From the author of The Oxbow Kingdom Trilogy comes a new fantasy adventure: Plea to a Frozen God.
Chapter 2
The seven celestial visitors arrived on the watery planet ages before the Septem Dominions existed.
Swagger Fry
Swagger Fry led two dozen mounted troops on the
desolate road between Skelmoth and Worglen. Far to the south, Fiegardia’s trio
of smoldering volcanoes served as their wintry backdrop. This time of year,
Fiegardia’s roads were barren, if not already impassable. As summers grew
shorter, so did the traveling season. Once the traffic tapered off, drifting
snow clogged the less-frequented roads. By midwinter, dog sleds became the only
reliable method of overland travel.
Singular winter smells dominated Swagger’s olfactory
senses. The dry, crisp breeze carried none of the pungent summer odors from
agriculture and fishing. He savored the scent of conifer needles, gurgling
water through cracks in the ice, and the occasional whiff of wood smoke from a
stoked hearth. Despite the cold and the gray and the winds, Swagger enjoyed the
outdoors—even winter in Fiegardia. The snow’s soft silence soothed him.
King Kolf Fiegard himself assigned Swagger to this
delicate political mission. As the leader of Fiegardia’s royal forces, Swagger
and his soldiers traveled on horseback to meet a Drachian betrothal party.
Because of early ice in Skelmoth Harbor, the Drachian ships would land in
Worglen and caravan inland to Skelmoth for this evening’s feast.
Sergeant Fry was to escort the Drachian royalty into
Skelmoth and Castle Fieg. He and his armed riders were to ensure no beasts or
bandits troubled the visitors on their journey. Though a royal procession would
prove an enticing target for raiders, a rogue mammoth, pack of ice wolves, or
rampaging snogre could prove just as deadly. Ever vigilant, Fry’s keen eyes
scrutinized the terrain for fresh tracks, but so far, no signs of nearby
predators appeared.
In his opinion, snogres posed the worst threat to
unprepared visitors. Unique to Fiegsland, the bear-sized carnivores were
stealthy apex predators, especially in winter, when their white hides provided
them camouflage. Fry suspected even a seasoned Drachian knight would have his
hands full with one of those vicious beasts.
“Damned silly time of year for a betrothal feast,”
Fry said to his second-in-command, Diora Boghech, who rode beside him on a
stout bay. The soldiers wore fur-lined helmets, cloaks, and woolen hoods over
their hardened leather armor. Blustering wind crusted their gear in white. The
lead riders carried green and gold flags, fighting the stiff wind as it rippled
the Fiegardian fabric.
“At least the wedding will be in fairer weather,”
Boghech said.
“Let’s hope so. Never can predict the whims of
royals. Why anyone would travel this time of year’s beyond me.”
“Love doesn’t follow the calendar, Sergeant.” She
paused before bursting into laughter.
“Love’s got naught to do with this marriage,” Fry
said, his voice a creaking gate blowing across a gravel path.
“Poor Prince Ligo’s got to marry that imported
princess to rescue the realm,” Boghech said.
Sergeant Fry considered voicing his opinion, but
cringed at speaking ill of his liege, despite fearing King Fiegard undertook a
risk in dealing with King Eronak Drachia. Hope for the best, prepare for the
worst.
Everything about the Drachians worried Swagger. King
Eronak motivated people with greed, and, unfortunately, for most, that trumped
integrity. Rumors also painted the Drachian ruler as an avid misogynist.
Swagger suspected a daughter meant no more to him than a valuable commodity to
expand his reign. It was common knowledge that King Eronak cycled through
several queens in search of that still elusive son.
“Loss for words, Sergeant?” Boghech
asked.
“Nah. I feel for the lad, too. I’m sure he’d rather
wed a fine Fiegard-blooded Skelmoth noble than this strange foreign lass.” He
blinked away the frozen moisture from the corners of his eyes. “But such is the
life of royalty. Bet that Drachian princess doesn’t know how lucky she is to
land a prize like Prince Ligo.”
“Rumor has it the prince suffers
from spells.
Might be he’s the one getting the
prize.”
Swagger’s head drooped as he thought of young Ligo. Wish
she wouldn’t speak of it. A fierce gust pushed him westward in the saddle, as
if mocking him. “Think the marriage will
really help the realm?” Boghech asked.
“It may,” Fry said as he studied the horizon. He
hoped this union would fare better than King Fiegard’s latest. After declaring
his missing wife dead, the king had remarried too quickly for most Fiegardians,
and the new queen consort accomplished little to restore faith in the king’s
decision. Swagger chased the depressing thoughts from his mind.
Drifts encroached upon the road, threatening to
colonize it into the barren white fields. Ahead, their path dipped into a
valley and cut through a sprawling pine stand.
“You hold out hope for this pending
marriage,
Sergeant?”
