Queen of Fire
“You had no choice,” Kiral told him one morning. He had gone to the edge of the berg in what had become something of a daily ritual. They were so far north now that Avenshura could be glimpsed for a brief time between dusk and sunrise, shining brighter than he had seen before. No war can be fought in the light that it brings. Just an ancient delusion, he knew. Life, death, love, war. It would all be played out on this earth until the end of time and Avenshura didn’t care. It was just a star.
“These people followed me,” he said. “To their doom it seems.”
“The song called and you answered. And our journey is not yet done.”
She spoke with a calm authority but Vaelin could not suppress his skepticism, gesturing at the slowly moving ice surrounding them. “It holds no warning about this?”
“It has sounded a warning note since we began this journey. But it also holds certainty. We are on the right course, the endless man awaits our coming. I know it.”
• • •
The first island came into view four days later, a small snow-covered rise some miles to the south, several larger cousins appearing a day later. The berg’s collisions increased as the floe became constricted by the channels through the islands. After many hours constant shuddering, and an ominous crack that shook the ice beneath their feet, it came to a grinding halt.
Wise Bear led them across the now-fractured ice-scape to the nearest island, taller than the others with bare rock jutting from its snow-covered slopes. His mood became sombre as they tracked around its southern shore, coming eventually to a collection of huts beneath a tall cliff. They were conical in shape, the walls constructed from seal hides over a framework of bone and wood, long out of use from their evident state of disrepair. Many were missing hides and others half-ruined by the constant assault of the elements.
“You know this place?” Vaelin asked the shaman.
“Bear People hunting camp,” he said, standing still and expressionless.
“We could press on,” Vaelin suggested, sensing his reluctance. “Find another island.”
“Nearest two days away.” Wise Bear started forward, moving with deliberate purpose and pointing his staff towards the north. “More storm coming. We rest here until it passes.”
They repaired the huts as best they could, using horse-hide to cover the gaps, the night coming on fast and bringing a bitter wind. By now they were all well attuned to the moods of the ice, the speed with which a storm could descend, birthing a new level of cooperation between the Sentar and Orven’s guardsmen. They worked together with wordless efficiency, seemingly unhampered by any language barrier.
“Once the ice made all men brothers,” Wise Bear said that night. They had repaired five huts, enough to shelter the whole company from the storm already howling outside, the surviving horses herded into a single hut with what scant fodder remained. The shaman sat beside the fire in the centre of the hut, the smoke rising to a small hole in the roof as he carved a new symbol into his bone-staff.
“The Long Night longer then, years not months,” he went on, eyes fixed on the knifepoint etching into the bone. “No tribes, just one people, made so by the Long Night. When gone, one people became three, brothers no more.”
He paused to blow powdered bone from the staff, revealing an irregular pattern of dots, each connected with a line. “What does it mean?” Cara asked, leaning forward. She was still alarmingly thin but had regained a great deal of strength during their time on the berg, though Vaelin doubted she could have endured long enough to shield them from the latest storm.
Wise Bear frowned, seeking the right words. “A story now told,” he said finally, his gaze roaming over the Gifted. “Story of journey and joining. When storm passes we make new story, of learning and fighting.”
• • •
Wise Bear led them on a south-easterly course three days later, the islands growing in size and number with every passing mile, some even featuring a few trees or bushes the farther south they went. However, there was little for the horses to feed on and, with the fodder now exhausted, soon only Scar was left, plodding in Vaelin’s wake with his head sagging ever lower.
When darkness fell Wise Bear would gather the Gifted, trying to impart some of his knowledge, though his agitation, their ignorance, and his still-rudimentary grasp of Realm Tongue, made it a frustrating task. “Speak!” he commanded Dahrena, raising her hand and placing the palm on his forehead.
“Speak what?” she asked in bemusement.
“Not with mouth,” he snapped, jabbing a finger to her temple. “Speak one word, here.”
