Brant straightened. The forest had emptied out. The world was snow and tasted of ice. The distraction of the cubbies had helped calm his heart, allowed his wits to settle. He was done running blindly like an animal. Whatever came from the north flowed south, driving the beasts ahead of it. There was another path. Rather than flee from whatever death was within the storm, he could step aside.
So Brant set off to the west instead, toward Oldenbrook, moving fast, abandoning quiver and bow to the snow. With his breath frosting the air, he fought the snow, underfoot and from the skies. He moved with an unerring sense of direction, swiftly, crossing frozen creeks and hurtling deadfalls. He flew as straight as an arrow.
As time froze around him, he fought only to keep moving, to put one boot in front of the other. His face went numb and senseless, vanishing away, stolen by the storm. He was only a walking, gasping lung. The cold now sliced with each ragged breath. He tasted blood on his tongue.
Snow continued to fall. He lifted his head, cursing the skies.
Flakes settled atop his upturned face-and melted.
The icy water ran like tears down his cheeks. It took him another two breaths before he realized the significance. The snow fell just as thickly, but this was no cursed blizzard. It was simply ordinary snowfall.
Relief surged through him.
He had cleared the river of death flowing through the wood, reached its western bank. He stumbled on with a coarse laugh, sounding half-maddened to his own ears. In steps, the forest vanished around him, and the lake opened ahead of him.
Free of the forest’s shelter at last, the winds blew stronger. Ducking against the onslaught, Brant headed out onto the ice fields. Ahead, Oldenbrook had been swallowed by the storm, but Brant trusted the tidal pull of his senses. He trudged onward.
Still, his brush with whatever Dark Grace tainted the storm had weakened him more than he had suspected. He coughed into his glove and saw the blood. His eyes watered, freezing lashes together.
He fought onward. Winds swirled and battered him, trying to drive him back into the forest. His legs trembled, and he could not stop his teeth from rattling in his skull.
Must not surrender…
Time slipped. He found himself suddenly standing in place. How long had he been frozen there? He stared ahead. The storm seemed lighter there. Was that the lamps of the city? Or was it merely the setting sun?
He moved again.
One boot…then another.
Then he was on his knees. He never remembered slipping down.
He craned up. Snow fell everywhere. The world was gone. Maybe it never existed. He coughed, wracking and loud, falling to one arm. Blood splattered the ice.
Trembling all over, he pushed up. A glow in the storm wobbled ahead.
He thought maybe he heard a noise that wasn’t the wind. He reached up and pulled down his hood.
“…this way!”
Brant blinked his frozen lashes.
“Braaaant! Ock, Master Brant! Where are you?”
Hope surged. He tried to answer, but another bout of coughing shook through him, taking him to his knees again.
But someone heard him.
“Over here, Dral!” a voice to the left called.
Brant sank to the ice. Two dark figures appeared out of the storm. They held lamps aloft, swinging from raised pikes.
The twin giants.
Malthumalbaen and Dralmarfillneer.
Brant closed his eyes with grateful relief. He sank around himself. Against his belly, two hearts beat. The Way had never been an easy path.
But it was the right one.
“Preposterous,” Liannora said under her breath. “Daemons in the snow…”
The next morning, Brant sat in the High Wing’s common room, sipping a healer’s draught of bitter herbs and warming alchemies. Thick drabs of honey failed to mask the acrid tang, and the swirl of complex Graces made his vision swim. He was under orders to drink it with every ring of the day’s bell. It was his second draught since being released from the healer’s ward.
His breathing remained pained, his voice hoarse, but the sputum no longer bled. Still, deep in his chest, he felt some sharpness if he inhaled too quickly, as if a few shards of ice still remained in his lungs. But the draughts slowly helped-as had a night buried under furs with bladders of heated water tucked against him. He felt almost himself again.
He warmed his palms on the hot stone mug.
By now, other Hands had gathered. By order of Lord Jessup. The god of Oldenbrook would be arriving shortly. All had heard Brant’s tale of some dread force cloaked in the heart of the past day’s storm. Doubt could be seen in their eyes and heard behind their whispers. Especially since the storm had blown itself out by morning, moving south and away, leaving in its wake a frigid cold and a world blanketed in windswept drifts of snow. The sky remained low and misted. Sunrise was more a pale effort at the start of a day, seemingly defeated before it had begun.
But nothing worse was revealed.
Just another winter’s day.
Talk of Dark Graces that stole through the forest, cloaked in a freezing snow, killing with ice, was little believed in the light of day, as meager as that light might be.
“How many winters have you spent up here?” Liannora persisted. She wore a resplendent morning dress of silver adorned with iridescent blue shells.
“This is my first full winter here,” Brant said hoarsely. “But I spent another three in Chrismferry, even farther north than Oldenbrook.”
Liannora scoffed, “Those are city winters, sheltered by towers, spent indoors, never more than a step or two from the nearest hearth. This is a wild winter. A true winter.”
Brant stared at her, wondering how many winters it had been since Liannora had stepped more than ten paces from the closest hearth. Or mirror, for that matter. He could not picture her traipsing a winter forest. But he stayed silent. He did not have the patience or the breath to confront her.
“Raised in the hot lands of the far south,” Liannora expounded, “you were simply ill-prepared for the savagery of our winters here. Imagining daemons behind every snowflake. I recommend you dress warmer next time. What were you doing out in that storm anyway?”
A pair of fellow Hands chuckled: the wide-hipped Mistress Ryndia and the skeletally thin Master Khar, Hands of seed and sweat, respectively. They were ever at Liannora’s bidding.
Brant felt heat rise inside him that had nothing to do with the healing draught.
Across the table, an older man cleared his throat, stirring from his seat with a creak of wood and bones. His intrusion was welcome. Brant respected the elderly Hand, though he represented the least of the humours: black bile. Master Lothbren was near the end of his duty here, bent and aged by his years of handling a god’s Grace. As much as it was an honor to serve, there was a cost. A god’s Grace burnt its bearers, setting flame to the candles of their lives, flaring them brightly but consuming them just as quickly.
The old man stared at Brant with eyes still sharp. “You rescued a pair of wolf cubbies, I heard,” he said.
Brant nodded. He had left them with the giant brothers, who had promised to deliver them to the castillion’s kennels, to get them warmed and fed. Brant had left his coat with the cubbies, the better to let them feel secure, to accustom themselves to his scent. He was planning on visiting them once he was finished with Lord Jessup’s summoning, to see how they were faring.
“For dogs!” Liannora spat with another roll of eyes. “He risks his life, his station for a couple of spitting curs. I daresay such an act smacks of disrespect toward Lord Jessup-to so wantonly jeopardize oneself when one is in service to a god.” She shook her head in disbelief and mild outrage.
Brant had heard enough. “Those dogs,” he said through clenched teeth, “were whelpings of the she-wolf your most glorious Sten slaughtered with razor wire and cowardly spear, while full to the brim with ale. He knew she had cubbies on her teat, yet he left them to starve and freeze.”