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scriveynerTitle: A Winter's Tale
Fandom: Voltron Legendary Defender
AU: Fantasy
Characters/Pairing: Shiro/Lance
Rating: T
Length: 10512
Summary: It had been this way as long as he could remember, awakening among the trees with his staff in hand and the innate knowledge of winter in the marrow of his bones. He lingered in the forest until the west winds brought whispers of green and the trees began to bud anew, when he would fade like the snow from the mountain’s slopes. It was a cycle as old as time, and Lance couldn’t begin to count the seasons he had lived.
A Lance-centric holiday gift exchange for rinthegreat.
The North-West wind blew in harsh, bringing with it low grey clouds and the crisp icy scent of winter. The trees rattled with its passing, skeletal limbs long bare of leaves, while the villagers in the valley below closed their shutters and stoked their fires. Amid the sea of tree, in the highest branches of a hardy old oak, crouched a lone cloaked figure watching the clouds move across the twilight sky. He held in one hand a crooked old staff, resting back on his shoulder lest he drop it into the canopy of dark branches below. He wouldn’t drop it, though, as the staff seemed an extension of himself; and as the wind blew fierce and cold and with more fury he sprang to his feet on the branch, laughing and holding his staff aloft to the night sky.
It began to snow.
#
The mountains were Lance’s whole world; the mountains and the valley and the village that he only visited in the dead of night, stealing silently across new-fallen snow leaving nary a footprint behind to show his passage. It had been this way as long as he could remember, awakening among the trees with his staff in hand and the innate knowledge of winter in the marrow of his bones. He lingered in the forest until the west winds brought whispers of green and the trees began to bud anew, when he would fade like the snow from the mountain’s slopes. It was a cycle as old as time, and Lance couldn’t begin to count the seasons he had lived.
The season’s first snow was sacred. White dusted everything like the fine sugar atop a pastry, and he laughed, bounding into the tree, the branches rustling and creating miniature snowfalls all their own as he made his perch atop the highest branch. Lance stood there, his staff hooked into the branches for stability lest the wind blow him free, and he shaded his eyes from the light of the moon, looking northward. He’d never been beyond the mountains, he’d never tried; his place was here, shepherding the village through the worst of the weather and keeping an eye on the villagers lest they stray too deep into the mountains on a cold, unforgiving winter’s night.
From his branch he could see his entire world; the village in the valley lit up warm and gold, lanterns strung between homesteads making it glow even brighter than usual. Lance smiled at the cheerful exterior the village put on, but a glimmer to the south caught his eye and he shifted, his weight barely disturbing the branch as he swung around, cloaking flying in the wind. The glimmer was faint, not the bright cheery warmth of fire but a reflection of a small burst of magic rippling through the trees.
Magic, in his woods?
It wasn’t unheard of. Lance wasn’t the only spirit to roam the ancient forest, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last. Countless seasons past there had been a werewolf that prowled the snow-covered slopes, and in the dim recesses of memory Lance knew something of fire and death - but he didn’t tug at that particular thread of his memory. Lance launched himself off the branch, catching the North Wind in his cloak as effortlessly as a bird on the wing, snowflakes swirling around him. Magic in his woods bore investigating; he would want to discourage any rowdy neighbors from moving in and preying upon those under his protection, after all.
Lance had not yet made it to the slope when there was another burst of magic, this more of an explosion than a glimmer. It was tinged red and ruthless and blasted the North Wind sideways, sending Lance tail over teakettle in the air. He caught himself with his staff, hooking a tree and spinning around it, placing bare feet upon the branch and staring in dismay at the black smoke now curling into the sky, the stench of death unmistakable.
A horse ran blind through the forest under his feet, and Lance knew these woods like the back of his hand, knew that the horse was headed down toward the town, toward the light and the warmth but it would never make it if it kept off the path like it was. He leaned off the branch and gestured with his staff, throwing up a wall of snow in the panicked beast’s face and sending it in a different direction, toward the path where it wouldn’t stumble off a ravine to its death.
Then, another horse; this one with two riders. The first holding the reins tight, the horse at a dead gallop on the slippery new snow; the other rider seated backwards, cloak whipping in the cold wind and firing arrows from a bow held tight in experienced hands. In pursuit were three riders on black steed, the breed unfamiliar but larger than the traveler’s horse, and they rode through Lance’s forest with impunity. Bandits no doubt, from the West.
Lance usually didn’t meddle in the affairs of travelers, but he absolutely could not stand bandits. He swept out of the tree and landed in the path of the riders, standing tall with his staff gripped tight as the three horsemen bore down on him. One by one, they passed through him and the horses faltered, spooked by the spirit they could sense but not see. This turned quickly into a struggle of horseman versus horse, trying to rein in the panicking creatures as one bucked, rearing up on its hind legs and almost throwing its rider. Lance turned in the direction that the two travelers sharing one horse had fled, but they were long gone, the last echoes of the horse’s hooves already lost to the wind.
Lance ignored the horses and their riders, heading back the way that they had come. There was light that way now, and warmth - he could smell the fire before he stepped into the clearing, where two other horsemen sat astride their own beasts, circling a burning wagon. There was still a donkey lashed to the wagon, bleating in terror as it the wagon burned but unable to pull itself away, the rear axle of the cart destroyed, one well shattered by a halberd’s shaft.
“Savages,” Lance whispered, as the terrified creature bucked and pulled and the two riders did nothing to dismount or to free the creature. Lance leaped down from the trees, moving quickly and decisively. People could not see him, sometimes animals could and sometimes they couldn’t; and when he put a hand out toward the donkey’s side, where the harness sat at its withers, it tried to kick him. “Hey, hey!” Lance said, dancing out of the way of the lethal kicks. “I’m trying to help you, here!”
He lifted the harness, finally, and the donkey bolted away, braying in a panic and startling the nearest rider, who clearly hadn’t expected the animal to get free. “Leave it,” the second rider said as the first turned to follow the donkey. “It’ll freeze to death in these mountains.”
“Yeah, that’s what you think, bud,” Lance said, and made a note to follow the donkey after he’d dealt with this. The fire wouldn’t spread, but its heat and warmth would draw attention and that would not do. He raised his staff, but before he could summon the winds to help extinguish the fire the other three riders returned empty-handed.
“Hey, where’s the donkey?” one asked, voice gruff as they rode slowly into the clearing.
“Ran off,” the one who had made to chase it said, and the first rider scoffed.
“I’d never ate donkey before,” they said, sounding mournful.
“Oi,” the other rider who had remained behind said, and leaned forward, one hand braced on the back of their horse. “I don’t see the Princess.” His voice was articulate and well-bred, despite the tatters of his cloaked form.
“Got away,” another one of the three said, and another nodded. Their cloaks were also bound tight, but their voices were high and fair.
“Horses spooked as we followed.” The big black steed that the rider sat astride snorted, blowing steam from its nostrils and shaking its head sharply. “There’s evil in these woods, your lordship.”
“We must follow them,” he said, “before the snows begin again and wipes all trace of their flight.”
Lance had quite enough by this point. He lifted his staff and drove it into the ground, bringing up a blast of cold air and swirling the already-fallen snow into the air as if a zephyr had spontaneously arisen. All five horses spooked this time, and they scattered into the dark woods around the path, their riders yelling and attempting to rein in their wayward steeds.
The frigid arctic wind that Lance had summoned served a secondary purpose, to extinguish the burning wagon. Lance picked his way around the destroyed vehicle; it had been damp with snow and rain before that and hadn’t burned easily, and as he came around to the back he found a man dead on the ground, where the heat had turned the snowy path to mud.
No coachman or simple farmer was this, he was wearing old armor and a torn, singed cloak. Lance prodded the body with his staff, hoping to turn it over and see if there was any notice of whose steward this was, when the body coughed and stirred at Lance’s prodding. He brought his staff in and leaned on it as the man rolled onto his back, coughing weakly, blood streaked across his mouth and face. He wore no royal insignia but his armor was further damaged, one arm all but gone. He wasn’t dead, but he would be soon.
“Did they get away?” the man asked, and coughed.
Lance cocked his head, and then looked behind him at the dark winter’s night. The wagon still smoldered but it was no longer alight, and he figured that the man must have mistaken a shadow for a comrade. When Lance looked back at him, the man was looking directly at him, eyes dark and shadowed. Lance frowned, tilted his head and then wordlessly pointed to himself, looking for confirmation. “Did they make it?” the man croaked again. “The Princess, did he get her away…?”
He was dying. Lance crouched in mud beside the soldier. “Your friends got away,” he said, the strangeness of speaking to another person exhilarating. “I spooked the bandits, their horses will take them far away before they have any hope of recovery.”
The man sighed out a labored breath, and then moved his damaged arm as if he were to draw something from his belt. Lance held up his hand and, with a small push forced the injured man’s arm back down. His skin was so warm, Lance’s hand didn’t pass through it and that made his entire body tingle. “What are you?” Lance said, as the man made a strangled noise and passed out.
Seasonal spirits could not interact with the living. It was not so much a rule as it was simple reality. People passed through him, if he tried to touch a living person his hand passed right through and at best the person would take a sudden chill, usually pulling their scarf or coat tighter and continuing on their business. Occasionally a small child would see him and wave, too tiny to remember the willowy brown figure cloaked in blue, and he could never tell what dictated whether or not animals saw him.
But he could touch this man, lying in the mud. His body had not grown cold, and as Lance laid his hand over his chest he could feel the weak rhythm of a heart working hard, pumping the man’s lifeblood into the mud from the stump of his arm. He was still alive, though not for much longer. Lance had to stop the bleeding, if he wanted to rouse the man and find out what made him so special, and why he could see Lance when no one else could.
Lance touched his fingers to the stump, then flattened his hand against it, his skin beginning to stain with the man’s blood. Lance exhaled, and ice grew from his fingers, spreading along the stump and crystallizing the blood and the tissue into a hard, dark mass. This wasn’t the best option, but the man had no arm and was dying, so a little bit of frostbite in a dead limb was a small price to pay, Lance reasoned as he lifted his hand. The ice that capped the wound was already turning black with blood, but it would hold for days.
Now, this left only the problem of what to do with him. Lance leaned against his staff and stared at the body of the man much larger than he himself was. He was a spirit, he didn’t interact with things but existed alongside them and he knew he did not have the strength to carry this man far. Lance turned his head, staring off into the darkness and a smile split his face. “Hello there,” Lance said, as the donkey tentatively stepped through the trees. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”I
t stood obediently still as, with the aid of a strong wind to brace him, Lance got the man astride the donkey. “We must get you out of the weather,” he said, and touched a finger to his nose, winking at the donkey, who brayed softly and let Lance lead them both into the winter night.
#
Lance knew these mountains like his own skin. He’d spent many an hour exploring the deep, dark caves where only the bats went; a perfect blue ball of ice-cold light his guide. The cave he led the donkey to was sheltered by trees and not visible from any path. Once it had been a bear’s den but that occupant had long since moved on. The cave didn’t go very deep, but enough so that Lance was able to get the man inside and lay him out on the ground. That accomplished, Lance took the lead and bridle from the donkey’ head. “You’re free,” he told the beast, and it wandered off to graze at the sparse, dead grass that poked through the shallow carpet of snow.
