Shadow Of The Winter King (Book 1) (21 page)

The scarf was caught on one of the orbiting gold rings of the mage-engine. They watched the scarf circle up and around until a gust of wind blew the scarf free over the ocean. They both leaned on the rail to watch it float down. Tithian breathed out a sigh and closed his eyes, content in this moment.

“What do you suppose that is, Tith?” asked Semana.

He opened his eyes once more. “Where?”

“There, just over the water,” said the princess. “Can you see it?”

With the sun just peeking over the eastern horizon, touching the world with gray, he could see it—if just barely. Far below, a black shape sped along the surface of the water, heading from Tar Vangr toward the skyship
Heiress
. Toward
them.
The Dusk Sea parted in its wake like unto a fast-moving warship, but it was far too small for a ship.

“A bird, perhaps?” He suggested, though he felt in the pit of his stomach that he was wrong. A shudder passed through the princess at his side.

As they watched, the flying shape twisted from side to side, tracing zigzagging patterns in the black waters. Then—heart doubling its pace as he watched—Tithian saw it pull up, swoop up, and hover in place about half a hundred feet away, alongside the
Heiress
. He thought it was staring directly at him.

High, cruel, mocking laughter rolled all around him. His skin crawled across his bones.

“Arm-Armsmaster—” he stammered.

Then he saw fire crackle around one of the creature’s hands, and he wrenched Semana back just as a bolt of flame erupted through the forward rail where they had been standing. They rolled across the deck and huddled behind a ballista as something exploded in the night and the
Heiress
shuddered.

Tithian looked into Semana’s wide eyes, which shifted from shock to genuine fear. He had never seen her afraid before. Despite his own racing heart, he nodded to reassure her, then peeked from cover.

The entire front of the skyship had become a smoking ruin. Frightened shouts rose from below as the
Heiress
lurched and began to tilt to the side. The pilot must have fumbled the controls—that, or the blast had killed him. Semana slipped from Tithian’s grasp, but he lunged and caught her in his arms. She grabbed the base of the ballista, and they steadied each other as the ship trembled.

Men were rushing up onto the deck, including Armsmaster Sargaunt. He saw Tithian holding Semana and gave the boy a tight nod, which Tithian returned.

The appearance of the soldiers also stirred Semana back to her senses, and she pulled at Tithian’s arm. “Come,” she said. “We have to get below. Tithian!”

“Ready!” Sargaunt shouted. The one-eyed veteran pointed a farcaster down over the rail and bellowed a command. The dozen soldiers took aim.

“Cover your ears!” Semana ordered, and they both pressed their hands to the sides of their heads.

A series of cracks split the night as the Winter soldiers fired. Their target wove and turned circles around bolts that left trails of smoke. More casters cracked, but those bolts flew false as well. Tithian thought its laughter grew louder.

“Get her below!” Sargaunt shouted at Tithian, pointing at Semana. He turned back to the battle. “Fire the main!”

Tithian heard a violent clack-clack-
clack
from belowdecks—the main cannon being prepared. The orbiting gold rings lined up around the
Heiress
, which hummed with building force. On instinct, Tithian wrapped his arms around Semana’s head just as thunder split the air. The noise was deafening and he reeled, dazed. Air burned around him. The
Heiress
shuddered under the force of its own blast, and Tithian watched a great bolt of crackling lightning flash toward the flying creature.

The black thing in the air waited for it, hands raised. Tithian thought he heard chanting.

The lightning struck full force and split into a storm of screaming, dancing sparks that would have reduced a score of men to cinders in an instant. The sound swallowed up the cruel laughter. Tithian had to look away lest the discharge burn out his eyes. He cradled Semana so tight he could feel her lungs shuddering and her heart racing, and she embraced him just as tightly.

In heartbeats, the screeching lightning cloud shuddered and died, leaving a great bank of greasy gray smoke wafting lazily upward. The men breathed out in relief.

Then the laughter renewed, and Tithian gasped. The black form flew out of the smoke, sickly green light dancing around its head, and streaked toward them. It was a person, Tithian realized in the illumination—some sort of horrible flying man dressed all in black. It thrust its hands forward.

