Seven Princes

8

Cold was his first sensation. It wrapped him like a second skin, a blanket of glittering diamond frost. Pain, formerly a stranger to him, now bent low and kissed his lips, his forehead, his chest, smothering him in its frozen lust. Then hunger, gnawing at his guts like a trapped bear cub, tearing its way from the inside out. He had never been truly hungry – or cold – before now. So many new discoveries… so many ways to suffer. He opened his eyes, spikes of fresh agony grinding into his skull.

Light, aquamarine and without a trace of warmth, momentarily blinded him. Emerald-indigo brilliance… was he underwater? No, he could breathe, though the air raked his lungs with iron claws. The numbness in his shoulders and wrists suddenly made sense – he hung suspended from his arms, fists bound together with iron chains. His feet dangled in the same loop of chain, thick black links gone white with rime. Squinting, he peered at the sheer walls of blue-green ice rising to left and right. Above, some rafter or stalactite of ice held the end of the chain. He thought of slaughtered cattle hanging in Udurum smokehouses, sides of skinned beef awaiting the butchers’ cleavers.

Below him yawned a pit of sullen darkness. If not for the chain, he would fall and be lost forever in that glacial crevasse. The cavern was carved of raw ice, or ice had frozen over its every earthen surface. He saw no bare rock behind the filmy crystal; it seemed the ice was solid as granite. The watery light filtering through was refracted sunlight. Now fully awake, he realized what he had first taken for brilliance was in fact dimness.

His stomach growled, and he coughed. Something moved in the cavern behind him. A grunt, a shifting of great bulk, heavy footfalls. Something grabbed the chains above his fists and slung him to the gro ^h [do grund. He almost lost consciousness beneath the waves of pain washing through his body, beginning from the top of his skull and raging through his limbs – all agony but for his numb shoulders and wrists. He remembered a great iron mace…

Two blue-skinned Giants stood over him, staring him down with blood-red pupils. Their beards were tangles of icicles, their white manes heavy with frost. Their stinking carnivore breath was colder than the wind in the cavern. They grinned at his helplessness. They boomed with laughter as he strove against the chains, gritting his teeth and pulling tighter the links of metal. Exhaustion and hunger had taken their toll. On any normal day he might tear these chains from his limbs like silken cloth. Now, fearing that his head would split open under such effort, he ceased and lay back, sucking chill air into his lungs.

One of the blue-skins grabbed the chain and dragged him along the floor like the carcass of some forest kill. The other followed with that same iron mace slung across his shoulder. Another swing of that weapon would crush Vireon’s skull to pulp. But he was too worn out to continue his struggles. He lay still and let himself be dragged along a carpet of frost.

The ice cavern gave way to others, larger and wider, and carved into Giant stairwells at intervals. They dragged him through vaulted galleries grown or hewn from the endless ice. A world of frozen crystal, steeped in the turquoise glow of filtered sunshine. Walls sparkled like miniature glaciers. Icy pillars thick as Uyga trees bore spiral designs depicting tribal warfare in a style reminiscent of the ancient Uduru. His captors dragged him through a domed plaza that must have been the very heart of the palatial glacier. There hundreds of blue-skins went about the common tasks of their daily lives, oblivious to the tiny captive hauled through their midst. Gravelly voices babbled in a melange of half-familiar syllables, some ancient dialect of Uduru speech.

They wore the furs of mammoth, bear, tiger, and wolf, white as snow or dyed to shades of crimson and black. Rusted spikes adorned the iron helms of male and female warriors. Their spears were taller than their heads, and tipped with frozen blades. Enormous broadswords hung on wide belts of sealskin. Ice and frost hung in the mens’ beards, in the braided tresses of the women, and their breath did not turn to vapor when they exhaled, for their bodies were as cold as the ice itself. Some stood around gouts of writhing blue flame that gave no warmth. None spared him a glance as the guards dragged him past, though in his wake he often heard avalanches of laughter.

