Winter's King Read online

  It didn’t work.

  “Relax,” the woman said, patting him on the shoulder before letting her hand fall. “In this weather it will be months before he could make it this far south. Just like it will be months before I can leave. Even if I planned on running—and I don’t—what good would it do me? Where am I supposed to go?”

  “North. With us. As I’ve been telling you for four days.”

  “And for four days I’ve been telling you I won’t leave. So stop trying.” Eva looked up at him, then, her eyes softened. “I have people here who need me. And, in a lot of ways, I need them. I can’t just leave.”

  The words hit Raz hard, but he didn’t let her see it. They summarized everything he had told Brahnt when he’d first refused to leave Azbar.

  He didn’t like it, but he understood.

  An hour later, Raz stepped back out into the cold for the first time in days, Eva at his side and Ahna—her blades hidden in their usual leather sack—thrown over one shoulder. A heavy traveling bag filled with his armor and other weapons hung from her end. He marveled as always—and as he seemed incapable of stopping himself from doing—at the bite of the air. The chill had deepened even in the week he’d been unconscious and recuperating, but beneath the heavy sown furs a few of the temple’s more talented seamstresses had put together for him, he hardly felt it. The thick, tan and brown pelts spilled heavily across his shoulders, falling around him and making Raz feel rather like a moving, furry hill. They covered him nearly completely, even hiding—when his hands were by his side—the clawed steel fingers of his gauntlets, the only gloves any of them had been able to find that fit him.

  Jerr’s work continued to remain unparalleled.

  The Laorin had done much better than just providing him with the massive mantle, though. They’d fashioned him boots, of a sort, more furs bound in thick leather, which shielded his shins and feet a great deal better than the makeshift wraps he’d made of his old cloak that had barely kept his toes from falling off on his feverish ride north. His claws protruded from slits in the skins, and the bottoms of the boots had been stitched together with the paw pads of some larger animal, hopefully improving his purchase on ice and snow. He’d have to watch where he stepped, and try to keep the insides as dry as possible, but the boots were a fine gift, and when Raz had received them he’d given Atler an appreciative nod, which the High Priestess returned in kind. It softened a little of the budding apprehension Raz was beginning to feel, knowing now where their true destination was.

  Cyurgi’ Di, the High Citadel, the greatest pillar of Laorin faith in the world.

  A place Raz didn’t expect to find many kindred spirits…

  “Ready, lad?”

  Raz turned back to the open double doors of the temple to see al’Dor standing in the opening, one last pack thrown over his shoulder. Behind him, Brahnt was sharing a few finals words with Atler, leaning heavily on his staff as always.

  In answer, Raz nodded to the Priest. He was turning to face Eva again, intent on imploring her one final time to come with them, when the woman wrapped her arms around his waist, squeezing him tight.

  “Safe travels, you,” she mumbled into the furs. “And thank you. For everything.”

  “I think that’s my line,” Raz said with a chuckle, easing Ahna against the nearby wall so he could return the hug with his good hand.

  “Maybe,” Eva said, pulling away and wiping her eyes with the back of her glove before smiling up at him. “But, I never really got to say it the last time, and I think I owed you the favor anyway.”

  Raz returned the smile, reaching up to put his clawed right hand on her head, pushing it about in a brotherly fashion.

  “Take care of yourself,” he said. “Stay safe.”

  Eva nodded, but said nothing more as Raz turned away to face the road. al’Dor was watching him expectantly, the bag he’d been carrying already hanging from the side of the saddle of his hefty grey mare. From the temple, the thump of steel on wood came, and Brahnt joined them outside.

  “Best we’re off,” he said to Raz as he passed. “I can’t pretend we haven’t delayed too long already. Have you said your farewells?”

  “Yes,” Raz said, not looking back at Eva as he retrieved Ahna from her place on the wall and heaved her and the bag back onto his shoulder. “Lead the way.”

  Brahnt did so, limping out into the road until al’Dor met him, taking the High Priest’s free arm and helping him to the brown spotted mare beside his own mount.

