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  The Snow Song

  Vol. 3 ofThe Hungering Saga

  by

  Heath Pfaff

  Version 1.0b

  The Snow Song is ©2009 by Heath Pfaff

  All rights reserved.

  This book is dedicated to

  my friends, fans and readers.

  I had done many things in my life -- fought in many battles, suffered many losses, and killed more men and beasts than I cared to remember -- but none of that prepared me for the task of being a king. It took me two years after the fall of Lucidil to gain the crown, for the manner of succession was deeply clouded, and with the threat of the Hungering seemingly passed, suddenly there was an abundance of men willing to take upon themselves the mantle of power. They, however, were lacking the one thing which was most important. I had the support of the man who had been the primary advisor to the line of kings for more than two hundred years. Ethaniel, first Knight of the Knight's of Ethan, and the most respected warrior of our land, stood in support of my ascension to the throne after the disposition of King Lucidil, the man whose death I had played no small part in.

  Of course, I hadn't been a party to his death in order to become king. In truth it could have been said that I had played little to no part at all in Lucidil's demise. I had been lying on the ground, at the cusp of death, when the previous king was felled. Malice, a fellow Knight of Ethan, a lover, a love, had delivered the killing blow to the red-eyed king. Lucidil had not been a kind man. He had been a cold hearted killer, with his eyes set upon capturing the world. No atrocity had been beyond his scope, if he had thought it might bring him closer to his goal. His last such inhumanity had been his undoing. He gave my daughter, Kaylien, into the hands of the Hungering, a race of flesh devouring monsters from across the sea, in exchange for their agreement to leave our lands. She had been only six years old at the time.

  The Hungering assured Lucidil that the girl would not be harmed, but that had not mattered. In my eyes, in Malice's eyes, Lucidil had gone too far. We fought him, and when our defeat seemed definite, Malice struck with the last of her strength and killed the fiery-eyed ruler of men, leaving the land without a king. Unfortunately, Malice was near fatally wounded in the struggle.

  I too, had been injured by Lucidil, but I recovered quickly, while Malice lay for months in a deep sleep from which I could not wake her. I stayed by her side for most of that time, fearing that she might pass into death if I left for more than a few minutes. When she finally did awake, however, she was changed. She still had the voluptuous body of a woman, but her mind had regressed to that of a girl of thirteen or fourteen. It was as though she'd erased all the bad parts of her life, and returned to a time when she was just a sweet, young innocent.

  She was still a Knight in body, with powerfully clawed arms and legs, the result of replacing her human limbs with that of the nomadic and fearsome fur clad monsters of the frozen lands, Fell Beasts. Her eyes still shone a miraculous green, bright and vivid, shifting with her emotions, and broken only by the ring of white around the place where the pupil would be on a human's eye, but she was not the Malice who had been the master of swords for the Knights of Ethan. She still followed me, as she had almost as long as I had known her, but her attention had become like a young girl with a crush, and not like a friend whose council and companionship could help me through the hard times. I had never told her how much I loved her before she was injured, and I dared not do so in her fragile, innocent state. I did not doubt, when I looked into her loving eyes, that she would give anything to me that was in her power to give, but I could not accept any such affection from her while I knew that she was as timid as a child.

  With Ethaniel's help, I finally took the crown, and began to build the ships I knew that I needed if I was to go after the Hungering, to bring back my lost daughter. I did so, however, with a heart weighted heavily by tragedy. My daughter was lost, given into the arms of a terrible enemy. If the Hungering kept her alive, I feared what would happen to her mind under such conditions. My love, my dearest friend, Malice, was diminished to a mere shadow of the woman she had once been, and everything else I knew and loved in my life was gone.

  To make matters worse, I found myself in a world of double-talking and politics that I had never before experienced. All sought the favor of the king, but at the same time, all sought to gain control of the king. It was a constant battle with the nobles, and sometimes even the common people, in order to maintain some semblance of control, and I was ill adjusted to the task. Ethaniel guided me. My advisors guided me. It seemed, however, that I did little to guide myself. I wanted nothing more than to have my ships built so that I might set sail once more, and leave the kingdom, and my crown, far behind.

  I hoped that time at sea, away from the castle and the unfamiliar world of the king's court, might aid Malice in remembering what she had been before Lucidil had nearly killed her. I wanted my family back.

  I did not want to be the king.

  I sat staring at Liet from across a table covered in scrolls and documents that I was supposed to be reading. The documents pertained to various business arrangements that would, in theory, aid the country in its attempt to recover from the massive damages that had been wrought by the Hungering. I had spent four years since becoming king, reading through the various offers and treaties from the human nobles, heads of clans, as well as those presented by the representatives of the other races of our land. All were eager to help, if they felt it would better their own standing. The greatest trick was determining which of the deals offered would aid the people at the least cost. For the time being though, I was ignoring all the various documents, and concentrating my efforts on the man who stood across from me.

