“What are you doing out here dressed in such an indecent manner, girl,” Granville said, shivering in his thick Arcanum robes, fox-fur gloves and cloak. His misted words hung in the still air like a bad fart. “Have you taken leave of your senses? Somebody fetch the heathen a blanket before she freezes to death.”
“There is no chance of that,” I snarled. “Only ice runs through the veins of this heartless creature.” That earned me disparaging stares.
My maternal grandmother Angharad was undeniably beautiful – beautifully horrific. That bitch’s magic-wrought facade masked one of the cruellest hearts I had ever encountered. Her unending youth made a mockery of the resemblance to my own beloved and lamented mother when by all rights this thing’s inner corruption should be represented by a rotting corpse. I had to fight back the nauseated shudder and the venom clamouring to spray from my tongue. The scars running down the right side of my face and neck pulled tight and hot. This thing was no kin of mine!
The girl opened her human eyes, if eyes they could still be called when amethyst orbs sat inside hollowed-out sockets. Mercifully the third, sitting in a hole carved in her forehead, remained hidden behind its strip of leather.
When she spoke her voice was old and weary rather than youthful and exuberant, and her accent was not quite that of the modern Clanholds but of a people long since dust. “The stones welcome ye Granville o’ the line of Buros, and ye also Cormac o’ the line o’ Feredaig.”
Her face turned to each magus as she spoke and they all felt discomfort. There was something incredibly off putting staring into a blind woman’s inhuman crystal eyes and knowing she could see deeper than any human should. “The winter winds welcome ye, Bryden, son o’ Araeda and Emlain. The fires of our hearths welcome ye Vincent, son o’ Fion and Bevan. The Sun and Moon and stars welcome ye Secca, daughter o’ Grania and Turi.” She looked to Eva. “No spirits welcome ye, Evangeline o’ the line o’ Avernus, but the hearts and sword-arms o’ our warriors will praise your arrival through the coming days.”
Then she looked to me. And said nothing.
I was not welcome in Kil Noth. I never had been. I was merely cattle that had escaped the slaughterhouse.
I scowled and imagined my hands around her throat, squeezing until all three sodding eyes popped out. “You lot forced me to come back, Angharad, so stick your welcome up your arse. Your face makes maggots gag in a bucket of guts.”
Everybody but Secca was staring at me with mouths agape – our magus of light and shadow was frowning and scanning the steep slopes of the surrounding valley as if searching for something.
Angharad rose to her feet and felt not a scrap of shame or shyness despite wearing only tattoos in front of so many strangers. Even given the looser physical morals of Clansfolk this bitch was brazen, but then she was old and terrible and beautiful so who would dare rebuke her?
She gazed down at me from atop her fallen stone, expression inscrutable. “Ye offer your poor, lonely granny no respect, Edrin Walker, nor a hug.” Her words found great purchase among our men, mostly thanks to her naked beauty.
A hug? Really? Was that the best she could do to try to alienate my army from me? It was a mere drop in the ocean of dislike. All she cared about was forcing me to become what my mother was originally meant to be.
“Oh don’t pity her,” I said. “She’s older than any of us and her hand-me-down eyes are probably older than the bloody Arcanum itself. If you stick your cock in that foul creature it will rot off. If only this little runt of a supposed seer was better at it then she might have seen this war coming in time to do something about it.”
She convulsed. Her head snapped up to face suddenly roiling clouds. When it snapped back to me her blazing eyes stained the snow purple with their inner light. Blood drained from her lips, and all colour from her tattoos until they too were white as snow. My Gift was wide open and magic poured through me, ready to kill.
“Enough.” A chorus of voices rang out in unison from all sides, causing the Arcanum magi to open their Gifts and our wardens to draw their weapons. Two dozen Clansfolk druí stepped out from shadowed crevices in the cliff walls, or simply appeared in front of us, all wearing grey and green clanless plaids, all Gifted. Secca grimaced and looked most affronted at having missed whatever illusion had masked them. That was all well and good – but how in all the shitting hells of heathens had they hidden themselves from me?
