by Ben Galley
‘I have been thinking about the Doomriddle’s first promise to us. Three tasks every god and mortal fears to face await. Three duties yet fulfilled of blood, breath, mind, and soul. Three cursed keys to three doors to be left locked evermore. The blood, breath, mind, and soul. Those words have played on my mind for days. I did not want to believe them before, but now, I cannot escape them.’
Aspala sniffed at Durnus. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The blood is what Sigrimur shed. The breath you had to hold in the second task. And we almost lost our minds to Utiru.’
‘Speculation, Durnus.’
Durnus snarled back at him. ‘The final payment to claim Gunnir awaits. What else could be demanded of us next but the sacrifice of a soul? One of us will be expected to make it.’
The vampyre’s words were damning, as though a noose had just been tied about each of their necks. Danger had followed them every step of the way, but it had never been so certain or foretold. They all traded sour looks as if pondering which one of them the spear would demand.
Mithrid shook her head, adamant and seemingly incensed. She worked away at her hands, grinding her gauntlets together. ‘No. We’ve beat every task so far. We can beat this one.’
The girl’s confidence wilted in the silence that followed. Farden watched her, recognising the fury roiling inside her. The frustration at the double-edged blade of the fate she believed in.
Farden dug up some reassurance for them, even though it felt hollow for him. ‘Let us escape these jaws first before we think about what Gunnir wants from us.’
The sandy buildings the caravan passed at first didn’t look like they belonged anywhere near the abode of a grand lord. They were ramshackle, seemingly deserted but for a few hooded villagers. Goats sat or stood or butted heads on their square and ramparted roofs.
‘Where are we?’ Farden asked the knight still trotting at their side, keeping watch.
‘Nowhere important, or that would educate you.’
‘Belerod doesn’t live in a palace or fortress?
‘Normally, he does. He is a prince of Narwe, after all. Lord Belerod has several palaces, but now he is heading to war. With your northern lands, no less. You ravage our towns and mine our mountains. Now you will pay the price.’
‘We’re from Emaneska. Far away from your Diamond Mountains and your problems. We are simply passing through.’
‘Tell it to my lord.’
‘Oh, I will,’ Farden threatened, but before he could antagonise the knight more, a glitter demanded his attention.
Water.
Farden hurt his cheeks he pressed his face to the bars so forcefully. The pool of blue water spread between the buildings before curving around the dune. Palms bent shade over its banks.
It was here the encampment began. Tents sprang from the sand, interspersed by more trees. Gold of hue, they were square-face and pointed, but there the simplicity ended. They were sculptures of canvas and rope, some reaching even two stories like houses. The caravan weaved between their ropes and sweeping awnings. Some parts of the tent settlement were completely covered in canvas as if to forge great halls.
It was a camp of war, no doubt. Soldiers occupied every tent. Swathes of smiths and armourers clogging the hot air with cinders and clanging. Somewhere between the canvas forest, beasts lowed at the watering hole.
What captured Farden’s eye – besides the palm-wood barrels of water and wine – were the engines of war. Similar to the machines they had built in Scalussen, though not runecrafted for strength. Instead, they were built larger, thicker, and from more iron than he thought possible.
A fanfare blared at the head of the caravan. The jolting of their wagon slowed as voices yammered back and forth about them. They had come to a courtyard of canvas and rope. A strange crowd stood about, sipping from tall, thin goblets of coloured glass. Men and women alike were dressed in golden silks of varying finery. A goat-faced man played a lute with a wand of string. It gave a haunting whine that a nearby drummer tapped nonsensically to.
Farden understood what this was. He had seen enough in his time. It was a lord’s court, and no court was without its fawners and wealthy contributors, even if all they fawned over was a person who usually loathed them in return, and all they contributed was their addled presence.
The court of Lord Belerod seemed no different. A multitude of attendees hovered about in clumps of conversation and nibbled from gold platters. They whispered as the wagons were drawn into an arc before a dais. Yet despite his court’s glitter, the lord’s lair seemed strangely functional. His burgundy tent was entirely open on one side. Its awning was splayed in the blue sky like skins being left to cure. Braziers of ornately carved stone burned on either side of a sweeping map table. A middle-aged man with a shaved head and a broad but trimmed granite beard stood waiting upon them. His mahogany skin bore a constant frown. Generals in gold armour whispered at his back. Soldiers, too, but Belerod had no need for them.
