Tales of the Frozen City

by JOSEPH A. MCCULLOUGH

  The demon ignored her and continued to scrutinise the frosted flagstones at its cloven feet.

  ‘Yes, well observed,’ she said, trying not to sound bored and cold. ‘No Summoning Triangle.’

  The demon looked up. It snorted and shambled toward her, trunks flaring to reveal toothed irises. Her heart raced. Her instincts screamed at her to run and keep running until she was home with her family.

  The long-dead wizard who had built the Devil’s Observatory had focused each telescope on a Summoning Triangle. However, when Frostgrave thawed, a telescope had come loose, resulting in a steady stream of stellar demons wandering free. These had led Linnet’s master here, but now his minions must kill them as they appeared, or else be overwhelmed by numbers when it was time to leave.

  Bows twanged. Arrows sprouted from the demon’s throat. The warband’s two Fjordland warriors stepped out from behind the altar and swung their axes. The demon discorporated with a hollow bang.

  Suresmiter’s glow cut off, as if the enchanted longsword was sulking. With a frown, Linnet sheathed the blade.

  The archers, Martha and Clem, retrieved their arrows. Martha clutched her back and groaned. ‘I’m getting too old for this.’

  Linnet said, ‘It’s the cold, that’s all.’ She called across to her master who watched an empty Summoning Triangle from the safety of his glowing Circle of Protection.

  Maugris the Eclectic did not turn from his vigil. However, their soul-bond conveyed his withering contempt. ‘What is it girl?’

  ‘That’s seven demons already,’ said Linnet. ‘Can’t we fix the loose telescope?’

  ‘Do your job, girl,’ he ordered.

  The four soldiers seemed to avoid her gaze.

  ‘You heard the master,’ grated Linnet. ‘We just keep killing them.’

  The wind gusted. The loose telescope juddered. Three demons manifested, one inside a triangle with another demon, which ate it, and two at different sides of the hall.

  Linnet shrugged. She told Clem and Martha to mount the altar and shoot the most distant one, then led the two Fjordlander axemen towards the other, a flipper-limbed monstrosity. With each step, her gorge rose. There would be no chance to surprise the thing this time.

  Stone cracked, crashed and clattered. The wind tore at Linnet’s robe. The torches guttered wildly.

  Linnet drew Suresmiter as she turned. Near to Maugris, a section of wall had crumbled. Two crossbowmen stepped through the jagged hole, the torchlight dancing on their breastplates.

  Maugris raised his hands to cast a spell.

  Mind racing, Linnet backed toward the cover of the altar. A rival wizard had followed them, but who?

  Limbs jerking and blurring with unnatural speed, the enemy crossbowmen sighted and shot.

  The bolts whirred above the heads of the trapped demons. Over on the dais, two door guards went down. The survivors spun around, shot back. An arrow clanged on a crossbowman’s breastplate. Then the door guards belly-flopped, each with a bolt projecting from his back.

  Breath smoking in the frigid air, six more armoured crossbowmen pushed through the main entrance and onto the dais.

  Between Maugris’s raised hands, a glowing ball formed...

  ‘But we haven’t practised this one... ’ muttered Linnet. Maugris’s restless pursuit of new spells left little time for focusing on the ones he had.

  The ball of fire collapsed in on itself. Maugris reeled, blood streamed from his nose.

  Linnet winced. She took a deep breath and readied her invisibility spell, one of the few spells they had spent time drilling.

  ‘Get them, girl!’ bellowed Maugris. ‘Elemental Fire!’

  ‘I... ’ began Linnet, but the soul bond took over. Suresmiter clanged on the stone. She raised her arms. A globe flared between her hands, singed her gloves, scorched her fingers...

  With a scream, she drew back to hurl the blazing ball... and the spell... teetered.

  She could tip the balance, could push with her very life force...

  The spell collapsed. Heat scalded through her. She staggered, cold fingers clutching her temples.

  Maugris raised his arms a second time to cast.

  A net of sparkling magic flashed from the dais and settled on him, covering his robes in a layer of dust and cobwebs.

  Linnet’s master simply froze in mid spell. Crossbow bolts thudded into him; one, two, three, each kicking up swirls of dust as it buried itself to the feathers. The cobwebs began to fall away. The wizard spasmed. He flopped to the flagstones; his Circle of Protection extinguished. He vanished from Linnet’s mind.

