Kingdomturn

by Matthew Williams

  Unable to bear the sight of more death, Edan moved without thought for his own safety. In the span of a single breath, he leapt to his feet, stepped back from the edge, then sprinted across the path towards the Tailings. The crackling buzz of the Venerates’ blasts pursued him, but Edan somehow evaded their deadly touch. With his arms outstretched, he jumped across the final stride and barreled into the two startled Tailings. Since the boys were much smaller than Edan, his muscular frame sent them both tumbling into the dirt. Before Edan had time to get to his feet again, Adlig was already starting back towards the path.

  “What are you doing?” Edan demanded, scrambling to reach the boy again.

  “Where’s Grefstan?” Adlig asked in a hollow voice, his vacant eyes seeming to stare into a distant nothingness. Edan gripped the Tailing’s shoulders and tugged him back to the dirt once again. With Adlig in a seated position, both Edan and Scur held him in place. “Where’s Grefstan?” he repeated in the same dazed tone.

  “He’s not here,” Edan explained carefully.

  “Where is he?” Adlig persisted.

  “He’s not here anymore,” Edan said in a hoarse whisper. Being forced to repeat the truth of Grefstan’s death brought a level of pain with it that Edan wasn’t prepared to endure. His throat grew tighter with each word and his chest ached with sadness.

  “Where is Grefstan?” Adlig asked once more, just as a pause came in the Venerates’ attack.

  “He’s dead!” Edan spat in the sudden silence, and tears at last began to flow down his dirt-stained face. Seeing the great Depthcarver Edan—hero of Kingdomturn and master of remaining emotionless—openly crying was enough to pull the Tailing out of his stupor. A moment later, Adlig sobbed into his hands as Edan and Scur tried in vain to console him. “It’s all right, Adlig,” Edan reassured him, though he knew there was no truth in his words.

  “What are we going to do, Depthcarver?” Adlig whimpered, his eyes wide with fear.

  “It’s all right,” Edan repeated, as much to comfort the boy as to avoid admitting the truth of their situation. Adlig hung his head once more.

  “What are we going to do?” Scur mouthed silently over Adlig’s shoulder. Edan shook his head in reply, unable to find any suitable answer other than uncertainty. Drops of cold rain caused Edan to turn his eyes upward again as hopelessness and fear threatened to paralyze him. So much had changed in such a short time that the reality of the situation was only now beginning to set in. The Venerates had the workers trapped and were steadily eliminating them. More of the terrifying, buzzing orbs issued from the Hall, but Edan then made a strange observation that distracted him from his panic. Up to that point, the deadly bursts of light had either struck close enough to jar his entire body or soared overhead towards targets farther away within Aldhagen. This latest volley of fire could be heard, but not seen.

  Cautiously, Edan moved to the edge of the wall until the barrage of deep green lights at last came into view. What he saw made no sense: the Venerate assault continued, now with even more fury than before, but their fire was concentrated to the east at a point somewhere beyond Aldhagen. As he watched hundreds of bursts of light disappear over the capstones of the eastern wall, Edan leaned farther out into the open until the Hall of the Venerates towered over him. Smoldering, charred earth radiated in all directions from the sacred structure, but one patch of Aldhagen remained unscathed—the base of the Hall itself.

  In that moment, an idea captivated Edan’s mind that refused to dislodge itself, no matter how ridiculous it seemed. He pulled away from the edge and turned back to Adlig and Scur, whose expectant frowns confirmed that they were both looking to him for guidance. “Boys, we’re going to have a race,” Edan declared. “Let’s see who can reach the Hall first.”

  “What?” the Tailings cried in unison.

  Edan held up his hands. “Hear me out. From what I just saw, the Venerates’ weapons can’t reach the ground closest to the Hall—the angle must be too steep. Whatever the reason, there is a ring of safety a dozen strides wide that surrounds the Hall. That’s where we need to go.”

  Adlig and Scur exchanged an uncertain glance. “Then what?” Adlig asked quietly. “The Hall’s still sealed, Depthcarver.”

