49: WINTER TRIALS
Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Three days since Thurvishar pedantically corrected himself
Janel chuckled. “No, don’t be so hard on Baramon, Qown. He wasn’t the person who revealed our plans.”
Ninavis sniffed and rolled her eyes.
“He wasn’t?” Qown looked confused. “But he’s the reason I found out what you were doing.”
“Yes,” Janel agreed, “but Relos Var didn’t want you to say anything, remember? No, someone else gave up the game, I’m afraid.”
“Who?” Kihrin asked.
Janel reached for her drink. “Oh, that would be me.”
Janel’s Turn. The Ice Demesne, Yor, Quur.
Suless’s eyes turn blue when she casts spells. Not every spell, mind you. Just the enchantments, just the moments when she’s playing with someone’s mind. It is as though in those precious seconds the old woman named Wyrga cannot help but show the goddess who lives underneath. I’d learned to notice the telltale clues, but given no one else seemed to have, I found myself wondering if I could only see the signs because of what Suless had done to me.
Suless proved good at teaching, but I hated the lessons. With each one, a little more witch-queen seeped into my soul, an infection taking over my mind. So I tried, as much as possible, to learn elsewhere. I studied books, tutored with Qown, and even sat in on Thurvishar’s lessons to the Spurned, as Kaen’s rejected wives began calling themselves. They deserved their pride. Since they’d begun studying under Xivan, her relentless training had turned them from a gaggle of bored, pampered prisoners into a proper fighting force.
The Yoran men were … incredulous. Quite unable to understand or believe how these women—who had just a short few years earlier been nothing more than beautiful furniture—exceeded them for speed, strength, and ferocity. They didn’t know about the spells the women had developed to increase their physical prowess to supernatural levels.
The stories I’d told Talea about my own strength had been the inspiration. She’d gone to Bikeinoh, who had figured out how to make the spells work. Then Bikeinoh taught any other woman who could learn.
Most of them, as it happened.
However, no man suggested putting the Spurned into the field. The women became a luck charm, an accessory for the Hon to wear while receiving guests, much like myself. Women warriors both scandalized and delighted visiting royals. Duke Kaen had special armor made for the women, which accentuated their femininity: still no more practical for surviving freezing cold than the old gowns had been. Useless for protecting against sword blows too, since it showed a great deal of cleavage and leg. Still, the stories spread. Maybe it did some good, when more distant Yoran villages heard rumors of the Hon’s fighting women.
Maybe.
I learned right alongside them. Thurvishar D’Lorus turned out to be an excellent teacher, although his insight into exactly what he needed to say or do to help me comprehend a spell occasionally unnerved me. He’d turn the book in my hands, say something, point out a flaw in my approach, and it would trigger some great breakthrough in my understanding.
Azhen Kaen grew more and more impatient and temperamental. He had believed Jorat would be an easy victory, and it had turned into a quagmire. Aeyan’arric began attacking more, and more villages emptied before she arrived. “Priests” of the Black Knight—dedicated to the Nameless Lord—began spreading the air sigil, rendering the Lysian gas Senera had used against Mereina obsolete. Senera began encountering Joratese using talismans to shield against magic. Kaen’s inability—more so, Relos Var’s inability—to track down the rebel leaders causing so many problems rubbed the duke’s temper raw. He snapped and bit at everyone around him.
Kaen did not stop sending Aeyan’arric into Jorat.
For several years after I first vowed my loyalty to Duke Azhen Kaen, he tested me. I hated these trials, but he never asked me to do anything too objectionable; I never traveled into Jorat with Senera, for example. He made me a symbol of his future rule—a Joratese taking orders from a Yoran—his promise of things to come for anyone who doubted their duke. I delivered messages to the clan houses, just to be seen. I wore Kaen’s rings in my hair and Relos Var’s jewels at the neck of a red cloak far too thin to protect anyone else from the cold. The Yoran nobles and courtiers took to calling me Dyono Tomai, or the Red Knight, and I was never quite sure if they meant it as a compliment. I suspected not.
Then came the day when Duke Kaen asked me to do something a little more serious than running errands.
“I want you to clear out the prison,” the duke told me over a game of Zaibur. “Xivan doesn’t want to take the time, but it’s grown too crowded.”
I paused and cocked my head. “You want me to release the prisoners?” I hoped I had misunderstood what he was asking.
