Page 25 of A Call of Titans
"And I you," she replied."Always."
He slipped into the corridor's gloom and disappeared from view.Gwendolyn lingered, the solar's warmth turning chill, her hand pressed to her breast where his absence already ached like a wound.
She had waved her husband off, never to see him again.And now she was doing the same to her only child.She uttered a prayer to the gods that she was doing the right thing, and that she would lay eyes on her darling boy again before too long.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
The northern wilderness was a realm of unrelenting white and wind-whipped shadow, where the world seemed forged from the bones of forgotten giants.Jagged peaks tore at a sky bruised with perpetual twilight, their flanks armored in eternal ice that groaned like the lament of dying gods.Snowdrifts towered above any man, and filled hidden gorges, swallowing the unwary in suffocating embraces, while the wind howled through ravines with the wail of spectral hounds.Here, beyond the Ring's northernmost outposts, the land did not yield to empires or kings—it devoured them, reducing legends to frozen husks scattered among the pines.
Thorgrin staggered through this frozen hell, his breath ragged plumes that froze on his beard before they could touch the ground.Blood still seeped from a gash across his ribs, warm at first but instantly cooling to a sticky crust, that cracked and bled and tore with every movement and labored breath.
He had had little chance to reflect on what had happened.The betrayal, or on what had become of his beloved comrades in arms.It had taken every ounce of his strength and his resolve to breathe, to pump the blood around his body, and to put one weary foot in front of the next.
Occasionally, images of the ambush, of Proudlock’s treachery, flew unbidden to his mind, but he shut his eyes.He hadn't the strength to deal with the pain or fury they inspired.That had been days ago—or weeks?Time blurred in the grip of fever and frostbite, his body a vessel leaking life into the snow.His left leg dragged, numb from hip to toe, the cold seeping into his marrow like venom.Though the Sorcerer's Ring was no longer in his possession, passed to Guwayne moons before, the druidic power within him stirred faintly, an ember against the encroaching dark, urging him onward.South,it whispered through the haze.To the boy.To Gwen.But south was a mocking mirage, the compass of his will spinning wild in the blizzard's maw.
He knew by now he had been walking in circles.Buffeted by the wind like a leaf, mindlessly following mountain trails like some baby mountain goat, plucked from its mother’s teat.
He collapsed against a wind-scoured boulder, the stone's chill leaching the last warmth from his palms.A vision swam in front of him.Crimson snow, the echo of monstrous roars mingling with human screams.Had he slain the trolls?Or were they illusions, conjured by the same sorcery that cracked the Shield?He was getting confused, his mind mixing memories, merging them and spewing them out to create a new reality.He had a vague memory of losing his sword—the sword—but he couldn’t remember how.Or where.
His eyes started to shut, this time of their own accord, and he fought to keep them open, fearful that if they closed, they may never reopen, and he couldn't bear the thought of never laying eyes on Gwen or Guwayne ever again.
A low growl pulled him from the brink.Not wind, nor beast—but men.Shadows detached from the treeline, hulking figures cloaked in furs matted with ice and bone talismans that clattered like wind chimes.Barbarians of the Frost Clans, exiles from the Empire's fringes or older kin, their faces obscured by masks of carved walrus ivory etched with spiraling runes.They numbered seven, axes and spears glinting with frost-forged edges, their breath steaming in unison as they fanned out, encircling him with the precision of wolves on a lame stag.
Thorgrin forced himself upright, hand fumbling for a dagger that was not there.His voice rasped, barely audible over the gale."I mean no harm.I am Thorgrin, King of the Ring—"
A spear thrust forward, stopping inches from his throat, its barbed tip dripping meltwater like blood.The leader—a giant of a man with eyes like chipped flint and a beard braided with raven feathers—barked a guttural command in a tongue as old as the mountains around them, harsh consonants coupled with the hiss of wind through cracks.The others advanced, their masks leering: one carved as a snarling bear, another a vortex of swirling storms.Hostility radiated from them, raw and primal, their grips tightening on hafts stained with old kills.
Thorgrin's druid senses flared, tasting the air: not just flesh and fury, but something deeper—an undercurrent of fear, mingled with reverence.They did not strike.The leader tilted his head, sniffing the wind as if scenting his soul, then gestured sharply.Ropes of sinew and hide snaked out, binding his wrists before he could protest.A blow to the temple from a spear butt sent stars exploding across his vision, and the world tilted into gray.
He awoke to the jolt of a sled, lashed facedown across rough-hewn planks that reeked of seal blubber and pine resin.The barbarians hauled him through the drifts, their chants a rhythmic dirge that blended with the creak of runners on snow.Pain lanced through his side with each bump, fever-dreams bleeding into waking haze.Consciousness ebbed like a tide, pulling him under, then spitting him back to the surface.
In the depths, visions uncoiled— not dreams, but glimpses torn from the ether, druidic echoes amplified by his waning strength.He saw the Ring as it truly was, not a mere kingdom, but a jewel cradled in the palm of ancient forces, its borders etched by spells older than the stars.The Shield shimmered in his mind's eye, a vast dome of woven light, but now cracked and weeping, fissures pulsing with an alien rhythm.Beneath it, the earth stirred—not with trolls or sorcery, but with something primordial, sealed in the prologue of creation.
