Last Battle of the Icemark

by Stuart Hill

  She smoothed her skirts, smiled quietly, and, turning to the distant peak where the watching figure of Cronus stood, she bowed her head.

  Then the black joy of her victory seized her and she couldn’t resist laughing loud and long, her voice echoing over the frozen wastes.

  “I did it, Orla! I did it!” she shouted joyously to her servant. “I defeated the six most powerful Adepts that the Darkness has ever known! Only one other is more powerful than me, and that’s Cronus himself!”

  CHAPTER 5

  Sharley, Mekhmet and Kirimin set off for the Samhein feast hoping to get to the dais before the Queen and Thar arrived. But in the event they didn’t have to worry; they were the first ones to arrive at the top table, and they sat down and looked out over the hall, where the lower tables were quickly beginning to fill up.

  Kirimin happily absorbed the atmosphere and shuddered with delicious dread. Some of the older country folk called the holiday ‘Halloween’ rather than the more formal Samhein, and it was they who kept up the folk traditions of ghost stories and carved pumpkin lamps. In fact all of the tables were glittering and grinning with jack-o’-lanterns and white papier-mâché skulls, and the huge hammer-beam roof was festooned with orange and black streamers, as well as ghosts and black cats cut out of thin card. The scent of candle wax and slightly toasted pumpkin flesh was the absolute epitome of Samhein for Kirimin. No matter what time of year it was, she only had to sniff the rich scent of cooking pumpkin and she was immediately transported back to cool twilights and the happy dread of ghostly tales.

  Some of the off-duty housecarles down in the hall had also dressed up as zombies and ghouls, and sat now chatting away happily with their comrades as though they always looked like they’d been dead for several weeks. The werewolves, of course, didn’t have to bother to wear costumes; they already looked monstrous, but they seemed to enjoy helping their human friends look as hideous as possible. One huge member of the Queen’s Ukpik bodyguard was patiently helping a housecarle friend make himself up as a zombie, delicately dabbing a green dye onto his cheeks and then stepping back to properly gauge the effect.

  “It’s going to be a good one this year,” said Sharley, happily gazing out over the hall. “I wonder if the Wolf-folk will start dancing again like they did last time. That was great, I’ve never seen anything so ridiculous.”

  “Yeah, I particularly liked it when King Grishmak decided to partner that little woman from the South Riding. She just about came up to his knees, or at least she would have done if she’d stood on a stool,” said Mekhmet.

  “Baroness Gunhilda, you mean?” asked Sharley. “She might be small but she’s the best shot I know with a throwing axe. Still, she did look a complete pillock dancing with Grishmak!”

  “What about the pie-eating competition?” said Kirimin. “I didn’t think Dad would ever stop being sick. But I suppose that’s the price you pay for taking on Olememnon.”

  “He won, though, that’s the point,” said Sharley. “Only a Snow Leopard could’ve done it. Uncle Ollie’s a legend among the Hypolitan.”

  “Is he here this year?” asked Kirimin. “He tells great ghost stories, and even better dirty jokes.”

  “No. The Hypolitan have their own ceremonies and rituals for Samhein. But the big meeting about the empire, and all the wars that have happened since Bellorum’s death, is scheduled for the day after tomorrow, and Uncle Ollie and the Basilea will be here for that.”

  A sudden commotion down at the main doors drew their attention, and they watched as two werewolves manoeuvred a sedan chair into the hall. Once through the doors, they raised the carrying chair to shoulder height and paraded between the tables as they headed for the dais. Maggiore Totus surveyed the decorations and activities all around as he was carried along, and he waved enthusiastically as the housecarles and werewolves began to thump the tables in greeting.

  “It’s Maggie!” said Sharley excitedly. “I didn’t expect him until much later – the roads from his home in the south are already beginning to freeze over.” He stood up and waved as the ancient scholar approached the top table.

  For a moment there was no response from the sedan chair, but then a pair of enormously thick spectoculums turned towards the dais and Maggie’s face lit up. “Sharley and Mekhmet! And I do believe I spy Princess Kirimin!” he called down the hall. “My, my, you’re all so grown up!”

