The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [263]
“No, her eyes are open, thank the Seven, but she won't answer me. Your Majesty—lend me a hand.”
Strong hands reached down, gripping her, pulling her upward, and the sky tilted. Black shapes hove into view, jagged as teeth. Mountains. She gasped as the hands sat her upright, and cold air rushed into her lungs.
“Lay me back in the ground,” she murmured. “I'm dead. Lay me back down.”
“I'm sorry to have to disappoint you, Your Majesty,” the man said with a laugh, “but you're very much alive.” Amazement stole into his voice. “Somehow we all are, though I don't have the foggiest idea how that can be.”
Grace blinked, and three faces came into focus before her. Tarus and Teravian held her shoulders, and Aryn knelt before her, relief in her sapphire eyes.
“Thank Sia you're alive,” the young witch said. “We've been searching the battlefield for hours, but we couldn't find you, and night comes soon. Only we didn't give up hope.”
“We must have walked right past this place a dozen times,” Teravian said. The wind blew his dark hair from his brow. “We were certain you fell somewhere near here, Your Majesty, only we couldn't sense your thread. The Weirding is a tangle of life and death here.”
“It was this blasted crack in the ground,” Tarus said. “She was wedged down inside of it. There was no way to see her unless you were three paces away.” The red-haired knight grinned at her. “And I still wouldn't have found you, Your Majesty, if it hadn't been for your breath. It's getting colder, and I saw a white puff rise up from the ground.”
Aryn threw her left arm around Grace. “We were near you when it all happened, only we lost track of you in the chaos. We saw you strike down the Pale King. Then everything went mad.”
Piece by piece, the shards of memories came together in Grace's mind. She remembered ancient eyes, burning with hatred in a face as pale as frost. “He was about to strike me down with his scepter. I couldn't stop him. Only then the sky . . . there was a terrible sound, and something happened to the sky. Berash looked up, and I saw a gap in his armor. I thrust at it with my sword.” She looked around. “My sword . . .”
“There, Your Majesty,” Teravian said, pointing into the narrow pit in the ground from which they had pulled her. “I'm afraid you won't be wielding Fellring again.”
She must have fallen on top of them in the pit: several shards of steel. The sword ended in a broken stump just above the hilt. It had done what it had been forged to do; she would not need it again.
Thank you, Sindar, she whispered in her mind.
The shadows of the mountains stretched out over the vale, and Grace shivered. Somehow the world was still here, and she wasn't dead after all.
“I think I'd like to stand up now,” she said.
Wanting and doing were two different things, but with the help of the two men Grace got her feet beneath her. The feeling of wellness was gone. Her sword arm ached, and she couldn't feel her right hand at all.
“It's cold as ice,” Aryn said, touching Grace's hand.
She murmured a spell, and Grace felt the warmth of the Weirding flow into her. The pain in her arm receded, and her hand burned with a thousand hot pinpricks. She concentrated and found she could move her fingers.
Turning, Grace gazed out over the vale toward the Rune Gate, which yawned like a dark maw. The Gate stood open, but she saw no sign of the enemy—only the abandoned siege engines, which hulked like gigantic scarecrows over the battlefield. The floor of the vale was white in the gloaming. Had it snowed while she was asleep?
Another shiver passed through her. It wasn't snow that covered the ground. It was a layer of bones, stretching all the way to the foot of the mountains.
“The Pale King's army,” she said, clutching Tarus's arm. “What happened to them?”
“They're dead,” the knight said.
“But how?”
Together, Tarus, Aryn, and Teravian did their best to describe what had happened, though