Tales of the Frostborne:
Heart in Ice
Tieve drew her woolen cloak over her shoulders, buttoned it tight to her neck, pulled on the elbow-length fur gloves that Clodagh had made for her, and tugged her hood well over her hair before clutching her basket and braving the door to the outside. The wind tried to snatch the heavy oaken slab away, but she wrestled it closed again, squinting against the mass of snowflakes rushing past. Beyond, the world was a haze of swarming white.
She was the only one outside. Hurrying through the empty town square, she listened to the wind moaning painfully over the roofs of the village. The squeaky crunch of snow beneath her feet was faint by comparison, and her own breath was lost, each draught sucked away on the exhale. When she reached the door of Brynn's laboratory, she didn't give her usual knock, but bolted through and pushed it shut by leaning on it. In her wake, a few errant snowflakes swirled, settled, and finally melted.
The familiar surroundings revealed themselves as she pulled back her hood: dim blue light of glimmer lamps reflecting from bottles and vials, with a few sconces casting a warmer glow over the alchemical clutter on every flat surface. The air carried the musty-sharp scents of reagents blended with the old-leather-and-vanilla smell of books, and a welcome note from the teapot that sat at a small table beyond the workbench. There, Brynn looked up from his reading, one finger holding his place on an unfurled scroll.
"Ah, Tieve. Prompt as always." He rose, putting his teacup down on the scroll to keep it open, and helped her divest herself of basket, gloves and cloak, hanging the latter near the brazier that glowed dimly at the very back of the room.
Taking her place at the table, she eyed him with slight exasperation. "Brynn, you really should dress more warmly. Even staying in, you could catch cold in that!"
He shrugged. His overcoat was neatly hung on the back of his chair, and he was down to a light linen shirt, his only concession to the season its high neck and buttoned cuffs. "I have mentioned before that it is not the cold itself that causes illness, but bad humours, which are spread by people. Thus, I take care not to spend too much of my time in company, as you well know. The cold itself is nothing to me."
She shivered reflexively, and his lecturer's expression softened as he hurried to pour a cup for her from the teapot. "You look like you could use some warmth though. Here." He replaced the pot precariously close to the table's edge, where it had been balancing just clear of his reading.
She took it and sniffed appreciatively. "Mmm. A new blend?"
"Betony, fennel, and a bit of balsam, for vitality in the season of death." He waved at a small package on the third, rarely-used chair. "There's a packet to take with you, if you like it."
"Always looking out for me," she smiled.
"Hmph."
She took that as a good moment to retrieve her own gift from her basket: an assortment of cheese scones and other savories. She busied herself laying out her offerings, prudently moving the teapot to a safer perch as she worked.
"Is that why Reilly always sent you on errands for him?" she asked.
"Is what why?"
"That you don't mind the cold."
"Ah." He was silent for a few moments, idly turning his teacup in his hands. He took a scone, examined it carefully and took a bite, then nodded approvingly.
"The order of events is rather the reverse, actually," he finally said. "My master never gave much care to my physical state; he said if I pampered myself I'd become weak. 'Get out and play!' he always shouted, if I complained." Tieve chuckled knowingly.
"I rarely did complain, of course. I had quite a few pressing questions about the world I wanted to answer myself, so I was generally far too busy to wish for an easier taskmaster." He took another bite and chewed slowly.
"There was a time...some years ago. Before I was, ah, required to limit my travels," he flicked a finger at their surroundings. Tieve nodded, her hands tensing slightly on her cup.
"This winter actually reminds me of that one. It was cold enough to freeze the docks; the sailors had to break ice to get the ships out, or remained anchored out in the current. Farmers had to dig tunnels to care for their livestock, and travel of almost any distance could be killingly dangerous."
"Surely Reilly didn't send you on an errand at a time like that?" she asked incredulously.
