ULREM NEVER GOT a word out of her, but she gave him a necklace of bone scrim charms, each bearing a different rune. They clicked against one another until he tucked them under his shirt. The bone felt strange against his skin, unusually warm. In a distant way, the necklace reminded him of the ring on his finger, alive with its own heat. Her fingers brushed his jaw, and her eyes searched his own. But if the woman wanted soothing, she asked for none.

He strapped the sword across his back, grateful that it had not been lost when he fell through the ice. The wolves yet hunted the slopes, and he doubted they would let him leave so readily. And, he thought with gloomy resolve, there was the thing on Mount Aemir that needed killing. If all the rest of this trip were a waste, at least he could settle that account. It was something. A reason to move forward, no matter how cold his blood ran.

A log popped in the fire, sending sparks skittering through the air, motes of newborn fire choked out by the chill before they reached the chimney.

Their ash was swept away, up and out. The woman took his hand as he watched, and squeezed gently. Imploring him to go.

The book is written by those who walk, the echoes whispered. Ulrem had heard those words before, he thought, but could not place them.

“I came searching for another Inheritor.” He fingered his ring. She looked at it, catching the thing’s strange gleam in the dark pools of her eyes. He could see she did not understand. The words were for him, though. “A witch in the south told me that another ringbearer long ago dwelt upon the frozen shoulder of Mount Aemir, with his disciples. I came to seek the last of their number. Valkir. To know,” he said, biting off each word, “my purpose.”

The woman stared at him, unblinking.

We were made to conquer! the echoes of the ring sang. Ours is the fire! The strength!

He ignored them, as he so often did. They were an unwelcome intrusion into his mind, phantoms of the power granted him by the slim band of gold on his finger. Red Akale’s ring, and before him, who knew how many others had laid claim to the furious power of Imaahis, the Conquering Flame, whose likeness was hung in the stars themselves. They haunted him, hunted him, drove him like wind before the flame. But who was he? To what great purpose was his fury set?

He was a killer, a beast. A lion, they called him, those who dared not use the other name.

Slayer. That epithet, of all things, Ulrem had earned of his own labors. His hands were soaked with the blood of lesser men, of abominations conjured, and beasts that prowled waking nightmare. He carried those ghosts, too, but they were mercifully silent. Yet they waited, lurking in the shadows of his mind, blackened eyes and sewn mouths pressing close in the night, watching, for the hour of his damnation.

“I will return,” Ulrem said.

The woman watched as he stalked off into the snow. Though the day was young, so far north the sun lingered only a few hours above the ridges and peaks that stood phalanx upon the west. He loped past the graves without another glance. The black stones he had laid upon them buried now in tufts of fresh white: no more than suggestions against the snows. There, he turned back to look for the woman. She was still watching him from the door of her hut, but right then a harsh blast of wind charged down the valley, whipping up a wall of white that struck her from view. When it guttered and he could see the roofs of the village again, she was gone.

Ulrem grunted and turned his back on the nameless village. He headed towards Mount Aemir.

The going was hard, but the effort brought heat to his blood. The land rose sharply upward, and if ever there had been a trail, it was long buried now beneath hard packed snow and sheets of ice that he had to scramble over as he worked his way up Aemir’s shoulder. At the very least, he had a bearing before long, for the dark stone of a fortress resolved as the snow began to let up.

Built halfway up the side of the frigid mountain was an upthrust fist of a fortress, surrounded by a skirt of black trees. The tower was stoutly built, and not ambitious in its height. Yet still, it would give a commanding view of the south face of the mountain and the valley below. Dark pocks of windows spoke of its dereliction, but there was no mistaking this as the place the woman had indicated. In clearer weather, he would have been able to glimpse it from the village below.

The sun climbed with him, until it reached its shallow zenith in the south, wreathed in unsettling clouds that promised to dump yet more of winter’s morose bounty on the valley. Ulrem wondered if the snow ever cleared out fully.

