by Rex Jameson
“All healed up!” Howland said, pointing at his chest. “I feel better now than I did when I was alive! Strong as a horse and mean as a bear!”
Howland gave a loud cheer, and his wife Sarah hugged him tightly.
Clayton pointed at his jaw and gave a thumbs up to the crowd. “Ashton brought me back from a gruesome death. You all remember it.”
He pointed down the King’s Road where he had been dragged. “I came back, just like those green-eyed bastards, but unlike them, I’m healing. I’m getting better. My wounds are closing. I still smell, but like a surgeon’s ward. I don’t even have to stuff myself with flowers anymore.”
“I don’t know about that,” Nathan said, backing away from Clayton playfully. “You’re quite ripe, if you ask me.”
“The point is,” Clayton said, frowning at his master but continuing. “We’re not like Orcus’s creatures, and we’re not like the King’s Guard. We’re something different now, and the man who brought us back and gave us this power, he’s out there somewhere, fighting for all of us. I can feel it. I know Ashton! He won’t stop. He’d come back to us if he could, but he’s in trouble.”
“What do you propose we do?” Nathan asked. “We have a few dozen axes and hammers. There are some swords tucked away in the basement of City Hall. I could make some more shields and some armor, I suppose. I think we’re short some percussion weapons for armored men, though.”
“Yes!” Clayton said. “That’s a start!”
“But I don’t think we have the people to carry what we already have made,” Nathan said, “Not unless you want to arm the women and children.”
“Why not?” Clayton asked. “Do you think the King’s Guard or Orcus are going to leave us alone? Do you think they’ll treat our children differently if they’re unarmed? We should at least give them a fighting chance!”
“I can fight!” Sarah declared.
“Even with my wife and all of my children,” Howland said, “we don’t have enough to fight off the King’s men and the undead.”
“Then I’ll find more people like us,” Clayton said, “People who can fight and heal!”
“You can raise others from the dead like Ashton?” Nathan asked.
“No,” Clayton said, looking toward Dona, “but I know where to find some.”
13
A Cold Draft in the Library
Princess Cassandra busied herself with a stack of old scrolls and metal implements, ancient gifts from the dark elves. Godfrey had been true to his word, and she had been escorted into the forbidden section of the Kingarth Library by the president of Kingarth College himself. Five scholars from the War College had been assigned to her, but she really just wanted to be left alone and given time to read and think, so she sent them away as soon as they arrived on pointless tasks for nearly a month. The men were tenacious, though, and never gave her more than a few hours reprieve from their questions.
She heard one of their footsteps approaching and slammed down a quill. She turned toward the man in agitation, and he slowed from his near-sprint to a meandering stumble.
“Do you mean to tell me, Christian,” she said, “that you managed to find me a scroll that details the Necromancer’s origins?”
“Yes,” he said. He then shook his head. “I mean, no. I guess not—not quite like you just demanded…” He shrugged and showed his teeth in an awkward smile. “Maybe?”
She growled audibly at him.
“Well, you see,” he blabbered, “you told me to find out where he got his powers, and so I looked through the ancient sections, like you told me to—”
“Right,” she interrupted him, “like I told you to…”
“I found this scroll,” he said, holding up one of a handful of parchments stowed under his arm, “8,000 years old but in remarkably good shape… It’s been restored before… covered in yellow candle wax—a thin sheet of it, really. Very expertly done…”
He flicked the scroll, and a corner tore off and floated to the floor. He watched in horror and winced when the tiny piece of paper touched the marble tiles.
“Oh, dear,” he said.
She stared at him with pure malice. He stood there like a deer on the King’s Road, though himself locked between abject fear and humiliation. She broke eye contact for a moment, realizing she was being unreasonable, and ran her fingers through her matted shock of crimson hair. She looked at the man’s feet and made a wheel motion with her hand to force him to continue.
“I wonder if he might be from a royal line,” he said.
“A royal line?” she asked. “The Eldenwalds are a well-established stock going back over 12,000 years, to a time when the dark elves ruled the land and Nomintaur was nothing more than an acorn in the forest.”
He licked his lips at the bait but didn’t take it. Usually, the scholars would argue with her, giving her more reasons to scold them for taking everything so literally. This one was learning.
“Yes, I understand that,” Christian Somerset said, stumbling over his thoughts like white rapids in a river. “I’m not talking about them. I mean, not that you aren’t royalty—of course—but, it’s just that there was a time… shortly after the fall of Balahambria, maybe 10,000 years ago… when the Eldenwalds were diminished. There was another line that ruled Surdel, well the country wasn’t called that at the time, but they ruled over the land for a while. There are scrolls that say this.”
“There was no other line,” she said, exasperated. “We all know the histories. The Eldenwalds have an unbroken line of leadership.”
“But there was a time when—”
“There was no such time,” she insisted.
“I found this scroll,” he said. “It’s more of a fable, really. Back then, the histories weren’t told like they are now. You—you were allowed to embellish to make the story more outlandish, or maybe just more interesting. More worth telling, I guess. They were more like fairy tales. Outside of this library, the stories were all oral, and the lessons, they had to be made simple and memorable for the peasants, the bards, and the like.”
