Frostfell_ The Wizards - Mark Sehestedt [105]
Amira looked down at her son. "I don't know if I can do this," she said.
"You must."
"Please, Belkagen," she said, her eyes welling with hot tears. "He's just a boy."
"This is a cruel world, Lady," said the belkagen. "You now face what all mothers face. Your boy can be a boy no longer. You cannot protect him forever. He must stand on his own."
"I don't fear him standing on his own," she said, and the tears fell, freezing on her cheeks. "I fear him falling alone. He's not ready for this. Not yet."
"He will not be alone," said Lendri. "The belkagen and I will watch over Jalan. If anything tries to harm him, it will have to take our life's blood first. If it is the will of your gods and ours that Jalan die today, he will die beside friends. That is the most anyone can ask of the gods."
Amira sniffed, trying to contain her tears. She did the one thing she'd learned to do at a very young age: She turned her grief and heartbreak to anger. "I hate the godsdamned Wastes," she said. "I hate them."
"She is a hard land," said Lendri, "and she breeds hard children. Take heart and give grief to your enemies."
Something that was half-sob and half-chuckle shook Amira. "Ah, Lendri. Someday I'm going to introduce you to my mother. You'll learn hard then." She stepped forward, twisted a brass ring off her finger, and handed it to Lendri. "Here. Take this."
The elf took it and studied it, turning it in his fingers. "What is it?"
"Something a dear friend once gave me. It's magical."
"I am no wizard, Lady."
"You need not be, not with this ring," she said. She explained to him what it did and how to use it. "It will work only once, so don't waste it. It may not be much, but it helped me escape from that lecherous bastard Walloch when all my best spells were spent."
Lendri put the ring on the middle finger of his right hand and bowed. "Thank you, Lady. I will use this gift in service to your son."
The belkagen cleared his throat and said, "Amira."
"Yes?" Only a slight flutter shook her voice.
"It is time. We must wake Jalan and go."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Winterkeep
Late morning. The low, slate-colored sky threatened overhead, and Amira looked down for the first time upon the ruins of Winterkeep. Only the seven pillars-all broken at various lengths-were visible. The piles of broken stone and boulders that the belkagen had told her littered the ground were now only great drifts of snow.
But Amira had seen it all before. In Hro'nyewachu she'd seen Iket Sotha die, and in her mind's eye she could still see the seven-pillared colonnade, the wooden mansions and outbuildings, and the wall of finished logs painted in the royal colors of Raumathar.
The air was so cold that the snow seemed more of a frozen mist coming off the sea. From where she crouched on the slight rise of land, Amira could see the ruins, but beyond that was only a constantly shifting canvass of white and gray.
She turned around. Leren and two massive gray wolves crouched behind her. Panning out behind them were more Vil Adanrath, both elves and wolves. Some of the elves carried weapons, but a few had stripped down to loincloths so that they could change to their wolf forms in battle. Even with the small bit of kanishta root wedged in her jaw, flooding her body with warmth, just watching the nearly naked elves crouched in the snow made her shiver.
"Any sign of the enemy?" asked Leren.
Amira found it an odd question, elf eyesight being far superior to her own. But then she realized that she could sense something. Through the thick hide of her gloves, she could feel power pulsing through the staff, connecting her to their surroundings, almost as if the staff were a young sapling with thousands upon thousands of roots spreading throughout the ground. To the north, scattered throughout the ruins of Winterkeep, that life seemed to twist and warp, as if shunning something there.
"Something's down there," she said. "I can't see it, but I can sense it."
"Iket Sotha is very old," said Leren. "Terrible things happened there long ago, and many foul creatures