  Why did adults always say that? all three of them thought as they watched the little old man approach. But he was so obviously happy to see them they forgave him immediately.

  The werewolves reached the top table, removed the carrying poles from the sedan chair, lifted the seat onto the dais, and then positioned Maggie next to the boys.

  “Thank you, Sergeants Grinfang and Moon-Watcher. I trust I can call on your services again at the end of the night?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the larger of the werewolves. “Though the ride might be a bit bumpy after a few beers, like.”

  “Well, I intend to have a few myself, so I probably won’t notice,” Maggie replied with a grin. The soldiers saluted and trotted down to the lower tables to join their comrades.

  The old scholar turned to the three friends and laughed. “It’s so good to see you all!” Sharley and Mekhmet hugged him, and Kirimin purred thunderously and rubbed her enormous cheek against his wrinkled face. “I hope you’ve lots of news to tell me; I’m a bit out of the way down in the South Farthing, so I miss out on things.”

  “Lots and lots, Maggie. Where shall we begin?” said Mekhmet.

  “Well, I’m glad you said that because I need to clarify a few points on your father’s campaigns in the southern provinces of the old empire.”

  “Glad to, but later tomorrow would be best, when things are quieter.”

  “Oh, absolutely. In fact I intend to be less than quiet myself tonight. Bring on the wine servers!” A chamberlain immediately appeared at his elbow, taking him completely by surprise. “Eh? Not yet, not yet, my man. Far too early to start drinking.”

  The boys grinned and sipped their goblets of sherbet, the alcohol-free drink produced in the Desert Kingdom. “Perhaps you’d like to try some of our refreshments, Maggie?” said Sharley.

  “That’s enormously kind of you, but I’m afraid I’m just an old reprobate who expects his drink to make his head spin when he’s had too much. Sometimes the infidel is beyond help, eh, Mekhmet?”

  “I would have you no other way, Senor Totus,” the Desert Prince replied formally, and salaamed.

  Medea breathed a sigh of pure joy as she arrived back in her cave. The old witch scuttled like a twisted crab to her mistress, ready to take her heavy furs.

  “I defeated them, Orla; I defeated all of my enemies!”

  “You did indeed, mistress. But now come in out of the cold and warm yourself by the fire.”

  Medea stopped and looked about herself, as though seeing the cave she lived in for the first time. “What’s this? The second greatest Adept in all the Darkness doesn’t live in a cave! Stand clear, Orla, your mistress will now create the architecture that truly reflects her status!”

  Medea closed her eyes, concentrating as she drew on the Power of the Darkness, and ghostly white structures of arches and flying buttresses slowly began to evolve from the warp and weft of starlight and ice. Not surprisingly, they were cold and white, being made up of countless glittering shards of ice, and they soared through the air in huge leaping arches, slender bridges and buttresses designed to look like the most delicate of skeletons: ribs and elegantly curved fingers, spinal columns and the most graceful of thighbones. All around her a palace evolved from the void, like a cathedral built in homage to refined death.

  She then made a high-backed chair that was almost a throne – almost, but not quite. He would’ve been angry if she’d allowed herself that. Then she placed white cobblestones over the ice of the tundra. Everything in the Darkness was monochrome: dead white, or the void of black. But these cobbles were different: th
ey were the rounded domes of thousands of skulls, stretching away into the distance until she raised a wall on which blazed torches with pure-white flames.

  Orla stood transfixed as the palace grew around her. As a spirit who’d been resurrected by Medea from the ice of the tundra, and who’d then watched as her mistress had fashioned a new body for her, she was well aware of the Sorceress’s power, but this massive display of magical Abilities was almost overpowering.

  Medea smiled as she looked on her new home; at last she had earned her status and the right to remain in the Darkness. But even now, in the moment of her success, a tiny shiver of fear slowly trickled down her spine as she remembered the victory over her enemies.

  “Orla, how do you think Cronus will . . . react to the deaths of the enemy Adepts?”

  “I’m not sure, mistress,” the witch replied fearfully. “But it’s said that he likes to control every aspect of the Darkness, including exactly who lives . . . and who dies.”