A blast of green-black magic tore through the side of the ship, catching half a dozen Winter soldiers in its wake. Before Tithian’s eyes, their skin peeled and flecked away, leaving gray-and-red flesh beneath. Then their bodies rotted in heartbeats, turning first to skeletons, then to dust. Where the magic touched the ship, the metal corroded, rotted, and dispersed in the night air.

Something thick and heavy slammed into Tithian’s face, knocking him to the deck. Dimly, he realized it was Armsmaster Sargaunt’s hand, still gripping a cocked caster. Then—

* * *

Tithian only realized the world had vanished when the ship shuddered and he awoke with a start. Steel groaned beneath him and heat raged inside his body.

His eyes opened just in time to see the aftcastle explode. A mage-engine wheel sliced like a barbed disk along the deck and missed him by a hand’s breadth. Its maniac path left a deep gouge in the iron and wood of the
Heiress
. It took Tithian a full five breaths before he stopped starring at the flaming wreckage, unable to think, let alone move. He half sat, half lay, and choked in the smoke and the smell of dissolving flesh.

Then he heard a familiar voice, raised in terror. Heart in his throat, Tithian looked around.

There, in the middle of the deck, stood a skeletally thin creature wrapped from the tip of its toes to the crown of its brow in black leather. A cloak fell in tatters from its shoulders and whispered around heavy, iron-shod boots. These, Tithian saw, did not touch the deck—instead, the air blurred beneath them as though distorted by heat, which somehow kept the creature floating just aloft.
Magic.
The thing’s face hid behind a thick black mask with thin slits that exposed lips cracked like bark and eyes that smoldered like coals. And dangling from the horror’s hand, flailing to break free of its grasp on her collar, hung Princess Semana.

Tithian cried out, but a thunderous explosion tore the sound away. Good thing, too, as he realized the scream might have alerted the creature. A strange calm descended upon Tithian when he realized how close he stood to death, with Semana’s own life hanging in the balance. He would not fail her.

Tithian’s fingers twitched along his belt to his knife. He closed his grip around the leather-wrapped handle—felt the cold wood engraved with the sigil of the Winter Blood. He remembered the promise the Frostburn had elicited, when he’d handed Tithian the knife:

“Ward her,” the Shadow of the Winter King had said. “Kill whoever and whatever you must. Only protect her.”

Tithian hadn’t known then if he could do such a thing. Now, he knew.

He drew the tiny fang quietly, praying to whatever dead gods were listening that the masked horror would not turn and blow him into a rotting corpse. Tithian rose, supporting himself as best he could on the broken rail, and took one trembling step forward.

The leather-wrapped creature cackled. “You are such a pretty girl.” Its voice—a thin, dry rasp as of splintered bones scraping across a dry riverbed—sent pangs through Tithian’s arms and down his neck. It traced barbed fingers over her soft face. “I wonder if I might keep you.”

Semana’s gaze slid to the side—to where Tithian had crept within half a dozen steps—and her captor began to turn. Then the princess looked back up to him. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“You are a fool, then,” the creature said. “A worthy one, but a fool.”

Certain the thing would hear his heart thundering in his chest, Tithian stalked forward. He set down each step hesitantly, like a cat on a crumbling roof. Another day, he might have found it amazing he could move so quietly, but instead he became aware of every tiny sound he made. Each scuff or panting breath might mean death, not just for himself but for Semana as well.

When he got within two paces, he realized if he came any closer, the creature would hear him. Semana must have realized it too, for she struggled to draw its attention. “I will kill you for this,” she said. “You, nameless thing, will be punish—nggh!”

Suddenly her body went taut and she coughed greenish foam. Tithian saw green magic flowing from the creature’s mask to Semana’s chest. He knew nothing of magic, but that looked like killing magic if he had ever dreamed of it.

“How brave!” The creature laughed. “But now it’s time to—”

At that instant, Tithian drove the dagger into the masked creature’s back with all the strength he could manage. Bright light flared from the sorcerer’s coat, pushing back against his thrust. He poured all of himself into the blow, and the deflecting magic began to falter. Suddenly, the dagger punched through the leather and into softer flesh beneath. Tithian bit his tongue at the shock.

The life-draining spell fell apart, and the masked creature looked around at him with red eyes. Its narrow chest pushed out, then in. For a horrible moment, Tithian thought the blade had done nothing.