  Liet's eyes were hard. A barely restrained brutality lay just beneath the surface. He had once been a knight of the king, not a Knight of Ethan, but a human knight in service to the king. When I had escaped from the capital city after it was overrun with the Hungering, Liet had been one of the few humans to survive the ensuing battles. He had proven his courage and strength on multiple occasions, even fighting on after sustaining serious injuries. In the end, I left him in safety, or so I thought, at Lucidil's war camp, and departed to take care of other business. It wasn't until well after the old king's death, that I learned what had become of the brave knight, Liet.

  Lucidil had Liet turned into a black cloak, one of the Black Patch Brigade, a creature with the body of a Fell Beast and the head of a man. Unlike with the Knights of Ethan, the black cloaks were shaped and bound by strong magics that dictated their behavior. The Fell Beast, being the greater portion of their body, held strong sway over the personality that resulted from the blending of forms. The only way to keep the black cloaks under control was to formulate strict restrictions into the magical process. Liet, the good, honest, and hard working knight whom I had fought beside, was merely a shadow behind the eyes of the creature that stood before me in my study.

  Upon learning of his fate, I had ordered the cessation of all such magical research. Of course, I had not been king at the time, and my words were taken in stride. Once I put on the crown, however, I closed down the kingdom's magical research centers. The cost was too great, and the pay off too little. My choice to eliminate magic was not well met. The nobles, heads of various human clans, accused me of trying to make of myself a god. They believed that I had gotten rid of magical research so that nothing stronger than me was ever created. Others believed that by doing away with magic, I was allowing the country to weaken, and that it was only a matter of time before someone, led by a magically created army, would come in and destroy us all.

  I, who had lost much to magic over the years, could not justify the cost that must be paid in order to create magical energy. For every
magic, there must be a sacrifice. Even the enchanted lanterns used for most public lighting required a sacrifice of life, minor though it might seem to kill a calf to power several of the ever glowing lights, when that same calf was to be slaughtered for its meat anyway. Where does one draw the line between killing an animal for power, and killing a man for power? Lucidil, my predecessor, had lost sight of that line, and I feared that, should I allow magical research to continue, I might as well. Liet's fearsome eyes still bore into me, reaffirming my belief that magic came at too terrible a cost.

  When I had closed down the research center that was responsible for creating the black cloaks, I had received threats against my life from a researcher referred to as Father. He was the head of the project and had worked closely with Lucidil during the creation and shaping of the process by which the Black Patch Brigade was produced. In the end it had taken mobilization of military forces to extract him from his offices, and he had sworn that he would have his revenge on me in some way unless we gave him his research back. I ordered the research documents destroyed, and Father exiled from the country. I often wondered if banishing the man was enough, but I would not bring myself to kill a man who had been doing what he considered a service to his country, especially not while I was still making use of those forces he'd created.

  "How are you today, Liet?" I asked the black-cloaked figure before me. He did not respond.

  "Liet, I asked you how you're feeling?" I repeated the question, much as I had every morning for the past two years. At first, after becoming king, I had been too distressed by the site of the changed Liet to even consider speaking to him. Over time, I realized that by avoiding Liet, I was paying him a disservice. I had fought beside him. He was a brother of battle. I ordered him to my private guard after that, intent upon showing him the respect his service owed him.

  Liet did not answer me.

  I sighed heavily. "Zet-grutkol-grutfen-gret," Liet snapped to attention. The ponderously long name was actually a number torn from a long dead language. 1,994. He was one of the last black cloaks, but there were still far too many. "How are you feeling?"

  "I am ready and able to serve, my King." He answered, his voice the gruff growl that remained of his human voice after being joined with the Fell Beast. It was not the answer I sought, nor was it any different from any answer I'd ever received. I felt certain that Liet still existed somewhere within the mind of the black cloak, but trying to reach him had not proved fruitful. In the early days, I had spent hours at a time trying to break through to the core of his personality. As time passed, and my efforts were met with failure after failure, I'd fallen into a routine.

  "From this point on, Zet-grutkol-grutfen-gret, I will refer to you as Liet, and you will respond only to that name. Do you understand?" I made my voice crisp and clear, letting the black cloak know that I was issuing an order. I had done the same thing previously, every single morning. The command held for a while, but eventually he would once again come to only respond to his Black Patch Brigade identification. Each time I had to repeat that order, it felt as though a hammer struck my heart. I wondered if he suffered, trapped inside his monstrous body.

  "I understand, my King." The black cloak answered. His eyes still burned with barely contained hostility, and deep seeded hunger. I knew both of those feelings. I too was joined with the Fell Beast, and I knew what it was to have the beast's boundless brutality pent up inside. Even calm as I was, if I concentrated, I could almost see the beast stalking through the dark recesses of my mind.

  "How did you sleep, Liet?" I asked, pushing aside my own dark thoughts, and trying to draw out the bright-eyed and intelligent knight I had once known.

  "I rested well. I am ready to serve." Liet answered, no appreciable emotion in his voice.

  My anger flared and I slammed my right fist, my only fist, down on my desk. Liet did not flinch. He watched me, his human eyes seeming like blank glass behind which was a feral malice. I clenched my fist, and let my hand drop to my side as I leaned back in my chair. The shoulder of my left arm, the shoulder that now had not even a nub on which to end, ached as I tried to clench the fist that was no longer attached to the arm. My anger dissipated as quickly as it had come, burned away like the flesh of my left arm.

