The King's Summons Read online

  “Don’t do that . . . please.”

  Dreck laughed. “Goddess help you—send me.”

  “I don’t think so. What do you know about the Goddess anyway? You’re a stinking orc raider.” Blaze tried to move as far away on the narrow trail as possible, but Dreck’s staff-club-thing shepherded her back to the middle.

  “Dreck know nothing,” he said simply. “Dreck seeking path.”

  Blaze glowered.

  “You lose staff, Ember Mage?” he asked.

  “Obviously, I’m not of the Order of Ember,” Blaze replied, regretting even more the company that she hadn’t the strength to avoid. “Not anymore.”

  “You worst judge to self,” said the orc.

  “You don’t know what I am,” Blaze said.

  “You sure you know?”

  Blaze had no answer for that. The princess had promised her that she would become an Ember Mage. Now she’d lost that path. It had been the only one she’d known. Without it, she didn’t know what she was.

  “Open heart,” said the monk. “Goddess will show you how to see.”

  It was a monk’s typical mumbo jumbo. “I can’t see with my heart.”

  “Can’t feel with your eyes,” he said.

  “Well, my heart doesn’t see. It makes fire when I’m angry—I can fight ice kobolds,” said Blaze.

  “She make point.” He gave her a gape-mouthed grin. Then he reached into a pocket inside his fur-lined gray tunic.

  With the parting of his robes, Blaze caught a better glimpse of the runes inscribed into the iron ring—they had been carved into every square inch of the metal. There was something else too: what looked like a dark stone set into the metal.

  A huge black diamond. There were very few black diamonds that size in all Crystalia. Wars were fought over them. Nothing was as hard as diamond—and black diamond, with its tiny aggregated crystallites, was impossible to cleave.

  But Dreck closed his robes again, covering the gem and runes. He handed her what looked like a piece of bark. “Eat.”

  “Is it magic?” she asked.

  “For some.” He smiled that horrible expression again. “It’s chocolate.”

  Blaze’s eyes widened, and she bit into the frozen chocolate bar.

  “Open your mouth to eat,” said the monk. “Open heart to see.”

  “You don’t understand. I lock my heart to make fire,” Blaze said. “I lock in everything—anger, rage. That opens the path to the inner fire.”

  “And the locket,” said the monk, gesturing to Blaze’s shirt. “Can open that?”

  Blaze drew out the locket and pried at the latch. “Stupid thing won’t budge—probably broken.”

  “Like your heart,” noted the orc.

  “It’s not funny. You know nothing about being an Ember Mage.”

  “Dreck know nothing,” he repeated.

  Satisfied that she had won the argument, Blaze took another bite from the chocolate. It melted in her mouth and trickled satisfyingly down her throat, seemingly filling the void left by the extinguished inner fire. “I think this stuff is magic.”

  “All is magic.” He opened his arms. “You need hug?”

  Blaze put up hand. “Absolutely not.”

  The teen orc laughed raucously loud. “You fight kobolds and afraid of hug?”

  “I’m not afraid. I’m just . . .” Angry. She couldn’t afford to let go of that. Anger lit the spark. An Ember Mage required anger—a lot of it. That didn’t mix well with things like hugs and heart. But something else had her attention. A wisp of black smoke rose from behind the next peak.

  “I thought this was supposed to be a rarely used trail,” Blaze said. “I really hope you’re going tell me that is a welcoming party.”

  “Fire not good,” said the young orc. His eyes narrowed. “Stay close to Dreck.”

  “Are you sure you want to go this way?” Blaze said. Seeing the smoke put her on edge. They weren’t alone.

  “Enemy saw Blaze,” said the monk. “Sure to follow. To reach Hetsa, there is no turning back.”

  As they hiked further into the trail that wound its way up into the towering, ice-frosted, black granite peaks of the Frostbyte Reach, Blaze found herself fighting a battle within her. Every instinct told her to reach for her magic, find the spark, store the energy, and blast this orc off the edge of a cliff.

  Crook-Eye Orcs killed my parents—burned my village.

