Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 30

When Nathan’s party reached the high pass of Kol Adair, he felt a sense of purpose, if not triumph. With Nicci and Bannon, he had originally climbed the rugged mountains above the lands of the Scar, intent on reaching this singular pass.

Prelate Verna had ridden beside him up the last rocky switchbacks until the glorious top of the pass unfolded before them. Nathan breathed hard in the thin air, but he couldn’t seem to fill his lungs.

General Zimmer and his soldiers gathered on the open tundra. A large rock cairn marked the high point of the pass like a monument to fallen kings. By now, they were quite far ahead of the enormous marching army. Zimmer called out, “We rest here for an hour. Eat your food, drink your water. There will be plenty of streams on the other side. We need to keep moving toward Cliffwall.”

Amber and Peretta mingled with the Sisters of the Light, while Oliver shaded his eyes and squinted into the distance, as if amazed at how far he had come. Rendell hunched his head, the expansive panorama seemingly too much for him to endure.

Captain Trevor said sadly, “The first time we reached this point, Renn dropped to his knees and kissed the stones, but on our way back I don’t think he paused to admire the view, he was so anxious to get home to Ildakar.” Trevor heaved a sigh. “Now he will never go home.”

The two morazeth showed no discomfort from the brisk wind. They studied the steep route down the other side of the pass. “It looks like a rugged journey ahead,” Lyesse said.

Nathan looked down the western slope to where he could see broken glaciers that had tumbled down in a recent avalanche. “It will be a far more difficult route for that giant army. In many places, the soldiers will have to move single file. We’ll pull even farther ahead.”

He claimed a boulder for his seat and removed the life book from its pouch. With numb fingertips, he traced the leather cover. The book contained a chronicle of history and adventure, everything he had done since leaving the Dark Lands far to the north. He had filled many of the pages, and he could hardly believe all he had done and faced.

Verna sat next to him on the large rock. “You’ve been here before, Nathan. What drew you to Kol Adair in the first place? Did you know what was on the other side? Were you looking for Ildakar?”

“Kol Adair was where I hoped to regain my gift,” he said. “But it was just a step in a longer journey.” Now that he had discarded his stained wizard’s robe in favor of more familiar black pants and ruffled shirt, he rested his hand on the ornate hilt of the sword. Nathan stroked his smooth chin. “It was a prophecy, of sorts.”

“A prophecy?” Verna was surprised. “You of all people know how misleading any prophecy can be, even back when prophecy still worked. All the forked paths, true ones and false ones.”

“Indeed, my dear prelate. That is why the Sisters of the Light locked me up for a thousand years.” He raised his eyebrows. “And look what good that did you! It only led to the ruin of the Palace of the Prophets and caused great dismay to your entire order.” He sniffed. “Serves you right. You should know what happens to anyone who attempts to thwart prophecy.”

“Yet you came here yourself following a prophecy. Weren’t you aware of the danger?”

“A desperate man will grasp at any hope, and a desperate wizard has ways to believe what he wishes to believe. Besides, my dear, I wasn’t attempting to thwart prophecy, but to follow it.”

He opened the life book, flipped back through the pages, ignoring his neat handwriting. On the very first page he read lines in a different hand. “This is what the witch woman wrote. We didn’t know what it meant at the time.” He ran his fingers along the words as he read them aloud. “‘Future and Fate depend on both the journey and the destination. Kol Adair lies far to the south in the Old World. From there, the Wizard will behold what he needs to make himself whole again. And the Sorceress must save the world.’”

He paused. “My gift had abandoned me aboard the Wavewalker, you see. I couldn’t perform even the simplest magic, not so much as a spark of flame in the palm of my hand. Red had written those lines while my gift was at full strength, yet she knew somehow I would lose it.”

“If you’re interpreting the words correctly,” Verna said. “You, Prophet, know that a reader reads the details of a premonition according to his own wishes.”

“I did know that, but I didn’t remember it. I was convinced that once I reached Kol Adair, my gift would suddenly return, that I would achieve the end of my quest. But no, the words say only that I would behold what I needed.” He looked eastward beyond the pass. “And from here, through a trick of a mirage, we saw Ildakar, far away, shimmering as the shroud of eternity flickered. That is why we headed there, and eventually I did indeed get what I needed, the heart of a wizard.”

Nathan suddenly winced as pain shot through his chest. Ivan’s heart beat harder, pounding as if trying to break free of his rib cage, fighting back against its new owner.

Verna saw his grimace. “What is wrong? I’ve seen you rub your chest before. Does your heart still bother you?”

