The blue lights moved closer.
At first, they resembled lantern flames drifting through the frozen passage. Then one passed through the wall.
A small face emerged from the ice.
Its skin was nearly transparent, revealing dark veins beneath. Long fingers followed, each ending in a black claw. The creature pulled itself from the frozen surface as though stepping through a curtain of water.
Others appeared around it.
They had no wings. These were not the pixies that had attacked Wallowdale. They were lean, hungry things with wide mouths and shards of sharpened ice held like daggers.
One crawled from the ceiling directly above Grazim.
“Move!” Fendor shouted.
Grazim threw himself aside.
The creature dropped where he had stood and drove both daggers into the floor. Before it could pull them free, Isamu struck it across the side of the head.
The blow sent it skidding over the ice.
It rolled once, twisted upright, and hissed.
More emerged from the walls.
Four became eight.
Eight became twelve.
The passage filled with the scrape of claws and the high chattering of teeth.
Kaylor raised his sword.
The light along its edge revealed movement within the ice itself. Shapes were swimming beside them, keeping pace behind the frozen walls.
“They can pass through it,” he said.
Nethnarel looked around at the tunnel surrounding them.
“We are standing inside their weapon.”
The creatures attacked from every direction.
One reached through the wall and seized Fendor’s bow. Another emerged behind him with a dagger raised.
Fendor released the weapon rather than let himself be pulled into the ice. He turned, caught the attacker’s wrist, and drove his elbow into its face.
The creature bit him.
Its teeth passed through his glove and closed around his hand.
Fendor stared at it.
It stared back.
“That was unwise.”
He drew a short blade from his belt and drove it beneath the creature’s ribs.
Its body cracked.
Blue light spilled from the wound. The thing shattered against the floor, leaving nothing but splinters of cloudy ice.
Fendor retrieved his bow.
Hexen planted both hands upon the ground.
He felt no soil beneath him. No roots. No living things answered his call.
Only the mountain.
Only the cold.
Yet life had survived in harsher places.
He closed his eyes and searched deeper.
Far beyond the walls, somewhere within the network of caverns, wolves lifted their heads.
Hexen felt their hunger.
Their fear.
Their hatred of the creatures moving through the ice.
He called.
Howls answered from the darkness.
The ice-things hesitated.
A pack of gray wolves raced from a side passage the heroes had not noticed. They struck the creatures in a rush of fur, claws, and snapping jaws.
One wolf seized an ice-walker and shook it until the creature broke apart. Another was dragged halfway into the frozen wall before Hexen caught its hind legs and pulled it free.
The wolf landed beside him and growled at the ice.
Hexen growled with it.
Nethnarel glanced at him.
“You are doing that as a man now.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
The wolf looked at Nethnarel and growled.
“That one dislikes me.”
“It has sound judgment.”
Kaylor and Grazim held the center of the passage.
Kaylor’s blade burned through the smaller creatures, but each strike left frost crawling farther along the metal. Grazim used the light of his hammer to drive them from the walls before they could fully emerge.
The creatures feared that light.
They recoiled from it, flattening themselves behind the ice.
Grazim stepped closer to the wall.
He could see them watching him from within.
Dozens of pale faces stared through the frozen depths.
He raised the symbol at his chest.
Golden radiance spread across the surface.
The ice-walkers fled.
Their shadows vanished into the mountain.
Those already in the passage tried to follow, but Isamu moved among them.
He struck one into the path of Kaylor’s sword. He swept the legs from another and drove it beneath Grazim’s descending hammer. His curved blade remained sheathed. The narrow space belonged to open hands, elbows, knees, and speed.
One creature leapt upon his back.
Isamu caught its wrist over his shoulder and threw it into the wall.
Instead of striking the surface, the creature passed through it.
Isamu’s hand followed.
For an instant, his fingers entered the ice without resistance.
Cold closed around his wrist.
Something seized him from within.
He was pulled forward.
Kaylor caught him around the waist.
More hands appeared beneath the ice, grasping Isamu’s arm and shoulder.
“Pull!” Kaylor shouted.
Grazim joined him.
The three men strained against the wall.
Isamu felt claws drawing him deeper. His skin had already passed beneath the surface. Beyond it lay not solid ice but a vast blue darkness filled with pale figures.
They wanted him inside.
He stopped resisting.
Kaylor felt Isamu go still.
“What are you doing?”
“Trust me.”
Isamu stepped toward the wall.
