The Ice Warden | Chapter 3
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Month III, day 22
Sharing a room with two other men wasn’t the most comfortable accommodation, but Yuri had slept in worse places.
He had another strange dream that night. It felt more like a childhood memory – winter time, him near a stream, with snow and frozen water…
He was the first to wake up at the crack of dawn. He put his gear back on while the guards were still snoring and went down to the common room.
He sat at one of the tables, taking out his travel journal, while waiting for the host so he could get some breakfast. He scribbled a few notes about the happenings of the day before, for his eventual report to his Captain in Laske.
After a while, that weird sensation came back. He heard footsteps, and the emissaries stepped into the room.
While Atres was talking to the guards, Sheila approached his table, seemingly interested in his journal.
Yuri turned the page to show a rough sketch of the Soth area he had made during his last scouting.
“You draw maps?” she asked.
“I’m an apprentice to the Master Cartographer in Laske when I’m not called for guard duty.”
“You must know these lands quite well, then. Are there some… places of interest close by? Where someone might seek refuge…”
Yuri frowned, and his eyes went back to his map. “There are several wooded areas around here. Whoever you’re looking for, if she’s not in the village, it’s impossible to find her.”
“We have to follow the path past the house we visited yesterday.” Sheila hesitated. “So I was told.”
“And once we’re in the middle of the woods?” There was nothing else out there but trees.
“We search the area. Maybe she will be the one who finds us.”
Yuri decided there was no point in arguing. They had to go there and see for themselves. “If you say so, let’s get going.”
Sheila seemed relieved and rejoined her brother. She whispered to him something that Yuri couldn’t hear. Then he noticed Atres giving the guards orders to set out.
The group retraced their steps from the night before, returning to the house of the supposed Fay. Sheila suddenly seemed unsettled by something.
Atres told the guards to stand by, which seemed an odd decision to Yuri, given how tense the atmosphere had become.
“Let’s go.” Sheila’s voice brought him back to focus; she then started walking down the path, and he and her brother followed.
“I wouldn’t trust my sister’s sense of direction. I hope she doesn’t lead us off a cliff,” Atres blurted another of his unfunny jokes.
“I’ll keep my eyes open,” Yuri replied, while they made their way through the trees.
Things began to feel strange as the vegetation thickened. It was different from his usual walks into the woods. Darker.
Yuri looked up at the sky, through the foliage. The day was clear, and the sun was rising higher. There was no reason for it to be so dark. It was also colder and misty, as if they were in a different season.
“I don’t like this place. How can we find a magical being if she doesn’t want to be found?” Atres’s voice was but a whisper.
“I have a hunch that she will be the one to reach us.”
Yuri was not sure if it was Sheila’s voice or the gust of wind passing through the spruce trees, but he felt a sudden chill.
That strange fog had grown thicker, making it hard to see around them. Even the air felt different.
He turned around to look at the siblings, but they had suddenly disappeared. How could he have lost them in just a few steps? Something was not right in that place, and all his instincts flared. He put his hand on the axe.
“Hey! Where are you?” he shouted into the void.
No answer. He looked around for a landmark or a sign, but the sky had disappeared, and he quickly realized he had no idea where he was. Lost. He hated that feeling. It twisted his guts, bringing back bad memories. Cold as ice.
“Have you ever dreamed of ice?” It was a female voice, barely audible. He couldn’t tell where it came from, but he was quite sure it was not Sheila’s.
“Who’s there?”
“Do you remember the ice, Yuri?” This time it came from a different direction. All he could do was move around in circles.
“The… ice?” An eerie feeling caught him, like some kind of memory, then a dim blue light flashed in front of him.
A woman appeared. She had alabaster skin and deep blue eyes, with long, snow-white hair down to her ankles, yet her face looked young. Could that be the wooden spirit they were looking for?
“Remember when you were a teenager? The ice was inside of you, but one day, the magic ended. Remember?” she said with a sad note in her soft voice.
He couldn’t believe his eyes. “Who are you? How do you know…?”
“My name is Sahama. I’m the Warden of Duty. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”
She was the Warden – the one they had been seeking. “You were waiting for me? Why?”
“For too many years, I’ve been trapped in the suspended dimension. It’s time for the powers to be transferred. You must find the Temple and pass through the mirror. But to find it, you’ll have to face the trial.”
Yuri remained frozen on the spot and very confused. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“You’ll understand when you remember the ice.” The Fay’s last words were lost in the mist, and her image faded away.
He ran a hand through his hair. Nothing of that made any sense.