He snorted. “I want you to execute them.”
I remember the moment quite well. The scent of burning wood from the nearby fireplace mixed with the odor of spiced butter tea from the tray next to us. The mage-light lamps cast a yellow glow over us, sparkled against the diamonds in his thick white beard. I stared at him, and he smiled.
Azhen Kaen knew exactly what he was asking me to do. He was escalating his tests. Would I kill for him? Not just fight for him, but put someone to death just because he asked it?
I bowed my head as I moved a game piece. “Do you wish me to make an example?”
“No. Dead will do just fine. I’ll order some men to assist you as you require.”
Which meant he’d order some of his soldiers to make sure I went through with it and then report back to him. After all, what good was a test if he didn’t have a way to verify the score?
I pinned his god-king piece. “And that’s game.”
He scowled at the board. “So it is.”
The next day, I traveled down to the prison level—still quite a way up from the Spring Caves under the palace—and realized just how bad the test would be.
Unlike Jorat, Yor does have prisons. Or at least the Ice Demesne has a dungeon. It was as dreary and miserable as anything I’ve encountered outside the Afterlife itself. Despite Kaen’s orders, his dungeon didn’t need emptying, because he never left prisoners alive for long enough to overfill its cells. This wasn’t about executing prisoners. This was about seeing if I would execute prisoners.
I’m no stranger to death, but slaying someone in battle and killing someone who is weaponless, bound, and helpless are very different.
The condemned were political dissidents who had been too outspoken against the duke’s rule or who had moved against him in some fashion. I had no idea if they’d received a trial, but I suspected not. The dozen men and women all appeared to be Yoran, dressed in the clothing they’d been wearing when arrested. From the looks of them, none had been pulled from their beds; they all wore furs, boots, the normal Yoran cold-weather attire. Since no effort had been made to heat the palace’s dungeon, they’d been allowed to keep their clothing. Apparently, the Hon hadn’t wanted them to freeze to death before they could be executed.
Which had given me an idea.
I gestured to the men Kaen had dispatched as my escort. I knew their leader, Hedrogha, from previous escort runs out to the clans. “Captain, pull them from the cells and follow me.”
“Where are we going?” Hedrogha seemed wary. I wondered what his orders were if I refused to kill the prisoners.
“The kennel,” I answered.
The soldier’s eyes widened.
The prisoners barely made a fuss as they were pulled from their cells. They looked weak and beaten. If they’d been fed, it hadn’t been enough.
I kept my expression blank as we made our way back up to the main level, to the kennels.
Of course, what the Yorans called the kennels would have been called the stable anywhere else. Even though most travel to and from the Ice Demesne happened via Gatestone, a main road did lead up to the pyramid’s base. Any conventional travel happened by way of animals more adapted to the cold than horses—namely, snow hyenas and ice bears. Neither animal was ridden, but teams of hyenas or bears often pulled sleds or wagons across the snowy countryside.
This was Suless’s (or rather Wyrga’s) domain. She trained and took care of the duke’s animals. No matter how she was despised, everyone admitted she excelled at her job.
The large hall was constructed from the palace’s normal black stone, but here a dark musk scent mixed with blood, offal, and ice filled the air. Hyena laughter and bear growls mixed with creaking leather and the sharp retort of snapping jaws.
I motioned to a handler. “Harness a wagon with bears.”
“You’re supposed to kill the prisoners,” the same soldier reminded me.
I turned to him. “Yorans may tolerate cold, but you have your limits. I’m going to leave them outside to freeze. Or won’t that be dead enough for you?”
The soldier gave concerned glances to the large entrance. They didn’t want to go outside either—exactly as I’d planned.
The prisoners heard our exchange, so panic set in. They were tied, but several began openly begging for their lives. Others started crying.
“Just kill them here,” someone snapped.
I stared at the man. “Are you questioning me?”
“No, just—” He gave Captain Hedrogha a pleading look. “We’ll need to change into our winter furs.”
I was about to tell them to go get them (which would give me time to take the prisoners out myself) when Wyrga stepped in.
“Or you can let her go alone,” Wyrga suggested as she walked over. “What’s she going to do, hmm? Help them escape into the mountains? Travel somewhere warm? I’d like to see her try.” The old woman had tied a cloth over one side of her head to hide her missing eye. I didn’t know what she’d done with the eye itself, which I felt was for the best.