Eva set a firm hand on my shoulder. “Shut your mouth,” she hissed. “Please, just for once. We need to fight with these people not against them.”
For her I shut my flapping jaw. She was right, here and now was not the place to rip the beating heart from my grandmother.
I had to be more cunning and ruthless than I’d ever been. I hated to think it, but I had to be more like her. Anything less and she would have me tangled helpless in her web while she tried to make me into something I was not.
Angharad was studying my reactions and seemed disappointed with what she found. No change there then. “Drop your weapons and let go o’ your magic. Any attempt to embrace it will result in your death, and ye will stay out o’ our minds, tyrant.”
I glared at Eva, I warned you.
Surrounded by their Gifted, we had no choice but to comply. Swords and shields, spears, bows and implementia arcana all dropped to the snow.
Angharad smiled, cold and hard as her heart. “Ye may now enter the sacred hold of Kil Noth.”
Warriors armed with circular hide-covered shields and basket-hilted broadswords escorted us, and at first the others could not see our destination. Only as we grew close could they discern the lines of carved stonework blending into the natural rock, the arrow slits, windows and chimneys of the upper reaches of Kil Noth.
We were taken along a concealed pathway to a massive circular doorway carved into the side of the mountain. The stone bore ancient protective runes and wards chiselled in harmony with vine leaves and thorny thistle stalks. Some of the wardings I recognised, the usual variety granting strength and durability to withstand ice and fire and hammer. For others, even my respectable experience with wards offered no answer. Some even resembled those found on the Tombs of the Mysteries back in Setharis that no magus had ever deciphered, or broken.
Angharad laid a hand on the doorway and the stone ground back to admit us to a place where I had once been tortured. I swallowed my fear of enclosed spaces, steeled myself against the horrors of the past, and entered Kil Noth.
CHAPTER 13
In the summer of six years past, I had entered that very same door to Kil Noth with hopes of salvation in my heart instead of blackest dread. I had been ragged in body and mind from four years of constant running, hiding, and futilely hoping that the daemons hunting me would eventually give up and leave me alone. I had faked my death and succeeded in throwing the Arcanum off my trail, but even that cunning victory had not offered as much respite as I had yearned for – the shadow cats had proven relentless and would never, ever, give up the hunt.
I had been so sick of travel, terrible food and bad drink in grimy rural taverns, dicing for coin with rigged dice and then moving on – always moving on after only a few short days. All the faces and names blurred into one, and it had got to the point I’d barely taken notice of tavernkeeps and serving girls as separate people: they were all just actors on a stage playing the same old roles.
If my survival in exile had not been all that ensured the safety of my old friends Lynas, Charra and Layla, then I might have ended my life long before then. Many a time I had stood atop a cliff and looked down at the white-topped waves crashing against jagged rocks while thinking of a home I would never see again. I had often pondered taking that single short step forward. A growing part of me had urged me to do it and find some rest and peace, but I never could – I loved my friends and I was too stubborn to let the enemy win. In any case, I’d always been good at putting things off until tomorrow, always the next tomorrow…
I had been filled with des
pair and thought that maybe, just maybe, the Gifted of the Clanholds might be able to offer me some sort of safety and rest – after all, was I not their kin on my mother’s side? I knew only a very little about my family history back then, some pieced together from the scraps my mother had let slip over the years, and the rest gathered from her ravings as madness and strange voices consumed her mind shortly before her death.
The farmers in the valley just up from Barrow Hill had eyed my tattered clothing and looked at me curiously when I asked where I might find the Gifted of the Clanholds. After a bit of word-wrangling they realised that I meant those of them born with magic. “Aye, that’ll be the druí of Kil Noth then, pal,” one said, offering directions.
As I gave my thanks, shouldered my pack and moved on, he had offered some parting words of wisdom that I should have taken to heart: “Be careful and make no deals, traveller. Those druí care more about their spirits than they do about the likes of us.”