“I want you to go back into that room,” she commanded, “and I want you to find me something I can use.”
“Please, Princess Cassandra!” the man pleaded. “This scroll says the original capital was not in Kingarth. It says the original capital was torn down. This scroll talks about Jarl Sven.”
“What does a fairy tale of a twenty-foot-man who rode on a giant raven have to do with a boy who can raise undead?”
“I don’t think he’s raising undead,” Christian said. “They say the people he brings back are loyal, not just to him but to you. That they might even get better—heal, regenerate. There are those spreading rumors that this may even be a wholesome magic—a gift from the gods. The dark elves say that demons only destroy, so the undead that the demons raise do not get better and they certainly don’t return to their homes to rebuild or raise crops.”
She had a quick flashback of the demon in the throne room and of her father’s head tumbling along the stones. She remembered the Necromancer’s panicked look as he stood behind the demon that approached her and her dying mother. He had sorrowful eyes, almost begging her to forgive him.
She waved the nightmare away.
“No, he raises demons,” she said. “I’ve seen one myself.”
“Listen to this,” Christian said. “I’m paraphrasing here. Jarl Sven, son of God, Bounder of Seas and Smiter of the Damned. His fists were life, but his tongue was death. He came to the house of King Vaston Eldenwald, wishing to pay him tribute—”
“Unless this story tells me how to defeat the demons or the Necromancer, I do not want to hear—”
Christian rushed onward through the waxed scroll.
“The King gave him offense, and the Jarl brought down his castle and sang him a dark song. The forest entangled the line of kings and pulled it down into the moist bog, where the worms did feast.”
She had never heard this story. She made a
disgusted face.
“And in the forests south of Godun, the ruins of Vaston dwelt for twenty years and the maidens wept and the vine of Eldenwald grew barren. And so it was, upon his return from Visanth, the Jarl did weep as he came upon the vines in the stone work. Wrapped was his head to quiet his tongue, so he paid respect with his hands. He pulled Vaston up and renewed him and the King did re-establish the line and command the Kingdom. Flourish it did for a hundred years.”
“Are you trying to say my many times removed grandfather was an undead?”
“No,” Christian said. “I mean, I don’t think so. It says he was renewed. Like he was made whole, like Cronos might do—creating life where it hadn’t been previously.”
“You’re trying my patience,” she said. “I need weapons in this war. If not against the Necromancer, then against the demons. I’m looking for fire and ice and light and—”
“Next stanza,” Christian continued, “twenty sons did he sire before he slept in the shadow of the fields. So does the ancient line continue.”
“I get it,” she said. “My great, great, great grandfather was brought back to life, and he had many children.”
“The scroll is written in a style that doesn’t change perspectives,” Christian said. “The scroll isn’t about King Vaston. The scroll is about Jarl Sven.”
“What does this have to do with the Necromancer?”
“Ashton Jeraldson was born in Perketh,” Christian continued patiently, “southwest of the old castle.”
“And what?” she asked. “He’s one of the twenty sons of Vaston? Are you saying that he’s an Eldenwald?”
“The scroll isn’t about—” Christian produced another scroll. “Look at this. It’s not that old, certainly not by comparison. 5,000 years. It’s entitled Genealogical Roots of Names.”
“I’m going to have you taken outside and—”
“Modern Jerald, derives from two bases. Gerald from the north, Jerl from the south. Jerl from Jurl, which in turn comes from Jarl. The names are of no consequence in the north, but in the south, especially those deepest parts of the woods, the name is considered offensive and community-shunned. See the story of Vaston.”
She perked up. “How did you come across these?”
“I found Genealogical Roots of Names, and then I followed the reference. I’ve been rifling through the ancient section for two weeks looking for the story of Vaston. I’m only trying to find what you’ve asked for.”
She gnawed at her lip, realizing that she might have been wasting their time more than her own.
“Sounds like a wild goose chase,” she said, looking up at him and pursing her lips in her best attempt at humor.
He chuckled and crossed his arms, crinkling the old parchment in his arm pits.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “If you wanted me to look for fire and ice and light, you should have told me that.”
She leaned back in her chair until it reached the desk. “I’m… Well, now that you mention it… I guess I could use a hand in looking for weapons. Fire and ice and light and all that…”
She picked up a nearby scroll and waved him to come over in confidence, hoping he would simply overlook the fact that she had been actively pushing him away for weeks, ignoring him and the other scholars, and humiliating them every day. He obeyed as if she were an old friend and pulled up a chair.
She brushed aside a stack of modern books and pointed at the scroll and then the two pieces of metal on the desk.
“The elves gave us these two rods,” she said. “They claimed they were gifts from the heavens. You’re familiar with Selenor the Seer?”
He nodded.
“Eleven thousand years ago,” she said. “These two items were given to the Eldenwalds. They said the fuel had been burned out, but that at one time, the pair used to connect two worlds. An ice world and our underworld.”
She held the metal rods up. “It says they’re in sync with each other. It says to get them to work, one has to be placed somewhere extremely hot or somewhere cold, and then the other one becomes a weapon.”