As the bolts were knocked from the cage hinges, and the bars fell away, Farden examined the two stone golems that loitered either side of the dais. These were far beyond the beasts that they had seen on the roads, instead masterfully carved. Their grey, almost blue stone, was veined with mica and quartz. Their shards and plates of stone echoed the muscle and shape of human lines. One was carved to look as though it wore armour. The other had claws curved like blades. Each must have been twelve-foot tall at the most. Their grim faces and piercing blue eyes regarded the prisoners with the curiosity that mortals reserved for insects.
‘It is about time!’ Belerod yelled. His accent was strangely reminiscent of deep Paraian, past the Dune Sea. His Commontongue was perfect.
‘Presenting Lord Belerod of Wind-Cut, Haspia. Master Windtricker. Envoy of the Narwe Harmony,’ yelled the knight as he poked them from the cage.
Belerod swept forwards. His golems were well trained and stepped with him. Beside them, the lord looked like a glass half-empty. His tone was gruff, yet it had a welcoming tone that surprised Farden. Though he spoke to the others, he stared avidly at Fleetstar. They had not let her or Warbringer from their cages. Their belongings and weapons clanked on the ground in sacks. All except Voidaran. The soldiers had refused to handle it. Instead, it lay strapped to Warbringer’s wagon.
‘I apologise for the mode of travel,’ said Belerod. ‘It is not the most comfortable, my golems tell me.’
Farden cut straight to the point. ‘You could apologise for shooting our dragon, while you’re at it.’
Belerod nodded. ‘Though necessary, I regret to harm the creature, and I trust it is nothing permanent. The Narwe have some of the finest surgeons known to history.’
The Mad Dragon blew smoke. ‘You’ll not touch me!’ she snarled. ‘Necessary? You mongrel cur. I’ll roast you alive.’
Farden half expected her to do it. The crowd of courtiers had the gall to gasp and gossip at the sight, as if they were an audience to some impromptu theatre.
‘It speaks! How pleasing,’ Belerod said. Though his brain had forgotten to tell his flat lips, he was clearly exuberant. He moved around them, striding back and forth like a captain drilling recruits.
Farden lifted his chin. ‘You didn’t have to do anything but give us passage through your land. We have no time to waste on our journey, and it would be in your best interest to let us go. Sooner, rather than later.’
‘You’re right about that,’ muttered Mithrid.
Belerod chuckled, and even then his lips. ‘How else was I to meet you?’
‘Meet us? Why?’
‘By politely asking?’ ventured Farden.
‘Ah,’ Belerod grinned. ‘You were correct, Lady of Whispers!’
Farden’s head snapped around with a click of bone. He felt the heat prickle his cheeks.
Sure enough, from the crowd emerged a familiar face: Lady Irien, draped in white cotton and a gold silk sash. Her arm made her unmistakable. There was no smile on her face now. No glimmer of her consta
nt amusement whatsoever. Her hair still stood in its ridge. Gold trailed from her ear and around her throat. She stood upon the sand between the court and the prisoners. Her stare crept to Farden. It might well have been the gaze of a frog for all the emotion and insight it offered.
‘In what way, Lord Belerod?’ she asked, both voice and eyes frosty.
‘They are fine characters indeed. Full of spirit and strength, just as you informed me. This one in the red and gold looks older than I recall. How the Easterealm has aged you.’
Farden tilted his head. ‘Have we met before?’
Belerod entwined his fingers as he now examined Farden’s armour. He marvelled at the interlocking scales. Farden caught Belerod’s proving fingers between his manacled hands. The nearby knights darted to intervene but Belerod shook his head. The mage felt a strength in the lord’s arms that said he was not just a planner of wars, but once a fighter, too. Farden released him unharmed.
‘Oh yes,’ Belerod crowed. ‘There is the anger, the rebellion. I saw you in the Viscera, good sir, and not only did your friends here perform admirably in such weighted bouts, but I must praise you for the most sudden way in which you brought the Scarlet Tourney to a close. That nest of vipers and gamblers deserved every drop of blood that was spilled.’
