by Ben Galley
‘Scalussen was destroyed, too,’ Mithrid muttered. ‘And almost all of us, if it hadn’t been for Durnus and me.’
Farden seemed to deflate, eyes gazing past the mouth of the cave as the memories of the battle flooded his mind. ‘I couldn’t stop it,’ he whispered. ‘Irminsul was too powerful. Too full of… rage, for want of a better word.’
Aspala nodded. ‘It took your armour almost a whole day to cool down.’
‘My—’ Farden flinched again, patting himself down with frantic hands. His face turned to horror as he saw the state of the blackened gold and crimson, and the bent scales of the cuirass. The design of the snarling wolf upon his breastplate was charred across one side of its face. Of the two rubies that lay embedded as eyes, one was missing.
The mage took a moment to remove his gauntlets so he could probe at the steel. Some scales seemed unnaturally loose, others twisted into new positions. His fingers trembled with either anger or fear, Mithrid couldn’t yet tell. It was then she realised Farden’s left hand was lacking its smallest finger. It seemed an old injury, decades healed.
‘I can’t feel it,’ the mage was muttering.
Aspala was concerned. ‘Something wrong with you, Farden?’
He looked up as if he had already forgotten his concerned audience and his murky surroundings. ‘Where in Hel are we? What are we doing here?’
Mithrid pointed to the vampyre. The question had burned in her mind for days. ‘Only Durnus knows, but unlike you, he hasn’t woken up yet.’
Farden didn’t reply. Much to his increasingly frustrated growling, he took an age to push himself to his knees. Aspala moved to help him but he waved her back.
‘Durnus,’ he yelled in the old vampyre’s ear. ‘Durnus!’
Mithrid sighed. ‘We’ve tried that.’
Farden began to shake him with the sense and level of force not to injure him further.
‘Tried that too,’ rumbled Warbringer.
Farden reached for the warped, half-molten Weight that still lay trapped in Durnus’ hands. The metal refused to part from his claw-like fingers. ‘Where have you taken us, you old fool?’ Farden growled.
‘All he managed to say before he fell into his malady was “east”,’ said Aspala.
‘East?’ Farden stared at the quiver in his hands.
The mage got to a shaky version of upright, face scrunching as though every muscle in his body complained vociferously. It took him several stumbles, but Farden prised his cuirass and greaves from his burned skin. He pushed himself to the cave mouth, where he braced against the storm winds. He reached to wet his hands and vambraces in the pummelling rain. Whatever sun shone on this odd land was now falling to dusk behind leaf and copper canopy.
‘There’s no ice in sight,’ muttered Farden. ‘No snow. Don’t recognise these trees. Doesn’t smell right. Birds are too quiet.’
Mithrid pinched the bridge of her nose.
Farden staggered deeper into the storm. His simple trews and tunic were soaked within moments, but he pressed on, staring into the wild forest and scouring the thick weave of branches for a trace of sky. The storm was all-consuming. Around and around he turned, a wobbling top, until he staggered back to the cave and slumped onto the stones next to Durnus’ charred satchel. The one that had no right to weigh as much as it did.
Farden’s shivering hands grasped at the satchel’s straps and something within. Aspala tried to help again, much to the mage’s irritation, but at last, he dragged a huge tome into the open, one covered in grey and ancient leather. He scratched at its clasp and heaved it apart with a creak and what Mithrid swore was an irritated whisper.
The pages were decrepit, weathered at the edges. Mithrid blinked as two bright sparks of orange light emerged from the book’s gutter. After her last experience with a spellbook, she recoiled instinctively against the stone. She was not alone. By the amount of sharp teeth she bared, Warbringer looked deeply disturbed by the tome.
‘Death magick,’ she whispered.
Only Aspala leaned inwards.
‘Show me Elessi,’ Farden blurted. Not to any of them, but to the book. His fingertips clawed at its blank pages.
The lights spun around each other like duelling flies, unsure. Wherever they moved, they left smoky amber trails of light behind, drawing half-hearted shapes. Mithrid made no sense of their efforts but Farden bowed his head, breathless in relief.
‘Eyrum,’ he whispered, and again the lights appeared broken.
