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Knife in hand, Pedric Karst crept toward the sound of the seeker’s voice. The mist grew thicker until he could scarcely see the ground beneath his feet. Cautiously, he moved forward until he found himself at the edge of a pool of quakewater. He hesitated. Had he gone in the wrong direction? The voice sounded so close. He must be in the right place.
As he strained to see through the dense curtain of fog, a light began to glow. Brighter and brighter it shone as the seeker’s voice rose along with it. He could see faint shapes beyond the mist. One of them was Shanis Malan. He could feel her presence so close.
The light revealed a stepping stone in the quakewater. This was the path she had taken. Moving on silent feet, he continued on. Finally, as if looking through frost-covered glass, he saw them.
The Galdoran prince stood directly in front of him, facing in the opposite direction. To his left stood the seeker. The man was now deep into his ritual and his words had taken on the melodic tone of a chant. To his right, the younger seeker knelt staring at the sword, the hilt of which had been thrust into the tree. It was the sword that now shown with intense light.
And in front of it stood Shanis Malan.
In an instant, he understood. The conversation he had heard while eavesdropping on the house of healing made sense. She was the sacrifice! She was going to hurl herself onto the point of the sword. He could not let that happen. Killing her was his task. Gripping his knife tightly, he tensed, ready to attack.
Wait.
The Ice King’s voice echoed in his mind. It was muffled and seemed to come from a great distance away as if this place somehow served as a buffer between him and the power that drove him forward.
You want me to kill her, he thought.
No. Let her do our work for us.
And the Ice King began to laugh.
Karst stood frozen in place at the edge of the mist. He had come all this way and now his god did not want him to finish the task? It could not be.
But the sacrifice...
Her sacrifice means nothing to me. She is not the ruler of my nation. You are. She does not know that she is about to die for nothing. All of their work has been for naught. They are about to give me what I want.
The Ice King laughed again, and the sound froze Karst’s marrow. In his mind’s eye, he caught a tiny glimpse of the Ice King’s thoughts.
The seeker was wrong. The gods had been trapped inside the Silver Serpent because the greatest among their own worshipers had lain down their lives in sacrifice. When the girl threw herself onto the sword, she would accomplish one thing— she would remove the only remaining obstacle that stood in the Ice King’s way.
Images flashed before his eyes: the Ice King’s power extending across Gameryah and beyond. Lines of people marched to the temple like lambs to slaughter, all for the sake of extending his power. They would die like Karst’s father had. He would move across the Sun Sands to the lands of the Far West, and then across the oceans. He would crush every nation beneath his feet. All would despair at his name.
I did this, Karst thought. This is all my fault.
The Ice King’s laughter stopped
Come away from there.
It was a command, but the Ice King’s words no longer held the powerful sway that it once had. The power of this place and the horror of his realization had restored Karst’s mind.
Come away now!
Karst teetered and almost fell off of the stepping stone. The power of the Ice King battled with his own overwhelming desire to stop this abomination he had created. He felt as if he were being torn in two.
Come away or I shall come for you myself. I shall... The Ice King continued to speak, but his words grew fainter until Karst could not hear them in all.
The future he had witnessed was beyond imagining, and he was the author of the destruction.
My name is Pedric Karst, he thought. My father was Rimmic Karst.
He remembered his father, saw again his death upon the altar of the Ice King. His father hadn’t believed in their horrible god. He had merely wanted to bring back his wife, Karst’s mother.
His mother. And then another memory came to him the one memory of his mother that was stronger than all others.
He was young, exactly how young he could not say, but he recalled with vivid clarity, sitting on his mother’s lap. Her arms around him holding him tight. She looked down at him, smiled, and kissed him on the forehead.
“You are a good boy.”
I am good.
And then a powerful force like a physical blow drove him to his knees.
The Ice King was no longer far away.
He had come.
“Why are they attacking the city?” Tabars asked. He gazed off in the direction of Calmut as if he could see through the gathering fog and the thick walls to the battle that had resumed on the far side of the city. They could hear the sounds of battle and see the flashes of light from the balls of fire hurled by the defenders. “I thought they would come for us.”
“So did I.” Lerryn watched the sky with an unsettled feeling rising in his gut. Part of him felt he should be there, commanding his forces in the defense of the city, but he could not bring himself to cower behind the walls when here would be the battle that truly mattered. This was where he belonged. “Perhaps...” He broke off as shapes appeared in the mist. As they drew closer, he could make out their forms—ice cats.
“The attack is intended to be a distraction. They believed if they could draw all our defenders to the walls, the way to the sacred grove would be open.”
“I guess we showed them.” Tabars said.
Lerryn glanced at Kelvin, whose face was white as milk. He had ordered the young man to join the defense of the city, but Kelvin had ignored his command. It looked as though he was regretting his rash decision. It was too late now. The ice cats stood between them and the city.
Lerryn drew his sword and raised it high.
“This is the moment!” he called out. “Do not let them pass!”
A ragged cheer arose from the White Fang.
“Sound the horn, Kelvin.”