Well. Now Lance had a half-dead soldier in cave, and that was about as far ahead as he’d planned. He had no idea what to do next. He sat cross-legged in the dirt and watched him breathe for awhile, one hand held out, the ball of ice-cold light floating slightly above his palm the cave’s only illumination. Eventually, the chilly night turned into a pinkish dawn, the cloud cover still thick and spotty. There would be a worse storm later in the day, a terrible blizzard that would bury the mountainside deep in snow, and Lance could feel the precipitation in his blood. He stood and went to the cave’s entrance to watch the sun slowly peek through the bare trees.
The man wouldn’t survive the night. That he survived this long, so badly injured, was incredible. Lance would have to learn what he could before the cold took him, as it had taken so many before.
The sun was well above the trees when he stirred, coughed, and gasped for water. There was a flask at his side and Lance took it from his belt, uncapped it and held it to the man’s lips.
The water fell like an arctic flood, and he choked on it, coughing. “Fire…?” he said finally, lids and limbs drowsy. “Flint, in my bag…”I
t had not even occurred to Lance. He was a creature of the frost and snow, fire like the wagon burning was anathema to him. “I can’t,” he said, and felt bad as the man coughed and shivered. He would die in the cold, and Lance … didn’t want that to happen. He turned around the young when they wandered too far from the village, sent them the right way home. Once, many seasons past he’d played too long with children who could see the blue spirit in the snow, and they’d fallen asleep exhausted under a sapling, huddled together for warmth and never rousing again. Their bodies still lay, the roots of the large tree crept thick through their bones, and Lance never again let a person stray too far in the winter’s cold. The old guilt grew on him now, and fumblingly he felt through the man’s pouches, found the flint and tinder and set them aside. He would need kindling, first.
There was an old knowledge here, something instinctual to it and Lance let the wind carry him through the clear winter morning, collecting dry wood where he could. He visited the village during daylight, a rarity for him, and peeped in windows and watched as fires were stoked, and new fires lit. Certain now he knew what to do, he returned to the cave to find the man lying on his side, curled in and shivering bad.
“No, no,” Lance said, put his hand on the man’s intact arm and felt the heat from his skin diminish. “No, you cannot die, you hear me? You’re the first to speak with me in a hundred seasons, I want to hear your voice again!”
“Cold,” the man gasped through chattering teeth. Lance leaned over him and his cloak brushed the man’s leg. Without hesitation Lance pulled the clasp and draped the thick, warm blue material over his shivering form. That didn’t assuage the cold much, but his shivers abated, just slightly.
With half an eye on his charge, Lance built a fire without thought, and as he struck tinder to flint his hand shook with the weight of a knowledge long forgotten.
The fire burned bright and warm. Lance arranged his charge better, closer to the fire, wrapping his cloak more securely around the large man. He was a mess, dried blood and mud caked over him, hair coated in it, his armor damaged from the battle he’d been in. Lance sat by his side and watched as the shivers left him and some form of color flooded his cheeks. When he awoke and asked again for water, Lance was far more careful and the man drank slowly, didn’t choke.
He stayed awake for a little longer, drowsy with fatigue and blood loss, the pain of his lost limb gone numb from ice coating its stump. “Do you have a name?” Lance asked as the man stared silently into the fire.
“Shiro,” he said, and didn’t speak again for a long while.
#
Shiro.
It was a nice name, Lance thought, although it sounded quite foreign to his ear. He’d grown used to local names, all hard sounds and consonants, and he rolled the new name off his tongue a few more times, moving his staff between his hands as he stood on the rock outcropping above the small cave.
The smoke from their fire was barely visible in the daylight, but at night it would be a bright beacon against the mountain’s slope. The villagers would see it, and might even send someone in the morning to investigate. That wasn’t all bad, because then Shiro could be looked at by the village’s healer; but his concern was that the villagers were a very insular lot and never cared much for the travelers that passed through their town. They could be a kindly people, but….
He could see no signs of the bandits or their horses. That at least filled him with relief. Shiro had two friends out there who might still be in danger, but their fate was in their own hands as they had passed from his mountain already.
The donkey still lingered by the entrance of the cave, and Lance patted its flank as he passed.
The afternoon had turned grey and dark already, and the promised snow had already begun to fall, fat sticky flakes of white. He stood out in it for a while, just outside the cave, face upturned to the sky. When he heard Shiro cough and murmur nonsense he finally stepped inside to see Shiro sitting up, Lance’s cloak puddled around his waist.
“You shouldn’t sit up,” Lance scolded him, moving to pull the cloak back up, but Shiro was cradling his stump with one hand, eyes closed. His face had taken on an ashen hue, and he only opened his eyes when Lance touched his face gently. “Your hands,” Shiro said, softly bewildered. “They’re like ice.”
Lance grinned at that, and settled his cloak around Shiro’s shoulders better. “Your armor is all damaged,” he said. “I’m sorry I don’t have much here for comfort.”
“You live here?” Shiro looked around the empty cave as if seeing it for the first time and Lance hesitated, and then shook his head. He didn’t exactly live anywhere, he existed until he didn’t … and really, he didn’t exactly live at all, but Shiro didn’t have to know that either. “Did you bewitch my arm?”
“I stopped the bleeding,” Lance said, and poked his staff into the fire, where it did not catch light. Shiro didn’t seem to notice the staff’s odd behavior, and when he looked up at Shiro, head titled, he realized that Shiro’s eyes were upon him still. “What?”
“You seem … familiar,” Shiro said, and that startled Lance. He sat up in his crouch, resting his staff on his shoulder. “What is your name?”
What was his name? When was the last time he had ever spoken it aloud? “Lance,” he said, after a long, panicked moment of introspection. “My name is Lance.”
“Where is your village, Lance? Your town healer?”
“They will find us in the morning, I’m sure,” Lance said. “When the storm ends. You should rest, your body is weak, sir knight.”
Shiro took his advice, although he did not lie down like before; now he slept upright, his back to the cave wall. His complexion stayed ashen, he was breathing uncomfortably loud and Lance knew that he did not have much time. The cave was silent except for the foreign crackle of flame, and the soft whistle of wind beyond the entrance; bringing with it walls of white snow.
Lance began to hum a low tune, the words of a song in a language long forgotten rolling easy off his tongue. It was a song of healing, of passage; he remembered the women singing it in the warm light of a winter’s flame, in the gathering dark as a pyre burned bright against the night. It was an old memory, faint and worn, but the words fell like the snow outside, and Lance’s voice filled the cave. Shiro’s ragged breathing evened out, and finally slowed.
It did not stop.
Lance smiled and continued to sing as the fire burned low in the cave.
#
It was still snowing when dawn broke again, muted grey against a sea of white. Lance had underestimated the amount of snow, he’d been well distracted and now he stood barefoot atop the fresh powder, feeling the drifting flakes settle in his dark hair. They would not melt, but settled like a sprinkle of sugar. Lance raised his staff and swept it, and the snow followed its point, swirled after it before blasting back up into the grey sky. He laughed and drew designs in the air, enjoying the sensation. The wind tugged at his clothes and Lance went to pull his hood and remembered, and the joyful swirl of snow around him dissipated, blowing wild back into the wind.
Shiro was not getting any better. He fed the man some berries, nuts for sustenance, but his heartbeat was slow and lethargic under Lance’s hand. He opened his eyes, staring at Lance’s hand on his chest, cold through the layers and his cloak. “The snow’s still in your hair,” Shiro murmured lazily, his words slurring slightly. “Looks like the stars.”
Lance ran his hand through his hair, brushing snow to the floor of the cave where it quickly melted under the warmth of the fire.
“Is the healer coming?” Shiro was having a hard time keeping his eyes open.
Lance couldn’t go fetch the town doctor even if he desperately wanted to. “No, he’s not,” Lance said, his voice a whisper. “We’re snowed in, it lies thick across the mountain. Even when it stops it will be days before it is safe to pass.”
Shiro’s one hand, his left hand, worked its way out of the cloak and reached out to grasp Lance’s arm. The movement startled him, he was even less used to being touched as he was to touching, and Shiro winced. “Cold,” he said, holding Lance’s arm tight. “You must promise me,” he said, his voice catching. “When I die you’ll carry this message to the Princess and her knight.”
Without a second hand to hold the pouch in, it had flopped from Shiro’s belt when he took Lance’s arm. Lance covered Shiro’s hand on his arm with his own. “You’re not going to die,” he said, firm in his conviction.
“You don’t get to decide that,” Shiro said softly, fading from consciousness. Lance watched him pass out, waited for his hand to go slack on his arm. This connection with another was absolutely beyond him, he could not let this man die, how could he continue on knowing how it felt to be touched? Lance envisioned a warm embrace, the casual touches of the villagers between friends and family, hands and hugs and open hearts and no, he did get to decide this. He was a spirit of the earth and sky, borne from the North-West wind to tend the mountains during wintertide. He would not let this man die.
“There is a Witch in the mountains deep,” Lance said to Shiro’s sleeping form. “No modern medicine seller is she, older than the trees and twice as wizened. I’ve heard talk of her, and though the price may be steep I am certain she can heal you before the sun rises again.” He held Shiro’s hand in both of his, knowing that his frigid skin did Shiro no favors but not yet wanting to part from that warmth. “If I do not return,” Lance said, and faltered. They had barely exchanged a handful of words, and Lance knew so little still. There weren’t words for what he was trying to say, so instead he brought Shiro’s hand to his mouth and kissed his knuckles, before tucking Shiro’s hand back into the cloak.
“Mm, Lance…?” Shiro asked, drowsy and not-aware, but the question fell to an empty cave.
#
Lance had never heard the name of the Witch, just that she existed in the mountains deep. It was beyond his territory, closer to the sea where the air turned salty and the wind whipped the brine into your skin. Lance landed on an outstretched branch that jutted over a crack in in the hill, a deep fissure from which burned an unnatural color.
The wind directed him here but now it abandoned him, dropping off abruptly and leaving the constant snow to continue around him, a drift of white through a grey twilight. It would be dusk soon, it had taken the better part of the day to find his way.
There was surely no living being at the bottom of the crevasse, so Lance continued along the sheer cliff’s edge until he found an entrance buried under thick, dead vines. He parted the foliage with his staff, slipping between them into a deep, dark cavern that stank of salt and sulfur. He didn’t need to use ice magic to illuminate here, at the far end of the cave there was a soft magenta glow, throwing several objects into stark relief.
Lance did not speak, moving forward silently. He’d grown too used to being unseen and entering unannounced that when the stooped, hooded figure whirled on him Lance could only stare dumbly in surprise before his wits reminded him of the danger and he leaped back, staff at the ready and searing violet eyes burned forever into his memory. “Who dares?” the Witch’s voice was twisted, haggard like her form and Lance held his staff in both hands, kept it between them, a weapon and a shield both. After a moment of studying Lance through the dark she laughed, a terrible, rickety sound.
“A frost spirit,” she said, dismissive, and turned her back to him. “Run along to your snow, little frost spirit; when I need you you’ll know.”
Lance did not like the sound of that, but that wasn’t why he was here. “I am here to trade favors,” he said, staff still held tight between them.
“Favors?” The Witch looked over her shoulder, hood shrouding all but the dim glow of her eyes. “I do not traffic in favors with spirits.” She gestured with one hand, a casual, dismissive wave and of a sudden Lance found himself outside, in the winter’s wind again and blown sideways by a vicious gust off the water. He spun, head over heels and did not catch a branch with his staff in time, finding himself flattened against the sheer rock face instead. He picked himself up slowly and marched right back to the vines, wrenching them aside with his staff to find the cliff beneath it. “You think yourself clever,” he shouted to the wind, for he was certain the Witch was listening. “There is a man I wish to bargain for.”