Dahrena closed her eyes in concentration, pressing her hand harder against the old man’s forehead but he only grunted in consternation. “Call power,” he said. “Not all. Just small power.”
Dahrena sighed and tried again, stiffening a little, her face losing expression and taking on a familiar, pale cast.
“Tower!” Wise Bear said with a satisfied cackle, adding, “Stop now. Not use too much.”
Dahrena removed her hand from his forehead, flexing her fingers, a look of confused awe on her face. “I didn’t know . . . Can all Gifted do this?”
“All with power, yes. Gifts change, power not change. All one thing. Come.” He gathered the other Gifted and led them to his war-cats, all waiting placidly nearby. He pointed at the largest of the cats, like the others still fairly ragged of fur but noticeably better fed than when they had first been captured by his gift. “Speak,” he told Dahrena. “Give order.”
Dahrena approached the beast with obvious trepidation, for all the cat’s apparent calm she had seen the carnage meted out by Snowdance who usually appeared no more threatening than an overgrown kitten. She stopped a pace or two from the cat and tentatively reached out to touch her hand to its great head, closing her eyes to summon her gift once more. The cat blinked then lowered itself to the ice and rolled on its back, paws raised. Dahrena gave a delighted laugh and knelt to run her hands over the cat’s furry belly.
“All try.” Wise Bear jabbed his staff at the other Gifted and waved it at the cats. “Choose, give names. Yours now.”
Cara moved forward with obvious enthusiasm, as did Kiral, whilst Lorkan and Marken were much more cautious. “What if they bite?” Lorkan asked the shaman, taking a short step towards one of the two remaining cats.
“You die,” Wise Bear replied. “Don’t let them.”
Vaelin’s gaze abruptly shifted to Kiral as she rose from the side of the cat she had chosen, the smallest of the group with a mangled left ear. Her smile faded as she stood and stared towards the east with a sudden and fierce intensity.
“Danger?” Vaelin asked, going to her side.
“A new song.” She winced a little, shaking her head in confusion. “Very old, very strange.”
Wise Bear said something in his own language as he came to join them, his expression wary rather than fearful as he added, “Wolf People.”
• • •
He led them to another island at first light, the largest they had yet seen, with wide patches of bare rock and a small cluster of trees and bushes on its eastern flank. Vaelin set Scar to feed on what sparse leaves the bushes could offer, the warhorse snorting in appreciation as he began his first meal in days. “Should’ve named you ‘strength,’ shouldn’t I?” Vaelin asked, brushing the frost from his coat. “Sorry for all you’ve suffered, old fellow.”
Scar gave another snort and kept chewing.
He found Wise Bear waiting where the island’s shore met the ice. Nearby Iron Claw sat gnawing on a horse’s thigh-bone. “We go, others stay,” the shaman said. “Wolf People not hate like Cat People, but won’t like too many on their ice.”
“Where do we find them?”
Wise Bear’s laugh was soft as he turned and started walking, Iron Claw rising to lumber alongside with the bone still clamped between his jaws. “They find us.”
They trekked east until the sky had darkened to black and the green fire once again danced in the sky. Wise Bear rested on a stunted plinth-shaped mound of ice, regarding the sky and singing his song to his ancestors.
“What do you tell them?” Vaelin asked when he fell silent.
“Bear People still live. I still live, but not long to wait now.”
“Are you so eager to join them? To be with your wife once more?”
“She with me now, watching.” Wise Bear gave him a sidelong glance. “You think this . . . a story. Your word . . . the word for not real story.”
“A lie.”
“Yes. Lie. No word for lie in Bear People tongue.”
“A lie is still a lie, even if you don’t have a word for it. But no, I don’t think it a lie. I believe your people, and mine, crafted legends to better understand a world that often makes little sense. And a legend becomes its own truth in time.”
“Legend is what?”
“An old story, told many times and changed with the telling. A story so old none can say if it ever truly happened.”
“You had power, when we met. Song like Fox Girl, but stronger. That a legend?”
“No, all very true. But like a legend, it had an ending.”