TheDawnbreakercleaved through the waves like a dagger through silk, her sails taut.She was a modest vessel, no grand war-galley, but a swift coastal sloop like those favored by smugglers and secret envoys—low-slung and nimble, with a hull of weathered oak.Under a canopy of stars that pierced the velvet night like scattered diamonds, the ship bore Prince Guwayne and a small band of companions toward the fog-shrouded isles of House MacGil's distant kin, a sanctuary of jagged cliffs and hidden coves where the Council's serpents could not slither.Or so they hoped.
Guwayne stood at the prow, one hand gripping the salt-crusted rail, the other absently tracing the etched runes on the Sorcerer's Ring on his finger.The night air bit sharp, carrying the tang of brine and distant thunder, but he felt none of it.His stormy eyes stared unseeing at the horizon, where the sea met the star-pricked sky in a seam of endless black.Dawn was still some hours away after their breathless ride, changing horses every hour to where the boat had been moored.
Through it all, there had been a range of emotions warring inside him, but one had won out, and now guilt devoured him.
How could he have left her?The question clawed at him, sharper than any blade from his training yard.Gwendolyn, his mother, the unyielding queen now standing alone against Aldrich's treachery.He could still see her face in the torchlight of his room, eyes fierce with love, her voice a velvet whip as she pressed the escape into his hands."Go, my lion," she had said, cupping his cheek with fingers that trembled only for him.He had embraced her then, fierce and fleeting, inhaling her scent deep into his lungs in the hope that some will remain with him throughout what lay ahead.But later, as he had fled the palace through the hidden tunnel and into the moonless night, doubt had burrowed into his heart like a thorn.
What if the Silver fell?What if Kellan's wall of shields crumbled under the weight of Holt's mercenaries, and Aldrich's knights stormed the keep?Guwayne imagined her bound, her regal poise shattered, dragged before that fox-faced lord like a trophy.Or worse—struck down in the bailey's bloodied gravel.The visions twisted in his mind until nausea roiled in his gut.He was the heir, trained in sword and strategy, wielder of ancient power—yet he had fled like a coward, slipping away on horseback in the dead of night.They had ridden hard through the misty vales until the salt winds of the coast welcomed them.Now, aboard this creaking ship under Captain Stolk—a grizzled Islesman with a peg leg and a scar-riddled face—they sailed for safety.But safety felt like surrender.
"Prince," a voice rasped from the shadows behind him.One of the men picked from the Legion to accompany him sidled up, his broad frame bundled in a woolen cloak, red hair tousled by the spray.In the dim lantern light from the forecastle, Guwayne watch him study him, concern etched on his features."You've been brooding like a storm cloud since we cast off.Eat something.There’s stew below—rabbit, or what passes for it on this tub."
Guwayne forced a half-smile, the effort like lifting a stone."I’m not hungry.”
The soldier leaned on the rail, peering into the dark waters where phosphorescent waves trailed the ship's wake like ghostly fingers."Guilt's a poor bedfellow, eh?Look, I don’t pretend to know the reason why you are here, but the Queen, your mother, she knows what she is doing.Battles aren’t always won by running headlong into them.And life is a battle young man.Life’s a battle.”He clapped Guwayne's shoulder, a brotherly gesture.It was one of the reasons he loved being in the Legion.He was treated no different.You earned respect, it wasn’t something you received in return for your family name.
Guwayne nodded absently, but the words rang hollow.The Isles, their destination, were a refuge, aye—a cluster of wind-lashed rocks ruled by his great-uncle's kin, far from the mainland's intrigues.But exile chafed against his blood, the same restless fire that had driven Thorgrin from his shepherd's hut to kingship.And the dreams...gods, the dreams grew worse with every league from King's Court, the Ring amplifying them into torments that blurred the veil between slumber and waking.
That very eve, as theDawnbreakerhad slipped her moorings under cover of fog, sleep had claimed him in the cramped captain's cabin—shared grudgingly with his companions.The vision had come swift and savage, no gentle fade into reverie but a wrenching plunge into the frozen north.He saw his father, Thorgrin, the King of Druids, no longer the serene monarch but a broken wraith in a wasteland of ice and shadow.He saw Thorgrin stagger through blizzards that howled like damned souls.His once-mighty frame was gaunt, ribs stark under rent flesh, blood crusting wounds that wept in the merciless cold.
As he had watched, his father had stopped, as if aware he was being watched.He had turned, and Thorgrin's eyes—storm-gray mirrors of his son's—found him across the impossible gulf."Guwayne," he rasped, “Come...before the unmaking."Shadows loomed then, not trolls but formless horrors—tentacled abominations slithering from abyssal cracks, their eyes fractured galaxies that devoured light.Guwayne reached out, the Ring blazing on his finger, but the vision shattered like ice under a hammer, leaving him bolt upright, sweat-soaked and gasping, the cabin's timbers groaning in sympathy.
He had shaken it off then, but sleep had evaded him, and the fragments lingered, gnawing like rats in the walls.Now, hours later, with dawn approaching he replayed it in his mind.Was it a dream or was it something more?
The crew—hardened Islesmen with tattoos of krakens and knots—moved about their tasks with quiet efficiency: trimming sails, coiling lines, murmuring prayers to the sea-gods.The rest of the soldiers slept below, exhausted from the ride, snoring like sawmills.Guwayne envied their respite.His body ached from the saddle's bruises, but it was the soul-deep weariness that anchored him to the prow.