  Yet, with the speed that orcs grew—even faster than humans—there was no chance this orc had been at Midway. And why did he want to become a monk?

  “How long have you been a monk?” she asked.

  “Five.”

  “Five what?”

  “Five . . . happy?” The orc gave her an enormous grin.

  “Five years? Five days?”

  “Five days.”

  “I knew it. You’re just pretending—what are you really doing here?”

  “Dreck seek greatest mystery in Frostbyte Reach. Come. I show you.”

  Chapter 6: Ice Giant

  Blaze and Dreck spent a frigid night in a half-open cave and a solid eight hours on the trail. With each passing hour, the fire within her grew, until she knew she had enough to roast the orc.

  But she didn’t. Not yet. She was out of her element in the Reach. She needed him as a guide.

  So long as he stays right where I can see him. She wouldn’t be caught with her guard down. Not for a second. She made sure he always walked in front.

  “Okay, what is this big surprise?” Blaze asked.

  Dreck the monk merely nodded at the peaks and smiled.

  Blaze had had a hard time finding a patch of ground to sleep on that was not covered by snow. Blaze produced her map from her rucksack and spread it in front of their meager campfire. Dreck pointed to an unfamiliar route that traced deep into the Frostbyte peaks. It was shorter by far, but likely treacherous. “This our path,” he said.

  Blaze winced. “Monks don’t believe in the easy road?”

  “What I seek is beyond all comparison,” said Dreck.

  Blaze smiled in recognition. Of course. No wonder he was going so far out of the way.

  Dreck was tracking giants.

  “You’re going to see the jotnar—aren’t you?” She said it “yote-nar” like all the dwarves she knew did. The Frostbyte Reach was famous for the ice giants that lived there.

  Dreck smiled. “Long have I prepared for this journey.”

  The jotnar were simple beings of immense power and wisdom who spoke to outsiders only on rare occasions. Even when the orcs began their invasion of the dwarf settlements in the Reach, the jotnar did not intervene but merely retreated further into the nearly impassable mountains. Sometimes it seemed the jotnar were a world apart from mere humans.

  “Dreck seek wisdom from ice giants.”

  “Yeah,” said Blaze. He could sure use it.

  Blaze stoked her inner flame just a little. Whenever she felt like igniting her spark, the orc would do something kind like take her pack or lift her over an ice flow. It was infuriating.

  She had never considered how convenient it was to have a travelling companion who would soon be more than seven feet tall.

  It put her on edge. Was it part of his plan? Was he trying to lure her away and ruin her chance at finding Princess Sapphire? If so, why didn’t he just crush her skull in her sleep with his walking “stick” that looked more like a small tree trunk?

  Out of curiosity, she gave the orc a two-handed shove toward the downhill side of the trail.

  He didn’t even notice.

  Great. I have a boulder for a hiking companion.

  The climb was unrelenting. As the altitude grew, the air lost its vigor, and Blaze was quickly out of breath. The temperature began dropping shortly after noon. She hoped her traveling cloak and the few extra layers the quartermaster was able to rummage up for her would be enough to ward off the cold. She had to foc
us on her mission: get in, find the princess, get out before she lost any fingers or toes to ice—or her head to orcs.

  Dinner was a welcome respite. Dreck provided fresh game he’d killed in the woods, and she started the fire.

  “What do you seek?” Dreck asked. His piercing gaze tracked her from under his pointed hood.

  Blaze inched closer to their fire. The question was far harder to answer than she thought. She said nothing.

  He’s a monk. Monks need patience, right? He can wait.

  On the third day, when the road wound alongside jagged, frosty peaks and dropped off to one side into a steep valley rimmed by evergreens, Dreck asked again. “What do you seek?”

  Blaze sighed. “Nothing . . . Everything.”

  “It is true.”

  “How?”

  “When your heart is closed, everything is as nothing,” said Dreck.

  “My heart is closed?”

  Dreck nodded. “You seek to control the power of the Ember Mages, but you seek to do it alone.”

  “What’s wrong with that? That’s actually how it works, you know. You summon the spark from inside you.”

