by Ben Galley
This book is a work of fiction, but some works of fiction contain perhaps more truth than first intended, and therein lies the magic.
– Anonymous
Copyright © Ben Galley 2021
The right of Ben Galley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved worldwide.
No part of this book may be used, edited, transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), or reproduced in any manner without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews or articles. It may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the Publisher’s permission. Permission can be obtained through www.bengalley.com.
All characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. And weird.
HLTCEB1
First Edition 2021
ISBN: 978-1-8381625-4-2
Published by BenGalley.com
Editing by Sarah Chorn
Map Illustration by Ben Galley
About the Author
Ben Galley is a British author of dark and epic fantasy books who currently hails from Victoria, Canada. Since publishing his debut Emaneska Series, Ben has released a range of fantasy novels, including the award-winning weird western Scarlet Star Trilogy and standalone novel The Heart of Stone. He is also the author of the critically-acclaimed Chasing Graves Trilogy and Scalussen Chronicles.
When he isn’t conjuring up strange new stories or arguing the finer points of magic and dragons, Ben enjoys exploring the Canadian wilds and sipping Scotch single malts, and will forever and always play a dark elf in The Elder Scrolls. One day he hopes to live in an epic treehouse in the mountains.
Follow me on social to stay up to date with new books, competitions, fantasy stuff and news:
www.linktr.ee/bengalley
OTHER BOOKS BY BEN GALLEY
THE EMANESKA SERIES
The Written
Pale Kings
Dead Stars – Part One
Dead Stars – Part Two
The Written Graphic Novel
THE SCARLET STAR TRILOGY
Bloodrush
Bloodmoon
Bloodfeud
THE CHASING GRAVES TRILOGY
Chasing Graves
Grim Solace
Breaking Chaos
STANDALONES/SHORTS
The Heart of Stone
Shards
No Fairytale
To all the fellow questers, adventurers, and those unafraid of paths untrodden
HEAVY LIES THE CROWN
SCALUSSEN CHRONICLES BOOK TWO
By Ben Galley
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
About the Author
Dedication
Title Page
Map of Emaneska
Part One: Adrift
1. In the Shadow of Irminsul
2. Beyond Maps’ Reach
3. All Sparks
4. Of High Seas & Low Hopes
5. The Vulture
6. Lilerosk
7. Monstrous Things
8. Riddles
9. Deeper East
Part Two: Paths Chosen
10. The Hunted
11. Dathazh
12. Vengeance’s Poison
13. The Lady of Whispers
14. The Scarlet Tourney
15. Old Friends
16. The Silent Witness of Stars
17. Viscera
18. Path Painted Red
19. The Last Breath of Sigrimur
Part Three: Shadows Long & Echoes Dying
20. Of Graves & Pyres
21. Enemy of My Enemy
22. The Second Task
23. Stormfront
24. A God’s Ransom
25. The Yawn
26. Gauntlet
Part Four: Tasks Even Gods Fear to Face
27. The Third Task
28. Utiru
29. A Warlord’s Employ
30. Betrayal’s Toll
31. Azanimur
32. Every God & Mortal’s Fear
33. Home
Epilogue
All books by Ben Galley
PART ONE
ADRIFT
CHAPTER 1
IN THE SHADOW OF IRMINSUL
Magick is not a force to be harnessed like the muscle of a beast, or coastal gales to be captured in sails. Magick is beyond force. Vast and limitless though it may be, it is a mind in its own right. Few but the gods have glimpsed the true face of magick, and known its thoughts.
FROM WRITINGS OF JEKOL THE HERETIC
‘Hook the bastard, Dabbage! Don’t let him escape now!’
Savage cries fought to be heard over the rushing river.
The dun steel hook came swinging, impaling the firegill right below its doleful black eye. Dabbage felt the sear in his muscles as he braced the weight of the fish.
Uncle was there. Line discarded, he dug his trusty knife deep between the firegill’s copper scales. Bleeding as it struggled for its life, tail thrashing in the swollen river, it was a battle to wrest the monster where the air could exhaust it. Dabbage was slick with mud and crimson by the time uncle extinguished its struggles with another blow of the knife, right between its brows, if fish could be considered to own brows at all.
Dabbage felt a sharp sting in his ankles and he collapsed to the mud with a cry, arms trembling from the effort of the catch. He eyed the majestic fish and its slowly gasping mouth. It was a fattened shield of copper, half a man across any way it was measured. Its razored fins had carved right through his trews to his shin. He had been cut almost to the bone.
‘Smear some of that river clay on it, boy, and you’ll do well to stand a little closer to its nose, next time, won’t you? Least you got some iron in those little arms of yours.’
Uncle was also bleeding from the shoulder, but Dabbage kept silent on the matter of hypocrisy. The man had a strong distaste to any form of cheek, backchat, and, if Dabbage was honest, general conversation. Uncle preferred the sound of his own voice.
He slapped a muddy hand across his expansive forehead, staining white hair dark. ‘By empire’s bones, think this might be the largest firegill I landed yet. This is a lake fish. No river fish. That flood must have driven it down to our narrower waters.’