  Many had believed that with my remarkable ability to heal, my left arm would eventually regenerate itself. However, the blue fire of the Hungering had damaged the tissue to too great a degree. The tingle of healing had eventually faded from the wound, and the fur that remained, a reminder of the Fell Beast from which I'd taken the arm, had turned as white as fresh fallen snow. Many saw my missing arm as a sign of weakness. They were correct. I was no longer as able as I had been with both arms, but it was foolish to think me less than deadly because I lacked one of my limbs. No few assassins had learned that truth the hard way.

  The assassins were ceaseless in their pursuit. Ethaniel told me that it was to be expected since I was a new king, but I noted that Lucidil, and the king before him, had never suffered so many attacks. Ethaniel had merely shrugged, not willing to offer any further advice or explanation. Ethaniel, first of the Knights of Ethan, should have been the king. I knew it, and the people knew it. Sometimes it seemed even the black cloaks, who served me without question, looked at me as if they too knew who belonged on the throne. I tried not to care.

  I had taken the position of king so that I could have my ships built, so that I might follow those who'd taken my daughter, Kaylien. Once I was aboard a ship, and sailing across the sea, I didn't care what became of the kingdom I left behind. That, I knew, was a terrible position for a king to take, but I was weary of the whole ordeal. I had never wanted to serve as ruler, but it had been necessary. For some reason, Ethaniel had thought it a good idea. He'd never precisely told me why he backed me, no matter how hard I pressed him for an answer.

  In my time as king, I had done my best to serve the people. Despite not wanting the job, I felt responsible for those who trusted in my judgment. Whether they liked my decisions or not, I tried to make choices that would allow the people to live comfortably and without fear. I struggled not to make the same mistakes as my predecessors, but that was no easy task. Everyone I spoke to, even my advisors, all had their own agendas. It was nearly impossible to tell good advice from bad, when everyone had some, seemingly rational, advice to give.

  After the war with Hungering, it had seemed like it would be so simple to bring peace to the kingdom, but it had not taken long for the independent tribes to split off once more. Even the Shao Geok, a tribal race of fearsome creatures who had long fought against humanity, but joined in the fight against the Hungering, had returned to their homes far to the south, leaving without so much as a word as to what their future intentions might be. Was peace even a possibility any longer? I didn't know.

  "You may return to your post, Liet." I said, and I heard the defeat in my voice as I spoke. It was hard to remain positive when it seemed the world sought your failure.

  "Yes, my King." Liet turned, and walked from the room. As soon as the door opened, Malice darted her way inside, rushing past the dangerous black-cloaked warrior. Liet watched her with his menacing eyes, but did not stop her. He was well aware that she had free run of the castle.

  Malice, in her mad dash across the room to my desk, very nearly skidded into the table, coming up short only by a few inches, and windmilling her arms to reestablish her balance. She wore a wide smile across her young face, and I was once again stricken by just how beautiful she was. She had the body of exceedingly shapely sixteen year old woman, with heavy endowments. Her hair was a brilliant red, and hung freely about her shoulders, not much longer than collar length. Her eyes were vivid green, the eyes of a Knight of Ethan, but filled with the mirth and joy of youth. Her face, which had usually worn an expression of seriousness, lit the entire room when she smiled.

  She was dressed in a one piece summer dress, with no sleeves, a modest, but not severe neck line, and a hem that came down to abo
ut mid thigh. It was the type of dress any girl her apparent age might wear in the warmer months of the year. Of course, it was late fall, and her actual age was nearly two hundred years. Her arms and legs were those of a Fell Beast, covered in soft black fur, and ended in claws that could rip the throat from a man with little effort. Guiding all that power and beauty, was the mind of a fourteen year old innocent. Her appearance was a confusing, but not unpleasant, mix of brutal power and bottomless grace.

  "Good morning, Lowin!" She exclaimed as she seated herself on the edge of my desk, knocking various scrolls and papers free. As was my talk with Liet, Malice's exuberant morning greeting had become a part of my daily ritual. She spent most of her waking time with me, and most of her night hours curled up in my bed, though she had her own quarters. I, being a Knight of Ethan, did not need to sleep very often, though I found that I enjoyed the quiet of my quarters in the deep of the night. She, strangely, for she was also a Knight, slept every night, and I allowed her to use my room. I could forbid her nothing, for I still loved her dearly, and hoped daily for the recovery of her mind. Though we sometimes shared a bed, it was not in the way that one shares a bed with a lover, but as an adult protecting a child. I had vowed to myself that I would not take advantage of her while her mind remained fragile. The years had passed, and she had not gotten any better.

  "Good morning, Laouna." I used her human name, from a time before she was a Knight of Ethan. She didn't identify with the name "Malice," and it didn't seem fitting to call her by it. "I trust you had a good night." I knew full well that she had slept soundly, for she had spent the night curled up in my bed, while I lay on a couch nearby. I would not allow myself to lay with her long. It had been too many years, and I craved her intimate company with such a vigor that I feared I might I exceed my restraints. Every night, after she fell asleep, I pulled myself from her grasp and went about my business.