  “No magic is of one. It is all of Crystalia—all born of the Goddess.”

  Mystic mumbo jumbo.

  “None of us can succeed in our journeys alone,” he said.

  Where have I heard that before? Blaze tucked her hands under her armpits to keep her fingers warm. “We’ll see about that.”

  The following day, Blaze spotted more orc tracks in the snow. She said nothing about it to Dreck, who had certainly noticed the same thing. He was a tracker.

  Why hadn’t he said anything to her about it? Was he hoping she didn’t notice—part of his tribe waiting to take her by surprise perhaps?

  Blaze doubled her guard, checking every crag and looking behind as well as scouting ahead at turns when she could get ahead of Dreck’s huge pace.

  Her spark grew steadily closer to ignition. She wasn’t going to be taken by surprise and slaughtered by the cruel creatures that had taken her parents. Thoughts of impending battle warmed her against the dropping temperatures.

  “Not all magic fire from anger,” Dreck said from atop a snowy ridge as he gestured to a magnificent sunset.

  “Ember Magic is.”

  “And jotnar magic from cold hearts?” he asked.

  “I guess.”

  Dreck gave his awful smile. “You will see.” After a few hundred paces, the ridge turned and looked out over a great valley.

  What Blaze saw was something she would never forget.

  Far below, grand ice sculptures—great crystal pillars—rose from the steep glacial walls into sweeping ribbons and spiraling tendrils. They were grand, but at the same time delicate, like vines made of transparent stone.

  The jotnar itself seemed to be made entirely of ice or living snow. It wore a short apron around its waist. The hairless skin on its bare back and chest sparkled like snowflakes in the sun.

  Even from a great distance, its size was breathtaking. Its chest was huge and muscular, and its arms long enough to level a village with a few swipes.

  The rays of the setting sun threaded a narrow canyon and hit the pillars, the light refracting around and between them until all were glowing with the silent fire of the setting sun.

  But what came from its hands were gentle ice ribbons that twirled in arches like trestles in a garden.

  Blaze gasped. She couldn’t help it. In all of Crystalia, she’d never seen anything like it.

  Blaze watched in silence and awe as the jotnar climbed expertly among its garden of light-scattering creations. Slowly, it drifted between ice sheets so thin Blaze could see through them like a window. Where it stepped, great platforms of ice formed like stair steps, then receded as it passed, dissolving into a blur of tiny snowflakes that drifted away in the breeze.

  Despite the howling wind atop the ridge, despite the chill of her ears and nose, a serene feeling washed through Blaze—a warmth of a kind she had never known before.

  “It’s . . . remarkable,” she whispered. But that word did not seem to do it justice.

  “Jotnar magic come from whole world of Crystalia,” said Dreck. Was that a tear on his cheek?

  “Aren’t you going to talk to it?” asked Blaze.

  Dreck shook his head. He looked surprised that she would ask. “Jotnar not talk to me. What would I say?” he said. “I come here to see jotnar.”

  When they finally camped that night, Blaze slept deep, her dreams rich with twirling ribbons of ice.

  She woke to a frigid dusting of powdered snow on her face.

  “Ahh! That’s cold.” Blaze sat up expecting to see Dreck standing over her, apologizing about his big feet kicking snow at her.

  Just the wind.

  It was nearly sunrise, and in the dim glow of predawn, she saw something she didn’t expect.

  Dreck was gone.

  “I knew it!” she said.

  His bedding and supplies were still there. Then why had he woken so early? Orcs were famously heavy sleepers, especially when they were growing. Not as utterly oblivious as napping trolls—you could bounce a rock off a troll’s face and it wouldn’t notice—but close enough. Dreck was up on purpose. And he hadn’t bothered to wake her.

  That made Blaze feel exposed. And now comes the ambush.

  Blaze wasted no time gathering her things. She wrapped her cloak tightly and set off across the snow, stealing glances over her shoulders as she went.

  Going backward was hopeless. The ridge ran for a mile or more, and the clear skies promised no new snow to hide her tracks. She would be spotted from a distance the moment the sun came over the horizon. Her best hope was to get ahead and get away while she could.

