“No luck, Chief?” Coira asked, scratching a scarred cheek with a blackened fingernail.
“Want me to crack their stupid heads?” Vaughn added, ever hopeful. “After the first few the rest will listen real good.” Baldo nodded in agreement, and leaned in close to whisper in Andreas’ ear. They both glanced back at the druí and licked their lips unpleasantly.
I sighed and put a hand behind my back to support it as I limped over to a shoddy ale house for a seat. I fumbled money out of my pouch and slapped it down. Turned out it was a fat Esbanian gold coin bearing one of their merchant princes’ noble profile. I couldn’t even marshal the strength to take it back and try to fish out another. “Bring us ale,” I growled. “The good stuff.”
The gold invited stares until a boy brought us mugs of drink. I doubted any of them other than Jovian, once sword-master to rich High House brats, had ever seen such money and here I was buying drink with gold enough to supply a month’s worth for all of us.
“Do we leave them to their doom?” Jovian asked. The others stilled, listening.
I badly wanted to throw my hands up in disgust and head off home. I tried to rest my face in my hands but they refused to cooperate and I failed to achieve even such a simple thing.
How were we supposed to survive this if these stubborn fools refused to help themselves? It was all politics and backstabbing, self-interest and secret agendas and bloody alchemic-fuelled visions and whatnot. The Arcanum, the Clansfolk druí, and even the Free Towns Alliance were all obsessed with their scheming self-interest. I’d had a gutful of it and just wanted somebody to stand up and do the right thing for once in their fucking life – much like Eva I supposed. Despite her constant physical agony she was out there fighting for all of us more than for herself. If it were me I would have ended myself before now. I knew her will was iron but even so, there had to be a limit to human endurance.
If I ran then Eva would still stay behind and do her duty, and the Scarrabus and their hosts would overrun this hold. They could not hope to resist an elder tyrant for long. With me here they at least stood a slim chance. Which meant it was all on me to stand up and do the right thing. Again.
I groaned and downed my ale. “More!” The serving boy’s lips thinned at my rudeness, but gold made up for many things in life.
Last time I trusted my grandmother I’d ended up a butchered hog atop her altar. I suspected this time around would prove no better. I could run and survive, until my taint consumed me anyway, but I’d left Eva to die once already and I refused to do so again. I would have to toss the dice and see if they could cure my hand and grant me power enough to defeat the enemy. Shackling myself to her frigid spirit would come with its own, as yet unknown, costs. Nobody ever gave great power away for free.
I sat pondering my plight as the light faded. Just before dusk a tired and sweaty Clansfolk runner arrived in a hurry from the north. I dipped into his head and what I found caused my mug to shatter in my hand. A new wave of flying daemons had appeared from nowhere, raiding our camp, killing many before disappearing back into the mist. If they attacked again Eva and her advance force might become trapped, and come the next day when Abrax-Masud cleared a way through Granville’s avalanche, she would die.
I couldn’t allow that. Not when I could do something about it. Exactly as she’d predicted, at dusk I stood once again before my grandmother. She lounged back on a bench, her three crystal eyes glowing softly as she waited for me to speak the words.
I had to drag them out kicking and screaming: “I will do it. Call your spirits and send them to keep the enemy leader away. He’s the greasy-locked prick in the blue robes riding on a huge beetle, in case they can’t tell. Do it now and I will come with you.”
She smiled, and it was that rarity of hers: genuine pleasure. “Very well, grandson, let us go and save the world.” She snapped her fingers and the other druí leapt to carry out their part of the deal.
CHAPTER 23
They made me wait in an antechamber of the Hall of Ancestors until night had fallen and the broken moon was directly over Kil Noth. Elunnai’s pale light bathed the hold’s sacred standing stones atop the mountain that reared above it, granting power to their spirits, or so these heathens believed. I sat on a bench with only a single small candle for company, my eyes closed, using my Gift to follow their stray thoughts and flickers of emotion.