  The last animal remaining stood separate, and was a far cry different from the docile pair the Priests had selected for themselves. A massive black stallion, maybe seventeen hands tall, it snorted temperamentally as Raz looked over at it, meeting his eye defiantly, daring him to approach. Raz had rarely seen a specimen of the same size, and only then as sleek creatures of preened elegance, kept as badges of luxury by some of the wealthier clients—and targets—he’d had in Miropa. It stomped and hoofed at the ground, shaking its great head and bobbing it up in down in challenge.

  “Had to trade for that one,” Atler said, stepping out of the temple last to stand beside Raz. “Wasn’t hard, actually. Apparently no one wanted to go near him.”

  “Wonder why,” Raz muttered sarcastically. He’d just taken a step towards the horse when Atler stopped him.

  “Arro, a moment,” she said. Raz turned to look back at her, but the woman wasn’t watching him. Instead, her eyes were on Brahnt and al’Dor, the latter boosting the former up into his saddle.

  “I need you to understand something,” she said, still not taking her eyes off the pair. “Talo has told me enough of your story to convince me you bare no ill intentions towards him or any of our faith, but I’m not so convinced that your presence among us won’t bear poor results regardless. That man”—she indicated Brahnt with a tilt of her head—“is arguably the most important leader of our people, and therefore the most important part of the Laorin’s stand against Baoill, and all men like him.”

  At last, she turned to Raz.

  “I need you to understand,” she said again, “that you don’t just travel with a man of importance. You travel with a man who understands evil, who has lived it, breathed it. Many of our faith—myself included, I’m afraid—have led sheltered lives. The Laorin are powerful, it’s true. We have numbers, magic and influence. But we have no plan, no greater purpose beyond spreading His word and His light to those in need. Talo does, or at the very least has the ability to marshal the faith and the valley towns to some purpose, whatever it may be.”

  She took a deep breath, as though attempting to conquer some fear. “If Talo was willing to wait so long, to sacrifice so much precious time to have you with him, I have to believe there is a reason. Still… please… understand what I am telling you. Understand what he is. And understand that you are a danger to him.”

  “I know.”

  The response took Atler by obvious surprise, but Raz didn’t let her cut in as he continued.

  “I do understand,” he said, also watching the Priests as Brahnt successfully swung his bad leg over the saddle. “Maybe I don’t yet appreciate the full value he has to you—much less to the North as a whole—but I’m certainly aware that my presence around him and al’Dor isn’t conducive to their safety. Miropa still has a bounty on my head, not to mention whatever the council of Azbar has probably thrown into the pile by now. I would be surprised if we so much as manage to get out of the city without any trouble.”

  His gauntleted hand tightened around Ahna’s handle reflexively. “And yet, he wants me with him. I’m not sure to what end, or honestly what sort of help I can be in whatever shit storm it is he’s riding the three of us into, but I believe as you do: there is a reason. I may not know what it is—hell, I’m not convinced he knows what it is—but it’s there, carved out either by my gods or yours.”

  He held the High Priestess’ gaze firmly, letting her see the resolution there. “I am part of this now, despite either o
f our reservations, and I don’t think there’s anything to be done but wait and see how the cards fall.”

  Atler’s face turned somber at that. “His life is worth more than yours,” she said, her voice hardening. “And you owe it to him, if it comes to that.”

  Raz nodded once. “If it comes to that.”

  Then he stepped away from the woman, neither glancing back at her nor at Eva over his other shoulder, and made for the stallion.

  The animal watched him approach almost imperiously, one dark eye taking him in as Raz moved in a slow arch around it, careful to stay in easy view the entire time. When he stood fifteen feet from its right shoulder, he eased Ahna and his pack down to the ground.

  Then, careful to stay low and as small as he could manage, he edged forward, slowly advancing until he was only a few feet away from the horse. As it dragged an iron shoe over the ground in warning, Raz worked his right gauntlet off awkwardly with his left hand—a tough job given the sling. When he managed it, he reached out, leaving his bare palm up, and waited.

