—far more—he hated what this man had done to her.

“How many, Prince?” he asked under his breath. “How many must you take from me?”

He closed his hand around the jackal figurine and put it back in his belt pouch. He had needed it to feel out the room for a waiting snare. Now, he needed to feel nothing at all.

Regel counted to one hundred before he made his way up the stairs. The other powder-nosed noble scions were too interested in their wine and company to notice an old man shambling off to bed.

As he reached the floor above, he put his hand on the hilt of his ancient sword, shaped in the scythe-curved falcat style. The tales named the blade Frostburn, forged of steel so cold it seared flesh from bone. The magic was real enough: he felt the familiar chill within, drinking life from his flesh. Crafted for harvest, the Deathless called this blade—for reaping the yield of Summer. And that was exactly what it would do this night.

“Let this be the last life this steel ends,” he prayed. “Let
his
be the last.”

* * *

Upstairs, Regel could hear the slave weeping loudly enough to fill the hall. He slipped a dagger through the jamb of Paeter’s latched door and lifted. The door creaked open.

Paeter stood over the slave in the middle of the room. In the years since Lenalin’s death, much of the lordling’s once impressive collection of muscles had gone to fat and wild red hair bristled in patches along his limbs. He was mostly nude, and Regel could see—with some satisfaction—that the brutish prince could not stand to the task at hand. He would be impotent in life and in death.

Instead, Paeter held aloft a weapon far more dangerous: his dueling sword, which he dangled over the cowering slave. A red slash cut across her cheek, dripping blood.

“Here’s coin for you,” he slurred. “Coin for all of you!”

There was no time for a proper challenge, and in truth, Regel was grateful. Letting his mind fall still, he darted across the room and smashed his elbow into the side of Paeter’s head. The bigger man reeled three paces and collapsed to the floor.

Regel thought he had never stuck such a satisfying blow.

A whimpering sound reminded him of the slave Paeter had brought into that room. Blood streaked down her face from where the prince had cut it open, but her gray eyes were wide and attentive. There was power in those eyes. Fire. Her thin-lipped mouth seemed drawn inward in thought as she watched him, fascinated.

“No fear.” Regel dropped to one knee and reached for the slave, but she cringed. He looked down at his black-gloved hand, a touch of sadness in his heart. He withdrew.

“Kill you...” Paeter half-rose, eyes red with drink and anger. “Kill...” His eyes rolled and he slumped back to the floor.

“Unlikely,” Regel said.

The wounded slave drew in a sharp breath when Regel looked at her but did not otherwise flee. There was fear in her eyes, but strength too. Perhaps, as Paeter would be his blade’s last victim... perhaps he could find a new path. They both could.

Regel’s leather gloves creaked as he released the hilt of his blade. He held up two fingers. “There are two moments where a man is weakest. The first is when he takes a lover. You will remember?”

Her face showed first confusion, then a wary understanding. She nodded slightly.

“I am not here to free you,” Regel said, “but you may free yourself if you will it so.”

She nodded again, wide-eyed.

“You will say nothing of this.” Regel knelt and put a pouch of coins into her left hand. “Walk out of this place and do not return. Do you understand?”

“What if—?” Her voice was soft but steady. “What if someone stops me?”

“None will stop you. You’ll not let them.” He drew a short knife from his belt, put it in her right hand, and curled her fingers around it. “Do you have a name, child?”

Marveling at the beautiful steel in her hand, she shook her head. Of course she had no name. Most of the poor of Tar Vangr had not earned one. She looked up, expectant, but he shook his head.

“It is not for me to name you. If you would have a name, you must name yourself.”

“Serris,” she said, her voice soft and crackling like embers. “For the angel.”

Paeter moaned and swore. His wits were returning, and Regel knew the time had come for him to conclude his night’s business.

“A fitting name,” he said. “I will see you marked as well.”

“I... I already have a mark.” She reached up to the slash on her cheek. “Given me by a prince. You have a greater name than his?”

“No.” Regel noted her obvious wits: to know the Crown Prince of Tar Vangr was no mean feat for a slave who had likely never set foot outside low-city. “Then you are named and marked. I take you for my Squire, Angel Serris, and I will be your Master, if you will have me.”

She looked surprised, but not displeased. What he had proposed to this girl he had just met was a great intimacy and responsibility. She would be his Blood in all but name, and her life would be his responsibility until such time as she broke with him. He asked as much of her as he offered, but he knew he had not erred.

“You may not have a greater name.” Her eyes locked on his. “But you are a greater man.”

Regel nodded. “Now walk away. If the Old Gods smile, we shall meet again.”

Silently, Serris disappeared out the door, glancing back over her shoulder at the last.

“How...
dare
you.”