"Well...no. Not then. I'm afraid it was my own idea. You see…" he absently stroked the edge of the parchment. "I had been reading...researching...and had found a very old text that spoke of a temple, deep in the mountains past the Hoarfrost caves. There, it said, was a gateway: a path to the gods, perhaps to Erinn itself." He sniffed. "The translation was quite difficult, because the source I had was actually a phonetic transliteration of the original Fomorian tongue, written down by a mage who spoke almost no Fomorian himself, and who did not have a keen ear."
Tieve rested her chin on her hands and smiled. "It must have been fun, figuring that out," she commented.
"Fun?" He glared for a moment, but meeting her eyes his own expression went faintly sheepish. "Well. Yes. I suppose there was some satisfaction in it. But that was merely a side effect. The goal, of course, was always the knowledge it contained."
"Of course," she murmured encouragingly.
"So. What particularly intrigued me was that the document also spoke of a 'heart of ice.' As best I could determine, it was referring both to an artifact and to the gateway, but there were sections that implied more than a simple connection or causality between the two. Regardless, studying such an item would have enhanced my personal research tremendously. And also...there were some hints that suggested that this heart of ice could be used to exert some form of control over cold, even over the winter itself." He sighed. "I thought that such an artifact not only might aid my research, but perhaps allow me to mitigate the harshest effects of the weather, or at least grant the townspeople some safety from it. If I were to possess such power, it would cost little extra effort to use it so, after all."
Tieve poked his elbow teasingly. "I know that you care for people, Brynn. Even though you do so hate to show it."
He gave her his most imperial look down the length of his nose. "Hmph. Well. Regardless of the variety of possible benefits, my master wasn't keen on such a journey, but I was adamant. Finally, he allowed me to go on the condition that I travel with adequate protection. I ended up commissioning a group of mercenaries from a competitor to the Crimson Blades, a small guild called Citadel, who were taking whatever work they could find as they established themselves."
Tieve sat up straight. "I know them! Or at least, some of them. They're a large guild now."
"Indeed. In fact, one of their current leaders was in the very party that accompanied me. A quick thinker, for a sellsword. Or staff, as it were." He drank the last of his tea, putting down the cup with a clink. "I suppose it is an appropriate reward for having survived what happened."
Tieve raised her brows, and refilled his cup. He nodded thanks and held it near his lips, not drinking but simply watching the wisps of steam curl in the air.
"It wasn't trivial, preparing for a journey in that weather. The mercenaries were a bit tedious about it, getting sleds and extra dry rations from Rocheste, which was an expedition in itself in that weather. But we finally set out. We were a party of eight: myself, two swordsmen, a shield maiden and a pillar-wielder, two archers, and a magician who knew a bit of ice magic and healing, though her theory was ill-grounded. Typical of any ex-apprentice who abandons an education for a career in war, I suppose." His brow quirked as he stared down at his tea. "But...she was willing to learn, at least. Enough so that I shared a few basic theories with her in the evenings."
"That was very kind of you."
He dismissed her words with a wave. "Having competent allies is a matter of simple self-interest." He sipped, and took another scone as he returned to his narrative.
"We took the route I had ascertained to be safest, through the Hoarfrost caves. Being deep beneath the mountains, they were more sheltered than the overland passes, and actually safer in the cold season, unlike in summer, when melting ice could become more treacherous than the inhabitants.
"We encountered a few colonies of kobolds, and yetis, once or twice. The mercenaries earned their pay, more through shows of force than real battles, and the encounters were mercifully rare. I expect even the creatures of winter were keeping to the lower depths then, for their own comfort.
"Once we had advanced beyond the tunnels that were relatively well-known, our progress slowed. Our route depended on extrapolations from my reading, some divination, and occasionally simple guesswork, making it all exceedingly frustrating. The nature of the Hoarfrost is ever-changing, you know; new caves are carved or collapsed by the workings of nature, year to year, as well as by the digging of their denizens. Often we had to backtrack from dead ends, losing an entire day's progress.
