The Grimoire of Yule (The Shadows of Legend Book 1)

by Adam Golden

  Najua was puzzled by the question. North? There was nothing north save the deep ice and the mountains. Scare game, little unfrozen water. The people didn’t venture north often. He said as much.

  “North lies the spirits of ice and snow, the cold winds and the lairs of the great bears. The people haven’t ventured far north in generations. Our spirits are the spirits of the coast.”

  “Yes, yes of course they are,” the tuurngaq or Amaguq said dismissively. “But what of the legends of the great mountain? Surely you know the stories. Strange spirits? Powerful magic?”

  Najua huffed. Of course he knew the stories. Did this spirit think him a fool? Those were some of the oldest tales of the Tunit. Tales of dark spells and men entranced, seduced, and destroyed by powerful and tricksome spirits. He opened his mouth to say so and paused. Tricksome spirits. His teachers warned that spirits could be troublesome to the unwary and there was something . . . off-putting about this tuurngaq.

  It’s lazy, teasing superiority seemed strained all of a sudden. Najua felt those piercing iron grey eyes digging into him as though trying to draw something directly from him.

  What could the spirit guide be after in those stories? Najua thought of what he knew: when they’d first discovered these shores the ancestors of the people had been proud, they’d lacked the proper humility and respect for the things of the spirits. Powerful shamans quested north to commune with the spirits there and learn their potent magics, but the spirits of the great mountain were devious, cruel, and had no care for men. The stories told of whole parties of hunters who sought to take the mountain flashing to dust, of spirits that could raise the dead, and of the White Woman. The Goddess of the mountain who summoned storms and could cause the earth to swallow her enemies.

  “The White Woman!” the old man exclaimed sharply. “Tell me more. Where is she found? How did your people come to possess a spark of her power? Speak!”

  Najua hadn’t realized he’d been speaking aloud. Had he been? Had this creature read his thoughts? The idea of this thing inside his mind made the young shaman’s skin crawl.

  “The songs say,” he said, frightened by the intensity of the thick bodied old man’s gaze, “that her hall lies in a great village atop the mountain, but that it’s guarded by a host of shadowy spirits who are bound to her will and will undo any man who approaches, but why would a spirit of the Tunit seek the shade queen, and why . . . ?”

  Najua yelped in shock as a bolt of blazing blue lightning ripped out of the mottled green murk, streaking toward him. He twisted and dove, writhing and twining his body like a swimming otter, but the brilliant crackling fire followed as though he had it on a tether.

  “Careful little wizard!” the man-wolf laughed, suspended in the thick goop above Najua’s head with a sort of indolent slouch. “This place can be dangerous.”

  The young spiritwalker’s mind worked as frantically as his speeding spirit form. He couldn’t outrace the lancing white fire. Could he stop it? How? Lightning blasted rock and split wood. Nothing stopped it. Nothing but . . . Najua stopped dead.

  The song bubbled from his lips as a matter of pure instinct, and his spirit form shimmered as his song turned it to water. The blazing knife of lightning struck his chest with a deafening sizzle and an explosion of steam. Billowing white clouds of steam shot upward, enveloping the lounging old man before they burst into uncountable drops of clear crisp dew which rained down and formed into the smirking form of Najua.

  “My, my! Very clever,” the Tuurngaq said with a slow clap that, like everything else the beast man did, seemed to mock. “You are a strong one. A true descendant of the shamans who managed to snare the powers of the mountain. Though, of course you could never hope for a feat like that.”

  He spoke with such matter of fact certainty that Najua hummed with outrage. No Angakok of the tribe could have done what he just had. The ancient spiritwalkers had been strong, but Najua was strong as well, and he had the benefit of centuries of knowledge those men hadn’t.

  “It wasn’t so great an accomplishment,” he said defensively. “More lucky than anything else. If they hadn’t stumbled on the cave, they wouldn’t have even found the injured spirit.”

  “Of course, of course,” the spirit guide said, eyes twinkling. “But those learned men had the skill and wisdom to locate the cave, and to treat with the spirit. Surely no one alive today could do as much.”

