The Winter King (61 page)

Having muzzled her storm, the Ice King turned back to Khamsin. He slammed his free hand in her direction, and razor-sharp icicles shot from his fingertips, flying fast as arrows across, straight towards her.

“
Calbernari!
” Merimydion shouted. “
Makatua! Poru myerina.
Shields! Protect the woman!”

Calbernans leapt in front of Khamsin, and Rorjak’s ice missiles exploded against their shields, showering them all in a powdery cloud of shattered ice.

Rorjak responded with another fierce, bone-curdling scream and an upward thrust of his hand. The ground beneath the Calbernans rocked and quaked, then split as huge columns of ice shot up from the ground, pulverizing rock in its path and throwing the Calbernans off their feet.

No sooner had the ice columns erupted than they melted down, the water oozing out like clear jelly. It covered the fallen Calbernans, then hardened into an icy shell, cocooning half the men, trapping the others with thick manacles of ice around legs and arms. Rorjak unleashed his Gaze on the lot, freezing them solid.

His path once again cleared, Rorjak turned the full force of his Gaze not on Khamsin but on the sword in her hand. The sword began to shake, and fire and ice battled for dominance. Rorjak began to advance towards her. Clutched in his right hand, Wynter’s sword, Gunterfys, was now covered with ice and glowing with blue light. She tried to strike it with lightning, but every bolt diverted before it hit, as if some invisible, impenetrable shield surrounded the Ice King and his sword.

The power of Rorjak’s Gaze grew stronger with each approaching step. Kham’s hand went numb. The muscles in her arm strained as she fought to keep her grip on her now-violently-shuddering sword.

Several of the ice-trapped Calbernans had managed to hack themselves free. They rose again, but this time as thralls who set upon their countryman in a blizzard of ferocity. A dozen more of Merimydion’s remaining warriors leapt into Rorjak’s path, putting themselves between Khamsin and the vengeful god. They formed a wall of shields, and held the wall as ice from Rorjak’s gaze coated the shields three inches thick. He swept them away with a searing blast of frost and a slash of his sword.

Krysti, who had been icing
garm
with Thorgyll’s spear, ran towards Rorjak’s unprotected back. The snowy falls of Rorjak’s white hair stirred like the sensory hairs of a
garm.
The Ice King turned with the speed of a striking snake. He batted the spear away with his sword and swept Krysti off his feet with a swipe of his left arm.

“Krysti!” Kham cried.

The boy flew through the air and landed limp as a rag doll amidst a sea of dead
garm
and broken Calbernan bodies. He didn’t move again.

The ice thrall, Galacia Frey, picked up Krysti’s dropped spear and began freezing Calbernans to her left and right as they rushed to surround Rorjak.

Khamsin lunged towards Rorjak, sword upraised, but Gunterfys slammed into Blazing with stunning force. Sparks and ice showered from the two blades. A second, fearsome blow from Gunterfys sent Blazing spinning from Kham’s grasp. Rorjak caught her throat in a tight grip and lifted her off her feet.

Stripped of Roland’s sword, death mere moments away, Khamsin did the only thing she could think of. She flung open the gates to the source of her power and called the lightning. All of it. Every last ion of energy that crackled through the roiling black storm clouds overhead.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

One after another, thick, hot, blinding bolts of concentrated electricity arced down from the heavens, following purple threads of plasma to their silver-eyed source. Deafening thunder boomed again and again. The ground shook, knocking combatants off their feet. The wild, hot music of the storm sang through Khamsin’s veins, and fire, hotter than the sun, filled her body.

She thrust out her palms, pressing them against the frozen white expanse of Rorjak’s chest, and released the power gathered inside her.

Light and heat exploded with a last, deafening boom. Rorjak and Khamsin flew backward in opposite directions and slammed to the ground.

Breath rasping through her bruised throat, ears ringing, Kham pushed to her feet, retrieved her sword, and staggered across the icy ground to the Ice King’s fallen form. There, her legs gave out, and she fell to her knees beside him. A smoldering, charred black hole was burned through his chest plate, but Khamsin wasn’t fool enough to think a little lightning could kill a god. She lifted her sword.

“Forgive me, Wynter.” Tears filled her eyes. Killing him would be like driving Roland’s sword through her own heart, but the Wynter she knew would rather die than let Rorjak live. She wiped her eyes resolutely and prepared to strike the killing blow. “I love you. I love you more than I ever knew I could love anyone.”