  She swayed, aware only of the enemy on the dais. Eight crossbowmen stooped to wind up their devastating weapons. Behind them stood two figures, each sporting a robe daubed with the numbers of the hours.

  Chronomancers, mouthed Linnet.

  Boots smacked the flagstones. Somebody grabbed her sleeves.

  ‘Get into cover!’ yelled Martha, pointing to the altar with her bow.

  Linnet glimpsed the riddled corpses of the Fjordlanders, then the two archers dragged her behind the altar. A crushing headache settled in. Her nose felt wet. She wiped it and found blood.

  Even so, her heart lifted. With Maugris gone, she could go home. All she had to do was survive this.

  ‘Your sword, miss.’ Martha handed over Suresmiter.

  Linnet took it gingerly. ‘There must some way out of this.’ She cleared her throat and called out over the growls and bangs of the stellar demons, ‘Parley! Parley!’

  A deep female voice answered. ‘Speak then.’

  Linnet’s mind raced. That could only be Andrastwan the Timeless. They’d even chatted at the last Truce Day. She rose. Several demons were loose, weaving their way toward the dais. However, Andrastwan’s crossbowmen now wound their weapons from within two Circles of Protection.

  ‘Lady Andrastwan,’ said Linnet. ‘Grant safe conduct and we will concede the observatory.’

  ‘Dear child,’ replied the Chronomancer. ‘I cannot let you go because you know the location of the Observatory.’

  ‘We just want to go home,’ said Linnet. ‘There must be something we can offer you.’

  ‘Your deaths,’ said the Chronomancer. She flicked her fingers. ‘Parley concluded.’

  The magic snapped across the distance between them. Linnet started to duck, but was covered in cobwebs, choking on dust. The crossbowmen had completed the time-consuming business of reloading their expensive weapons and were now bringing them up to bear on her; Andrastwan’s spell had stolen a precious few seconds. The crossbows clunked. Bolts buzzed and something plucked at her hair. Linnet dived behind the altar as more bolts zipped overhead. ‘Blasted Chronomancers!’

  On the dais, Andrastwan raised her voice, ‘By the Great Time Keeper, let one hundred thousand years of history unfold!’

  Shadows flickered across the altar, as if the days raced by for it and it alone. It shuddered. Bits of stone flaked off...

  Linnet winced. This must be how they had opened a hole in the Observatory’s wall; making a patch of stonework age until it crumbled to nothing. Now their only cover was about to go the same way.

  Clem and Martha nocked arrows. Linnet wiped the blood from her nose and braced herself to throw a ball of elemental fire.

  The altar’s shudders became mere vibrations, then ceased.

  Linnet laughed. ‘Hah!’ she called. ‘The ancient gods protect their altar.’

  ‘No matter,’ replied Andrastwan. ‘We’ll clear the loose demons then simply flank you. You will not leave this place alive.’

  Martha exchanged nods with Clem. ‘No point in us all dying, girl. Me and Clem will keep the crossbows busy. You run for the hole in the wall.’

  Grey-haired and portly, thought Linnet, they should have been playing with their grandchildren, not blundering around the Frozen City. She shook her head. ‘You are my responsibility now that Maugris has gone.’

  ‘But you look like death,’ said Clem.

>   Linnet set her chin. ‘I’ll kill the Chronomancers. Without Circles of Protection, the crossbowmen will have to fall back. Then you... ’ She turned away from their expressions. ‘... we can all run for it, right?’

  The wind whistled through the hole in the wall. The loose telescope swung. Somewhere beyond the altar, demons banged into existence.

  ‘Ah,’ said Linnet. ‘New plan.’ She mimed a push at one of the bigger telescopes and intoned a power word. This was practically a beginner’s spell.

  With a scream of metal, the fat telescope swung. Thunder rolled and she knew that several major demons had manifested – outside the preprepared triangle. The wind caught the telescope and it wobbled, generating more thunderclaps.

  ‘I know what you’re doing,’ declared Andrastwan from the dais.

  Linnet repeated the spell, freeing another telescope.

  The wind caught it. The beam of starlight raked towards Linnet and her friends.

  A dog-headed demon with lobster feet appeared between them and the hole in the wall. Three more demons slithered or lurched into view.

  Dog-head stared at Linnet. It shambled towards them, arms extended, vipers hissing from the eye sockets of the alligator heads that served as its hands. The other demons fell in behind. They came on slowly, inevitably.

  Bowstrings thrummed.