  It was several seconds before the stallion showed any interest, and another long few before it made its move. In that time Raz could feel the cold and wind start to numb his long fingers, digging down to the bone, but he suffered the discomfort. His patience paid off when the horse turned towards him, taking a few plodding steps in his direction to snort at his scaled skin, first from a little distance, then closer as it made out nothing threatening.

  “Good man,” Raz said in a soothing voice—or as soothing as his voice could get. “That’s it. We can be friends, can’t we?”

  The horse—as horses are like to do—ignored him. Instead it kept snuffling at his hand, then at the furs hanging over him. As it moved up his arm Raz reached out to carefully place a few fingers on the bulge of the stallion’s shoulder. When it didn’t protest, he slowly slid his palm down the animal’s hide, going with the grain of the hair.

  Eventually he made it up the horse’s neck and mane, until finally his hand was petting along the dark ridge of its muzzle.

  “Good man,” Raz said again to the now-calm animal.

  After that it took a little effort for him to figure out how to mount one handed, but he managed, finally balancing Ahna and his things precariously across the saddle before putting one foot in the stirrup and heaving himself up using the pommel. Once he settled, the dviassegai now balanced more comfortably across his lap, he took hold of the reins and turned the stallion about.

  Brahnt and al’Dor were both waiting for him, looking on with bemused expressions.

  “Problem?” he asked, heeling over to them.

  al’Dor shook his head. “Just surprised to see you handle a horse so well.”

  “We were betting what part of you the thing was going to take a chunk out of first,” Brahnt joked, grinning.

  Raz managed to give them a crooked smile in return. “Rhen said the same thing when she got me out of Azbar. You forget I spent my childhood with the desert caravans of the Cienbal. I could break and ride you two into the ground, if it came to it.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t,” al’Dor grumbled, eyeing Raz’s stallion as it huffed at his mare.

  Then, with nothing more than a last grateful incline of his head in Atler and Eva’s direction, the Priest turned his mount about and started west down the road. Brahnt paused long enough to raise a hand in farewell to the two women and shout his thanks before kicking his horse into a trot to catch up with his partner.

  Raz took the longest, unable to help himself from looking back at Eva. He had no other words for her, and nor—it seemed—did she for him. Still, it was a long moment before he raised his own hand, watching her return the gesture with a sad smile.

  Then Raz wheeled the stallion about, urging it down the road with a flick of the reins and a shouted “hyah!”

  “Gale.”

  The name came to Raz not long after, riding in silence between the two Priests, and he wasn’t sure he’d meant to say it out loud. Still, both men turned inward to look at him. al’Dor looked a little confused, but Brahnt seemed to know where Raz’s head was at.

  “The horse?” he asked, and Raz nodded.

  “It was the name of my father’s horse, when I was a boy,” he said, passing the reins to his bad hand long enough to pat the side of the stallion’s neck. “The beast I learned to ride on, in fact.”

  “That must have been a sight,” al’Dor chuckled, surprising Raz with the humor.

  Apparently getting back on the road was doing much to lift the man’s spirits.

  “It was,” Raz said. “Apart from the fact that Gale was hell-bent on not having a scaly little bastard like me on his back, Father always said I had about as much interest in riding as ‘the sands did in turning to snow.’” He laughed. “Oh, the irony…”

  “What was your father’s name?” Brahnt asked him. “I never found out.”

  “Agais,” Raz told him at once, amazed when he realized this was, perhaps, the first time he’d spoken the name aloud in years. “My mother was Grea, and my sister was Ahna.”

  “Ahna?” al’Dor asked curiously as they took a corner between the buildings. “Ahna, as in…?”

  He let the question hang in the air between them, glancing down at the dviassegai’s hidden blades, suspended over the cobblestone as the haft remained balanced across Raz’s thigh.

  “The very same,” Raz said, pulling Gale back to fall in behind the Priests as they entered the more trafficked lanes of the main fairway, which would take them straight to Ystréd’s west gate.

