Song of the Fell Hammer

by Shawn C. Speakman

  “These dark veins will kill Thomas if they enter his chest and get to his heart.” The Giant seemed to be seeing past the wound and into the man himself. “He is poisoned.”

  A cold sweat had broken out all over Sorin. “Why? What happened?”

  “Why do you think dragons exist despite the hatred their kind receives?” Relnyn asked. “It’s because they are poisonous to all except their own.”

  Panic threatened to overwhelm Sorin. Thomas had saved Sorin from certain death, had offered answers for his parents’ deaths, and had gotten himself involved and put himself at risk simply because Sorin deserved to know. And now his only friend lay dying in the cradling arms of a Giant. Sorin realized he would do anything to keep Thomas alive.

  “I only hope the venom hasn’t spread to his mind,” Relnyn sighed, looking at the surrounding hills in the distance. “He is mortally wounded. This old idiot has a death wish. The sun sets soon. He probably won’t last till morning.”

  “What can we do?” Anger replaced the panic suddenly, sweet in its power and certainty.

  “Go home,” Relnyn said. “In the War of the Kingdoms, the Ashnyll—my ancestors—fought alongside dragonkind. We are not immune to their innate poison. One of the few benefits from that War was an antidote for this. Our healers will hopefully still possess the skill to create the remedy for Thomas.”

  “And if not?” Sorin asked, afraid of the answer.

  Lifting the shallowly breathing man as though he were a child, Relnyn said, “If not, he will certainly die.”

  Sorin grabbed the reins of both horses and mounted Creek. Cradling the lifeless form of Thomas in the crook of his elbow, Relnyn jogged toward the rising mountains of the north.

  Feeling more alone than ever, Sorin sensed the shadow looming behind them, growing as it closed the distance, but worries it was the jerich were second to the well being of Thomas. He kicked Creek to speed in keeping with the Giant.

  And as they fled north, the forest around them was silent like death’s promise.

  Chapter 12

  High King Nialls Chagne sat in the first row of polished wooden pews in the giant Bacilus Cathedral of Aris Shae, the seat’s uncomfortable hardness adding to his inability to concentrate on the sermon at hand. It was mid-morning, the azure sky peaceful and cloudless, but within the cathedral hundreds of the capital’s most affluent citizens sat behind him as they listened to Archbishop Reneau give a booming Godwyn lecture upon his raised dais. Around the city, thousands of the populace were attending similar services in churches of their own choosing, but the High King’s presence was required here. Around him, the upturned faces of friends, greed-stricken merchant princes, an aristocracy yearning for more power, and a few who wished the betterment of the Kingdom, were lost to the day’s message.

  As was custom, no one sat near him. It was just as well; no one was close enough to view the disenfranchised conflict that filled his eyes and permeated his soul.

  The High King’s First Warden was to return to the capital by early afternoon. Rowen had sent a rider ahead of his company to notify Nialls, and once he arrived he would fill the High King in on the events plaguing La Zandia. The initial reports were not good, and Nialls had not been able to shake the foreboding that constantly stirred within him. He had sent Rowen to find a solution to the problems in the south, and the High King had every confidence the leader of his armies would appraise the situation and resolve it. If the Marcher Lord was intent on battle, nothing was likely to prevent that now. But Nialls could do everything in his power to assure the protection of his subjects. As Dendreth had informed him, there were events taking place in his Kingdom that deserved his undivided attention, but La Zandia was the foremost among them.

  Now Nialls sat amidst the city’s most cunning and manipulative, but it was here he took some reprieve from the pressures of the world without.