“The heart is not entirely mine.” He gave her a wan grin. “At least that is what Chief Handler Ivan seems to think.”

Loosening the laces among the ruffles of his shirt, he tugged open the front to reveal the long white scar on his breastbone. “This was where Fleshmancer Andre tore out my heart and replaced it with Ivan’s to give me my gift back. Andre wasn’t sure the scheme would work, and I’m quite certain that Ivan had no wish to participate.” He tugged the laces tight against the chill breezes on the pass. “It wasn’t my choice either, but I had tried everything else. A prophet without prophecy and a wizard without the gift—I felt quite useless, Verna.” He wondered whether he had ever used her first name before. “At the time, I accepted what I had to do, and now there is no reason to second-guess it. I do have my gift back, and I will fight against the enemies of the land. That is all I can do.”

Verna placed a comforting hand on his knee. “And what does the rest of the prophecy mean? ‘And the Sorceress must save the world.’”

“That part is for Nicci, I believe, but she’s been doing that all along.”

After a brief rest, the company moved on down the western slope. The lead horses picked their way in single file along the rougher and more jumbled terrain. In many places the road had been damaged, strewn with fallen boulders or swept away by sheets of ice and snow.

Holding on to the saddle horn, Zimmer rocked back and forth as his horse traversed the uneven ground. He glanced back over his shoulder. “Our avalanche certainly caused a lot of damage, Prelate.”

Nathan raised his eyebrows. “Your avalanche?”

“You’ll see soon enough,” Verna said as the first line of horses picked their way across an angled white field.

Dislodged pebbles and ice chunks still pattered down the slopes. Though Nathan felt uneasy about the unstable terrain, he could only imagine how difficult this passage would be for many thousands of marching men in full armor. By the time they reached Cliffwall, their small group should be a week or more ahead of the main army.

As the party veered around the broad fan of a fresh jumbled snowfield, Nathan realized the white blocks were studded with dark forms, a glint of polished armor, the sharp edge of a shield. A gauntleted hand reached out of the frozen mass. As the company approached, cawing ravens took wing from their feast of frozen meat.

“Those are bodies!” Nathan realized just how many corpses there were; not just hundreds, but thousands. “Dear spirits!”

“One of General Utros’s expeditionary armies,” Verna said. “We found them camped just below Kol Adair, beneath the heavy glaciers.”

Zimmer pulled up to a halt beside them. “We estimated they were ten thousand men marching in the general direction of Cliffwall. We stopped them.”

Amber, Peretta, and Oliver called out as they stopped by the edge of the avalanche field. “Some of the ice melted, but the bodies are still frozen!”

“Not so frozen that the crows can’t eat them,” Peretta said. “By summer, all these bones will be picked clean.”

Nathan tried to grasp what he was seeing. “What did you do? How did you cause this?”

Verna seemed quite pleased with herself. “Renn was the only wizard among us, but there were Sisters of the Light and many gifted Cliffwall scholars. Together, we used magic to melt the ice in strategic places, which lubricated the glacier sheets. Gravity did the rest.” She shrugged as if it had been a simple exercise.

At the edge of the ice field, Nathan stared at the innumerable buried bodies, the armor, helmets, and the exposed faces with pecked skin.

The morazeth nodded with admiration. “Ten thousand?” Thorn asked.

“An impressive score,” Lyesse added.

Nathan turned to the prim prelate, seeing Verna in an entirely different light. “I had no idea you were so bloodthirsty, my dear.”

“I can be, when it’s necessary.”

“Yes, I suppose you can. I have seen you do many hard things over the years.”

Nathan and the prelate had an often contentious relationship. She considered him dangerous due to his gift of prophecy, and after he’d escaped from the Palace of the Prophets, she had tried to hunt him down. Nathan had only wanted his freedom, living his life for the first time, even though he was already a thousand years old. He had indeed found adventure and love, more than once.

He sighed. “After Clarissa was killed, I was so angry at you that I broke your jaw.”

Verna hung her head. “I am sorry about that.”

“You’re sorry? I’m the one who smashed you in the face.”

“Many things were different then. It healed.”

Nathan thought of beautiful, innocent Clarissa, and then Prelate Ann, whom he had also loved … and much more recently there was Elsa, who had sacrificed herself in a blaze of glory with her transference magic. “Not everything heals completely.”

He kicked at the armored glove of a body that was buried in ice and snow. Without gloating further over the massacre, he and his companions moved on toward Cliffwall.