XIX
Hall of the Traitor King
XIX
Hall of the Traitor King
“Tempest,” the Betrayer continued, leaning forward in his broken throne. “...you look so much like your mother. I’m glad.” I should note, given how deep and almost growling his voice was, that the preceding comment was not sarcastic in any way. Cyclone seemed genuinely happy.
“Uncle.”
Tempest did not seem happy.
Cyclone ignored the cold reception, swiveling his sunk-eyed gaze toward me. “...and you must be Morty.” For what was already a sarcastic nickname, I was stunned by the sheer amount of disdain that fit into Cyclone’s voice. “I’ll be watching you closely; do not think my city endures the same ambitions as the barbarians do.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he added “Welcome to River Rock.”
And then something I could never have predicted happened.
Gale broke into a gallop, charging across the room. I was terrified she was going to outright attack him, although my evil cult comment was intended as a joke. But instead, she lunged at him with her forelegs spread wide…
… and hugged him.
“Gale…” Cyclone growled, wrapping his good wing over her back. “It is good to finally meet you.”
“You too, Cyclone.”
He allowed her to hug him for a few spare moments, before releasing her with his wing. She didn’t seem to want to let go, and he was forced to pull his neck forward. To my immense surprise, his neck and shoulders carried her whole body weight, lifting even her hind hooves off the ground as adjusted his posture.
Think about that: this is a pony who could do a pull up with his neck—or at least, I assumed he could do his own weight, given the lack of apparent effort it took him to lift Gale. I found myself swallowing nervously. Whatever he’d heard about me, he didn’t seem to like me very much.
As Gale hung there for a moment, clearly amused by her new position, Tempest quietly excused himself from the room. None of the guards made any move to stop him.
Gale finally dropped to her hooves just as the throne room’s warped metal doors swung shut. Though she’d cleared the length of the chamber, the near-absolute quiet made it quite easy to make out her not-particularly-restrained voice. “How’d you know we were coming?”
“Tempest didn’t tell you?” He took a moment to glance over Gale’s shoulder, only to notice his nephew’s absence. Cyclone shrugged. “Father came here.”
To this day, I still don’t know if my ears were deceiving me, but the way Cyclone said the word ‘father’ was not cold or hateful, nor even sad or distant as I might have expected. Instead, the word was empty of any emotion at all.
“He stopped to pay his repsects…” There was a wistful pause there. “Then he continued, escorting Clover to the draconic border. He has a chariot with him, so you can make the trip back to Everfree safely.”
“Yeah… fuck that.” Cyclone’s brow rose to a sharp point at Gale’s casual outburst. “Morty and I are going to go slay the Windigo and end winter. We need to know where it is.”
Cyclone glared my direction. “Did you put her up to this idiocy, wizard?”
Almost on instinct, I donned the best smile I could manage—which, as Gale occasionally informs me, actually is rather disarming and debonair—and slowly shook my head in the giant pegasus’ direction. “That was her plan before I even met her. My goal here is to find Clover.”
“And to escape your death sentence with the barbarians…” He scowled. “That is, the ‘Crystal Union’.”
“Ah. So my reputation precedes me.” I swallowed heavily as the onset of fear made my throat feel like it was closing up. “Yes, I admit, not being decapitated or hung is amongst the nicer perks of my journey. I’m glad to offer my services to your court…” I glanced around the empty room, and then coughed into my hoof. “…to you, for the duration of my stay.”
“Hhmph.” The snort from Cyclone’s nostrils made visible steam in the chilly (though far from outright frozen) throne room. “I may just take you up on that offer, ‘Morty’. But that is a discussion for some other time.” His attention returned to my sole unicorn companion.
“Gale, I’m glad to finally meet you, but I have to ask: what possessed you to set about trying to kill the Windigo?”
Do you know how a dog looks at its master when it has successfully accomplished that rare and brilliant canine maneuver known to the old masters of their breeds as a ‘fetch’? That look of unbridled, unsubtle expectation of praise, head raised up to look into the master’s eyes, offering some stick or ball as though it were one of the Lost Tomes of Tourmaline?