  This was the reaction Edan had expected—it echoed his own thoughts from when the idea first came to him. After witnessing the deadly onslaught that had destroyed most of Aldhagen, it was madness to think of running towards the Hall, but the true insanity lay in what they would have to do next. “Then we climb,” Edan said with intense resolve. “We know there is no safety to be had in Aldhagen. Perhaps we will find it in the lands beyond.” The idea of discovering anything other than death outside the walls went against every teaching they had ever known; then again, imagining the Venerates killing hundreds of people in the span of a few minutes had seemed equally impossible until that morning.

  The boys retained their frowns as Edan spoke, the rain dripping from their pensive brows, then at last they began to nod slowly. Their fear was immense, but the faith they had in their Depthcarver was stronger. Edan smiled at them proudly as his pulse quickened. He led the Tailings to the end of the structure and paused just long enough to exhale a wordless prayer for protection. Then he took the first step and fixed his eyes on the base of the Hall.

  For more than seven turnings, Edan had sprinted towards that building every day hoping the Venerates would look down and take note of his eagerness and dedication. Now his only desire was to remain unseen as he escaped their oppression forever. Thirty strides remained. The bursts of light continued arcing east without pause. Twenty strides remained. Newly-formed puddles splashed beneath Edan’s boots as he pushed forward with a speed that was only made possible by his fear. Ten strides. He could distinguish every stone in the wall that connected to the Venerates’ stronghold. Then, to his amazement, he found the cold, wet surface of those same stones beneath his hands a moment later.

  Before Edan began the climb, he turned with a victorious laugh as Adlig and Scur slid to a stop by his side at the wall. None of the blinding green orbs pursued them, and as Edan looked back to the living quarters, it appeared there were no new scars in the dirt where they had run. Though it seemed the Venerates had taken no notice of their desperate sprint for the wall, others within Aldhagen had. Edan’s elation collapsed like one of the nearby buildings when he spotted several pairs of terrified eyes peering at him tentatively from various parts of the ruins before disappearing again. There were other survivors.

  “This way!” Edan shouted as he took his hands off of the stones. “Hurry, before the Venerates see you!” For one man, Edan’s encouragement was the only thing needed to risk traversing the open space between the destroyed buildings and the Hall. When the worker arrived panting, Edan recognized him as Corfen, the Feller who had won the Woodsmen’s Trial many weeks earlier. His face was battered and bleeding, but he still smiled with relief after reaching the base of the wall.

  “Thank the Kingdom,” Corfen sighed, then he frowned with worry a few breaths later. “Why would the Venerates do this?”

  “I don’t know fully,” Edan admitted. “I believe they view us as a threat, and so they’re eradicating us.”

  Corfen wiped the rain and blood from his forehead. “How could we be a threat to them? Look at the power they possess!” He swung his arm in an arc towards the crumbling remains of Aldhagen’s buildings.

  Edan nodded. “They do have incredible power, but we now have our memories of the truth—of lies, of people cast out unjustly, of pain and torture, of murders we were forced to forget—all brought about by the Venerates.” Feller Corfen shook his head in wide-eyed disbelief, but he didn’t question the statements that would have been dubbed blasphemy in days prior. A troubling thought then crossed Edan’s mind. “How many others were hiding with you?”

  Corfen glanced at the ground for an instant. “Six,” he replied, then his dazed expression faded. “I left them out there! I abandoned them!” In a panic, he
started back for the buildings, but after two steps he staggered to a stop and toppled towards the ground. Edan caught hold of him and realized suddenly that the gash in the top of the Feller’s head was worse than it had seemed at first.

  “Steady,” Edan said as he propped Corfen against the base of the wall. “Scur, come over here.” The boy approached without hesitation and stood before Edan, awaiting instruction. Edan then tore a strip of fabric from the end of his own sleeve and secured it across Corfen’s injury. The Feller winced but didn’t protest. “Scur, I want you to keep pressure on this until I get back.”

  The Tailing nodded, but fear was plain on his face. “Where are you going?” he asked quietly as he placed his hands on Corfen’s head.

  “To get everyone else,” Edan replied, then he took hold of Scur’s shoulder. “I didn’t get a chance to say this to Grefstan, so I’m saying it to you now. Thank you for freeing me from the Venerates’ lies.” The boy gave no response, but no words were needed—he beamed with pride as Edan turned to traverse the deadly distance once more.