The hands inside pulled harder, expecting his weight.
He turned at the final instant, twisted his trapped arm, and used their combined force against them.
Three creatures came tumbling from the ice.
Kaylor released Isamu and brought his sword down.
Grazim’s hammer followed.
The last creature tried to crawl back into the wall.
One of Hexen’s wolves caught it by the ankle.
The pack dragged it away from the ice and tore it apart.
Silence fell.
The surviving wolves paced the passage, sniffing the walls.
Hexen knelt beside the largest.
“Can they guide us?”
The wolf looked toward the darkness ahead.
Its ears flattened.
It backed away.
“What does that mean?” Nethnarel asked.
“It means they will not go farther.”
“Why?”
Hexen placed a hand upon the wolf’s neck.
Images entered his mind.
A chasm.
White arrows.
The scent of larger predators.
Something with too many feet.
Hexen opened his eyes.
“They are afraid.”
Fendor examined the ice around them.
“They were not afraid of these things.”
“No.”
Hexen released the pack.
The wolves retreated into the side passage and vanished as quietly as they had appeared.
The six continued alone.
The frozen tunnel descended until it opened onto a narrow shelf overlooking a bottomless gulf.
Their light reached the opposite wall but not the depths below. The path continued sideways along the cliff face, barely wide enough for a single person.
Fendor tested the surface with one boot.
“The ice is solid.”
Nethnarel peered into the darkness.
“That is precisely what ice wants you to believe.”
Kaylor checked the two swords at his side before stepping onto the ledge.
The heavier blade had served him since the summit. Its balance, reach, and weight felt inseparable from the oath slowly returning to him.
The second sword was narrower and lighter. Pale metal ran through its fuller, and the pommel bore markings worn almost smooth. It had been among the weapons waiting beside him when he awakened, but unlike the larger blade, it had never felt entirely familiar.
He had carried it because leaving it behind had felt wrong.
He still did not know why.
Isamu went first.
He moved with his back toward the wall, finding shallow holds with his fingers and testing each step before shifting his weight. Fendor followed, then Nethnarel, Grazim, Hexen, and Kaylor.
They reached the midpoint without incident.
Then a hand emerged beside Isamu’s face.
He leaned away as an ice dagger struck the wall.
Two of the small creatures pushed themselves from the frozen cliff. One appeared between Isamu and Fendor. Another emerged behind Kaylor.
The narrow shelf left no room to turn.
Fendor pressed himself against the wall as the first creature slashed at him.
He could not raise his bow.
He drew an arrow from his quiver and drove it forward like a knife.
The point entered the creature’s shoulder.
It hissed and lunged, trying to force him from the ledge.
Fendor lowered his center of balance and let it come.
At the last moment, he stepped aside as far as the shelf permitted.
The creature’s momentum carried it past him.
He caught the shaft embedded in its shoulder and pulled.
The ice-walker spun into the gulf.
Its scream continued long after it vanished.
Behind the others, Kaylor fought with one hand gripping the wall. The second creature climbed across him, claws scraping over his armor as it tried to reach his face.
Kaylor could not swing the heavier sword in the narrow space.
The ice-walker climbed across his armor, claws reaching for his face. With one hand still gripping the wall, Kaylor drew the lighter blade from his opposite side.
There was no room to strike.
He released it.
The sword fell toward the chasm.
A line of pale light appeared between its pommel and Kaylor’s open hand.
The blade stopped in the air.
Kaylor stared.
The creature stared too.
He pulled instinctively.
The sword flew upward.
This time Kaylor did not catch it.
He turned his wrist, and the blade changed direction in midair. It drove through the ice-walker’s body without ever touching his hand.
The creature shattered, showering the ledge with fragments of ice.
The sword hovered beside Kaylor.
For one breath, it waited.
Then it returned to his grasp.
No one moved for several breaths.
Nethnarel looked back at Kaylor.
“You knew it would return?”
Kaylor stared at his sword.
“No.”
“An increasingly troubling theme.”
They continued across.
At the far side, the passage widened and curved through a series of natural chambers. Some were empty. Others held frozen bones embedded in the floors and walls.
Many were human.
Some wore fragments of clothing bearing the same six-starred mountain symbol found at the summit.
Grazim knelt beside one of the bodies.
“This passage belonged to the old heroes.”
“Or to those who followed them,” Fendor said.
Isamu examined marks cut into the wall above the dead.
The writing had been deliberately damaged, but several words remained.