Regel turned slowly, watching Paeter Ravalis trying to climb to his knees. Slowly, Regel touched the hilt of his curved blade. It was a weapon of another world—of another time.

The man spat and mewled, his eyes wild. “You have no right to touch me, Denerre’s dog!” His mouth frothed. “Beg forgiveness and I’ll kill you before my father hears of this. Count it a mercy.”

Regel drew Frostburn, bathing the room in the weird light of its wavy blue steel. His hand prickled as the blade sucked at the warmth from his arm. “Get up,” he said.

“You think you have the advantage, don’t you?” Paeter felt at the blood running from his face, and it made him smile. He tore open his tunic, revealing a red jackal tattooed across his flabby flesh, through which ran three scratches. “You’ve drawn my blood, and now it will prove your end.”

Regel stiffened, but he sensed no attack coming. Had pain and drink driven Paeter mad?

Nothing happened for a long moment, and Paeter blinked down at the blood on his hand. Realization dawned on his face, then turned to anger. “That treacherous filth. He
lied
to me.”

Regel didn’t know what Paeter meant and didn’t care. “Get up,” he said again.

“You think you frighten me, old man? You and your fairy steel?” Paeter wiped his mouth, then tapped the scar on his left throat. “You didn’t kill me ten years ago, and you won’t kill me now. And how well that blade will look on my trophy wall—beside the portrait of that whore, Lenalin. Even after I shoved the whore through a mirror—and oh, she made a hideous corpse!” Paeter grinned wide. “Even then, you didn’t kill me. You are a coward, Frostburn.”

Regel held his sword high, cutting the space between them. The torchlight shimmered along its ever-sharp edge, which stood along the inside of the curve. He had to kill Paeter, if only to stop him speaking of Lenalin. The monster did not even bother to deny his guilt in her death.

“Get up,” he said for a third time. “There is no honor in killing a man on his knees.”

“You are ardent. You
truly
mean to kill me?” Paeter laughed and ran his fingers through his sweaty red hair. He got to his feet and drew his sword up clumsily from the floor. “You are a fool, then, if you think you are a match for the finest swordsman in Tar Vangr—in Luether—in all of Old Calatan.”

Regel called upon the Old Gods to bless Frostburn’s aim. He was not the sword’s first wielder, and neither would he be the last. The strength of centuries filled him, burning fit to match his hatred.

“And even if you could kill me, you
would
not,” Paeter said. “I am the heir of Ravalis, and the future king of Tar Vangr. Touch me, and you destroy all you love. I am the man you cannot kill.”

“You are not a man but a beast.” Heart thudding in his throat, Regel held his hand firm. “No man would do what you did to...
her
.” He could not speak her name, for then he would lose all control.

“I see.” A cloud passed over Paeter’s eyes, and a wicked smile curled his face. He raised his sword. “Whose honor do you avenge, King’s Shadow? Is it Lenalin or Ovelia—my whore or yours?” He snickered. “Do not answer. They are
both
my—”

Regel lunged forward and blew the life from Paeter in a single blow.

The strike cut open Paeter’s neck so deeply it almost took off the man’s head. Paeter’s body slammed into the wall. It spun and seemed as if it might stay standing, then slumped to the floor. The corpse jerked and twitched in a widening crimson pool.

Paeter Ravalis died pitifully, just as Regel had wanted.

“Make it swift and ignoble,” the Winter King had said earlier that eve, when he’d sent forth his Shadow. “Though do not be cruel. Despite his works, he is a prince of the realm.”

Paeter Ravalis had become a corpse now, and held as little relevance as a haunch of meat. He had begun his path to Ruin long before he had ever met the King’s Shadow, long before he had murdered his wife, and long before that lonely, sad night in the Burned Man, as his lifeblood ceased to flow.

Regel looked down at the chill blade balanced lazily in his hand. “Let this be the last life I take by this blade,” he prayed. “No more King’s Shadow—no more Regel Frostburn. Let me take a new name.”

Cold teased up his arm from the hungry sword. He fought it back with a firm purpose.

“For you, Lena,” he murmured. “For you.”

Even as he said it, he found himself thinking not of Lenalin—his perfect, silver-haired princess, dead these ten years—but of Ovelia. He saw again her pleading eyes, her rough fingers, and her warm lips. He felt again his heart squeezing as though it would break under the strain.

Footsteps on the stairs broke his reverie. Paeter’s lordlings, come to investigate the sound of their master crashing to the floor. Regel sighed. He drew the figurine from his pouch—a jackal for a jackal—and dropped it onto the corpse that had been Paeter Ravalis.

He was out the window of the Burned Man before the door burst open.

* * *

As cries of “Murder!” rang in his ears, Regel skittered spider-like up the mountain wall of the palace, trying to slow his raging heart. He could no longer hear the accusations, but only the wind that sang of his victory, so long overdue.

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