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Some, but not all. The thing was still deadly, and it lifted a great spiked mace, the head dripping with foul tarry fluid. The weapon’s anointed edges were razor-cruel, and I could well imagine the damage it would wreak in Elder flesh, let alone that of mortals.
We could not expect much aid, for the Elder before and behind us were occupied with other work. They, and the wolves of Naras accompanying each one, were faced with a pair of liches completing the trap—and summat else.
Eol shouted, a thin noise compared to the creature’s malice and Daerith’s song, and the heir of Naras drove forward. The gem in his swordhilt, though wrapped, gave a great white starlike glitter through the leather, and he met one of the Seven with a clash.
Nathlásthey are named, those high servants of the Enemy. They draw the dead from well-earned rest to bind lesser liches in his service. The seven great captains of Agramar are terrifying creatures, brought by foul arts from some part of the Unmaking beyond the world and the Allmother’s grace. They rebelled against Hel’s rule as thebelrochbroke from Tyr’s to follow a different master, one promising them an eternity of wreaking suffering upon existence itself. The greater liches take shapes taller than men or even Elder, with heavy spiked iron helms and armor full of sharp-rent edges. Over it all they wear the black mantles, but those are not woven by any seamstress or even the foul many-legged beasts—larger cousins to those infesting Mistwood—which linger in the Enemy’s dungeons and spin noisome cloth from the agony of trapped thralls. The Seven’s mantles are aseidhr-darkness so thick and foul it takes physical shape, and they spread like oily smoke during battle, to confuse and disorient their prey.
Do something, a voice inside me shrilled. But I was petrified, staring entranced at the thing, as Eol’s cut was parried with a cold ringing clatter and the great mace descended.
The son of Tharos danced aside, handling the weight of his blade with more-than-mortal speed—for the wolves of Naras are granted great strength and quickness, and he used every fingerwidth of thegift upon that eve. From the left, there was a howl shading into a human cry at the end, and an Elder voice lifted as well.
Brought to bay by the Elder, a pair of lesser liches suffered dissolution that day; those who had fought the trap’s jaws were now free to move to its center, granting aid to their companions—or dying with them, for the Seven are far mightier than the restless, corrupted dead they govern.
Soren, slipping between his two forms like a shaggy ink-smear upon an oiled plate, flung himself at the thing. Beside him, Yedras and the other spearmen harried it as well. For all its bulk, it was quick indeed, and the din of steel meeting steel mixed with another of its sharp, unholy cries. It now had a giant sword in its left hand to match the mace in its right. The blade was black, drinking in failing daylight as its mantle did.
“Move!” Aeredh shouted in my ear, and though an Elder’s strength handily outmatched mine, I was so frozen with terror he had some difficulty lifting me bodily off my icebound feet.
But there was nowhere to run, unless we wished to leap into the deep, sheer-sided ravine we had been working along the edge of. For Gelad, Karas, and the Elder with them were driven back by the appearance of a fresh evil. It was a hungry floating thing, screaming as it burst upon us with a puff of freezing-foul breath, mouth gaping wide and its tattered feathery raiment flapping like giant wings, buffeting its prey.
Upon the Glass, a snow-hag might even be worse than one of the Enemy’s greater captains.
Lich and Snow-Hag
Dark strength they are given, those who serve the Enemy, and foul cunning of hand and eye. Some may speak honeyed words, others entice with promises, yet in the end it all arrives at the same place; the disguise is dropped, the blade unsheathed, the corruption unveiled. All rots under their touch, swiftly or slowly, for swearing allegiance to evil is to court Unmaking itself.
—Aenarian Greycloak,Aphorisms
Askeletal yellowed face, serrated rows of clashing teeth, great staring swollen black eyes with foxfire sparking in their depths—if I were to describe a snow-hag I might halt there, for every Northerner knows of what I speak. But it does not express their deep dry unholy reek, or the sound when its multiple bone-veined wings clap, nor can it portray the utter wrongness of the creature. At least the great lich,nathlàsin the Old Tongue, is shaped like an Elder or Secondborn or even dverger: Two arms, two legs, a body, and a head.