Mithrid, half-expecting a sabrecat to come bounding from the spellbook at any moment, spoke up. ‘What is that thing? What does that mean?’
‘It’s called the Grimsayer, and it means they’re not dead, girl. Alive and hopefully well, somewhere,’ Farden pressed his head against a boulder. He heaved with a deep sigh.
The others bowed their head, grateful. Warbringer whispered to some god of her kind. Mithrid was still staring at the lights, still uneasy. ‘What of Hereni? And Bull?’
‘If the others are alive, then—’
‘Ask it. Please.’
The lights looked as confused as before. Mithrid felt her heart give up its rapid pace. She shook off the fears that lurked in the darkest corners of her mind.
Farden half-closed the book, but paused to argue with some inner impulse.
‘M—’ Farden stopped himself, unable to say the third name. He had to physically spit it out. ‘Malvus.’
Once more, the lights drew nothing. The mage’s comfort turned to disbelief. He pushed himself up, lip curled in anger. ‘Loki!’ he hissed at the spellbook. The orange lights died away as if bored of failing.
Mithrid flinched. She had heard that name before in the emperor’s tent, but other matters were more pressing. ‘Wait. Does this mean Malvus survived?’
‘Yes, it fucking does.’ Farden grimaced so severely his lip had begun to bleed.
An uneasy silence settled in the cave. Their victory, it seemed, was not so complete after all. Such sacrifice. Such sweeping death. Mithrid scrunched her eyes shut. Once more, the flames of Irminsul greeted her, along with the screaming of the countless Arka.
Farden slammed the tome shut and shoved it back into the vampyre’s satchel alongside other tomes. His armour grated on the stone as he sprawled, exhausted. ‘We’ll wait for the storm to pass. Leave at first light. Find a vantage point to see where we are,’ Farden muttered, while he stared at his scarred vambraces. His movements were fidgety, as if he tried to quell an inner panic. That, or he desperately needed to piss.
Far beyond the mouth of the cave, something screeched pitifully. It commanded their attention until something else silenced it.
‘It’s raged for three days already,’ said Mithrid.
‘Then surely it should be over soon. Failing that, we’ll wade through it,’ Farden growled. He clenched a fist to still his quivering hands. ‘Are you injured? Can everyone walk?’
Aspala’s voice was hoarse. ‘Bruised, but I can travel.’
‘I can walk,’ said Warbringer, staring beyond the cave. Her bearded chin and jawline ruffled in the bothersome winds.
Mithrid simply nodded.
Farden reached for the ashes and half-burned wood of their fire. He spread his fingers over the shimmering embers. It took no time for Mithrid and the others to notice there was a problem. The mage strained harder, narrowing his bloodshot eyes. Farden was nearly grasping the embers by the time he gave up, hunched over his hands. He looked at them as if they had just inexplicably strangled a loved one.
Mithrid seized a handful of kindling and a log from the meagre store they’d gathered, and began to stoke the fire the old fashioned way. The wood was a faded silver. Bronze knots ran through it like rivets, and when it burned it gave off a fragrance of almond and cloves. Aspala could be seen wrinkling her snout, but the heat was too enticing.
Farden caught Mithrid’s eye as he inched closer to the fire. It was too narrow a look for her liking, too full of suspicion and unspoken words. But he did n
ot look at her again. His gaze remained fixed on his scorched armour for the remainder of the evening. At least until Mithrid’s eyes drooped, too heavy to keep lifted. Too exhausted to fight the boredom and fatigue.
She was escorted into dreams of a fiery dark by a sound she at first presumed was snoring. A lone, sighing horn, quiet through distance. Yet sleep already commanded her.
Morning found Farden kneeling over puddles, furiously scraping the soot from his Scalussen armour, piece by piece. Slumber was a realm he had left the others to enjoy fitfully. Three days of sleep was more than enough. Any more felt like tempting death.
The mage’s body ached awfully from scalp to sole. Farden was convinced a rib was cracked. The night’s flames had kindled his raw skin, flushed with heat from a dozen burns where both magick and flame had scorched him.
The jagged cave entrance was dark, four still figures huddled within. A faint stream of blue-grey smoke rose from its mouth, the last breaths of the fire. It mingled with the morning drizzle the storm had left behind.