Was it some kind of vision? Was he dreaming? Maybe he was still asleep at the inn and just needed to wake up.
And what had any of that to do with the ice?
Again, that weird tingling sensation crawled up his spine. The sound of footsteps made him turn sharply, raising the axe above his head. Then he stopped himself.
The touch of a gentle hand made him stop. Her fingers brushed the spot where he gripped the handle, and he stared into those deep brown eyes. It was her this time, the Urash woman. Sheila.
“I found you,” she murmured, and Yuri felt his heart skip a beat.
Then he sighed and put his weapon down, withdrawing from her touch. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to attack you.”
She seemed unfazed. “I know. Have you seen my brother?”
He shook his head. “I think I met that Fay, though.”
“Sahama?” Her eyes went wide. “Where is she now?”
“I have no idea, she just… disappeared. I’m starting to think I just imagined it.” He scratched his short beard on the right side of his face.
“Did she say anything?” insisted Sheila.
“A lot of strange things. She told me I have to find a Temple, a mirror… but first…” He couldn’t finish his sentence because something fast passed between the two of them.
It was like a flash of light, and then white shadows floated around them, raising gusts of icy wind.
“What are those things?”
“Wraiths?” hissed Sheila.
There was no time to question her statement, because those things were definitely not friendly.
Yuri grabbed his axe again as he saw a translucent figure headed toward him. He swung, but the blade went right through it, and the spirit darted past him, grazing his shoulder. He didn’t feel anything, but saw a gash in his sleeve, as if a blade had slashed it.
“Damn it. I can’t hit them, but they can hit me.” As unbelievable as it could be, he couldn’t underestimate the situation.
He turned to see if Sheila was in danger and heard her mumble some strange words. She drew an arc with her hand, and the air seemed to shift. The same unpleasant feeling from the day before came back, making him queasy.
“Black magic! Black magic!” shrieked the ghosts, swirling around them in a circle.
They seemed angry, but at least they weren’t attacking anymore.
“What’s going on? What did you do?” he asked her.
“I raised a barrier… a shield around us. They don’t like my magic,” Sheila replied. “I’m not even sure if it will have any effect…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. The spirits had deviated from their trajectory and slammed against the invisible wall surrounding them.
It didn’t take long before the barrier was shattered, the white shades darting toward them at full speed.
“I don’t know what to…” she tried to say, but there was no time, and Yuri’s instinct kicked in.
He grabbed her and dragged her to the ground to dodge one of the wraiths that was about to hit her. He pressed her down and remained on top of her to shield her. He knew they couldn’t stay put, and they needed to roll away somehow, but he wasn’t fast enough. Suddenly, something freezing cold slashed through his back. He gritted his teeth through the pain.
What he didn’t expect was Sheila moving quickly underneath him. She turned toward another of those ghosts and hissed a few words. Another fit of nausea hit him, and a dark wind passed through the white shadow, barely staggering it before driving it away.
“I would have paralyzed ten men with that spell,” she whispered, looking up at his incredulous face. “I don’t know what else to do…”
They were both kneeling on the ground, looking at each other, helpless, while the wraiths seemed to have stalled for a moment.
“Only the true Light can have access to this place,” hissed one of them in a distorted voice.
“They protect the stones…” mumbled Sheila, still fixed in his eyes. “What did Sahama tell you? What were her exact words?”
He couldn’t hold her stare. He grabbed her arm and helped her to her feet, quickly dragging her to dodge another wraith.
“Stay away!” he screamed at them, pointing his axe, as if that could actually do anything.
They were still floating in a circle around the two of them.
Yuri lowered his voice. “She said… things I didn’t understand, she told me to remember… the ice…”
Another one moved toward them. He raised his arm instinctively to protect both. Sharp pain jolted him as the ghost made a deep gash in his flesh. Blood started to pour, trickling down his elbow. Yuri cursed in the language of Wodr, changing their position again, trying to head toward a tree to put some sort of obstacle between them and the wraiths.
“I need to create a more powerful protective field,” Sheila was saying in the meantime. Yuri felt her clinging to his arm. It was an unsettling sensation, an unknown energy coursing through him as she uttered another of her ominous spells.
A cold wind rose around them, forming a dark vortex that overshadowed everything. Yuri felt dizzy and bewildered; it was as if they were in the eye of a cyclone.
He could barely hear the spirits outside, yelling. “How dare you!”
The ground began to shake under their feet.
“What is happening?” asked Yuri in a harsh tone.