  Clem and Martha’s arrows sank in a hand’s breadth, and hung there wobbling. The demon didn’t seem to notice.

  Martha swore.

  ‘Lend me your sword... ’ began Clem.

  Linnet shook her head. Hunching low, she edged away from the altar and swept Suresmiter’s point around the floor, scraping a Circle of Protection in the frost. ‘In! In!’

  Clem and Martha crawled over to kneel next to her.

  A crossbow bolt passed overhead and drew sparks from the flagstones.

  ‘But now we’re trapped,’ said Clem, ducking lower.

  Martha caught his hand. ‘So much for buying that inn, eh?’

  ‘It would have been boring anyway,’ said Clem.

  ‘What? I thought you... ’ Martha laughed. ‘Clem! I didn’t want to buy an inn.’

  ‘Nor did I!’

  ‘Ahem,’ said Linnet. ‘I still have some tricks left.’ She mouthed the power words. A tingle rippled out from her chest and spread over her body. She stared at her hands. ‘I am invisible, right?’

  The couple nodded, neither quite looking in the right direction.

  Linnet rose and crept away from the altar.

  The wind screamed. Her robes billowed and the loose telescopes creaked. Yet more demons appeared near the dais.

  The Chronomancer’s apprentice threw forward his arms and bellowed a power word. One of the demons turned on its fellows, slowing the advance.

  Linnet frowned. Unlike her late master, Andrastwan obviously believed in a handful of spells well-learned. A magical duel would be a bad idea.

  The crossbows twanged in unison. A volley of bolts clanged into one of the loose telescopes. Most bounced off, rattled on the floor at the feet of the demons. One, however, pierced the tube from side to side, cutting off the beam of starlight.

  The crossbowmen stooped and wound up their weapons.

  Linnet grimaced. They could knock out telescopes as fast as she could loosen them. She took a deep breath then sprinted for the hole in the wall

  The wind hit her like an icy cloak. Her front foot slipped into nothingness. She flailed her alms, teetered, then pressed back against the wall.

  The Devil’s Observatory stood on one of the spurs of granite that rose like a forest in this part of Frostgrave. There was just enough ledge for her to shuffle round to the entrance. She stalked inside and emerged directly behind the Chronomancers.

  The crossbows sang. Bolts sprouted from the last of the loose telescopes and its beam cut off.

  ‘Now the demons,’ ordered Adrastwan. She leaned closer to her apprentice. ‘Home to mulled wine?’

  The apprentice turned enough so that Linnet could see the flush on his cheeks. A young man with a square jaw that promised rugged looks once his acne had cleared up. ‘And toasted muffins.’ He rubbed his gloved hands together. ‘I’ll never get used to this cold.’

  Linnet stalked closer. She was now in the perfect position to use ‘Varro’s Shattered Virtual Vase’, a spell that would make razor-sharp ceramic shards explode out from where she stood, hitting everybody... if it worked. In fact – thanks to Maugris’s preference for learning new spells rather than practising ones he already knew – she could call up a dozen spells that were more likely to hurt her than cause harm to the Chronomancers.

  But now she was just a few paces from them.

  ‘We could heat a bath,’ said Andrastwan. ‘Get really warm.’

  ‘Perfect,’ said the apprentice.

  Linnet hesitated. She was contemplating killing – be honest, murdering – two perfectly ordinary, likable people.

  ‘Any moment now,’ said Andrastwan, ‘And we can finish off Maugris’s warband.’

  But then, thought Linnet, they were going to kill her friends.

  She drew Suresmiter and lined up the point with care – as soon as she struck, her invisibility would end. Then, feeling only a cold certainty, she drove the blade up into Andrastwan’s back just below the ribcage.

  The keen tip went through the woman’s fur-lined robes, slid up into her chest cavity and grated on a rib.

  The Chronomancer croaked. Her knees bent, she folded away from the sword then fell flat on the frosty flagstones. As she died, so died her Circle of Protection. Howling and gibbering, the demons hurled themselves on the furthest group of crossbowmen.

  The apprentice yelled. He took a step back from his mistress’s corpse and drew his sword, a spike-bladed monstrosity with a back-hook, side-flukes and an odd double crossguard. He spat out a power word and the blade caught fire. ‘Murderer!’

  Linnet flushed. ‘No... I... ’ Hands shaking, she raised Suresmiter ready to defend. Hot blood trickled down the blade, which now glowed happily. She shuddered. She felt no guilt, just a sudden exhaustion.

