“You’re lying. You’ve always lied about this. Thala told you something, didn’t she? The Far-Seeing Queen, isn’t that what they call her? She saw far. She saw the shards being hammered back together. She saw the Heart being wielded. I know she did. Don’t lie to me, Father.”
The king shook his head. “If she did, she never told me.”
“You’re lying,” Amron repeated, louder. The mists billowed around him, pouring off throne and armour and blade. “Was it me? Will it be me who unites the blades? Is that what you’re frightened of, Father? Is that why you hold me back?”
Ayrin felt utterly exhausted. He could not keep going around like this, repeating the same things over and over. “It will not be you,” he said. “You will not combine the blades.”
Amron stared at him. “So you know? You do know? You have been lying to me.”
“I know you will never combine the blades. One day, perhaps another will, but not you. It will not be you, Amron.”
The prince burst up from the throne, the mists blowing about him in a storm. “Then curse you,” he shouted at him. “Curse you, Father. And Thala and Ilith too! Curse the bloody lot of you!”
Ayrin closed his eyes. He had no strength to fight him today. Not today, of all days, on the anniversary of Thala’s death, long decades ago now. He had hoped only to sit and remember her, to read and write and ruminate on her wisdom. Instead he was here, with his warmonger son. A son he loved fiercely, and yet feared as well. He feared what he would become.
A conqueror, the king thought. Ruthless and unmerciful. His armies will be enough to make him that, and his power with sword and spear. Varin had defeated Drulgar with the Sword of Varinar alone, and so too Karagar and Eldur at the Ashmount. He never needed the Heart Remade to win his wars and glory.
He will not wield it, Ayrin knew, looking at his son. He must not wield it, lest he bring the world to ruin.
It was a sad truth, but a truth all the same. Ilith had known it of Varin, and now Ayrin knew it of his son. One day, perhaps, someone would rise up to restore the Heart. But it would not be Amron of House Varin to do it.
Another, Ayrin thought. Another…who is more worthy.
PROLOGUE II
3,160 Years Later…
The hall was a dead giant, a fallen god of these lands, revered. The ribs spread overhead, curving, covered in pelts and furs and skins, and from the spine, yak-hair ropes had been tied, dangling down with grinning skull-lanterns that flickered with a blood-red flame.
Tables filled the space below, long tables roughly cut of hard ironwood, coated in tar, hammered together with nails of tooth and claw. Many were packed along the benches, wise men and warrior men and warrior women too, mothers and grandmothers with children on their laps, crones and codgers, all had come. There was a murmur, like a nest of hornets, of people whispering and hissing and chattering at one another as they waited.
At the head of Orthrand the earth had been raised within the thick stone skull, creating a platform between the giant bear’s jaws where the tribal lords would gather at times of need. They came for weddings, sometimes, and to come to terms of peace after their wars. Often those two things were linked, weddings used to end wars. Today they had come for a different reason. Today the matter was survival.
Stegra Snowfist stood upon the raised platform, garbed in his great white ice-bear cloak, broad-chested and wide-shouldered, standing at over six and a half feet tall. To his left was his teen son Svaldar, a younger version of himself, already grand and imposing. At his right stood Wagga the White, wisest of Stegra’s council. The rest of his snow-brothers were arrayed below; Kusto Crowbane, Jorgen Half-Eye, Sigurt Seven-Sons, little Briggor the Big and big Arnel Hammerhand, Niklas No-Name and Verner the Herald. Verner had won his name only recently, for being the one to see the sign.
Others of his tribe were here too, senior men and women of the Snowskins clustered about one long bench beneath the platform, with their snow-white hair and milky skin and bright eyes like chips of ice. The rest of his people kept to the encampment raised outside within the frosted basin where the bear god Orthrand had died, felled by the Red Storm thousands of years ago. There were many out there, many thousands from all corners of the free lands and the high places of the mountains as well, the ranges the steel men called the Weeping Heights. For long days they had been gathering, arriving on their greatyaks and mammoths, their sleds and sleigh-carts, answering the Snowfist’s call.
In the encampment outside they kept themselves apart, each tribe raising their tents and shelters and lean-tos away from one another, and the same was true in here. The tribes did not often mingle. Each sat along tables of their own. Next to the Snowskins sat the Deadcloaks of the Deadwood, heaped in their pelts and furs, brown and black and green. The Crowmen of the Crag wore only black, sitting shoulder to shoulder in their cloaks of raven feathers, their faces long and dour and ugly. Another table bore the strong Stone Men of the low ranges, who lived in their great caves…and another the Mole Men who dug their homes underground…and another the tribes who lived along the banks of the Silver Scar, a quiet fisherfolk who had few warriors of their own.