“Like a fireplace or something?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” she said, “like the center of a planet like ours. The elves said this pair had been connected to one that was destroyed.”
“Does it say we’re supposed to take one to the center of Nirendia?” he asked. “Is that what we’re supposed to do?”
She shrugged her shoulders but looked over the ancient text again, just to be sure. The wording was descriptive, not prescriptive, though, and had apparently been copied from the original elven certificate of authenticity—which had been incinerated to make room for other items.
“I’m surprised they let these survive the magic purges,” Christian said.
“They didn’t,” she said. “Not really. I found this other scroll,” she said, holding up a crinkled one on the table, “that gives a date that both cylinders were destroyed and the scholar’s name who carried it out. Lord Jeremiah Crayton.”
“Please try not to punish his descendants for Jeremiah’s betrayal of the crown,” Christian said jokingly. “The Somersets are vassals of the Craytons. They put me through schooling. They are a very good, trustworthy house.”
She shook the metal rods and the bindings tinkled together. “I think we’ll do our best to forgive him, given the circumstances.”
“Thanks! Good idea,” he joked good-naturedly. “Well, I don’t know about hot, and I have no idea if there’s a cave that would lead us to the center of the planet, but the coldest place I’ve ever been is the Chejit Glacier, north of Edinsbro and Nydale. It’s as deadly a place as any in the world.”
“How far away is that?” she asked. “I’ve never been too far from the castle.”
“Maybe three days by horse exchange,” he said, talking about the courier exchanges on the King’s Road to Edinsbro. “Could be a couple weeks on foot… and then the coldest part of the glacier is up the mountain.”
“How long does that take?”
“It took my father and me the better part of a summer,” he replied. “And it’s fall now. The winter winds have already started up there.”
“Is there something else more accessible? Somewhere I can try this out?”
“Godun, maybe,” he said.
“The place with all the undead and this demon lord Orcus running around?” she asked sarcastically.
He nodded. “You didn’t say give you easy answers. You asked me where you can find somewhere cold enough to be used as a weapon. That glacier is as cold as it gets. People die there from exposure in the summer. The mountains just north of here are temperate by comparison. If you want something cold all year round, something you can use as a weapon at any time, well… I’d say it’s the Chejit Glacier.”
She gathered up the five scrolls she had found that described this gift from the dark elves and stuffed them into a rucksack and the rods into the deep pockets of her brown, common leather pants. Her father may have disapproved of her “tomboy” phase, but that had never stopped him from supplying her with more boyish garments from the lower districts.
“When’s the last time you visited the glacier?” she asked.
“Maybe twenty years ago,” he said, “when I was fifteen.” He looked at her seriously. “I’m afraid I’m no longer that young or stupid.”
“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said. “I’m sure you’re still plenty stupid.”
“I’ll alert Regent Ross that we’re leaving,” he said.
“Are you kidding?” she asked. “He’d never let us leave.”
He grumbled.
“There’s an undead army out there,” he said, “and you’re going to go on an excursion to a glacier with nothing but a middle-aged scholar?”
“Of course not!” she said. “I’m going to bring my royal guard and a generous purse from the treasury. A lady can’t save the entire kingdom all by herself. That’d be crazy! Some of you men will have to help in thos
e small, meager ways that you’re good at.”
“I’ll grab some scrolls,” he said dryly.
“You’re going to be carrying a lot more than that,” she assured him with a smile. “Come on, Christian! Don’t be so glum. We’re going on an adventure!”
14
The Blood Chief Follows the Wind
The orc chief Bloodhand huffed and beat his chest in defiance at the archers along the battlements of Croft Keep. He only had 1,000 berserkers with him. Not enough to storm yet—which the shaman Wovtet kept reminding him of. The battering rams had made it through the mountains, though. Scouts said the siege weapons were already through Hell’s Edge and Sherb. He’d need them to break down the castle doors, if he could figure out how to cross the moat. The humans huddled like cowards behind their walls. Every death to humans was a miserable death.
He needed the reinforcements from Oldrakh, but he hadn’t heard from them. They hadn’t arrived over the northern passes that bordered the wood elven realm. He had been counting on them to tear down the forests and bring the trunks to cross the castle moat. He hoped they were pillaging some towns along the way and were just delayed. His berserkers were growing restless and bored, and he didn’t want to have to kill a few of them to keep the peace.
He didn’t fear the worst—that the entire northern division had been lost; fear would be unbecoming of a war chief. He’d find another way to take down the Keep. Or he wouldn’t. The Great Light would only judge him for his courage, not his failures. There was no fail if he tried. He knew that in his heart. If there was a challenge, it had to be met—no matter the odds. If it wasn’t met, someone else deserved to be chief. Such was the law of nature. But he had been Chief for as long as he could remember—not that he could remember much.
When the rams arrived, no matter the numbers, they would storm the gate. If they succeeded, he would find the commander and rip him to shreds. If the leader’s children lived here, he would kill them too. If they could be killed, then the Great Light demanded it. Honor would be served.