Massaging raw fingers, Farden stacked his armour in a neat pile, crouched with his head in his hands, and surveyed it with a grimace. Not in forty years of battle and narrow scrapes had his armour ever seen such damage. Not since it was forged for the Knights of the Nine over a thousand years before.
Several sections of gold and red scales were buckled. One small portion had even melted together. The cuirass was warped. One pauldron wore an alarming dent. Scratches and stubborn black scorch marks were an added eye-watering garnish. A muscle above Farden’s lip began to twitch sporadically. A damning thought struck his mind like a hammer to a bell.
His armour was broken.
When he at last could look no more, the mage thumbed the black tattoos on his forearms: black skeleton keys, jagged of tooth and running from his wrist halfway to his elbow. Whatever wounds broke the rest of his skin, not a scar or scratch dared to cross their ink.
The forest around him was silent save for the patter of nodding, dripping leaves. Stepping out of sight of the cave, Farden walked along the short limestone cliff until he found a natural basin of trapped rain. With much grunting, Farden pulled his tunic free of his scorched skin and let the morning air cool him. He could feel its cold breath keenly against every swirling line of script running along his shoulders and back. It was not the effort of his tired muscles that brought the sweat to his brow, but the persistent notion that his armour was irreparably damaged. Farden snarled it into silence and began to douse himself with icy water, too tired to flinch.
Eyes glassy, unfocused, he thought of Irminsul’s fire as he bathed. The battle with the blaze had left his memories patchwork after the moment Modren had fallen to Gremorin’s claws. It felt unbearably recent, as if his old friend had died yesterday. Inwick, too. The grief had been stolen by war, but now it swooped upon him. Farden choked as his throat clenched. He splashed water on his face to calm his itching eyes, pooled some in his hands to drink. He choked on that, too.
Crackling leaves betrayed Mithrid’s approach. A wild mess of red hair poked around the rock. ‘Thought you’d left us here. Snuck off,’ she said.
Much to his guilt, the heartless thought had crossed his mind not long before. ‘Look away, girl,’ ordered Farden, hastily donning his tunic. It stank of sweat and smoke.
‘Never took you for the bashful type,’ Mithrid replied. She did not smile, but there was no scowl on her face, either. Aside from the char on her armour and pale skin, the few cuts and gashes, she looked remarkably untouched by the chaos of war. There was no hint of Irminsul’s fire in her emerald eyes. Not that Farden could see. She merely paid him a cautious attention.
‘Funny,’ he said. ‘Not while my Book is on view. It’s too dangerous even at a glance.’
Mithrid lifted her face to the drizzle instead and closed her eyes. ‘Even for me, do you think?’
‘Even for you.’
Farden slid the Scalussen vambraces over his wrists and waited to feel the icy prickle in his veins that normally accompanied the magick of the Nine’s armour. Godblood in the steel, so the legends spoke. To Farden’s dismay and continuing underlying panic, he felt nothing but cold, damp metal, devoid of its subtle powers. The word ordinary had rarely – if ever – been applied to Scalussen armour, but there it was. Plain, ordinary steel.
‘I should thank you,’ Farden said hoarsely, donning his greaves and gauntlets.
Mithrid crossed her arms and leaned against the rock. ‘I reckon you should.’
‘Not only for coming back, but for stopping me from…’ Farden paused. ‘Doing something regrettable. My memories are broken, filled with naught but flame, yet I remember you reaching for me. Yelling at me. I thought I could wield it, but in fact I was powerless to stop it. I saw a face of magick I’ve never seen before. It used me, and now it’s betrayed me. And here I was, beginning to believe the notion I was invincible,’ Farden muttered. ‘That I was the Forever King.’
‘I’m just glad somebody was there to stop you. The saviour needed saving, it seemed. Durnus said you could have wiped out half the north if I hadn’t done something. Perhaps all of Emaneska. We’re fortunate you didn’t.’
Saviour.
Farden winced at the notion of destruction. The shadow of his actions was a sickening worm gnawing at his stomach. The fact the others were alive was the only fact keeping it from consuming him.
‘Was it worth it, do you think?’ Mithrid spoke up, hesitant and unsure for the first time.