  Her voice trailed away to silence, and she flinched as Medea suddenly smashed her hands down onto the arms of the chair-that-was-almost-a-throne. “Why didn’t you remind me of this? I can’t be expected to remember everything when I’m preparing for battle and then fighting for my life!”

  Orla trembled before this outburst, but she knew there was more that Medea needed reminding of. “Mistress, I didn’t know that you planned to kill your enemies, otherwise I would have warned you against such an act. But . . . but I’m afraid there are other facts that have slipped your mind in the elation of your victory.”

  Medea turned a cold eye on her handmaid. “Remind me.”

  Orla drew a deep steadying breath. “After the war against Heaven, almost all of the rebel army betrayed Cronus and accepted the mercy of the Goddess. Only six remained loyal, and were exiled with him into the Darkness, where together they healed their psychic wounds and then helped him to create the realm as we know it today . . .” Orla’s voice trailed away to silence again, but then she went on: “Those six Adepts now lie dead on the field of battle, their souls blasted to ice by your powers; they’re lost amongst the countless thousands in the tundra that they helped to create.”

  Medea gasped as the truth of Orla’s words hit her. Her grandfather could easily decide to avenge the deaths of his most loyal allies by destroying her! For a moment blind panic threatened to seize her, but then she spied a glimmer of hope.

  “Orla! We must return to the battlefield and I can revive their frozen souls, just as I did yours! I’ll put a check on their powers and house their souls in small, easily controlled bodies. Then I can present them to Cronus to do with as he wishes!”

  But Medea’s excitement was interrupted by a small, careful cough. “Mistress, I’m afraid the situation’s more complicated than that.”

  “What are you talking about, woman?”

  “Your powers, Mistress. They’re different; they combine the Abilities of a fallen Immortal with elements that are purely human. Feelings, for instance; your hatred ripped the Adepts’ souls apart and scattered them over the tundra. There are fragments and shards spread over the entire width of the Darkness. It’d take a lifetime of searching to find all the parts.”

  Medea let out a great howl of rage, and siftings of cosmic dust trickled down from the ceilings of her palace. What had she done? How could she hope to survive the wrath of Cronus?

  Orla quietly withdrew into the shadows. Centuries of life, before she’d become one of the first to fall in the Darkness, had taught her precisely when to make herself scarce, and this was definitely one of those times. Orla had no intention of returning to the oblivion of the tundra if she could help it. Within a few seconds she’d quietly withdrawn to the doors of the Bone Fortress, and disappeared into the frozen night. She’d either return when her mistress had found a solution to her difficulties, or simply fade permanently into the background if she did not. After all, if Medea was destroyed by Cronus, she could hardly punish Orla for absconding, could she?

  Medea didn’t even notice that Orla had gone as she desperately tried to think of a way to convince Cronus that the deaths of the six Adepts were somehow good for the Darkness. But as she wrestled with the impossibility of the situation her thoughts were suddenly interrupted, as the tall ivory doors of the palace creaked open and a breath of deadly cold slipped over the floor like an invisible glacier.

  Her mind scanned the ether and she leaped to her feet. It was him! Quickly she smoothed her dress, and as her every nerve and fibre screamed under the strain of the unbearable tension, she peered into the gloom.

  The ripple of faint footsteps echoed through the towering halls of the palace, and as they drew closer she began to sweat in spite of the deep penetrating cold. At last a long shadow slowly encroached on the skull-cobbled pattern of the palace floor, and with it came a dense mist of ice crystals.

  Closer and closer the shadow came, and as its grave-scented clamminess touched the hem of her dress and slowly rose up her legs, to her waist and finally over her whole body, she shuddered and almost cried out.

  She forced herself to wait quietly until the swirling mist of Cronus’s presence coalesced under the icy archway that led into the hall where she stood. In a state of controlled terror she curtsied. “Welcome, Grandfather.”

