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

by Adam Golden

  Volundr surged, calling up the strength that even a thousand years of subjugation and slavery couldn’t break in him. Blood bubbled from his lips as a defiant cry broke from his ruined chest, and he swung the great kaleidoscopic sledge toward his enemy. The force of the swing spun the old man in a violent dizzying circle. The space where the heavy bearded sorcerer had stood was empty. Volundr’s last great blow struck nothing! The monster in human skin slid away like a snake, moving with unnatural speed and grace.

  The force of his momentum spun the old smith about so harshly that he staggered and fell across the altar. The hammer landed on the crystalline lid of the sapphire sarcophagus with a concussion like the ringing of a hundred bells. Peals of piercing noise bounced off the carefully sloped and planed stone walls, and were magnified time and time again. A wild animal scream burst from the monster that had murdered him as it clutched frantically at Nicholas’ ears, trying to shut out the din.

  Volundr’s last breath leaked out between lips curled into a fierce smile as he looked down and saw ice blue eyes meet his. She was roused, she was angry, and Volundr found himself glad he would be absent for the clash between whatever it was that had killed him and the wrath of Elphame, God-Queen of Alfheim.

  To Win All Battles

  Everything dropped away as Nicholas approached the altar. The presence of Volundr, the stifling confinement of the mountain, even the ever-present expectations of his destiny, it all drifted into an obscuring cloud of etheric charge. The air crackled with magic so intense and all-consuming that even the inhibiting force of the Gleipnir thread could do nothing to hide it.

  Nicholas was washed forward, caught in a current that wouldn’t be denied. A discordant melody pulsed inside the wizard as disparate powers clashed and swirled around him. The wild lightning surges of raw, vibrant life, that he’d come to recognize as the First Force, pulsed everywhere. The chamber was full to bursting with the living hum of it, but there was more there. Something rested beneath it, around it, encompassing and bolstering it. This second force had an air of sturdiness, of depth and patience, that reminded Nicholas of Volundr’s calm assurance and effortless capability. That, he knew, must be the stolen forge magic of the Dokkalfar.

  The third note in the rough harmony was so subtle that Nicholas missed it at first, buried as it was among the crashes and echoes of the others. It slipped into him like the needle edge of a stiletto—subtle, sharp and driven deep.

  The silvered steel of the Anvil felt cold as ice under his left palm, but the shiver that rocked through the sorcerer wasn’t for the chill. It was for the heat that raced up his right arm. A grasping, hungry darkness raced through him like wildfire, destroying, dividing, and cauterizing. The sensation was alien, yet more familiar than his own face. It took him by the throat. It caressed and cajoled, pleading like a desperate lover. He was terrified and enraptured.

  Nicholas opened his mouth to shout, whether in elation or terror he didn’t know. The needle point of inky blackness pierced deeply and fragmented, expanding inside him. A rush of breath burst from his lungs as he sagged against the edge of the altar and then straightened as his hand closed possessively, almost violently, around the rough-ridged ram’s horn hilt of the weapon that was more a part of him than the hand that held it.

  A low growl burbled up from a throat that had never been designed for such an inhuman sound, and Nicholas felt himself being submerged, diluted, transformed. The other that was him yet not burst forward in a blur of snarling outrage, his recaptured fist white with the tension of his grip on the shard of horn and steel that had freed him.

  Driven back? Him? Chained like some animal, shackled by elven trickery?

  The hybrid wizard seethed with a red, reasonless rage. To have been forced to endure the resurgence of that mewling mediocrity, that shell . . . The dreaded sorcerer drew himself up and wrestled the blinding fury building inside himself. It was justified, it was right, but he knew it’s true source. This was Strongest. The Krampus Alpha’s presence was more powerful, closer to the surface than it had been before. The elven halter was still in place, that was why! Those freakish little monsters knew not what they’d snared. The human Nicholas was, as always, an embarrassing ineffectuality, but the man’s raw ability, wasted as it was without strength to guide it, did provide the bulwark that let him focus and filter the demon animal’s few useful attributes.

