by Ben Galley
‘Please! I’m but a humble—’
‘Answer the question!’
No!’ he wailed. ‘Just the one door!’
‘Warbringer!’ roared the mage.
‘A pleasure!’
The minotaur swung Voidaran at the tavern’s back wall. The poor bricks stood no chance. Half of them were reduced to powder as the warhammer’s blunt face collided. The rest exploded into the night, leaving a hole big enough for them to squeeze through.
Mithrid lingered, spinning her power between her hands to leave trails of black shadow behind them. The superstition of the townsfolk did the rest, halting them from chasing.
‘Dusk God!’ they yelled.
In the confusion, Mithrid and the others managed to escape too much scrutiny as they dashed for the southern wall. At the chokepoint of a street made of clay and thatch buildings, they found themselves once again at the mercy of Warbringer.
After pressing the limp vampyre into the arms of Farden and Aspala, the minotaur began to swing Voidaran in a wailing arc. She charged, whirling the weapon overhead until, half a dozen paces from the wall, she let it fly. Voidaran split the wall of brick and wooden scaffold asunder. It was closely followed by Warbringer, who lowered her horns and drove her charging bulk into the gap. The wall collapsed, leaving her to roll almost comically down the hill on the other side.
‘Who needs a locksmith when you’ve got a minotaur?’ Aspala yelled as they scrambled over the wreckage.
‘It’s all fun and games until you’re fighting against them,’ snapped Farden as he stumbled and rolled.
The townsfolk and their ramshackle militia had noticed their escape. As the strangers sprinted into the darkness, snow stinging their cheeks, a dozen flaming arrows drew streaks in the sky. They landed wide and short, but they still spurred them to greater speeds.
‘Dawn curse you!’ came the cries.
‘Bandits!’
‘Whores of Dusk!’
More arrows soared into the sky. One landed with a thud and a hiss close to Mithrid’s feet, and she yelled to Farden.
‘Their aim is getting better!’
Farden didn’t answer. He was busy searching the skies. ‘Fleetstar, you damnable swine!’ he yelled.
It took an arrow clanging against Farden’s armoured shoulder for the dragon to answer their pleas.
Her black shape skimmed so close, Mithrid swore she felt scales brush her hair. The dragon tore clods of grassland up as she skidded to a halt. Her eyes were cold crystal points in the gloom. Dangerous and wild. She said nothing as Mithrid, Aspala and Durnus clambered aboard her saddle. Farden and Warbringer braced as her claws closed around them. With several inconsiderately lurching wingbeats, the dragon was aloft and skimming the grasslands into a cold and flurrying night.
Mithrid clung on for dear life, having lacked the time to strap herself in. The biting wind sealed her eyes shut. All she could focus on in that rushing darkness was the overwhelming smell of roast mutton.
CHAPTER 7
MONSTROUS THINGS
Beyond storms, pirates, and sharp rocks, the sailor fears the leviathan the most. What does the leviathan fear, you ask? The giant and fearsome keraken, if any still exist.
FROM THE ‘WET LETTERS’ OF MASTER WIRD’S SEAFARING EXPEDITIONS
It was with the screams of the Bay of Rós fading in his ears that Loki ascended the steps of the Arkathedral. The Scalussen armada was speeding west, hurried by the sailors dying behind them as a ship sank into the dark night’s water.
Half a mile of steps had already passed before his feet, and yet he trod them just the same: an inexorable climb.
The fawners had fallen away, too tired to keep up. Even the guards struggled, and still Loki climbed. He had the peak of the Arkathedral in his mind, and he would be damned if anyone stopped him.
With strength unknown to mortals, Loki reached the hall of the Marble Copse, where the magick council and Malvus had once issued their orders and decrees. Past the unlit Blazing Throne, Loki walked. Curving up the stairs until he felt the chilling breath of evening air on his warm skin, he emerged into the Eyrie. Here Malvus had trodden amongst the vulegul nests and stared down upon the core of his empire.
Loki did the same, daring his feet to the edge of precipices that had no balustrade or iron railing. Below him, the white marble tiers of the Arkathedral descended one by one, until the walls became fused with bridges to mansions and inflated watchtowers. The streets were afire with lanterns and torches, held by citizens parading in celebration. Not just for the victory over the Scalussen fleet. Not merely for the leviathans he had summoned. But for the god that resided amongst them.