As if the answer lay in the morning’s fog, uncle looked across the river to what little could be seen of the far bank. The floodwaters of previous days had gnawed and swallowed what they desired of the riverbanks, finding a new level a yard higher than before. Birch trees, half submerged, still stood proud yet shivering in the waxen waters. The sodden ground crunched with a frost. A mire of wet ash sat atop it. Even now, it fell in faint flakes.
‘Think we’ll see the sky again today, Uncle? Been days of ash now. Father said—’
‘Your father knows as much about the sky as he does about coaxing a single sprout from his fields. Bugger all, is what, boy. Why my sister insists on…’
Dabbage had learned to deafen his uncle’s tirades with his own absent pondering. It was now the third day since thunder had shaken their farmhouse. Since fire had filled the sky and the flood had burst the river. The sun had yet to show its face. The smell of sulphur failed to die. The black clouds rising above the Tausenbar had only grown darker. As well as ash, grains of black stone had fallen upon the fields, and pale pebbles that had the texture of bone. The thunder refused to die. Dabbage had lost track of dawns and evenings. Only the village’s trusty
water clock kept his unease at bay, letting him know that at least the days still passed.
‘…your drunken fool of a father’s only good for one thing, I tell you, and that’s helping us carry this catch back to the cottage. There’s a week of eating in this fish and I’ll be damned if I’m letting it spoil in this mud and foul ash. Hurry, boy. Fetch your father, swift and mindful now.’ Uncle flourished his trusty knife. ‘I’ll get started.’
‘Yessir,’ Dabbage agreed, setting off back through the knitted mass of undergrowth to the barren sprout field. The fog kept the field’s edges hidden. The world was wrapped in cotton, and yet Dabbage, not even nine years of age, could have run the path blindfolded. Even though tricksome wooden stumps and stones sought to trip him.
A distant yet unmistakable wolf’s howl caused him to turn as he ran. Nothing pursued him, but he scanned the feathered boundaries of his field, nonetheless.
The boy faced ahead too late. A figure stood before him. Dabbage skidded to the frozen ground and felt his wounds open afresh as he scrambled to all fours.
A man stood in the centre of the field, imitating a scarecrow in both stillness and dishevelled nature. Broken, black armour hung from limp limbs. It was only when the man pivoted on scuffing feet and stared over Dabbage’s head that the boy saw his burns.
One half of the man’s face was charred black and blistered. The eye was melted clean out of its socket, now a tear-like smear across his cheek. He clutched at a ragged stump of a wrist with his one good hand.
Muttering, ‘Hel has opened,’ over and over in a hoarse whisper, the man stumbled onwards in his journey. He was aimed vaguely south.
While Dabbage hunched there like a startled cat, he saw more shadows emerge from the fog. First a handful, then a dozen. Then a score. Not one of them moved faster than a dazed shuffle. Most were mere shapes in the haze. Those that came close enough bore more bloody clothes and wounds, green and gold cloth soiled black with char and dirt. One had a beard full of frost and shivered uncontrollably. They carried the stink of sulphur with them, and a sour scent that lingered in the boy’s nostrils.
Strong arms grabbed Dabbage from behind. A hand reeking of fish clapped over his mouth. He struggled until he saw the notched and runed knife before his face. His uncle’s trusty blade, trembling in the faintest way.
‘Stay still, lad,’ he whispered, and together they watched more silhouettes appear. ‘Smell that on them? That’s the reek of death’s hand. They’re not right behind the eyes any more.’
No ranks held them. No orders accompanied their quiet yet seemingly determined shuffling. One decided to slump over a stone wall and stay there, giving in.
‘Who are they, Uncle?’ Dabbage breathed.
It took the man some time to answer, as if it made little sense to him either. ‘The empire’s soldiers, lad. The same ones that marched through here not a month ago.’
Dabbage remembered the endless hordes trooping past. He and his family had hidden within straw bales and a dry well to avoid the mages that put half the nearby village in chains for refusing to fight for their emperor. Now, on the heels of the red skies and thunder, these ghosts of men and women had returned in their place, drifting across the fields like the floodwaters that preceded them.
‘D—did they win?’
Uncle shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, lad.’
There was a note of shock in uncle’s voice Dabbage couldn’t ignore.
A scream came from somewhere in the fog. Somewhere close to the village.
‘Killed us all,’ said a voice nearby.
A woman stood beside them. She was so pale as to be already dead. Half a sword quivered in her hand. A cut across her head showed skull.
‘Killed us all,’ she said again, as she reached for uncle’s coat.
‘Get away!’ he yelled.
Steel clashed with a harsh ring. Blood spurted across Dabbage’s face. He fell to his arse, stunned, pawing at the sudden warmth on his cold skin. In his peripheries, uncle fell to the ground. The bloodied fur coat peeled from him as he slumped, writhing to the floor.
‘Killed us all,’ the woman spoke to the frozen Dabbage as she reached for him, too.
CHAPTER 2
BEYOND MAPS’ REACH
They say war, trade, and curiosity forge roads. The former has left nothing but wary borders where the old Skölgard Empire once pushed its intentions. Trade and curiosity have long been the true architects of exploration, and have kept roads open even in the darkest times.