  As Archbishop Reneau finished his speech with a passionate, vocal prayer, Nialls was brought achingly back to the Cathedral. It was enormous, able to hold thousands of people, a giant cocoon made from white stone and glimmering glass. Stained glass windows depicting scenes from the era of Aerom Fatherhead rose in tall rectangles around the periphery of the great hall. The architect had designed and created the Bacilus several decades after the War of the Kingdoms ended to provide sanctuary with the All Father’s presence. The hill Aris Shae sat upon was holy, and the Cathedral was a meeting hall for Godwyn’s parishioners. Some historians thought the enormous structure was only wrought to make people feel small, to overwhelm them with grandeur and glamour, to make them humble supplicants. Nialls did not know the truth of the claim and did not care to know; it was part of his routine and that was all that mattered.

  He tried to find comfort on the ancient pew but his thoughts drifted to his mother. Winters past, when his father was High King and Nialls’s own kingship was a far future, his father had called him here. Dark featured, with bold black eyes and straight black hair, High King Cort Chagne ruled fairly with strength. Nialls had received his mother’s fair, golden features, but he had assumed his father’s logical outlook on leadership. He had loved his parents very much, their family unusually close-knit. He had been near his twentieth winter when his father’s summons changed all of that.

  When Nialls arrived, his father was alone, an assurance something was not quite right.

  “Do you know it took more than twenty winters to build this cathedral?” his father began, caressing one of the monolithic stone pillars as if he were smoothing out an invisible wrinkle. “It was a work of monumental care. Feyr did not build it; their time of assisting Godwyn Keep was over. No, this was built by human hands, with human heart.”

  At the time, with each word, fear unlike any he had known crept into Nialls. It was an emotion he would grow to know well.

  “Your mother admired its beauty,” the High King continued in a steady voice, but his father’s usually straight back was bowed. “She loved its fluidity and openness, the very lines Bernine the Architect planned to convey the All Father’s power, depth, and grace. In each stained glass window, she saw a timeless story—the martyrdom of Aerom, the sacrifice of Pontiff Erik as he assured the completion of the Tower of Illuminae, the carpenter who became High King through humility rather than arms. But above all else, she loved these ornately carved pillars lofting the ceiling toward the heavens. Look here.”

  Nialls was able to make out the thinnest black line in the aged stone. It was a crack, a tiny fracture that ran vertically from the bottom of the finely carved pillar and vanished into the stone’s upper reaches. Nialls had never seen it before.

  “It is an imperfection in the stone,” explained his father, still intent on the crack. “When your mother first showed it to me, she was giddy with discovery. We had been married for several winters, and while she was pregnant with you she roamed the palace, learning all she could about the history in these halls, these buildings, the hills the palace sat on. She found this crack and felt like she had found a vein of silver.” He paused, as if gathering strength, the weight increasing on his shoulders. “I thought it unimportant, a triviality. She soon found it detailed in ancient history books. Most of them account for the crack’s appearance as a small stress fracture that occurred when the ceiling’s heavy supporting ribs were added to the pillar. Some philosophers oppose this, saying Bernine placed this imperfect pillar here on purpose to plead the case that nothing in this land is perfect, even in the house of the All Father.”

  Nialls had wanted to reach out to his father, to have him turn, to capture a hint of what the man was thinking. But something restrained his hand, knowing to touch his father would be a grave mistake.

  “One defect in a column like this can bring down an entire building,” his father had said, looking up toward the dome. “And yet, this crack resides within this stone, unable to be free, the stone imprisoning it. The building continues to stand, unwilling to yield to the one flaw.”

  The High King had s
hook then—the Kingdom’s leader dissolved—and the trembling man who was Nialls’s father was all that remained. “I passed your mother’s infatuation with this building off as a woman obsessed with anything to relieve the time it took for you to be born. Now, in retrospect, your mother had a way of seeing the world anew that I will never forget.”

  High King Cort had looked at his son then, and the reddened, wet eyes told the story more acutely than any words. Nialls had clung to the man with tears of his own, beside the flawed and magnificent pillar his mother would never touch again.