  He thought al’Dor may have mumbled something in response to this revelation, but ignored it, preferring to keep the good-natured Priest he was seeing for the first time to the stern and anxious man he’d been dealing with over the last few days. Raz also decided it was time to focus on other things as, looking around, he watched their presence being noted by the crowd of riders, pedestrians, and beggars that ringed them on all sides.

  Brahnt had assured him that getting to the gate wouldn’t be an issue, so long as he stuck close to them. Sure enough, no one seemed inclined on bothering their party as they clopped along down the road, moving with the crowd. Indeed, while most of the eyes that peered in their direction were first drawn to Raz, poorly hidden despite the heavy furs, it was only briefly. Then the stares would shift, flicking between Brahnt and al’Dor, often lingering on the black line along the back of the High Priest’s white cloak before looking away again.

  Influence, Raz thought, remembering what Atler said and impressed by the deference. In truth, while he could begrudgingly admit to himself that he had developed a certain esteem for the Priests—particularly Brahnt—Raz had never seen much to indicate the Laorin held any sort of sway in the North. Azbar had been his only example to go by but—seeing this new response to the white robes—the people of that particular city were rapidly proving poor models for how most of the populace reacted to the Laorin. Indeed, some of the people milling about them made it a point to press closer to al’Dor and Brahnt, reaching out to touch their horses and legs as they passed, and smiling as the men rapidly traced a sort of half circle and horizontal line across their foreheads, like a rising sun.

  Fortunately, the masses seemed smart enough to give Raz a wide berth.

  It continued like this, the three of them moving at a crawling pace, for nearly half a mile. At last, just as Raz was starting to feel a familiar headache return as the people pressed in on all sides, the gate came into view. It was a sad thing, more of a glorified hole in the low ten-foot wall than anything else, but it served its current purpose well enough. People came and went from either side of the road, and as they got closer Raz made out a trio of men in uniform directing the traffic with practiced signals, controlling the comings and goings that were undoubtedly spiking with the temporary taming of the winter storms.

  When one the guards caught sight of him though, his signals stopped, and he froze.

  It was then that Raz start
ed to feel uneasy. He watched the man as they approached, keeping one eye on him and only barely listening to Talo’s and Carro’s exchanges on either side. The guard went back to his duties, but he couldn’t seem to help glancing around every few seconds, as though to make sure Raz was still making his way along the road.

  Raz’s suspicions came to fruition just as he and the Priests reached the gate, making to follow the wagon that had fallen in in front of them. The guard he had been eyeing stepped across their path sharply, blocking their way to the rolling snow-covered hills that could be seen beyond the wall.

  “Halt!” the man shouted, throwing one hand up and placing the other on the hilt of his sword. “You, biggun”—he pointed a finger at Raz—“show yerself. Now.”

  “Is that really necessary?” Brahnt asked in reply from slightly in front and to the left of Raz, his horse sidestepping nervously at the sudden stop.

  “What’s going on?” One of the other guardsmen—an officer, judging by the metallic patch on his shirt—had walked over to see what the fuss was about. “Wetts, why are these people stopped?”

  Then he noticed what little of Raz’s face wasn’t hidden beneath the hood of fur mantle, and his eyes grew wide.

  “Sir, it’s him,” the guard called Wetts said unnecessarily, his voice pitching into an excited squeak, his eyes never leaving Raz’s. “It’s him. It’s the Monster!”

  Though the travelers around them had certainly already been aware of Raz’s presence among their throng, the energy that had been tempered by Brahnt and al’Dor’s places on either side of him was quickly rising with the guard’s blatant audacity. Whispers soon built into shouts, and everywhere people were craning up on their toes to see what was happening, or else peering around wagon covers and over high carts.

  “Lieutenant,” Brahnt spoke to the officer, obviously having a better understanding of the patch on his breast than Raz did, “this doesn’t concern the city guard. My friend—” he said the word pointedly, accenting it with a gesture towards Raz so that there was absolutely no mistaking the line Wetts and his commander were toeing “—travels with me on Laorin business, and makes for Cyurgi’ Di.”