Gale looked up at Cyclone that way before she answered her question.
“I’m tired of sitting around in Everfree. Killing that Windigo would fix the whole Compact Lands, way more than some bullshit parliament meeting or whatever.”
Cyclone blinked. Then he blinked again. His body seemed to lock up, his mind refreshing itself like a pony recovering from being bashed in the face by a bear—yes, personal experience, thank you for asking—before finally locating his tongue. “Your goal is to prove that executive military action makes better leadership than Equestria’s triumvirate system? And you intend to prove this by killing the last windigo?”
Gale nodded, obviously oblivious to the implications of what she had just said. I could nearly visualize her lowering her muzzle to push the metaphorical stick and/or ball forward, drawing attention to the sheer glory and magnificence of the offered proposal.
“You are being an idiot.”
Gale’s face fell like a hound smacked on the muzzle with a scroll.
Now looking like a disappointed, though still perfectly beautiful young unicorn mare, Gale offered a defiant voice. “I’m not afraid of getting hurt.”
Cyclone snorted, gesturing to his crippled wing. “Do you honestly think I haven’t tried to finish what Father started? I’ve been out hunting the spirit twice. With the death of its two siblings, it has grown to fear ponies. Now it hides in the blizzard it has created, somewhere in the mountains. I have most of a legion of skilled warriors for such a battle, but even with Clover’s magic, we couldn’t find the monster.”
At that little explanation, I couldn’t help but cut in. “Clover helped you hunt the windigo? It’s her fault the thing is still here in the first place. Why would she want to kill it now?”
A flash of anger crossed Cyclone’s face for just a moment. He spoke slowly. “From experience, I think she wanted to correct her mistake.”
“Mistake,” I countered. Hoof quotes: check. Sarcasm-laden voice: check. Slow eye-roll: check.
Remotest amount of self-awareness in regards to the pony I was speaking to, and how my commentary might reflect on him: Not-so-check.
Large flames from Cyclone’s good wing: check.
“Whoa!” Gale had to jump back from the surge of flame. I did the same, stumbling backward despite being well outside the range of being burnt.
Cyclone just stood there, on fire; apart from the wrinkles in his flesh at the base of his muzzle, and hint of his bared teeth visible through his beard, he seemed quite calm for a pony who was literally on fire.
It took me a few seconds of relative calm (relative calm here being defined as ‘he made no move to try and light me on fire) to remember that his specialization in pegasus magic was fire, and that pegasi tended not to kill themselves with their own favored element.
Thus, he was intending to intimidate me. Wintershimmer had taught me exactly what to do; the only trick was applying it to the exact situation.
I made a deliberate show of shivering, rubbing one forehoof along the length of the other leg. Then I walked forward to Cyclone, approaching as close as I could comfortably get. There, I sat down on my haunches, extended my forehooves, and warmed myself, as one might about a campfire.
This particular campfire was not amused. Cyclone opened his mouth, and not at all unlike a dragon, exhaled a single fireball in my direction. Quite unlike what unicorns call a “fireball”, this literal orb of flame struck me on the tip of my horn before I really had a chance to react. It burnt, certainly, but the flames dissipated before any real damage was done. Its only effect was to see me cover my face with my forelegs—a defense completely unhelpful against him if he continued to use fire, as I realized only moments later.
Instead, however, the fire vanished as quickly as it had come, and Cyclone snorted once from his nose—an action I would much later learn was as close as the behemoth allowed himself to go towards a real laugh.
Gale rushed over to my side—yes!—and threw herself around me. “Are you alright?”
“It just stings,” I told her.
“I’ll kiss it better later.” she told me, pointedly avoiding the flaming pegasus’ gaze. I noted Cyclone’s eyebrow reach as-yet-unexplored heights (which, given its earlier altitude, was impressive indeed), in time with the echoing of offering around the empty chamber.