"The magician proved useful there. Now and then, something that looked like a dead end was merely an ice wall a few feet thick, and we could drill through it with fire, or even more ice, using the element against itself. Each time, our work would reveal a path that would take us a mile or so closer to our goal. With her aid, we made more progress than I could have managed alone.
"Also, the squad leader of the troop, a swordsman, helped greatly. Compasses turn strangely in those caves, perhaps because the mountains are so rich in iron ore; if I had relied on such tools we would have been lost within days. But the leader had some skill in navigating and mapmaking. He charted our path, and blazed the crossroads with signs so that we would be able to find our way back along our route. Unfortunately he spoke no Fomorian-it is far too rare a skill among mercenaries-but he listened when I shared the translation I'd made, and made suggestions that helped us forge through the depths of the Hoarfrost mountain range, to the other side. In the end, we reached a realm that no human had trod in generations of memory."
Tieve watched him with shining eyes. "Then...was it there? Did you find it? The gateway, the heart of ice?"
Brynn sighed, the animation suddenly draining from his face, leaving him looking paler than usual, remote and chill. "Yes. Yes, we did. To our misfortune." He rose, then, and paced to one of his reagent shelves at the back of the room, running his fingers along the dark wood.
Her voice went smaller. "What happened?"
He didn't answer at first, but slid his fingers to the back of the shelf, carefully tracing whatever items were hidden in its depths. He kept searching for two paces, then stopped, pushing curiosities aside with tiny clinks and scrapes, and pulled out an object wrapped in dark cloth. He unwrapped it as he returned, laying it down in front of her still half-swaddled. She leaned forward, fascinated.
Nestled in the folds of cloth, a sickle curve gleamed translucent blue, its depths crazed with a shatter pattern in milky white. The thick base was jagged, as though it had been broken away from a larger crystal. The piece was a little wider than her spread hand.
Wonderingly, she touched it. A tingling sense of power chilled her fingertips and sang just at the edge of hearing, thin yet piercing enough to bring tears to the corners of her eyes. She lightly traced the pointed tip, feeling it to be sharp enough to draw blood.
"It's beautiful," she breathed.
"So it often is, with deadly things," he replied grimly. He sat down again, eyeing the object without favor. She drew back from it, disturbed, and rubbed her cold hands together.
"This...isn't what you sought?" she asked.
He chuckled without mirth. "No. Merely a piece of it. A small, insignificant piece. A souvenir, and a reminder, more than anything else." He reached out and tapped the crystal, which thrilled discordantly, like a half-tuned chime.
"Some regions of the Hoarfrost remain cold all year round," he murmured, staring at the piece. "For as we continued, we saw ice that had been carved and built upon, stone anchored within it by ancient artifice, forming great vaults and corridors wider than any ever carved by kobolds. Some rooms were open to the sky, leaving the wind free to howl through the halls. The cold cut dangerously at us, but I knew we were close, so I drove us on.
"We were half a day past the time our ration supply should have turned us back, when, at the end of a long tunnel, we found a massive stone door, carved with glyphs of warding but standing ajar, its magic long faded. Beyond was our journey's end.
"I could call it a temple, though there was no altar, nor any signs that men or Fomors had ever come to worship. It was a vast space floored with broken stone, and at the center was a great seal that bore a sigil I did not know. Around the room, huge pillars framed other corridors and held up the roof, a natural formation pierced with a hole that revealed the sky. We had arrived near noon, and the sun shone so bright on the ice and stone that it hurt to see.
"I was ecstatic, of course. I immediately took out my parchments and began recording the carvings, and sent some of the mercenaries to scout for any inner sanctum where the gate or the artifact might reside. My first goal was the seal; I wanted to copy its likeness for study. Walking out toward the center, I noted how loud my footsteps were. The stone carried the sound, as though a giant was plucking the strings of some huge instrument with each step." He scraped a knuckle under his lip, pressing hard. "In retrospect, that was probably what summoned our ruin."