I arrived in the village that sprawled around the foot of the holdfast with a powerful thirst and a rumbling belly. To my surprise, I found somebody waiting for me in the tavern, her hood up, sitting in my favoured seat in the corner, the one that offered my back against the wall and eyes on all windows and doors.
Her blind and cloth-bound head turned to me, and she smiled, dazzling me with warmth. “Well met, Edrin Walker. Come sit with me a’while. No need to run, I have been expecting ye. The spirits have told me o’ your troubles.”
She wore robes of exceptionally fine cut, woven with wild wardings more like Clansfolk tattoos than those of carefully studied Setharii craft, but no less magical for all that. She was strongly Gifted, and knew my instinctive reaction had been to leg it right back out of the door.
“You know me, but who are you?” I’d demanded. “My name is Angharad,” she replied, pulling back her hood to reveal long snow-white hair framing features so very like my mother’s. “And I am your granny. Sit here by the fire, grandchild, you must be exhausted after all your travels.”
I gaped at her, my heart pounding as I thumped down opposite. She smelled faintly of lavender and pine, my mother’s favourite scents bringing a tear to my eyes. Nowadays I suspected that had been a deliberate ploy, damn the vile creature, but back then I had been dumbfounded. My mother had never mentioned my grandmother was Gifted, or still alive come to that. In fact she had barely mentioned her life before Setharis at all. I was a magus, and most of us stopped ageing at some point, though usually later on in life, and as such my grandmother’s youth was surprising but not shocking.
“I did not know ye existed,” she said, sadly. “Otherwise I would have come for ye long ago. My daughter, is she…”
“Dead a long time,” I said gruffly.
The girl nodded, forehead wrinkling with sorrow – or so I’d thought at the time. “That blessed, tormented child should never have run from here. Your mother needed the help only I could give her. And I, hers. I searched up and down all Kaladon for years, but neither hide nor hair of her was ever found. In a place as big as Setharis I suppose you cannot find one who does not wish to be found.”
“Oh?” I said, my hope hardening with caution. “Why did she run in the first place?”
“The spirits,” she replied. “Your mother never came to respect them as I do. Their voices only served to frighten the flighty and nervous child she was. She had such rare talent, and they offer such wisdom and power to those chosen few who share our ancient blood.” She turned to look at me, her eyes blind behind the strip of cloth, yet still seeming to meet and hold my gaze. “And now in turn they offer ye safety and respite from those daemonic beasts that hunt ye. They are closing in, but there is a way to keep them from ye if we hurry. Then we will have many years to grow to know each other better. After all this time, my grandchild has come home.” She sniffed and wiped a tear from her pale, tattooed cheek.
Home. The word pierced my heavy heart. Setharis was forbidden to me, but I still had family, and another place to call home if I wished it. The years of running and solitude weighed on me like a lead coat, but finally here was somebody on my side willing and able to help. I could finally rest and be happy again. Hope swelled inside me, bubbling out into a muffled sob.
She embraced me warmly, arms wrapped tight around me as if she never wanted to let go. “Hush now, child. There’s no need for that. We are kin, ye and I. Blood binds us together stronger than steel.” She placed her hand on my then-smooth and unscarred cheek and her skin felt cool and comforting. “We are kin, and that means we face the perils o’ this world together – and those perils had best be afraid. I am so sorry, my child. Ye must have been so alone all these many years. Well no more will ye have to run and hide. Ye are home w’your old granny now and she’ll take care o’ everything, never ye fear.”
What could I have done but say yes? Such a trusting fool. I had wanted to believe in her so much that even my usual cynicism and paranoia gave way before the bond of family, treacherous though it turned out to be. Finally, I’d had hope for the future.
It took my grandmother three days to prepare the ritual, in between spending as much time with me as she was able, listening to my entire life story and cursing out the Arcanum and the Setharii gods for not helping me. I had been all alone for years, but now I had my grandmother looking out for me, and that was a glorious gift beyond all compare.