A long pause, and then the rock behind the vines parted silent as a whisper but the stone still solid and thick. “A human?” the Witch’s voice reached down the tunnel and to him. “Speak, for I hold little patience.”
Out of the briny ocean air Lance spoke, and told of all that had happened before. The Witch listened carefully, never speaking or asking clarification until Lance’s tale was spun through. “He is strong, for a human,” she said, thoughtful. “If he lasts so long in the company of spirits, I would have great use for him, if the Hunt should pass this way again.”
“He is not yours, Witch,” Lance said.
“Nor is he yours, my little frost spirit,” she said. “I can save your strange little human easily enough.” She waved her hand over the cauldron, and the magenta glow seemed to deepen. “The cost, though …” here she hesitated, casting a sly look at Lance.
Lance would not back down from her stare. “I have little to give but my life,” he said, truthfully.
“You would give your life for this human?” she laughed again. “No no, much too simple.” She held out a small satchel that had seemed to materialize out of the air. “Apply the salve to his wound before the moon rises, then have him drink the flagon dry. He will live, if it is in his will to survive.”
Lance reached out to take the satchel, hardly able to believe how easy it was, but he couldn’t seem to touch it. “The price,” the Witch said, “is your staff.”
Lance hesitated.
The staff in his hand was a part of him. He had never been without it, it was more than a simple piece of wood. He didn’t feel like he would be able even exist for long, without it. “Why do you want such an old, nasty piece of wood?” he asked. “I can find you a dozen limbs far more suited-”
“My silly little spirit,” the Witch said. “The staff contains the very root of your power.” She crooked her finger. “You offered me your life, did you not? I let you leave at least with that.”
Hands tight on the old wood, gone smooth with his constant grip, Lance thought of Shiro sleeping against the cave’s wall. He thought about the fire going out, the creeping cold working in, and Shiro never rising again from his sleep. He’d seen so many come and go already, and his name would be forgotten quickly by the winter winds. It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it; even if Lance did this, surrendered his staff the man would pass into shadow eventually as all things did with time. That was the nature of them, mortal and ephemeral, gone like the snow in the spring sun, as if they never were.
Lance’s name, in Shiro’s mouth, warm and honeyed even though his tone was strangled, pained. It was the first time anyone had spoken his name in living memory, and Lance brought the staff to his chest, eyes closed. “As I thought,” the Witch said, withered claw of a hand clasping the satchel’s strap tight. “They are not worth your soul, spirit.”
Without a word, Lance thrust the staff out with one hand, to the Witch. “They are worth everything, Witch,” he said. “Take it, if that is your price.”
#
The trek back was longer still. Cloakless, staffless, he was just a dark figure against the white snow. Occasionally the North Wind would push at him, nip at his heels, blow him along - but he spent most of this journey on the ground, trudging over the wintry landscape. It was a hard journey, harder still because he could feel the distance from his staff grow with every step forward.
The storm abated eventually, the clouds growing thinner and bringing an icy chill to the night air. Between the scattershot clouds, high above he could see the bright pinpricks of stars and the nearly full moon glimmered, casting its light across the landscape.
The fire was all but out in the cave. Lance felt the chill inside, felt it bite at him in a way he wasn’t used to and he stoked the fire carefully before he checked on Shiro.
He was still alive, beads of perspiration dotting his face and freezing to his skin in the frigid air. Lance took the bottom hem of his tunic and tore it, used the old cloth to wipe Shiro’s face. An old scar crossed the bridge of his nose, a marker of a past battle. Lance hesitated, before taking his rag outside, bathing it in snow and returning to continue cleaning Shiro’s face.
The ice-cold of the rinsed rag brought Shiro around, eyes opening and focusing fuzzily on Lance. “You came back, Lance,” Shiro said, and Lance smiled because Shiro spoke his name.
“I have to go soon,” he said, the words hard in his throat. “The Witch gave me a salve to heal your wounds. You’ll be weak for a few days, but if you’ve made it this far a few days more should be nothing.” The weather wouldn’t be too bad, the sun would rise and, although the snow wouldn’t melt it would be days before the next storm. “If you stoke the fire up, the villagers will find you.”
“Where are you going?” Shiro asked, but Lance quieted him.
“Sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll dress your wounds. We can speak of it then.”
Shiro slept, and Lance felt the fire warm his feet as he sat beside him, and kept watch.
#
There was no longer any sign of the donkey outside the cave, it must have run off in the night as there was no trace of it. That was a pity, because Lance knew Shiro needed meat; the nuts and berries Lance had collected from winter stores were barely enough to sustain him and he would need better supplies when Lance was gone. The sun rose to a bright, clear sky and Lance could already feel the way that the cold took him as he traveled down to the village for the last time.I
t felt bad, to steal from the villagers. He had taken so many of them in winters past, and even the seasons that he watched over them didn’t make up for it. But Shiro needed it, and they had plenty in their stores and larders, well prepared for the long winter. A few small loaves, some dried meat, a candied fruit; all these went into a small sack. He was almost caught by a child of one of the villagers but Lance slipped out the door before she noticed, peering into the larder with a shiver and a frown.
Shiro slept most of the day, which was fine, because the less he remembered of Lance the better. The message he’d intended Lance to carry to his friends lay on the cavern floor by his leg, and Lance left it undisturbed. He spent the afternoon sitting outside the cave, on the overhang, watching the glitter of fresh snow in the sunlight.
The sun had cast shadows long across the valley when Shiro woke again. Lance gave him bread and a flagon of mulled wine he had pinched, and Shiro ate and drank gratefully, almost giddy on the food. He tore a chunk of bread from the loaf with his teeth and offered the loaf to Lance, intending to share it. Lance shook his head silently and watched his friend eat. “You are a strange one,” Shiro said, when he had finished, and Lance laughed at that.
The ice on Shiro’s arm had finally started to melt, long since gone a hard, dried black color. Lance applied the salve atop it and the ice seemed to harden. Shiro sucked a breath in through his teeth, pained, as Lance rubbed the oily, smelly salve all over the stump of his arm. “There,” Lance said, wiping his hands on his trousers and leaving twin streaks of oily residue on the old cloth. “Now, the potion.”
“There’s more?” Shiro said, his voice gone weak with the pain.
“I know it hurts,” Lance said. “But it will heal. This will speed the process.” He uncapped this flagon, and held it to Shiro’s lips. “Drink it dry,” he said. “It will help.”
Shiro choked on the bitter potion, but with Lance’s urging he drank the draught down as quickly as he could. Then he doubled forward, his hand clasped over his stomach and wincing in pain. “You said it would help ,” he moaned, and Lance stood up, dropping the empty flagon to the cavern floor as Shiro doubled over, shaking in pain.
The cramps subsided, but not the pain. Lance made Shiro as comfortable as he could, but his time was short. “I will be gone when the moon sets,” he said, soft as a whisper, Shiro delirious with his pain. “You will survive this, Shiro, and go back to your Princess. You’ll forget me, as it should be.”
“Lance,” Shiro said, voice cracked through in agony, and Lance swallowed hard. He was trying to reach for Lance, but Lance had bound his arm in the cloak, wrapped him tight in it to keep him warm and safe until the pain passed.
“You will survive this,” Lance said again, and brushed his dark hair from his face. He kissed Shiro’s forehead and stood, stoking the fire one last time before he walked out into the clear, dark night. He stood in the pale moonlight, face upturned to the midnight moon, and took a deep breath, his lung filled deep with the icy clear mountain air.
As the cold took him, Lance closed his eyes, and thought only of Shiro.
#
The snow was waist deep in the mountains, and all but impassable. Shiro sat at the fire, his right hand in his lap, flexing his hand and his fingers in turn. It wasn’t his hand, and yet it was - it was attached to him, it responded to his commands and he could feel with it … but it wasn’t his. The skin was black and shiny, hard scaled and the fingers curled into sharp talons. It was draconic in its form and function; Lance had spoken true. He’d gone to a Witch.
When he’d woken in the morning, his arm was grown. Shiro didn’t remember it growing, didn’t remember much of the previous night save the haze of pain and the soft tenderness with which he was attended. When he woke, finally, fully … he was whole, the pain nothing but a distant memory, and Shiro felt well for the first time in a week. However, his benefactor was nowhere to be found. The small sack of provisions he’d brought lay by the fire, and the remains of his cloak, tattered and old and now heavy with the scent of Shiro’s sweat, were the only proof he had ever been.
No new snow had fallen, but there were no tracks from the cave. Shiro stood at the opening a long while, the cold air making him shiver, until the fire called him back. He waited, for Lance to return.
Night fell, and the distant howl of a wolf cut the night’s air. Shiro slept restlessly, felt like all he had done was sleep and if he slept he would miss Lance’s return. The willowy young man had a beautiful, if sad smile, and Shiro longed to see it again. Morning came, and there was still no Lance.
The snow remained too thick to easily pass, and he was still far too weak to go in search of him. Shiro stoked the fire with the wood Lance had left behind, and ate sparingly, regaining his strength in bits and pieces.
On the third night, he heard something just outside the cave. “Lance,” he called, springing to his feet and moving to the entrance to greet him, to show how well he’d healed; but there was no one there when he looked, and the wind blew past, blasting loose snow across the slope of the hill. He slept restlessly again, and was woken when the moon was still high in the sky by the reverb of something he had not felt in some time, something that echoed deep in his bones. Fire magic.
Keith.
Shiro scrambled to his feet, the fire gone to embers in the night. He fastened Lance’s cloak over his armor and came to the entrance of the cave, looking for any traces of Keith’s magic on the hillside. He didn’t have to look far as another wall of snow blasted in front of the cave’s entrance, whipping past with the fury of a blizzard gone out of control. Shiro shook his head in disbelief, eyes raised to the sky above the trees, clear and free of clouds, but then that too was overtaken by white.
The burst of fire magic illuminated the area between the cave and the trees, and there was Keith in profile, traveling cloak blown upon by the wind and sword in hand. He other hand was open, palm up, a ball of red fire burning bright above his palm. The wall of white snow obscured him, before he could see Shiro in the cave’s entrance, but that was okay because Keith was meant to combat this, the blizzard around them bitterly unnatural.
“Shiro!” The Princess’s voice reached him, and Shiro cursed Keith quietly for letting her remain by his side instead of seeing her safe to the next passage point. He could not see her though, only hear her voice. “Shiro, was that you? Are you there?”
“I’m here,” Shiro called, and felt naked without his weapon, something to combat the magic that swirled around them. His new right arm throbbed, and without thought Shiro closed his fingers and flattened his palm, holding his hand out flat toward the snow. He felt, more than saw this magic, felt it reverb like Keith’s, even though he did not see what it was the wind dropped to nothing as if it had never been and the snow that had been whipped into a fury hung suspended in the air, before slowly drifting back down to settle on the earth.
“Shiro!” Princess Allura, dressed the same as Keith was, cloaked and in light travel armor, came running across the clearing as the fallen snow dusted her hood. She had her shortbow in hand and clearly meant to embrace him, but drew short, hesitating when she saw Shiro’s new, blackened arm. “I was certain that the bandits had taken your life.”
