Shadow Of The Winter King (Book 1) (33 page)

The world shivered, and Regel felt pain shoot through his body. He could barely move, but he could hear wet wheezing near him. He managed to climb up the bed to Serris, who stared at him hard, as to speak to him with her thoughts. He reached trembling fingers toward her face, but her body jerked out of the way. She made one last gasp, then her eyes glazed and she was dead.

“Regel!” someone was shouting. Ovelia. “Regel, get up!”

Regel was stunned, hardly understanding. It had all come to pass so quickly. He saw blood bloom from the cut Lan’s shattering sword had left in his hand, but he felt far away. He looked up and watched as the prince strode around the bed, caught Draca in his gauntleted hand, and hurled Ovelia back. The bloodsword’s flames licked at Lan’s armor to no effect. Ovelia was paying as much attention to Draca as to her opponent, but Regel saw what she saw: no warning shadows.

“Terrible, is it not?” Lan asked. “The power you thought would save you—failing.”

“Regel!” Ovelia shouted.

Lan reached for her. Ovelia swung at him, but the prince ignored the blade bouncing off his shoulder guard, caught her by the throat, and raised her into the air. She managed to slap Draca against his armored hip, and a jolt of lightning knocked it tumbling from her fingers to clatter to the floor.

At that, Lan smiled madly in her face. “You think the Blood of metal and the forge cannot counter your little toy?” he asked. “That you could walk into this house and kill with impunity? Well?”

“R-Regel...” Ovelia managed.

“Whores never know when to shut their mouths, eh, Oathbreaker?” Lan put the jagged remains of his blade to Ovelia’s face. “If you’re so hungry, you can put this in your mouth. For now.”

“Hold.” Regel staggered to his feet, drawing his falcat. Serris’s blood coated his hands.

“You’re not angry about the scarred one, are you?” Lan asked from the other end of the bed. He dropped Ovelia to the floor and turned to Regel. “Really, I did you a favor. Now you don’t have to pretend not to see that face.”

A curtain of red fell across Regel’s world. He drew a falcat, snarled, and lunged at Lan.

It would have been a deathblow, but Lan reached over and pulled the mattress up to block his leap. Regel tumbled over the twisted bed, kicked off the wall, and flew at Lan. The prince simply slapped his sword aside and lashed out with a lightning-enhanced punch, but Regel twisted in midair and jabbed a dagger with all his strength into Lan’s thigh. The blade turned on the power armor with a shriek of parting metal. The prince staggered back, startled at the sudden pain.

“Regel, his blood!” Ovelia cried. “Don’t—”

Regel barely heard her. He raised his dagger and sword. “No mercy, Lan Ravalis,” he said. “This time, you die.”

“You think so?” Lan felt at his bruised thigh. “Even if you
could
shed my blood, it would be your death. Vhaerynn wards all of us Ravalis. I think you are overmatched, Dead King’s Shad—”

Regel struck before Lan could finish his boast. He moved with blinding speed, faster than any man should have been able to. The prince tried to block, but the blade eluded his gauntleted hand, darted in, and swatted him on the side of the head. Lan staggered aside, and Regel followed up with a dagger thrust to the base of the spine. It would have crippled or killed an unarmored man, and he struck so hard his blade shattered on Lan’s armor. The prince cried out and stumbled to one knee, then to the floor.

“What have you done?” Lan strained, but he couldn’t stand or even turn to unleash his armor’s stored lightning at them. “Coward!”

“I won’t shed any blood.” Regel sheathed his sword and drew out his garrote. “I won’t have to.”

“You lose.” Lan ripped off his left gauntlet and put his broken sword to his bare flesh, but Regel hurled his dagger and knocked the blade away. The steel screamed off the prince’s right hand, which still had its gauntlet on to protect the vulnerable skin.

“Your necromancer can’t hear you,” Regel said. “You are alone.”

With a desperate cry, Lan threw a pillow in Regel’s face, but the slayer cut the soft thing aside with a flash of steel. Feathers filled the air, falling to settle in Serris’s lifeblood pooling on the floor. Regel stepped through the rain of white, blade glimmering as he bore down on Lan who, unarmed, looked about desperately for a weapon—to cut at his attacker or to cut himself.

“Was this your plan?” Regel asked. “Face us alone? That was foolish.”

Lan’s terrified face split into a mad grin. “Indeed.”

A thunderous crack split the room, and a casterbolt struck Regel just above the right knee. His leg shot out from under him and his sword skittered from his hand. When he tried to rise, his leg went dead and dropped him back to the floor.

“Regel!” Ovelia scooped up Draca, but doing so put her in Lan’s reach. Lightning flashed from his gauntlet, and though Ovelia got the sword up in time to block it, the force still slammed her against the far wall. Draca clattered to the floor, and she slumped down after it.