When the time came she took my arm and led me into the holdfast. Her scent and slender form were again so very like my mother’s that it threw my mind into turmoil. I think that was the whole point, to keep me from thinking too much. My memory of what followed is fragmented and fuzzy, partly from pain and fear, and partly thanks to whatever alchemic she was about to pour down my throat.
It was a sacred ritual, she said, handing me a drink, one brewed and infused with special magic to call her great spirit and bestow its protection upon me. I was so desperate to believe this would solve all my problems that I did as she wished without reservation. I drank the liquid from an engraved bowl and the next thing I remember are the nightmares: the running for my life as hideous snapping monsters with too many legs and eyes tried to eat my face, the screaming frantic flight through a world that was not my own, inhabiting a body that was not quite human flesh and blood.
My magic had roared through me as I frantically sought a way to escape, and in my panic I managed to latch on to a black thread of thought that lead my mind back to the realm it had come from. It led me home to my own human body, and I woke atop a stone slab screaming and clawing at the air, drenched in sweat that sparkled with ice crystals.
“No!” my grandmother shrieked. “Ye are ruining it. Ruining it!” Her blindfold was off and her eyes – her three amethyst eyes – boiled over with virulent magic.
I sat upright, groggy, breath heaving. “What was that?” As I regained my senses I attempted to slide off and get to my feet. “What’s happening? What are you doing to me?”
She placed a hand on my chest to stop me, firm as an iron bar. “Shut your mouth, ye disgusting piece o’ foreign filth. We try again immediately, until it succeeds or ye die trying.” I tried to move but she pushed me back down with remorseless inhuman strength.
Panic reared its ugly urgent head and I struggled. “Not a chance. I am done with this stupid ritual. Fuck this shite.” It was all wrong, and she was all wrong. There was no love to be found in her twisted expression. All my dreams of home and family went up in flames, a cunning lie told to a stupid gullible boy she knew had yearned to believe it. “I am leaving.”
“So be it,” my grandmother hissed. “We shall do this the hard way, ye ungrateful derelict.” She punched me full in the face and I slammed back, head rattling off stone. The metal tang of blood from a split lip filled my mouth. Another blow followed, then another. She leapt atop me, straddling my waist.
I tried to shove her off but my body felt heavy and clumsy, still affected by whatever alchemic she had given me. “Don’t make me use my magic on you
.”
Her face twisted with cruel and heartless fury. “Ye are nothing, just street filth squeezed out o’ an ungrateful cunt o’ a daughter.
Ye will obey me!” She looked down on me with those sinister, glowing purple eyes that saw nothing but a tool of her making. “Ye would be foolish to try your Gift. I am warded against all magic. I created your faithless wretch of a mother, boy, and in the stupid cow’s absence her vulgar whelp must take her place in the ritual. For ye the future holds nothing save a life sacrificed to serve a greater purpose. I have dreamed o’ ye wading through rivers of blood as thousands die around ye. It is better that your life ends now to usher in a better future directed by my hands. At least your pathetic life will have a point to it.”
She waved to a wall where thirty-six yellowed skulls sat in niches. “There sit your aunts and uncles, who proved unGifted and their bodies unable to withstand the Queen o’ Winter’s power. Useless wretches the lot o’ them – Gifted children are so very rare. But ah, your ungrateful mother… such promise wasted! How glad I am ye are here to take that ugly cow’s place.”
“Go fuck a goat, you syphilitic whore,” I spat into her face, along with a goodly blob of phlegm and blood. “You are insane – you murdered your own children!”
She snarled and her nails extended into claws. “Not children. Flawed spawn carried in my belly like sacks o’ gold that turned to shite when they dropped. Useless creatures. But your body will serve me well – that harlot o’ a daughter did something right after all. I shall force the pact upon ye by carving the Queen o’ Winter’s name directly into your heart as painfully as possible.” She smirked as her claws raked down my cheek and neck, ripping deep through flesh and muscle before plunging into my chest, digging through muscle towards my heart.
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