Ice.Endless, abyssal ice, veins of black that throbbed like a colossal heart.The prologue's rumble echoed here, magnified: the groan of mountains birthing nightmares.Seals cracked— not the Shield's wards, but deeper bindings, forged when the gods warred with elder things dredged from the void.Thorgrin floated through the vision, a spectral observer, watching colossal forms stir in frozen tombs: tentacles of shadow coiling around crystalline spires, eyes like fractured galaxies blinking open in the dark.They were not beasts of flesh, but essences—chaos unbound, hunger incarnate, older than druids or Blood Lords.The breaches were birth pangs, the Shield's failure a mere symptom.As the ice calved in cataclysmic sheets, releasing geysers of steaming vapor, Thorgrin understood with a chill deeper than winter: the catastrophe was awakening.The Ring's peace, the world's fragile balance, teetered on the brink of unraveling into primordial night.And he, the King of Druids, had been the unwitting midwife, his restoration of the Shield stirring the slumbering horrors below.
Gasping, he surfaced, the vision's weight crushing his chest.The sled lurched to a halt, and rough hands hauled him upright.Snow stung his face, the barbarians' chants swelling to a crescendo.The leader loomed, mask removed now, revealing a face tattooed with swirling azure spirals that seemed to shift like living water.His eyes bored into Thorgrin's, not with hatred, but a grim curiosity—as if appraising a relic unearthed from sacred ground.
"You bleed the old blood," the barbarian rumbled in heavily accented common, his voice like grinding glaciers."Druid-kin.The ice speaks of you in cracks and whispers.Why do you trespass the White Mother's domain?"
Thorgrin coughed, tasting copper."The Shield...breaches.Monsters flee south.I came to mend—"
A backhand silenced him, splitting his lip anew."Lies of the warm-landers.The Mother stirs because your ring-people meddle.Seals break, old ones wake.You are omen or sacrifice—we shall see."The leader nodded to his kin, who bound a muzzle of leather across Thorgrin's mouth, stifling further words.They lashed him to a central pole on the sled once more, but now flanked by torchbearers whose blue flames danced, fed with sacred herbs that filled the air with acrid smoke.Hallucinations clawed at the edges of his mind: the tattooed spirals on their faces writhing into the scenes of his visions, the ice beneath the sled cracking to reveal glimpses of abyssal eyes.
As they pressed on, the wilderness yielded to subtler signs of habitation: blazes on distant ridges signaling unseen watchers, cairns of mammoth bones topped with antlered skulls that grinned at the moon.The chants grew fevered, invoking names that tugged at Thorgrin's druid lore—Vyrka the Shatterer, Eyldra the Deep Dreamer—entities from scrolls deemed myth, guardians against the elder voids.These barbarians were no savages; they were wardens.They captured him not for sport, but purpose: to divine if he was savior or harbinger, to offer him to rites that might appease the stirring below.
Fever dragged him under again, visions fracturing into shards.He saw Guwayne, ring aglow on his finger, standing amid breached canyons as shadows longer than trolls slithered forth—not rock-skinned horrors, but fluid nightmares that warped reality, melting steel and flesh alike.Gwen's face flickered, resolute in council, but lined with the cracks of a crumbling throne.And deeper still, the ice-heart pulsed, a symphony of cracks spreading like roots, heralding the greater calamity: not invasion, but unmaking.The world as they knew it would fracture, swallowed by the elder things unless the seals were reforged with blood and forgotten magics.
He awoke to the scent of smoke and seared meat, the sled grinding to a halt amid a chorus of howls—human and lupine, blurring in the night.Torches bloomed like fireflowers, illuminating a primitive settlement huddled in a glacial hollow.Longhouses of mammoth hide stretched over bone frames, ringed by totems carved with spiraling wards that hummed faintly, repelling the wind.Faces peered from doorflaps—women with bone piercings, children clutching effigies of ice-wyrms— their eyes wide with a mix of awe and fear.Drums throbbed, a primal heartbeat that Thor felt came not from their instruments, but from inside him.
The barbarians dragged him from the sled, ropes biting into raw wrists as they hauled him toward the settlement's heart: a central pit ringed by standing stones etched with the same azure runes.The leader—Kragthar, Thorgrin gleaned from the chants—bellowed invocations, his kin forming a cordon of spears.Thorgrin's legs buckled, but they propped him upright, forcing him to witness the rite's prelude: a seeress in antlered headdress casting bones into the snow, their patterns foretelling doom or deliverance.
As the drums peaked, a tremor shook the ground—not the earth's idle groan, but something deliberate, probing.From deep within the encircling mountains, strange, otherworldly sounds echoed.Not thunder, but a sound as if the very earth was screaming.In pain.Or fury.
The settlement fell silent, faces paling, and Thorgrin's blood ran cold.The visions no longer portents but preludes.The greater catastrophe uncoiled, and he—captive king, dying druid—stood at its threshold.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
The first blush of dawn crept over King's Court like a thief in the mist, painting the eastern spires in hesitant strokes of rose and gold.Yet beneath this serene facade, the heart of the Ring beat with the staccato rhythm of dread.Torches guttered along the battlements, their flames licking at the fog like wary tongues, while the Silver stood sentinel in polished mail, spears glinting.Ready.Waiting.