“They were no bandits, Princess,” Shiro said, although his eyes were not on the Princess, but fixed to Keith. “It was the Prince, and his company.”
Keith stood squared in the clearing, sword held out and the fire he had cast coating its blade. He was paying no mind to Shiro’s reunion with Allura, but instead his attention was locked on the crystal figure revealed from the center of the snow vortex, ice-colored skin translucent in the moonlight. Allura placed her hand on Shiro’s scaled arm, but he lowered it, moving forward and past her. Keith kept his attention on the ice wraith, although he did double-take when he saw Shiro walk past him. “Shiro, stay back!” Keith called. “It’s an ice wraith, their very touch is lethal!”
The wraith was floating about the snow, hands held wide and watching them both. He’d heard of ice wraiths, of course; frozen spirits who stole the life from travelers lost deep in the wintertide, but he’d never seen one before. “Shiro,” Keith said from behind him, a warning in his tone. Shiro ignored him, staring captivated at the creature, whose face was chiseled from ice.
“Lance,” Shiro said, voice strangled and breath steaming in the cold moonlight.
It did not speak, but screeched an unholy noise and lunged for him. “Shiro!” He heard the twang of Allura’s bow and her voice in warning simultaneously, and the arrow hit the wraith in the shoulder, chipping ice that fell to the ground below. The creature seemed not to be damaged in any way.
It was Lance, or it used to be - he knew it was but he did not seem to recognize Shiro, and was blasted sideways by the heat and flame of Keith’s fire magic. The ice wraith - Lance - flew past Shiro in a fury, headed straight for Keith, snow whipping around his form and Shiro was going to watch one of his friends die if he didn’t do something first.
So, he moved.
Shiro moved faster than he thought possible, still weak and worn out from his injuries but he matched the ice wraith pace for pace, planting himself in its path, Keith and Allura’s horrified yelling a distant backdrop to his focus. He thought of Lance sitting by the fire, a constant presence watching him with his bright blue eyes, singing low to a tune he had never heard that felt achingly familiar all the same. Shiro opened his arms, and caught the ice wraith.
He growled and struggled against Shiro’s grip, so cold it felt like the skin was melting from his bones. Shiro didn’t care, pushed aside the pain, tilted Lance’s face with his new draconic arm, and kissed him.
Cold, bitter cold flooded every sense of Shiro’s being. He felt frozen through, almost blind from it, but he didn’t stop kissing Lance until Lance ceased struggling in his arms. A sudden aura of warmth from behind him had to be Keith, and Shiro blinked away the ice blindness as a familiar, if cold hand touched his face. “Shiro,” Lance whispered, his voice cracked and dry like the earth.
“By the gods old and new,” Allura said, and Shiro looked at Lance in his arms. His skin was no longer translucent and hard, although his hair was seasoned through with white it was the familiar face he had seen by the fire that looked up at him.
“You have to go,” Lance said, his voice old and heavy. “This won’t last, the ice will take me again. Go, before I hurt you.”
“What the hell,” Keith said, fire dancing in the palm of his hand. He looked between Shiro and Lance, clearly bewildered. “Shiro, this is an ice wraith, what are you doing?”
“It’s Lance,” Shiro said, his arms tight around Lance. “This is Lance.” His body was so cold, and growing cold still. Lance pushed one hand against Shiro’s chest ineffectively, and when he looked down Shiro could see the ice creeping along Lance’s skin, turning it translucent again. “He saved my life, Keith.” He felt Lance try to push away again, the growing in his arms. “What must I do to save yours?” he said, to Lance.
“There is nothing you can do,” Lance said, ragged. “Flee.”
Keith put his hand on Shiro’s arm, and he looked to Keith. “You heard him, Shiro,” Keith said. “We thought you dead once already, I could not bear to watch you die again.” Shiro’s arms went slack and Lance finally pushed free, stepping back and away from Shiro.
He looked to Allura helplessly, who clutched her bow tight, and then back to Lance. His arms were glittering now, all the way up past his sleeves. The transformation was taking hold of him quickly. “I cannot leave him to this fate,” he said, finally.
“I’ve accepted this,” Lance said. “Please, I’m begging you, go . Don’t make my sacrifice be in vain.” He turned, and for the first time Shiro realized that Lance was standing atop the snow, not sinking into it.
Allura came up on Shiro’s other side, and he looked to her. “I’m not powerful enough to free him,” Allura said softly, and Shiro clenched his jaw. “But,” she continued, “I might be able to save him.”
“Do it,” Shiro said without hesitation, and she placed her hand on his arm, newly draconic.
“It would be irreversible, Shiro,” she said, and Shiro’s eyes were trained on Lance.
“I don’t care,” he said.
She looked to Lance, and back to Shiro again. “Lance,” she said, hesitating a moment over the name, unsure. “What did the Witch of the Cliffs take from you?”
Lance inhaled, a sharp bitter sound, and then laughed quietly. “Something you cannot restore,” he said, and crouched in the snow. “My soul.”
“Well, sounds simple enough,” Keith said. “We get his soul back from the Witch.”
“Deals made with witches are rarely simple,” Allura said, and Lance nodded his head in agreement, ice-blue eyes trained on Shiro. Allura held out her hand to him, but Lance did not move from his position. “My magic is not yet as strong as hers,” Allura said, “but you will not harm me.”
“The touch of an ice wraith is death,” Lance said, but Allura remained with her hand outstretched.
“Are you surrendering to your fate?” she asked. “Or are you willing to fight to change it?”
“What are you doing, Princess?” Keith asked, and Allura looked to him sharply. “He’s a winter spirit, and will fade with the first hint of springtide.”
“Take my hand, Lance,” Allura said, and Lance stirred, rose to his feet, almost looked compelled to do so by the commanding tone of her voice. He reached out and ice-crystallized hand, and took hers.
“Princess,” Shiro said, as she took his draconic hand and laid Lance’s in it. She looked to him for a final confirmation, clasping her hands around Shiro and Lance’s.
“This will hurt,” she told Shiro.
“I don’t care,” he said, and Allura’s hands began to glow, a pale rose in the darkness.
“What will hurt?” Lance said, suddenly worried, looking to Shiro, who was already wincing, and back to the Princess. “Don’t hurt him!” He tried to yank his hand away but he was caught, now, and the rose glow crept up his arm, as it did Shiro’s. Allura seemed to be bathed in it, glowing completely from head to toe. Shiro grunted, his jaw locking in pain and Allura kept concentrating, head bowed over their clasped hands.
“Shiro,” Keith said, voice strung through with worry, hand reaching out for him.
“Don’t touch him!” Allura snapped, and Keith froze in place, dropping his hand back to his side.
Finally, finally Allura dropped her hands from theirs and Lance yanked his hand back, staggering backwards and almost tripping over his own feet, landing on his butt in the snow. Shiro slumped back, stumbled but remained upright, clearly completely drained. Keith caught him, slung Shiro’s arm over his shoulder and looked up at him, startled. “Princess, his hair!”
Lance, sitting in the snow, was looking at his hands; no longer translucent nor ice. He stumbled to his feet and didn’t quite make it, slipping and falling into the snow again. “Witch,” he said, stunned, unable to quantify his emotions properly. “What have you done to me?” His attention swung from Allura to Shiro, leaned against Keith, and that brought him to his feet proper. He staggered forward before Keith could think to swing Shiro away, and his hand slid on Shiro’s cheek as he turned his head. The shock of white hair was centered above his eyes, and Lance’s attention went from his hair to Shiro’s drowsy expression as he turned his face into Lance’s hand.
“Warm,” Shiro murmured, happily, as his eyes slid closed.
#
The Princess’s hair was a fair white, almost faintly blue and looked like it had been spun from clouds themselves. She tended to Shiro as Lance sat next to them, wrapped up tight in his cloak and watching them with distrustful eyes. “Witch,” he said again, and Keith, seated at the fire opposite, paused in sharpening his blade to glare at Lance.
“He’s not wrong, Keith,” Allura said, unperturbed by Lance’s words or tone. Keith resumed sharpening his sword, still keeping an eye on them both. “How are you feeling?” Allura directed the question at Lance, though she tended still to Shiro.
“Weird,” Lance said. “Cold.” He didn’t like that. He liked the cold, but the bitterness nipped at his toes and he sat with his feet tucked under him. “I don’t like it.”
“If you would rather be an ice wraith,” Keith said, “I’m sure that can still be arranged.”
“Is Shiro all right?” Lance asked, ignoring Keith. “He’s not going to die, right?”
“No, he is quite hardy.” Allura finally seated herself, on Lance’s other side. “He’s just weak. A night’s rest and he should be well on his way to recovery.” She looked Lance over thoughtfully. “How long have you been an ice spirit, Lance?”
“For as long as there have been winters in the mountains,” Lance said. She smiled and spread her hands over her lap, but didn’t comment on that. “Am I … not a spirit, any longer? Is that why you both can see me?”
“Not exactly,” Allura said. “I can see spirits because I am a witch. Keith…” she looked to him, but Keith did not object or stop her from speaking, though she clearly expected him to. “Keith can because he has firedrake blood in his lineage.”
“Firedrake,” Lance said, unfamiliar. He looked back over at Shiro. “What about Shiro?” he asked. “He could see me too, before. I thought it was because he was near death.”
“Perhaps,” Allura said. “Or perhaps it was because he was even then bound to your fate.” She looked to the fire, and beyond to Keith, whose face had gone a peculiar shade of red. “You walk among us now, ice spirit.”
“What did you do to me,” Lance asked again, his voice a whisper.
“If it is the lack of a soul that creates an ice wraith,” Allura said, “then a soul is all you need to avoid that fate.” She smiled slightly, looking fondly back at Shiro asleep, who hadn’t even hesitated. “A soulbond is not simple magic, but it is at least effective.”
Lance touched his chest, under the cloak, flattened his hand to it and felt his own heartbeat. A soulbound. Shiro’s soul … he curled his fingers in the old scratchy fabric of his tunic and closed his eyes tight, tilting his head forward. He started, at the touch of a hand on his back, and he lifted his head to see Allura still smiling bright. “Shiro trusts you,” Allura said, “and that means so do I. Will you join my guard?”
Lance blinked wide eyes, looking from Allura, to Shiro’s sleeping form and then finally to the entrance of the cave, where moonlight still lit the snow, bright as day. Then, Lance smiled.
#
The trees were awash in the greenery of a new spring, leaves fresh and bright; while other trees blossomed a champagne-spray of fragrant flowers from their branches. The day was warm and bright, the sky a cloudless blue above the wagon traveling the dusty mountain trail. It was like so many of the others that had passed down through the small valley, plain and nondescript. A rider rode ahead on his steed, keeping a weather eye on the road; a knight turned mercenary no doubt, kitted in old tarnished armor, his hair loose. The villagers didn’t pay the travelers much mind as they passed through, although the breadmaker smiled at the willowy young man who drove the cart.
“You look familiar,” she said, slow and thoughtful, and he blinked wide blue eyes in surprise, then smiled back.
“I get that a lot,” he said, as his companion nudged him and smiled. The breadmaker thought little of it as the travelers passed into the mountains, on their way south.
Shiro smiled at Lance and leaned over, brushing free the blossom petals that had caught in his hair; and kissed him warmly. Gagging came from the back of the wagon, as a spectacled alchemist yelled, “gods, get a room,” and Lance laughed, both hands on the reins, and then looked to the cloudless blue spring sky.