As he stood tall against the wind, Loki heard his name chanted across the city. He basked in it, hearing, as well as feeling, the adoration from below. It fuelled him, and he twisted his face into a mask of haughty satisfaction that even he was unused to. He remembered himself at last, smoothing his smile across his cheeks with his forefinger and thumb before chuckling. It was time to gamble some more.
And this time with higher stakes.
Loki made sure he moved out of sight before he vanished from Krauslung. The people thought him a saviour; they were not ready to know a god walked in their midst. Not yet. He needed them to adore him willingly, and so he left them to suspect and wonder at his nature.
Snow scattered around his boots. Loki looked upon the farmhouse that sat lonely amidst a frozen field of stumps. Its windows had been boarded up in panic. The thatch looked one stout storm away from collapsing. There was a loneliness to it that Loki appreciated. A defiant kind of existence much like him, immune to the grinding change of the world around him.
Above the farmhouse, the night sky was full of colours. Great swathes of dusty light, blue and green, duelled with each other lazily. Above the black Tausenbar, fire still burned in the northernmost mountains. Half hidden by clouds of smoke and ash, a pillar of cobalt light dominated the dark. It reached high into the heavens. Loki felt the swell of Irminsul’s power in the air, pulsing as a heartbeat.
Already creatures had come to gather. On the edges of the field, in the misted darkness, Loki spied the diamond shine of the eyes of wolves, and their larger cousins, fenrir. Trolls, too, of charred wood and stone. Ghouls and ghosts aplenty, some freshly wrought. he ignored them all.
Stepping over the half-frozen corpses of an old man and boy, Loki’s boots crunched on the hoarfrost. He could hear shouting inside the farmhouse. Something crashed against a wall. Loki tutted.
Humans. They could never be trusted to sit still.
Within the gutted abode, dark figures stood hunched and hooded around a single candle. These were the scrapings of the wilds; Arka survivors that Loki had found lost in the mountains or stuck halfway to Krauslung.
A lone surviving Scarred stepped upward, light threading between her fingers before realising it was Loki. Two particularly burly figures watched over a shivering huddle of prisoners. One twiddled a dagger between his fingers. The other tended burns that Loki could still see glowing with magick.
‘It’s time,’ he ordered. To the whimpers of the prisoners, Loki climbed the rickety stairs to the upper room amongst the thatch.
Another crash came from the other side of the door. Loki let his hand hover over the handle a moment before clasping it. Light spread across the cracks of the wood as it unlocked.
In the gloom within, lit only by the night sky creeping through the boarded windows, stood a heaving, raging shape.
Loki slammed the door behind him at the same time as bringing the glass cube of Jurindir’s Candle into the light.
Malvus looked wild. The daemonblood Loki had left him with was gone. The bottle lay in pieces at the foot of the far wall. Malvus’ feet had trodden upon the shards, it looked like, and dragged bloody footprints across the floorboards. His shirt was ripped and soiled. The pillowy body of an emperor whose habits were mostly sitting and shouting and coughing up blood was evident. Though a potbelly
remained, he had grown gaunter in the chest and arms even in his short stay in the farmhouse. A sandy beard had sprouted across his face.
Judging by his physical appearance, his gaze had no right to burn so brightly. Loki smiled. ‘Good!’ he announced.
‘Good?’ screeched Malvus from behind his hands. The light blinded him.
‘I can see the rage in you once more. The strength. You’re more yourself than ever before. You’ve healed well.’
‘You fiend.’ Malvus choked on a cough and wiped his lips. Loki saw the faint smear of blood on the back of his thumb. The god trusted he had not dallied too long.
‘You accursed fiend. W—who do you think you are to keep me prisoner? Days, I have waited here. All the while Krauslung betrays me and that fucking mage keeps drawing breath! I will have you flayed for your insolence.’
‘Just like the loyal soldiers beneath us, it was for your protection, Malvus.’
‘You will refer to me as Emperor, damn you…!’
Loki gestured for him to sit on the bed. Malvus remained standing. ‘You needed the time, and so did I.’
