Madeline Howard - A Dark Sacrifice

“And that one?” he asked. Merely to look into those eyes was like sinking into a well of dark water, wickedly cold and deep.

“A brute and a bully. I’ve seen him come to blows with several of the others. See, now, how the old one snarls and shakes his head, as though rebuking the braggart for his swagger?”

Kivik would have preferred to refuse the obvious conclusion but it clamored for his attention anyway. It gave him an odd sinking feeling to think of the giants as distinct personalities, with friendships and rivalries, antipathies and loyalties.

They were an ancient, mysterious race, the ice giants. Skørnhäär, that was an old name for them—whether Eisenlondish or some other foreign tongue Kivik did not know—a difficult word to get the mouth around. For years almost past counting there had been very little reason to call them anything, everyone believing they had been driven beyond the boundaries of the world ages past by southern wizards, or else bespelled into an endless slumber. He wondered if someone would make a new word for them now they had returned, and how they named themselves in their own language. In no way akin to humans, according to all the old accounts they were self-aware, rational, emotional, and therefore capable of barbarisms unknown to the animal kingdoms.

The silence on the wall turned prickly with things unsaid. “You don’t care to think of them being like us in any way,” Skerry observed wisely.

“Do you?”

His cousin thought for a moment, then grunted a negative. Kivik could almost read his mind: as giants, the creatures were formidable; as Men, they were monstrous.

“Like or unlike, they will probably grind our bones for bread readily enough,” he said glumly, “if they ever find a way to breach these walls.”

Skerry did not answer, but the sky flung down a stinging spatter of snow that burned where it touched bare skin.

Once everyone had accomplished the move indoors, a giddy enthusiasm broke out. Inside the keep and the adjoining towers, some of the braver souls took the ragged banners and tapestries off the walls, hanging them inside doorways and across shuttered windows to keep out drafts. Inspired by the broad marble fireplaces and deep circular fire pits, they started felling trees in the gardens and courtyards, where they had barely found the courage to gather deadfall before, until every room where people congregated had its own roaring fire. Farmwives and herdsmen brought their livestock in with them.

Soon, sheep and goats were seen wandering in the splendid high halls; geese, chickens, and other small fowl mingled with the human inhabitants in the snugger antechambers, wardrobes, and closets.

An odd winter-holiday atmosphere began to spread, even though it was the wrong time of year, even though no one had anything to celebrate. Yet the merriment was infectious. What if they were on short rations and often went hungry? They had shelter, fires, fellowship; they were surrounded by the wonders of a magical, long-ago age. No one was willing to believe that the food might run out entirely before help arrived.

And perhaps, Kivik told himself with a thin smile, there was a kind of wisdom in making the most of the fires and comfortable surroundings while they still could. Who could predict how long this peaceful interlude would last? He thought of the giants and were-bears outside the walls, he thought of the Eisenlonders—they were coming, and no amount of optimism among the refugees and camp followers could banish his certainty of that.

So while the halls resounded with a cheerful stir of activity and the people made merry with the little they had, the Prince made certain that his men continued to keep a careful watch from the battlements, and that those in the barracks spent a large portion of each day in mock swordfights, sketching out plans of the outer fortifications on bits of parchment, and otherwise preparing for the inevitable siege.

But there was someone at Tirfang who shared in none of the gaiety, someone who wandered through the cursed fortress like one in a bad dream.

A strange mood was on the princess Winloki, an intimation of evil that grew each day. She was always starting at noises or at scurrying shadows that nobody else heard or saw, and things seemed to be constantly, inexplicably going awry, though none but she recognized a steadily worsening pattern: Food stores spoiled despite the cold. Wounds went bad that had seemed to be healing. Small objects disappeared the moment she turned her back on them.

Caught between fear and frustration—and angry because of the fear—she even found herself quarreling with the oldest and most experienced healers, Syvi and Thyra.

“We should use only the simples and potions we brought with us from Lückenbörg,” she cried out one day. “Everything we brew here turns to venom!”

Startled by her outburst, Thyra dropped a glass phial, which shattered on the hard stone floor. “You acccuse me of poisoning our patients, Princess?”

“Not you—the Old Fortress.” Yet Winloki could see that her words were utterly wasted. There was puzzlement and disbelief on the older woman’s face—Thyra, who not many days past had been as terrified as anyone of entering the buildings.

Wherever Winloki went, she was always aware of some lingering residue of monstrous passions, ancient cruelties, and blackest sorceries. Yet altogether worse, because more palpable and encroaching, were the shadows: shadows milling about, clawing their way up the walls, shadows clinging to doorways and windowsills or hanging from the lofty ceilings like giant bats. Sometimes, where the shadows were deepest, there was a glint of blood-red eyes.

At times she was convinced that she was breathing in shadows. As the days passed, she began to feel starved for light, parched with the lack of it, as though she could never get a sufficiency. The great hearth fires seemed weak and anemic in the presence of her need, she felt so steeped in shadows. When that need was greatest, she took brisk walks through the courtyards, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sun struggling through the clouds. If it chanced to break through she lifted her face, letting the light beat against her skin, drinking it in.

In a pond in the courtyard a child had fallen through the ice and very nearly drowned. He said that a water nixie had pulled him down. But when his grandfather and another man plumbed the pool (it was not, after all, very deep), all that they found was pebbles, mud, and the roots of water lilies. Nevertheless, Winloki was inclined to credit the nixie.

She did what she could to warn the others of their peril, cautiously at first to avoid starting a panic, and then more directly. Every hint, every warning was received with polite incredulity. Even Skerry, who ought to have believed her—knowing the peculiar intuitions of which she was sometimes capable—even he returned nothing but the same infuriating silence he had used since they were children to outlast her more determined efforts to have her own way.

But can’t you see? she wanted to shout at him, folding her arms across her chest as if to contain all the anxiety and frustration brewing inside of her. Don’t you know that this is different?

He did not and would not. In truth, she sometimes wondered how she could ever have pledged herself to marry a man capable of such determined blindness. Then he smiled at her and brushed his fingers across her face, and she knew that even though he did not believe a word she said—even though he thought her whimsical, unreasonable, possibly delusional—he remained steadfast in his devotion, which was either heroic or heroically stupid. She preferred to think the former.

But none of this brought Winloki any closer to being heard, much less heeded. On the day she realized that the refugees were beginning to make use of the fortress’s perilous treasures—ploughmen eating moldy bread off dishes made of silver and onyx, their daughters wearing combs of opal and ivory in their hair—she very nearly gave up trying.