Book 9: Chapter 22: Fire and Ice

Book 9: Chapter 22: Fire and Ice

The fact that Victor didn’t gain a level from his slaughter of the would-be assassins told him a great deal about them; they weren’t steel seekers, and they likely weren’t even tier-eight or nine iron rankers. Still, the surge of Energy was enough to distract him for a moment, refill his Core, and speed up his body’s natural regeneration. When it was over, he stooped to pick up the queen’s fallen crown, then jogged out of the garden, pounding up the inclined pathway to the palace, intently scanning every doorway, every window as he approached the central portico where he’d seen the queen’s guards ushering her inside.

Soldiers were forming up near the tall, glass double doors, and when they saw him running their way, Victor wasn’t surprised to see some panic enter their eyes; he was still clad in his armor, and though he’d returned to his standard giant size and sent Lifedrinker back into her storage container, he presented a fearsome sight. Captain Wash was there, though; he calmed his troops and shouted them out of his way. “She’s inside, Champion.”

Victor nodded and slowed his jog to a walk as he pushed the enormous glass door open. There, he saw the Queen, still surrounded by her Queen’s Guard while, all around her, attendants, soldiers, noble folk, and officials scurried about. They shouted instructions, questions, and generally alarmed-sounding statements while the queen ignored them and locked eyes on Victor. Bryn stood beside her, a battered shield still on her arm, but Victor’s magical aegis was gone, dispelled by the influx of Energy he’d received from the dead assassins.

As he stepped close, Victor held out the queen’s crown and knelt before her, perhaps to reassure everyone whose nervous fear hung palpably in the air. Kynna took the crown in blood-stained fingers and, with trembling, halting movements, lifted it to her head. Victor could see the evidence of recent healing all over her; pale, new skin marred her forehead where she’d been gashed, similar freshly healed wounds covered her arms, and, despite its heroic attempts to repair itself, her gown was gashed, torn, and stained with the queen’s blood.

“Thank you, Champion. Thank you, Victor. My guards tell me the assassins are all slain. I owe you much, but I fear we have snakes among us. I fear—”

“It was your ladies.” Victor produced one of the ribboned rods he’d pulled from the garden’s soil. “Where are they?” He looked around the big marble-decked hallway at the clusters of panic-stricken faces and the frantic, rushing servants. He saw none of the queen’s ladies in waiting.

Queen Kynna took the rod, hefted it, and delicately held the pale ribbon between her fingers. “They mock me.”

“Who?”

“Come, Victor. We must move to my private wing. There, I’ll explain.” She turned, and the guards formed around her as she marched purposefully down one of the broad, arched hallways.

Victor followed and found Bryn striding beside him. He looked down at her, taking in the dents and puncture marks in her once-shiny armor and the wide, almost haunted look in her eyes. He gestured to her helmet. “Take that off. You’re done fighting for now. Let yourself breathe.”

“I...”

“Consider it an order.”

“Yes, Champion.” Bryn touched her helmet and exposed her strong, tanned face, crusted with dried blood. He saw her breathe deeply as they marched, and Victor knew what she was thinking: everything had happened so quickly, she’d thought she was going to die, and now life was moving on as usual. It was a strange feeling the first time it happened.

“You’ve never fought in a battle you thought you were going to lose before, have you?”

“I...No. I suppose I haven’t.”

“Well, you didn’t die, so don’t be afraid to look into the face of death and laugh later today.”

She spoke softly, eyeing the guards and the queen ahead of them, “Because of you.” She cleared her throat and said it more clearly. “I’m alive because of you. That...spell. I’ve never been shielded so fully. Are you a Paladin Class?”

Victor chuckled. “Not even close.” He reached over and clapped her on the shoulder. “Don’t give me all the credit. You and the Queen’s Guard gave me a chance to break the queen free, and then, when I saw how valiantly you were fighting, it convinced me that I had to do the stupid thing—something I’m quite used to, by the way—and not run away with the queen. I’m glad for that.”

“How did you kill so many so easily? How—Your axe! What a weapon! I—”

“Shh!” Victor jostled her again. “Let’s not spread the word until we’re sure the cat’s out of the bag. I don’t know how many witnessed my fight, but I’m still kind of hoping it was just us.” Victor nodded to the queen and her guards. He turned his head, looking over his shoulder to see at least two dozen nobles and retainers following behind, keeping a “polite” distance. “The queen,” he said, more loudly, “should tell these people to get lost for now.” He knew Kynna could hear him, and he hoped she’d act without him having to insist.

They’d just turned toward the broad, spiral staircase that would lead up to the Queen’s second-story wing when the clamor of stomping, metal-clad boots came from an adjoining passage. Victor turned to see Chamberlain Thorn charging at the head of fifty or so royal guards; they flooded into the main hallway, putting themselves between Kynna and all the retainers following behind. The chamberlain looked panicked, his face drenched in a sheen of sweat and his breath coming in harsh gasps. “My Queen! I was seeing to your instructions in Frostmarch when I heard of the attack!”

Bryn stood before the queen’s doors with two of the Queen’s Guard—a man and woman she didn’t know well. “You reckon he’ll stop ‘em all?” She glanced away from the stairwell to the man on her right. He was tall, his armor streaked with soot and blood; he’d been one of the first Victor had rescued after saving her.

“You saw him destroy the assassins.” She didn’t need to say more; how could he lose? She’d never seen anything like it.

“But Thorn and them royal guards...I mean to say, Thorn might not be a champion, but he’s been around a long time. I’ve felt his aura in negotiations. I’ve heard him talk before he came, saying he could probably kill Obert if things got bad enough.”

