BARBEGAZI by Kim McDougall

Summary

Etien changes the day he faces the White Death. His body is broken, but his spirit awakes. When his family's curse manifests inside him, he leaves his birthright for the ice-encrusted mountains where he both fears and hopes to meet the mythical icemen, the Barbegazi.

A halfling has been hiding in the snow outside the Barbegazi village for days. Ethgel can feel his fear, though the others choose to ignore him. But Ethgel is tired of traditions that seclude her people in the remote reaches of the mountains. She longs to reach out to the frightened halfling but will he embrace the ways of the Barbegazi or will his human failings, his unending rage and fear, come between them?

Excerpt

Etien was Fabian. At seventeen, he had gone to war at his father's side, and learned what this really meant. Men died for that name. They died willingly. The name brought respect from some and fear from others. Etien could recite all the heroic deeds of his ancestors. They watched him from portraits hung on the castle walls. They whispered to him on the winds that blew down from the mountains. Their bodies rotted in Fabian ground, becoming part of the beauty that never dulled in his eyes. They were all around him in these mountains. They were the snow under his feet, the . . .

Those spirits rumbled, with sudden ferocity. Etien looked up, unbelieving. Thunder? No, the sky was still clear.

Avalanche. The White Death.

Behind him, the mountain peak blurred in a silent cloud of snow. The noise followed like an afterthought, like a stampede of gods. Etien jumped over the cliff, heedless of the jagged rocks and ice. He landed on a ledge of soft snow with only seconds to regain his balance. The mountain shook icicles off itself, like a sacrificial bull shaking flowers from its mane. Etien pulled his feet together and tucked. His skis cut deep into the virgin snow, slowing him. He dared a look behind and wished he hadn't. A white wall, a wave of snow, ice and debris, bore down on him.