“To know your enemy is to control your enemy.Channel the obsidian—shape the stone!"She cried.
He slammed his palms to the floor, combining all the element within him to raise pillars of quartz that pierced the ceiling before crumbling under his faltering focus.
"Weave the silk—bind the wind!"Came her cry.Gales howled through the cave, coiling into lassos he hurled at illusory foes, only for them to backlash, slamming him against the wall with bruising force.
"Defy the ink—claim the shadow!"Darkness pooled at his feet, birthing shades that lunged with spectral claws; he banished them with light from the Ring, but each victory left him drained, visions flickering on the periphery of his reality.
He collapsed, gasping, Calista's hands hauling him upright."Again," she commanded, though her eyes betrayed concern.
He bowed to her command, only to be rewarded by the same word.“Again.Again.”
Night fell, or what passed for it on the isle, the cave's glow dimming to a somber pulse.Guwayne sprawled against the altar, body a map of bruises, mind a tempest.The artifacts' echoes lingered in his veins.
Finally, she relented and let him be unmoving on the cave's floor.
Yet as sleep claimed him at last, another vision flickered—himself at the chasm's edge, hand outstretched, the world's fate hanging on his actions alone.The burden of choice awaited, inexorable as the tide, and Guwayne, for the first time, felt its full, unforgiving weight.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The aurora's veil had thinned to ragged shreds by the time Grimolf called a halt to the march, the third since leaving the clanhold.The sky above hung heavy, bruised with clouds that bled faint greens and purples, as if the heavens themselves wept violet-tainted tears.He scanned the horizon from the crest of a wind-scoured ridge, his breath fogging in the relentless chill hung at the edges of his fur-lined hood.The wasteland sprawled before them like the hide of some colossal, flayed beast—fractured ice plains veined with fissures that hissed steam in erratic.The earth groaned beneath his boots, a low, subterranean rumble that set his teeth on edge, as if the ground itself hungered for the warmth of living flesh.
Behind him, the band settled into a hollow shielded by a crescent of boulders, their sleds dragged into a tight circle like wagons against a coming storm.Halvok, the young warrior with the shaved head and eyes too old for his frame, kindled a fire, his breath and busy fingers coaxing reluctant flames from damp, frozen tinder.Lirna moved among them, distributing strips of dried meat and skins of fermented root sap, her gaze lingering on Thorgrin—the warm-lander—with a mix of wariness and wonder.The southerner sat apart, his borrowed furs draped loosely over broad shoulders scarred by battles Grimolf could only imagine.His face caught the firelight, turning his eyes to shadowed pools.He sharpened the spear that was his constant companion, the rhythmic scrape of whetstone on wood a counterpoint to the wind's mournful howl.
Grimolf watched him for a long moment, the weight of unspoken truths pressing on his chest like the ice that never fully thawed in his veins.Thorgrin was no mere wanderer, no lost soul to be pitied or turned away.The spirits had marked him, that was obvious in the way the earth seemed to hush when he walked.Yet to bind him to their cause, to reveal the full measure of the Iceborn's curse, felt like handing a blade to a child and bidding him strike at shadows.Grimolf had seen too many blades turned inward, too many guardians fall to the very darkness they swore to contain.With a sigh that misted the air, he shouldered his curved blade and approached the fire, gesturing for the others to give them space.The band obeyed without question; they knew the hour was grave, the tales he would share not for idle ears.
"Sit, Thorgrin," Grimolf said, his voice a gravelly rumble honed by decades of chanting into a dry, icy wind.He lowered himself onto a flat stone, the cold seeping through his leathers like an old enemy's grasp.The warm-lander met his gaze, setting aside the whetstone with a nod that spoke of kings and warriors alike.No fear in those eyes, only the quiet steel of one who had stared into abysses before.And triumphed.Grimolf envied that clarity, even as it stirred a flicker of hope long buried under layers of frost.
The fire popped and hissed between them, its flames dancing low.Grimolf poked at the embers with a stick, watching sparks rise like fleeing souls before they winked out in the dark."You ask of our ways, of the old bindings," he began, his words measured, pieced together from the halting tongue of the south he'd gleaned from traders and exiles."But ways are not songs or dances.They are blood.They are bone.We Iceborn...we are not tribes of hunters, not wanderers chasing mammoth herds.We are watchers.Wardens of the deep cold."
Thorgrin's brow furrowed, the firelight carving shadows across his stubbled jaw."Wardens?Of what—the Titans you spoke of?The prisons?I've felt the cracks, seen the...things that crawl from them.But your people—how long have you stood against them?"
Grimolf's laugh was a dry rasp, humorless.He glanced skyward, where the aurora twisted like tormented serpents, their lights pulsing in time with the distant tremors that shook the ground at irregular intervals.Each quake was a reminder, a tolling bell for the dying world."Longer than your Ring has had stone walls, warm-lander.Longer than the suns have traced their path without faltering.Our sagas whisper of the Binding, when the First Walkers—Druids from your south, shamans from our ice, weavers from shadowed empires—drove the Titans into slumber.Vorath's fists chained in stone heart of the glacier.Elyndra's threads tangled in eternal gales.Kalthor's maw sealed in abyssal black.But seals are not iron.They are will.They are life woven into the world's skin."
