FROSTFALL – THE SHATTERING (sample)
Prologue
“The night is coming. Dark night. I have seen it in my dreams. H’ol Chazkar rising, gathering strength.”
“The Ice King has tried before and failed.”
“Indeed. Yet the will of the Sentients grows weak; it crumbles. The kings have died. Their resolve falters. Some even clamor for his return.”
“The fools know not what they seek.”
“The signs are everywhere. Have you not felt it in the High Peaks? There are reports of ice, of death from the nost. The Moartegheta comes.”
“Moartegehta? You speak of the Hrímföll?”
“Yes. I speak of the Frostfall. It is coming.”
Tendrils of painted clouds, glowing brilliant orange and fiery cranberry red, had exploded across a deep cobalt sky. Lucian swatted the backside of the reluctant goat blocking the narrow mountain trail, and it jerked forward. As he rounded the boulder jutting into the path, he found his younger brother Ghit frozen in place, his wide eyes fixed on the heavens in admiration.
“How long have you been standing there like a pile of cahkat?” teased Lucian, though he felt a quiet tug of longing for the days when he had done the same, days when the streams or the sky could wholly capture his wonder.
“Oh… heh.” Ghit laughed nervously, looking up at his brother. “I was just…” he let the words trail. Stupid! Why can’t you focus?! Ghit silently cursed himself. Despite all he did to emulate the tall, strong Lucian with his tanned face and charming wit, Ghit knew he couldn’t measure up. Father made no effort to hide how he entrusted the entire herd to Lucian and only the scat shovel to Ghit. The three years between them could have been a hundred as far as Ghit was concerned. A delayed growth spurt and clubbed foot only highlighted his deficiencies.
“Where’s the twelfth?” asked Lucian, his eyes intently fixed on the craggy basin below, his finger counting and re-counting the white and tan goats scattered across the dark purple rock like bone dice on a rolling mat. “I count only eleven!” Lucian restarted his count.
Ghit’s stomach dropped as he frantically scanned the small valley below, praying he hadn’t lost one of Father’s precious goats. Lucian had always said something like this would happen if he didn’t pay more attention. Of course, it was Tago, the rascal. The very same goat had chewed through the wagon straps a mooncycle earlier, freeing the family’s mule and sending a half-full cart of freshly picked winter gourds rolling away. Ghit was to blame for that as well. He had lost interest in the goats and had been skipping stones when he heard the shouts and the crash of the wagon into the neighbor’s stone wall.
“There!” shouted Ghit, spotting the black and white goat fifty marqs up a steep bank on a thin rock pass. A wave of triumphant joy and relief splashed over him. Not a failure today, he told himself. “I’ll be right back.”
“Oh no,” said Lucian, grabbing his arm. “You stay here. Do not let a single one out of your sight, do you understand?” Ghit’s eyes lowered, and he offered a doleful nod. “We’re an hour from dark, and we must get them home!” Lucian knew he didn’t need to add more. The boys had wandered off to the nost of the farm, as they had before. The grass was better, but every step closer to the Shadow Pass in the far mountains brought new perils.
“Must be quick,” Lucian told himself aloud as he hopped nimbly up the bank. The mention of dusk had brought to mind a string of terrors, some real and some straight from bedtime stories. He’d never seen a shadow hound or a gorgol or a bearmon, but plenty of villagers had their tales. Now his heart was beating fast. “Come down, you cad!” he shouted, now only twenty measures from the stray. This last stretch was steep and rocky, requiring Lucian to use his hands and feet to scrabble up, something he had been doing since he could walk.
As he got closer, he spotted the goat disappearing over the thin ridge. “Cahkat!” Swore Lucian. “Stop, you blastim corva!” If his mother heard him speak like that, he’d take his meals with the pigs for a week. But there were no mothers out here. As he pulled himself up and over the ridge, he braced his foot against a bluish rock that crumbled under his boot, causing him to slide out and his knee to strike the ground painfully.
“Aaah.” Glancing down, he assessed the injury. Just a small cut, barely wider than his thumb, though the white line quickly pooled with red, and a drop of blood trickled down. He cast a glance and spit at the offending stone, now just a pile of powder. Castra d’goras! He cursed, picturing his grandfather waving a pipe and delivering the ancient epithet like a street performer. “Bucket of holes” was the direct translation, but that didn’t have quite the same ring.
Pressing a rag to his knee, he hobbled down the side of the bank into the small, grassy valley below. He spotted Tago, moving quickly down the bank, each of the animal’s steps sounding like it was walking on bells. Slow down! he thought, noticing for the first time how the grass here looked more blue than green, and not just because of the evening light. He’d spent thousands of days in these hills and had never seen grass like that. When he leapt from the boulder into a patch of the stuff, it crunched beneath him, making the same tinkling sound coming from the goat’s hooves.
“What’s wrong with it?” he asked aloud, momentarily pausing his pursuit to bend down and inspect the vegetation. When he pulled a handful of the grass, instead of yanking out a tuft as expected, the blades shattered in his grip, turning to a blue powder. A chill passed over him.
“Ervin has been missing for days,” Lucian remembered the words of his pale, shaken neighbor as his mother tried to soothe her over a cup of blackcurrant tea in the sitting room. “He left to see his cousins in Bracea two days ago.” Bracea was the next town over, up in the hill country. Not far from here. Lucian and Ghit had whispered about bandits that must have gotten Ervin, or wolves. Or something worse.