THE ROAD OF WINTER
SEALED BY THE FIRST COMPANY
LET NONE OPEN THE GARDEN
Hexen read the final line twice.
“We appear to be traveling toward the garden.”
Nethnarel raised her blue flame.
“Perhaps it is pleasant.”
No one believed her.
The next chamber contained a circular wall of ice blocking the passage.
It was not natural. The surface was smooth and clear, fitted perfectly between the stone floor and ceiling.
Behind it, another tunnel continued.
“A plug,” Fendor said.
“The Queen sealed the road,” Grazim replied.
Nethnarel placed her palm against it.
Faint heat spread from her fingers.
“I can melt it.”
Kaylor looked back down the passage.
“How long?”
“That depends upon whether the fire cooperates.”
Hexen touched the wall beside him.
He called upon the heat of sunlit forests, summer earth, and the blood of living beasts.
Grazim added the warmth of his divine light.
The ice began to run.
Water pooled around their boots.
Nethnarel’s magic brightened.
The flame smelled faintly of cinnamon.
Hexen glanced at her.
“Still?”
“I have decided it is a signature.”
The opening widened enough for them to pass.
Beyond the plug stood a round chamber with six tunnels leading outward like the spokes of a wheel.
A frozen pillar occupied its center.
Within the pillar floated a human figure.
The body wore ceremonial armor. Both hands gripped a sword held point-down before its chest.
Kaylor approached.
The armor bore the shape of a burning sun.
Something inside him tightened.
“Do you know him?” Grazim asked.
“No.”
Kaylor touched the ice.
A memory flashed.
A crowded hall.
The same warrior kneeling before him.
A voice saying:
My oath follows yours, even beyond death.
The vision vanished.
Kaylor staggered back.
The frozen warrior’s eyes opened.
Everyone raised a weapon.
The eyes were empty.
Only frost remained inside them.
Words appeared across the pillar.
Not carved.
Written from within by spreading cracks.
YOU CAME TOO LATE
Then the cracks vanished.
The body became still again.
Nethnarel moved closer.
“I would prefer not to touch anything else.”
They searched the six tunnels.
Two ended in collapsed stone.
One returned them to the same chamber after a long, curving descent that should not have been possible.
The fourth contained dozens of frozen statues with their faces turned toward the wall.
None of the heroes remained long enough to discover why.
The fifth held the remains of a campsite.
Blankets had rotted away, but the ashes in the fire pit were still warm.
Fendor crouched beside them.
“Someone was here recently.”
“Lady Frost?” asked Grazim.
“No tracks.”
Nethnarel looked at the untouched floor.
“Someone who does not need to walk.”
A laugh drifted through the chamber.
Dark Voice’s laugh.
Nethnarel turned.
Nothing stood behind her.
The sixth tunnel led downward.
They followed it.
A low growl came from ahead.
Two enormous wolves stepped into the passage.
They were larger than those Hexen had summoned, with gray-black coats and scars across their muzzles. Behind them came two white wolves whose breath smoked with supernatural cold.
The white wolves lowered their heads.
Frost spread outward beneath their paws.
Hexen stepped forward.
He held one empty hand before him.
The gray wolves hesitated.
“Can you speak to them?” Isamu asked.
“I can try.”
Hexen lowered himself until his eyes were level with theirs.
He felt anger from the beasts.
Hunger.
Pain.
Chains.
The Queen’s presence clung to them like a scent.
Hexen reached farther.
For one instant, he touched the mind of the nearer gray wolf.
He saw a den beneath open stars.
Pups sleeping against warm fur.
Lady Frost standing at the mouth of the cave.
A silver collar closing around the wolf’s neck.
Hexen withdrew.
“They are enslaved.”
Kaylor looked at the collars hidden beneath their fur.
“Can we free them?”
One of the white wolves attacked.
Its jaws opened, releasing a blast of freezing wind.
The heroes scattered.
Ice coated the walls. Grazim was struck directly and hurled backward into Kaylor. Fendor rolled behind a ridge of stone, though the edge of the cold caught his cloak and froze it solid.
Negotiation ended.
The gray wolves charged beside their masters.
Hexen transformed.
The bear filled the passage, meeting the first wolf with a collision that shook frost from the ceiling. The animals grappled, claws scraping across stone.
Kaylor attacked the second gray wolf but turned his blade at the last moment. Instead of cutting its throat, he struck the silver collar.