  The red sorcerer let himself assess the roiling waves of anger and hunger that the animal brought up in him without letting the feelings really touch him. It was like a storm, a cyclone of naked hatred and bloodlust. It was distasteful, but he couldn’t deny the power of it. What one could do with such strength if it were properly organized. A flash of red sky and black cliffs played before his eyes. A view from high above, looking down on legions of swarming monsters, struggling endlessly for strength and position. It was an army. An unstoppable host, millions of slavering inhumanly resilient killers whose very bloodlust would bolster his own power with every kill.

  The power around him buffeted the wizard with a force that was almost a physical assault. Magic oozed from every inch of the chamber, he should be able to see it dripping down the very walls of the cavern. This was a place of power like no other. A strong enough practitioner could achieve almost anything. He could raise the dead, transmute matter, he could reshape reality itself.

  Or tear it asunder.

  The plan struck him and the incantation leaked out in the guttural tongue of the Krampus plane. The usually inviolable walls between planes were thin as rotted cloth in this place. That, he knew with the strength of sudden epiphany, was the real reason why destiny had guided his steps to this place. He would rip away the veil, and an army like none the world had ever known would boil forth to do his will. Millions of savage, bloodthirsty killers would swarm to his banner and their every violent excess would feed his power. Not even this Maelstrom monster could stand against the combined might of the Krampus legions and the strength of the greatest sorcerer in history!

  The dark blade slashed at the empty air as the incantation came to a climax. The magic swamped the Forge chamber, it convulsed and contracted, eager, even desperate, to answer his call, or any call. Yet nothing happened. The unseen tether of the Gleipnir thread constricted around Nicholas, and the wizard sputtered in a mixture of pain and outrage. The barrier between himself and the magic was thin as a film of spider silk, but as impenetrable as iron.

  The frustrated magician cast about wildly. Where? There!

  On the corner of the Anvil opposite him. The dwarf-wrought implements were piled haphazardly, as though they’d been brushed aside to make room for the great oblong crystal sarcophagus that dominated the altar’s top.

  Nicholas felt a decidedly Krampus-like snarl rise up in him. He stepped toward the tools and found himself blocked. The human, the old smith was staring at him with the vacant stunned visage of the cattle he truly was. Irritation flared, another obstruction, another delay. Nicholas punched out with his onyx blade and felt the familiar flush of strength and vitality flow into him as it rushed out of the dying human’s pulverized heart. The dying man clutched at him, sputtering his pain and shock, trying to give voice to his final outrage. The wizard sighed and pushed himself away from the tiresome display. The dying human roared some final pathetic exclamation and threw himself at the place where his killer had been a split second before.

  Nicholas didn’t see the hammer the dead man clutched, his attention already beyond the ruin of a corpse he’d made. He scattered the crystal tools impatiently as he searched among them. Finally, his free hand clutched possessively around a set of sparkling translucent tongs, and he thrust them into the air in triumph.

  The blare shook the Forge, reality contorted, and sent Nicholas to his knees in howling, hair ripping agony. The inky blade and shimmering tongs clattered to the stone, forgotten as the he clutched at his ears trying desperately to shut out the rush of noise. It was as though every bit of glass ever made was shat
tering inside his head. His senses were shredded, his nerves raw and ragged. Nicholas stretched prostrate on the rock, writhing as though trying to bleed into it, anything to escape the sound.

  —

  “Nicholas.”

  The prone body flinched at the gentle word and then softened as it processed the silent stillness around it. The soul rending noise was ended. The sorcerer was limp, spent and near panting with relief.

  “Nicholas.”

  Haltingly, he pushed himself up, though he only managed a sort of slouching seated position before the weakness in his body stopped him.

  “Nicholas,” the voice came again.

  “I am not that impotent mediocrity any longer!” he said. The declaration came out more softly and with a great deal more weakness than the hybrid sorcerer would have liked.

  “Nonsense,” a voice like the tinkling of glass bells laughed in response. “A man may do and say many mad things in the grip of fever, but the illness does not change who he is.”