Tieve had tucked her hands into her sleeves against the lingering chill of the crystal, but reached out and touched his wrist before he could rub harder. "Brynn...you don't have to tell me anything more if it hurts you. I didn't bring you here to relive bad memories."
"Bring me here?" He stopped his fidgeting when she touched him, blinking in confusion. He started to ask more, but the question faded from his lips the next moment, forgotten as he met her eyes.
Instead, he shook his head. "It is alright. Thank you, Tieve." He sighed. "The memories remain, whether or not I am silent. After all this time, it helps to speak them to a sympathetic ear."
"My ears are here for you," she said firmly. An upward twitch of his lips was her answer, as close to a sincere smile as he ever came, before he went pensive again.
"The translation...I realized just how much I had erred in my understanding. Gate to the gods; a heart of ice that could control winter; it was all correct, and all laughably inaccurate.
"It came down through the roof as though it had been waiting for us. I was stranded out in the center, nearly under its talons as it touched down. Huge, silver and white, seemingly wrought of the winter itself. I know now to call it a dragon, but in that place, confronted with that presence, there were no words that could have encompassed it.
"It looked at me. Just looked, but…I felt as though it took in everything that I was, every thought, action, aspiration that I had ever possessed, and dismissed them. But also...remembered." He looked up sharply, and Tieve blinked at his haunted expression. "Of course I know what people say. They think I stay here because I was injured in my last great folly, that the Laboratory sustains me. It's not so; I'm perfectly capable physically," he paused, and a slight blush colored his pale cheekbones. Tieve fixed her gaze studiously on her tea. "No. I must remain in the protection of the Laboratory because to venture outside its ward could result in...notice. My later offenses against the order of the world just confirmed my fate."
Both of them looked down at Brynn's hands, which had curled into fists. He carefully laid them flat again, and took a deep breath before speaking on.
"Of course the mercenaries were frantic, regrouping from the corners into some sort of battle array, surrounding the beast as though that would help matters. It just stood there, looking around at them, as calm as a king on his throne. I heard it inhale, a noise like the howl of a snowstorm.
"When it exhaled...I was trapped. Covered in ice, burning with the cold. I couldn't move, could barely breathe, was only just able to move my eyes. I could still hear, at least, though my ears were ringing. There were screams. I wasn't the only one trapped, it seemed.
"There was no question of actually fighting, then. Our numbers, our armaments, our preparations were completely inadequate. I must give credit to that troop; their priorities were correct, without false bravado. The goal became flight, in as good an order as could be managed.
"I heard the squad leader commanding a fighting retreat, and the magician calling out her spells. I felt the heat of fire magic surround me, melting the ice enough to break free. I could still feel the cold, though, deep in my flesh. But I could move, and could cast. I helped her with the others who had been encased. Three warriors were engaging the dragon, trying to distract it while we got the others free to retreat.
"I was hastening back toward the corridor where our sled waited, when a massive gust of air pushed me forward. I turned in time to see the dragon take off, the wind from its wings nearly flattening the warriors beneath it. It circled, and everyone began to run toward me. Then it breathed again. The heat was sucked from my bones and the air from my lungs. Warriors were tossed like dolls. And a forest of ice grew upward on the path of its breath, as fast as water might rise from a fountain.
"Such brute control of elements was beyond any magic I had ever seen. It...cowed me. I hung back at the door, shouting at the mercenaries to rise, to run. The dragon flew to one side, and beat its wings...and the ice shattered, filling half the temple with flying shards. Those who were on the wrong side..." He didn't finish. Tieve shivered again, but not from the cold.
"Five of us remained alive, as best I could tell. I started back into the room, to lend what aid I could, and the squad leader rose from where he had been thrown and screamed at us to get back, to flee. The magician would have ignored him, but I pulled her away, made her help me with the surviving archer. His legs were broken; he couldn't stand on his own.
