The Dark Warden (Book 6)

by Jonathan Moeller

  “Ah,” said Morigna. She had wondered why Mara had freed her instead of Jager. “I will see what I can do.”

  Mara nodded. “We should hasten. If the Warden opens that gate, we’ll never see Calliande again.”

  Morigna did not like Calliande, but even she would not wish such a hideous fate upon the Magistria. Nor would she condemn the people of Old Earth to millennia of slavery beneath the Warden’s iron hand. Of course, the nations of Old Earth seemed eager to enslave themselves, if the Warden’s visions had been true. But that was of no consequence. Ridmark was in danger, and she had to save him.

  If she could figure out how to do so.

  She took a deep breath and cast the spell to sense the presence of magic.

  It almost overwhelmed her. The tremendous magic stirring outside the walls of Urd Morlemoch washed over her senses like a storm. For a moment fear choked her. The Warden was nightmarishly strong. He could have brushed aside the Old Man like an insect and crushed the Artificer in a matter of moments. How could Morigna hope to oppose a wizard of such sorcerous power?

  “Are you all right?” said Mara.

  “No,” said Morigna. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to focus upon the menhirs.

  The spells upon the standing stones were tremendously complex. The spells bound their prisoners with chains upon the mind and the body, locking them in a sleep and filling their minds with soothing dreams. Worse, even touching the menhirs would release the power, killing both Morigna and whoever she touched.

  “Can you do anything?” said Mara.

  “I believe so,” said Morigna. The black menhirs were impervious to her magic, but she could fold the white stone beneath them. If she moved the menhirs, perhaps it would cause their prisoners to fall and break contact with the stones, shattering the spells. Or she could command a gust of wind to blow them away, though playing with the wind at this height was dangerous. She recast the spell, focusing it again.

  Something occurred to her.

  She swept the focus of her spell against the menhir Mara had occupied, and her eyes widened. That spell was damaged, bleeding power. Mara was right. Evidently whatever spell the Warden had used had not been designed for whatever Mara had become.

  “The power,” said Morigna. “The power for the spells is coming from the soulstones.” She left the circle, examining the small altars that stood against the exterior of the standing stones. “Look at this. There are thirteen menhirs, but only eight of us were trapped here.”

  “And only eight soulstones,” said Mara. “Mine looks…broken.”

  It did. The other seven soulstones shone with a steady blue light, like domes of crystal draped over blue-burning candles. The one that had held Mara flickered and sputtered, seeming to vibrate like a rope under excessive tension. Morigna sensed the power leaking from it.

  A surge of excitement went through her.

  Power that she could use, perhaps? Power that could use to break the spell?

  “You can do something?” said Mara.

  “Yes,” murmured Morigna, staring at the damaged soulstone. “If I use the power in that soulstone, I can break the other spells.”

  “What?” said Mara, horrified. “No, that’s not what I meant at all.”

  “It will work,” said Morigna. “Like when we faced the Artificer. The Warden’s magic can defend against everything except itself. If I draw on the power, I can use it to break the spells on the menhirs and awake the others.”

  “You’ll have to draw that power into yourself,” said Mara. “That’s the Warden’s magic, Morigna. It will do bad things to you.”

  “We have to break the others free,” said Morigna, looking at Ridmark.

  “There are better ways,” said Mara, pointing at Morigna’s belt. “Your dwarven dagger. You can use it to push the soulstones off the altars. Its enchantment will resist the dark magic, and moving the soulstones will break the spells on the menhirs.”

  “It might,” said Morigna. “Or I can turn the Warden’s own magic against the spells.”

  “No,” said Mara. “Morigna, this is an extremely bad idea. You have seen what dark elven magic does to mortals. The soulcatcher almost turned Jager into an urhaalgar. You don’t know what this power will do to you.”

  “I know what I could do with it,” said Morigna. With that power she could free Ridmark and the others. If they lived through this, if they managed to escape Urd Morlemoch…she could put that power to great use.