Seen by the muzzled light of day, the valley itself was beautiful in its stark black and whites. Where the land was uneven, gentle banks of snow cast soft blue glares, and the dark forms of sturdy pines stood erect like arrows driven into the ground, awaiting some colossus’ hand to pluck them up. He wondered what this place was called, this secret haven in the shadow of Mount Aemir.

He picked out a path among the snows, and was pleased when, atimes, he caught sight of stone steps where the wind had scoured away the snow. The trees that surrounded the tower had a menacing look to them, like surly guardsmen glaring out at unwelcome travelers. Beyond them, he could see how tightly the stones were fitted in the tower walls. He had seen similar forts and outposts in the temperate climes of the south in far worse repair. Though he was a thing of the wilds himself, man’s instinctual appreciation of fine craftsmanship stirred in his breast at the sight of the rugged work.

Movement had brought life back into his limbs, but it did not take much standing and staring for the cold seep back into his bones. Stamping his feet and slapping his fingers across his breast, Ulrem pulled the blanket tightly about his shoulders. The comfortable weight of his sword pressed into his back, like a firm hand driving him forward. Ulrem pushed into the trees, where the snow was thinner on the ground and the going easier. They bent about him, wicked, eye-twisting black shapes that seemed to shift. The wind made their boughs rattle and creak. Feeling hunted, he gnashed his teeth and fell into a crouch, waiting for the wind to fade.

He knew he was a sunblind fool for it, but the wary blood of a survivor pumped in his veins, cold though it be, and he was a man that respected the signs. Ears pricked and eyes darting for suspicious shadows, Ulrem noticed something on the ground no more than a few paces from where he stood: a broken branch, shattered by some immense force. It lay at the foot of a damaged trunk with long, raking gouges torn in its side.

He glared around, searching for more, or for the beast that had wrought such injury to the old wood. The remains weren’t hard to find, but he found no sign of any thing else alive upon the mountain. He cast a wary eye at the tower, which stood mute and dark, as if holding its breath under his gaze. Snarling, Ulrem followed the path of destruction. It led him to the inner ring of the guardian trees. Beyond, no more than fifty paces away, stood the foot of the tower.

The main door was blasted in, leaving a yawning black portal into the unlit interior. All was still. With the fresh snowfall, he had no idea whether anything had passed through here recently, though he doubted it. Had he been anywhere else in the world, he might have chosen to keep walking, to set this all behind him. Yet, Ulrem knew he could not. The woman had saved him, and pointed him hence. What choice did he have?

Breath misting in silver plumes, he eased his sword from its sheath. It was a long sword, larger and heavier than most men could have wielded easily. He was larger than most men, and his muscle was forged in the heat of a hundred battles. That sword, as long as his arm from shoulder to fingertip, was as fine as a surgeon’s knife in his hands. The hilt was wrapped in simple, well-oiled hide strips, though he could feel the bite of the metal core even through his gloves. The pommel was a broad half-circle, in the western fashion. It had been polished once, but it was scuffed and battered now, a veteran of hard times.

The trees clacked and rattled around him like a shaman’s bone charm, urging him forward towards that broken door and whatever lurked within.

A high, distant moan rose among the banks of the mountain. At first, Ulrem thought it was a stern gale, but it persisted, a wavering, tortured note of wolfsong. Another took it up further along Mount Aemir’s shoulder, and more. A string of them, issuing a baleful warning that chilled Ulrem more than the unflinching cold. They were close, those beasts. Had they tracked him all the way from the village? Were they so thirsty for his blood, or was it something else?

He had heard of men who could sing with the wolves, who knew the secrets of their wild hearts. Ulrem was not one of them. He was born of iron, quenched in blood, and he only knew the songs of sword and spear, of crash of shield and bone, of the thundering charge.

Their howling hounded him until the jaws of the tower closed around him, and he vanished into the tower’s belly.