Cold and Barren is the Land

Penryn’s face smashed into the snow as his sister’s hand came down on this shoulder when she crawled off his back. He hadn’t noted it in the middle of battle, but he’d definitely been injured and this wasn’t helping. He groaned in protest and she croaked out an apology. She settled on her knees next to him and murmured a soft, “Oh God.”

“What?” Penryn asked, gathering his hands under him so he could push himself up. A shiver went through him as he levered himself off the ground and his hands sank into the snow. Wherever they’d portaled to, they weren’t wearing the right clothes for this. His chainmail would freeze on his body, and his sister’s light summer skirts would do absolutely nothing to insulate her from the wind that whipped around them. He cupped his hands to his mouth and huffed into them. Strange. His Kingdom was in the middle of high summer heat. Where had Cimber taken them?

“Look.” Cimber gulped, reaching out to thwack his shoulder.

Penryn glanced at his sister who had frozen to the ground, silvery blonde hair in a tangle around her, then followed her gaze to–

Oh God.

They were inside a massive skeleton.

His hand instinctively went to his sword where it had landed beside him on the snow, and he leapt to his feet. He hoisted his weapon up and turned in a slow circle, taking in the skeleton.

If the dead beast was around them, they were its heart. They stood in the rib cage, right where the organ should be. Above them were swaths of ivory bone, bars against the gray winter sky. Forward, toward the setting sun, lay a skull.

Penryn did one last turn before quietly sheathing his sword. There was no one around, or at least no one he could see. They were on a barren, icy field all except for the skeleton. It was like it had fallen in the middle of some great battle. He squinted his eyes to try to bring some contrast back into his vision. All the white snow and gray shadows were playing tricks on his eyes.

He held out his hand to his sister who took it and looked at him wide-eyed as he pulled her up. Her eyes were amethyst, the same as his own, and a hallmark of their ancestral line. Or they were. With everyone dead, the chance of seeing those eyes on anyone else was slim to none. The responsibility fell on the two of them, now, and with Eustus dead Penryn wasn’t sure Cimber would be interested in reviving their line anytime soon. He added it to his mental list of responsibilities.

She squeezed his hand twice, two quick pulses, and he gave her a small smile. She regarded him with an unmistakable sorrow in her eyes, like she knew what he’d been thinking about. Her eyes searched his a moment longer, and then she turned and nodded to the beast’s skull.

Time enough for mourning later. They needed to get out of the cold.

“What kind of animal do you think it was?” She asked. Her breath came out in a cloud and Penryn swung the cloak off his shoulders and swept it over hers.

She blinked at him as he pulled at the fine red material so it sat right over her shoulders. “There. That should help with the cold,” He said, satisfied. “You think it was an animal? More like a monster, from the size of it. Let’s go look.”

Penryn took one careful step and then another, wading through snow that came up to his knees. Cimber followed, walking in his footsteps. She took his hand to climb over the creature’s clavicle, and skipped ahead to try to peer through one of the empty eye sockets.

The skull lay on its side, jaw open, some kind of long-toothed cat. The fur and muscle had long since worn away, but Penryn could practically feel it snarl at them. He could almost hear it, too, although he knew it was just the wind howling over the open plain.

“What was this thing?” He asked, running a hand over the jawbone. The long teeth on the beast were the length of his body. The shorter hind-teeth were about the size of his forearm. “Where did you bring us?”

“I don’t know.” Cimber admitted, scrunching her face. “I thought we were just portaling to somewhere else in our Kingdom, but this…”

She didn’t need to finish her sentence. The only animal their world had that could even rival the size of this monster was a creature called an elephant, and the skeleton of one of those animals would have easily fit inside this monster ten times over.

“Those voices…did they say where their spell would take you?” Penryn asked. Dread started to pool in his stomach. Her voices weren’t always helpful.

She shook her head. “They just said I would be safe. I thought…well, I thought they meant somewhere without the Death Bringers. This isn’t exactly…” Her voice died off as she shivered and crossed her arms over her chest.