At the top of a great pile of crystalline stairs, his captors flung open a gleaming gate and pulled him into a massive hall set with sparkling pillars of turquoise immensity. The booming of drums filled his ears, mixed with a chorus of eerie voices, low and rolling like thunder across the cold spaces. This must be the loftiest hall, the royal chamber. Blue-skin warriors lined the viridian walls. Now his jailers picked him up, only to throw him down again like a stolen treasure at the feet of their King. The savage drumming hammered against his skull.

Vireon stared up from the slick floor, blinking stars from his eyes, and inhaled a musky animal scent. The King of the blue-skins reclined on a throne built of tarnished mammoth tusks. On his left, a harem of nude Giantesses danced for his pleasure around a fountain of cold blue fire; at his right, a band of blue-skin drummers sang their primal cadences. A trio of white tigers sat at the King’s cthee ffeet, chained by iron collars to the base of his throne. The felines stared hungrily at Vireon, who lay merely fingerspans from their fangs; they licked their chops with ruddy tongues.

Chained like me. But still deadly.

The blue-skin King wore a crown of black metal set with sapphires. It gleamed in the icy light, like the weird fires of his domain. The ice in his beard crackled as he shifted in his great chair to stare at the prisoner. A huge axe lay at his side, its double blade of iron glittering with a sheen of frost.

The Ice King raised his hand. The drums stopped, the dancers fell upon their furs, and silence reigned in the hall. Vireon ignored the pain in his skull and limbs… his shoulders were coming back to life now. He forced himself onto his knees, then to his feet. They hadn’t bothered to give him cloak or blanket, but at least they had let him keep boots and leggings. There was a terrible absence at his waist where his long knife should be. He stared into the blood-bright eyes of the Ice King.

The monarch spoke, and Vireon strained to understand his words. It was the speech of the Uduru – surely these people were Uduru, or had been in some remote age. But the accent was guttural and hard to grasp. He snatched what meaning he could from them.

“Little human… son of the South… You are far from home. No human… may come here. These are the hunting grounds… of the Udvorg… the Ice Clans. Are there more… humans like you… in our mountains?”

Vireon chose his words carefully. “I am no Southborn, no human,” he said, though it pained him to speak. His teeth chattered. His stomach growled and the white tigers looked at him hungrily. “I am the Prince of Udurum… My father is Vod of the Storms… Uduru King.”

The Ice King laughed, a sound like grinding glaciers.

“You… are a tiny human… nothing like the Uduru. Unless… they have shrunk.”

The guards laughed at their King’s jest. Vireon coughed.

“My father was Vod, King of Udurum…” he said. “But my mother was a human woman, Shaira of Shar Dni.”

The Ice King raised his frosted brows. “How… can this be?”

“My father was a sorcerer,” said Vireon. “He chose a human woman because he loved her. He has three sons. I am the youngest son… Vireon.”

The blue-skin monarch looked about his chamber, as if gauging the reactions of his subjects, but Vireon could not tell if any communication passed between them. It was all he could do to stay balanced on his unsteady feet.

“My name…” said the King, “is Angrid the Long-Arm. I am King here. Long ago… we and the Uduru… were one people. That is no more… the truth. Once we warred on the humans together… We drove them past the Mountains of the South… into the great wasteland of Serpents.”

“The wasteland is no more,” said Vireon. “My father turned it into a fertile realm, a land of thunder and rain. They ca craiThell it the Stormlands. There, as in Udurum, the Men and Giants live in peace.”

“Lies,” said the Ice King, his crimson eyes narrowing. He leaned forward in his great chair, cracking his knuckles. “You… are a Southborn… a human… and you invade our hunting grounds.”

“No,” said Vireon, and his coughing cut off his next words.

“Tell me!” growled the Ice King. “Tell me… where are the rest of your human tribe? Where are the invaders? Tell me… or you will suffer!”

“I am alone,” said Vireon. “I am no human! I carry the blood of Uduru in my veins! Only give me food and rest, and I will prove it to you.”

The Ice King waved a hand at his guards. “Tell me… and you will eat. Until then you starve.” The jailers grabbed him by the arms and carried him from the hall. Vireon would have screamed, but his voice broke in his throat. Outside the great doors, they tossed him to the frozen ground again, and he lost consciousness. When he awoke, he hung once more by his wrists over the crevasse.

