He closed a fist and felt a fearful rage move through him.

Life for life, he thought.

35

The wind was fierce in her face, blowing up from Vandar’s Mercy. Much as it was pleasant to see the view from here, Amilia Lukar was cursing herself for ever agreeing to this. “Are you quite ready, Elyon?” she called, over the noisy gusts. “You promised me that we would return to Ilithor by dusk, and we’re barely even halfway to Thalan.”

The prince was on one knee, rolling his right shoulder in its socket. He winced on occasion, and Amilia could almost hear the clicking of the joints even over the wind and the crash of waves below, smashing distantly against the Tukoran cliffs. “Just give me a minute,” he said. “I need to do my stretches so I don’t seize up.”

It was mid-morning, and the air was bitter cold. Amilia had dressed appropriately at Elyon’s advice, wrapping herself in rich furs and wools over godsteel mail and studded leathers to protect her, but the winds knifed through her all the same. Somehow it was even worse here on the hilltops by the coast than up there in the skies. Up there she had the world to look down on, at least, and there was something about the fear of flying that seemed to keep her warm. But standing on this hilltop was unbearable; it was a cold fierce enough for the deep of winter, but summer had only just begun.

“Just hurry up,” she said. “I’m freezing, Elyon. If I stand here any longer, you’re going to have to thaw me out.”

“And if I don’t stretch properly, we could crash, and die,” he came back at her. “So just suck it up and stop complaining. I’ll be done in a moment.”

She made a rude gesture at him, then dug into her cloak pocket to pull out a skin of wine, taking a long drink. Elyon frowned at her. “Oh, you didn’t think I’d come without refreshments, did you?” At least if we crash, I’ll be half drunk, she thought.

“What is wrong with you?” he said. “We’re going to meet the new King of Rasalan. You shouldn’t be drinking, Amilia.”

She shrugged and had another drink, then another just to ram the point home. “You should just be happy I’m here. I might have said ‘no’, you realise. Thalan’s not somewhere I ever wanted to go back to.”

“Yes, and I appreciate that. But this drinking…”

“Has got to stop,” she said for him. “Save it, Elyon. I’ve had that from Morwood and Mallister already, and I don’t need it from you as well.” She had a last swig for good measure, stoppered the skin with a cork, and put it back into the large inner pocket of her cloak. Then she drew it tight about herself, fastening it with her leather belt. “Are you ready yet? Just give me a timescale, at least. If you’re going to take another ten minutes, I’ll take a walk to keep warm.”

“No.” He performed a final roll of the shoulder and stood. “I should be OK to go now. Come on. Let’s get you strapped up.”

The harness had been of Elyon’s own design - with the help of old Archibald Benton - and allowed him to fly with another person strapped up to his chest. Amilia would prefer to straddle his back like she was sitting a horse, but was told that was not possible, and far too dangerous. She’d been drunk when she made the suggestion. She walked up to Elyon and slid her arms and legs through the leather loops, then he tightened them all up to make sure she was secure, harnessing her into place. “Good?” he asked.

“None of this is good, Elyon. But yes, I feel quite secure.”

“Let me know if you feel any of the straps loosening, and I’ll land. Do you want me to go at the same pace as before, or a little faster?”

She twisted her neck back to look at him. He was so close they could kiss, pressed up behind her like that. “How much faster can you go?” So far as she could tell, they’d been going rather quickly already.

“Much,” he said, smiling at her. “Though with my shoulder, I’d best take it easy. Thalan is still over two hundred miles from here, so we may have to stop again, but I’ll try to make it in one go if I can.” He paused. “Is there anything else you want to say before we take off?” Talking when in flight could be difficult, with the rush of the wind, Amilia had found. “Do you need to make water?”

She huffed at that. “I’m not a bloody child, Elyon.”

“No. You’re just a drunken princess who may need to take a piss. And I’d rather you didn’t do it when we’re airborne.”

“I’m fine. Let’s just go. I can hold my bladder if I must.” She did not like feeling demeaned like this, though supposed he had a point. Two hundred miles was a long way.

“Just tell me if you need to go, and I’ll land. I wouldn’t want you soiling yourself before we meet the king.” She could almost see him smiling behind her. Before she could conjure a response, he raised the Windblade and stirred the winds, and that deafening rush filled the air.