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, the fire's warmth a frail barrier against the memories that chilled him deeper than any blizzard.Images flickered unbidden: his father's face, gaunt and resolute, as he poured his essence into a spit in the ground during Grimolf's youth; the crone-shaman Eira, her body crumbling to dust after a ritual that bought the clans a single winter's peace."The Iceborn were born of that Binding, or so the chants say.Not as conquerors, but as keepers.Our blood sings with the old magic.These marks,” he pulled up his sleeve to indicate the azure tattoos on his scarred arms, “these are not mere decoration.They bind us to the ley lines, the veins of the earth that now pulse with the Titans' dreams.We renew the seals, season by season, moon by moon.Chants at the standing stones.Blood on the fissures.Life for the barriers that fray like worn hide."
Thorgrin's eyes narrowed, the spear forgotten in his lap."Life?You mean...sacrifices?”
Grimolf shook his head, the bone beads in his mane clattering softly."Not like you are imagining.Pain does not interest the gods.No, we give willingly.Shamans, elders, those whose spirits burn brightest.They delve into the dream-ley, the hidden currents where the Titans slumber.There, they thread their souls into the bindings—willing essence to mend the tears.A life for a season's grace.My father...he was such.In the great frost of my eighteenth winter, a fissure yawned wide near the Spire Clanhold.Beasts poured forth—shadow-wolves with eyes of void, shredding herds and men alike.He went alone into the deep, chanted the renewal.We found him at dawn, body whole but eyes empty, frost-veined like broken quartz.His spirit lingered three days, whispering warnings, before it faded.He bought us two summers of quiet."
The warm-lander's face tightened, a flicker of something raw—grief?Recognition?crossing his features."And now?How many have you lost?"
Grimolf's gaze drifted to the band."Too many.Each season, the prisons weaken further.The Titans stir.We feel it in the winds.Our numbers dwindle.Clans disintegrate—Kragthar's fire-folk cling to old pains, believing suffering alone can rouse the bindings.But we...we see the truth.The seals demand more now.Not one life per renewal, but threads from many."
He fell silent, the fire popping as a log shifted, sending embers spiraling upward.The wind carried a faint, dissonant hum from the east—a fissure's song, Lirna called it, the earth's cry as corruption bled through.Grimolf had heard it swell over the years, from a whisper to a dirge that echoed in his dreams.Last moon, they'd lost three: twin shamans, brother and sister, whose joined chant sealed a rift near the Bone River, only for their bodies to shatter like ice under the strain, shards embedding in the snow.The clanhold's hearths burned dimmer now, children fewer, the old songs sung by voices too weary to rise above a murmur.
Thorgrin leaned closer, his voice low, urgent."Tell me how to help, Grimolf.Your magic...it echoes mine.The druid fire in my blood—it stirred at the ward-stones, blended with yours.If I can lend strength—"
"You already do," Grimolf interrupted, his weathered hand clamping on the warm-lander's forearm, calluses rough as glacial moraine."Your presence mends what ours cannot.The spirits sense you—a bridge, as Lirna named it.But even bridges crumble under flood.Our shamans...they push deeper now.Rituals once sung under open skies, now delved in the under-ice warrens, where the ley lines run black with Titan-dreams.They drink the void-ink, weave with shadow-threads, pull life from the barriers themselves.Last cycle, Elder Vorn attempted the Triple Binding—merging his essence with echoes of all three Titans to reinforce the core seals.He emerged...changed.Not broken, but hollow.Speaks in tongues that chill the blood, sees futures where ice devours the sun.We use him still, for his warnings save lives, but each rite claims a piece.How long before the hollow claims us all?"
The warm-lander's grip tightened in return, a silent vow passing between them."Then teach me these rites.Let me share the burden.Perhaps my blood, my fire, can tip the scales."
Grimolf pulled back, searching Thorgrin's face in the fire's dying light.“Perhaps,” he said.“Perhaps.”But he was suddenly certain that no matter how blessed this man was, how much druidic blood he had coursing through his veins, it wouldn’t be enough.He wasn’t the one who would save them.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The dungeons of Castle Larkridge were deathly quiet, broken only by the constant drip of water and the ragged breaths of men chained like beasts in a forgotten menagerie.Sir Kellan leaned against the cold iron of his cell door.His wrists, raw from days of futile straining against his manacles, throbbed with a dull fire, but pain was an old companion.Tonight, it would serve him, sharpen him, as would the gnawing ache in his heart for his queen, dragged upward hours ago.
Had they got wind of their plots to escape?Were they worried that a last desperate effort, coordinated by the queen and her most loyal of servants would succeed, and hence separated them from, in the hope it also separated them from opportunity?