  Great use, indeed.

  “Morigna,” said Mara, “please, listen to me…”

  Before Morigna could change her mind, she reached out her left hand and placed it on the soulstone upon the altar.

  The soulstone blazed brighter, and blue light poured up Morigna’s arm. She gasped in surprise, her fingers clenching tighter against the soulstone’s cold, rough surface. The veins in her hand and arm shone with blue light, as Mara’s did when she used her power. Strength rushed into Morigna, and she felt her magic growing stronger. The sensation was almost intoxicating. With this power she could free the others, and perhaps she could even challenge the Warden himself…

  Then the pain came.

  Morigna threw back her head and screamed. It felt as if every fiber of her body had caught flame. Suddenly she felt the currents of magic roaring around Urd Morlemoch and flowing to the east, currents that pulled at the power burning with her.

  “Morigna!” said Mara, grabbing her arm.

  Blue fire and black shadow erupted around them both, and everything vanished into the void.

  Chapter 19 - Threshold

  Mara felt something rough and cold beneath her cheek.

  After a moment she realized it was concrete, though concrete far finer and smoother than any she had seen in the realm of Andomhaim. A peculiar murmuring sound filled her ears, and after a moment she realized it was the sound of a city, of boots clicking against the ground and voices raised in conversation in a language she did not recognize. Yet stranger sounds came to her ears. A deep rumble, like some great engine laboring endlessly. Peculiar beeps and chirps, like the songs of metal birds. Many softer rumbles, and the whooshing noise of something moving with terrific speed.

  She gathered her strength, opened her eyes, and sat up.

  The first thing she was saw the gray mist. It swirled around everything, through everything, and to her Sight it was saturated with magic. In the distance she saw a blazing sheet of blue-green flame, and realized that it was the Warden’s gate. Or, rather, what would soon become the Warden’s gate. The forces were gathering, and it was not yet fully open.

  Then the strangeness of the other sights forced their way into her consciousness.

  Mara was in the city of glass and steel the Warden had showed them.

  She was in London, in Britannia upon Old Earth.

  The great buildings of glass and steel rose over her, and the strange horseless vehicles moved back and forth with terrific speed down a strip of black tar between the buildings. Paths of concrete ran on either side of the black road, filled with men and women on foot. Most of the men wore suits of shiny black cloth with gleaming black shoes and stark white shirts, peculiar ribbons of colored cloth hanging into their coats from their collars. The women’s clothing had more color, though most of them wore skirts that left their knees and legs bare, and rigid shoes with high heels that made a constant clicking against the concrete. Many people held their speaking machines to their ears, talking into them. One florid-faced man stepped towards Mara, talking into his device, and she tried to get out of the way.

  Instead the man walked through her. As if she were not there.

  As if she were a ghost.

  Puzzled, Mara waved her hand, and her arm passed through the head of a nearby woman. The woman showed no reaction. Mara turned and strode through several men and women. None of them displayed any reaction.

  Was she a ghost? Had she died and gone to Old Earth? That seemed most unlikely. When she died, Mara had thoug
ht she would either go to paradise because of her faith in the Dominus Christus or to hell because of the various crimes she had committed with the Red Family. She certainly had not expected to go to Londinium.

  Or perhaps she was real and she had come to a world of ghosts.

  A groan came to her ears.

  Morigna lay upon the street.

  She did not look well.

  Physically, she looked unharmed. Yet the Sight revealed the dark magic swirling and pulsing within her. Morigna had taken that power into herself, and now it was sinking into her like a poison working its way through the blood. Mara wondered if Morigna would transform into an urshane or an urdhracos.

  Yet that didn’t seem to be happening.

  Mara knelt and touched Morigna’s shoulder. That felt real, at least. To her Sight, it looked as if Morigna was somehow absorbing the dark magic. Using the soulcatcher had almost transformed Jager into an urhaalgar. Yet Jager hadn’t been a user of magic. Morigna was, and it seemed her natural abilities were assimilating the dark power she had absorbed.