Fandom: Voltron Legendary Defender
AU: Fantasy
Characters/Pairing: Shiro/Lance
Rating: T
Length: 10512
Summary: It had been this way as long as he could remember, awakening among the trees with his staff in hand and the innate knowledge of winter in the marrow of his bones. He lingered in the forest until the west winds brought whispers of green and the trees began to bud anew, when he would fade like the snow from the mountain’s slopes. It was a cycle as old as time, and Lance couldn’t begin to count the seasons he had lived.
A Lance-centric holiday gift exchange for rinthegreat.
The North-West wind blew in harsh, bringing with it low grey clouds and the crisp icy scent of winter. The trees rattled with its passing, skeletal limbs long bare of leaves, while the villagers in the valley below closed their shutters and stoked their fires. Amid the sea of tree, in the highest branches of a hardy old oak, crouched a lone cloaked figure watching the clouds move across the twilight sky. He held in one hand a crooked old staff, resting back on his shoulder lest he drop it into the canopy of dark branches below. He wouldn’t drop it, though, as the staff seemed an extension of himself; and as the wind blew fierce and cold and with more fury he sprang to his feet on the branch, laughing and holding his staff aloft to the night sky.
It began to snow.
The mountains were Lance’s whole world; the mountains and the valley and the village that he only visited in the dead of night, stealing silently across new-fallen snow leaving nary a footprint behind to show his passage. It had been this way as long as he could remember, awakening among the trees with his staff in hand and the innate knowledge of winter in the marrow of his bones. He lingered in the forest until the west winds brought whispers of green and the trees began to bud anew, when he would fade like the snow from the mountain’s slopes. It was a cycle as old as time, and Lance couldn’t begin to count the seasons he had lived.
The season’s first snow was sacred. White dusted everything like the fine sugar atop a pastry, and he laughed, bounding into the tree, the branches rustling and creating miniature snowfalls all their own as he made his perch atop the highest branch. Lance stood there, his staff hooked into the branches for stability lest the wind blow him free, and he shaded his eyes from the light of the moon, looking northward. He’d never been beyond the mountains, he’d never tried; his place was here, shepherding the village through the worst of the weather and keeping an eye on the villagers lest they stray too deep into the mountains on a cold, unforgiving winter’s night.
From his branch he could see his entire world; the village in the valley lit up warm and gold, lanterns strung between homesteads making it glow even brighter than usual. Lance smiled at the cheerful exterior the village put on, but a glimmer to the south caught his eye and he shifted, his weight barely disturbing the branch as he swung around, cloaking flying in the wind. The glimmer was faint, not the bright cheery warmth of fire but a reflection of a small burst of magic rippling through the trees.
Magic, in his woods?
It wasn’t unheard of. Lance wasn’t the only spirit to roam the ancient forest, and he certainly wouldn’t be the last. Countless seasons past there had been a werewolf that prowled the snow-covered slopes, and in the dim recesses of memory Lance knew something of fire and death - but he didn’t tug at that particular thread of his memory. Lance launched himself off the branch, catching the North Wind in his cloak as effortlessly as a bird on the wing, snowflakes swirling around him. Magic in his woods bore investigating; he would want to discourage any rowdy neighbors from moving in and preying upon those under his protection, after all.
Lance had not yet made it to the slope when there was another burst of magic, this more of an explosion than a glimmer. It was tinged red and ruthless and blasted the North Wind sideways, sending Lance tail over teakettle in the air. He caught himself with his staff, hooking a tree and spinning around it, placing bare feet upon the branch and staring in dismay at the black smoke now curling into the sky, the stench of death unmistakable.
A horse ran blind through the forest under his feet, and Lance knew these woods like the back of his hand, knew that the horse was headed down toward the town, toward the light and the warmth but it would never make it if it kept off the path like it was. He leaned off the branch and gestured with his staff, throwing up a wall of snow in the panicked beast’s face and sending it in a different direction, toward the path where it wouldn’t stumble off a ravine to its death.
Then, another horse; this one with two riders. The first holding the reins tight, the horse at a dead gallop on the slippery new snow; the other rider seated backwards, cloak whipping in the cold wind and firing arrows from a bow held tight in experienced hands. In pursuit were three riders on black steed, the breed unfamiliar but larger than the traveler’s horse, and they rode through Lance’s forest with impunity. Bandits no doubt, from the West.
Lance usually didn’t meddle in the affairs of travelers, but he absolutely could not stand bandits. He swept out of the tree and landed in the path of the riders, standing tall with his staff gripped tight as the three horsemen bore down on him. One by one, they passed through him and the horses faltered, spooked by the spirit they could sense but not see. This turned quickly into a struggle of horseman versus horse, trying to rein in the panicking creatures as one bucked, rearing up on its hind legs and almost throwing its rider. Lance turned in the direction that the two travelers sharing one horse had fled, but they were long gone, the last echoes of the horse’s hooves already lost to the wind.
Lance ignored the horses and their riders, heading back the way that they had come. There was light that way now, and warmth - he could smell the fire before he stepped into the clearing, where two other horsemen sat astride their own beasts, circling a burning wagon. There was still a donkey lashed to the wagon, bleating in terror as it the wagon burned but unable to pull itself away, the rear axle of the cart destroyed, one well shattered by a halberd’s shaft.
“Savages,” Lance whispered, as the terrified creature bucked and pulled and the two riders did nothing to dismount or to free the creature. Lance leaped down from the trees, moving quickly and decisively. People could not see him, sometimes animals could and sometimes they couldn’t; and when he put a hand out toward the donkey’s side, where the harness sat at its withers, it tried to kick him. “Hey, hey!” Lance said, dancing out of the way of the lethal kicks. “I’m trying to help you, here!”
He lifted the harness, finally, and the donkey bolted away, braying in a panic and startling the nearest rider, who clearly hadn’t expected the animal to get free. “Leave it,” the second rider said as the first turned to follow the donkey. “It’ll freeze to death in these mountains.”
“Yeah, that’s what you think, bud,” Lance said, and made a note to follow the donkey after he’d dealt with this. The fire wouldn’t spread, but its heat and warmth would draw attention and that would not do. He raised his staff, but before he could summon the winds to help extinguish the fire the other three riders returned empty-handed.
“Hey, where’s the donkey?” one asked, voice gruff as they rode slowly into the clearing.
“Ran off,” the one who had made to chase it said, and the first rider scoffed.
“I’d never ate donkey before,” they said, sounding mournful.
“Oi,” the other rider who had remained behind said, and leaned forward, one hand braced on the back of their horse. “I don’t see the Princess.” His voice was articulate and well-bred, despite the tatters of his cloaked form.
“Got away,” another one of the three said, and another nodded. Their cloaks were also bound tight, but their voices were high and fair.
“Horses spooked as we followed.” The big black steed that the rider sat astride snorted, blowing steam from its nostrils and shaking its head sharply. “There’s evil in these woods, your lordship.”
“We must follow them,” he said, “before the snows begin again and wipes all trace of their flight.”
Lance had quite enough by this point. He lifted his staff and drove it into the ground, bringing up a blast of cold air and swirling the already-fallen snow into the air as if a zephyr had spontaneously arisen. All five horses spooked this time, and they scattered into the dark woods around the path, their riders yelling and attempting to rein in their wayward steeds.
The frigid arctic wind that Lance had summoned served a secondary purpose, to extinguish the burning wagon. Lance picked his way around the destroyed vehicle; it had been damp with snow and rain before that and hadn’t burned easily, and as he came around to the back he found a man dead on the ground, where the heat had turned the snowy path to mud.
No coachman or simple farmer was this, he was wearing old armor and a torn, singed cloak. Lance prodded the body with his staff, hoping to turn it over and see if there was any notice of whose steward this was, when the body coughed and stirred at Lance’s prodding. He brought his staff in and leaned on it as the man rolled onto his back, coughing weakly, blood streaked across his mouth and face. He wore no royal insignia but his armor was further damaged, one arm all but gone. He wasn’t dead, but he would be soon.
“Did they get away?” the man asked, and coughed.
Lance cocked his head, and then looked behind him at the dark winter’s night. The wagon still smoldered but it was no longer alight, and he figured that the man must have mistaken a shadow for a comrade. When Lance looked back at him, the man was looking directly at him, eyes dark and shadowed. Lance frowned, tilted his head and then wordlessly pointed to himself, looking for confirmation. “Did they make it?” the man croaked again. “The Princess, did he get her away…?”
He was dying. Lance crouched in mud beside the soldier. “Your friends got away,” he said, the strangeness of speaking to another person exhilarating. “I spooked the bandits, their horses will take them far away before they have any hope of recovery.”
The man sighed out a labored breath, and then moved his damaged arm as if he were to draw something from his belt. Lance held up his hand and, with a small push forced the injured man’s arm back down. His skin was so warm, Lance’s hand didn’t pass through it and that made his entire body tingle. “What are you?” Lance said, as the man made a strangled noise and passed out.
Seasonal spirits could not interact with the living. It was not so much a rule as it was simple reality. People passed through him, if he tried to touch a living person his hand passed right through and at best the person would take a sudden chill, usually pulling their scarf or coat tighter and continuing on their business. Occasionally a small child would see him and wave, too tiny to remember the willowy brown figure cloaked in blue, and he could never tell what dictated whether or not animals saw him.
But he could touch this man, lying in the mud. His body had not grown cold, and as Lance laid his hand over his chest he could feel the weak rhythm of a heart working hard, pumping the man’s lifeblood into the mud from the stump of his arm. He was still alive, though not for much longer. Lance had to stop the bleeding, if he wanted to rouse the man and find out what made him so special, and why he could see Lance when no one else could.
Lance touched his fingers to the stump, then flattened his hand against it, his skin beginning to stain with the man’s blood. Lance exhaled, and ice grew from his fingers, spreading along the stump and crystallizing the blood and the tissue into a hard, dark mass. This wasn’t the best option, but the man had no arm and was dying, so a little bit of frostbite in a dead limb was a small price to pay, Lance reasoned as he lifted his hand. The ice that capped the wound was already turning black with blood, but it would hold for days.
Now, this left only the problem of what to do with him. Lance leaned against his staff and stared at the body of the man much larger than he himself was. He was a spirit, he didn’t interact with things but existed alongside them and he knew he did not have the strength to carry this man far. Lance turned his head, staring off into the darkness and a smile split his face. “Hello there,” Lance said, as the donkey tentatively stepped through the trees. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”I
t stood obediently still as, with the aid of a strong wind to brace him, Lance got the man astride the donkey. “We must get you out of the weather,” he said, and touched a finger to his nose, winking at the donkey, who brayed softly and let Lance lead them both into the winter night.
Lance knew these mountains like his own skin. He’d spent many an hour exploring the deep, dark caves where only the bats went; a perfect blue ball of ice-cold light his guide. The cave he led the donkey to was sheltered by trees and not visible from any path. Once it had been a bear’s den but that occupant had long since moved on. The cave didn’t go very deep, but enough so that Lance was able to get the man inside and lay him out on the ground. That accomplished, Lance took the lead and bridle from the donkey’ head. “You’re free,” he told the beast, and it wandered off to graze at the sparse, dead grass that poked through the shallow carpet of snow.