  Nialls watched his father go through the remainder of his life as a haunted man, the emptiness at his side reaffirming every day the ache in his heart. It was a grief Nialls would come to know as well. Of those he had loved and shared his life with—his lovely wife, his son, his mother and father, and his closest friend—all but his son were taken from him. They had left him a repository of fond memories, good advice, and total faith in him. But it was difficult going through life alone, to be High King and have nothing else.

  And now his Kingdom was on the verge of war, and it took will to prevent thoughts of his ailing son from overwhelming him entirely. He was on the brink of losing his last intimate relationship at a time when the Kingdom needed him as High King.

  Archbishop Reneau finished his benediction and brought his hands up, signaling to his audience their need to rise. A small choir raised their united voices in harmony, a melding of tones and timbres. The cathedral in turn absorbed the music and released it as a new entity. The piece was meant to swell the hearts of those in attendance, to fill souls empty of hope. For Nialls, it exonerated him from sad thoughts; it reminded him—if only for a moment—of the beauty in the world.

  While the chorus continued, the enormous entryway doors opened soundlessly at the back of the cathedral and two young men entered. They were not yet nineteen winters of age, dressed in white robes that billowed around them as they walked, and each delicately carried an ornate pitcher carved from dark wood and polished to a deep luster. The pitchers, gifts from the Giants of Lockwood, contained water from the Rosemere—the fountain of water that sprung from deep within the earth in the nearby Wyllspring Garden. Pouring the sacred water into the small shimmering pool of the cathedral would symbolize the congregation’s rejuvenation in the presence of the All Father. As the water bearers brought forth their charges and were near the front of the great hall, the Archbishop began to sing deeply, adding his voice to the choir’s, intensifying in the openness of the Cathedral. Nialls tipped his head down to appear in some semblance of humility for the finishing rite, when gasps of shock and fear punctured the music.

  Nialls lifted his chin to know the reason. One of the boys had turned from his customary path, advancing on the High King with eyes devoid of life, the muscles of his face slack. The water bearer dropped his pitcher, but no weapon was visible.

  Wards screamed and ran toward Nialls. He rose from his seat, uncertain. But when the boy reached for him and wrapped his hand about the High King’s left forearm, there was nothing he could do but scream.

  Flames erupted along the boy’s fingers and traveled into Nialls’s flesh, burning and inflexible iron bands. The fire crawled up his arm in a sheath of flickering red, burnt orange, and violent yellow, the smell of the his own crisping skin assailing his nostrils. Soon the fire was engulfing the boy’s robes from the inside, his body the tinder that drove the conflagration, the hand fixed on the King’s arm impossibly strong. Nialls could not get away.

  Time slowed as though he were in a nightmare. Nialls fell backward, the panic of his situation setting in, and he lashed out repeatedly with all his strength, but the young man came on, unabashed by the High King’s efforts. No sound escaped the burning man’s lips. The rest of him became blisteringly hot. Sweat born of heat and fear covered Nialls. He understood clearly this was an assassin; he also knew if he did not get clear of the fire soon, it would consume him.

  The Wards were almost to the High King, but the closest person to Nialls acted without hesitation.

  The other water bearer tackled his flaming companion from behind, and the vise-like grip of Nialls’s adversary grudgingly released as the living inferno was driven off of him. Wards swarmed the assassin, their swords stabbing through the fire deep into its source. He fell to the floor, and as the boy died, the flames died with him. The High King’s young savior rolled on the ground nearby, screaming in pain as the fire that had consumed his companion latched onto him and his white robes, his skin charring. Wards helped to smother the flames and soon they lost potency and died out in an acrid haze of burnt meat.

  “Are you all right, Sire?” a Ward asked, steadying Nialls with a helpful arm while shielding him from further harm. Nearby, another Ward with a familiar voice barked orders to secure the building. “Are you badly wounded?”

  “I’ll be fine, Beric.” Nialls said, surrounded by an anxious throng of his subjects. The King’s Wards pushed the people back, giving Nialls and the scene the distance it deserved, the possibility of more danger hidden nearby evidently concerning his guards.