“Expanded trade and an alliance with a former rival
should strengthen Fiegardia.” He rubbed his numb nose and fretted his loose
tongue, then continued despite his reservations. “The joining of two divine
bloodlines promises strong offspring.” Thinking of Prince Ligo as a father
lifted his mood, if only momentarily. “But then again, they don’t pay me for my
political smarts.” Fry’s thoughts on Fiegardian politics grew more pessimistic
with each passing day, yet he dared not voice his fears to his troops. Never in
his thirty-six years had the public opinion of the Fiegards been so low.
“Worst that’ll happen is we’ll be riding under a
different banner,” said Boghech.
“Bite your tongue. I’d rather die than forsake the
Fiegard colors.” Despite the chill, Fry’s temperature rose.
“You bleed green and gold, do you?”
Fry shifted to the side and spat. “Red, just like
you. But a soldier without loyalty’s just a mercenary.” “There’s never a
shortage of work for soldiers,” Boghech replied. “At day’s end, don’t really
matter whose head’s on the coin they pay me.” She cast Swagger a side-eyed
glance.
“Bah, you ain’t that heartless, no matter how hard
you pretend.” Her audacity riled him, but Swagger remained calm.
“You never know, Sergeant. Never know.”
“You’re a good soldier, and those are rare these
days. I’d hate to lose you.”
“Things keep going like they are, we might both be
wearing different colors before too long,” Boghech said, too loudly for
Swagger’s taste. “People are restless—desperate, even. Weather gets worse every
season, the realm hardly sees the sun. Fishing, farming, trade—all hurting.
This union might be our king’s last chance.”
“Ain’t King Fiegard’s fault the volcanoes won’t stop
filling the sky with ash.”
“Isn’t it?” Boghech asked. “People think the
descendants of Fieg should be able to change the weather. Folk say Fieg
abandoned her royal bloodline.
Based on what I see, it’s hard to
argue with that.”
Fry allowed the
conversation to drop as he focused on the descending path ahead. Few years ago,
I would have warned her of treason for such talk. He snuffed the ice inside his
nostrils. Now, her words are about as good as you can expect regarding the
Fiegards. Or might be I’m getting
soft in my old age? He’d also heard the rumors of Queen Blynn’s disappearance,
how she set off on a foolhardy quest to appeal to Fieg herself. Might be
Boghech’s more right than she knows.
A practical man, Swagger knew his strengths and
limitations. Built for combat and survival, a quiet pride infused him over the
fact that in harsh times, his chances were better than most. Swagger was a
solid leader to like-minded soldiers, but didn’t suffer fools. Not born to
nobility, he never dwelt on the limitations of his station. Easier to value
your blessings than spend your days lamenting flaws.
Preferring silence to more of Boghech’s irritating
chatter, he led his contingent into the wind, while snow pellets raced to the
ground, impatient with gravity’s pull. He brushed the accumulated frost from
his beard and did the same for his horse’s coarse mane. The double-coated
chestnut snorted in response, its breath fogging the air.
Swaying conifers lined the valley road and shed
clumps from their branches. One devious gob landed on his neck and trickled
down his shoulder. Swagger shimmied and twisted as the melting snow raised his
hackles.
“Fieg’s fury, that’s cold!”
Diora Boghech chuckled at his misfortune. “Curse all
you want at your frigid goddess, but that’s just bad luck!”
Fry hushed Boghech with a hiss and a finger to his
lips. He pointed to riders in the distance. Upon following his finger up the
valley ridge, Diora Boghech’s eyes grew wide.
“Who are they?” she whispered.
Swagger halted his troops and squinted into the
bluster. While shielding his face with a gloved hand, he inspected the distant
horsemen.
“Drachian colors.” His brows furrowed, Swagger
turned toward Boghech with a questioning glance.
She shrugged. “They’re
early?” “Doesn’t make sense,” he said.
“That’s no royal caravan.”
“Did King Drachia send a scouting party?” Swagger
counted the distant riders, noting their weapons and armor. “They outnumber us,
and are fitted for battle.”
“Why bring a war band to a betrothal feast?” Boghech
asked.
“They say King Drachia’s paranoid.” Swagger
scratched his beard, sending flakes onto his emerald tabard. “But this reeks of
treachery.”
“Should we confront them?”
Fry licked his chapped lips and shook his head. “No,
I don’t think so.” They could be hostile, and we’re outnumbered. Swagger
wondered if he was the one being paranoid.
“What then, Sergeant? If they spot us avoiding them,
it’ll reflect badly on King Kolf.”
He bristled at her familiar use of the king’s first
name. “I’ll risk a political embarrassment if it means protecting the realm.
Send two riders to Skelmoth with a warning. We’ll monitor ’em from a distance.”
“How should we phrase the warning? Early guests?”
