Seeing his twin become irate should have bothered Alijah but, after so long, he was, instead, forced to hide his smile. Inara had never let anything or anyone come between her and the justice that needed answering, even from a young age.
Hadavad’s answer was as plain as could be. “A cult of necromancers excavated Asher’s bones in Vengora. They used the magnified power of the magic inside Paldora’s Fall to cast a resurrection spell.”
Inara appeared to be searching for any hint of a lie on the mage’s face. “The Black Hand you spoke of?”
“Aye,” the mage replied. “After bringing him back, they bound him to their will as well as Malliath.”
Inara shook her head. “That’s impossible. A bond can never be forced.”
Vighon said, “And a few days ago, I didn’t think the dead could be brought back to life…”
“It’s true,” Alijah added, ignoring Vighon’s unhelpful comment. “I saw it happen.”
Inara turned away from them all and faced Athis, though his reptilian face was a mystery to Alijah. Judging by his sister’s face, he deduced that they were holding another conversation.
“There’s more,” Hadavad stated.
Alijah’s stomach lurched, concerned that the mage was about to divulge the bond that the rogue now shared with Malliath. He hadn’t wanted them to know, let alone his sister, a Dragorn.
“There were other creatures inside Paldora’s Fall,” Hadavad continued. “Pale and horned.”
Alijah hid his sigh of relief.
“You fought them?” Inara asked.
“I killed a few,” Alijah answered. “But there were too many. We had to run.”
Inara looked at her brother with new eyes, as if she was reassessing all that she thought she knew about him. Inara wasn’t the only one who had changed over the years.
“How many?” the Dragorn asked.
“A lot,” Vighon chipped in helpfully.
Hadavad asked, “Would they be the orcs you spoke of?”
“Orcs?” Galanör blurted out. “That’s what chased us in the crater?”
Inara nodded solemnly. “They have returned, and in some number it seems.”
“What are orcs?” Vighon and Alijah asked simultaneously.
“A breed of monster lost to history…” Galanör said, visibly shaken.
“Just as Asher was lost to us,” Hadavad mused, his eyes on the prophecy in his hand. “It seems the lost and impossible are coming together.”
Inara turned back to Athis. “We need to go. Gideon must hear of this.”
“Wait!” Vighon exclaimed with more emphasis than he should have. The northerner tried to plough through his awkward command. “Malliath and Asher are still out here somewhere. I think we can all agree that getting out of The Arid Lands is our best course of action right now. Perhaps a Dragorn escort would see us safely out of the desert?”
Inara hesitated but still shook her head. “This is too important. Gideon has to know what’s happened here and it will take you too long to reach The Moonlit Plains from here.”
“To Tregaran then?” Vighon pressed. “It’s the capital of these lands; we would be safe there.”
Alijah was doing his best to shoot daggers at his friend, more than aware that Vighon wasn’t afraid of their journey north.
Inara silently consulted with Athis before turning back to them. “To Tregaran, but we cannot go any farther.”
Alijah blinked very slowly and pinched his nose. This adventure had quickly turned into a nightmare four years in the making.
The twins shared one last look before they separated and made for their individual mounts. The tension between them would inevitably come to a head if he knew his sister. She let nothing go.
“I shall look after this.” Hadavad lifted the prophecy before tucking it into the pouch on the side of Alijah’s horse.
“That’s my horse,” the rogue protested quietly.
Hadavad looked from the black steed to Alijah and shrugged. “Old bones, you see. Besides, you and Vighon ride so well together.”
Alijah sighed, quashing the unusual rage that again threatened to consume him. The half-elf knew he shouldn’t feel this way and yet his anger clawed at the bars to be unleashed.
He swallowed that fury and met Hadavad’s eyes. “You and I still need to have a talk, old man. We thought you were dead.”
Alijah watched the mage nod his head and trot ahead. He waited until he could only see the back of him before releasing his grip on the dagger strapped to his belt. He hadn’t even realised he was gripping it.