The metal rang.
A line of light appeared across it.
The wolf recoiled.
Kaylor struck again.
The collar broke.
The animal froze.
The pale light vanished from its eyes.
It looked at Kaylor, then at the white wolf controlling the passage.
The freed beast turned upon its captor.
Fendor cut the second gray wolf’s collar with a shot made through the confusion of battle.
Both liberated wolves attacked the white pair.
The passage became a storm of fur, blood, and freezing breath.
Isamu passed between the animals without being touched. He struck pressure points beneath jaws and behind shoulders, turning attacks aside rather than meeting them directly.
Nethnarel gathered dark magic between her hands.
The power felt different from her usual flame.
Hungrier.
It drew warmth and color from the air.
She cast it at the nearest white wolf.
The creature’s fur withered. Frost cracked across its body. It stumbled as though years had passed through it in a heartbeat.
Nethnarel stared at the magic fading from her fingers.
“That was unpleasant.”
“It worked,” Fendor said.
“That does not make it pleasant.”
Grazim drove the weakened wolf back with a sweep of golden light. One of the freed gray wolves seized its throat.
The second white wolf fled.
It raced through the tunnel and disappeared around the bend.
The gray wolves began to follow.
Hexen returned to human form.
“Let it go.”
The wolves stopped.
They looked back at him.
“You are free,” Hexen said.
Perhaps they understood the words.
Perhaps only the meaning behind them.
They touched their muzzles briefly to his hands, then disappeared into the tunnels.
Kaylor cleaned his blade.
“The white one will warn whatever waits ahead.”
Fendor retrieved an arrow.
“It was already warned.”
A heavy impact shook the passage.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
Another followed.
Then another.
Six measured steps.
Something scraped along the stone beyond the bend.
The surviving white wolf reappeared.
It was no longer fleeing from the heroes.
It was fleeing toward them.
A massive head emerged behind it.
The creature resembled a reptile carved from frozen stone. Its body was long and armored in overlapping blue-white scales. Six powerful legs carried it through the passage, claws gouging the floor.
Its mouth opened.
Rows of translucent teeth surrounded a throat glowing with cold light.
The white wolf tried to pass the heroes.
The beast snapped its jaws and caught it.
The wolf disappeared in a spray of frost and blood.
The creature swallowed.
Then it looked at the six.
Nethnarel stepped backward.
“That has too many legs.”
The frost beast charged.
Grazim barely raised his hammer before its head struck him. The impact lifted him from the ground and threw him into the wall.
Kaylor attacked its flank.
His sword glanced from the scales, leaving only a thin line of light behind.
The creature turned with astonishing speed and swept its tail through the passage. Kaylor and Isamu were thrown from their feet.
Fendor fired at its eye.
A clear inner lid closed over the arrow.
The shaft shattered.
“Armored everywhere!” Fendor shouted.
Hexen became the bear again and threw himself against the creature’s side.
The frost beast outweighed him several times over.
It pushed him backward.
Six legs dug into the stone.
Hexen roared and strained, but the creature continued driving him toward the others.
Grazim forced himself upright.
Pain burned through his ribs.
The beast’s scales were too thick for his hammer.
But light did not need to pass through armor.
He spoke the battle prayer.
Golden figures appeared around him—faint warriors carrying shields and spears, their forms half remembered and half divine.
They rushed the beast.
Spectral weapons struck its head and shoulders. The creature recoiled, more from the radiance than the blows.
Hexen seized the opening and rolled aside.
The frost beast inhaled.
Cold light expanded within its throat.
“Down!” Kaylor shouted.
A storm erupted from its mouth.
The passage vanished beneath white fog.
Stone cracked.
The heroes were driven backward by a wind colder than any natural winter. Ice formed across armor, weapons, and skin.
Grazim felt the cold enter his lungs.
For one breath, he stood again upon an ancient battlefield.
The same creature towered before him—larger then, armored for war, carrying riders upon its back.
He remembered raising his shield.
There was no shield in his hand now.
Kaylor stepped beside him.
The dragonborn planted his feet and held his sword horizontally before them. Pale fire expanded from the blade, forming a wavering barrier.
The cold struck it.
Kaylor cried out.
The light bent but did not break.
Isamu stood behind him and placed one hand against his shoulder, lending his strength.
Grazim added his own.
The barrier held until the creature’s breath failed.
Frost covered Kaylor from head to foot.
He remained standing.
“Now,” he whispered.