Swagger eyeballed Boghech. His patience evaporated
and revealed itself in his harsh tone. “Tell the king there are Drachian
knights on Fiegard soil— and no sign of the princess or royal caravan.” Swagger
exhaled a tense breath into the frigid air. “At least the king won’t be taken
unawares. And if this is just a misunderstanding, I’ll take the blame for our
lack of hospitality.” And only a demotion, if I’m lucky.
Boghech turned her horse toward the troops, but
before she issued the command, Swagger interrupted her.
“They’ve spotted us. Here they come.”
Chapter 3
The
seven celestials visited the watery world long before The Claimed Isles were
named.
Riggan
Castle Fieg’s clarions warned Riggan that trouble
approached. She peered out her tower window with a clear view of Skelmoth.
Smoke wafted from snow-covered roofs on buildings extending to the frozen bay.
Anchoring Skelmoth’s center sat Fieg’s Temple and its prized treasure, the
crystal obelisk. Under the late afternoon sky, Riggan scanned from the bay to
the bridge connecting Skelmoth to Castle Fieg.
No signs of obvious concern met her
eyes.
Despite the myriad of calamities a Mystic of Fieg
had to tend with, her intuition convinced her that the horns blew for the royal
hunting party. ’Tis past time for their return. She donned her pocketed leather
coat, collected her medicine bag, and strode for the stairs.
Although she served the God of Death, Riggan’s
primary tasks were to keep Fieg’s faithful from prematurely dying. Despite the
stigma associated with the God of Death, Fieg’s servants never hastened death’s
arrival; rather, they worked to keep her faithful alive until their proper time
to pass.
The path from her tower chambers led Riggan through
the cavernous Castle Fieg. The stone edifice clung to the west side of Mount
Skelmoth, towering above the capital city of the same name. Carved blocks from
the Skelmoth mines comprised the structure, which spread back into the rocks
whence it was hewn. Commanding high ground and rooted to the mountain by a
network of tunnels and caverns, a well-defended Castle Fieg was
impenetrable.
At the moment, this mattered little to Riggan, whose
knees and ankles lamented the winding trek down flights of oaken stairs. As she
hurried toward the ground floor, house guards fell in behind her, summoned to
duty by the ominous horns. Illuminated only by sconce flames, the castle walls
and stairwells displayed eerie shadows from the silent marchers. Boots echoed
in the hallways, setting a rhythmic beat to accompany the misery pipes.
The bustling castle staff prepared for tonight’s
betrothal feast as busy servants impeded Riggan’s progress. She dreaded the
event, all pomp and ceremony, with no purpose other than to ply guests with
gluttonous food and drink. The royals claimed the celebration honored Fieg, but
Riggan recalled no such ritual in the ancient canon. And she knew Fiegardian
creed better than anyone alive. This particular tradition sprung from a
hedonistic royal’s desire for more divinely sanctioned debauchery. So be it,
just another harmless gala, with a fabricated origin.
She could envision the haughty Drachians watching
her and whispering ancient falsehoods. Of the Seven Gods, Fieg was the most
misunderstood—and reviled. Especially by Drachians, who considered Fieg
inconsequential compared to their own God of War.
Fuck them, and
their arrogant god.
While her booted feet pounded the floorboards in
long strides, Riggan’s mind raced. Despite all the dangers of a walrus hunt,
her thoughts revolved around Prince Ligo. He’s the most vulnerable. The
prince’s confounding ailment vexed her, as she could not cure— much less
identify—the reason for his unpredictable convulsions. If forced to wager,
Riggan placed her coin on another royal seizure as the reason for the alarm
horns. With the betrothal feast imminent, King Kolf would have little patience
with her failure to remedy his eldest’s recent malady.
Riggan sympathized with Prince Ligo over the
similarity of their paths. Both she and the prince were assigned their life’s
work at birth. Though predestined for lofty, powerful positions, neither
enjoyed the freedom of choosing their own destiny. Now, Prince Ligo had been
designated a life mate with no input of his own.
Theoretically, she and the prince could have spurned
their predetermined stations, and turned their backs on their families and
peers. Such a rebellious decision might have granted them some form of freedom
at the cost of ostracization from their families and communities. Riggan
sometimes fantasized about what her life could have been, if not for her sworn
service to Fieg. She wondered if Prince Ligo did the same.
When Riggan reached the gatehouse’s main floor, the
massive doors stood open, and the drawbridge lowered. Castle Fieg’s gatehouse
exterior bore the God of Death’s likeness. The entrance served as Fieg’s open
mouth, and the iron portcullis resembled her long teeth. Leering above the
opening, the carving wore a perpetually scowling face. Riggan blamed the
threatening visage on grandiose artistic license with no basis in historical
fact. She rolled her eyes out of habit.
Another harmless
fabrication.
