Morgan Rice - A Grant of Arms

Then, finally, Steffen began:

“When I was young,” he said, “I yearned to be a warrior. Just like the other boys. Of course, it was not meant to be, given my body. They made fun of me. I did not have the body they had, the height, the strength, the looks—any of it. I did not fit the profile of the warrior, and they would not allow me a spot for training. So, instead, my parents decided I would be the servant for the family.”

Steffen sighed.

“I served them all, and those years were hard. But they could not break my spirit. When a day was over, after I’d worked all day for everyone, after I’d served and cleaned up after them all, after everyone was asleep and there was nothing left to do, my parents could not control me then. I snuck outside, roamed the hills in the moonlight, and I fashioned a bow myself, out of the finest sticks I could find. The local carpenter, he was a good man; he was not mean to me like the others, and he taught me how to craft one. He was impressed by my work, and over time, he gave me better and better scraps from his shop, and I made better and better bows.

“Before long, I was crafting the finest bows in town, bows that even the carpenter himself could not make. It turned out that I had a talent. He gave me arrows, and I taught myself. I would practice every night under the moonlight, until I became the finest shot in our village—and soon, even in our region.”

Steffen sighed again.

“Of course, my family knew nothing of this. I couldn’t tell them. They would make fun of me, or take it all away from me, because they never believed in me. But one day, my bow was discovered.”

Steffen fell silent, frowning, looking down, and Gwen could see the story pained him. He continued in the silence, the ice crunching beneath their boots, and Gwen wondered if he would continue.

Finally, he raised his chin and looked out at the ice with glassy eyes, as if looking directly into his past.

“The bow was under my bed,” Steffen continued, “and somehow, one of my brothers had found it. He had held it up and asked everyone whose it was, and they all looked to me. They accused me of stealing it. My mother dragged me to the local castle to have me put in the stocks—until the carpenter heard, and explained that I’d made it. My family was incredulous. They never thought I could make anything.

“My brothers took the bow from me, and they demanded that I prove it, to prove that I could use it. I was glad to oblige, but my brothers snatched it from me and insisted that they try first. They all fired clumsily at targets, missing. When they tired of it, they gave me a turn. With one shot, twice as far as they, I hit the target perfectly, the target they could not.

“My father, instead of applauding, fell into a rage. He stepped forward, took the bow, and snapped it over his knee. I can still remember the sound of that snap. It was like the sound of my heart snapping. It broke my heart, and it broke my spirit.”

Steffen sighed and turned to Gwen.

“My spirit has been broken ever since, my lady. It was not until I met you, until you gave me a second chance at life, that I began to feel my spirit revived. It was not until I met you that I ever raised a bow again.”

Gwendolyn felt a surge of emotion at his story, and it took her mind off the cold, off of her weariness, off of everything. She felt a burning sense of compassion for him, and also a sense of pride. She related to his story in some odd way—to his suffering, at least. She thought of her own suffering at the hands of McCloud, of how she persevered, of how the spirit could always persevere. She thought about how people could take things from you, how they could do their best to break you. But they could never break you if you didn’t let them. If you can just hang in there long enough, she realized, one day you will meet someone, even just one other person, who will see you for who you truly are, and who will restore your faith in mankind, and restore your spirit.

“Thank you,” Gwendolyn said to him.

They continued walking, trudging ever deeper into this strange world, weaving in and out of the mounds of ice, when suddenly, Gwen detected motion. She stopped as she saw a sudden movement out of the corner of her eye, something slithering on the ice.

“Did you see that?” she asked the others.

The others stopped beside her, and they all stared out at the landscape, peering between the mounds.

“I did not see anything,” Alistair said.

But suddenly Krohn started snarling, stepping forward, hairs on end, carefully, one foot at a time, and Gwen knew she was right, she had seen something. It was something long and white, and it had slithered between these mounds. For the first time down here, she looked around, and she felt afraid.

“Maybe you were seeing things—” Aberthol added, but then stopped speaking as another creature appeared, slithering between the mounds, coming right for them. It was a huge, white snake with three heads, one at each end of its body and a third in the center. The snake, U-shaped, slithered in a strange way.

Steffen drew his bow and Gwendolyn her dagger, as the snake came towards them. Krohn snarled, and began to charge.

Just as quickly, the snake slithered away, disappearing from view, heading in a different direction.

“What was it?” Gwen asked.

“I have no idea,” Aberthol said.

“Whatever it was,” Steffen added, “it did not look friendly.”

Suddenly, there came another one. Then another.

Several of them slithered towards them—but then they all turned away, at the last moment, scattering in every direction. The sound of their scales sliding along the ice gave Gwen the chills.

“They’re not attacking us,” Alistair observed.

“It looks like they’re scared of us,” Steffen said.

“Or like they’re running from something,” Aberthol added.

“From what?” Gwen asked.

There came a sudden tremor, and Gwen stumbled, as the ground beneath her shook. At first, she was sure it was an earthquake.

But suddenly, a huge mound of ice before her shattered, and out from it there sprang an enormous monster, fifty feet high and just as wide, entirely white, made, it appeared, of ice. He had a spine in the front of his body, and each vertebrae had a glowing red eye on it. It had eyes running up and down its arms, too, and at the end of each finger, it had razor-sharp teeth, ten mouths, opening and closing, snapping as the fingers came towards them.

It took a step closer and the ground shook. Gwen stumbled as the monster lowered its teeth right for her, coming too fast. In a moment, she knew, she would be dead.

Reece draped one arm over Krog’s shoulder, O’Connor supporting the other, the two of them helping him walk as the group hiked deeper into the unknown wilds of this exotic world at the base of the Canyon. Sunlight streamed in faintly through the turquoise and orange leaves of the strange trees that grew down here; Reece craned his neck and looked straight up, and through the swirling mists he saw the immensity of the Canyon walls, rising up into the sky, impossibly high. This place seemed magical. Reece could hardly conceive that they had come this far, had descended this deep, and he wondered if they would ever be able to make it back up again.

More importantly, as he surveyed their surroundings, he wondered if they would ever be able to find the Sword. There was no trail or marker, or anything to follow; the Sword could be anywhere. He marched through the mud-like material, a gooey substance sticking to his boots, this place filled with the sound of strange creatures. Reece had never imagined that there could be a whole world down here, plants and animal life, its own terrain, like a whole separate universe, sitting between the two sides of the Ring. He wondered what sort of creatures could live here, in the depths of the earth. He wondered if people could live down here, too.