The bare skin beneath it was blackened as well, but the thick layer of ice that coated him had broken away and not re-formed. A faint hint of golden color had leeched back into his skin. Hope fluttered in her breast. Roland’s sword had melted the Ice Heart in Wyrn’s Temple. Was it possible her lightning had done the same to Wynter’s heart?

She laid a hand over his lightning-struck chest. The thud that answered was so slight, she almost missed it, but it was followed by a second thud, then a third. Weak, sluggish, but a heartbeat nonetheless. A living, beating heart.

“Wynter! Wynter, wake up! Please, beloved. Come back to me.” She dropped her sword in order to seize his shoulders and give him a shake. Then she grabbed his face between her hands and chafed his cold skin, all but willing warmth back to his flesh.

“Dear gods, please, please, let him live.
Please.
I’ll do anything, give anything, pay any price, only let Wynter live.” Muttering frantic prayers over and over again, she pulled him into her lap, cradling his head against her chest, smoothing the cold silk of his hair back away from his face. Hot tears spilled from her eyes and rained gently upon his face. She kissed his cold lips, breathing into his mouth. She clasped his cold hand against her cheek and pressed her lips into the still-icy palm. “Come back to me, Wynter. My husband, my love.”

The thick fans of his white lashes stirred, fluttering against his still-pale cheeks.

Her breath caught in her throat as his lashes lifted, and a smile of utter joy broke across her face as she beheld eye of glacier blue rather than the soulless clear ice of Rorjak’s wintry stare.

“Khamsin?” He frowned up at her in puzzlement.

She laughed. “Oh, thank the gods for their infinite mercy.” She fell upon him, showering him with kisses, weeping with abandon. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”

“Lost me? What’s going . . . on?” His voice trailed off as he caught sight of the carnage surrounding them. The
garm
and thralled Winterfolk fighting tattooed Calbernan islanders. The maimed bodies of his people littering the snow. “The Calbernans. Falcon.” His face lost all expression. He turned back to her and she was horrified to see the blue leaching from his eyes, the golden color leaching from his skin. “You betrayed me. You brought the sword to your brother. You joined them to fight against me.”

“No! Wynter, no!” She reached for him with desperate hands as he shoved out of her grasp and climbed to his feet. “I didn’t betray you. I would never do that! I
couldn’t
! I love you.”

“
Liar.
” The voice that emanated from Wynter’s lips was no longer his own. It was a dark, raspy, threatening voice, pure evil, filled with corruption and hate and all things vile. Just the sound of it sucked the warmth from her flesh and drained the hope from her heart. The ice that had melted from Wynter’s skin re-formed over cold, white, bloodless flesh.

“Wynter, please! Don’t do this! Fight him! You can’t let Rorjak win. You’ve got to fight him. Please, beloved.
Please.
” Her chin trembled. Her voice broke, and she began to sob, tears spilling down her face. “I love you. I love you more than I ever thought possible. More than I ever knew I could love anyone. Please, stay with me.
Please.
” Her hands trembled. Her whole body shook, racked with heartbreak.

“You pathetic, mewling
skurm,
” a voice sneered at her back. Something white slashed through the air.

Kham gasped and scrambled backward to avoid the killing stab of Thorgyll’s icy spear.

Reika Villani had not fled the battle, after all. She had, instead, escaped into the forest in order to circle around and attack her foe from behind. “He is not your love, nor will he ever be. He is Rorjak the Great, God-King of Mystral. And
I
will be the queen who rules beside him through all eternity.”

“Like Hel you will.” Kham lunged for Blazing. Her fingers closed around the hilt, and she thrust the blade towards the heavens, screaming, “Helos help me!”

Power rushed to her call. The diamond in Blazing’s hilt went blinding white. She slashed the blade towards Reika, instinctively channeling the power down her arms and out through the sword the same way she had the lightning. Instead of flames, a concentrated golden white beam of energy shot from its tip.

Reika froze in midlunge, a look of almost comical surprise stamped on her coldly beautiful face. Khamsin scrambled to her feet and spun around, sword drawn back for a second strike. She hesitated in confusion. Reika was still frozen in midlunge. She hadn’t moved a fraction of an inch. As Khamsin watched, the skin of Reika’s face shifted along an invisible seam, like two blocks of ice moving in different directions. Then her legs folded, and her body separated into two vertical halves that crumpled to the ground. The seared and cauterized flesh of her bisected corpse steamed in the winter air.