Numbing pain shot through Regel’s world, and he roared wordlessly. Blood fountained from the wound. Ovelia lay moaning and gasping, as much a victim of Lan’s blast as the poison Regel himself had put in her. Where was Mask? Had she betrayed them after all?

“You’re right.” Wincing at the effort, Lan climbed back to his feet. His armor’s thaumaturgy sputtered and died, but it had done its work. “It
would
have been foolish to face you alone.”

The double-caster, pointed at Regel’s face, still held its second bolt. Regel looked up along the line of the casterman’s arm to his face shrouded in bones. His two eyes blazed—the one almost black, the other milky white. “Davargorn,” Regel said, hardly able to breathe against the pain.

“The great Lord of Tears himself,” Lan said. “Made careless through one slut’s blood.”

The prince dealt Ovelia a kick to the side and stooped to relieve her of her belt-knife. He grasped her by the hair and dragged her, kicking, over to where Regel knelt. Regel tried to move, but Davargorn tapped the caster against his head.

Lan jerked Ovelia’s head back and put his knife to her bulging throat. “Shall we try that again?” the prince asked, his teeth bared like those of a bear. “I didn’t spatter you enough with the first one. Perhaps if I aim better—”

“Hold, all of you,” came a dark voice, one ragged as a wolf’s cry.

The world slowed. All eyes turned to the doorway where Mask stood. The sorcerer stood tall, her jaw imperiously raised, seeming fashioned of steel rather than flesh. The room came alive with the green-black energy of voracious magic, and Regel felt it leech the warmth from the room.

Lan’s eyes widened. “What by the Fire are
you
?”

Like a queen—like a
goddess
—Mask surveyed Lan and Ovelia, then looked to the blood gushing down Regel’s crippled leg. Her gaze lingered over Davargorn, who averted his eyes. Regel knew he was a traitor to his mistress, and she would punish him for it. Soon.

“Lower your blade, Lan Ravalis.” Mask spoke in a voice so deep and malevolent Regel hardly recognized the sound. He realized he had never had the full measure of this creature.

“Burn you,” Lan said. “Shoot that thing, Davargorn.” He jerked his head toward the man. “Why do you hesitate?”

The disfigured man in the bone mask stood motionless, staring at Mask.

“You’ve lost, Prince,” the sorcerer said. “Yield.”

“Why?” The prince sneered as he cut the tiniest crease into Ovelia’s throat. Blood trickled down her white skin. “Why should I give you anything, Syr...
Thing
?”

“So you can salvage some honor, you stillborn wretch of a rotted Blood.” Mask replied. “Release that woman and face me with some courage. Or do you have none?”

Regel was so tired. Dark blood poured down his leg to stain the golden bearskin rug, matting the fur as though the bear was still alive and wounded. Regel fought to stay awake.

Ovelia saw it too. “Please,” she begged. “Help Regel, he’s going to bleed to—”

“Silence, whore!” Lan wrenched her head back, cutting off her words. He turned again to Mask, his eyes glittering like daggers. “Who are you, that you
dare
question me—Crown-Prince of the Ravalis, the man who will be king of Tar Vangr, and Luether thereafter?”

“I am one that does not cringe behind a helpless woman,” said Mask. “Or are you a coward, too?”

Lan bared his teeth. “Very well, creature.”

He thrust Ovelia away, and her head cracked against the wall. She stumbled dizzily for a heartbeat, then sank to the floor near where Regel lay. Blood trickled down her cheek.

Bereft of his shield, Lan puffed out his chest and sneered at the sorcerer. “Strike, then, if you’ve the manhood,” he said. “I fear none, however awful his mask.”

Mask stood frozen, her hands crackling. Regel could do nothing about the two of them, so he reached toward Ovelia. She coughed at his touch—still alive.

“Strike!” Lan roared, and stepped toward her. “Or does that mask hide your fear?”

Mask hands were trembling. Her eyes shot to Regel as though for guidance.

“Strike,” he murmured. Fading from blood loss, he could barely speak.

Still, Mask hesitated.

Somewhere, Regel heard shuddering blows falling on the door from outside. Ravalis guards. His world had come unpinioned. Regel looked up at Ovelia’s muddled eyes. She was fading, as was he. The room suddenly felt so cold he shivered. Breath steamed up from his lips.

“Strike,” Lan said, stepping almost close enough to Mask to touch her—to crush her in his embrace. “Am I not your foe? Strike, for surely if you do not, I will kill you.
All
of you.”

Mask’s entire body shook. She couldn’t do it, Regel knew. Why couldn’t she do it?

At that moment, the door burst wide under the boot of a guardsman in blue and red. Half a dozen men pushed into the room, stopping short as they saw their lord and master not half a pace from the black-clad sorcerer. They raised their double-casters.

“Highness!” Davargorn was a blur of motion as he leaped.

