"Any gods so monstrous as to drown my mother and father would never have my worship, I vowed."
The Frostfangs loomed over her, but they were not the mountains she knew. There were faces in the rock and the rock bled. She watched the mountains collapse into a river of blood, which flowed towards her. She could not run. Somewhere, a wolf howled, and then she was swept away.
Nyssa woke in agony. She heard the sound of dripping water, opened her eyes, and realized she was no longer in the camp. The only light came from a small fire, which cast a bloody red light onto the damp, stone walls of a cave. Though it was freezing, her skin felt on fire. Her face was slick with sweat and the taste of some pungent herb lingered on her tongue. Someone had taken off her shirt and wrapped her chest in clean, white bandages. She yelped when she tried to stretch her legs. The pain was such that she'd never felt before. When she moved it was as if the skin across her back were splitting apart.
Someone must have brought her here and bandaged her wounds. But are they friend or foe? She loosened the bandage around her thigh and fingered the black, crooked stitches beneath.
"Don't touch that," a woman said. Greta, the old mage, appeared out of the shadows. Nyssa let loose a sigh of relief at the sight of a familiar face, but confusion quickly swept in.
"How did we get here?" she asked, eyeing the old woman skeptically. She certainly didn't look strong enough to have carried Nyssa to this place, whatever this place was.
"I'm old," Greta said. "With even older secrets. Now hush."
Nyssa was too tired to protest. Silently, she watched Greta grind a crumpled handful of yellow flowers into a fine powder between two smooth stones. The old mage scooped the powder into her wizened palms and held it over the low fire. She muttered words in a strange tongue and the flames turned shock white, only for a moment.
"Eat," Greta said. The flower-paste had hardened over the white fire into a brittle cracker. Nyssa plucked it from the mage's hand and gave it a sniff.
"Go on," Greta said. "It'll give you the strength you need."
Still, Nyssa did not eat. "Need for what?" she asked, thinking of Illa, dead on the ice, and the mountain of burnt bodies at camp.
"Eat," Greta repeated. Reluctantly, she bit into the hardened paste. The taste was horrid, but the more she ate, the less her wounds pained her.
"They're all dead," she muttered, once she'd finished.
"Not all," Greta said. "Some escaped. Bone Dust will lead them to the king-beyond-the-wall."
The news brought Nyssa little comfort. Bone Dust had survived. My sister did not. At last, the tears came. Hot and bitter, they streamed down her cheeks. She buried her face against her knees so that they old mage wouldn't see.
"Gather yourself, girl," Greta said. Her clawed fingers dug into Nyssa's shoulders, shaking her with surprising force for a woman so old and frail in appearance."It has only begun for you."
Nyssa slapped her away. Glaring now, she said, "It has ended for me. Illa's gone. I lost her."
"Everyone dies," Greta said, shrugging her humped shoulders. "The girl's time came and it went. What happened on the ice was meant to happen."
"Meant to happen?" Nyssa, forgetting the pain in her sudden rage, leapt to her feet. She meant to strangle the big-mouthed crone, but Greta vanished right before her eyes.
"Good," she said, now standing behind Nyssa, who spun around, wide-eyed, at the sound of the mage's voice. "Anger is what you need."
"Who are you?" Nyssa demanded. Greta spread out her hands. Her upward facing palms were pale as the moon, smooth as a young girl's, not the hands of an old woman.
"I've waited many, many years,"Greta said. "I'm much older than you think, child, and much younger. Today was meant to happen as it did. I've seen it come to pass for longer than you've been alive."
"You have the gift of prophecy?"But Nyssa didn't wait for an answer. "Why didn't you warn us, then? You could have saved her!" Her eyes scanned the cave, in search of the bone-hilt knife.
"Killing me is a waste of time," Greta said, holding up the knife so that the blade caught the firelight. "I'll die soon enough without your aide."She threw the knife at Nyssa's feet, but the girl did not move to retrieve it.
"Then tell me," she said. "Tell me what you've seen. Tell me what you've been waiting for me to do."
"You already know," Greta chuckled. "Go south. Find the direwolf."
"I don't know what you're-"
"Don't lie," the mage said sharply. "You can't run from this."
At being told she couldn't run from this, whatever this was, Nyssa steeled herself against the old woman's cryptic words. She would not obey a prophecy which foretold of her sister's death.
"You can rot," she said, spitting at Greta's feet. She spotted her shirt on the cave floor, pulled it over her head, and added, "I won't do it. I won't go south." She would return to Illa, as she'd promised. Then she would drown herself in the bay. Nyssa strode past the mage, to the cave's narrow entrance, but she paused when the woman spoke.
"No matter which direction you walk, all trails lead south for you," Greta warned. A chill travelled down Nyssa's spine. I won't be played by this old coot, she told herself sternly. Illa was waiting for her on the bloody bay.
Nyssa trudged back and forth from the forest to the bay, carrying wood for the pyre on her back. By dusk she'd gathered enough to build a pyre worthy of any over-the-wall kings, and she laid Illa's body upon it. She unearthed a cluster of purple flowers from the snow and wove them into her sister's red hair. Cursed by fire. Then she gently closed Illa's eyes.
She'd left the Frozenriver bodies, for the wolves, on the ice. Waiting for the sun to set, she held Illa's cold body and sang songs of death and winter, until darkness fell over her like a shroud of mourning. Nyssa wrapped the end of a thick branch in strips of cloth, soaked in wine, and held it in the fire until it ignited.
"Forgive me," she whispered, and then set the torch to the pyre. The wood burned well. Nyssa sunk to her knees, having lost the will to move. Soon, she was coated in soot. Embers stung her cheeks and burned her clothes. She longed to throw herself onto the flames, but had not the energy. Instead, she curled up on the ground, kept warm by the pyre. All around her, the wind howled.
The wolf howled. "I can't hear you," she cried. "I won't listen."
Nyssa woke to the smell of charred flesh and a stranger's hands around her neck. She opened her eyes. A hooded face blocked out the dawn.
"Morning girlie," the man said. She spat at him and he leapt back, wiped the saliva from his cloak, and then slapped her across the face hard enough to draw blood. Nyssa tried to stand, only to find that her ankles and wrists were bound by rope.
The man was not alone. Another hooded figure stood beside him. She could not make out their faces.
"This one's got fire," the man who'd slapped her said to his companion.
"Too much, maybe," the other said. "Look at her, all covered in blood. Bet she had something to do with all them bodies on the ice."
Nyssa could tell by their accents that neither of them were Free Folk. They sounded like the traders from over the Wall. Slavers, she thought. While they talked, she searched the ground for her knife. It wasn't where she'd left it the night before.
"Don't get any smart ideas," one of the hooded men growled. He slid his blade out of his sleeve and admired it for a moment. "I could make a nice profit off o' this."
"C'mon, Drust. Lets just leave her for the wolves. Look at her. She'll never sell."
The man named Drust ignored his companion. He crouched at Nyssa's head and pressed the point of the blade between her eyes.
"You'll behave, won't you, girlie?"His breath was hot and rancid. She did nothing. Weaponless, wounded, and bound, there was no hope of overcoming them. I don't care, she thought, looking to Illa's pyre. Let me die.
"See, she's a good girl." Drust rustled her hair with the hilt of the knife. "And she's pretty under all that muck. All she needs is a good scrubbing and a couple o' beatings." He struck her across the face once more.
Let me die. Let me die. All went black again.