Thorgyll’s spear dropped to the ground and rolled down the hill, coming to rest at the blood-drenched feet of Dilys Merimydion.

She heard the tinkling sound of breaking ice behind her. A draft of cold air washed over her, prickling her flesh. She didn’t need to turn around to know the Ice King had risen again.

Merimydion met her eyes, then glanced at the spear at his feet. She nodded.

“I’m sorry, my love,” she whispered. She steeled her heart, clenched her fist firmly around Blazing’s hilt, and spun around to stab her blade deep into the Ice King’s frozen heart.

A split second before the blade plunged into Rorjak’s flesh, she saw the glimmer of blue in his eyes, the shimmer of golden warmth rising beneath the icy white of his flesh. Her arm jerked. The sword that had been aimed directly at Rorjak’s heart pierced scant inches above it instead.

“Merimydion, wait!” she cried, but the Calbernan had already scooped up Thorgyll’s spear and let it fly. Khamsin had no time to think, even less time to act. Instinct took over.

She leapt between her husband and the icy, irrevocable death rushing towards him.

“Wynter, I—” The breath in her lungs left her in a sudden rush as the spear slammed into her shoulder. The weapon impaled her, piercing flesh and bone, then burying its enchanted point into the thick plate of Wynter’s armor. The armor crackled with frost.

Warmth fled inch by rapid inch as the god-killing magic of Wyrn’s enchanted spear consumed her.

In helpless, frozen silence, she stared up into the dawning horror in the eyes of the man she loved. And then her world went white.

“Khamsin!
Khamsiiiin!
” Wynter grabbed the cold shaft of Thorgyll’s freezing spear and yanked hard. The spearhead was stuck in his armor plate. He yanked again, and again. “Valik! Laci!” Around him, ice was shedding from the members of his army as Rorjak’s vile enthrallment melted away. The walking slain collapsed to the ground in a natural death, while the rest emerged from the torpor of their enthrallment in varying states of confusion.

“You, there! Calbernan!” Wyn jabbed an imperious finger at the huge, tattooed brute who’d thrown the spear that impaled Khamsin. A few minutes ago, Wyn had nearly lost himself to Rorjak a second time when his instinctive feelings of betrayal and hate at the sight of the Calbernans fighting alongside his wife had given the Ice King the chance to overpower him again. That one moment of doubt might have doomed Wynter again had not Khamsin slain Reika.

It was Reika in whom the Ice King had fully manifested. Reika, who had lusted for power over everything else, just like Rorjak. To gain that power, she’d surrendered herself to the Ice Heart and to Rorjak. He’d used her as his entrée back into the world, used her to manifest his power. Except, a daughter of Ermine clan wasn’t the powerful avatar Rorjak desired for his reincarnation. He’d wanted Wynter, with his royal weathergifts and his Snow Wolf blood.

And that had been his downfall. Because from the moment Wynter saw Khamsin’s tear-stained face and heard her sobbing “I love you!” the Wolf in Wynter’s blood would not let him hurt his mate. That Wolf had refused to be conquered. He’d held out, fighting Rorjak’s attempt to subsume him, until Wynter, listening to his wife’s tearful pleas for him to fight, listening to her sobbed professions of love, had realized that even if Khamsin
had
tried to help her brother, even if she had betrayed Wynter in every way, it didn’t matter. She was his wife, his queen, his mate. His heart.

And he loved her.

He loved every exasperating, fiery, rebellious, beautiful, challenging, volatile inch of her.

And with that realization, Rorjak lost all chance of claiming any part of Wynter ever again.

“Get over here and help me get this thing out of her!” Wynter snapped at the wary Calbernan. “Move, damn you!”

The islander sprinted over, keeping his barbed trident ready to strike, but when it became obvious Wynter was no longer under the control of Rorjak, the tattooed fellow tossed down his weapon and seized Thorgyll’s spear with both big hands. One flex of those enormous biceps later, and the bloodied spear slid free of Khamsin’s flesh.

Khamsin’s frozen body remained standing, locked in that moment when she’d chosen to sacrifice herself to save him.

“Wyn.” Laci stumbled over. Droplets of water and chips of melting ice covered her from head to toe. “Wyrn save us, what happened?”