  53

  Layers of thunder overlapped one another, bouncing and merging in an endless tumult as the storm from the north drew nearer to the Lake of Skulls. During the few moments of silence, the valley shook with explosions that fell from the Hall of the Venerates into Aldhagen and Locboran. Sheets of cold rain surged over the northern cliffs, blurring the view of Aldhagen as they struck the grim faces of the warriors destined for it. Keltin pulled his cowl into place once again, but it was already so heavy with water that it did nothing other than cause the rain to drip incessantly across his eyes. In another ten strides, a gust of wind sent it back to his shoulders where he decided to leave it.

  While flashes of blue and gold erupted from the clouds to the north, bursts of radiant green stained the dark sky directly above Aldhagen as the Venerate attack continued. For a time, Keltin had watched the incredible display of power with horrified fascination; now, his concern for the workers above had grown so great that he forced himself to focus solely on the path ahead. This was why he looked up sharply when the sound of explosions was suddenly absent.

  Though the storm raged on, Aldhagen fell eerily silent. Then the ominous glow returned, but this time it expanded, growing brighter and brighter until the Hall was lost amid the intensity of the blinding green light. A sound like a thousand crackling embers filled the air just as Keltin made the terrifying realization that the Venerates’ attack no longer focused on Aldhagen—they had shifted their attention to the assault force.

  The nysk cart lurched to the left as a stream of glowing orbs flew through the air five strides overhead. Keltin felt a strange chill course through him when the bursts of light sped past, but he was thankful they had missed the cart for now. He glanced back with just enough time to see the green lights explode into the advancing force behind him, causing chaos to ripple through the fighters from Cynmere and Dism Slyde. People scrambled for cover, nysk carts swerved wildly across the sand, and scrid leapt from the northern ridgeline even at the risk of being infested by the haugaeldr below. Beyond all of that, though, another fact struck Keltin as far more troubling—only a fraction of the assault force remained on the western side of where the explosions had struck, and he was part of it.

  “They know we’re here!” Tir laughed darkly as he shifted the cart from left to right, seemingly at random yet somehow always in a pattern that dodged the next volley from the Hall. Other carts farther from Aldhagen mirrored this pattern, but many of them vanished in flashes of the Venerates’ fire. Scrid darted between explosions, weaving around Tir’s cart, onto the cliffs, then back into the mud once more. Even with their incredible mobility, they, too, suffered many losses in the exposed stretch of the valley that offered no refuge from the Venerate onslaught.

  “We have to turn back!” Cailla pleaded, shifting her gaze wildly from the plateau to Tir.

  Tir only shook his head. “The way back is lost. Watch the way forward instead.” As much as Keltin longed to heed Tir’s advice, he found it impossible to look away from the scene unfolding behind the cart. Hundreds of strides to the east, the bulk of the assault force scrambled for cover behind the nearest curve in the valley that put the Hall out of sight. Each barrage from the Venerates pushed a wedge farther between the two groups, but worse than that, the explosions attracted the haugaeldr in frenzied surges. In seconds, a wall of glowing yellow death spanned the northern shore, barring the only way for Keltin and the others to return to the camp in the Deadlands. Retreating fighters who stood against the beasts were overcome immediately, all doomed to a death too horrifying for Keltin to imagine. He looked away, unable to bear any more of the painful images that confirmed his earlier feelings of guilt.

  Keltin quickly found there was merit to Tir’s words even beyond what he had initially thought: the towering walls of Aldhagen were close enough now that only the very top of the Hall of the Venerates remained visible. Green orbs continued to pummel the edge of the Lake of Skulls, but soon the explosions were all behind the cart. Keltin wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or even more worried—though the bursts of light were no longer a threat, the strip of shoreline narrowed drastically along this section of the lake, bringing the infested waters of Drugoth dangerously close to the northern cliffs.