A sudden gust rocked the ship, spray bursting over the rail.Guwayne gripped tighter, the wood biting into his palm, and closed his eyes against the sting.That's when it came—not a dream, but a vision, raw and unbidden, the Ring flaring hot as forge-iron on his finger.The world tilted, the deck vanishing beneath him, and he plummeted into ether, a spectral thread stretched taut across the realms.
He hung suspended in void, stars wheeling madcap around him, the sea's murmur fading to a distant roar.Before him unfolded the north in hyper-clarity: mountains like the spines of slumbering leviathans, cloaked in eternal ice that gleamed under a bruised aurora.Deeper still, through layers of rock and frost, he sensed the primordial groan from the beginning of time—the earth's belly rumbling, unleashing not beasts but chaos, black-veined ice calving in cataclysms that birthed geysers of shadow.
And there, in a glacial pit ringed by azure-rune stones, was Thorgrin.No dream-fugue this; the vision burned with the tangibility of touch, the chill seeping into Guwayne's bones as if he stood there himself.His father, stripped to ragged breeches, wrists raw from sinew ropes, knelt before a seeress in antlered headdress.
Thorgrin's head lifted, as if scenting the air, and his eyes—fever-bright, unbowed—locked onto Guwayne's across the gulf.The distance collapsed in that gaze, miles folding like parchment, and Guwayne felt the druidic bond ignite, father to son, Ring to blood."Guwayne!"Thorgrin's voice thundered in his skull, not a whisper but a clarion, full of urgency and paternal fire."Come north, boy—wield the Ring as I could not.Save the world...save me!"
The words struck like lightning, Thorgrin's form shimmering as shadows coiled at the pit's edge—tentacles of smoke and stone probing the wards, eyes like shattered voids blinking open in the dark.Guwayne gasped, the vision's weight crushing his chest, a phantom pain lancing his ribs in echo of his father's wounds.He saw the catastrophe uncoiling: breaches widening not just in the Shield but in reality's weave, horrors spilling south to devour the Ring, unmaking kingdoms in tides of primordial night.And beneath it all, the faint pulse of destiny—the Sorcerer's Ring on his finger answering its twin echo in Thorgrin's faded runes, a call to quest, to legacy.
The ship lurched back into focus with a slap of wave against hull, the stars steadying overhead.Guwayne sagged against the rail, breath ragged, chest heaving as if he'd sprinted leagues.The Ring cooled, its glow fading to dull obsidian, but the vision's fire scorched his veins.Alive.Father lived.Calling him north, into the maw of the unknown.
"Prince!"Footsteps pounded the deck—Captain Stolk, peg leg thumping on the wood, his scarred face creased in alarm."Gods, lad, you look like you've seen the Kraken's bride.What—?"
Guwayne straightened, the prince's mantle settling over him like armor, gray eyes hardening to flint."Change course, Captain.North.To the frozen wastes."
Stolk's jaw slackened, the wind whipping his salt-gray beard."North?In this tub?With winter's teeth bared?Beggin' your pardon, Highness, but that's madness.The gales'll shred us, icebergs crush us like eggs.We're bound for the Isles—safety, as the queen commanded."
Guwayne shook his head.He had never felt so certain about anything in his life.“We sail south to cower, and the Ring falls.North, to fight.That's my command, Captain.That’s my command."
Stolk's eyes narrowed, weighing the boy-prince against the man he glimpsed in that unyielding stare—so like Thorgrin's own.The crew murmured, hands twitching toward hilts and lines."It's suicide, lad," Stolk growled, but his peg shifted, testing the deck."TheDawnbreaker'sno icebreaker."
“Change course, Captain.That is where I am going with or without you.”He held the old sea dogs eyes, staring into them.
A beat of silence, broken only by the snap of sails and the sea's hungry lap.Then Stolk spat over the rail, a grim salute."Aye, then.Damn the ice and the gods' own fury.Helm amidships!Lads, rig for nor'east—tight as a miser's purse!"
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Consciousness returned to Thorgrin in fragments.First came the pain.It bloomed from his ribs, radiating outward, threading through his limbs like barbed wire.His left leg throbbed with a dull, insistent fire, the numbness giving way to shearing agony as blood trickled back into frostbitten flesh.His mouth tasted of copper and salt, lips cracked and swollen from the leather muzzle that had bitten into them during the sled's jolting trek.And his head...gods, his head pounded, each pulse a hammer blow against the inside of his skull.
He forced his eyes open, expecting the blinding glare of snowfields or the dim sway of the sled.Instead, warmth enveloped him—smoky, primal.No, not warmth exactly; it was the heavy, cloying heat of bodies packed into a confined space, mingled with the acrid tang of burning herbs that clawed at his throat.Blinking against the haze, Thorgrin made out blurred shapes, fur-draped figures huddled around a central blaze, their shadows leaping like dervishes on walls of stretched hide and bone.The air hummed with low chants, guttural syllables that rolled like thunder trapped in a cavern, weaving in and out of his fevered haze.
He was in a longhouse, he realized dimly.The settlement's heart, perhaps—the one glimpsed in his delirium as they dragged him from the sled.Rough-hewn beams of mammoth ivory arched overhead, lashed with sinew and adorned with totems: antlered skulls grinning down, feathers and bone beads dangling like frozen rain.The floor beneath him was packed earth, strewn with rushes that smelled of damp decay, and his wrists...his wrists were bound behind him to a stout post, rawhide thongs cutting into skin already chafed raw.He tugged experimentally, the fibers holding firm, unyielding as the mountains themselves.