Well. Now Lance had a half-dead soldier in cave, and that was about as far ahead as he’d planned. He had no idea what to do next. He sat cross-legged in the dirt and watched him breathe for awhile, one hand held out, the ball of ice-cold light floating slightly above his palm the cave’s only illumination. Eventually, the chilly night turned into a pinkish dawn, the cloud cover still thick and spotty. There would be a worse storm later in the day, a terrible blizzard that would bury the mountainside deep in snow, and Lance could feel the precipitation in his blood. He stood and went to the cave’s entrance to watch the sun slowly peek through the bare trees.
The man wouldn’t survive the night. That he survived this long, so badly injured, was incredible. Lance would have to learn what he could before the cold took him, as it had taken so many before.
The sun was well above the trees when he stirred, coughed, and gasped for water. There was a flask at his side and Lance took it from his belt, uncapped it and held it to the man’s lips.
The water fell like an arctic flood, and he choked on it, coughing. “Fire…?” he said finally, lids and limbs drowsy. “Flint, in my bag…”I
t had not even occurred to Lance. He was a creature of the frost and snow, fire like the wagon burning was anathema to him. “I can’t,” he said, and felt bad as the man coughed and shivered. He would die in the cold, and Lance … didn’t want that to happen. He turned around the young when they wandered too far from the village, sent them the right way home. Once, many seasons past he’d played too long with children who could see the blue spirit in the snow, and they’d fallen asleep exhausted under a sapling, huddled together for warmth and never rousing again. Their bodies still lay, the roots of the large tree crept thick through their bones, and Lance never again let a person stray too far in the winter’s cold. The old guilt grew on him now, and fumblingly he felt through the man’s pouches, found the flint and tinder and set them aside. He would need kindling, first.
There was an old knowledge here, something instinctual to it and Lance let the wind carry him through the clear winter morning, collecting dry wood where he could. He visited the village during daylight, a rarity for him, and peeped in windows and watched as fires were stoked, and new fires lit. Certain now he knew what to do, he returned to the cave to find the man lying on his side, curled in and shivering bad.
“No, no,” Lance said, put his hand on the man’s intact arm and felt the heat from his skin diminish. “No, you cannot die, you hear me? You’re the first to speak with me in a hundred seasons, I want to hear your voice again!”
“Cold,” the man gasped through chattering teeth. Lance leaned over him and his cloak brushed the man’s leg. Without hesitation Lance pulled the clasp and draped the thick, warm blue material over his shivering form. That didn’t assuage the cold much, but his shivers abated, just slightly.
With half an eye on his charge, Lance built a fire without thought, and as he struck tinder to flint his hand shook with the weight of a knowledge long forgotten.
The fire burned bright and warm. Lance arranged his charge better, closer to the fire, wrapping his cloak more securely around the large man. He was a mess, dried blood and mud caked over him, hair coated in it, his armor damaged from the battle he’d been in. Lance sat by his side and watched as the shivers left him and some form of color flooded his cheeks. When he awoke and asked again for water, Lance was far more careful and the man drank slowly, didn’t choke.
He stayed awake for a little longer, drowsy with fatigue and blood loss, the pain of his lost limb gone numb from ice coating its stump. “Do you have a name?” Lance asked as the man stared silently into the fire.
“Shiro,” he said, and didn’t speak again for a long while.
Shiro.
It was a nice name, Lance thought, although it sounded quite foreign to his ear. He’d grown used to local names, all hard sounds and consonants, and he rolled the new name off his tongue a few more times, moving his staff between his hands as he stood on the rock outcropping above the small cave.
The smoke from their fire was barely visible in the daylight, but at night it would be a bright beacon against the mountain’s slope. The villagers would see it, and might even send someone in the morning to investigate. That wasn’t all bad, because then Shiro could be looked at by the village’s healer; but his concern was that the villagers were a very insular lot and never cared much for the travelers that passed through their town. They could be a kindly people, but….
He could see no signs of the bandits or their horses. That at least filled him with relief. Shiro had two friends out there who might still be in danger, but their fate was in their own hands as they had passed from his mountain already.
The donkey still lingered by the entrance of the cave, and Lance patted its flank as he passed.
The afternoon had turned grey and dark already, and the promised snow had already begun to fall, fat sticky flakes of white. He stood out in it for a while, just outside the cave, face upturned to the sky. When he heard Shiro cough and murmur nonsense he finally stepped inside to see Shiro sitting up, Lance’s cloak puddled around his waist.
“You shouldn’t sit up,” Lance scolded him, moving to pull the cloak back up, but Shiro was cradling his stump with one hand, eyes closed. His face had taken on an ashen hue, and he only opened his eyes when Lance touched his face gently. “Your hands,” Shiro said, softly bewildered. “They’re like ice.”
Lance grinned at that, and settled his cloak around Shiro’s shoulders better. “Your armor is all damaged,” he said. “I’m sorry I don’t have much here for comfort.”
“You live here?” Shiro looked around the empty cave as if seeing it for the first time and Lance hesitated, and then shook his head. He didn’t exactly live anywhere, he existed until he didn’t … and really, he didn’t exactly live at all, but Shiro didn’t have to know that either. “Did you bewitch my arm?”
“I stopped the bleeding,” Lance said, and poked his staff into the fire, where it did not catch light. Shiro didn’t seem to notice the staff’s odd behavior, and when he looked up at Shiro, head titled, he realized that Shiro’s eyes were upon him still. “What?”
“You seem … familiar,” Shiro said, and that startled Lance. He sat up in his crouch, resting his staff on his shoulder. “What is your name?”
What was his name? When was the last time he had ever spoken it aloud? “Lance,” he said, after a long, panicked moment of introspection. “My name is Lance.”
“Where is your village, Lance? Your town healer?”
“They will find us in the morning, I’m sure,” Lance said. “When the storm ends. You should rest, your body is weak, sir knight.”
Shiro took his advice, although he did not lie down like before; now he slept upright, his back to the cave wall. His complexion stayed ashen, he was breathing uncomfortably loud and Lance knew that he did not have much time. The cave was silent except for the foreign crackle of flame, and the soft whistle of wind beyond the entrance; bringing with it walls of white snow.
Lance began to hum a low tune, the words of a song in a language long forgotten rolling easy off his tongue. It was a song of healing, of passage; he remembered the women singing it in the warm light of a winter’s flame, in the gathering dark as a pyre burned bright against the night. It was an old memory, faint and worn, but the words fell like the snow outside, and Lance’s voice filled the cave. Shiro’s ragged breathing evened out, and finally slowed.
It did not stop.
Lance smiled and continued to sing as the fire burned low in the cave.
It was still snowing when dawn broke again, muted grey against a sea of white. Lance had underestimated the amount of snow, he’d been well distracted and now he stood barefoot atop the fresh powder, feeling the drifting flakes settle in his dark hair. They would not melt, but settled like a sprinkle of sugar. Lance raised his staff and swept it, and the snow followed its point, swirled after it before blasting back up into the grey sky. He laughed and drew designs in the air, enjoying the sensation. The wind tugged at his clothes and Lance went to pull his hood and remembered, and the joyful swirl of snow around him dissipated, blowing wild back into the wind.
Shiro was not getting any better. He fed the man some berries, nuts for sustenance, but his heartbeat was slow and lethargic under Lance’s hand. He opened his eyes, staring at Lance’s hand on his chest, cold through the layers and his cloak. “The snow’s still in your hair,” Shiro murmured lazily, his words slurring slightly. “Looks like the stars.”
Lance ran his hand through his hair, brushing snow to the floor of the cave where it quickly melted under the warmth of the fire.
“Is the healer coming?” Shiro was having a hard time keeping his eyes open.
Lance couldn’t go fetch the town doctor even if he desperately wanted to. “No, he’s not,” Lance said, his voice a whisper. “We’re snowed in, it lies thick across the mountain. Even when it stops it will be days before it is safe to pass.”
Shiro’s one hand, his left hand, worked its way out of the cloak and reached out to grasp Lance’s arm. The movement startled him, he was even less used to being touched as he was to touching, and Shiro winced. “Cold,” he said, holding Lance’s arm tight. “You must promise me,” he said, his voice catching. “When I die you’ll carry this message to the Princess and her knight.”
Without a second hand to hold the pouch in, it had flopped from Shiro’s belt when he took Lance’s arm. Lance covered Shiro’s hand on his arm with his own. “You’re not going to die,” he said, firm in his conviction.
“You don’t get to decide that,” Shiro said softly, fading from consciousness. Lance watched him pass out, waited for his hand to go slack on his arm. This connection with another was absolutely beyond him, he could not let this man die, how could he continue on knowing how it felt to be touched? Lance envisioned a warm embrace, the casual touches of the villagers between friends and family, hands and hugs and open hearts and no, he did get to decide this. He was a spirit of the earth and sky, borne from the North-West wind to tend the mountains during wintertide. He would not let this man die.
“There is a Witch in the mountains deep,” Lance said to Shiro’s sleeping form. “No modern medicine seller is she, older than the trees and twice as wizened. I’ve heard talk of her, and though the price may be steep I am certain she can heal you before the sun rises again.” He held Shiro’s hand in both of his, knowing that his frigid skin did Shiro no favors but not yet wanting to part from that warmth. “If I do not return,” Lance said, and faltered. They had barely exchanged a handful of words, and Lance knew so little still. There weren’t words for what he was trying to say, so instead he brought Shiro’s hand to his mouth and kissed his knuckles, before tucking Shiro’s hand back into the cloak.
“Mm, Lance…?” Shiro asked, drowsy and not-aware, but the question fell to an empty cave.
Lance had never heard the name of the Witch, just that she existed in the mountains deep. It was beyond his territory, closer to the sea where the air turned salty and the wind whipped the brine into your skin. Lance landed on an outstretched branch that jutted over a crack in in the hill, a deep fissure from which burned an unnatural color.
The wind directed him here but now it abandoned him, dropping off abruptly and leaving the constant snow to continue around him, a drift of white through a grey twilight. It would be dusk soon, it had taken the better part of the day to find his way.
There was surely no living being at the bottom of the crevasse, so Lance continued along the sheer cliff’s edge until he found an entrance buried under thick, dead vines. He parted the foliage with his staff, slipping between them into a deep, dark cavern that stank of salt and sulfur. He didn’t need to use ice magic to illuminate here, at the far end of the cave there was a soft magenta glow, throwing several objects into stark relief.
Lance did not speak, moving forward silently. He’d grown too used to being unseen and entering unannounced that when the stooped, hooded figure whirled on him Lance could only stare dumbly in surprise before his wits reminded him of the danger and he leaped back, staff at the ready and searing violet eyes burned forever into his memory. “Who dares?” the Witch’s voice was twisted, haggard like her form and Lance held his staff in both hands, kept it between them, a weapon and a shield both. After a moment of studying Lance through the dark she laughed, a terrible, rickety sound.
“A frost spirit,” she said, dismissive, and turned her back to him. “Run along to your snow, little frost spirit; when I need you you’ll know.”
Lance did not like the sound of that, but that wasn’t why he was here. “I am here to trade favors,” he said, staff still held tight between them.
“Favors?” The Witch looked over her shoulder, hood shrouding all but the dim glow of her eyes. “I do not traffic in favors with spirits.” She gestured with one hand, a casual, dismissive wave and of a sudden Lance found himself outside, in the winter’s wind again and blown sideways by a vicious gust off the water. He spun, head over heels and did not catch a branch with his staff in time, finding himself flattened against the sheer rock face instead. He picked himself up slowly and marched right back to the vines, wrenching them aside with his staff to find the cliff beneath it. “You think yourself clever,” he shouted to the wind, for he was certain the Witch was listening. “There is a man I wish to bargain for.”
