The King's Traitor (Kingfountain #3)(93)
They followed the river at the head of the waterfall high into the mountains, where water melted from a natural glacier older than any of the kingdoms. It was this glacier that was the source of the river of Kingfountain.
“There’s the cave,” Carrick said, pointing. There was nothing but ice and shattered rock this high in the mountains. The river was narrow enough to span with their legs at this point, but the ice cave extended deep into the throat of the glacier.
Fergus whistled with respect. “My boy found it,” he said boastfully, turning to Evie. “I’ve been by this way a dozen times without ever thinking it more than a crag of ice and rock, but he felt something calling to him from inside it. He can hear things we can’t.”
Now that he was close, Owen could sense something too. The Fountain’s magic welled in this place, as much as it did in Brythonica. He could sense power emanating from the mountains. The closer they’d come to the source of the river, the more he’d felt his magic reserves fill up.
They paused before the ice caves, and Carrick and Fergus brought out torches and lit them with flint and iron. The ripples of the flames would help them see as night shrouded the sky. Stars had begun to appear in the liquid expanse overhead, higher than the clouds that hung oppressively over Dundrennan.
Carrying the torches, the hunters led the way into the caves. The river was frozen just inside the cave, a sheet of continuous ice that led the way in, but the travelers’ boots were equipped with leather straps covered in nail spikes. The torchlight glimmered off the strange walls that were clear and warped like glass. The light from the torches made dazzling colors that illuminated the way ahead.
“I told you I couldn’t miss this,” Evie whispered to Owen as they walked, her breath coming out in great puffs of white. “We always wanted to visit the caves.”
With a gloved hand, Owen touched the rippled ice of the walls as Carrick led them deeper into the cave. The only sounds were the scratching noise of their boot spikes and the puffs of frosty air they exhaled.
Around the first bend, there was a cleft of solid stone that had been split down the middle. Owen stared at it in surprise. The rock looked like it had been cleaved down the middle by an enormous axe, though the boulder was too big for any mortal weapon. Fragments of rock lay askew around it. As Owen passed the area, he rubbed his hand along the sheer surface of the rock, his mind alive with the Fountain.
It is the power of the sword, it whispered to him. The power of ice. It is the White King’s blade.
Owen shuddered as the knowledge passed through him.
“It is this way,” Carrick said solemnly, pointing.
Around the next bend, the cave ended reaching the face of the glacier. Suspended in the ice, about a foot deep, was the outline of a sword trapped inside. A feeling of magic and reverence hung thick in the air.
They all crowded around the blade, the torches casting their shadows on the ground.
“I thought to bring a pickaxe,” Carrick said softly, “but I dared not.”
Owen’s heart beat wildly as he stared at the ancient weapon. The sword of the Maid. The sword of King Andrew.
When he pulled the glove off his hand, he felt the cold bite into his skin. The ring on his finger began to glow. He readied himself, preparing for the pain he was expecting. As he reached out to grasp the sword, the ice began to billow out like fog. He plunged his hand into it, experiencing cold so intense that it burned. Wincing with pain, he pushed harder. When he gripped the sword, the ice around it became as insubstantial as a cloud, and he drew it out of its prison. The pain immediately began to recede, the scabbard at his hip sustaining him, and he stared in awe at the weapon he had drawn out.
The Maid’s sword had been dubbed Firebos, so named because it had been drawn from the fountain of St. Kathryn in the village of Firebos in Occitania. With the sword, the Maid had driven the Ceredigion army back to their prewar borders, putting the duchy of Westmarch as the borderland between the warring kingdoms that had once, centuries before, been united.
The weapon that Owen drew from the glacier matched the description he’d once read about. The sword had five stars on the blade, and the metal was striated like wood grain, except in various shades of gray and silver.
When Owen held it in his hands and gazed on it, he felt a surge of magic shoot up his arms, and he knew without a doubt it was the Maid’s blade—the weapon of King Andrew himself. Images from countless battles flashed through his mind in quick succession. A sound like a ringing bell filled his ears.
“This was worth the climb,” Evie said after a pent-up breath. She gazed at Owen with eyes full of wonderment, and he allowed himself to relish her admiration for a moment.
“Praise be the Fountain,” Fergus uttered reverently as he stared down at the hole in the solid ice.
To the king’s traitor:
I, your sovereign lord, have played Wizr against you enough times to know when the game is lost. You have outmaneuvered me, and I submit to your claims. While you prepared a young boy to miraculously claim this unruly realm, I know you have secretly coveted the power for yourself. May your stint as lord protector prove more favorable to your fortunes than mine did. I relinquish my authority willingly and will submit to the ignominy of the dungeon or the river as many of my forebears have patiently endured. I send you Chancellor Catsby to negotiate my surrender. The hollow crown is yours.