The Iron Seer

Chapter 2 - Making Promises

The ice wyrm's shriek still echoed in my ears, the white glare of the ice imprinted on the backs of my eyelids. I could feel the touch of the wind and see clearly the peak and the snow-capped mountains around it, the snarling jaws of the beast and the blood-spattered snow.

It was not a memory; nor was it a dream.

My name is Ariella Tularyn, and I'd been having these visions for a while now. 

The Duke of Glassbarrow, my father, would soon be dead from ice wyrm poison. If I didn't do something to save him.

I could only hope that I would get there in time. 

The pile of shattered ice that had been North lie at my feet, already fading into nonexistence as I watched. In the place of his body, a small evergreen sapling sprang up from the sparkling snow, reaching toward the sky.

I was too late, I thought. I'd known that I would be too late to save North - my only hope was that I could get the antidote to my father in time - but seeing it was another thing entirely.

All of my memories of North rose up, an unrelenting tide of images. Teaching me to shoot a bow and arrow, ignoring my father's disapproving frown; passing me his dessert after dinner with a conspiratorial wink, scandalizing Madame Isolde. Comforting me in those brief, rare moments when the loss of my mother came back to me and threatened to crush me under its enormous weight.

I felt like that now, but North was no longer here to wrap his arms around my shoulders and tell me stories. I had to be strong by myself now, even though I felt as if my heart had been ripped from my chest, leaving only an aching hollowness behind. And so I forced myself to turn away, scanning the rest of the mountaintop.

The first thing I noticed was this: The ice wyrm was nowhere to be seen. For this I was glad - I didn't want to fight it. Not right now.

I heard a groan and my head whipped around. There, collapsed on the snow, was the Duke. "Father!" I cried, and ran to him, flinging myself to my knees beside him. His eyes opened a fraction, glassy with pain, but they focused on me as he breathed, "It got away."

"Shh, it's okay," I soothed, though even as I said it and beheld the blood and the injuries, I knew it wasn't. The puncture wounds from the ice wyrm's poison-tipped claws were deep, so deep that it seemed impossible that he was still alive. The poison must be spreading through his system by now, causing unbearable agony as it slowly killed him.

I fumbled for the vial in my pocket, unstoppering it and pressing it to my father's lips. "Drink," I ordered, and he opened his mouth and let me pour the green liquid down his throat without complaint, though he winced as he swallowed. "We need to get back to the manor right now."

His brows furrowed. "How did you find me?"

I just shook my head. Izotz was getting to his feet, a hand to the red gash on his head as he stared wide-eyed around the peak, and I yelled to him. "Izotz! Help me carry him!"

The young satyr helped me get the Duke into the saddle of his horse, which I had found in the forest on the way up the mountain. As we began the breakneck journey back down, I glanced back over my shoulder, once, at the place where the ice wyrm had vanished, and told myself that one day soon, I would track it down and kill it for what it had done.

North, I swear it.

***

I was standing outside of Madame Isolde's office again. I had been waiting for the gnome woman to reemerge for a while, pacing so much that Tiaothin had joked that I might be wearing a trench into the floors. I'd glared at her, in no mood to be made fun of, and she'd grinned, but left me alone after that; slinking off along with everyone else, who Isolde had ordered to get back to their usual tasks before disappearing into her office to heal the Duke.