Standing beside Ned, Vighon was watching him. His friend’s intense stare posed the same question that was swirling inside Alijah’s head.
What was happening to him?
22
Welcome to the North
Doran Heavybelly took one last look over his shoulder. Kelp Town was quickly disappearing behind the falling snow, its wooden walls fading to white. With Kelp Town and Grey Stone behind them, the three companions were well and truly in the north.
They were also without comfy warm beds and buffets that went on and on. Of course, their reception in Kelp Town paled by comparison to that of Grey Stone’s. The lord of Kelp Town could never compete with the luxuries of his king, Jormund Orvish.
Still, they had been offered warm accommodation and free food and drink. The dwarf couldn’t complain about that.
“Nothin’ cures a nasty hangover like a northern breeze!” Doran bellowed into the icy wind.
Reyna looked down from her horse at the dwarf. “Is getting blind drunk a prerequisite for every town you visit?”
Now that Doran thought about it, he couldn’t remember much of their stay in Kelp Town. “Blind, deaf, an’ preferably passed out, me Lady!” he replied with a broad smile.
“I’ll say,” Nathaniel added. “Kelp Town was hit by one of those damn quakes last night and you slept through the whole thing.”
Doran vaguely recollected some kind of disturbance, but he had chalked it up to his belching or some other kind of gas expulsion…
The three continued their journey north, rounding the southern curve of Vengora to put them on a straight shot to Namdhor. The Selk Road was almost impossible to make out in the snow, but Doran’s uncanny sense of dwarven direction kept them straight.
With only two brief stops, the companions had made good tracks into the region of Orith. Only once did they pass another traveller on the road; a wagon of goods being transported to Grey Stone apparently. Doran fancied stopping and sharing some food with the driver, especially the salted pork he boasted of, but the Galfreys drove on.
When the Selk Road cut through a small wood, it offered nothing but trees for the son of Dorain to look at. After rainbows, trees were the dullest things to a dwarf’s eyes.
“This travellin’ malarkey is borin’ as shit!” Doran announced after another few hours of silent trekking. “Nathaniel! Ye must have some interestin’ tales from ye time in the Graycoats!”
Nathaniel moved his hood aside to look at the dwarf. “That was thirty years ago, Doran.”
“Bah! Ye humans and yer flimsy memories… I want stories abou’ hunts! Beasties! Summat excitin’! Anything to take me mind off o’ me numb arse!”
Reyna offered, “Would you like to hear a tale of the elves, son of Dorain?” Even the howling wind died down to hear the elf speak.
Doran held up his hand. “Ye can save ye stories of dandies and butterflies, me Lady.”
“Surely you would want to hear of Lady Syla’s great feats?” Reyna continued.
Doran’s ears pricked up at the name. “As in Syla’s Gate?”
“Named after Lady Syla of house Arinör,” Reyna explained. “It was her idea, and magic, that saw the great gates erected to keep the Darkakin out.”
Doran chuckled to himself. “Well, she did a piss poor job o’ that! Valanis brought ‘em down in an afternoon!”
The elf rolled her eyes at him. “Before that, the
y had stood for three thousand years. Besides, there are far more tales of her heroism than the war against the Darkakin. Lady Syla was known throughout the realm for her skill with a bow.”
“Much like you, dear,” Nathaniel commented oddly.
Reyna removed her bow and held it firmly in her right hand. “Thank you, darling.”
Doran raised a bushy eyebrow and looked from husband to wife.
“I have often wondered if I am as good a shot as Lady Syla,” Reyna continued, this time drawing an arrow from her quiver.
“I would say so,” Nathaniel replied, gripping the hilt of his sword and pulling it an inch out of its scabbard.
Now, Doran’s face was a picture of confusion with a light sprinkle of irritation. “What are ye two talkin’—”
Everything happened at once and Doran’s mind did its very best, while still somewhat intoxicated, to interpret the surroundings.
The trees either side of the road exploded with savage cries, a pair of axes flew through the air, Reyna let loose her arrow, and Nathaniel leaped from his horse with his sword held high.