  “Few could,” Najua allowed. “But I myself have made some study of the old songs that speak of that tale. The incantations are involved, but hardly impossible. If one could locate the right spirit and the song is quite explicit about the route of the journey . . . Why, I’d wager that I could . . .”

  The young spiritwalker trailed off, realizing he was cringing inward on himself as the thick ooze of the place pressed hard around him. It felt more solid, as though it were hardening. Najua tried to will it back, but nothing happened. It was too strong.

  Strong.

  Najua’s song was rapid and urgent. His form began to stretch and fill. Limbs expanded and thickened; his bulk doubled and then doubled again. Short dark hair spread and became long, coarse, and pale. He stood three times his usual height, and many times his weight. He had become one of the great ice bears his people revered. He roared triumph as he tore free of the hold on him. Ice-blue eyes searched for the tuurngaq. The bear’s sharp eyes didn’t see him, but his nose . . . the bear whirled and found the heavy man behind him, thrusting a long knife. The weapon was a spike of blackness darker than the dead of night that lanced toward Najua’s chest. The great beast lashed out with a heavy paw, twisting his great form. The black knife took him in the side rather than the heart, and he batted the treacherous tuurngaq to the ground.

  The bear form burst like a pricked bubble and Najua’s soul sprawled, hanging limp and exhausted in the dirty green sludge.

  “You’re clever man-pup,” the Amaguq snarled as it rose to its feet. The old man’s face a mass of blood, blackened, bruised, and twisted into a mask of violent outrage. “Clever and strong, still I will not—I cannot be denied!”

  The crimson cloaked monster clinched his empty hand and the substance around Najua crushed his spirit body tightly. Shocks of pain crackled through the young man’s soul.

  “The world demands my victory!” the bearded man exclaimed. “It requires your sacrifice. I must have your knowledge. I will have your power!”

  The maddened demon stalked toward him and Najua struggled against the universe that held him in its fist. The panic was almost too strong to think and the music wouldn’t come. He reacted on pure instinct. A ball of brilliant white light the size of his chest snapped into existence before him. The dark knife pierced the white-hot miniature sun, and it exploded with a force that rocked the entirety of the strange realm.

  The vicious wolf-man flew backward.

  Najua felt triumph for a moment, before the pain, before he saw the smoking ebony knife lodged in his chest. When it finally came, the pain blasted away everything else. It ripped at his consciousness, rifling through his mind.

  “I said I would lead you home, young wizard,” came the voice of the monster in some twisted mimicry of compassion as it staggered forward and pulled the knife from the boy’s spirit heart. “I keep my word.”

  —

  Najua’s eyes opened and stared, sightless at the smashed and burning wreckage of the sprawling village of the Tunit. Tears ran from his senseless eyes and mixed with the streams of drool that poured from his slack mouth. All around him fires burned and blood ran from the heaped corpses of caribou-skin clad tribesmen and women. Here and there some of the dying still moaned. Najua heard, but the pitiful cries didn’t resonate. The gifted spiritwalker saw only the tip of the black blade, felt only it’s hateful punching burn and heard only the laughter of the monster who held it.

  War Winds Blow

  Wisps of smoke rose off his charred flesh and swirled around his prone, heaving form. The smell of burned blood and r
uined meat hung thick in his nostrils. His stomach churned and his heart hammered in his chest. He snarled wordlessly at his own weakness and at the stark reminder that, for all the knowledge and immense power he’d acquired since his rebirth, he remained a finite, and even fallible, creature.

  That boy, that ridiculous, savage child! So laughably self-important, so foolish, and yet he’d nearly been the wizard’s end. So strong. How could he be so strong? Practitioners who could approach the sorcerer’s power had been exceedingly rare, even when he’d been merely human. He’d been lax, he knew. He’d let himself be lulled by his own strength. That wouldn’t happen again.

  These simple creatures, these Tunit, were steeped in raw, primordial magic, in Fulvia’s ‘First Force’. Generations of savages had taken it in with their mother’s milk, with every bite of food and drop of water. It sang from their blood, lying latent in all but the strongest of their shamans, witch women, or whatever names they gave their practitioners, waiting for a talented vessel to call it forth. Waiting for its true master.