Captain Hedrogha started to protest, but Wyrga locked her eye with him. That eye’s color flashed, just briefly, to ice blue.
Hedrogha paused. “You make a good point.”
Wyrga smiled sharp teeth and malice. “I always do, dearie.”
I suppressed a chill. I’d seen the ice eye flash before: Wyrga had just used magic on the guard. Duke Kaen had forbidden his captive goddess from doing a great many things—harming his family, for example—but she was useless to him if he forbid her from ever using magic at all.
But what could I say? What she had done worked in my favor.
“I’ll be back soon,” I reassured Captain Hedrogha. “This won’t take long.”
He didn’t even look at me. Wyrga’s ice-blue stare still trapped his gaze. His men didn’t seem to notice.
The animal handlers readied two of the great bears for me, who I preferred to the hyenas. The bears were terrifying in their own way—they were more than capable of killing someone accidentally—but they liked that I was warm and good at scratching behind their ears. It wasn’t at all the same as riding a horse, but since I secretly went riding with Arasgon almost every night in the Afterlife, I didn’t resent the difference.
Once all the prisoners had been loaded into the wagon, we set out. I tried my best to ignore their screams.
For me, the difficult part of traveling in the Yoran winter landscape wasn’t the cold. I’d long since learned to heat myself up enough to prevent frostbite. No, the difficulty was keeping that heat inside. If I allowed myself to radiate heat, I’d find myself wading through ice water, defrosting equipment designed to work best while frozen, or falling right through snowbanks and ice sheets rendered unstable. I’d found that out the hard way.
I rode out, unescorted, down the main road, not a proper road so much as a line of tall poles staked into the ground meant to rise above the worst winter snowbanks. Then I turned south, traveled several miles off the road, and stopped.
I enchanted coins as we rode. I’d have preferred to use rocks, but finding bare ground in winter was unlikely, so coins would have to do. Fortunately, the Hon hadn’t been stingy with his metal, and to my surprise, I had a spending allowance.
And thanks to Suless, I had a few other tricks up my sleeves as well.
I stopped the wagon, opened the door, then backed away and drew my sword.
“Come out,” I said, “and I’ll explain how this will work.”
They looked at me with undisguised fear.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I said. “You may either come out and I’ll explain what you need to do to survive, or stay where you are and give me no choice but to follow through on the Hon’s orders. I leave the choice to you.”
They all stepped onto the snow and looked confused as I handed each of them a coin. More confused as they felt the warmth emanating from that metal.
“Keep those on you. Those tokens will keep you from freezing to death.” I pointed south. “Aim between those two mountains. The pass between them will lead you south. You’ll end up in Tolamer. Once you’re there, I’ll have people waiting for you. Ask for a woman named Ninavis. Understand?”
A tall, thickly built man with dark blue hair shook his head. “It’ll be weeks to make it that far. Even if we don’t freeze, what are we supposed to eat?”
I nodded. I’d prepared for this part too, although it galled me that I had Suless to thank for the method. I whistled, then made a barking, laughter-like noise.
The hyenas responded immediately. These weren’t the snow hyenas Suless had back at the palace. These were wild. I heard their barking response in the distance.
Hyenas are very hierarchical. Every animal in a clan knows exactly where they fall within that hierarchy—who is above them and who is below.
Really, not so different from Jorat.
In any event, it meant I only had to dominate their queen to rule the whole clan. I could only give the animals simple commands, but I thought it enough to ensure the former prisoners safely escaped Yor.
“The hyenas will escort you out and bring you food. Don’t attack them. Don’t even try to touch them, but they’ll keep you safe.”
I suppose I couldn’t blame the prisoners for looking scared and nervous. Between the hot coins and the hyena escort, enough of them remembered stories told at grandmother’s knee to suspect me of being a witch-mother. I was in no position to correct them.
I closed up the wagon doors and pulled myself back up behind the bears, grown restless with the proximity of that hyena clan. “It’s the best I can do,” I told them. “Good luck.” I nudged the bears to head back to the palace.
I didn’t know if they’d make it, but I suspected they’d rather have a chance.
When I returned, everyone seemed to accept I had indeed executed those prisoners. How could it have been otherwise? The soldiers reported back to Kaen, who in turn seemed pleased.
I thought I’d gotten away with it.
At least, I thought so for a little while.