From across the stone bridge, Riggan spotted the
hunting party through puffy wet flakes. Across Skelmoth’s slippery streets, the
loaded dogsleds approached with near-reckless haste. Prince Ligo was not
driving any sled.
King Kolf, Prince Calamir, and Firon Halcha pulled
their dogsleds across the massive drawbridge and into the castle proper. Their
cargo included a dead walrus and an unconscious Prince Ligo. King Kolf’s angry
eyes met Riggan’s and held fast.
“Mystic, attend my son!”
Riggan sped past the panting dogs and found Prince
Ligo strapped to a sled’s basket. She brushed the accumulated snow off him.
“What happened, Your Majesty?”
“What else? He suffered another spell,” the King
said.
“Collapsed
on the ice, right in front of the bull,”
Calamir added. “Halcha saved his
life.”
Estimating the trip’s duration, Riggan calculated
that Prince Ligo’s post-seizure unconsciousness had lasted longer than ever. I
fear his attacks are worsening. As the hounds sniffed her boots, Riggan checked
Prince Ligo’s vitals. His breathing and pulse are sound, but I need to do a
thorough inspection. The brisk, crowded gatehouse would not serve.
“Your Majesty, my infirmary is best equipped to
treat him.”
The glowering king motioned for his guards to
comply, and they hoisted the prince onto a stretcher.
Back up the tower stairs, Riggan followed the
soldiers and their royal burden. Though doubts began popping into her mind, she
mentally prepared for her examination. Could the cold trigger his reaction? The
dogs? As soon as an idea emerged, she quashed it. No, his last seizure happened
inside, in the morning, after sleeping in a warm bed with no animals near him
for hours.
When they arrived at the infirmary, Riggan
instructed the guards to place him face-up on her examination table. “Help me
get his parka off, please.”
The guard propped Prince Ligo into a sitting
position and Riggan stripped off his coat. Vomit coated the exterior. She
tossed the damp garment onto an adjacent table and then pointed at the other
guards milling about her infirmary.
“One of you, please stoke the fire, then close the
door on your way out.”
As the guards exited, she removed the prince’s coif
and checked his skull for injuries. So far, so good.
The infirmary door slammed shut and Riggan pulled
off the prince’s two-layered boots. Sweat beaded on her brow as the roaring
fireplace warmed the sterile room. She continued to remove Prince Ligo’s
clothing. Urine soaked his trousers. Could have been worse. With a warm, damp
cloth, she cleaned and inspected each part of his body.
“No external injuries, thank Fieg.” She imagined a
scowling King Kolf breathing down her neck.
Riggan covered the naked prince with a blanket, then
hurried to her apothecary cabinet and began grabbing ingredients. He’ll have a
headache, for sure, and I’ll need to warm his blood and get it flowing. “Willow
bark, betony, verbena,” she mumbled as she worked. “Some cumin and mint.”
Riggan added the ingredients to a ceramic mortar and
began grinding the grassland herbs and flowering plants into a powder. She
added the painrelieving concoction to a simmering alembic solution and then
increased the heat. The mystic repeated the process for a second elixir, using
sage and snogre blood.
With the amalgams boiling gently, she grasped her
lodestone and returned to her still-unconscious patient. Riggan wiped the sweat
from her brow. Standing toe to heel, she slipped off her boots, providing
relief from the sweltering room. The stench from his soiled garments
intensified in the warm air. Riggan kicked her boots under the table and
uncovered Prince Ligo. With the lodestone in her right hand, she traced his
bare skin with the magnetic mineral while pressing his flesh with her left
hand.
Riggan started at Prince Ligo’s head, running her
fingers through his curly hair, feeling his scalp for abnormalities. Convinced
his skull was physically unharmed, she advanced her examination to his limbs.
Riggan sensed the stone’s subtle magnetic field while probing flesh and muscle
to the bone. She covered each sinewy arm, around shoulder and armpit, across
his smooth forearm and long fingers, all the way to the tips. She repeated the
procedure for each leg and found no injury or affliction. His fitness is
certainly not an issue.
She inspected his chest, feeling each rib, from
spine to sternum, then on to his abdomen as it rose and fell with each breath,
using her deft fingers to prod his organs. Lodestone’s telling me nothing.
She moved to his groin and noticed his first bodily
reaction to her touch. That’s a good sign. Riggan would dutifully check every
inch of him to discover what was wrong. Her lifelong training provided her an
unparalleled knowledge of the body. And yet, she lingered over him, completely
flummoxed. Can’t find anything wrong. Why won’t he waken?
With her hand still between Prince Ligo’s legs, she
startled as King Kolf cleared his throat behind her.
He and his wife are devoted dog-lovers who share their home with rescue dogs. Plea to a Frozen God is his fourth fantasy novel following The Oxbow Kingdom Trilogy (Crimson & Cream, Mirrors & Mist, and Warlock & Wyrm).
Blog: http://cmskiera.blogspot.com/