How long would they keep him here before dragging him to the Ice King again? How long until the King tired of him and sliced him in two with that great axe? Or would he die of hunger first? These thoughts rang through his head as he dangled there, his two guards sitting against the ice walls. Eventually they fell asleep, and he joined them in the bliss of slumber. He woke frequently, his body racked with fresh agonies. Now the cavern lay in total darkness. The moon’s weak glow could not penetrate the depths of the ice here.

Vireon dreamed of his father standing on the sea shore, wrapped in a cloak of black fur, wearing his crown of gold and opals. Vod, standing proudly at his full Uduru height, stared at the rushing waves, listening to the voice of silence. The wind moaned and sighed across the strand. The sky was gray and the sun a leaden ball between roiling thunderheads.

Vod cast off his cloak, his sword and crown, and walked into the surf. Wavelets pounded his knees, and he walked on. Blue lightning flared in the dark sky. The water covered his waist and chest, and still he walked. Thunder shook the world. His crownless head bobbed above the waves, and the sun peeked out for a moment from behind the clouds.

Now Vod was gone, marching beneath the sea toward some mysterious grave.

Vireon woke with a start. A light shape was moving in the darkness. He heard the soft padding of feet and smelled a pleasant scent that had stolen his sanity days ago. Now the sound of a blade being drawn across flesh, quickly and deeply, slicing through cartilage and bone. The same sound repeated. He smelled blood, coppery and strange.

A light flared in the darkness. She stood before him: a radiant Goddess with a white flame dancing in her palm. Her other hand was a fist clenched about the hilt of his long knife. The blade dripped purple gore. The two blue-skins lay with their slit throats gushing cold, dark blood. She stared up at him with night-black eyes.

Vireon laughed as best he could. It sounded more like choking.

The fox-wom c"›Tld. an dropped his knife and used her feet to slide the blue-skin corpses over the edge of the crevasse one by one. They tumbled soundlessly into the dark pit. She turned back to Vireon and raised a key of red iron in her free hand.

Reaching out to grab his legs, she pulled hard at his ankles, and the chain above snapped through the ice. He fell, almost into the pit, but she had the lower chain wrapped about her forearm and dragged him to safety, all under the light of her blazing palm.

She used the key to unlock the chain and carefully unwound it from his body. His shoulders and wrists ached unbearably, and his stomach growled. She smothered him with her body, transmitting warmth across his chest and limbs. He reveled in the sheer ecstasy of warmth, blessed warmth… for now he understood what cold truly was. The flame in her hand faded, and she rubbed his arms, fingers, wrists, sending heat throughout his body. In the dark, as his senses came back to life and the pain receded to a dull roar in his ears, her lips brushed his and lingered. He wrapped his arms about her gently… more gently than he had ever touched a woman. The surge of his great strength had always made him a careless lover, but he did not have that strength now. They kissed tenderly and urgently, until suddenly she moved away from him.

She helped him to his feet and conjured the white flame back into her palm. He picked up the stained knife and stared into the deep wells of her eyes. How could he thank her with mere words? She pressed into his hand a piece of dried meat, and he ate it voraciously. It did not even begin to quell his hunger, but it aroused his metabolism and sharpened his senses. He could not place the flavor of it, but he did not care. It was delicious.

“What is your name?” he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.

She looked at him curiously, tilting her head. He asked again in the southern dialect of Uurz, again in the tongue of Shar Dni. She blinked at him, wordless, and kissed his neck lightly. She spoke neither Giant nor man language. Perhaps she spoke only the language of foxes. What was she? He grabbed her, more urgently this time, but she slipped out of his grasp, motioning toward the end of the cavern. She wanted to escape now. He nodded. There was no time for romance.

They ran by the light of her palm-flame through glistening halls of chilly gloom. She seemed to know the way as he did not, so he followed her. He was used to that, having chased her for days into the frozen north. They came at last into the great plaza of the blue-skins, where the light of cold azure flames flickered on the ice. She snuffed her flame, and they peered into the plaza, across a landscape of sleeping blue-skins wrapped in furs and blankets.

Looking at him now, she placed two fingers against her lips.

Yes, we must be quiet.