Amilia braced as her feet left the ground; it was not a sensation she would fast get used to and her heart was pumping hard, yet there was an undeniable thrill to it as well. Much as she liked to tease Elyon Daecar, she trusted him to fly her safely, and if a dragon should happen by, well, perhaps there would be a thrill in that as well. Fighting through the skies, battling in the clouds…Amilia wondered what it would be like to have an up-close view of all that, though in truth she’d rather not find out. Her stomach was sensitive enough as it was, and no doubt Elyon would do a great deal of jerking and twisting and somersaulting to outmanoeuvre his foe, and she would prefer not to choke on her own vomit. That would not be a princessly way to go.

Elyon lifted them up slowly at first, then a little faster, and at once the world spread out beneath them. Amilia cast her eyes around. To the far south, she could see the towers of Rockfall, Lord Huffort’s city seat, tiny as children’s toys at the base of the mountains. Northwest, more distant, the shining waters of the Clearwater Run jagged their way through the rugged lands of North Tukor. As they flew higher she could see the city of Ethior out there, the city of her lady mother and her kin, hardly more than a black smudge at the edge of her sight, built upon the river’s southern banks.

East was their direction of travel, though. Within moments they were flying directly over the choppy waters of the Sibling Strait, right where it opened out to form the great bay of Vandar’s Mercy. The story was as old as time. The god Vandar had been sick of the squabbling between the brother-gods Tukor and Rasalan, so had come here and torn them apart, forming the bay and strait as he did so, ripping the lands of the gods asunder.

Amilia didn’t believe that, of course, though she liked the tale. There were a hundred others like it, in which the gods had shaped the world. How Vandar had made the islands of the Bloodmarshes with his warhammer, smashing the land-bridge that linked the continents into a thousand tiny pierces. How the Hammersong Mountains had been raised from all the thudding of the forge god’s hammer, and so named thereafter as Ilith took the hammer up at Tukor’s death, singing his sweet melodies as he struck at his anvil, the sound of both hammer and song ringing out through the peaks. In the far south they said that Solapia had been Lumara’s favourite child, and so the goddess of the sun and the moon and the stars had made Solapia an island all of her own, where she could live in peace.

There were so many stories like that. Every land and every people had been raised by the gods and their followers and moulded in their image. It had all happened over such a long time, over countless millennia, right back to the beginnings of the world, but now it all seemed to be collapsing in on itself so quickly.

And what would be left if Elyon and his ilk prevailed? Even if they won - and the princess thought that most unlikely - the cost of life would be unimaginable. Hundreds of thousands had already perished, and great forts and cities across all the north were toppling like trees beneath the woodsman’s axe. Thalan was lost, and now even Varinar, the great impregnable city of the Steel Father, had been cast beneath the shadow of the Dread. How long until the same happens to us? the princess fretted. How long until Ilithor falls?

She did not like to confront all of that. She only wanted to drink, and dance, and sing, and take Mallister Monsort into her bed as often as she liked, and perhaps others as well, to indulge in the fruits and vices of the world before it all came crashing down. And why shouldn’t I? she thought, and not without a note of bitterness. Why should I not be able to enjoy these dying days in pleasure, and in peace?

And yet…it was growing harder to silence the voices, to sit by idle while others worked to save the world. As I drink and dance, the world is dying. As I sing a thousand more are slain. When I scream in the throes of pleasure in my bed, how many thousand are screaming in terror? Those thoughts gnawed at her, and her guilt was building. Little by little, her hedonism was losing its lustre. And so came the creeping, gnawing thought - maybe I should do something to help?

The air was getting colder, burning at her cheeks. She blinked from her thoughts and looked forward. Ahead, beyond the eastern shores of the Sibling Strait, she saw the Oakwood fringing the coast of Rasalan. There was a glitter of white atop the trees. Snow? she thought. At this time of year? She heard Elyon calling out to her, pointing his spare hand away to the north. “The Mercy is freezing over,” he shouted into the wind. “There are floes of ice out there.”

She squinted through the rush of air and saw that he was right. A thick carpet of ice was forming atop the waters, with broken floes jostling and bustling in the waves. That usually happened at the height of winter, and only during the coldest.

“It’s the same to the south,” Elyon was going on. “It’s raining almost nonstop across the southern parts of Vandar.”

“And the north?” she shouted at him.

She saw him shake his head. “This is as far north as I’ve gone.” He gestured forward. “Look. There’s snow up there, in the Highplains. The Izzun River is choked with ice.”

