Frostborn: The First Quest

by Jonathan Moeller

Her eyes shot open with a gasp, the cobwebs dancing around her lips, her heart hammering against her ribs. Again a violent spasm went through her limbs, her muscles trembling, her head pulsing with pain.

  Bit by bit Calliande realized that she was ravenous, that her throat was parched with thirst.

  And she was no longer in the darkness.

  A faint blue glow touched her eyes. She saw a vaulted stone ceiling overhead, pale and eerie in the blue light. The air smelled musty and stale, as if it had not been breathed in a very long time.

  She pressed her hands flat at her sides, felt cold, smooth stone beneath them.

  On the third try she sat up, her head spinning, her hair falling against her shoulders.

  She lay upon an altar of stone, or perhaps a sarcophagus. The altar stood in the center of a stone nave, thick pillars supporting the arched roof. The blue light came from the far end of the nave, near an archway containing a set of stairs.

  Calliande sat motionless for a moment, listening to the silence.

  She had no idea how she had gotten here. Nor, for that matter, did she know where she was.

  And, with a growing sense of panic, she realized she could not remember who she was.

  Calliande, her name was Calliande. She knew that much. But the details of her past turned to mist even as she tried to recall them. Shattered, broken images danced through her mind. Men in white robes, warriors with eyes of blue flame, armies of blue-skinned orcs…but all of it slithered away from her grasp.

  Something, she realized, had gone terribly wrong.

  “They were supposed to be here,” she whispered, her voice cracked and rasping. “They were supposed to wait here.”

  But who?

  She didn’t know.

  Her panic grew, her hands scrabbling over the altar’s stone surface. After a moment she realized that she was looking for something. A…staff? Yes, that was it. A staff.

  Why?

  Calliande looked around in desperation, her panic growing.

  “They were supposed to be here,” she said again.

  But through her fear, her mind noted some practical problems. She was alone in a strange place, her stomach was clenching with hunger, and she was so thirsty her head was spinning. Despite whatever had happened to her, she could not remain here and wait for someone to find her.

  Calliande took a deep breath, braced herself on the edge of the altar, and stood. Her boots clicked against the stone floor, and her legs felt as if they had been made of wet string. Yet she did not fall, and after a moment she took a step forward.

  Something brushed her left arm and fell to the floor.

  She looked down at herself and saw that she wore a robe of green trimmed with gold upon the sleeves and hems, and the left sleeve had fallen off, exposing the pale skin of her arm. Once it must have been a magnificent garment, but now it was worn and brittle, the seams disintegrating. The leather of her belt and boots was dry and crumbling, and the few steps she had taken had already split her right boot open.

  The clothes looked centuries old.

  Her fear redoubled. Was she dead? Had she been buried alive?

  Another part of her mind, the cold part that had urged her to find food and water, pointed out that a dead woman would not feel nearly as hungry as she did. Had not the Dominus Christus eaten food in front of his disciples to prove that he was not a spirit?

  Whatever had happened to Calliande, she was still alive.

  But she needed to take action to stay that way.

  She crossed the nave, her boots crumbling further with every step. A thick layer of dust covered the floor, and she glimpsed more cobwebs stretched between the heavy pillars supporting the ceiling. No other footprints marked the dust. It was clear that no one had entered this chamber in a long time. Soot stained the pillars, and here and there Calliande saw piles of burned wood that had once been furniture.

  Had this place caught fire?

  She saw the first bones after that.

  Three skeletons lay in the dust nearby, clad in rusted armor, swords and maces lying near their bony hands. She saw the marks of violence upon their bones. Plainly a battle had been fought here, long ago, and it had been followed by a fire.

  How long had she been lying in this place of death?

  Calliande reached the archway at the far end of the nave. A skeleton lay slumped against the stairs, clad in the ragged remnants of a robe.

  A white robe.

  She remembered the image from her dream, and reached to touch the bones.

  As she did, the blue light brightened, and a specter appeared on the stairs.

  Calliande took a step back in alarm, but the specter made no move to harm her. It looked like an old man in white robes, his head encircled by a tangled mane of gray hair, his eyes deep and heavy and sad.

  “Forgive me, mistress,” said the specter.

  “You can see me?” said Calliande. “Who are you?”

  “Forgive me, for we have failed in our sacred charge,” said the specter. “The Tower of Vigilance is overrun. The warring sons of the old king brought their foolish quarrel here, and the Tower is taken. I wished us to remain neutral, but the others thought differently…and our Order has paid for it.”

  “Answer me!” said Calliande. “Who are you? Why am I here?”

  But the specter kept talking, and Calliande realized it wasn’t really there. Or, rather, it was not a spirit or a ghost. Rather, it was a spell, a final message to her.

  Left by the man whose bones now lay moldering at her feet.

  “I have no doubt they would kill you simply out of spite,” said the old man, “and I have my suspicions of the darker forces behind the strife. But I have activated the defenses of the vault. Sealed it from the inside.” He took a deep breath. “Only you can open it.”

  “But that means…” said Calliande.

  That meant the old man had sealed himself inside the vault.

  And to judge from the skeleton, he never left.

  “Do not mourn for me,” said the old man, “for my course is run. I am wounded unto death.” She saw the spreading crimson stain across his white robes, and realized that he had been wounded. “You will be safe here, until you awaken.”

  He closed his eyes and shuddered with pain.

  “Mistress, I beg, listen to me,” said the old man. “You were right. You were always right, and I should have listened to you as a young man. This war between the Pendragon princes…no, it did not occur on its own. They were manipulated into it. Mistress, beware.” His voice grew thicker, his breathing harsher. “The bearer…the bearer of the shadow. You were right about him, too. This was his doing. Everything has been his doing…and he has been laboring in the darkness for centuries before Malahan Pendragon raised the first stone of Tarlion itself. Mistress, please, beware…he will come for you…he…”

  The specter vanished into nothingness.

  And the blue glow faded.

  With a surge of alarm Calliande realized the glow had been part of the spell. And now that the spell’s message had been delivered, the light would fade away.

  Leaving her alone in the darkness.

  “No!” she said, her voice echoing off the walls.

  The blue light faded away a moment later, leaving her in utter blackness.

  Follow this link to continue reading Frostborn: The Gray Knight (https://www.jonathanmoeller.com/writer/?page_id=4069).