Two casterbolts crashed into him at the same moment. The first struck him in the belly, and the second exploded through his shoulder. The force of the bolts blew him off his feet and against the wall, where he slumped to the floor, a mess of blood and flesh.

Davargorn’s disjointed eyes shot to Regel. They gazed at one another across three paces, two men caught in the same web. They both lay dying, of injuries they had suffered for the same purpose: protecting those they should hate. Davargorn gave Regel a tiny smile, shivered, and stopped breathing.

“Tithian!” Mask cried, in a voice that Regel had never heard her use before—a voice that was high and impossibly young. She looked to the castermen, who were taking aim with their second bolts. “Stop! I command it!” Her hands shot to the buckles of her mask.

“No,” Ovelia moaned from the floor. “Highness, no!”

Mask unbuckled her leathern shroud and wrenched it free of her head. Silver hair billowed around her face. She smoothed it away from her creamy-smooth cheeks and delicate features. Regel gasped at her hazel-red eyes gleaming with a familiar fire and her jaw set in implacable, royal command.

“I am Semana Denerre nô Ravalis, Greatdaughter of the Winter King and Princess of Tar Vangr.” Her eyes blazed with silver-blue flame. “I command you to stop!”

Darkness slipped in around him like a forgotten lover, and Regel’s eyes closed.

Act Four: Masks

Five Years Previous—The Dusk Sea—Ruin’s Night, 976 Sorcerus Annis

W
hat say you?”

Mask—the most horrible creature Tithian had ever imagined, let alone faced—had just asked him to betray the most important creature in the world: Princess Semana. In return, the sorcerer offered knowledge, power, training—all that he might ask.

Tithian squared his shoulders and faced Mask. “I’ve an answer,” he said. “
Master.
”

His caster gave a mighty
crack
, and a fiery bolt sizzled across the deck of the skyship
Heiress.

Almost lazily, Mask raised one skeletal hand, and its body blazed with green shielding magic. The casterbolt slowed and stopped in its flight. It vibrated, clanging against the shield like an angry hornet trapped against a sheet of glass.

“A poor choice, Davargorn,” Mask said. “You must learn that choices have consequences.”

The quarrel turned slowly in the air, then shot back along its course to strike Tithian full in the chest. Fire erupted through his middle and the force blew him back against the rail. He stumbled and fell.

“Tithian!” Semana cried, though he heard her only blearily.

Tithian somehow caught the rail and twisted in the air so that his feet stretched out into darkness, and he hung suspended in the air for an instant by the force. Ruin spread out below him—a great black sea of nothingness. He saw the harbor of Tar Vangr, toward which the far edge of the ship had started to sink, dipping away from him. The temptation to fall was vast—he would soar and find peace. But Semana needed him, and he would sooner suffer the pain of a thousand casterbolts than fail her.

When he came back down, he slammed into the side of the skyship hard. His vision blurred as he hung there, struggling to breathe. He fought to keep his grasp in a world slipping bloodily into nothing.

But he did not die.

Somehow, even as he hung over an impossible fall, a casterbolt in his chest, he still lived. The ship tipped lower, the tilt becoming more pronounced, and the rail became an angle he could lie on—steep, but easier to hang on. He held himself up, panting and wondering why he wasn’t dead.

“Move,” he said to himself. “
Move
.”

Slowly, fingers trembling, he reached over with his free hand and grasped the quarrel. Pain lanced through him from an epicenter in his chest, and he realized the impact had jarred the casterbolt loose, like a nail hammered halfway back through. The shaft was slick with blood and the tiniest movement sent such pain through his body that he almost fainted. But he clung to awareness with a stubbornness that would have made the dead Syr Sargaunt smile. Tithian seized hold of the bolt, braced himself, and wrenched. What seemed like a bundle of a dozen knives slid out of him. The casterbolt slipped from his nerveless fingers and tumbled end over end toward the black sea. Somehow, he managed to hold on.

Dimly, Tithian thought that he should have climbed up first before he dealt with the bolt, but at least he was still awake. He slithered back onto the heaving deck, if barely. His heart thudded in his head, and his body screamed at him, but he didn’t care. Only Semana mattered.

The
Heiress
groaned, shifting to the side as it made its slow, shuddering way toward the sea. Its mage-engine damaged irreparably, the ship was sliding out of the air. Tithian knew his life would come to a shattering end within moments—if the wound did not kill him first. He touched at his chest gently. There was pain and a great deal of blood, but none of it seemed to be actively flowing. He almost thought the flesh had closed somehow.

He put it out of his mind and searched the smoky deck—
there
. There was Semana, but—Tithian’s eyes widened—no Mask. The princess was sitting alone, knees drawn up to her chin, sobbing. She had something in her arms, but he could not make it out at this distance.

Tithian limped across the deck. “Princess?”