That was one thing Farden was certain of. He steeled himself. ‘It will be,’ he asserted. ‘And you said it yourself: the Arka chose their side.’
‘And yet I can’t stop thinking about Malvus’ grinning face somewhere, happy to be alive. I can’t stand that we went through Irminsul only for him to escape. All I seem to care about is him dying,’ Mithrid spoke up. ‘Can that grim book of yours tell us where we can find him?
‘First, we have to find out where we are. And be careful of that obsession, Mithrid. It can harm you in ways you can’t imagine.’ Farden cleared his throat. ‘I have to ask you something.’
She looked at him at last. ‘What is it?’
‘Did you do… something to me?’
‘What, by Hurricane, are you accusing me of?’ she asked, immediately insulted.
‘My magick, my armour. They’re not as they were. They don’t…’ He forced out the words. ‘They don’t work any more. Did your magick do something to me?’
Black smoke curled around Mithrid’s fist. ‘I did what I had to do to save us. From you, Forever King. The one wielding the inferno of a volcano. Maybe look to yourself before you seek to blame others.’ Mithrid tutted, and left him to scratch at his stubbled chin. Farden could at last see the pain in Mithrid’s eyes, one beyond Farden’s infamous way with words and his thin accusations. The pain of being lost lay in the helplessness of the soul, not of the body. Farden knew it well, because he felt the very same. By the molten walls of Scalussen, were they lost.
‘Well done, Farden,’ the mage sighed to himself.
Looming like the troll who owned the limestone burrow, Warbringer was waiting for them, looking impatient and disturbed by the constant dripping of the forest canopy. The Paraian woman, Aspala, was holding one of the fallen leaves, shaped like a bronze star with sunlit veins. She wiped her thumb across the leaf and it came away grimy.
‘Soot?’ she asked of Farden.
‘Or ash.’
‘A promising sign, no? The mountains must be close,’ Warbringer said. She raised her giant warhammer Voidaran as if it weighed no more than a wheat bushel. A faint and wistful moan accompanied the weapon’s every movement, however subtle.
‘Would you help me, Warbringer?’ Farden asked, standing over Durnus. It wounded him to see his friend so helpless, yet for the moment, he was most concerned with the pungent waft coming from the hulking minotaur. Warbringer moved the mage aside, scooped Durnus up with surprising care, and draped him across her una
rmoured shoulder.
‘Like a feather,’ she said.
The satchel Durnus had rescued from Scalussen was another matter. The weight of the tomes and the Grimsayer within were nothing short of sadistic. Farden got a corner of it off the ground before his arms and back protested. He bared teeth as he paused to try again.
‘You’re not yourself yet, King. You’ll need time,’ Aspala said as she hoisted the satchel over her shoulder. He saw her grimace with the effort and tried to take it from her, but she was already out of reach.
They gathered at the cave mouth, each peering in a different direction. Farden listened to the heavy breathing of his companions: a Paraian, a minotaur, a half-dead vampyre and a… Mithrid. He still hadn’t figured whether she could be called a mage. He realised they were staring at him.
‘Where to then, King?’ asked Mithrid.
A sweat prickled his skin. ‘Don’t call me that. I don’t deserve that title any longer.’
An awkward silence hung before he spat in the loam.
‘I say anywhere but this fucking forest,’ said Farden, choosing the only direction that made sense to his tangled mind. Onwards.
It took them half the day to notice, but it turned out the forest was a carnivorous beast. Its spoils were not of meat, nor of bone, but of soul and spirit.
The scant amber light the treetops let through offered the survivors of Scalussen no sun for a compass. They could only guess at the passage of time. Only the thump of their boots in the damp loam counted the moments. The wet air felt so thick as to be an unwanted coat around their shoulders. Throats and nostrils itched inexplicably, and another sharp, unpleasant smell now pervaded the forest, like that of witches’ powders and tinctures.
The monotony of their arboreal prison was bewildering. The trees never crowded or encroached on each other. Hardly a single tree was crooked or fallen. And though the tree trunks were twisted and woven, each was still painfully alike. Only the scars across their silver trunks told them apart, as well the gouges Mithrid and the others cut in their wood to mark their way. Crimson sap dribbled like blood, which made them all the more noticeable when they crossed upon their own marks again and again.