She saw that too, as they flew closer to the river’s mouth where it opened into the bay. Some ships were resting along the banks, and there were others that looked to have been caught in the floes as they crashed together and merged, right in the middle of the river. There were some men down there, small as fleas, trying to break the ice and get themselves moving, but it was a losing cause, that was clear. South of the Izzun, the harbour city of Steelport was much the same, its docks frozen over, the galleons and galleys and cogs and other trading vessels all stuck in the ice.

“The clouds are thickening ahead,” Elyon called. “It’s snowing out there.” His teeth were starting to chatter, and the wind was cutting bone deep. “I’m going to have to go faster, Amilia. Thalan isn’t far now and I’d sooner not freeze to death in flight.”

Amilia agreed. “I can’t feel my face.” Much more of this and she’d get frostbite on her nose, and her cheeks were stung red and raw by the wind and cold. “Go as fast as you need to. Just get us there safe.”

The extra speed only made it all the more loud and painful. The wind stabbed at her like a thousand small needles, cutting at her cheeks and eyes and lips. She squeezed her eyes shut and clamped her mouth tight, praying for it all to end. She could feel a crust of hoarfrost forming on her eyebrows, filling her nostrils, dangling off her lashes.

After a long while she heard a shout. “There, Amilia. We’re almost there.”

Thank the gods. She opened her eyes with some effort; the cold had almost glued them shut. Through the sudden white world through which they were flying she could see the city spreading out before her, ghostly in its pale misty mantle, a city of spectres and death. She had flashbacks from the night it fell. The dragons and the fire and Eldur with his red eyes, and that voice from another world, filling all the air. The rush through the palace and the secret tunnels Astrid knew, and the gasping, leg-burning escape into the Highplains to the north. The City of Thalan had become a hell that night, visited by the wrath of a god. And now that hell has frozen over, Amilia thought, as they flew across its stiff dead corpse.

They passed over the harbour where the city straddled the Izzun River. The boats were thick below them, clustered and frozen at their docks. The masts wore white cloaks, and from the rigging icicles hung down. Beyond, the city stepped up through its levels, its whitewashed walls and painted roofs, in ocean-blue and sun-yellow, all covered in a layer of snow. Great piles of rubble lay scattered where buildings had toppled, half hidden under their freezing blankets, and the open squares were deserted. At the rear, rising up with the Snowmelt Mountains to its back, the Palace of Thalan still stood above it all. The balconies were broken, the walls pitted and scarred, and some of its towers had fallen, but it still stood. To one side, Amilia saw the Tower of the Eye rising up near the cliffs, the rotunda at its summit torn open by the claws of Garlath the Grand.

“That’s where I saw him,” she said, with a shiver to her voice. “Eldur. That’s where he took the Eye.”

And Hadrin, she thought, remembering how her rat of a husband had whimpered and obeyed, taking the Eye off its tessellated stone pedestal, to fly away with the Father of Fire. That did not go well for him, Amilia had learned. Her husband had spent the following months chained to a plinth in a windowless chamber, scorned and mocked, his clothes worn down to rags, his flesh all but melted off his bones. She had the story from Elyon, who had been there to see her husband die. It gave her such joy to hear it, after all he’d inflicted upon her. “Tell me again,” she would say to him, as she cuddled in her chair by the fire. “Tell me how he died, Elyon. Tell me of his fear.” And she would sit there and listen, drinking down her wine, imagining the death of her rat-king husband over and over again, smiling.

She was not smiling now, though. There was nothing to smile about here.

“We’ll land there,” Elyon called back to her. “Just outside the palace. I see guards.”

His eyesight was clearly much better than hers, because she hadn’t seen a soul thus far. But as they flew lower, and came down to land, the faces started to show themselves. They poked from out of their broken hovels and peered from shattered windows. She sighted cloaked figures slipping away down alleys like mice, saw footprints in the snow. Through the palace windows, some fires were burning in its grand and stately rooms, glowing softly behind the shutters and boards, and outside on the steps were a host of guards, huddling about an open fire on stools and blocks of stone.

The soldiers saw them coming down. There were voices, shouts, and several of them stood and drew swords. The others made no effort to move. The rush of air softened as Elyon came in to land in a slow dismount, stirring loose snow from the surface of the icy cobbles and causing the flames of the fire to dance. Their feet crunched down through a film of ice, and Elyon dismissed the winds. All went calm and still.