Page 476

Hauke watched in frozen horror as Ashlynn methodically built her way to what seemed like the only logical conclusion. By the time she arrived at the end, everything seemed to fit neatly in place. So neatly that any other explanation wouldn’t make any sense at all.

Nyrielle had explained what the Frost Walkers had lost over the years.

She even told them who was responsible for it!

And now, hundreds of years later, the rulers of the once mighty Frost Walker nation of the Seven Peaks had returned, finding a ready-made pawn who was eager to participate in their scheme to restore their fallen empire.

But for Hauke, it hadn’t been like that at all!

He’d shared with the ancestors everything that Ashlynn had told them about humans, their church, and the power of their Crusades.

He explained the threat facing the Frost Walkers and how much they needed strength to face the battles to come.

It was only because of those threats that the ancestors had offered up ways he could use his powers to rebuild ancient defenses for his people.

Everything he learned from them had a purpose.

Ansgar taught him how to fight against mighty champions while Eraric taught him how to create strong fortifications.

Though he’d had little opportunity to use the healing arts he’d studied with Eugen, Hauke struggled to see how those or the lessons in managing a nation he’d received from Kimsel. ..

Suddenly his mind froze as he began to look at those lessons from Kimsel from a different perspective.

"You will need these methods for now," she had told him in one lesson when she spoke of methods to advance while seeming to retreat when negotiating with more powerful nations.

"But in time, strength will accomplish what honeyed words can not.

By the time you are as old as I once was, perhaps no one would dare to suggest you give way to them. "

Other lessons also sounded different if he listened to them again with fresh ears.

"The air above us contains vast pockets of even greater cold," Ines explained during her first lesson on Sky Ribbons. "When you can connect the peak of a mountain to those pockets of cold, you can do far more than simply prevent a glacier’s retreat..."

When he’d heard her explanation, he’d been eager to apply her lessons to his home mountain as soon as possible.

Anything that would stop the shrinking of their glacier and preserve the ancestral caves that were in increasing danger of being exposed each summer would be a welcome boon.

If it did more than that, then that was all well and good, but he never expected to be as great a man as people like Ansgar were.

For Hauke, it would have been enough if he could protect his people from the human threat and forge an even stronger alliance with the Vale of Mists.

If he could have gained the qualifications to become a witch and join Ashlynn’s coven, that would have been even better but he never expected such an outlandish dream to come true.

Every time he spoke with the ancestors, he thought he understood them better. He believed that they were making the best of what little time they had left to help him grow into the kind of guardian for their people that they had once been. But was it really that simple?

"Would you really have faded away?" Hauke asked the empty chamber of ice, his voice trembling with fear. "Or would I have been the one to be locked away," he wondered, taking another look at the reflection of the binding on his horn.

It wasn’t Eraric’s work and it had been applied in haste but.

.. The powerful architect had recalled such a complicated working in an instant and applied it with brutal efficiency.

Had he been studying the thing, perhaps with the other ancestors?

Had this been the fate they always intended for Hauke?

"I’ve been such a fool," he said, slumping against the ice that held him prisoner. "This whole time I thought they were my teachers. I thought I gave them a purpose that they could hang on to but... they had their own purpose all along."

Maybe they hadn’t all agreed on it yet. Maybe Kimsel and Eugen were still trying to teach him so that he could resurrect their once mighty nation and rule it in his own right.

But Ansgar... Ansgar controlled his body like a puppet, wielding Hauke like an unfamiliar weapon in his hands.

In time, however, Hauke was certain that the unfamiliarity would have gone away until no one could tell the difference between Hauke and the ancestor who he had unknowingly surrendered his life to.

Now, as he turned his attention back to Ashlynn who had returned to her seat on the icy throne, he realized that the time had almost arrived for Nyrielle to render her judgment and yet he had never been able to say a single word in his own defense or anyone else’s.

"No, no, no, no, no, no," he muttered as he tried to calm his mind and regather his composure enough to use what little sorcery he felt he could manage.

His mind remained his to control but his body was closed to him, leaving him as limp as a rag doll and helpless to do anything.

He dared not dream of defeating the binding placed on him, he already knew that was futile, but if he could expand the area that he had control of, just a little bit then perhaps he could at least speak.

"Healing Wind of Gentle Warmth," he said, guiding the thinnest ribbon of warm green energy around the bonds at the tip of his horn. "Bitter Cold, Sudden Freeze," he said a moment later, instantly freezing the energy that gathered at the tip of his horn.

The world around him shook and trembled, going from warm to cold in the blink of an eye, but Hauke wasn’t done yet. Again and again, he summoned the opposing forces, pushing the warmth further and further into the spaces between the links of the chain each time before freezing them again.

Like ice wearing away at stones as it melted and froze again, Hauke battered the edges of the bonds that held him in place, struggling for a moment of freedom, just one chance to speak before the chains snapped tightly around him again...

"Mistress Nyrielle," Ashlynn said, turning to look at her lover with a faint, hopeful expression. The people seemed to accept the story they’d unfolded, though there was a great deal of speculation filling the gaps between solid facts.

Whether they were right or not, it was impossible to say, but given her own experience with ghosts who wouldn’t easily give up any chance they had to control or influence the living, she felt it was more likely than not.

"I think that..."

"Wait!" Hauke’s trembling, strained voice cried out, shocking everyone present in the hall. His appearance hadn’t changed much, his body still hung limp against his chains, but now he held his head up high and his eyes had gone from unfocused and glassy to clear and filled with purpose while the tip of his horn pulsed with a feeble green and blue flickering light.

"Before you. Pass judgment," he said slowly as he struggled against the curse that bound him. "Please, let me speak!"