  The battered sorcerer sucked in a sharp breath as the burned flesh of his neck and chest strained and cracked, pulling together to cover the bones that were already knitting themselves back into place. The devastating rents in his flesh had nearly taken his head off. Now they were little more than scratches, a few moments more and they’d be gone. Siphoning off the dribs and drabs of raw magic from those squalling primitives had been unpleasant, distasteful work, like sucking desperately needed moisture from a dirty rag while a river of pure water raged just out of reach, but it was working. It nourished even if it hadn’t really satisfied.

  Oh, but that boy! That wonderful, ridiculous boy! That had been like plunging his head into a rain barrel on a hot day. So refreshing, so wonderfully invigorating, and what’s more the child had surrendered an unexpected treasure trove. He caressed the tangled knot of songs, stories, traditions, and superstitions that now lay in the back of his mind. There, he was sure, lay the keys to the mountain, it’s treasure and their guardian—this so-called White Woman.

  The heavy leather flap of the tent moved aside for an instant, allowing the wane light of arctic twilight into the stale smoky tent. The rude clang of a hard fist on bronze announced the arrival of his captain.

  “What is it?” the sorcerer barked, his voice thick with pain and the effort of his restoration. “Have they found it?”

  “Yes . . . master.”

  The words croaked out of the massive form that had been the man Belsnickel as though against his will, though of course he had no will any longer, save that his master gave him. A black crust of cooked flesh cracked and fell away, trailing thin strings of pink mucus as the warlock whipped around to face his creation excitedly.

  “Show me,” he demanded.

  —

  His heavy crimson cloak swirled about as he and his general tromped through the ragged, hastily erected camp. Conjured bonfires raged every few feet, maintained by a trickle of his own power. Every one of them was ringed around by the huddled, cringing forms of what remained of Belsnickel’s crew, but even those raging towers of flame did little against the unearthly cold of the White Witch’s conjured storm.

  Nicholas barely noticed the stiff bodies in the snow as he passed. More dead. This place was becoming a camp of corpses. Nearly two dozen of the supposedly hardy bandits had fallen on the march north, and near twice as many had succumbed since, either from the cold or the exertion of digging their way through the endless series of snow berms the storm threw up to block their path. Every warm pelt and thick blanket that could be found among the ruins of the Tunit had been taken, yet they were little use against the unnatural fury of the storm that pounded against the invaders. No matter, if they’d truly found what he sought, he wouldn’t need these mortals much longer anyhow.

  The sorcerer’s gaze went to the thicket of ice columns that arced around the northern edge of the ragged camp. After those first deaths from the cold, and the brutal pace he’d set them, Belsnickel’s ruffians had lost all sense of themselves, and of where their fear should be placed. Some had run off and others refused to work. Those were the first to decorate the columns the red sorcerer raised out of the ice and snow, but not the last. More than a score of malcontents and dissenters hung there now, naked, their skin near as brittle and milky white as the ice that held them. They hung suspended, arms and legs doubled behind them, and frozen into the very ice itself. The screams went on for hours, growing more eerie and terrible as they grew weaker and more forlorn. Those spared the stake tried not to listen as their brethren writhed and twisted weakly, trying in vain to avoid the White Woman’s blistering winds. They tried to ignore the pitiful whimpering that sounded whenever the wind’s howling grew quiet, but their eyes always drifted back, and they always started at the sounds.

  Work was back in full swing before the first of the sacrifices had even frozen through, and by the time the last of them expired, his ragtag little army had fully remembered the proper dread of their master. The wizard who had been Nicholas bemoaned the lost time and wasted manpower, but there was little to be done. He’d had a cook as a boy who had a proverb about the need to break eggs. He couldn’t recall it entirely, but what he remembered felt apt. He would find that cave, he would have the secrets of this mountain, and if it cost the lives of every man here, that would be a price too small to even note.

  The wizard glared up at the frozen slab of ice and rock that loomed before them.

  Situkkak Tunngujuttak Ikumak.