The people of the remote western shores were gathered in great abundance and had travelled the farthest to be here. They lived across the many small islands out there in the west of the Icewilds and wore clothes made from seal and walrus and whale, bearing weapons forged from the teeth of ice sharks and dragon seals. Their ancient leader had a necklace of massive walrus tusks around his neck which dragged him forward as he walked, and he needed to be helped along. He had brought with him his entire family, and hundreds of others besides, perhaps as many as a thousand. The family alone numbered over fifty, Stegra had heard. Everyone was enamoured with the Walrus Lord’s prize, a great-granddaughter of astonishing beauty who wore a cloak of white and black made from the skin of an orca. Svaldar was in love with her, his men had said, teasing the lad last night. The way he blushed - and Svaldar never blushed - had suggested it was true.
Last were the Wild Weepers. They had come only this morning, a small group of them prowling down from the Weeping Heights where they made their grisly lairs. A part of Stegra had hoped they would not answer his summons. Across the free lands, the Weepers were regarded with scorn and fear. They had cuts about their eyes, and strange tattoos and markings on their skin, and wore the bones of their enemies as trophies. One had a human skull on his head, bolted atop an iron helm. Another had a man’s severed arm hanging from his swordbelt, still with strips of ragged skin and wisps of cloth attached. Their leader was tall, cruel-eyed and insolent, with finger bones draped around his neck on a rope of human hair. Red scars slashed out from his eyes like a gruesome sunburst, and there were tattoos depicting scenes of torture inked into his forehead and cheeks and elsewhere no doubt too, though thankfully Stegra could not see them. The man’s name was Blood-Eye. Everyone hated the Wild Weepers, who sat at the back, snickering and sneering and scheming.
Between the tables, a single long fire pit had been dug, right beneath Orthrand’s spine. Flame ran along it like a long orange serpent, licking and hissing at the air with a thousand little tongues. Smoke rose in tight grey circlets, coiling to gather above them in a foggy cloud. The fire was warm, filling the hall. But even so, Stegra could feel the chill outside…that grasping, deepening cold. A cold that could kill them all.
He thumped the ceremonial bone-club to begin the session, smashing it hard against the huge, white-brown tooth that jutted up through the earthen platform. It rang out loudly through the smoky hall. The buzz died, and Stegra spoke.
“I am Stegra the Snowfist, Chieftain of the Snowskins,” he bellowed out, through the jaws of his bear-hood cloak. “You all know me. You know I am fair, and I am fearless, but there is a fear in me now." He pointed to the rear of the Hall of Orthrand, where the great pelt door had been tied shut to keep away the cold. Even so, the guards there were shivering. “The white world we love is changing. The deep dark we live in is darkening. You have all felt it, you all know it, and that is why you have come."
Murmurs filled the air. Nods and grunts of agreement. No one was standing and shouting at him yet, which was good. Stegra had rarely been to one of these conclaves where arguing hadn't broken out after the first words had been said.
"It is the End Fall," he rumbled in his deep voice. "The last great snow that will come down upon us and bury us all beneath it..."
Now the shouting began.
At once men stood from their benches, one, two, ten of them, more, all calling over one another.
"It is just another long winter," claimed Narek of the Crowmen, son of their leader Tarek. "We have seen long winters before. And snows deeper than this.”
"The Snowfist is scared of snow!” cackled one of the Weepers at the back, to jeers and laughs from his brothers. “I call you Stegra Snowbabe, bawling in your bear cloak!”
Stegra's eyes flared. He was about to shout at the man when a great heavy voice rumbled out, "We have lived through worse. We will live through this." He was Hraka, called the Great by his people, mighty leader of the Stone Men. They wore bones and stones as armour and many were of great size, towering above even the Snowfist.
Stegra shook his head. "This is different, Hraka. It is the End Fall. The signs have been seen.”
"What signs?" demanded the chieftain of the Deadcloaks, a woman of fierce green eyes and wild jet hair called Black Merryl, who was a woods witch all knew. Her voice cut right through the din. She did not have to raise it, nor did she stand. But she was looking at him with those strange eyes that had always disquieted him. "Do you talk of your Steel Lord, Stegra? And your Sea-King? Are these the signs of which you speak?"
Laughter filled the hall. The fools, he thought. "These signs are true."
"True?" sniffed the witch. "But what of these lands you were granted? This blight that was cleared? Rolling hills and sweeping valleys and woodlands teeming with game. Rivers so fat with fish you need only step into the shallows and you can pluck them up with your fist. A shore, wide and open, looking out into the great beyond. You have boasted of these new lands of yours, Stegra. Now you say we should leave?"
Stegra did not like this woman. "I have not boasted," he growled, from within his hood. In it he looked like a great ice bear himself, with his huge white beard and mane of hair. "I settled there. I led my tribe to these lands. I hoped more than any man to remain, and live in peace, but I did not count on the snow.” He looked around at the sea of faces. “You all know this is not a natural fall. It is too heavy, too constant, too cold. We are the Snowskins, we can fight the cold better than any of you. Yet even we fear it. Even I, the Snowfist.”
“Snowbabe,” shouted that Weeper again.
Stegra thrust a finger at him. “One more word from you and I’ll have your tongue.”
“I’ll have your eyes,” hissed the man.