I waited a few seconds for his eyebrow to yield to the inexorable tug of gravity, then nodded. “Okay, Cyclone. Point taken. For what it’s worth, I didn’t mean anything about you. I just don’t trust Clover.”
Cyclone did not loosen his scowl. “If that is your belief. Leave us, wizard. I would speak to Gale privately.”
The hallway outside the throne room wasn’t exactly ‘private’ from the throne room, given that the historic burning of the solid iron doors had left a pony-sized hole squarely in their center. As a consequence of this, I wandered my way down the central hall of Burning Hearth Castle. That passageway led me to a grandiosely sized gallery, with three tiers of colonnaded balconies looking down on a bland stone-floored central plaza, and an almost distracting lack of any decorations whatsoever. I could see gouges in the woodwork and cracks in the stone where beautiful portraits and tapestries presumably once hung.
Amidst all the gray and brown, a sky blue stood out fairly quickly. Tempest somehow managed the feat of both looming and moping as he hung his forelegs off the railing of one of the ornate railings above me.
I couldn’t resist sweeping a foreleg over my chest. “But soft! what light, through yonder window breaks?”
Tempest rolled his eyes. “What do you want, Morty?”
I shrugged, and then lit my horn. With a crisp pop, I found myself at a much better speaking distance to the pegasus, two floors up from where I had been standing. After recoiling for just a moment from the mana my spell took, I turned to face Tempest. “Cyclone wanted to talk to Gale alone. I just figured I’d find Graargh or my rock. Maybe a fireplace, too, so I don’t freeze to death.”
That comment earned me a raised brow. “Aren’t you from the Crystal Union?”
I nodded. “It’s cold as Tartarus up there in winter, sure, but the city has magic to keep out the snow. And we still have warm summers.” I leaned against the railing. “How does Everfree City compare to the snow?”
Tempest shrugged. “Warmer. You wanted to find a fireplace?”
How Tempest knew or guessed the location of a fireplace is something I can still only guess. Regardless, a mere two doors later, I was sitting down in front of the hearth as Tempest stuck his wing onto the logs. Moments later, a fire was crackling, and the pegasus was busily preening charcoal and ash out of his feathers.
I let about thirty seconds pass, warming myself, in silence. It was only when Tempest stood to leave that I realized just how strong my curiosity had become. “Why do you hate your uncle so much?”
Tempest abruptly froze in place. A short pause preceded his words. “I don’t hate him.”
“You certainly didn’t want to be in a room with him any longer than you have to. I’d say you were afraid of him, but he seemed happy enough to see you.”
Tempest turned back toward me and glared. “It’s a family thing.”
The casual thought brought back memory of a peculiar phrase from the throne room. “Is he your father?” I asked bluntly. In the ensuing silence, under the burden of Tempest’s flat glare, I shrugged. “I mean, he said he was glad you looked like your mom, and—”
“My dad is dead, Morty.” Tempest frowned, and then took a seat. “If I give you the history lesson, will you stop bothering me?”
“I’ll do my best,” I told him.
Tempest rolled his eyes. “My father sided with Uncle Cyclone in the rebellion. Mom killed him.”
“Wait, your mom killed her own… oh.” I managed to hold my tongue just in time. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Sure.” Tempest went back to preening, burying his face behind his wing. I turned to stare at the crackling fire—ever a pleasant source of visual distraction to let one’s thoughts flow freely.
I hardly expected to be interrupted by Tempest’s voice. “What would you think if I was afraid of him?”
Tempest hadn’t taken his head out from behind his wing, so I had no way of gauging if there was some answer to that he was looking for. Was he hoping I’d expect him to be a proud soldier like his family? Or was there something else?
“I guess I wouldn’t really care,” I told him honestly. “I mean, to some extent he scared me. He has an established reputation for killing unicorns.”
Tempest snorted into his wing. “Yeah. I guess so.” Then, with an almost feline stretch of his spine, he stood up. “Enjoy the fire.”