The robed druí and the sky-clad painted warriors waited in silence atop the snowy peak until the first of Elunnai’s tears fell streaking and sparking across the sky. They gathered ice and snow in baskets of bone and sinew made from their own ancestors before beginning their descent back into the hold. Their faith was a silvery light in my mind, burning and unshakable as the procession travelled secret paths back down the mountain and wound down the spiral staircase into the Hall of Ancestors.
I heaved myself to my feet, groaning with pain as I faced the doorway. They would see no more weakness from me. The stone door ground back to reveal a blaze of torchlight that stung my eyes.
“Come,” Angharad said, body naked, black and blue tattoos dancing across her pale skin. Her eyes were bound with a strip of black cloth sewn with stylised eyes, but she knew the way with a familiarly bred from centuries of ritual and habit.
The procession shuffled to the end of the hall where two doors awaited us. To the left was the black pyramidal chamber of the Eldest of the ogarim, but this time my grandmother placed her hand on the polished silver circle to the right. The doorway slid back to reveal the holiest site of Kil Noth, the place where they communed with their great spirits.
I had been in this sanctified place only once before, on the horrendous night my grandmother tried to crack my chest open and carve symbols into my heart with her fingernails. Until the Magash Mora, it had been my worst nightmare, forcing me awake and drenched in sweat, pawing at phantom chest pains. Now, it didn’t make me terrified, it made me angry. I had sworn I would never set foot in Kil Noth ever again unless it was to cut out the bitch’s eyes.
I was in no condition to put up much of a physical fight if my magic proved insufficient, and that had already failed in the face of Abrax-Masud’s overpowering might. I was weak and broken and needed both healing and more power if I was to face the Scarrabus queen again and hope to survive. To go in unprepared would be suicide, and if I didn’t go through this damnable ritual all over again everything was at risk. My grandmother had won, but then she usually did. Those amethyst eyes of hers allowed her to see further than anything human ever could.
Angharad gloated, knowing exactly what was going through my mind, that I had no other choice but to do as she demanded. My young mother had been right to run from this evil creature that shared our blood. That raised her. Tortured her. It was no wonder that she had grown up hearing strange voices and seeing things that were not there. It was a gods-given miracle she hadn’t ended up a raving madwoman.
Of course, once I had all the health and power Angharad promised me, I wouldn’t need her any more. The thought of gutting her kept my mood buoyant. I expected her beloved spirit would complain when I did, but I didn’t give a rat’s arse what it wanted.
The natural cavern was vast, lit by roaring braziers and smouldering bowls of incense arranged in a wide triangle around an altar of black stone. Every inch of space was carved with depictions of the great spirits of the Clanholds. There were many that I, not being native, could not identify, but the far wall bore a depiction of a woman holding sheaves of grain – Summer – holding court over the other spirits of growth and life. On the right among many different warrior spirits, was the Skathack, the lady of swords herself with outstretched crow’s wings made of blades. On the left were the nameless great spirits of the animals, with the horned head of cattle in place of prominence. On one side of the ceiling was Sun and its attendant spirits of rain, wind and lightning, and on the other, Elunnai of the broken moon, her tears falling across cracks and crevices towards the black stone slab in a place of honour i
n the centre of the cavern. That altar was dedicated to the Queen of Winter and made of the same slick organic-looking stone that comprised the room of the Eldest, and also the gods’ towers back in Setharis. It was carved all over with stone icicles and frost patterns so intricate it almost appeared to be a chunk of black ice. Angharad had placed a white wolf’s pelt across the top, still fresh and bloody from the skinning.
The Eldest of the ogarim was already here, sitting in a timeworn hollow in the shadows. Its three dark eyes reflected the dancing orange and yellow light cast by the braziers as Angharad led me into the room and closed the door behind us.
“Disrobe,” she commanded.
I fumbled at my coat and tunic, both hands nigh-useless.
She sighed, exasperated and impatient, and then assisted me none-too-gently to remove my clothing. My scarred and bony body was not a pretty sight but neither she nor the ogarim seemed to care. To one I was a tool to be used, and to the other all humans were broken and half-formed creatures that evoked feelings of pity.