Malvus said not a word. His breaths came rapid and heavy. ‘You made me a promise when last we spoke.’
‘That I did.’
‘Then speak. How exactly do you propose to kill Farden?’
‘Me?’ Loki patted the emperor on the clammy shoulder twice before Malvus pushed him away. ‘Not I, but you, Malvus Barkhart.’
The level of scorn on Malvus’ face was almost impressive. ‘With what weapon?’
‘Why, you, of course.’
The confusion was not amusing to the emperor. Somehow the scorn deepened. It was then Loki saw the sliver of glass in Malvus’ other hand, clutched so tightly that blood pattered on the floor.
‘You toy with me,’ he growled.
‘I wouldn’t dare, my good Malvus.’
Loki rapped a knuckle on the door. The hooded, pale Scarred appeared. The prisoner in her clutches was babbling a constant stream of apologies and promises of silence. Other dark figures lingered in the stairwell. Loki removed the sack from the man’s head and let him blink in the light of the Candle.
It took him a moment to recognise his emperor, and when he did, he fell limp in the Scarred’s hands. ‘Your Majesty,’ the man gasped.
Malvus gestured to the man’s robe. Once a clean grey, it was now soiled with mud and piss. ‘A scribe?’
‘Astute! Your wits have not failed us yet.’ Loki explained. ‘Only a score of them survived creating the Scarred. Half of those we left behind fled Krauslung. The other half were dutiful enough to remain in the Arkathedral, where I found them. They did not come willingly. It took time, as I said. Quite the opposite, in fact, with much screaming and vomiting, as it happens. The way I travel is not for everyone’s stomachs, I suppose.’
Malvus grunted in agreement. ‘And what do you propose to do with them? Make more Scarred? Even if we had your Hides of Hysteria—’
Loki swept the grotesque tome from inside his coat and thumped it on the straw bedding. Malvus narrowed his bloodshot eyes.
‘—then the Scarred would still be useless in the face of Farden. Hundreds have already failed to defeat him. No Book is as strong as his.’
‘Fortunately for us, we have a copy of his Book.’
Malvus laughed in Loki’s face.
Once more, the god summoned a prize from his pocket. He slapped the folded sheaf of leather down atop the Hides and crossed his arms.
‘You liar…’
‘Stolen from beneath the mage’s nose not one moment before your Arka charged Scalussen for the last time.’
Loki watched the emperor’s dishevelled face cycle through a range of emotions, slipping from scoffing hilarity to confusion, outrage, and finally to awe. Not of Loki, much to his irritation, but of the Book that lay within arm’s reach. Malvus reached towards it, then stumbled backwards.
‘Farden’s Book…’ he breathed. ‘By the gods. What have you done? How did you get this?’
Loki could hear the guards whispering, even as stunned by Irminsul’s fire as they were. ‘With this and the other Books, we can at last create a mage worthy of opposing Farden. A mage the likes of which Emaneska has only seen once before. In Samara, Farden’s dead daughter.’
‘The girl who brought the sky crashing down…’ Malvus rasped, reaching again for Farden’s Book. ‘Yes. Yes, god. You have proven your worth once more!’
‘And tenfold, I’d say.’ Loki motioned to the Scarred. The scribe prisoner was thrown unceremoniously to the floorboards and left there to whimper. He had already guessed his fate. A hundred scribes had died or gone irretrievably mad from the rushed effort to forge the Scarred. He could not tear his wide eyes from the Hides of Hysteria.
‘You had best prepare yourself then, Malvus,’ Loki suggested.
The emperor’s head shot around. ‘We are leaving?’
‘No, Your Imperial Majesty. You should prepare yourself for the ritual.’
‘Ritual?’
Loki was far from impressed by how long it took Malvus to realise what the god was suggesting. Perhaps it was not the stress and disease that had dulled his mind, but the sheer preposterousness of what Loki had just implied.
‘Nonsense!’ Malvus blurted. ‘You can’t mean that I… that you want me to—’
‘Ah, but I do.’ Loki went as far as to wink. The human expression had never suited him.
The emperor brandished his sliver of broken glass as a dagger. ‘Then you mean to murder me, Loki! More than half the mages we turned to Scarred died during the process, and they were trained! You know I have no magick in my veins. Even if I were a mage, the ink and needle would destroy me! Soldiers, seize this traitor—!’