Then blood—hot and red—welled around his hand. The sorcerer staggered and released Semana’s collar, fumbling instead at the dagger hilt. The princess fell to the deck, and Tithian threw his arms around her. Her face was haggard, her eyes half-closed listelessly.

“Are you well?” he demanded. “Are you
well
?”

She shook her head, then looked past him. “Ware...”

The creature’s arm bent sharply like an artist’s model, grasped the knife low in its back, and pulled the blade free with a grunt. Tithian could see blood spilling from the wound, and puckered brown flesh through the slit in the armor. The blood vanished against the dark leather.

Black hides blood, he realized. He would remember that for the rest of his life.

Backing away, Tithian cradled Semana and did his best to look ferocious when all he felt was fearful. At his feet lay Armaster Sargaunt’s severed hand, clutching the still-charged farcaster he’d meant to fire at the masked beast. The red eyes flickered balefully in the firelight. The sorcerer’s mouth opened.

“Well struck, Tithian,” said the leather-wrapped thing. “Well struck indeed.”

“How do you know my name?” he demanded. “Get... get away!”

“It seems—” The creature turned the dagger over in its hand. “You know me not, or else you would flee.” It tossed the blood-stained blade over the rail and spread its hands. Its boots began to glow with red light, trailing smoke, and it rose into the air effortlessly. From on high, it spoke to them. “I am Mask, and I am the greatest slayer that bards’ tales will ever know.”

“Well, burn you and get back!” he shouted. “Leave us be!”

“Tithian, Tithian.” Mask floated back to the deck and smiled. “Do you not know me?”

And with that, it reached up and pulled off its mask. Tithian sucked in a breath, and could not blow it out again. He knew that face. He had seen it in his dreams every night that he could remember.

“You’ve become such a fine boy,” said the gnarled and smoldering face, the voice rasping, the teeth shining brilliant white amongst the corrupted lips. “I knew you would.”

A scream was growing in the depths of Tithian’s throat and he fought hard to keep it down. The world swam and gray spots drifted over his eyes.

When trembling fingers touched his back, he remembered Semana was there. He seized hold once more of his body and faced the slayer who had come for them. He would not fall—not with the princess he loved depending on him.

“Has your life found purpose, Tithian?” Mask was no longer facing him, but had looked away across the dark waters toward Tar Vangr. “Have you found your cause?”

There was a chance—now, while Mask’s gaze was turned. Tithian squeezed Semana’s hand, then laid his other hand on the caster in Sargaunt’s limp fingers. The dead hand still clutched it hard, so he released Semana’s hand and set both hands to prying the caster loose. As he worked, sweat ran down his face and he prayed that Mask wouldn’t turn.

“Sometimes,” Mask said. “Sometimes, one must look into the abyss to see what is in one’s heart.” The sorcerer rose and started to turn. “Is this not so... Semana, my child?”

The princess made a mewling sound, and Tithian gritted his teeth. Just—there. He had it.

Now, as the mage-slayer turned back to him, Tithian held the caster low—threatening. Mask’s red eyes gleamed in the flames rising from the skyship. With a face ravaged by both fire and plague, the sorcerer looked like a creature from the worlds beyond—a burned god, or the darkest and cruelest Deathless One in the tales of a mad bard.

“I see,” Mask said, indicating the caster with one long black finger.

“Just,” Tithian said. “Just leave us. Fly away, or what you will. I’ll cast.”

“
I
have no doubt of that. Though I see that you doubt yourself, Tithian Davargorn.”

His aim wavered. “Wh-why do you call me that?”

“If a slayer you would be, then
slayer
shall be your name. I name you Davargorn—the son of the one who kills. For your father is a monster, and you—you are as deathless as he.”

“Deathless?” Tithian’s hand was shaking. He put both hands on the caster to make it stop. “I am not some fey creature from the tales, but a mortal man. The man who will kill you!”

Mask smiled. “It is only fitting that you should slay me, you who are born of such violent blood and cold. But you’ve no idea, have you? As to your father and your mother?”

Tithian’s heart leaped. Behind him, Semana breathed harder and faster. She was afraid.

“We shall make a bargain, Tithian Davargorn.” Slowly, Mask’s skeletal hands drew the black leather mask back over the burned and mangled face. “You require a master, and I lack a squire. Swear yourself to me and I will tell you all you would know: your Blood, your heritage, your destiny.”