Jaleigh Johnson - Spider and Stone

“We’re on our way to see the king,” Icelin said. “Will you come with us?”

“Sure, sure,” Sull said, a wide grin stretching across his face. “My job’s mostly done anyway.” He fidgeted, scrubbing a hand through his hair, as if he were about to burst. “You two … I mean, have you … you have, haven’t you, you-?”

“I think our butcher might be delirious,” Icelin said serenely, raising herself on tiptoe to kiss Sull’s cheek.

“Must be the forge smoke,” Ruen agreed, slapping Sull on the arm. “Gets to all of us after a while.”

“Forge smoke! Idiots, the both of you-well, it’s about time!” Sull cried happily, sweeping them both into his arms in a crushing hug. “We’re family now. Nothin’s goin’ to change that.”

“Unless you suffocate us,” Icelin groaned. When Sull released her, she straightened her shirt. “Got that out of your system now?”

Sull was practically bouncing. “We’ve just had one weddin’, and here right off we’ll have another-”

“Hold on,” Icelin said. She raised both hands to rein in the butcher’s enthusiasm. “We haven’t talked about any of that yet, and in case you’ve forgotten, we’re far from home, we’ve a drow invasion looming over us, and a dwarf king who’s lost his head to deal with. You know, small details like that.”

“No, Sull’s right,” Ruen said unexpectedly. He stared out at the plaza and the revelers. Ingara and Arngam were on the dais, dancing while a trio of dwarf musicians played songhorns for them. “This is the time-the place doesn’t matter.” He drew his dagger. Icelin realized what he intended to do just a breath before he pricked his index finger with the point. Blood welled, and he touched it to his lips.

Icelin’s heart filled. She reached out to take the dagger. She pricked her finger on the blade and touched the blood to her lips.

“Will you stand as witness?” Ruen asked Sull.

Tears welled in the butcher’s eyes. “You know I will.”

“As will I,” said a familiar voice from the crowd, though Icelin was used to hearing it speak only Dwarvish.

She turned, only then realizing that several dwarves among the revelers had seen her and Ruen’s exchange and had gathered silently to watch. Obrin stepped from among them, with Joya and Garn trailing behind.

“I witness this union on behalf of the Blackhorn family,” Garn said. Obrin drew his axe, holding it in his hands so that the obsidian horns shone in the torchlight.

“I bless this union in the name of Mystra, Haela Brightaxe, and Moradin,” Joya said in her sweet voice.

“I speak with the voice of Icelin’s mother and father, and her great-uncle, to approve this union,” Sull said formally. He used his thumb to wipe a tear from Icelin’s cheek. Then he turned a stern gaze on Ruen and added, “And I’ll speak with my fists and my mallet if you hurt her.”

Approving chuckles passed among the dwarves. Ruen did not laugh, but bowed respectfully to the butcher. Joya stepped forward and took Icelin and Ruen’s hands. She pressed them together. “By stone and flesh are you bound before these witnesses. Be now bound by blood and heart, for as long as you live.”

Heart pounding, Icelin wrapped her arms around Ruen’s neck. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, their blood mingling in the dwarf tradition.

What a tale all this would make, Icelin thought fleetingly. Then Ruen deepened the kiss, and she thought of nothing at all for the next several breaths.

When they broke apart, Ruen still held her close, and Icelin saw his muddy red eyes gleaming with unshed tears. She started to make a jest about this being a truly momentous occasion, but she stopped. Instead, she stood on her toes and kissed the corners of his eyes, smiling at him.

“My thanks,” Icelin said, turning to Garn and the others. “But there are things we must do. We must see the king.”

Garn exchanged a look with Joya and Obrin. “He’s declared he won’t see anyone,” Garn said. “You’ll be wasting your time.”

Icelin shook her head vehemently. “He will see us.”

At the doors to the king’s hall, Icelin gave her name to the guards and told them to relay it to King Mith Barak. After only a few moments, they returned and ushered her, Ruen, Sull, and the three members of the Blackhorn family inside.

Mith Barak was not seated on his throne, but rather paced the floor in front of it. When he saw the group, he scowled.

“All come at once to badger me, have you?” he said testily.

“The king’s absence at the wedding feast is conspicuous,” Joya said, ignoring Mith Barak’s deepening scowl.

“The king’s absence from his city is conspicuous,” Icelin said. The dwarves tensed, but she had no more patience for dallying around the subject. She barreled on. “Your city and your people need you, yet you hide in this room-”

Mith Barak stopped pacing. He turned a black glare on Icelin. “Have a care how you speak to me, little one. I am not your butcher or your man, that you can tame me with a tongue lashing.”

“She’s right,” Ruen said. “Your people need their leader. Why don’t you go to them?”

“I will lead them!” the king cried, rage and anguish twisting his features. “To death, to annihilation, whatever the gods will, but for this last night, leave me in peace! Gods, you don’t know how I’ve longed for just one moment of peace in a century.”

“They don’t understand, my king,” Joya said gently. She went to the king and tried to take his arm, but he shrugged her off with an incoherent cry. “Your people don’t know what you have suffered. You must tell them the truth.”

“What right do they have to the truth?” Mith Barak roared. “What right to rip open the wound, to pour through my mind and heart?”

“Because they have shed blood for you,” Garn said. He gazed at the king with hard eyes, and his voice was not gentle like Joya’s. “Your people have endured torments of their own. They will not see their king as weak for having his own share of scars.”

“Scars, aye.” The king let out a bitter laugh. “Claw marks raked into stone.” He stood before Icelin. “Is that what you want, then? To see into the abyss?”

Fear surged through Icelin, but she didn’t back down. “I want to understand,” she said.

“And you to heal,” Joya said, laying a hand on Mith Barak’s shoulder.

“Very well,” Mith Barak said hoarsely. Silver flecks swirled in his eyes, a hypnotic light that snared Icelin and wouldn’t let go. “I’ll go with you to the dark places. I hope neither of us gets lost.”

Icelin opened her mouth to reply, but an icy gust of wind cut off the words, filling her mouth and making her chest ache. The world fell away, and she was flying, soaring high above dozens of mountain peaks. In and out of the cloudbanks, she dived and reeled. Terror and elation filled Icelin as she soared upward to even more dizzying heights.

“What is this?” she cried. She expected the wind to steal her voice, but instead a mighty roar split the air and shook the snow from the mountain peaks. Above her, the sun broke through the clouds and bathed the mountains in gold light.

“Look below you.”

Mith Barak’s voice reverberated in her mind. Icelin recognized it, and yet the voice was different, bigger, and full of an immense, mind-shattering power barely kept in check.

Icelin looked down and saw the shadow of a massive serpentine body on the unblemished snow. A pair of talon-tipped wings unfolded from its body, and its frilled neck ended in a thick, horned head.

By the gods, Icelin thought. This can’t be happening. If she’d possessed a body in this strange vision, she’d be trembling, weeping with the wrongness of what she saw.