  The Forge was gone. The mountain was gone. The weight of air and atmosphere were lifted away. The wizard existed in an ethereal place of sapphire light, and standing before him was a figure of brilliant white radiance. She was tall, slim, and delicate looking, the perfect embodiment of feminine fragility, robed in layers of ivory gossamer that floated around her like wings.

  Here is Elphame, the famed White Lady of the Elves, Nicholas sneered as he looked on the white witch’s aristocratic bearing and soft, almost childlike expression. This is the great power of the hidden mountain?

  The witch queen smiled, almost sadly, as though she’d read his very thoughts and found something pitiable in them.

  “I am Sange Klau, the Blood Claw!” the wizard roared, pricked by her apparent sympathy. “Born of the greatest of two races and better than both, I am the greatest sorcerer of all time. The only hope for the world against the coming of Chaos!”

  “You are Nicholas, a once decent, remarkably gifted boy corrupted by pain, fear, and madness,” the White Lady declared, matter-of-factly, her calm detachment utterly untouched by the building fury of the looming sorcerer. “That boy grew into a man so consumed by the desperate need to prove himself, to be accepted and loved, to control, that he opened himself to a darkness he didn’t understand, a darkness he thought he could master. You have lost your way, become polluted, steeped in that darkness for so long that you’ve given it form, and even allowed to speak with your voice.”

  The hybrid sorcerer surged forward, reaching for his adversary’s slim shoulders. It was time to end this game. What did he care for the elf witch’s words? She couldn’t conceive of what he truly was. She was nothing, a poor receptacle for the power that was rightly his. No more! Nicholas’ powerful hands closed around nothing. The elf queen was gone, not moved with supernatural speed as he himself could do, his enhanced senses would have seen that. No, the witch had simply vanished.

  “This conflict cannot be resolved with blunt force, Nicholas,” came Elphame’s cool musical voice. “This is not a fight you can hope to win.”

  The powerfully built magician snarled as he spun, searching the azure cloud around himself for any sign of his foe. “You imagine yourself so much stronger, witch?” he bellowed. “Come then, face me without your tricks.”

  “I do not speak of myself. We are not in conflict, Nicholas. I seek conflict with no creature,” the White Lady’s voice rang around him. “I speak of your true enemy. Maelstrom comes, and it will not be defeated by your brute bully tactics. You cannot bludgeon Chaos. Nor will its avatar be cowed by your threats and snarling. It has no blood to let, no soul to rend, and its body cannot be broken. Put aside the animal, Nicholas. Use the mind you were blessed with. Think.”

  The elf queen’s words gave Nicholas pause. The aggressive fire that had fueled him since he’d rediscovered the dagger and recovered himself bled off just a little, replaced by a growing confusion. What was her game? Was this some attempt to save herself by undermining his confidence? Ridiculous. Maelstrom was a creature of magic, as he was. It was powerful, certainly, but in the end it was merely the servant of a forgotten God. He was Sange Klau, power made flesh, a new god for a new age. It would fall to his magic just as the broken priest who’d become its host had, as Fulvia and the black robes had. He’d bested and enthralled the strongest Alpha the Krampus had ever known. There was nothing that could stand before him. Surely that must be so.

  “Your power will not serve you in this,” Elphame’s disembodied voice said. “What we call magic is the living thread of order in existence. The creature Maelstrom, though formed of a sort of dark magic, is not of it. The longer he inhabits this plane, the stronger his influence becomes. He has been here for some time now, Nicholas, you have felt yourself weakening. More and more blood, more and more dread has been needed to satiate your disease, not so? Yet still, you would seek to suffocate a flame by feeding it more thread to burn. It is folly.”

  The sleek ethereal form of the elven queen gilded around him. Her hand brushed his heavy shoulder gently as wide earnest eyes of glacier blue ice implored him. “You must find another way, Nicholas.”

  A shudder ran through his body. He felt fractured and confused. His resolve, always as solid as foundation stone, started to waver. She sounded genuinely upset, almost begging. Could she be right? Was he doomed to failure?