They crept through the sleeping plaza, stepping between the snoring bodies of blue Giants. She was silent as a fox, even in her girl form, but he was less so. At the crunch of every icy pebble he halted, holding his breath. But these Giants slept deeply. They made it to the center of the plaza without waking a single one.

She led him toward a great open corridor at the far side. He trusted her implicitly – that must be the way out of this glacier-fortre clacowass. He stalked past a slumbering Giantess, her arm wrapped about a snoozing infant half as large as a full-grown man. Never had he seen an infant Giant, and it struck him as odd. Then he remembered the Uduru could no longer have children. This is why they were dying out. He stopped, glancing about the chamber. Two more blue-skinned babies lay swaddled in furs and masses of pillows. There, a half-grown boy… there a young girl. There were more Ice Clan children than he could count. And this was only one chamber. How many existed in other clans outside the King’s roof?

The fox-woman grabbed his elbow, pulling him toward the corridor. They moved swiftly now, more sure of their invisibility. Crossing the threshold, they ran along a wide passage. She led him through a series of twists and turns, arched tunnels of solid ice, and came at last to a great wide stair. At its top they emerged into the open freedom of a starry night. Behind soared a sheer wall of emerald and indigo, the cold moon reflected on its lucid surface. There were no guards stationed at this outward gate, or she had already slain them and hidden their bodies.

She grabbed his hand, and they ran. He could only move so fast, but she slowed herself to stay with him. Into a frozen landscape they plunged, knee-deep in crisp snow. Scattered Uygas rose about them, branches dripping with millions of icicles. After a while Vireon looked back and caught his breath. She leaned into him as he enjoyed a full view of the Ice King’s palace, a mountain of crystal and sapphire looming against the stars. Towers, domes, and battlements of living ice. Ultramarine walls bathed in starlight. Its size was not quite that of Vod’s palace, but the nature of its glimmering substance was infinitely more impressive. It was a marvel of audacious, impossible beauty.

Then they ran again, until the Ice King’s domain was lost among the frosted peaks. The golden glow of dawn lit up the pristine mountainsides. Vireon and the fox-woman fell into a bank of soft snow. The sun warmed their skins, and they made fierce love beneath the beaming sky. She gave herself to him with an animal urgency; he took her as a parched man takes cool water. A rush of mad sensations staggered him with pleasure, erasing all his agonies. Afterward they slept for a while on a carpet of green grass beneath melted snow.

Before midday she woke him, and they drank fresh snow turned to water in her cupped palms. Hunger still gnawed at him, but he ignored it. There would be game when they reached the lower climes of these mountains.

“What is your name?” he asked her again.

She gave no response.

They ran down the mountainside, toward green woodlands that still held sway below the white snows. Eventually, coming into a warm and verdant valley, he found roots and walnuts to eat. She wandered off and came back with a fresh-killed hare. She ate it raw, but he declined. He would have to teach her the art of cooking meat.

He set up a pile of tinder and motioned for her to call up the white flame. She did, and he guided her hand to the woodpile, setting it alight slowly but steadily. She marveled at this, laughing like a child. She must have never done this with her flame. Then he built a spit and cooked the rest of the hare over it. She sniffed at the smell, and he grabbed her about the slim waist. They made love again, this time on a bed of leaves the color of her golden hair, and when they were do c th She looked at him strangely but indulged his request. She enjoyed it no more or less than she had raw. He laughed.

They rested in the valley until the sun sank behind the white-capped mountains. The Ice King’s mountains… realm of the Ice Clans.

“ Long ago… we and the Uduru… were one people.”

Did Fangodrim know about these Udvorg? Did any other Uduru know? Did they remember at all their lost cousins in the north?

Vireon thought of the blue-skin babies, the Udvorg children sleeping in their icy home.

He thought of his uncle and all his Giant cousins, aging and resigned to extinction. He thought of the Uduri, barren of womb and empty of hope. Did the Udur u really have to die out?

Could this mean hope for Vod’s people?

My people.

He stroked a hand across his lover’s cheek, pulling her close.

“I have to go back,” he told her. “I have to make peace with the Ice King.”

She blinked at him, pink lips forming a half-smile.

He kissed her again and pondered his impossible task.