"The dragon took its time landing. It seemed almost to be toying with us by then. But one of the warriors, the pillar-bearer, lifted a massive ice shard from the floor, a remnant of the dragon's spell. He launched it at the beast, throwing the shard as if it were nothing more than a javelin. A desperate gamble, to buy us a few seconds. And it worked; the beast was hit in the jaw and knocked off-balance.
"The pillar-bearer used that moment to pick up one of the fallen, the shield maiden, and run for the entrance. He nearly made it." Brynn swallowed. "But the dragon caught him, felled him with one mighty slash, so powerful that it shattered the stone floor. His last act...I don't know if he intended it, or if it was merely luck, but the warrior he carried was thrown clear, landing almost at our feet. We pulled her onto the sled, though we didn't know if she was alive or dead then.
"We started pulling the sled as fast as we could, away down the tunnel. It was heavy, with two extra bodies on it and only two people to move it, even with a levitation spell to help it along. I looked back once. The squad leader was standing at the threshold behind us, his swords raised. The magician screamed at him to come with us, but he just looked back and saluted before dashing away, back into that room.
"I pulled for my life. We were only a few dozen yards along when another blast of cold pursued us, but it was fainter, not aimed down the corridor. We kept pulling, down that tunnel, down the next, and the next, until exhaustion dropped us." Brynn rested his elbows on the table. He looked slumped and gray, as though the telling had recalled the fatigue of that flight.
"The squad leader, the navigator," Tieve said slowly. "He didn't come with you? You found your way back without him?"
Brynn shook his head. "If I ever saw him again, it was not in any form I would know. But he had wrought well. We found our way by the signs that had been left. The rations remaining for our reduced number were sufficient, though we went slowly, returning by stealth through tunnels we had traversed in strength before. At least, while we journeyed, I was able to heal the shield maiden somewhat, and the archer whose legs had been broken. All who left that room, survived the return. But only half our number left it." He sighed.
"That," he tapped the crystal again, "we found later, caught in the shield maiden's armor. The tip of one of its claws. I...made pretense that it was hers, despite the contract, and bought it from her later. A bonus of sorts, since she wasn't able to fight again. It was the least I could do.
"And as for my own reward?" The bitter, familiar curve of his lips turned his contempt inward. "My life. Such as it is. And questions. Always with answers that recede out of reach. And winters that grow ever colder.
"So you see," his voice shifted to brittle lightness, "This paltry chill simply does not compare to what I'd felt once. It cannot touch me now. I am apart from it, sequestered, as I am from any great destiny. It is for others, now, to seek the mysteries beyond the world, and for me to be the dispenser of petty remedies along their way."
"Brynn." Tieve's voice was strange. Brynn looked up, and met an expression he had never seen before on her soft face: sad, distantly kind, and indescribably old.
"Your life is worth more than you think. Though it was not your place to be the fulcrum of change, you have done much, and you will do more. And someday...all questions will be answered."
His throat went dry. "You speak as an oracle?"
"Call it that, if it comforts you. But the truth is yet to come. All winters must end. And when this one does...yours will, as well."
Her presence suddenly seemed vast, filling the dim room. She reached out, and Brynn leaned away, filled with an unease he could not name. But his recoil was in vain; he felt her cool fingertips brush his cheek. Something washed through him then: fear, and longing, and a deep tremor of awe that left him shaking. Her eyes filled the world.
Brynn awoke with a start. He pushed up from his pallet, but recognizing the faint outlines of his room he lay back down, gaze roving the dark.
There had been something...a dream. Fragments swirled through his mind, fading as he tried to grasp them. There had been a friend, a dear friend, closer than anyone in he had in waking life. Old pain. A bittersweet touch of the past. And...hope? The sensation was alien, a soft flutter like wings around his heart.
Beyond the walls came the low moan of the wind. From his window, the soft patter of snow. "All winters must end," he whispered, and lay awake for awhile, listening to the night as it turned toward dawn.