The ogarim studied my right hand, and the hard blackness that was now rising past the elbow. Its white fur stirred though there was no wind in this isolated underground chamber. I felt its mind reach out towards my hand and then recoil a moment before it touched, wary of whatever dwelt within.
Angharad directed me to stand before the altar and offered me a silver cup retrieved from a niche underneath.
“Not going to fuck it up again are you?” I asked, eyeing the half-frozen dark liquid it contained.
She did not deign to answer my taunt and instead rammed the cup against my lips. After a moment’s hesitation I managed to clumsily take it in both hands and drank deep. The thick slush seared a trail down my throat to numb my belly. Whatever was in her alchemic elixir, it tasted like ice and blood mixed together – sharp and metallic but not entirely unpleasant. I suspected this was what pumped through the veins of the callous creature.
She reached for the cup again but I tossed it aside to bounce and clatter across the floor until it came to rest by a pair of huge furry feet. The Eldest tilted its head, studying me with its three eyes in both the physical and magical, not entirely comprehending my ire. They were strangely calm and uncomplicated creatures.
She opened her mouth to rebuke me but I got there first: “Just get on with it. I don’t have time for pointless ritual and pathetic prayer.”
Her eyes blazed with fury as she shoved me onto the altar and pressed my wounded back down hard onto the wolf pelt. The coarse fur prickled my bare skin like little knives but any pain felt distant and woolly as the world began to stretch and spin around me. Angharad’s crystal eyes swirled and pulsed with purple light. Pungent wisps of blue smoke rose from the incense to dance across the room and caress us, the scents changing with every breath. Half-heard whispers filled the room, almost on the edge of understanding.
She took a small flint knife to her fingertip, slitting it open with a deft cut. The blood welled up and she began to draw runes in arcane patterns across my chest. This time I paid very, very careful attention to every single thing she was doing. Some of those runes I had seen before, used by a halrúna blood sorcerer to summon a daemon during the attack on Setharis.
My heartbeat sped up until it thudded in my chest. I had been here at my grandmother’s mercy once before, a naive lamb on the butcher’s table, and had escaped her rage with only horrific gushing wounds down my face and neck. If I failed to willingly form a pact with the Queen of Winter then I doubted I would be so lucky a second time.
“Close your eyes,” she demanded. I did, and she ran bloody fingers from my forehead down across my eyes, whispering the many names of the Queen of Winter as she went.
“My lover and my beloved queen,” she said, her voice dripping with reverence. It was strange to hear her of all people talk of love in such a voice. “Angharad o’ Kil Noth calls ye. Come to this ancient holdfast where the Shroud is thin as paper and the Far Realms but a stone’s throw away. Come, Beirraa, great Queen o’ Winter! Come to Kil Noth. There is one here who has drank o’ your essence. There is one here who offers his essence to ye.” She repeated it a dozen times before I felt a vast presence squeeze into the room.
I shivered as the temperature plummeted. Colours flickered and danced at the edge of my vision, red and blue bleeding in, faster, faster, spiralling in towards a black centre. My flesh refused to obey me, as if asleep.
She placed a hand over my heart, sharpened nails pressing in to draw beads of blood. Her touch was cold as death, cold as the heart of winter.
“Open yourself to the magic,” she ordered. “Relax and wait for her touch. Follow the prepared path into the heart o’ her realm o’ ice and snow. Be at peace, for your journey will be over soon. The Queen o’ Winter calls ye, Edrin Walker.”
The moment I flung my Gift wide her hand pressed down and the runes on my chest began to burn. “I open the ways between realms!”
Ice filled my heart and stabbed into my mind. “Go to her – I set ye free of this realm o’ flesh and blood and bone!”
I plunged into absolute darkness, screaming and spinning for an eternity.
Light exploded all around.