Cimber had been hearing voices since she grew into her magic at the age of fifteen. It was rare in his world, and unwelcome. Theirs were a people forged in fire, born to the blade. Magic was temperamental, flighty, and the sign of a weaker species. His father hadn’t been pleased when Cimber had shown signs of power, and the voices hadn’t helped.

They were forever telling Cimber to leave, to come find them, to try this spell or that, and sometimes, rarely, they’d show her visions of the future. She had been strictly ordered to ignore the voices and get on with her duties as the Kingdom’s princess. Her attempts to hide her magic had been largely successful, a secret between the two siblings, up until Penryn had called on her power to try to counter the Death Bringers when they’d emerged from the Hinterlands to usurp his family’s rule. He hated to pull his sweet, smart, peaceful sister into it, but his Kingdom was hers too. She deserved to try to protect it.

Fat lot of good that had done. He should have just left her alone, then maybe she wouldn’t have night terrors or that permanent crease between her brows. Penryn frowned and rotated on the spot, doing another surveillance check. “Enough of this. We need to find shelter and warmth. The sun is setting, this cold is only going to get worse and it’s been a–” His voice caught in his throat, “A terrible day. Come on, I see some trees over there, we might find shelter.”

It almost didn’t feel real. If it weren’t from the wounds he had sustained from the battle, he wouldn’t believe it had happened. But Eustus and Gallant were gone, and his sister was the only person he had left.

Cimber pinwheeled as she tried to pull her feet free. One hand caught on the monster’s tooth, and the whole world froze as a pulse surged, sending an energy wave out that shook the distant trees and sent snowflakes spinning.

“What–” Penryn started.

“Pen!” Cimber gasped, staring over his shoulder.

He whirled around. A light had blossomed in the center of the beast’s throat, and three men appeared. No portal, they just walked out of thin air. They were dressed in heavy furs with muffs pulled up under their eyes and worn hunting coats buttoned over their bulky frames. One of the figures pointed at Penryn and Cimber and yelled, “There! Secure them!”

“Secure who?” Cimber asked, mouth agape, “Us?”

It seemed so. He had no idea what they’d done wrong, but he knew a predator when he saw one. Months fighting the Death Bringers had taught him that.

“Run.” Penryn said. He grabbed her hand and tried to pull her behind him through the snow, but Cimber’s shoes had had enough. They were made of thin canvas and were barely suited for a light walk in the garden let alone the all-terrain trekking they’d been doing.

“Wargh!” She cried as her legs fought to drag her slippers out of the snow, and Penryn turned just in time to catch her under the arms to keep her from face-planting in the snow.

The two of them were no match for the men. Their thick-soled winter boots ploughed through the snow easily, and they were on them in an instant. Cimber screamed as one of them took hold of the back of her dress and wrenched at it. Anger ignited low in his belly. No way in hell were they going to get away with that. Penryn threw out his hands to grab his sister’s arms and clung on with all his might. He dug in his heels and threw his weight back, trying to yank his sister back.

“Port them!” The man holding onto Cimber called to a companion.

One of the men held up a hand and issued an impressive, ringing command. For the second time that day Penryn’s world lit up. But instead of falling into a portal he merely phased out of existence, leaving behind the punishing winter winds and rematerializing in a room so warm his ears instantly started to ache.

The sudden silence was deafening, but Penryn took advantage of the sudden shift to wrap an arm around his sister’s waist and haul her back so that he stood between her and their attackers. He pulled out his sword and pointed it at the men.

Bizarrely, the men had fallen to their knees and were bent over from the waist, hands on the ground in a show of devotion. Penryn froze. Behind him, Cimber placed a hand on his arm to peek out from behind his shoulder.

“Welcome, High Priestess!” A voice boomed, making the both of them jump.

As one, the two siblings turned. The tip of Penryn’s blade hit the floor with a startled chink.

Before them was a man, lounging on a throne. Penryn swallowed hard as his eyes found the crown on the man’s head. It appeared to be made of bone and iron, a hard crown for a man whose eyes were fierce. Behind him, Cimber went deathly still as a savage smile slid onto the King’s face.