The monster was Tarin. Tarin was the monster. In the throes of battle, the line between them faded to nothing and it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
They—for there was no longer Tarin and the monster—swung the Morningstar, crushing skulls, felling the wraiths around them without compassion, without mercy, feeling nothing but desire to end. To destroy.
She was there, a pale ghost before him, her voice rising and falling in waves. Tarin. Tarin. It’s me. Me me me me… Your Annise. Please stop. Please please please…
They stopped, confused, and for a moment the monster separated from the man, still reaching for him, trying to grab him, to claw him back. Do I know her? Tarin said in his mind. She is…familiar.
No! the monster hissed, in that snakelike voice Annise was now familiar with. She will kill you. She is the enemy. They all are. Kill kill kill KILL
The Annise before him reached out, tried to touch him, to comfort him, but in Tarin’s eyes she was the monster, and her fingers were claws and she would destroy him if he did not destroy her first.
He swung, his hand slamming against her jaw, twisting her head around, throwing her back. The pain she felt, the pain Annise remembered as distinctly now as the moment he’d hit her—a red hot flash that struck all the way to the core of her heart—trembled not only through her, but through him too. The monster was thrown out, tumbling across the ground, and Tarin fell to his knees. What have I done?
“Tarin!” Annise shouted, her eyes exploding open from the dream, the cold air immediately stinging them. Her blanket had fallen away and she shivered.
And then Archer was there, and Dietrich, and even Sir Jonius, though he looked paler than she’d ever seen him look. “Annise,” one of them said, though she could not discern whom. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
She looked at each of them in turn, not really seeing them, looking through them to that dream, that nightmare made real. And though she preferred the other dream she’d had of Tarin, this one provided her with more insight into him than any conversation ever had. Finally she understood how he felt—the fear, the pain, and, above all, the anger—and why he’d had to leave.
And yet…at the core of the dream was something else, something Annise clung to now, her breath misting before her.
It was hope.
My pain dispelled the monster, she thought. His love for me. That is the answer.
“Annise?” This time she was certain is was Arch who had spoken, his face laced with concern.
She gathered her strength, letting it wash over her, straightening out her bent nerves one by one. “I am fine. My strength is back. We push onwards.”
And push on they did, the calm between winter storms like a held breath, passing the time in silence, the crunch of their boots on frozen snow a drumbeat to the whistle of the winds across the barren Hinterlands.
For a while, the not-so-frozen Frozen Lake flanked them, its dark waters lapping against the bleak and empty shore, but eventually they were forced to angle away, toward that hell-frozen spot on an old map that could be more farce than fact. Before they’d veered away to the west, Sir Dietrich had suggested they take advantage of the strangely warm waters of the lake to bathe, but Sir Jonius had warned against it. “’Tis not natural,” he’d said. Annise had not disagreed, and they’d not dipped foot nor hand in the lake.
Now, as they stopped to rest, Annise searched the east for any sign of the large body of water. All she saw, however, were snow-covered mountain peaks turning silvery orange in the light of the dying day. If she didn’t know better, she could almost believe the enormous lake had vanished completely, sucked into a crack in the earth.
Sir Dietrich muttered curses as he struck a flint against stone, trying fruitlessly to generate a spark beneath Sir Jonius’s cupped hands. Arch searched for anything that might be used as kindling, though dry vegetation was sparse on the tundra.
Annise turned away, watching the glow of the sun behind the clouds as it sunk lower, lower, casting the north into murky darkness. And then, like a vision of light through fog, the thick clouds parted to reveal a sky drunk with stars. Twinkling golds, exploding greens, streaking reds. The moons, however, were noticeably absent, hidden behind the mountains perhaps.
You look upon the same sky as him, the voice hissed. I see it twice. Through you. Through him.
“Shut your pie hole,” Annise growled, though the damage was already done. Tarin filled her mind, sapping the strength from her knees, forcing her to crouch to avoid falling. She pretended to busy herself with the tent poles and canvas covering, though she could feel Arch’s eyes on her back.
“Who were you talking to?” he asked.
“This cursed tundra,” she lied, working the flexible poles into their fittings.
“Annise, I’m—”
“I’m fine,” Annise interrupted. Aren’t I?
Yes. Of course she was. If anything, she understood Tarin—truly understood him—for the first time in her life, save perhaps when they were children playing Snow Wars in the castle courtyard.
“You don’t always have to be the strong one, you know,” Arch said, his boots crunching closer. He was so near she could see his breath now, curling wisps of vapor passing overhead. A hand on her shoulder. Warm, tender, so different than the way they usually treated each other—the shoves, the playful punches, the trips and barges and elbows.
The honesty behind the simple touch made her resolve begin to crack.
She shrank away, refusing to let herself fall into the yawning chasm that was forever threatening to drag her down into darkness. She stood, hauling the poles with one hand and the heavy canvas with the other. Her legs were strong, well-muscled from long treks across the harshest terrain in the Four Kingdoms. Her back and shoulders were broad and firm, capable of carrying the weight of a man—though not a man as large as Tarin, who weighed as much as a small bull—for several leagues. No, she would not do more than crack. She would become the northern sigil, a shield forged of steel, sometimes cracked, never broken. Unless she died first, she would shield her people from their enemies, even if the entire world was amassed against them.