A long pause, and then the rock behind the vines parted silent as a whisper but the stone still solid and thick. “A human?” the Witch’s voice reached down the tunnel and to him. “Speak, for I hold little patience.”
Out of the briny ocean air Lance spoke, and told of all that had happened before. The Witch listened carefully, never speaking or asking clarification until Lance’s tale was spun through. “He is strong, for a human,” she said, thoughtful. “If he lasts so long in the company of spirits, I would have great use for him, if the Hunt should pass this way again.”
“He is not yours, Witch,” Lance said.
“Nor is he yours, my little frost spirit,” she said. “I can save your strange little human easily enough.” She waved her hand over the cauldron, and the magenta glow seemed to deepen. “The cost, though …” here she hesitated, casting a sly look at Lance.
Lance would not back down from her stare. “I have little to give but my life,” he said, truthfully.
“You would give your life for this human?” she laughed again. “No no, much too simple.” She held out a small satchel that had seemed to materialize out of the air. “Apply the salve to his wound before the moon rises, then have him drink the flagon dry. He will live, if it is in his will to survive.”
Lance reached out to take the satchel, hardly able to believe how easy it was, but he couldn’t seem to touch it. “The price,” the Witch said, “is your staff.”
Lance hesitated.
The staff in his hand was a part of him. He had never been without it, it was more than a simple piece of wood. He didn’t feel like he would be able even exist for long, without it. “Why do you want such an old, nasty piece of wood?” he asked. “I can find you a dozen limbs far more suited-”
“My silly little spirit,” the Witch said. “The staff contains the very root of your power.” She crooked her finger. “You offered me your life, did you not? I let you leave at least with that.”
Hands tight on the old wood, gone smooth with his constant grip, Lance thought of Shiro sleeping against the cave’s wall. He thought about the fire going out, the creeping cold working in, and Shiro never rising again from his sleep. He’d seen so many come and go already, and his name would be forgotten quickly by the winter winds. It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it; even if Lance did this, surrendered his staff the man would pass into shadow eventually as all things did with time. That was the nature of them, mortal and ephemeral, gone like the snow in the spring sun, as if they never were.
Lance’s name, in Shiro’s mouth, warm and honeyed even though his tone was strangled, pained. It was the first time anyone had spoken his name in living memory, and Lance brought the staff to his chest, eyes closed. “As I thought,” the Witch said, withered claw of a hand clasping the satchel’s strap tight. “They are not worth your soul, spirit.”
Without a word, Lance thrust the staff out with one hand, to the Witch. “They are worth everything, Witch,” he said. “Take it, if that is your price.”
The trek back was longer still. Cloakless, staffless, he was just a dark figure against the white snow. Occasionally the North Wind would push at him, nip at his heels, blow him along - but he spent most of this journey on the ground, trudging over the wintry landscape. It was a hard journey, harder still because he could feel the distance from his staff grow with every step forward.
The storm abated eventually, the clouds growing thinner and bringing an icy chill to the night air. Between the scattershot clouds, high above he could see the bright pinpricks of stars and the nearly full moon glimmered, casting its light across the landscape.
The fire was all but out in the cave. Lance felt the chill inside, felt it bite at him in a way he wasn’t used to and he stoked the fire carefully before he checked on Shiro.
He was still alive, beads of perspiration dotting his face and freezing to his skin in the frigid air. Lance took the bottom hem of his tunic and tore it, used the old cloth to wipe Shiro’s face. An old scar crossed the bridge of his nose, a marker of a past battle. Lance hesitated, before taking his rag outside, bathing it in snow and returning to continue cleaning Shiro’s face.
The ice-cold of the rinsed rag brought Shiro around, eyes opening and focusing fuzzily on Lance. “You came back, Lance,” Shiro said, and Lance smiled because Shiro spoke his name.
“I have to go soon,” he said, the words hard in his throat. “The Witch gave me a salve to heal your wounds. You’ll be weak for a few days, but if you’ve made it this far a few days more should be nothing.” The weather wouldn’t be too bad, the sun would rise and, although the snow wouldn’t melt it would be days before the next storm. “If you stoke the fire up, the villagers will find you.”
“Where are you going?” Shiro asked, but Lance quieted him.
“Sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll dress your wounds. We can speak of it then.”
Shiro slept, and Lance felt the fire warm his feet as he sat beside him, and kept watch.
There was no longer any sign of the donkey outside the cave, it must have run off in the night as there was no trace of it. That was a pity, because Lance knew Shiro needed meat; the nuts and berries Lance had collected from winter stores were barely enough to sustain him and he would need better supplies when Lance was gone. The sun rose to a bright, clear sky and Lance could already feel the way that the cold took him as he traveled down to the village for the last time.I
t felt bad, to steal from the villagers. He had taken so many of them in winters past, and even the seasons that he watched over them didn’t make up for it. But Shiro needed it, and they had plenty in their stores and larders, well prepared for the long winter. A few small loaves, some dried meat, a candied fruit; all these went into a small sack. He was almost caught by a child of one of the villagers but Lance slipped out the door before she noticed, peering into the larder with a shiver and a frown.
Shiro slept most of the day, which was fine, because the less he remembered of Lance the better. The message he’d intended Lance to carry to his friends lay on the cavern floor by his leg, and Lance left it undisturbed. He spent the afternoon sitting outside the cave, on the overhang, watching the glitter of fresh snow in the sunlight.
The sun had cast shadows long across the valley when Shiro woke again. Lance gave him bread and a flagon of mulled wine he had pinched, and Shiro ate and drank gratefully, almost giddy on the food. He tore a chunk of bread from the loaf with his teeth and offered the loaf to Lance, intending to share it. Lance shook his head silently and watched his friend eat. “You are a strange one,” Shiro said, when he had finished, and Lance laughed at that.
The ice on Shiro’s arm had finally started to melt, long since gone a hard, dried black color. Lance applied the salve atop it and the ice seemed to harden. Shiro sucked a breath in through his teeth, pained, as Lance rubbed the oily, smelly salve all over the stump of his arm. “There,” Lance said, wiping his hands on his trousers and leaving twin streaks of oily residue on the old cloth. “Now, the potion.”
“There’s more?” Shiro said, his voice gone weak with the pain.
“I know it hurts,” Lance said. “But it will heal. This will speed the process.” He uncapped this flagon, and held it to Shiro’s lips. “Drink it dry,” he said. “It will help.”
Shiro choked on the bitter potion, but with Lance’s urging he drank the draught down as quickly as he could. Then he doubled forward, his hand clasped over his stomach and wincing in pain. “You said it would help ,” he moaned, and Lance stood up, dropping the empty flagon to the cavern floor as Shiro doubled over, shaking in pain.
The cramps subsided, but not the pain. Lance made Shiro as comfortable as he could, but his time was short. “I will be gone when the moon sets,” he said, soft as a whisper, Shiro delirious with his pain. “You will survive this, Shiro, and go back to your Princess. You’ll forget me, as it should be.”
“Lance,” Shiro said, voice cracked through in agony, and Lance swallowed hard. He was trying to reach for Lance, but Lance had bound his arm in the cloak, wrapped him tight in it to keep him warm and safe until the pain passed.
“You will survive this,” Lance said again, and brushed his dark hair from his face. He kissed Shiro’s forehead and stood, stoking the fire one last time before he walked out into the clear, dark night. He stood in the pale moonlight, face upturned to the midnight moon, and took a deep breath, his lung filled deep with the icy clear mountain air.
As the cold took him, Lance closed his eyes, and thought only of Shiro.
The snow was waist deep in the mountains, and all but impassable. Shiro sat at the fire, his right hand in his lap, flexing his hand and his fingers in turn. It wasn’t his hand, and yet it was - it was attached to him, it responded to his commands and he could feel with it … but it wasn’t his. The skin was black and shiny, hard scaled and the fingers curled into sharp talons. It was draconic in its form and function; Lance had spoken true. He’d gone to a Witch.
When he’d woken in the morning, his arm was grown. Shiro didn’t remember it growing, didn’t remember much of the previous night save the haze of pain and the soft tenderness with which he was attended. When he woke, finally, fully … he was whole, the pain nothing but a distant memory, and Shiro felt well for the first time in a week. However, his benefactor was nowhere to be found. The small sack of provisions he’d brought lay by the fire, and the remains of his cloak, tattered and old and now heavy with the scent of Shiro’s sweat, were the only proof he had ever been.
No new snow had fallen, but there were no tracks from the cave. Shiro stood at the opening a long while, the cold air making him shiver, until the fire called him back. He waited, for Lance to return.
Night fell, and the distant howl of a wolf cut the night’s air. Shiro slept restlessly, felt like all he had done was sleep and if he slept he would miss Lance’s return. The willowy young man had a beautiful, if sad smile, and Shiro longed to see it again. Morning came, and there was still no Lance.
The snow remained too thick to easily pass, and he was still far too weak to go in search of him. Shiro stoked the fire with the wood Lance had left behind, and ate sparingly, regaining his strength in bits and pieces.
On the third night, he heard something just outside the cave. “Lance,” he called, springing to his feet and moving to the entrance to greet him, to show how well he’d healed; but there was no one there when he looked, and the wind blew past, blasting loose snow across the slope of the hill. He slept restlessly again, and was woken when the moon was still high in the sky by the reverb of something he had not felt in some time, something that echoed deep in his bones. Fire magic.
Keith.
Shiro scrambled to his feet, the fire gone to embers in the night. He fastened Lance’s cloak over his armor and came to the entrance of the cave, looking for any traces of Keith’s magic on the hillside. He didn’t have to look far as another wall of snow blasted in front of the cave’s entrance, whipping past with the fury of a blizzard gone out of control. Shiro shook his head in disbelief, eyes raised to the sky above the trees, clear and free of clouds, but then that too was overtaken by white.
The burst of fire magic illuminated the area between the cave and the trees, and there was Keith in profile, traveling cloak blown upon by the wind and sword in hand. He other hand was open, palm up, a ball of red fire burning bright above his palm. The wall of white snow obscured him, before he could see Shiro in the cave’s entrance, but that was okay because Keith was meant to combat this, the blizzard around them bitterly unnatural.
“Shiro!” The Princess’s voice reached him, and Shiro cursed Keith quietly for letting her remain by his side instead of seeing her safe to the next passage point. He could not see her though, only hear her voice. “Shiro, was that you? Are you there?”
“I’m here,” Shiro called, and felt naked without his weapon, something to combat the magic that swirled around them. His new right arm throbbed, and without thought Shiro closed his fingers and flattened his palm, holding his hand out flat toward the snow. He felt, more than saw this magic, felt it reverb like Keith’s, even though he did not see what it was the wind dropped to nothing as if it had never been and the snow that had been whipped into a fury hung suspended in the air, before slowly drifting back down to settle on the earth.
“Shiro!” Princess Allura, dressed the same as Keith was, cloaked and in light travel armor, came running across the clearing as the fallen snow dusted her hood. She had her shortbow in hand and clearly meant to embrace him, but drew short, hesitating when she saw Shiro’s new, blackened arm. “I was certain that the bandits had taken your life.”