She came closer. “We don’t have much time. I can’t do more than this. You’ll have to take care of it.” She sounded out of breath. He put his left arm around her waist because he had the impression she was about to collapse.
“What can I do? I can’t even hit them!”
Her eyes were on him, pleading. “Yuri… you are a Warden… use the ice…”
“What?” he whispered.
The ice?
Do you remember the ice, Yuri?
A flash of memory from years ago… he was barely a teen playing stupid games by a stream.
Even though the flood had taken away half of his family, he wasn’t afraid of water. He forced himself not to fear it. He wanted to challenge it, to stop it from flowing.
It was winter when it happened. He knew well how the deep cold could crystallize everything, stop the flow of water.
He wanted the water to stop from the stream, from his nightmares. And one day, out there in the cold, he had succeeded. The water had frozen in his hand… but that was just… it shouldn’t have been possible. And it was never able to do that again.
Then the magic disappeared. Remember, Yuri?
The voice of Sahama echoed in his head. How could the Fay know him? And how could he feel like he knew her?
But it was not just her voice in his mind; there was something else, another, deeper voice. It was his own. Speaking a word in an ancient language.
He felt a cold energy, too familiar, growing inside him.
The darkness around them was slowly dissipating. He could glimpse the shades of the wraiths surrounding them.
Sheila was clinging to him, getting heavier as if her legs were about to give in. He had to do something; he had to protect her, before it was too late, before the spirits would be back to strike.
If he could stop the water, he could stop them too.
He just had to say that word, the one he thought he had forgotten. But it was still there, buried inside of him, and now he had to let it out.
“Ljed.”
He was not prepared for the surge of energy that coursed through him. While Sheila’s barrier dissolved completely, the forest was flooded with light, and a violent blizzard enveloped them.
He couldn’t even feel the cold, while Sheila was shivering in his arms. He held her tight, sending the energy outward, away from them and toward the ghosts.
And then it all ended.
When the storm subsided, all that remained of the wraiths were motionless, frozen statues that looked like eerie ice trees.
Sheila slid away from his grasp and fell to her knees. “You did it…” she said in a breathy voice.
Yuri didn’t stop to think. He just wielded his axe and struck the wraiths with all his strength, shattering them to pieces.
Slowly, their icy shards dissolved along with the pain from his wounds. He looked at his arm in disbelief: the bleeding gash was not there anymore, as if he had imagined everything.
He stood for a moment in complete silence, and then a mirror appeared before him.
It was as big as a door, resting vertically on the ground, perfectly balanced.
Yuri looked at his reflection. Something was shining on his right cheek. A light-blue star. “What is this?” he muttered to himself.
A female voice replied. “You have passed the test.”
“Sahama?” Yuri saw her image behind him. There was the same symbol on her face.
“You finally accepted your fate,” she continued.
“What fate?”
“That for which you were chosen, that for which you came to this place. Look before you, the mirror of the Law shows you what you are.”
He wrinkled his brows. “What is this symbol?”
Sahama approached, standing next to him. “It’s the sign that you are a Warden.” She brushed the surface with her fingers. “In each of the Temples that guard the Flower of Light gems, there is a mirror. The mirror is the door. The mirror reflects the symbol of theWardens; they alone can access the Temples.” She took Yuri’s hand, dragging him with her. “Follow me, now.”
* * *
Far back, sitting on the ground, her breath heavy and her heart pounding, Sheila watched the two bright figures. She couldn’t look into the mirror because of the way it was angled relative to her position, but she saw them moving across the surface and disappearing into nothingness.
She wouldn’t dare move, and she was still drained by the spell, so she just remained there, waiting.
After a while, Yuri reappeared, alone. The Fay was gone, and the mirror slowly faded in the dark. He met her eyes, and something that looked like relief passed over his face. He walked over to her and held out his hand to help her get back on her feet.
She gladly took it.
“Are you all right?” his voice made her heart flutter.
“I’m… I’m fine. Did you find the stones?”
He merely nodded. “We’ll talk about this later. Now, let’s try to get your brother back.”
“Sheila!” She recognized Atres’s voice and immediately let go of Yuri’s hand.
“We are here,” she replied, raising her tone.
Her brother’s figure emerged from the darkness with a worried expression. Around them, the fog was dissipating, and the sunlight was returning to filter through the tree branches.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” She gave a half-smile.
“What happened?” Atres scratched his head. “This place is weird…”
“We’ll talk about it later,” she cut him short. “Now, let’s get out of here.”