  She still wasn’t sure what it would do to Morigna. Right now they had larger problems.

  Figuring out where the hell they were, for one.

  Morigna groaned again, and her eyes twitched open. They were still black and hard, but a haze of blue fire seemed to shimmer within them.

  “We are alive,” said Morigna at last. The fact seemed to astonish her.

  “Yes,” said Mara. “I told you not to touch that stone.”

  “Clearly I should have listened,” said Morigna, sitting up. She winced and pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead. “I have never been drunk, but one imagines this is what a hangover is like.”

  “There’s usually more vomiting,” said Mara.

  Morigna got to her feet and looked around.

  “This is not Urd Morlemoch,” said Morigna.

  A man in a dark suit walked through her and she flinched.

  “That…should not have happened,” said Morigna.

  “I think we’re on Old Earth,” said Mara. She waved a hand at the blue-green fire in the distance. “That, I believe, is soon going to become the Warden’s gate. I’m not sure what happened to us.”

  Morigna turned, considered the gate for a moment, and looked at Mara.

  “Threshold,” she said at last.

  “I’m sorry?” said Mara.

  “I believe we are on Old Earth’s threshold,” said Morigna. “Remember what the Warden said. The spell to create a gate first joins the worlds’ thresholds, their shadows in the spirit realm. He must have joined together the thresholds while we were unconscious. Then when I touched the soulstone…the power drew us into the threshold of our world, and then we were sucked here.”

  “Is the gate open, then?” said Mara.

  Morigna cast the spell to sense the presence of magic, and Mara noted the swirl of blue fire around her fingers. “No. I do not believe so. It will be soon, though.”

  “We have to get back,” said Mara. “If we wait until the Warden opens the gate, he will kill us, and Calliande will never get her body back.”

  “How do we get back?” said Morigna. “I do not even know how we got here.”

  “My power,” said Mara. “After I touched you, after you picked up that stupid soulstone, it triggered my power. The dark magic combined with the power in my blood must have thrown us into the threshold.”

  “Perhaps that is how your power works,” said Morigna. “It shifts you into the threshold and then back into the mortal world, allowing you to cover dozens of yards in the blink of an eye.”

  “Except the power of the additional dark magic pulled us here,” said Mara, “and the Warden’s spell drew us into the threshold of Old Earth.”

  “We can theorize later. Can you take us back?” said Morigna.

  “Maybe,” said Mara. She reached for the fiery song within her and drew on its power. She started to travel, blue fire shining in her veins, but nothing happened. Something was blocking her, holding her back. It was the boundary between the threshold and the mortal world, she realized. It was too strong.

  In the distance the blue-green fire of the gate brightened.

  The barrier was too strong here, but the Warden was tearing a hole through it.

  “I can’t do it here,” said Mara. “But if we get closer to the gate, I might be able to punch through.”

  “The gate?” said Morigna with a frown. “If we return to the material world there…will not we simply appear in front of the Warden and his gate?”

  “We might,” said Mara. “Do you have any better ideas?”

  “I do not,” said Morigna.

  “I was afraid you would say that,” said Mara. “Let’s go. Oh, give me your dagger.”

  “The dagger?” said Morigna, but she slid the dwarven blade from its sheath and passed it to Mara. “Why the dagger?”

  “Because,” said Mara, “if there are any creatures here, I suspect they will be magical in nature, and I have no means to harm magical creatures.”

  “A good point,” said Morigna. “Let us hope your pessimism is misplaced.”

  Mara shrugged. “There is a first time for everything, I am told.”

  They set off through the misty street.

  ###

  Morigna could not stop staring.