  She watched as the mist of ice crystals swirled as though driven by internal winds, and then were torn aside to reveal Cronus himself. He was ugly, horribly ugly, though outwardly he looked almost normal. His tall figure glided over the floor. His skin was as creamy-white and as dry as parchment; his face seemed little more than a skull, though the bone structure was fine and beautiful. His eyes were as wide and as black as moonless midnights, and had no pupils or irises. They reflected neither light nor emotion and were blank and flat.

  He looked neither young nor old, he seemed neither living nor dead, and as he walked there was only a small distant echo of footsteps receding away like ripples in a pond.

  “Granddaughter,” he said in greeting, drawing his white lips away from his sharply pointed teeth. His voice held the senses in a grip of iron and ice; it was deep and toneless, as though spoken into a wide lightless cave where blind creatures scuttled in the shadows.

  The smile of greeting was then carefully packed away and he looked at Medea with expressionless eyes. “You have destroyed my allies. Exactly why did you do this?”

  Near to panic, Medea couldn’t think of anything to say. Her legs began to shake, and she sank into her great chair, where she tried to look as though she was so at ease in Cronus’s presence that she could sit without his permission.

  The dead black eyes held her gaze in a grip of ice, and she felt her control slipping. She mustn’t show fear, even though he knew full well she was terrified. “I killed them because I wanted to!” she blurted, like a child caught with its hand in the sweet jar. Then suddenly defiance swelled up within her, and with a growing anger she went on: “They were my enemies. If I’d been defeated they would’ve killed me!”

  “Undoubtedly,” the deep toneless voice agreed.

  “So, then, my actions were justified!”

  “No. The battle had been won and you were victorious. There was no need for you to destroy them. Your actions were premeditated and murderous.”

  “Yes, I won, but could you guarantee that they wouldn’t have been a threat to me in the future?”

  “No.”

  “Then surely you must agree that destroying them was the only thing I could do.”

  “They deserved better. We fought together against the Goddess herself, and even in defeat we were glorious.”

  She found herself snorting. She’d no idea where this courage came from; perhaps there was more of the Lindenshield in her than she cared to admit. “Should I have let them live just because they were once great enough to make war on the Goddess?”

  Cronus answered with a silence that stretched into long endless seconds and seemed to echo on the frozen air. She looked up and met the empty b
lack gaze for as long as she dared, before dropping her eyes.

  “Truly you are now a citizen of the Darkness,” he said at last. “Your attitude reminds me of the admirable Bellorums.”

  “No. They failed!” she spat in reply.

  “They did. A disappointment, after so many years of manipulation. But now that the Polypontian Empire’s destroying itself in a welter of vicious wars, I’ve a huge cast of characters to choose from. Warlords and generals and homicidal maniacs.”

  “But you’ve chosen already, haven’t you?” she asked with certainty.

  Once again the black endless pits of the Arc-Adept’s eyes held her for a few agonising seconds. “Yes,” he said at last. “Erinor of Artemesion is a fitting successor to the Bellorums. I’ve already manipulated events so that she could break out of her mountain kingdom, and now no one can stop her.”

  “And the point of all this is what, exactly?” she asked.

  “That will stay a secret, for now. But I’m prepared to say that all of your family will be heavily involved.”

  “Really?” she asked with excited glee. “Then my hateful little brother could die, at last! How delightful!”

  The mist of ice crystals swirled about Cronus like clouds around a mountain peak as he ordered his thoughts. Medea, as a powerful Adept, would be a useful addition to his arsenal of weapons; all he needed to do was to shape her to his needs. The simplest of tasks.

  “You have an endless capacity to kill those who should hold your loyalty, Medea, whether the greatest Adepts of the Darkness or your own blood kin. This hatred of rivals, and even of your family, shows a preoccupation with revenge that reveals a dangerous flaw in your character. As an Adept, you should be above such petty concerns.”

  “You hate,” she dared to snap. “You kill for pleasure. Why is it different for me?”

  “I hate in the abstract, not the particular. I hate all things with equal malevolence, and so rise above dangerous private obsessions. But you hate with a personal passion that can distract an Adept from the purity of magic. It’s a flaw and a weakness that could be exploited by a clever enemy, and one that could yet see you destroyed.” His black, empty eyes held her for a brief agonising moment.