All was now as it had been once before. There was no prepared path and no gentle descent into the Queen of Winter’s realm. Instead I tumbled into a maelstrom of magic and madness. Unnatural worlds and strange skies flickered and faded all around me. Realms without number clamoured to claim the spiritual traveller in their midst, hot and moist winds billowing around me, warring with frigid arctic gusts. Strange air no human could breathe seared and scalded and boiled in my lungs. For a moment I felt icy fingers wrap around my ankle – but then my tainted right hand spasmed and reached out through the void to seize a flickering red light, one small realm among the many.
My body convulsed as if I’d touched lightning, causing the taint of black iron to writhe up to engulf my whole arm. The hand latched onto something solid and yanked me free from that endless fall, flinging me into a realm that was not my own. I fell burning and screaming until I hit land…
CHAPTER 24
I lay face down in cold red sand until the swirling flashing lights faded. When I was able to rise to my feet and brush the crud off my face I found myself in a ruddy, blasted hollow of sand, bare rock and desiccated scrub. The ground was pitted with holes and littered with shattered fragments of bone and gnawed shell.
Ahhh shite. I was back.
This was where I’d ended up when the previous ritual had gone wrong. I’d fled it screaming. This was not the home of the Queen of Winter, this was a death world populated by monstrous daemons living only to kill and eat, and not necessarily in that order. The last time I had thought it all my fault, that somehow I had messed up the ritual, but now it seemed my incompetent and vindictive grandmother had ballsed it up all over again. It wasn’t like I’d any say whatsoever in where I’d ended up.
This realm was old and sickly, the sun a dull, swollen red orb covering an entire third of the jaundiced sky. The air smelled like a bad case of arse gas after a heavy meal, one liberally seasoned with boiled cabbage. The air was probably deadly poison to a human. Had I been here in my actual body rather than in spirit, or mind… or whatever the fuck I was currently… I had no illusions that I would survive for long.
Despite the grotesque size of this sun, my breath misted in the chill air. I was all alone on this alien world. I shivered and wrapped arms around my naked body, dearly wishing I had Dissever once more. It was times like this where I missed having an incredibly lethal spirit-bound blade in my hand – being able to cut through anything with ease is very comforting. That dark spirit’s presence in the back of my mind had been silent for some months, only waking when blood flowed and it was time to feed, and to take more of my arm. I might not have been in my actual body, but my right hand had not changed – it was still black and hard as iron, the taint sticking to me like flies on shite, yet more evidence of it being a magical as
well as physical affliction.
My ankle throbbed, misshapen red welts like finger marks encircling it. I remembered the feeling of something trying to grab me during my fall. At least here, away from my real flesh, my back did not pain me and my left hand worked properly. The fingers opened and closed on command, as obedient as they had been before I’d been forced to burn out a tiny part of my brain to permanently destroy knowledge so the traitor god couldn’t uncover my devious plan to end him. And now I had a new powerful being that I needed to contend with.
After my last fucked up foray into trying to make a pact with a great spirit of the Clanholds, I knew I did not have time to stand around scratching my head and gawping at everything like a lackwit. The daemons would sniff me out soon. I searched the ground and found a bleached bone the length of my arm and then chopped the end with my iron hand, snapping off a knobbly chunk to form a sharp point.
I once ran from here naked and screaming, hunted by hideous creatures that I had tried so hard to forget. Even now I wanted to piss myself, but I’d had more than enough of living in fear and being pushed around by others. This time I was stronger and far more vicious. I was no longer prey, and I had seen far worse than anything this realm could possibly offer.
I opened my Gift and let magic flood through my mind and pseudo-muscles, preparing to kill. Fear and uncertainty washed away, leaving a burning knowledge that I was the baddest, boldest bastard in this whole miserable place. I would survive and I would find this fucking Queen of Winter and bend her to my will.
When the first burrower burst from the sand, red carapace gleaming and mandibles clacking, I was ready for it. As its segmented centipede-body swung round to face me I thrust my makeshift spear right through one of its large compound eyes, wincing at the high-pitched squealing as it flailed and gushed thick orange blood all over my hands. My right hand burned and itched as the creature fell at my feet, legs twitching. It stank worse than rotting meat, and I was drenched in its thick and cloying coppery putrescence.
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