The axes went wild, Reyna’s arrow sunk deep into the chest of one of their attackers, and Nathaniel sliced open another with a perfected horizontal strike.
Doran’s Warhog saw blood and went crazy. The dwarf yelled at the top of his lungs and held on as the pig sprinted towards the rushing men. The nearest of the attackers took a tusk to the leg and went down screaming. The next two faced Doran, who held a sword in one hand and an axe in the other.
An arrow whistled through the air and pierced the skulls of both men, dropping them dead. Doran turned to his right with the infuriated look of a wronged dwarf. The expletives that came to mind, however, never found their way to his mouth, as the Warhog continued its charge between the legs of Nathaniel’s riderless horse. Doran was thrown backwards when his bulk met the larger bulk of the horse’s midriff.
Spitting snow and shaking the powder from his armour, the dwarf rose with the fury no one should ever bring out in his kin.
“Come on then!” he roared.
Nathaniel kicked one of his attackers in Doran’s direction and the son of Dorain pounced. His axe swung first, quickly followed by his sword. A betting dwarf would have wagered the man died after the first swing, but the second always felt damn good!
Reyna had abandoned her horse now and joined them in the snow. Her green eyes sighted down arrow after arrow, each one nocked quicker than a man could blink. Only one of the elf’s attackers succeeded in getting close enough to actually raise their sword to her. Seeing the flat of her boot was the last thing he ever saw.
Doran swiped his axe and chopped down a man who sought to stab Nathaniel in the back. A downwards thrust of his sword ensured the man would never threaten another person. Seeing the man bleeding into the snow, there was something about him that gnawed at Doran.
A sharp pain interrupted his musings and the son of Dorain turned to see the end of a sword poking between his back plate and shoulder guard. The man on the other end tried desperately to either push or pull his sword free, twisting it this way and that. The sword wouldn’t budge.
“Dwarven skin, laddy. It’s almost as tough as our armour.” The son of Dorain spun around, knocking the sword free of the man’s grasp and his shoulder. “Ye should o’ thrust harder!”
The man turned on his heel and ran north with all haste.
Nathaniel danced around the last two, dispatching them one after the other with the graceful movements of a knight. “Where’s that one going?” he asked, spotting the runner.
“Nowhere fast,” Doran quipped, twirling his axe in one hand.
“Doran, no!” Reyna’s cry was too slow for Doran’s muscle memory.
The dwarf had already launched his axe into the air with a prayer to Grarfath on his lips. The axe spun through the air over some distance and height before finally coming down in the back of the runner’s head. The distinct sound of his skull cracking was terribly satisfying.
“What would ye stop me for?” Doran asked.
“To get some answers,” Reyna replied.
Nathaniel looked about at the bodies strewn in the snow. “I don’t suppose we left any others alive, did we?”
“Answers?” Doran repeated. “They’re jus’ a bunch o’ bandits.” The dwarf kicked the nearest body with disdain. “They were jus’ too stupid to know who they were dealin’ with!”
Reyna was shaking her head. “These were no bandits.”
Nathaniel sheathed his sword. “I agree. They’re dressed too well.” The old knight picked up a discarded sword and examined the steel and the hilt. “Bandits can’t afford steel like this and they’re not trained well enough to take it from their owners. They were forged by a professional smith, most likely from Namdhor this far north - Skystead maybe.”
Doran didn’t see it, but then again, he spent most of his time on the road, making him more accustomed to such ambushes. He waved the notion away and ploughed through the snow to retrieve his axe.
“I’ll be takin’ that, thank ye!” The son of Dorain yanked his axe out of the runner’s skull, lifting the head as he did.
The corner of a tattoo on the man’s neck caught Doran’s eye. The dwarf huffed, thinking nothing of it, before deciding to take a closer look. If the Galfreys said that something wasn’t right then it often wasn’t.
Pulling back the man’s shirt, Doran inspected the tattoo only to find it ran down the neck and over the torso. The dwarf rolled the body over and caught sight of another tattoo, on the man’s wrist.