  Nialls knelt at the side of the boy who had saved him. He was badly burned over much of his chest, arms, and thighs, his white robe covered in black grime where it was not missing altogether. The flames had blistered his neck but left his face unscathed. He breathed shallowly. The High King moved to offer some aid to the water bearer but knew there was nothing he could do at the present moment.

  Beric knelt next to them. “It’s unwise you remain in the open like this, Your Majesty. Might I suggest leaving immediately?”

  “Give this young man the best care possible,” Nialls commanded. “And notify me the moment my First Warden returns.”

  “I am already here, Your Majesty,” said a deep voice beyond the throng. A gray-haired man stepped through the deferential crowd wearing heavy chain of the field. Rowen was the man Nialls had heard ordering the security of the cathedral. “I will come straight away once the palace and cathedral are inspected and deemed safe.”

  With a brutal throb entering his arm, Nialls briefly glimpsed his failed assassin as the High King was escorted away by the warden. The boy only vaguely resembled a human, grotesquely crimson and blackened, peeled skin covering every body part. Faint smoke still rose from the corpse, gagging him with its stench. Nialls peered at what had been the assassin’s face, and what he saw there horrified him.

  The hint of a ruined smile gaped across the boy’s crisped facial tissue, maliciously leering at his intended victim even in death.

  * * * * *

  When Nialls took the final step of the steep spiraling staircase and entered the uppermost chamber of the Tower of Illuminae, he was met with momentary vertigo followed by the awe-inspiring vision of the ocean.

  It was mid-afternoon, and puffy white clouds meandered above the horizon in organized herds. The hills surrounding Aris Shae tumbled into the lowlands below to the Bay of Orphic, their verdant green covering expanding into the distance. Their vibrancy from this perspective captured Nialls. Below them, several large-masted ships sailed smoothly in the calm waters of the bay and trimmed their sails as they coasted into the wharf city of Dockside to replace the ones that left. Across the bay jutted the Godwyn peninsula, the Keep gleaming like a pearl far in the distance against the deep blue of the ocean. The scene was slow-moving and lazy.

  Oftentimes Nialls came here for comfort, to observe the life that filled the city, the ships coming and going, and the world beyond—to lose himself in the unending sky as it met like a mirror at the sea.

  He came to the tower now for a different reason. As High King, he had to be strong and resolute, hiding the fears and worries others would take advantage of, but here he was allowed to relax and think on the Kingdom’s state of affairs without worry. His bandaged arm ached, pulsing with vitality and pain, reminding him evil forces were aligning against him, ready to pounce given any opportunity. He guessed he was lucky he could feel anything at
all. The assassination attempt was foiled, but something else had died within Nialls—the ability to be free, to not have to worry about the shadows, to eat a meal without fear of it being poisoned.

  Pontifex Charl had been gone from Aris Shae for more than a week on a quest for knowledge. Information could help free Nialls once more and give him paths with many choices; information could give him friends whom he could trust.

  The High King heard the faint footsteps of his First Warden enter the understated white stone chamber. Rowen awaited the attention of his leader patiently; he would stand there all day until he was acknowledged. The head of the Kingdom’s army was brusque but dependable, direct when speaking, and crisply dressed. He was not prone to emotion or recklessness, and he showed deferential respect to the common man. He led thousands of warden to maintain peace, his position requiring a focus and commanding attitude in affairs. For all of his stern attributes, Rowen was a true friend, a man who cared so much for the Kingdom he would die rather than see it or the throne desecrated.

  “How fares the boy?” Nialls said finally, turning from the view. He sat in one of the heavily cushioned chairs brought in for his comfort.

  “He is resting now, Your Majesty,” Rowen answered, his shoulders squared and straight, his arms behind his back. “The healers have given him a sleep aid. He is burned quite badly, and he may not live.”

  “If it weren’t for him, I might be dead.”