Bryn scowled. “Well, he didn’t, did he? If he wanted to be champion, he had plenty of time to step up! He’s a coward and a snake! The queen shot him, didn’t she?”

The other Queen’s guard spoke up. “Too right, she did! Duke Victor will finish ‘em off! He probably already has; you all heard the crash!” It was true. Shortly after they’d climbed the stairs and run to the queen’s quarters, the whole palace had shaken. Marble tiles had split even in the hallway where they now stood.

Bryn realized she could see the other woman’s breath as she spoke, and she tested it herself, huffing some air out before her in a white cloud. Wasn’t Thorn an Ice Elementalist? “Something’s wrong. It’s too cold.”

“Look!” the first guard said, pointing toward the stairwell. Sure enough, frost was gathering on the marble and slowly spreading toward them, climbing the walls and creeping over the marble.

“It’s too quiet,” the second guard said. Bryn couldn’t argue; Victor wasn’t a quiet fighter. Was he defeated? Should they retreat? “Bryn, you’re his guard. You need to go and look. If we don’t hear back, we’ve got to move the queen to the escape portal.”

“I—” Bryn didn’t want to say what was in her heart; she was afraid. Was her duty worth her life? Growling, she remembered Victor’s words; she’d already fought once today, thinking she was going to die. She was different now. Death didn’t own her anymore. “I’ll go look. I’ll try to signal if you should flee.” With that, she crept forward with trembling knees, glad it wasn’t apparent through her heavy armor. She still wore her battered shield on her left arm; if she couldn’t repair it, and if she didn’t die, it had earned an honored spot on her family’s hearth.

When she stepped onto the frosty marble, she had to use her Balance of the Wipperlash spell, magically enhancing her agility to the point where she could daintily tiptoe through the slippery, icy mess to the steps. Once there, she crept down, crouching, ever peering ahead, alert for the smallest sound. When she rounded the last turn, she could hear a familiar voice speaking.

“...keep the boy in hand; we may need to go ahead with our original plan.” The voice paused and, a moment later, said, “Yes. Yes, have the women keep him in the summer tower.”

It was Thorn, and he didn’t sound defeated or, frankly, even wounded. He sounded smug and confident. Was he talking about Prince Tomorran? Was Victor dead? Bryn crept forward to peek around the central column, affording herself a clear view of the hallway. The scene that unfolded was one of nightmares. Ice hung in thick sheets from the broken walls and ceiling. On the floor were the fractured bodies of every soldier Thorn had brought with him, and in the center of all those horrific, frozen sculptures stood Victor and Thorn.

Victor was, again, twice his usual size, looming large over Thorn, his great, deadly axe high over his head, frozen near the thirty-foot-high arched ceiling. Victor was coated in ice, his flesh blue, his red-black armor dim, obscured by the frosty stuff. He wasn’t moving, and no breath plumed from his mighty lungs. Thorn stood before him, holding a potent, ice-attuned Energy focus, and he seemed to be preoccupied, muttering as he summoned a book and began to leaf through it.

Bryn frowned. Could Victor be dead? Defeated by ice? As she formed the thought, a sheet of the stuff fell off Victor’s torso to crash at Thorn’s feet, and the chamberlain jumped back, startled. He lifted his focus, and a pulse of potent frigid Energy rolled out of it, eliciting deep cracks from the depths of the palace as more and more marble was flash-frozen. Thorn lowered his focus and growled at Victor’s frozen figure, “Give it up, fool. Just die before I have to waste the effort on—”

He danced back, interrupting himself as the ground around Victor began to hiss with steam, and the ice instantly thawed. Great sheets fell from Victor, the ceiling, and the walls, and then Victor’s magnificent, gleaming black axe fell like a guillotine, nearly splitting Thorn in two. Somehow, the chamberlain slid back, gliding over the wet, ice-littered ground in his frosty blue armor. Victor’s entire body was steaming, but apparently, he was just getting warmed up.

As Bryn watched, Victor lifted his axe, and it burst into flames. He burst into flames—red fire limned his body, and he began to exude black smoke like a man made of living brimstone. Bryn couldn’t see his face, but most of the smoke came from his deep, heaving exhalations. Rather than swing that massive axe again, he leaned toward Chamberlain Thorn and screamed. The roar had a different quality to it than the battle cries he’d let loose in the garden.

The sound was like thunder, like an avalanche, like the world waking up and announcing its fury. The walls and ceiling came apart, crumbling before Victor’s voice. Great sheets of marble fell, smashing into Thorn, forcing the chamberlain to expend more and more Energy shielding himself. Still, Victor wasn’t done. As his body smoldered and the palace fell apart around him, he lifted his foot and stomped.

Bryn had never felt an earthquake before, but she’d heard tales of them—this was what she’d imagined. When the stairs bucked and cracked beneath her, she leaped, using every ounce of magically enhanced agility she could muster, fleeing the fight, rushing upward ahead of the crumbling steps. When she pounded onto the rapidly thawing marble of the queen’s hallway, she screamed, “Run! The palace isn’t safe!”

The Queen’s Guard didn’t have to be told twice; the hallway rippled like it was alive, marble tiles popping loose, the walls cracking and falling apart, and, of course, plaster and tile falling from the heights. Bryn held her shield over her head and charged through the open door behind the guards. When the queen saw her, she shoved past her guards as they tried to rush her into her study and the secret passage beyond. “Does he yet live?”

Bryn knew she didn’t mean Thorn. She wanted to know if her champion would survive the day. “He lives, but he’s gone mad with fiery rage! Thorn tried to freeze him—he has Tomorran, but I know where! We must flee; Victor will bring the palace down!”