“Sack you!” shouted Lucian at the wandering goat, now most of the way across the narrow valley. When his echo returned to him, he shot a nervous glance behind, imagining bandits lurking among the boulders, gorgols rising from the shadows. This wasn’t like him. His mother’s friends called him stedibiat, calm boy. It was true. Lucian was hard to rattle; he laughed at his friends who still feared the dark. But right now his heart was racing.
Apparently, Tago found the strange, blue grass appealing because the goat’s grazing had grown almost frantic as it reached the far side of the hollow and stood beside a towering pile of boulders. Lucian groaned as his eyes followed the incline that rose up to the left, a full hundred measures. “Don’t think about it!” he hobbled faster, favoring his sore knee.
Instead of climbing, though, the goat ambled to its right, disappearing behind the stack of boulders. When Lucian rounded the formation, he spotted Tago slipping through a narrow fissure in the wall. It was as if this rocky hill, larger than a house, had been dropped from a great height, cracking in half down the middle, creating a narrow passage. If he put his arms out, he could touch both of the crevice walls that rose twenty measures. Ahead, the goat moved in silhouette against the purple opening beyond, the bell on its neck clanging loudly in the confined space.
“You’ll be mutton by feast day!” threatened Lucian, now only steps behind the animal, his breath puffing in a ghostly cloud before him. How can it be? He wondered absently. With the long summer days not yet over, it would be another month, two even, before the first frost. Yet he felt the sudden chill in the air, cold on his face, inside him.
Tago had exited the passage and stood, washed in dim light a few measures beyond in what looked like a dead end. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his knee, Lucian leaped out. “Ahh Ha! Got you!” he exclaimed in triumph, spreading his arms to block the passage. He was right, there was no other exit.
“What’ve you found here?” Lucian asked as he began removing the rope from his belt and uncoiling it. He stood in a hollow, perhaps twenty marqs across, sheer rock walls surrounding the space on all sides, covered in slick, frozen blue moss of some sort. Even the elusive Tago couldn’t climb these walls. I’ll have to bring Ghit back here, he thought, admiring this hidden space. Not today, though. He glanced up nervously at the darkening patch of sky above.
“If we lose the light, you’ll be the first one we offer up to the bonehounds!” Lucian threatened, looping a coil of rope as he noticed for the first time the large crack running nearly halfway across the rocky ground in the center of the hollow, like a raw wound in the earth. At its widest, the scar was three measures, and a faint blue glowed from within the blackness. The sight of the chasm instantly filled him with a deep, ominous dread, like a thousand bats flapping in his nightmares.
“We have to go!” he said urgently, grabbing Tago’s leather collar and forcefully jerking the goat’s head up from the blue grass it was eating. Usually a calm animal, Tago now screamed in bleating protest, snapping its head around. Lucian jumped back. Tago’s eyes had gone a brilliant blue, no white remaining at all. They seemed almost to glow.
“What’s happened to —” even as he spoke, the goat lunged, snapping at the boy. Lucian spun backward, barely pulling his arm out of the way of its bite. But Tago’s teeth caught the leather bag strap across his chest and held. “What are you doing?!” Lucian pulled back from the goat, his fear rising to a shrieking panic as he swatted at its head with his coiled rope, but Tago wouldn’t let go.
The once docile goat frothed a blue-white foam from its mouth, pulling Lucian backward. He tried to brace against the animal’s force, but it was impossible to plant his sandals in the pulverized blue grass beneath his feet. Tago’s back hoof suddenly slipped into the crevice, and the animal lurched backward. Still, it didn’t release its hold on the boy.
“Stop it, Tago!” he shrieked.
For a brief second, Lucian met the goat’s luminous blue eyes, fixing him with an unearthly stare; then Tago fell. Screaming against the weight of the plummeting animal, both goat and boy disappeared over the edge into the black blue crevice.
***
The figure staggered forward through the darkness, over rocky ground, toward the firelight. The sun had long since retired, and to his credit, Ghit had gathered wood, built a fire, and had all eleven goats accounted for, even if lashed awkwardly together and anchored to a gnarled cedar.
“Lu!” cried Ghit in delight, dropping the thick branch he wielded like a weapon against the lurching intruder and running to his brother. “It’s been hours. Where have you been?” The accusation turned to tears, a release of the fear the boy had been holding. “I thought you were dead.”
Ghit threw his arms around his brother when he reached him, failing to take notice of his jerky movements, the foam at the corners of his mouth, or the new, deep shade of blue of his eyes. Lucian returned the embrace, wrapping Ghit in both arms.
“Forget that foolish Tago,” Ghit whimpered. “Let’s go home.” Even as he pressed against his brother’s chest, something felt off. “You’re freezing cold.” Had Ghit been a doctor or even an observant parent, he might have noticed the absence of a steady, rhythmic beat within his brother’s chest. Lucian let out a puff of cold steam. A dark feeling passed over Ghit, and he tried to push back, but his brother held him tight.
“Ok. Too tight, bearmon!” Ghit objected to his brother’s rough game, but still Lucian squeezed. “Stop!” croaked Ghit, suddenly angry, pulling his head back and looking up at his brother. Lucian stared straight ahead, ice-cold blue eyes focused elsewhere.
Ghit became frantic. He couldn’t breathe and clawed at his brother’s back. Still, Lucian held him fast, absent eyes staring ahead. The edges of Ghit’s vision flickered and slowly faded to black. The boy’s head drooped as he lost consciousness. In a swift motion, Lucian dropped a hand to his brother’s belt, whipped the skinning knife from out of its leather sheath, and plunged it into Ghit’s back.