  She tried to walk in his large footsteps but finally gave up. A Crook-Eye Tracker wouldn’t be foiled by that anyway. Instead, she ran full speed ahead, charging through the snow and the bitter cold. The morning wind that crested the ridge threatened to blow her over the edge and down into the den of the jotnar. Even if it was awake, jotnar were pacifists. There was no help there.

  Blessing the wind that woke her and cursing her luck at being caught by Dreck in the first place, Blaze stoked her anger. She had to be ready to summon fire in an instant.

  At her first opportunity, she would break from the trail and descend the opposite slope, toward Hetsa and the populated villages of the Reach. She just needed a place that wasn’t a sheer cliff. Judging by the down slope, she was approaching a saddle, perhaps even a narrow canyon.

  Blaze stopped to catch her breath behind a rocky outcropping. “Come on. Just a little farther, then it’s all downhill.” She listened to her breath for several seconds.

  A creak of metal broke the silence.

  Instantly, her spark lit fire and poured into her veins. She pressed her back against a rocky outcropping and leaned out slowly to peer across an ice field.

  A hundred yards away, behind a rise and out of the jotnar’s view, was a platoon of large soldiers—very large.

  This was a moment for which she had prepared her entire life. “Orcs,” Blaze whispered. Was this the trap Dreck had been leading her into?

  How much easier was it for him to play her for the fool and make her walk the whole way herself? No, you’re jumping to conclusions, she thought. Take a step back. She had to try to understand what was going on.

  Blaze’s heart beat anxiously against her ribs. There were just so many of them. Never had she felt so small and so helpless—not since Midway.

  From behind a crag in the mountain, a troop of orcs hauled a great sledge. Behind them, more followed. Each sledge was loaded with cables and anchors, spears, bows, hooks, and nets of dark metal wire.

  “Goddess keep us. They come to capture the jotnar,” said Blaze to herself. Or corrupt it, like everything that touched the darkness. Blaze leaned out, straining to hear the commands of the orc captain.

&nb
sp; “Get those sledges up here!” he barked. “I want everything in place when he arrives with the Iron Collar.”

  He? The Iron Collar. The very metal hoop that was slung under Dreck’s shoulder. It was inscribed with rune magic—perhaps the work of the Dark Realm. Dreck was bringing it to them.

  No wonder he had left. Now she really had to stay on her guard.

  Blaze looked down into the shadowed valley where the massive giant likely lay sleeping among its creations, blissfully unaware of the danger—a giant so powerful it could trample a city in a rage or destroy an entire army.

  Then there was the jotnar’s magic. If legends were true, what Blaze had seen that jotnar do was just a glimpse of its power. If the jotnar became their enemy, nothing could stop them. Not even the fortifications at Dwarfholm Bastion.

  Blaze gasped. “The jotnar doesn’t know. I have to warn it.”

  But King Jasper wouldn’t know of the danger either. What of him? She could go back to warn him. But he was just so far away. His forces would take weeks to get there. Blaze was on her own.

  Unless . . . Princess Sapphire was in the Reach at that very moment. She could rally the dwarves. If she was alive.

  As Blaze watched, another figure, this one slightly smaller, stepped slowly and carefully across the ice field that separated her from the enemy on the far side of the saddle. He joined the column of orcs ascending the slope. He stopped one of them.

  Dreck.

  Anger surged inside her. The traitor. Of course.

  She listened as a terse conversation passed between the orcs and Dreck.

  “You have that which you promised?” asked one of the orcs.

  Dreck opened his robe. Even from a distance, Blaze could see the runes inscribed in the large iron ring. The black diamond was set in its center.

  “Finally—you certainly waited until the last minute,” said the orc. He traced his fingers over the runes. “Incredible craftsmanship. It would take years to duplicate these runes.”

  “The magic of the runes will be strong enough to make your dark jotnar,” muttered Dreck. His eyes darted downward.

  Blaze frowned, still listening. Dark jotnar?

  The orc captain scowled. “They had better be, or Cernonos will likely have your head.”