“They were no bandits, Princess,” Shiro said, although his eyes were not on the Princess, but fixed to Keith. “It was the Prince, and his company.”
Keith stood squared in the clearing, sword held out and the fire he had cast coating its blade. He was paying no mind to Shiro’s reunion with Allura, but instead his attention was locked on the crystal figure revealed from the center of the snow vortex, ice-colored skin translucent in the moonlight. Allura placed her hand on Shiro’s scaled arm, but he lowered it, moving forward and past her. Keith kept his attention on the ice wraith, although he did double-take when he saw Shiro walk past him. “Shiro, stay back!” Keith called. “It’s an ice wraith, their very touch is lethal!”
The wraith was floating about the snow, hands held wide and watching them both. He’d heard of ice wraiths, of course; frozen spirits who stole the life from travelers lost deep in the wintertide, but he’d never seen one before. “Shiro,” Keith said from behind him, a warning in his tone. Shiro ignored him, staring captivated at the creature, whose face was chiseled from ice.
“Lance,” Shiro said, voice strangled and breath steaming in the cold moonlight.
It did not speak, but screeched an unholy noise and lunged for him. “Shiro!” He heard the twang of Allura’s bow and her voice in warning simultaneously, and the arrow hit the wraith in the shoulder, chipping ice that fell to the ground below. The creature seemed not to be damaged in any way.
It was Lance, or it used to be - he knew it was but he did not seem to recognize Shiro, and was blasted sideways by the heat and flame of Keith’s fire magic. The ice wraith - Lance - flew past Shiro in a fury, headed straight for Keith, snow whipping around his form and Shiro was going to watch one of his friends die if he didn’t do something first.
So, he moved.
Shiro moved faster than he thought possible, still weak and worn out from his injuries but he matched the ice wraith pace for pace, planting himself in its path, Keith and Allura’s horrified yelling a distant backdrop to his focus. He thought of Lance sitting by the fire, a constant presence watching him with his bright blue eyes, singing low to a tune he had never heard that felt achingly familiar all the same. Shiro opened his arms, and caught the ice wraith.
He growled and struggled against Shiro’s grip, so cold it felt like the skin was melting from his bones. Shiro didn’t care, pushed aside the pain, tilted Lance’s face with his new draconic arm, and kissed him.
Cold, bitter cold flooded every sense of Shiro’s being. He felt frozen through, almost blind from it, but he didn’t stop kissing Lance until Lance ceased struggling in his arms. A sudden aura of warmth from behind him had to be Keith, and Shiro blinked away the ice blindness as a familiar, if cold hand touched his face. “Shiro,” Lance whispered, his voice cracked and dry like the earth.
“By the gods old and new,” Allura said, and Shiro looked at Lance in his arms. His skin was no longer translucent and hard, although his hair was seasoned through with white it was the familiar face he had seen by the fire that looked up at him.
“You have to go,” Lance said, his voice old and heavy. “This won’t last, the ice will take me again. Go, before I hurt you.”
“What the hell,” Keith said, fire dancing in the palm of his hand. He looked between Shiro and Lance, clearly bewildered. “Shiro, this is an ice wraith, what are you doing?”
“It’s Lance,” Shiro said, his arms tight around Lance. “This is Lance.” His body was so cold, and growing cold still. Lance pushed one hand against Shiro’s chest ineffectively, and when he looked down Shiro could see the ice creeping along Lance’s skin, turning it translucent again. “He saved my life, Keith.” He felt Lance try to push away again, the growing in his arms. “What must I do to save yours?” he said, to Lance.
“There is nothing you can do,” Lance said, ragged. “Flee.”
Keith put his hand on Shiro’s arm, and he looked to Keith. “You heard him, Shiro,” Keith said. “We thought you dead once already, I could not bear to watch you die again.” Shiro’s arms went slack and Lance finally pushed free, stepping back and away from Shiro.
He looked to Allura helplessly, who clutched her bow tight, and then back to Lance. His arms were glittering now, all the way up past his sleeves. The transformation was taking hold of him quickly. “I cannot leave him to this fate,” he said, finally.
“I’ve accepted this,” Lance said. “Please, I’m begging you, go . Don’t make my sacrifice be in vain.” He turned, and for the first time Shiro realized that Lance was standing atop the snow, not sinking into it.
Allura came up on Shiro’s other side, and he looked to her. “I’m not powerful enough to free him,” Allura said softly, and Shiro clenched his jaw. “But,” she continued, “I might be able to save him.”
“Do it,” Shiro said without hesitation, and she placed her hand on his arm, newly draconic.
“It would be irreversible, Shiro,” she said, and Shiro’s eyes were trained on Lance.
“I don’t care,” he said.
She looked to Lance, and back to Shiro again. “Lance,” she said, hesitating a moment over the name, unsure. “What did the Witch of the Cliffs take from you?”
Lance inhaled, a sharp bitter sound, and then laughed quietly. “Something you cannot restore,” he said, and crouched in the snow. “My soul.”
“Well, sounds simple enough,” Keith said. “We get his soul back from the Witch.”
“Deals made with witches are rarely simple,” Allura said, and Lance nodded his head in agreement, ice-blue eyes trained on Shiro. Allura held out her hand to him, but Lance did not move from his position. “My magic is not yet as strong as hers,” Allura said, “but you will not harm me.”
“The touch of an ice wraith is death,” Lance said, but Allura remained with her hand outstretched.
“Are you surrendering to your fate?” she asked. “Or are you willing to fight to change it?”
“What are you doing, Princess?” Keith asked, and Allura looked to him sharply. “He’s a winter spirit, and will fade with the first hint of springtide.”
“Take my hand, Lance,” Allura said, and Lance stirred, rose to his feet, almost looked compelled to do so by the commanding tone of her voice. He reached out and ice-crystallized hand, and took hers.
“Princess,” Shiro said, as she took his draconic hand and laid Lance’s in it. She looked to him for a final confirmation, clasping her hands around Shiro and Lance’s.
“This will hurt,” she told Shiro.
“I don’t care,” he said, and Allura’s hands began to glow, a pale rose in the darkness.
“What will hurt?” Lance said, suddenly worried, looking to Shiro, who was already wincing, and back to the Princess. “Don’t hurt him!” He tried to yank his hand away but he was caught, now, and the rose glow crept up his arm, as it did Shiro’s. Allura seemed to be bathed in it, glowing completely from head to toe. Shiro grunted, his jaw locking in pain and Allura kept concentrating, head bowed over their clasped hands.
“Shiro,” Keith said, voice strung through with worry, hand reaching out for him.
“Don’t touch him!” Allura snapped, and Keith froze in place, dropping his hand back to his side.
Finally, finally Allura dropped her hands from theirs and Lance yanked his hand back, staggering backwards and almost tripping over his own feet, landing on his butt in the snow. Shiro slumped back, stumbled but remained upright, clearly completely drained. Keith caught him, slung Shiro’s arm over his shoulder and looked up at him, startled. “Princess, his hair!”
Lance, sitting in the snow, was looking at his hands; no longer translucent nor ice. He stumbled to his feet and didn’t quite make it, slipping and falling into the snow again. “Witch,” he said, stunned, unable to quantify his emotions properly. “What have you done to me?” His attention swung from Allura to Shiro, leaned against Keith, and that brought him to his feet proper. He staggered forward before Keith could think to swing Shiro away, and his hand slid on Shiro’s cheek as he turned his head. The shock of white hair was centered above his eyes, and Lance’s attention went from his hair to Shiro’s drowsy expression as he turned his face into Lance’s hand.
“Warm,” Shiro murmured, happily, as his eyes slid closed.
The Princess’s hair was a fair white, almost faintly blue and looked like it had been spun from clouds themselves. She tended to Shiro as Lance sat next to them, wrapped up tight in his cloak and watching them with distrustful eyes. “Witch,” he said again, and Keith, seated at the fire opposite, paused in sharpening his blade to glare at Lance.
“He’s not wrong, Keith,” Allura said, unperturbed by Lance’s words or tone. Keith resumed sharpening his sword, still keeping an eye on them both. “How are you feeling?” Allura directed the question at Lance, though she tended still to Shiro.
“Weird,” Lance said. “Cold.” He didn’t like that. He liked the cold, but the bitterness nipped at his toes and he sat with his feet tucked under him. “I don’t like it.”
“If you would rather be an ice wraith,” Keith said, “I’m sure that can still be arranged.”
“Is Shiro all right?” Lance asked, ignoring Keith. “He’s not going to die, right?”
“No, he is quite hardy.” Allura finally seated herself, on Lance’s other side. “He’s just weak. A night’s rest and he should be well on his way to recovery.” She looked Lance over thoughtfully. “How long have you been an ice spirit, Lance?”
“For as long as there have been winters in the mountains,” Lance said. She smiled and spread her hands over her lap, but didn’t comment on that. “Am I … not a spirit, any longer? Is that why you both can see me?”
“Not exactly,” Allura said. “I can see spirits because I am a witch. Keith…” she looked to him, but Keith did not object or stop her from speaking, though she clearly expected him to. “Keith can because he has firedrake blood in his lineage.”
“Firedrake,” Lance said, unfamiliar. He looked back over at Shiro. “What about Shiro?” he asked. “He could see me too, before. I thought it was because he was near death.”
“Perhaps,” Allura said. “Or perhaps it was because he was even then bound to your fate.” She looked to the fire, and beyond to Keith, whose face had gone a peculiar shade of red. “You walk among us now, ice spirit.”
“What did you do to me,” Lance asked again, his voice a whisper.
“If it is the lack of a soul that creates an ice wraith,” Allura said, “then a soul is all you need to avoid that fate.” She smiled slightly, looking fondly back at Shiro asleep, who hadn’t even hesitated. “A soulbond is not simple magic, but it is at least effective.”
Lance touched his chest, under the cloak, flattened his hand to it and felt his own heartbeat. A soulbound. Shiro’s soul … he curled his fingers in the old scratchy fabric of his tunic and closed his eyes tight, tilting his head forward. He started, at the touch of a hand on his back, and he lifted his head to see Allura still smiling bright. “Shiro trusts you,” Allura said, “and that means so do I. Will you join my guard?”
Lance blinked wide eyes, looking from Allura, to Shiro’s sleeping form and then finally to the entrance of the cave, where moonlight still lit the snow, bright as day. Then, Lance smiled.
The trees were awash in the greenery of a new spring, leaves fresh and bright; while other trees blossomed a champagne-spray of fragrant flowers from their branches. The day was warm and bright, the sky a cloudless blue above the wagon traveling the dusty mountain trail. It was like so many of the others that had passed down through the small valley, plain and nondescript. A rider rode ahead on his steed, keeping a weather eye on the road; a knight turned mercenary no doubt, kitted in old tarnished armor, his hair loose. The villagers didn’t pay the travelers much mind as they passed through, although the breadmaker smiled at the willowy young man who drove the cart.
“You look familiar,” she said, slow and thoughtful, and he blinked wide blue eyes in surprise, then smiled back.
“I get that a lot,” he said, as his companion nudged him and smiled. The breadmaker thought little of it as the travelers passed into the mountains, on their way south.
Shiro smiled at Lance and leaned over, brushing free the blossom petals that had caught in his hair; and kissed him warmly. Gagging came from the back of the wagon, as a spectacled alchemist yelled, “gods, get a room,” and Lance laughed, both hands on the reins, and then looked to the cloudless blue spring sky.