Three paths of note spear their way into the strange eastern lands. To the south, many run the dangerous Silent Sea by ship from Kroppe, Rolia, or Essen. Others take the Merchant’s Bridge from Jorpsund, crossing Nyr’s Dagger. The northernmost take the Sunder Road from Trollhammerung and Lack.
FROM ‘THE MAPBUILDERS’, BY THE EXILED SAGE OLE WRUM, YEAR 912
With naught to endure but monotonous similarity, boredom sets in as quickly as the fever of a festering wound. The mind becomes prone to an anxious cycle of asking questions without answers. Change was the medicine, but the body was numb to fetching it.
With a claw of limestone, Mithrid scraped yet another cross on the wall. Up, stoke the fire, eat, stare, sleep. And repeat. Boredom sat upon her shoulders like a stone gargoyle.
For three days the storm had kept them cowered in the cave. The strange forest roared and creaked ceaselessly. Yet even without the howl of the winds that used leaves and twigs like biting ammunition, or the freezing nature of the rain, or the fact they had no idea where they were, their comatose charges would have forced them to stay put.
Farden and Durnus still had not awoken. Exhaustion had kept Aspala and Warbringer slumbering, nursing burns and a dozen other injuries from the final battle of Scalussen.
Frustration kept Mithrid defiantly awake and quite literally clawing at the walls. When she did close her eyes, all the girl could see was dark fire, hungry for flesh and bone and rock, consuming body after body until she wrenched herself awake. The faces of Bull and Hereni remained as shadows in her mind.
Mithrid scratched another cross on the wall.
‘Quite the collection,’ Aspala whispered from her makeshift bedroll of leaves and less pointy pebbles. She had not moved, but her amber eyes were open. Her broken horns and the purple bruises across her crooked snout gave her a roguish – if not unfortunate – look. She hadn’t let go of her broken golden sword since Durnus’ spell had whisked them… somewhere. The answer of their whereabouts was still trapped in the unconscious vampyre. Or out in the forest.
‘Mmph,’ grunted Mithrid.
Aspala took some time to push her weary bones up. ‘Better than death.’
Mithrid offered her a tired scowl. ‘I’m doubting that.’
‘Wherever we are, no matter what state we’re in, it’s better than being dead.’
It was dismal comfort, but it counted.
Aspala tottered to the mouth of the limestone cave they’d stumbled upon after a day, dragging Durnus and Farden through the forest. Even with Warbringer, it had been hard toil.
The Paraian sniffed at the wild air, stared at the silver trees with their flat, russet gold leaves. The smells rising from the sodden soil had a strange scent. Offensive only through their difference to the pines and salt Mithrid found herself missing so dearly. She felt the same as she had that gloomy morning outside Troughwake, kneeling before Arka mages with her hands bound.
‘Don’t smell like Emaneska. Smells… bitter. Like almonds,’ Aspala was whispering. ‘I hate almonds.’
‘As you’ve said. Still doesn’t answer where we are, and what we’re doing here,’ Mithrid suspired. She pushed herself from her stone seat and brushed the dirt from her legs. Stepping over the slumbering minotaur and the circle of embers she curled around, Mithrid examined the vampyre and mage for the dozenth time.
Farden was in a coma of his own making. As not even Warbringer’s strength could pry the scarred Scalussen armour off him, they could
n’t do much but keep him propped up and listen for his breathing between the slits in his helmet.
As for Durnus, no bones seemed broken. At least, none they could tell from poking and prodding. The vampyre had awoken briefly once to take water and yet dribble it out again. He was so pale between the scabbed burns Mithrid could almost see the bones of his skull.
She pressed a hand gently to his thin arm and tried to wake him. All she got was a murmur. It was, instead, Farden that awoke, and with a lurch so sudden and violent it tested the fortitude of Mithrid’s bladder. She recoiled in a panic, narrowly avoiding the fire and collapsing against Warbringer’s hoof. Farden instinctively raised his hands, one clawed in magick, the other as if he held a sword.
‘Farden! It’s us, you idiot!’ Mithrid yelled at him. Shadow swirled around her fingers.
Warbringer was now awake, half-upright and growling low in her throat. The copper rings in her snout jangled softly. Between the wounds she wore without care, large patches of her charcoal fur had been burned away. Her horns were whole but scarred with fresh notches carved by blades. Her armour, scant and unnecessary though it had been before, had been reduced to a kilt of mail and crisscrossing leather bandoliers. She clutched at the necklace of bones as if fearing it had been lost.
Panting breathlessly, Farden clawed at his helmet, raising his visor to gulp in air before wrenching the steel from his head. The metal scales that normally interlocked so finely scraped as they came loose. At last, the king was revealed. Sweat and dirt muddied his face. Eyes red with burst veins stared wildly at Mithrid and the others.
Only when he had caught his breath did Farden try to speak. ‘Did we… Did I…?’
‘Win? Is that what you’re asking?’ Mithrid asked, teeth clenched. She struggled to forget the mage had almost scorched them to dust. ‘Without a doubt.’
‘Arka naught but ash and bone.’ Warbringer thumped her bare chest. ‘Fine deaths for my people.’