Ignoring Arch’s stares, she raised a hammer and began pounding the first stake into the rock-hard ground, inch by inch, relishing the feeling of progress as the metal disappeared beneath the surface.
Progress. Aye. That’s what each day was, each step, each rise and fall of the sun.
Toward what, she wasn’t certain.
Yesss, Tarin’s monster hissed, and this time she didn’t respond, content to let its voice be carried away by the wind.
The next day dawned bright and warm. Well, not warm exactly, but relative to the frigid temperatures they’d endured thus far, anything that made her fingertips tingle was as welcome as a hot bath.
A hot bath, Annise mused. She could almost feel the water rushing over her, soothing her aching muscles, shrinking the ice sheathing her bones. Perhaps they had been too hasty to reject Dietrich’s notion of swimming in the queerly warm northern waters of the Frozen Lake.
She yawned, rolled over, and crawled from the tent, making a true effort to avoid waking the three men, who remained deep in slumber. Outside, she blinked against the shards of sunlight piercing the clumps of cloud cover. She scooped up a handful of snow, letting it melt in her cupped hand, and then slurped it greedily.
Next she reached back inside the tent and felt around for their provisions, grasping a satchel heavy with salted beef and half-frozen potatoes. Without fire, the duo would make for a meager breakfast, but food was the last thing on her mind this morning. Not when the white cliffs seemed so much closer in the morning light than they had the night before. Not when that spot on the map might be directly behind them. Yes, the climb would be steep and treacherous and test the limits of their strength and endurance, but they would make it. Of that Annise was certain.
She realized she was gritting her teeth, clamping them down on a mangled
leather-stiff chunk of salt beef. She relaxed her jaw, feeling the ache in her teeth. Laughing at it. Pain was an old friend now, and she wouldn’t fear it nor avoid it.
She was pulled from her revelry when the flaps of canvas fluttered and Sir Jonius emerged. He squinted, surprised by the burst of sunlight across a landscape that had been cloaked in gray for several days. While he adjusted to the brightness, she studied his face. As a child, she’d thought of him as old; but now, the signs of his age were even more evident: the crow’s feet fanned on either side of his eyes, the frown marks creasing his forehead, the droop of his lips and the streaks of gray in his hair. This was a man who’d been through frozen hell and back, who’d done horrible things and wonderfully heroic things, who’d served a tyrant and emerged from the fire unburnt. Not unchanged, however, just as a blade could not pass through the forge without being affected.
“Top of the morning,” he said, still squinting, looking at her.
“And we’re nearly to the top of the world,” Annise said, gesturing to the towering cliffs.
His eyes widened as he took in the view. “And here I thought those cliffs were retreating.”
“A trick of the light,” Dietrich said, scrambling from the tent on all fours.
Annise faked a kick at his midsection and he flinched. Jonius chuckled. Annise said, “Says the man who claimed, just last night, that those selfsame cliffs were—how did you put it again? Ah, yes, ‘bewitched by ice faeries.’”
Arch yelled from inside the tent. “Is there a point to this prattle? Some of us still need their beauty rest.”
Annise grinned. Something about this morning felt so…normal. Like the world had finally, after a long hiatus, spun back into its proper position.
Only one thing was missing: Tarin.
She swallowed the thought away and met Arch’s eyes when he pushed through the tent. If anything, he looked more handsome than ever, the dark stubble of his cheeks suiting him the way everything seemed to suit him. She remembered the way he’d touched her shoulder the night before, the concern evident in his voice. On this morning, a thousand thoughts seemed to pass between them, as they only can in a shared look between a brother and sister born to a monster of a man.
“You look tired,” Annise japed.
“See? I had at least another hour of sleep in me,” Arch said. He targeted his stare on the cliffs. “Whoa.”
“Eat up,” Annise said. “If the weather holds, today we shall mount the north.”
“I have a better idea,” Sir Jonius said, pointing toward the base of the cliffs, where a jagged triangle of black marred the otherwise white-blue face. “We cut through to our destiny.”
Sir Jonius was correct. The black slash in the cliffs was a cave mouth. As they stared into the infinite blackness, Annise couldn’t help but feel like they were looking into the maw and throat of an enormous beast—one of the legendary hintermonsters they’d told scary stories about as bored children with vivid imaginations.
She weighed the pros and cons in her mind. “Thoughts?” she said, to no one in particular.
“I’d rather be swallowed by an ice bear,” Dietrich said.
“Perhaps I can find you one,” Annise said. Dietrich grimaced.
Jonius said, “We will be free of the cold and wind. If we bring along enough kindling, fire will come easy and we can keep torches burning the entire way.”
“What if it dead-ends halfway through?” Arch said. “Or curves around on itself so that we walk in circles? For all we know, it could be a labyrinthine series of tunnels no better than a maze. I say we take our chances with the cliffs.”
“I’d rather scale the towers of Castle Hill,” Dietrich noted helpfully.