Though he strained his mind to the point of pain, the mage could not remember this man; not from crowd nor from the contestants. ‘Lord Belerod…’ he muttered.
‘And you are Farden and Durnus of Scalussen, sorcerers both,’ Belerod announced their names in kind, sweeping back and forth their line. ‘Mithrid of Hâlorn, if I pronounce that correctly. The Warbringer, the Broken Promise, and Aspala of Paraia. It is an honour to have you here. We shall have food brought for you. Song, if you wish. I treat all the guests of my court and my children of stone with the utmost respect. Unless they displease me.’
Farden felt his lips crack as he smiled. He hadn’t the strength for another enemy. Not now. Not when we are so close. He hoped he had made enough already. ‘In that case, I suppose now’s a good time to remove these shackles, no? Though while your hospitality is much appreciated, we can’t stay long.’ He raised his shackles, but neither the soldiers nor Belerod made a move. Irien winced.
‘Ah. I feel I’ve misunderstood,’ Farden said.
‘I feel you have.’ Belerod’s puckered mouth broke its form, breaking into a vicious little smirk, like a rat discovering a cheese larder left open. ‘I am an artisan, you see. Like the Lady of Whispers here, I appreciate fine artefacts. I recognise quality, skill, and craftsmanship when I see it. After seeing what you did to the Viscera, I knew I had discovered a number of rare specimens that I not only needed to meet and study, but that would strike fear into the hearts of my enemies. Like my Wind-Cut golems, no less. But a true western dragon? My! The northerners will quake in their fortresses. Not to mention a minotaur. Two mages and fighters both. And you, Aspala of Paraia, who murdered my youngest son to the cheer of the Scarlet Tourney.’
Farden’s head switched to the other side. If there were any more revelations he would soon break his neck.
‘I what now?’ Aspala shook her manacles.
Belerod stepped to examine her. She was taller than he was, especially with her horns now fully regrown, but the looming shadow of the golems somehow gave the lord the edge. The one with sculpted armour growled.
‘Dooran of Dooran was his name, son of Belerod of Haspia, or so they dubbed him,’ Belerod said, much to the sighs and slow, sad shakes of his courtiers’ heads. Fawners all.
The name was slowly dawning on a memory. Farden remembered a hesitant fighter dropping a sword.
Belerod jogged their memory for them. ‘My sixth boy and a fool for entering the Tourney, I said! But alas, Dooran was not born with his father’s smarts. I blame his Borian whore of a mother.’
Farden scowled. He was not alone, though the court muttered in defence of their lord, not in criticism.
Aspala bared her white teeth. ‘I was put into that arena against my will, do not punish my friends for my—’
Belerod held a finger to his lips. ‘Fortunately, the goddess Haspha smiles upon me. I have many more sons to replace him.’ Several knights spread around the circle of tents thumped their breastplates, including the fellow that had captured them between the dunes. ‘You gave Dooran a clean warrior’s death, and for that I will spare your life. And I do not punish you; I am rewarding you with a proud place in my army! Honour and glory. Blood and chaos, as Irien tells me you crave. She has been quite useful here in the south. Her knowledge of the north will make this a swift war.’
‘Now, I think it’s you that’s misunderstood,’ Farden tutted. He wished he had the moisture to spit at the lord’s feet.
Belerod continued as if the mage hadn’t spoken. ‘Under my command, and fighting under the banners of the Narwe Harmony, you will bring death to your pale brothers and sisters. The northern marauders burn village after village in our foothills. Our ancient mines are being sacked and raided, and already, they send a fleet of ships down the coast. War for the Diamond Mountains has been declared, and I will deliver a first blow that will send the north reeling.’
‘We will not fight for you,’ scoffed Durnus. ‘Not for some jumped-up warlord and a war we do not belong to.’
Aspala looked wild behind the eyes. A knight had to seize her manacles. ‘I refuse to be caged!’
‘Let us go, Belerod, and you’ll be better for it.’
