Morgan Rice - A Grant of Arms

There, riding out front, sword held high, was one of the men he cared for most in the world: Thorgrin.

Kendrick’s greatest fear had come true: their time to meet in battle had come.

Gwendolyn walked in awe through the Valley of Trapped Souls, the endless maze of frozen bodies, Alistair, Steffen, and Aberthol beside her, Krohn at her feet, snarling. They were all on edge. It was the most eerie and desolate landscape that Gwen had ever entered. Every twenty feet or so another ice capsule protruded from the earth, each perhaps ten feet high, and just wide enough to contain a body. They were translucent, and inside each Gwen saw a frozen body, staring out with an expression of agony.

“What is this place?” Steffen asked.

“They are all trapped souls,” Aberthol remarked. “Destined to live out the rest of their days here.” Aberthol’s voice shook with exhaustion as he walked, leaning on his staff, the sound of it clicking on the ice floor the only thing to break the silence. “It appears in many of the ancient books. I never knew it really existed. And I never thought to lay eyes upon it in my lifetime. Then again, I never thought I’d take a journey such as this at my age.”

“But who are these people?” Steffen pressed.

“This place is a sort of purgatory,” Aberthol said, “a place where those of the magic race are brought to be trapped. Punished. To serve out their sentence.”

“For how long?” Alistair asked, looking up in wonder. She examined one face, of a young girl, trapped behind the ice, face pressed up against it in an expression of sadness.

“For some, it could be centuries,” Aberthol replied. “Their experience of time is different than ours.”

“What did Argon do to deserve such a sentence?” Steffen asked.

Gwendolyn felt overwhelmed by guilt as she pondered the question. She had been thinking the same exact thing, thinking how guilty she felt that Argon was here on her account. And how humbled with gratitude she was to imagine that he would risk all of it, would risk being put in this place, to save her life.

“He violated the sacred law,” Gwen said softly to the others. “He interfered in human affairs to help me. He saved my life. Seeing this, I wish he hadn’t. I would have rather died on the battlefield that day than to see him suffer this way.”

“Do not blame yourself,” Alistair said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Remember, Argon had his own destiny, too. Maybe it was his destiny to help you.”

Gwen had never considered that, and Alistair’s words, as always, provided her a sense of solace. Still, she felt ridden with guilt, and determined to find him—and free him. She would make wrongs right, no matter what she had to do.

“He will not be here forever,” Gwendolyn said back firmly. “What’s done can be undone.”

Gwen turned to Aberthol.

“Can’t it?” she asked, hopeful. “Can’t trapped souls be freed?”

Aberthol sighed, and looked down grimly.

“I’ve never heard of anyone being freed from the Valley of Souls,” he said. “I don’t know how it’s possible. I don’t even know how you are going to find him.”

Gwendolyn was wondering the same thing as they all marched through the valley, larger than any cemetery she’d ever seen, tens of thousands of frozen figures before them, like monuments to some other world. It was eerie and haunting. A gale of wind rushed through, freezing her to the bone, and she pulled her furs tighter.

Gwen could not even see where the valley ended, and it could take months to walk through this land. She was beginning to feel hopeless. She had no idea how they would ever find Argon here.

Please, father , she pleaded silently. Please help me .

Gwen thought of her dad, King MacGil, of how much he’d loved her, of how much she’d missed him. She’d never felt more alone. She wished he could be by her side, that he could guide her again, could help her. Why had he had to leave her alone with all of this? Why couldn’t he just be there to help her now?

Gwen heard a screech, high up in the sky, and she looked up with surprise to see a lone bird, circling. At first she could not see it well, amidst the clouds; but then it lowered, and screeched again, and her heart soared as she recognized it: her father’s bird. Estopheles.

Estopheles dove down low, screeching, circling them. She dove down low, then rose up, circling again and again, and Gwendolyn felt she was trying to give them a message. She flew off to one side, diving and rising, spreading her wings, and Gwendolyn felt more and more certain she was trying to tell them something. That Estopheles was trying to lead them somewhere.

Gwen had a thrill as she realized: perhaps her prayers had been answered. Perhaps she was leading them to Argon.

“She is telling us something,” Gwendolyn said to the others. “We must follow her.”

Gwendolyn turned and headed off in another direction, following her.

She marched quickly through the valley, and the others fell in behind her. She looked up, watching the sky, weaving her way between the ice capsules, all the trapped souls. She looked up at the faces, the bodies as she went, each capsule holding a more exotic creature. Not all were human. Some of them were of races she had never seen. There were men and women, young and old, in cloaks and robes. She wondered what they had all done to be sentenced and imprisoned here. It was like a vast army of the undead. In some ways, though, it was worse than dying. Here, they all seemed stuck in an awful state—not alive, and not dead, either.

Gwendolyn walked and walked, the cold so intense it was freezing her to the bone. She was feeling herself slowing down, sick from hunger, from exhaustion. Estopheles flew and flew, sometimes going out of sight, and Gwen began to wonder if she were imagining it all, if she were being led to the right place.

She wondered if this would ever end. She felt an intense pain in her stomach, felt her baby, Thor’s baby, turning over again and again, and wondered what would become of them. She had a vision of herself collapsing, being frozen in the ice, and never rising again, never being found.

Estopheles suddenly screeched, snapping her out of it, and dove straight down, to a patch of ice around the bend, perhaps a hundred yards away. She landed atop of a sole ice capsule, turned to Gwen and screeched.

Gwendolyn summoned her last bit of energy, walking towards it as quickly as she could, when suddenly she dropped to her knees in pain and felt an awful twinge in her stomach. She cried out in agony, barely able to catch her breath as an intense pain shot through her. She breathed and breathed, and felt like crying, more so for her baby than for herself. She prayed he was all right.

Gwen felt a comforting hand beneath each of her arms, and looked over to see Alistair helping her up on one side, and Steffen on the other. Aberthol was huffing to catch up himself, several feet behind. Krohn came over, and licked her face, whining.

Clearly, this trek had taken a tremendous toll on her, on all of them. They all looked more dead than alive. And Gwendolyn felt such pain, she almost wished she were dead.

“Are you well, my lady?” Alistair asked.

Gwendolyn held onto her tight, waiting for the pain to pass, to be able to breathe again. Finally, slowly, it did.

Alistair draped one arm over her shoulder, and they all began to walk again.

As Gwendolyn took one step after the next, making her way through the fields, slowly the pain subsided. She looked up and saw Estopheles on the horizon, and was determined to get there.

Finally, weaving their way between the capsules, they reached the one that Estopheles was perched on. She sat up there proudly, spreading her wings, screeching down at them.