‘You have something else in your veins now, Emperor.’ Loki presented him with a glass bottle of red liquid. It filled his palm. Black wax sealed its stopper.
‘None of our mages ever had this to keep them alive. With daemonblood, with your stubbornness, with the sheer determination of entitlement I know burns within you, you can survive.’
Loki flicked open the leather sheaf, baring the slimmest corner of Farden’s Book. Just enough to glimpse a flowing line of black runes. Malvus and the unfortunate scribe recoiled. Loki watched them closely. Malvus battled with every fibre of his being not to look, tendons stretching on his neck, eyes white on the corners. The god smirked. He could see the intrigue in the emperor like a hook in a fish’s mouth. Yet it would take skill to reel him in.
‘And not just one Book. Two, perhaps. Three.’
Malvus stumbled backwards with horror. ‘Do you seek to torture me for your own pleasure? This is pure madness! I will not do it.’
Loki stamped his foot. His kin had not blessed him with height but he used his gods-given magick to fill the room with his presence. Shadows crept along the walls. ‘Madness is precisely what is needed to defeat Farden! The mage is a brute force that has foiled you every step of your journey. With these Books you can fight him on his own level. Head to head as never before. That is the defeat you always wished for. I dare you to tell me I’m wrong. I saw it on the ice fields. Saw it in your eyes as you watched your soldiers throw themselves against Farden’s walls. That’s how Farden dropped your guard the day his steel dragon came out of Scalussen.’
There, Loki paused, examining his trimmed fingernails in the darkness. This world incessantly soiled his hands with its dust and filth.
‘Unless, of course, you have a better idea? Or, if you are done with your lust for conquest and revenge, Malvus Barkhart, then this conversation is moot. Let Farden and his ilk disappear into the sunset as they no doubt always wanted. Let Krauslung govern itself. You can build a quiet life here once the ash stops falling and the frost melts. You could till the fields, even. Live out your remaining days until your illness takes you at last. I could provide as much daemonblood as I—’
‘ENOUGH!’ Malvus roared.
Loki had cornered him. Now, he had
broken him. The god tilted his head as Malvus began to pace forwards and back, left to right. Fear was an emotion of many faces.
‘Farden will be no match for you. Nothing will stand in your way. And when you are done, while holding the mage’s severed head in your hand, you will show Krauslung you are their true emperor.’
Shaking like a winter pine, Malvus Barkhart sat upon his straw mattress and dragged his shirt from his back. He spoke to the dark corner. ‘And if this fails, then you will pay with your life, Loki. Even if I have to come back from Hel to wring your neck.’
The god waved a hand at the Scarred and her prisoner. ‘Bring him forwards. No better time to start than now.’
The scribe, whose head had volleyed back and forth as the god and emperor argued, now fought tooth and claw to be free.
‘No! No!’ he howled, until the Scarred walloped him in the face and singed him with a palmful of fire to keep him quiet.
‘Hush now,’ Loki soothed the man, stroking his sweat-soaked mop of hair.
‘Just kill me now. I’m dead either way!’ he threatened.
‘Dear me,’ Loki pulled a face. His stroke became a grip, not on the man’s locks but on the soul within him. His eyes turned up in their sockets as he screamed. Even the Scarred recoiled until Loki had released him.
Loki chuckled as he rode the rush of power. Even the smallest taste of it was intoxicating. Prayer and adulation be damned. ‘There are many things worse than death, my good man. Worse than what we want from you. This?’ From his jacket, he brought rare ink, and a long, slightly curved whalebone needle. ‘Take it from me. This is the easy way out.’
The man reached, whimpering, for the needle. Another soul broken.
‘Just do it,’ Malvus growled from behind them, before smashing the neck from the glass vial of daemonblood. Both it and the blood from his own sliced lips ran down his neck. ‘I won’t die here. Not like this.’
‘That’s the spirit.’
Loki closed the door shut behind him and crossed his arms. He smirked. What he did was heresy to both god and human, and he revelled in it. He hoped his fellow gods were looking down, wondering at the shadow he had made of himself, and that they shivered in the cold dark of their void.