The man did not look the least bit hampered by Farden’s threat. ‘Allegiances and friends are a double-edged sword, my new warriors. This is why I advise against such fancies, and trust only what I can build with my hands and the winds. It is simple: I will kill one of you, and then another, until those who remain agree to do my bidding.’
The simple evil of the matter silenced them. The lone wolf had no such problems, but Farden had the weakness of companions, and frankly, a heart. As the golden knights grabbed their manacles and led them into the camp at Belerod’s behest, he found Irien in the crowd and bored a hole in those bewitching eyes. He cursed himself for believing her charm. He should have recognised the wolf in her, too.
Belerod was a peculiar captor. Despite the chains and swords at their back, he acted the grand and accommodating lord as if imprisonment was a favour he were paying them.
‘Ten thousand Khandri have joined my cause. Thirty thousand Hasp,’ he boasted. They had not wanted a tour of the camp, but he provided one anyway.
Farden got the feeling he was a man of minor beginnings. The kind that felt the need to hammer home their status with proof, as if it were constantly in silent question. Most chose jewellery or treasures. Others palaces or politics. Some the path of the learned scholar, but Belerod had chosen war.
Belerod’s mind was a wicked thing, and one that Farden slyly took hints from. He was no simple noble who fancied himself a warrior, but a warlord and a general. And an engineer or inventor, too, judging by his golems and contraptions of murder. Farden saw complicated ballistae capable of firing racks of arrows at once. Catapults sat ready and loaded with spiked balls of steel connected by chains. He wondered if the northerners had weapons to match, or if they were due for a bloodbath in return for their trespass. It was no war of Farden’s.
There was magick in the war-camp, too. Much to his ever-present anguish, Farden could not feel it, but he saw it between the tents. Mages using wind magick to stir whirlwinds against shield walls. Toned individuals mixed potions and powders that puffed with smoke, like the witches of the ice fields.
Other creatures and captives besides them lingered in cages, waiting to be of use in Belerod’s war. And of course, there were the golems.
Belerod’s pride burned most fiercely for his granite creations. Ten more of the intricate beasts were scattered through the camp between siege machines and chariots.
‘Twelve, I have built so far. A thirteenth, possibly my finest, is currently under construction in my homeland of Haspia to th
e east.’
‘How does one build a golem?’ said Durnus, somehow treating it exactly as a tour.
Despite his magnanimous sentiments, Belerod was reticent with some secrets. ‘With old magick and patience. These golems, however, are carved with the winds of Haspia. There are none like them in all the world.’
Annoying as it might have, Farden was inclined to agree.
‘Of your dragon and minotaur, what does it eat? Does it sleep?’
Nobody answered the warlord, least of all Fleetstar and Warbringer. The dragon just charred the bars of her cage with restrained fire.
Stay calm. I’ll get us out of here, Farden whispered in his mind. She did not respond, but she recoiled from the bars all the same.
‘Very well, hold your tongues. I am a quick learner. I am most fascinated by the concept of dragon riding.’ Belerod extended his hand to the dragon to feel her scales, but Fleetstar snapped her huge jaws at him. The knights menaced her with swords.
‘All in good time, as with all things,’ Belerod said confidently. ‘And at last, here are your quarters. The dragon will come back to my court with me, under my watchful eye.’
‘You best not lay a finger on her.’
‘While you are in no position to threaten me, Farden, rest assured. I will do no more harm to my property. Unless I am forced to.’
Fleetstar whined as they parted them and dragged her cage back the short way they had come.
Their “quarters” were tall, glorified cages, similar to what they had seen in the Viscera. Four of them altogether, each side by side and sharing bars. A tent stretched across the sprawl of iron to hide them from the sun. And, to Farden’s joy, there was water.
It might have surprised the others to see him striding behind his bars, but as he dunked his head into the trough of oasis water, he couldn’t care less. Farden drank like he was drowning.
Belerod bid them no goodbye as he swaggered away, clearly pleased with his swift and seamless acquisition. For the first time, Farden knew somewhat of how Hereni or Mithrid felt, or any of the soldiers and mages Malvus had stolen into his armies. It was too swift. Too helpless. The only difference was that they were not as helpless as Belerod perhaps imagined. Not quite.