“Lost,” she was whimpering. “All of them—lost to Ruin.”

Hesitantly, Tithian touched her on the shoulder and Semana looked around. Black blood covered her face, and her eyes glowed in the light of the burning ship, so bright they sent him staggering back a step. They seemed almost red. He saw now what was in her arms: a suit of black leather, flattened and empty. The mismatched war-gauntlets lay discarded on the deck. Hanging from her left hand was a hollow black mask.

Semana stared at him for a moment that stretched, infinite, in all directions. There was pain in her eyes, and a terrible sort of purpose. It was almost like hunger.

“Princess?” Tithian asked.

Then the leathers fell to the deck and Semana threw herself into his embrace and put her arms around his neck. “Gods!” she wept, kissing his scarred cheeks. “Gods, Tithian! Are you well?”

New strength crept through him. Even now, bleeding and riding a crashing skyship to his doom, Tithian felt hope stir in his breast, the way it ever did when Semana so much as smiled at him. Then his eye fell upon Mask’s discarded armor and his hope turned to fear.

“What happened?” he asked. “What of Mask?”

Semana pulled her face away and met his eye. “I... I killed him,” she said.

Tithian blinked. “Killed him,” he said. “How?”

But the princess shook her head. “He was using magic, and... it turned on him.”

“Turned? From you?”

“He struck at me, and it was like he struck a solid wall,” she said. “The magic turned back in protest. I don’t know how, but I was stronger.”

“Stronger.” Tithian felt thick and slow.

“
Better
.” Semana looked down at Mask’s armor. The black leather was flattened and empty, the body within entirely gone—turned to dust and scattered on the wind. Her hand stretched toward it, almost with longing. “A sharper blade.”

Tithian winced at a niggling pain in his chest. He’d nearly forgotten his wound.

“Old Gods!” Semana drew away. “Your chest.”

“Is it bad?”

“No.” Semana sounded shocked. “It’s barely there.”

Tithian looked down and his eyes widened. Sure enough, while blood slathered his chest, the wound itself seemed like little more than a blemish on his skin. “But I felt the bolt go into me,” he said. “I pulled it out!”

Even more wondrous, as he watched, the wound closed entirely. A thin silver radiance played across his flesh, and within a breath, even the mark vanished.

“Lifefire,” Semana said. “You are an heir of Calatan—a wielder of true magic.”

“How do you know that?” Tithian prodded at the wound.

“He—” Semana said. “He told me this would happen.”

Tithian’s gaze snapped to her. “He? Mask?”

But Semana was shaking her head. “We have to go,” she said.

“Go?” Tithian looked around. The ship was still sinking toward the bay, which loomed larger. They had perhaps a hundred count left before it struck. “Go where? We are lost! Mask could fly, but—Highness? What passes?”

Kneeling beside the empty armor, Semana drew first one, then the other of Mask’s boots over her bare feet. She stood, and the air rippled around her feet, distorted by magic. She floated into the air, and in her arms, Tithian drew up from the deck just as easily.

Tithian’s face went white. “How are you doing this?”

“The boots.” Semana looked back at Mask’s armor.

Tithian clasped her arms harder. “Fly us to the castle, Highness. The king must hear of this.”

“Yes,” Semana said. “Yes, of course. I have to go there. If they attacked me, he might be in danger as well.”

“Old Gods.” Tithian hadn’t even considered that.

But Semana shook her head. “First, there is something I must do.” Slowly, they floated back to the deck, and Semana dropped to one knee beside the disembodied suit of Mask’s armor.

“Highness—Semana,” Tithian said. “What are you doing?”

He could see her impressive mind whirring, which had also seemed wondrous to him.

“Someone sent Mask to slay the Blood of Winter.” Semana traced her fingers across the blasted iron gauntlet with the war claws, and its elegant silver twin. “If I show my face, my enemy will know the sorcerer failed and be able to vanish. I cannot let that happen.”

“What do you mean?” Tithian asked.

“This way, we can find him.” Semana seemed not to have heard. “I must stop it. I
will
stop it.”

“Yes, but—” Tithian’s eyes widened as he understood, at last. “You cannot mean to—”

“If this is my destiny, then so be it.” Semana began unlacing her scuffed and torn dress. “Will you stand with me?”

All hesitation fled Tithian’s heart. He stood as tall as he could. “Always.”

“Then give me your dagger.”

Davargorn turned the bloody blade over. Semana reached behind her head, took up her luxurious braid of silvery hair, and sawed it off. Mask’s blood smeared both the hair on her head and in her hand. She returned the knife to him, then held the braid in one hand, the mask in the other. She looked from one to the other.

“Princess,” he said. “Are you certain of this?”

“Your princess is dead.” Semana raised the mask to her face. “I am Mask.”

Tithian smelled the leather’s reek of ashes and of death.