“Hang abou’…” Doran knew that tattoo. He roughly stripped back the sleeve and discovered it ran up his arm and connected to the mosaic on the runner’s chest. “Over ‘ere!” he called.
Reyna reached him first. “You have found something?”
Doran sniffed hard. “I’ve seen this bugger before.”
“Where?” Nathaniel asked, crouching beside the body.
“Back in Grey Stone,” the dwarf explained. “He was servin’ drinks.”
Reyna crouched on the other side, examining the tattoos on the other arm. “He was a servant of King Jormund?”
“No,” Nathaniel answered firmly. “I’ve seen tattoos like these before, a long time ago.” The old knight pointed at a particular pattern of tattoos that ran down the centre of the man’s arm. “You see these straight lines, the sharp angles? That’s a Namdhorian design. You see this longer one, the way it’s entwined and ends with a point? That’s the mark of The Ironsworn.”
“The Ironsworn?” Reyna asked.
Doran spat on the ground. “Thieves, rapists, and murderers, me Lady!”
“They’re a gang,” Nathaniel clarified. “When I was a Graycoat, I had a few run-ins with them. I even remember them trying to establish a foothold in Longdale, when I was a child.”
“That was sixty years ago,” Doran said. “Times ‘ave changed. The last I heard, The Ironsworn ‘ave establishments in every town in the north. After that little civil war they had, the one that put that war-witch on the throne, the gang spread like wild fire. Had a run-in with them meself a few years back, in Dunwich.”
Reyna ran her finger over the entwined mark. “Why would The Ironsworn attack us on the road like bandits? They clearly have a hold over the north if they have establishments in every town and city, so why go to the effort of waiting in the freezing cold to rob people?”
“Maybe robbing us wasn’t the objective,” Nathaniel said. “I would say we were targets if Doran saw this man in The Black Fort.”
“Aye,” Doran agreed. “They scouted us out and waited until we were on their turf before springin’!”
“But why?” Reyna questioned again. “Why would a gang from Namdhor go to the effort of infiltrating King Jormund’s keep and then set a trap?”
“What trap?” Doran exclaimed. “Ye two knew we were bein’ ambushed before they moved a muscle.”
Nathaniel flashed Reyna smile. “Not much c
an get past an elven nose.”
“Not when they smell this bad,” Reyna replied.
“Still,” Doran continued, “they sent what - ten men to kill us? It’s bloody insultin’!”
Reyna and Nathaniel rose to their full height, looking back over the dead Ironsworn.
“Our reputations come from a war that ended thirty years ago,” Reyna pointed out. “Most of these men weren’t even born then.”
“We’re just relics now,” Nathaniel concluded.
“Speak for yerself!” Doran insisted. “I’ve killed more beasties and bandits than ye’ve had hot meals.”
Ignoring their comments, Reyna said, “Perhaps our presence in Namdhor is not desired, after all.”
“By who?” Nathaniel gestured to the bodies. “By a gang? We were requested by Queen Skalaf. What do The Ironsworn care?”
Reyna slung her bow over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t say we were requested exactly. I suppose we’ll just have to reach Namdhor and discover the truth ourselves.”
The son of Dorain stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled, calling the Warhog. “Nothin’s ever simple with ye two, is it?”
23
Broken People
Vighon was awed by the blanket of stars that arched over The Arid Lands. With the ruins of Karath and Syla’s Gate many miles behind them now, there wasn’t much else to look at.
Except for Inara…
Vighon did his best to keep his eyes on the magnificence above them, but his gaze couldn’t help but fall on the beautiful Dragorn. Of course, every time he looked at her, Athis looked at him. The dragon’s piercing blue eyes spoke volumes, averting Vighon’s interest.
“They look like they have a lot to talk about,” Galanör commented as he sat down beside Vighon.
Vighon glanced at the elf before looking across the fire, to the twins. Inara and Alijah were a little way into the desert, on the edge of the firelight, and deep in discussion.
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