“Again, I will arrange it upon our return,” Annise said. Despite her quip, she was seriously considering all opinions at this point. In truth, none of them could predict what either the cliffs or caves would bring. More likely, they were equally dangerous, as most paths in the north were.
“We could all use a break from the snow,” she said. “And if a storm hits…”
Arch frowned, but didn’t argue. “We are overdue for the next one,” he conceded.
“Atop the cliffs we’ll be unprotected,” Jonius said, hammering the final stake into his argument.
“We go through,” Annise said.
As it turned out, Archer’s concerns were unwarranted. The tunnel, though narrow, was impressively straight, as though a giant had thrust his spear through the cliffs and then withdrawn it. Occasionally the shaft would widen into caverns spiked with teethlike stalactites and stalagmites, some so large it would’ve taken all four of them joined hand to hand to reach around their bases.
In one such cavern, Dietrich cast down his bundle of unlit torches and kindling with a rattle. “The path ascends without end. I can scarcely breathe in this place.”
“Did you try opening your mouth?” Annise said. Despite the joke, her lungs were heaving as well. And he was correct. Though, at times, it was difficult to discern, the burn in her calves and lungs made it clear the tunnel was rising gently with each step.
Jonius waved a torch along the wall, chasing away the shadows cast by the unfinished columns of stalagmites. “We are not the first to pass this way,” he said.
Annise followed the light, immediately noticing the markings on the rock walls. The depictions were rough, drawn in red ink—or at least Annise hoped it was ink—and yet not difficult to interpret:
Legions of plate-clad soldiers bearing arms, marching through a tunnel. Strangely pale creatures surrounded them, wearing nothing but thin cloths about their loins. Some might’ve been female, but it was impossible to tell. They didn’t walk upright, but were more crouched, their fingertips almost brushing the ground. Others clung to the walls and ceiling like spiders.
“Frozen hell,” Archer said. “What are those things?”
He was referring to the creatures, Annise thought.
“Are those the Sleeping Knights?” Dietrich said, running his fingers along the lines of soldiers.
“They are knights, alright,” Jonius said, “but they look very much awake to me.”
“They were attacked,” Annise said, a chill settling into her bones. “We’ve all heard stories about how the finest knights of the north marched into the Hinterlands to await the time when they would be called forth. But what if they never made it to their destination? What if these…” The right word eluded her. “…killed them first?”
“It depends on who drew these pictures,” Arch said. “If these were drawn by the knights, then they emerged victorious. But if it was the…natives…” That felt like the right word to Annise. After all, in these lands they were the invaders, having broken a pact signed long before any of them were born.
She swallowed a deep breath. Let it out. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We aren’t turning back. We will find the truth of these markings one way or another.”
“Unless the truth finds us first,” Dietrich muttered.
After a brief rest, they marched onwards. Annise knew they’d been walking for hours, but she had no grasp of the time of day in this place. If not for their torches, it would be blacker than the blackest night, even if it was midday outside. In some ways, she felt like they were violating the very nature of the tunnels by filling them with torchlight, by breaking the silence with the scuff and thud of their boots, by clouding the air with their exhalations and torch smoke.
She had hoped to pass through the cliffs without stopping to sleep, but as the tunnel wore on, never ending, never changing, she worried it would take days, if not weeks, to emerge back into the light and cold.
Along the way, they passed more paintings, drawn in red. They were battle scenes, filled with as much violence as the famous paintings at Blackguard, the ruling castle in Blackstone. The pale creatures were clearly attacking the armored knights, coming in waves, throwing themselves from the ceiling, from the walls, biting at their feet, clamping their claws
around their wrists. The color of the drawings made perfect sense now, each scene splattered with more blood and gore than the one before.
Interestingly, none of the knights were shown as dead or dying. Instead, it was the pale creatures that fell along the way, a few at first, and then in droves, their fleshy half-naked bodies piling up around the knights, who marched onward, ever onward, slicing off their enemies’ limbs, stabbing through hearts.
And then, abruptly, the paintings stopped, the walls bare and nondescript once more.
Dark tunnels began to emerge on either side, small at first—perhaps large enough to shove a fist through—but growing larger, until several were passable if one stooped.
She remembered how the pale creatures depicted on the cavern walls had been drawn walking stooped over.
“What if we reach a fork?” Archer said.
“We go right,” Dietrich said immediately.
Though Annise wasn’t fond of what-if scenarios, she frowned even more at the knight’s quick answer. “Why right?”
“Because it is right,” he said, grinning.
She rolled her eyes. “If it comes to it, we will judge each fork individually. We need to keep moving in the same approximate direction if possible.” She hoped they wouldn’t encounter any forks. Or pale creatures that climbed on walls and ceilings.
“A logical response,” Jonius said, winking at Annise. Despite the aged weariness that seemed to surround the old knight these days, something about this journey had chased the shadows from his eyes. That, more than anything else, made him seem younger than his age.
In a way, it reminded her of Tarin—how action and movement kept his demons at bay. Distractions were a powerful tool for anyone with a past.
“Thank you, Sir,” she said, firing a childish smirk at Archer. She might be a queen, but he was still her baby brother, and she was entitled to a bit of gloating now and then.