A short blast and the men of the White Fang rode forward to meet the enemy. They were young and inexperienced, Lerryn mused, hardly the measure of the veterans of the original White Fang that had followed him into so many battles, but they were good men who had served him well. He hoped at least a few survived this day.
Bestial roars arose from the throng of ice cats. Frightened horses shied and whinnied while their riders shouted their battle cries as the two lines came together.
Lerryn’s sword flashed and bit deeply into the nearest creature. All around him he saw ice cats fall, but he also saw soldiers pulled from their saddles and torn apart. There was nothing he could do for them except continue to fight. The battle raged on. Fur and blood flew. Shrieks and curses rent the night air. All around him ice cats and soldiers lay dying, but many fought on.
“Some of them have broken through!” Tabars shouted
“There’s nothing we can do. We have enough to deal with here.” Lerryn hacked the paw off an attacking ice cat, drew back, and thrust his sword through the beast’s throat. The remaining ice cats scattered and his men gave chase, hoping to run them down before they reached the grove.
Larris wheeled his horse but stopped when a pale blue light shone in the distance.
“What is that?” Tabars gasped.
Time seemed to freeze. In an instant, Lerryn took in the terrible sight. If the shadow of the Ice King with which they had done battle earlier had been fearsome, it was nothing compared to the reality of the towering figure that strode toward them. Where his shade had glowed, the Ice King burned with angry blue fire and wherever he stepped frost spread across the ground. His very presence was so powerful that Lerryn could scarcely look at him, but he forced himself to meet the god’s fearsome gaze.
“That,” he said, “is how I will die.” He kicked his heels into Kreege’s flanks and rode out to meet the Ice King.
Hierm heard a roar in the distance as if thousands of voices were lifted as one. Sweat dripped down the back of his neck and he clutched the hilt of his sword for comfort. “I guess they’re coming.”
To his right, Dacio laughed ruefully. “I’m wishing I had paid more attention in sorcery and less in history.”
“You’ll be all right,” Naseeb said. “You are the best in all of our studies.” He made a thoughtful frown and then shook his head. “All right, not all of them but I still think you’ll be all right. We are, after all, students of the Gates.”
“I’ll wager you a flagon of ale,” Allyn said, "that I kill more them than both of you combined.” He nocked an arrow and stared out into the fog with a sly grin on his face.
“Will the three of you shut your mouths? I’m trying to listen,” Krion barked.
“Peace father,” Colin said. “They are nervous. We all are.”
Hierm glanced at Lizzie. The young thief clutched a knife in each hand and was trembling from head to toe. “You don’t have to do this,” he whispered. Take shelter in the trees until it’s over.”
She turned her pallid face toward him. “Oskar is in there.” As if that ended the discussion she turned to stare off in the direction from which the cries had come.
“Here they come,” Colin said. “Ice cats.”
Closing on them fast, a line of the vicious creatures charged forward. Hierm had forgotten how fast they were. He couldn’t help but marvel at the speed with which they chewed up the ground between them.
Allyn stepped forward and began firing. Again and again his arrows found their marks but a single shaft would not bring the beasts down unless it was perfectly placed. Just like the Ice King’s warriors that fought through until the bitter end, the will of their master drove the beasts forward.
Gillen, Naseeb, and Dacio began flinging fireballs at the cats. They erupted in gouts of orange flame and the creatures squealed with feral rage, but still they came. Finally, one of the creatures fell, and then another. And then the cats were upon them.
All was chaos. Hierm thrust his sword at the nearest cat, driving his blade deep into its flank. It roared and lashed out, slashing him across the chest. He fell back and then Lizzie and Heztus leaped upon the beast, gashing it with their knives until it lay in a bloody, twitching heap.
Hierm whirled about, sword upraised. He saw Colin drive his sword into the heart of one of the beasts. Nearby, Krion was locked in battle with another.
Dacio went down beneath one of the massive creatures. Hierm ran to the young man’s aid. He raised his sword and brought it down with all his might on the unprotected base of the ice cat’s neck. He felt his blade cut through flesh and bone, and spurts of icy cold blood splashed his face. He stabbed again and again until it no longer moved. He threw his shoulder into its bloody side and rolled it off of Dacio and his heart fell at the sight. There was no hope for the young seeker. There was also no time to mourn.
Another cat flung itself at him, but it was taken down in midair by the twin spells hurled by Gillen and Naseeb.
Lizzie screamed and Hierm whirled about to see her desperately fending off another cat. She drove a dagger into its throat and his claws raked her face. Heztus ran forward, rolled beneath the beast, thrust two daggers up into its unprotected belly, and rolled free of its slashing claws. Hierm ran forward and finished the cat with a deft stroke of his sword.
The cats continued to try to break through their line, desperate to get inside the grove and into the passageway between the standing stones. Colin and Krion fought like wild men. Naseeb and Gillen hurled spells in every direction. Hierm chopped and hacked at every flash of gray he saw.
A cat sprang seemingly out of nowhere and caught Allyn from behind. The young archer went down and did not rise.
“We can’t hold on much longer!” Heztus snarled.
A cold feeling of doom rose up inside Hierm. Perhaps this was the end.