  An arrow punched through the apprentice’s throat. The arrowhead appeared on the other side. Blood sprayed from both wounds. His eyes widened more in outrage than surprise. He took a step towards her, raised his flaming sword. A second arrow struck his wrist. The sword clanged to the ancient stones. Still looking outraged, he toppled to lie beside it.

  The second circle vanished.

  The remaining crossbowmen turned and fled through the door. The demons streamed after them into the night leaving Linnet with only dead bodies for company on the dais.

  Martha and Clem stood on the altar, bows in hand. Linnet raised Suresmiter in salute. ‘Good shooting, my friends.’

  ‘What now?’ called Clem, loudly above the racket of the remaining stellar demons.

  Linnet shook her head. ‘Don’t ask me. I’m done.’

  A thunderclap resounded through the hall. A massive demon now towered over Maugris’s corpse. An icy crown glittered from the brow of its elephant-like head.

  Martha cocked her head. ‘Isn’t that what Maugris was waiting for?’

  ‘The Whisperer of Secrets,’ said Linnet. Suddenly chapbooks by the fire seemed less interesting than grimoires by candlelight.

  As she stepped off the dais and negotiated the floor-full of penned demons, she reflected that she could hire new soldiers and take over the dead Chronomancers’ base with its warm bath.

  She could even find herself an apprentice. A presentable young man of good family, perhaps...

  M. Harold Page is a Scottish-based author with several historical adventures in print. He believes in ‘write what you know’, which possibly explains his collection of grimoires, the battered suit of plate armour in his hall cupboard, and the sword scar. He can also be found most Tuesday nights teaching Medieval German Longsword at Edinburgh’s Dawn Duellists Society. (Are you sensing a theme... ?)

  HOME COMING

>   Mark A. Latham

  Hrothgar yanked his blade away from the beast’s throat, blood arcing across white fur as the monster scrambled away in its death throes. The enchanted gemstone in the hilt of Hrothgar’s sword glowed ember-red as the troll-blood was absorbed by the blue-steel blade.

  Around him the story was much the same. Finreir and Stornric hacked at a troll with sword and spear until it lay motionless in the snow; the mighty Bolivar held aloft another troll’s head, grinning triumphantly. The wizard, Gereth, was already striding ahead through the swirling snowstorm, ploughing up the rugged tor that had drawn them here, leaving a burning troll-corpse to light the way. Hrothgar spat. The wizard’s bull-headedness would be the death of his small company. They’d already lost two good men, and now Finreir was sporting a pronounced limp as he hobbled over to join his captain.

  ‘Vanyssa!’ Hrothgar shouted, noticing his scout absent from the flickering circle of torchlight.

  A scuff came from the darkness to his left, and he turned to see Vanyssa returning to the group, striding from the shadows with longbow in hand. She was drenched in blood.

  ‘Are you hurt, lass?’ Hrothgar asked.

  ‘Not mine,’ Vanyssa said simply, stalking past the assembled mercenaries and following the wizard up the hill.

  ‘Stornric, help your brother. We must press on before that fool wizard gets himself into more trouble.’

  Stornric did as he was bid, and the two raven-haired men-at-arms followed Vanyssa, with Hrothgar and the giant Bolivar close behind.

  By the time they reached the peak of the craggy tor, the company was tired and breathless. Finreir could barely stand, and even Bolivar leaned heavily on his great axe. Ahead of them, huge pillars jutted from the rock face, broken and jagged. Higher up, barely visible against the flurry, taller, darker pillars arched upwards, disappearing against a crow-black sky, like clawed fingers scratching at the firmament.

  ‘This is it!’ the wizard shouted, his voice dulled by the endless snowfall. ‘The ruins of Stonefall Abbey. Here is where we shall find the riches I promised you.’

  Hrothgar pushed his way to the wizard’s side. They had not long been companions; when Hrothgar’s liege, Aldwyck the Enchanter, had fallen in their last expedition into the accursed city, the remaining warriors had become freemen, selling their steel to the highest bidder. Gereth had bid highest, though the way the wizard’s eyes gleamed whenever he spoke of the fabled Stonefall troubled Hrothgar. It reminded him of gold-fever, which pushed many a man to a sticky end. It troubled him more so now they were here – the wizard fairly trembled with anticipation at the sight of the imposing ruin, pulling off a fur-lined glove despite the cold, so he could run a bare hand over ice-crusted carven stone.