Fendor had been waiting.
The beast’s inner eyelid opened.
His arrow struck the exposed eye.
The creature reared and screamed.
Nethnarel hurled the dark, withering magic into its open mouth.
Black veins spread across its throat.
Hexen charged in the form of the bear and struck the wounded side of its head.
The frost beast crashed into the wall.
Isamu ran along its lowered neck.
Each of the creature’s six legs reached for him, but none found him. He crossed its back, leapt above the head, and drove both feet into the arrow protruding from its eye.
The shaft sank deeper.
The beast convulsed.
Its tail struck Isamu from the air.
Grazim caught him before he hit the wall.
Kaylor ran beneath the creature’s raised chest.
There, between two overlapping rows of scales, he saw a faint glow.
A scar.
An old wound.
His sword remembered it.
Kaylor drove the blade upward.
Light erupted inside the beast.
The glow traveled beneath its scales, tracing the shape of ribs and spine. The creature staggered.
Grazim struck the same wound with his hammer.
The spectral warriors around him drove their weapons forward.
Hexen seized one of the beast’s legs and pulled.
The creature collapsed.
Its massive head struck the floor.
Nethnarel raised both hands.
Magic gathered in a dense sphere between them. Violet light, blue flame, and the terrible darkness of her previous spell twisted together.
For once, no feathers appeared.
No fish.
No unexpected door.
Only power.
She released it.
The blast entered the beast’s wounded eye.
The creature went still.
Cold light faded from its throat.
For several moments, no one moved.
Then Fendor sat down against the wall.
“I believe,” he said, “that we have found what frightened the wolves.”
Hexen returned to his human form and collapsed beside him.
Kaylor pulled his sword from the beast.
“It had been wounded before.”
“By us?” Grazim asked.
Kaylor looked at the scar.
“I think so.”
Isamu examined the six-legged corpse.
Its scales bore faint markings. Beneath layers of frost, he found part of the mountain-and-stars symbol burned into its flesh.
“This thing fought the First Company.”
“Then survived them,” Nethnarel said.
“Until now,” said Fendor.
Behind the creature, the passage ended at another wall of clear ice.
Beyond it shone many colors.
Red.
Green.
Gold.
The first true colors they had seen beneath the mountain.
Hexen touched the frozen barrier.
“Another plug.”
Nethnarel sighed.
“I am beginning to miss doors.”
Together, they summoned what heat remained to them.
The ice melted slowly.
As the opening widened, warm air drifted through.
It carried the scent of flowers.
Not living flowers.
Something sweeter and older, preserved beyond its proper time.
They stepped through.
A frozen garden spread before them.
Crystal flowers rose taller than men. Trees of translucent blue filled the cavern, their branches bearing blossoms trapped forever at the moment of opening. Colored light moved through every leaf and petal.
The garden climbed in terraces toward a broad platform.
Someone waited there.
A giant rose from a throne of black stone.
He stood more than twenty feet tall. Two heads rested upon his enormous shoulders, each wearing a separate crown of iron and frost.
One head watched the heroes with open hostility.
The other smiled.
Beside him stood Lady Frost.
Fendor’s earlier arrow had been removed from her shoulder. Her silver armor was unmarked, and her sword rested easily in one hand.
Dark Voice occupied a smaller throne on the giant’s opposite side.
Its hood remained empty.
Above the crystal flowers, ice pixies unfolded their wings.
Eight pale archers raised their bows.
The two-headed giant descended one step.
His voice came from only one of his mouths, yet it filled the garden.
“I have been waiting for you.”
Kaylor raised his sword.
Lady Frost smiled.
The giant lifted one immense hand.
“If I wished you dead, the garden would already be your tomb.”
His second head leaned forward.
“You have broken my servants. You have embarrassed my wife. You have survived the road beneath the ice.”
The first head studied them.
“That may make you useful.”
Grazim looked at the pixies surrounding them.
“Useful for what?”
The two-headed giant’s smile widened.
“Something was stolen from me.”
Dark Voice tilted its hood toward Nethnarel.
Lady Frost rested the point of her sword against the crystal floor.
The giant continued.
“A fragment of life that does not end.”
The garden became silent.
“Bring me the Shard of Everlasting Life,” he said, “and I may allow Wallowdale to survive the winter.”
Far behind the heroes, the opening through which they had entered sealed itself beneath new ice.
They had found the court beneath the mountain.
And the only road out led deeper into darkness.