  Strange scraping sounds from the floor of the cart brought Keltin’s attention to the muddy path that lay ahead, and suddenly the name of this dreadful place made sense. The bones of untold thousands coated the shoreline; remnants of arms and legs clawed against the underside of the cart while each skull encountered produced a hollow and sickening thump. Every one of these people had looked to the Venerates for protection, and every one of them had instead been betrayed. Keltin’s stomach turned from disgust when he recalled the ease with which the Venerates delivered their favorite—and most hypocritical—phrase of “peace and honor.” It meant nothing to them, just as the lives of the workers clearly meant even less.

  The sound of the bodies beneath the cart became so frequent that it was impossible to distinguish one skull from the next; it was far easier to count the patches of mud without bones, though those moments were seldom encountered the closer the cart drew to the plateau. At last, the thundering of the great waterfall that poured from Wracandyr swelled into a deafening roar that washed away all other sound. The nysk cart still shook with each burst of light and every roll of thunder, but neither could be heard.

  “Weapons ready!” Tir shouted above the tumult, and Keltin gripped the spiked oar nervously. On a narrow promontory fifty strides in front of the cart, fighters who had survived the journey were amassing to begin clearing out the haugaeldr, and soon he would join them. Oars and arrows dispatched the monstrosities, and if one was felled too close to the warriors, a quick toss of its carcass lured the other haugaeldr farther into the water.

  Only four other carts had reached the base of the plateau, and the nysks were fighting just as hard as their passengers. Tendrils flailed and snapped at the yellow glow of the haugaeldr, each strike sending the deadly creatures tumbling through the air towards the lake. Behind the line of nysks, less than a dozen scrid—some with riders, some without—clung to the edge of the cliff a safe distance above the ground. At best, Keltin guessed there were fewer than seventy fighters who had made it this far, and a quick glance back to the east proved that their numbers wouldn’t increase by much.

  Tir slid the cart into position beside the others and the two nysks immediately joined the defense. “Everyone out!” Tir called, then he leapt down the ladder and seized one of the oars for himself. Cynmeren and Smokedwellers surged onto the muddy outcrop as arrows flew into the distance to the south. Keltin nodded to Ryna and the others, then they all followed Tir to become part of the fight.

  Moving through the mud proved difficult from the instant Keltin jumped out of the nysk cart. The rain had inundated the already wet ground and the passage of animals and boots had churned it into a thick slop. As Keltin lif
ted one weighted foot after another, he found more remains mixed into the muck, their pale whiteness now stained tan from the muddy water. He breathed heavily from the effort but tried not to be sick at the same time—the smell of stagnant decay in this place was overwhelming.

  After at last reaching the front of the cart, Keltin found one of the haugaeldr already charging towards him from the water. He skewered the little beast, then used the length of his oar to fling its body many strides into the lake. Even as it died, the creature stabbed at the air wildly with its injector, hoping to find a host for the next generation of horrors. Keltin shuddered, then quickly recovered to repeat the process with two more haugaeldr. A few strides to his right, Ryna swept her oar in a wide arc that sent half a dozen of the creatures splashing into the lake. To his left, Keltin suddenly heard Tir cry out.

  The Bloodbrother had fallen into the mud and was still on his back as he scrambled away from the lake using one arm. With the other, he swung his oar frantically at a group of more than ten haugaeldr that were steadily closing the distance to him. Keltin sprinted to Tir’s aid as fast as the mud would allow and plunged the spike of his oar into the nearest haugaeldr. The scent of death drew the attention of four of its hungry brethren, but more still pursued Tir. Just as Keltin felt the first pang of desperation freeze his heart, he was uplifted an instant later by a sight of beautiful fury. From above the former Vessel Guard’s shoulder, Eyrie leapt into the fight with Cailla by her side, the two of them bounding from one spot to the next with fluid grace as they struck with terrifying accuracy.

  With the immediate threat gone, Keltin helped Tir to his feet and studied him uncertainly. After slinging away the larger clumps of mud from his armor, Tir took note of Keltin’s gaze. “You can save your worry. I don’t have any new punctures, thanks to you and those two,” he panted, nodding to the twin sisters as they finished removing the nearest group of haugaeldr. Tir shook his head and looked towards the waterfall. “I’ve never seen this place without the smoke. Or had to deal with so many haugaeldr at once.”