  She knew she ought to be watching for danger, but she could not turn her eyes from the sights that thronged the streets of London. The peculiar vehicles seemed like living beasts wrought of glass and enameled metal, moving with a speed that even an urvaalg could not match. Signs glowed with an inner light as if by magic, but no doubt through some mechanical contrivance. From time to time she even glimpsed one of the metal birds flying far overhead, so high it was a speck against the blue sky.

  The peculiar sights were also a welcome distraction from the fear that churned in her heart. Fear for Ridmark, fear of remaining trapped in this strange place.

  And fear of what she had done to herself.

  The dark magic coiled within her, sinking further into her flesh with every step she took. Part of Morigna’s mind recognized that something was very wrong, that she ought to be alarmed. The dark magic was dangerous. Dark magic had led to the deaths of everyone she had ever loved.

  Another part of her exulted in it.

  The power could make her much stronger, perhaps even as strong as Calliande. With it she could augment her spells of earth magic, making them far more potent. She could even attack creatures of dark magic directly as Calliande did. Perhaps Morigna could even imbue weapons with enchantments. Ridmark would not need a soulblade if she could fashion a weapon of power for him.

  Morigna made herself look around, forcing aside the wild thoughts that bounced around the inside of her head. None of those dreams would ever come true if she died here, if she wandered Old Earth’s threshold until she starved to death.

  Or if Mara’s fears were correct, and dangerous creatures did wander the threshold.

  “There,” said Mara.

  A sheet of blue-green fire rose from the center of the misty street, the vehicles passing through it without hindrance. Mara strode into the street without stopping. Morigna hesitated, and then followed, wincing a bit as the vehicles ripped through her without slowing. She knew the things could not hurt her, but nonetheless stepping in front of something so large that could move so fast put her instincts on edge.

  “It hasn’t opened yet?” said Mara.

  “I do not believe so,” said Morigna. The amount of raw power coursing through the half-formed gate made her teeth vibrate. As her eyes focused upon the gate, suddenly she could see through it. Beyond she glimpsed a grand circle of the dark elves, similar to the one where the Old Man had tried to steal her body. Calliande floated a few feet off the ground before the gate, blue fire and shadows snarling around her hands, her eyes bottomless black pits. In the distance rose the half-ruined walls and thrusting stone towers of Urd Morlemoch.

  �
��Can he see us?” said Morigna.

  “I do not think so,” said Mara, squinting at the gate. “I think…I think he sees wherever the gate will open in Old Earth.” She gestured at the busy street around them. “The city of London in Britannia, presumably. Though if no one on Old Earth knows how to use magic, they won’t even realize that they’re about to be invaded.”

  “Then let us spoil the Warden’s plans,” said Morigna. “Can you punch through the barrier here?”

  “I…I think so,” said Mara, closing her eyes. “Let me concentrate for a moment. Make sure no one kills me, please.”

  “I do not think we are in any danger of that,” said Morigna, watching the vehicles and the people go past. “The men are so absorbed in their speaking devices that one doubts they would notice the Warden and his hordes walking through the gate. And the women…if they tried to run in those ridiculous shoes, they would snap their ankles like twigs.”

  Mara said nothing, her eyes darting back and forth behind closed lids, the veins in her hands and neck glimmering with blue fire. Her face was taut with strain, sweat rolling down her jaw and forehead. Morigna wanted to help her, but could not think of a way. She hoped the strain of breaking through the barrier to the mortal world was not too much for Mara.

  “Yes,” said Mara. “I think….yes, I think I can do it. Just need to gather my strength for a moment.”

  Morigna nodded, remembered that Mara could not see her, and then saw the man in the suit staring at her.

  He looked little different than the other men, pale and gaunt, his black suit close-fitting, a shiny strip of black cloth wound around his collar and dangling into his buttoned coat. Unlike many of the others, he wore a peculiar pair of black spectacles that concealed his eyes. And unlike the others, he appeared sharp and clear, while everyone else Morigna had seen was wrapped in white haze.

  He was looking right at them.

  The man stepped off the curb, and one of the horseless vehicles shot through him, leaving him untouched.