  “You . . .” he started with a momentary stammer, “you only seek to save yourself, to prevent me from taking the First Force, from taking your power. You fear my ascendance . . .”

  The ghostly white woman shook her head sadly. “The ‘First Force’, as you call it, will not help you. It is not what you think it is. As for me, you’re no danger to me, as you’ve seen already. I seek no more than to help you, Nicholas, to show you the way. That is the role of my people. We have ever been protectors and guides of the people of this realm. It was we who first taught your kind to touch the power, to mold it and use it to protect and enhance that which the Gods gave us to steward.”

  As she spoke, the wizard saw brilliantly colored and detailed flashes of memory. He saw a thousand generations of men and women stretching back to the dawn of time. Long trudging lines of travelers journeyed from the farthest corners of the earth. Each traversed wildlands, overcame unimaginable dangers and difficulties, often travelling for years. All were coming here, to the mountain realm of the Elves, hungry to study at the feet of elven masters.

  “For uncountable ages we tried to mold you,” the white witch continued, her voice heavy with a deep ache and a weariness that spoke of eons of endless labor, “to show you how to maintain the balance, to foster both the stability and community of order and the inventive creativity of chaos. We hoped you would learn to use and embrace both halves of the natural order. Alas, you are a young and headstrong race, hungry to know, but too impatient to really learn. Our most important lessons were forgotten. You remembered the power and the control, but you forgot the substance, forgot that fear and anger, while powerful, are not the greatest fuels for magic. True power comes from joy, from gratitude and wonder, from community and trust and sacrifice. Real magic comes from fostering the good, from feeding the light.”

  He barked a bitter, derisive laugh and shot forward in another attempt to take hold of Elphame’s slim arm. His clawed hand slid through her as though she were formed of vapor.

  “Sunshine and happiness,” he sneered, disbelieving as he stumbled to a halt and whirled to face the spectral elf queen. “Am I to fight monsters with love, kindness, and showers of fresh spring flowers? Fool!” he barked. “Protectors and guides you say. You forget traitors, tyrants, and overlords. Where was your high-minded righteousness during the thousand years your people despoiled, raped and enslaved your own kind? Where was this balance and community when you leeched the very lives from those you kept chained in darkness? Or while you hoarded your might hidden on your mountain while this avatar of Chaos tore apart cities and killed millions?”

  Elphame seem
ed to deflate before him, pulling in on herself as she nodded sad agreement. “It is true,” she grated, sounding as though she fought back a flood of tears. “We lost our way. We grew complacent in our wisdom and entitled in our power. When it began to fail us we grew fearful. We knew real terror for the first time in our long lives. Fear like that turns to anger as easily as water touched by cold becomes ice, and anger demands a vent. Soon one finds enemies everywhere. We found one in our brothers, we grew jealous of their remaining magic. We were covetous and afraid, and you cannot imagine what it cost us.”

  “I know well enough what it’s costing you now,” the wizard said, recapturing some of his bravado. “By dawn there won’t be a light elf left alive in this city who isn’t in chains. The Dokkalfar will have their vengeance, and I will have your power. You will give me the First Force.”

  Yet another exhausted sigh trilled from the rosebud lips of the elven queen. “My own so-called priests kept me confined for centuries in that same vain hope, that they could somehow siphon it away, use it, control it. They could not, and you cannot either. It is not some untapped energy like the one you know. The First Force is not a weapon to be hurled, it is a spark, the essence of creation. It is a pinprick of pure possibility. It cannot be used, only unleashed, and to do so would surely destroy you.” A tight bitter smile played on Elphame’s delicate porcelain features.

  “There is no hidden power here to help you Nicholas, there never was,” she said. “What you feel in this place, what you stole from the Tunnit on the coast, is no more than the magic of the elves. My magic, restored to us and fed to me by the wrongheaded faith and devotion of my people. It is the fruit of a lie. I am no God. No real queen, just a scholar who has reached too far and lived too long, but I have tried to follow the old way, to spread the power, to protect and enhance this land. Yet even now it ebbs. Feel it.”