  The ancient Tunit name for the legendary peak floated to the surface of his mind, unbidden and utterly unwanted. The Mountain of Blue Fire. It was only one of a dozen names the tribesmen had for the mythic peak, but it was easily the most fitting. Nicholas knew the limited creatures huddled around him saw only bare grey rock and ice, but to his eyes the irregular granite spike blazed like an azure sun, awash in snapping, swirling tongues of pale blue flames. The power he felt from that blasted peak beggared anything he’d ever felt, it made his throat go dry with an almost carnal desire. It called to him, inviting, seductive, and deadly. He’d stood in so many of the world’s places of power, he was one of the few that had stood amidst the green ichor of the magical plane itself, yet none of that held a candle to the pure naked force emanating from that mountain.

  He could reach out and touch it, in fact, the power inside him tried again and again to do just that, to hurl itself against the magic of the mountain. It felt eager. It pushed against his defenses constantly, an ocean barely contained by an inadequate dam. The sorcerer fought the urge to launch himself at the mountain day and night. He could have done that days ago, forced his way through that flaming cobalt shield and driven himself to the peak. He thought he could have, but that wasn’t the way. Haste and overconfidence had nearly ruined him once already.

  No, the cave was the key. The Tunit lore was clear, at least, the bits he’d been able to decipher seemed clear. The cave was the path to the White Woman’s city. He had to have it! The giant’s long strides and powerful legs made short work of the drifts that stood almost knee high to the wizard. He rolled on as unstoppable as a boulder plowing down a mountainside. The snow retreated before Nicholas as though the frozen water knew to flee his wrath. A narrow furrow of dry earth scored through the raging winter where he went only to be swallowed again once he’d passed. The two unnatural men moved at preternatural speeds, chewing the unforgiving terrain with every stride, still the journey around the base of the granite giant took more than an hour.

  Nearly a dozen human dead lay scattered about, marked by the irregular holes in the deep snow which were the only graves they would ever know. They were blue, rigid with cold, and huddled in on themselves in a last desperate bid for warmth. It was one of his scouting parties, yet he hadn’t sent any out this far. Had they gotten lost? Were they attempting to desert him? It didn’t matter, not if they’d found it. Nothing else mattered now.

  In the space of a blink, the raging
wind and obscuring snow ceased. A rapid tattoo of low sharp hissing, like water drops falling on a hot skillet, sounded all around as the weather outside struck the arcing dome of heat the wizard threw up to shelter the spot. A heavy, pregnant stillness blanketed the little bubble of warmth in the sea of blistering, raging cold. The wizard’s gaze scoured the spot, his senses clawing for any sign . . . There! A thin, struggling wisp of steam rose out of the hard pack.

  “Who found it?” the wizard demanded.

  He turned to face his captain when no answer came, and the enslaved giant wilted under his master’s gaze, his powerful armored arm raising to point. Nicholas knew without looking, and twin films of pleasure and vexation bubbled within him.

  A shawl of seaweed, kelp, and other sea plants still draped narrow shoulders and clung to each gangly limb. Here and there the wizard spied small crabs, barnacles, and other sea life he couldn’t identify clinging to a bit of waterlogged cloth or slug-pale flesh, frozen in place now and utterly unnoticed by their host. It’s dark, bone-bedazzled hood was ragged and worn from long hard use, and the bits of clothing left to it were thin, tattered things, barely worthy of the name. Only the white length of the heavy club of lashed human bones that rested in the crook of the waterlogged revenant’s arm was pristine.

  This creature, this Prancer, was troubling in many ways. It was crude work, a blunt club good for little else, and yet with surprising aspects. The wizard had been shocked when the revenant plodded out the sea, utterly unfazed, and took it’s silent brooding place at his side. Nicholas’ eyes shifted to the other, to his captain. The hulking form of the one who’d been the pirate Belsnickel stood like a golden boulder in his bronze breastplate and beautifully worked high attic helm. In almost every way that one was a superior work: smarter, more able to reason and react independently, within set boundaries of course. Belsnickel couldn’t only resist magical attack, but was actually made stronger by such. Still, Prancer had greater strength, more innate resilience, and there was a naked ferocity, an animalistic instinct to the creature that the pirate lord lacked. Even with his greater power and understanding, the being who still thought of himself as Nicholas didn’t know why he hadn’t been able to replicate that, no matter how many times he’d tried.