But a snow-hag… itshiftsas it floats upon a cushion of tinkling ice-shards ground so fine by whirlwind they can flay a great antlered deer to bone in moments. Through the cloud, stabbing insectile legs may be glimpsed, and its segmented hide is tough and hairy. It does not grow sluggish amid the cold like the weavers of Mistwood; only when sated does it slow. This one was hungry, having been leashedand brought on a hunt much as any man might bring a good hound, letting loose only when the quarry is in sight.
Gelad bled from a gash in his shoulder and another across his ribs, and even shifting between forms did not stopper the flow. He staggered away while an Elder—it was Kirilit, his paired blades flashing in a complicated pattern—darted at the hag, driving it back.
Aeredh halted, snapping a glance slightly to our left—but Arn cried out, a howl of baffled rage, and skidded to a stop before me; Daerith had loosed his hold. She leveled her spear at the hag, for though its bulbous eyes flickered with nictitating membranes, it stared unerringly at me.
Ifeltits attack, a great sticky-soft brush ofseidhrso foul I can barely avoid a shudder at the memory. They are quick, those winter-cloud hunters, and their many-jointed, clawed legs are dangerous.
But the chief way a snow-hag catches its prey is with its gaze, black as a pitch-pool and dangerous as a bog. Red coral in my hair turned to chips of burning ice, and there was a sharp twinge against my scalp—Astrid’s fingers while she braided in great hurry, swift-sure and merciless in their love.
Two of the hag’s legs flickered. Kirilit was flung toward the crevasse; Karas blurred into his second form, streaking for his fellow fighter. The wolf of Naras caught the Elder just at the crumbling edge, driving his sword into frozen ground as a woman will pin a fold to hold it in place for sewing, and my terror was such I almost did not notice. Aeredh hauled me aside, but there was Arn, and the hag was almost upon her despite all the Northerners’ efforts.
My shieldmaid was going to die keeping this thing from me, and I was once again fishgutting, utterly useless.
Another sharp tug against my braids. This time ’twas Idra’s fingers, an ungentle tweaking.
Then act, child.I almost… no, Iheardmy teacher, in an eerie moment of silence between another piercing cry from the great lich almost behind us, Daerith’s song faltering as he fought for breath, a featherbrushing breeze as Arn’s spear trembled upon the edge of swift movement, and Aeredh shouting something, I know not what.
I flung both hands out, and though Idra oft saidsmaller is better, the gout ofseidhrI tossed was the entirety of the stock granted me that moment. A supreme effort, sparing nothing, and by chance it was the one thing that mattered. My mantle’s hood was knocked back, the rest gale-whipped and almost torn from me.
Spending so long callingaelflameinto being day after shadowed day in the Mistwood, both with Elder preparations for the fuel and later with will alone, meant the blue fire was what erupted through me now. My fear added force to the burning; well it was so, for a snow-hag is resistant fuel indeed. It was like trying to shift a boulder in a muddy field, my feet slipping as Aeredh’s fingers bit into my mantle-sleeve and he sought to keep his grasp.
The very fabric of the hag’s body fought my kindling touch. Its gaze was a great vat of rotten pitch attempting to suck down and drown me.
But I know pitch, as any daughter of a river steading must. Blackened tar or tree-dropped resin is sticky, and itburns.
I heard shouting in the Old Tongue, my voice high and silver-clear weaving a net ofseidhr.Aelflameerupted from the hag’s hairy skin, its tattered rotting vestments, its feather-rags. One of its great bulbous black eyes popped with a loudcrackand the whirlwind underneath its abdomen exploded, a cloud of grit and sharp icicles flung in every direction. Arn’s spear jerked, the leaf-tip smacking flying debris aside before it could touch her.
Chance saved us once again, for Aeredh had gained his balance and dragged me toward him with a convulsive effort. I still had aseidhr-grasp upon the hag, however, holding the flame as I had all through the solstice night. The bright blue-burning mass streaked past us, tumbling like a wheel and shedding razor ice-knives. It barely avoided Yedras, who lost a chunk of his dark hair to flying debris. Daerith scraped the dregs from his lungs, a last burst of song rising with terrible vein-popping triumph as Eol brought his blade down in one final, irresistible sweep. The leather wrapping at its hilt was burned away and the colorless stone sang too, a high crystalline note matching my scream. The eldest son of Tharos clove the great lich’s mace-hand free even as thenathlàs’s sword-tip plunged into hisshoulder, and the captain of the Enemy would have struck Eol down nonetheless…
