The Glass Throne (Legends of Ansu Book 4)

by JW Webb

  That was when Olen saw him—the rider in the sky. The ancient horseman by some called the Wanderer, he hurried forth a dark storm, his hounds baying overhead and a host drifting silent behind him.

  The Wild Hunt was abroad.

  Olen’s riders gazed up in horror as the grim vision tore across the night sky. The Wanderer blew three times on his ghostly horn and then, even from that distance, those watching by their campfire could feel the heavy gaze of his single eye.

  The Wanderer pointed his spear toward them and then swung it around, whilst guiding his eight-legged stallion to face north. With a final horn blast, the host rode high, passing overhead and fading into the distant shadows of The High Wall.

  It might have been his imagination, but Olen thought he glimpsed the faces of the dead Ptarnians he’d spied that morning rushing behind the Wanderer’s hounds. With a distant boom, the host vanished, and the moon rolled back behind cloud.

  The following morning, a pale sun spilled a modicum of warmth on the white dale and moor surrounding the dark forest, brooding a mile to their north. Olen walked among his men alongside Arami and Kerante. The vision last night had terrified them all—except Olen, who now had a grim determined set to his jaw.

  “So what do you propose?” Kerante asked him while they were breaking camp. “Back to Rorshai?”

  Olen shook his head. “That was a message from the Skyrider last night. He is faring north for war and bids us do the same. Corin—should he survive Darkvale—will make for Point Keep, the old fortress, and we will do the same.”

  “What of the Ptarnians?” Arami had overheard their conversation.

  “We kill any we find.” Olen smiled grimly. “Their main force will be far north of us by now, and if we stick close to the mountains we should avoid their scouts. “Come, alert the others we’re riding out. Once we join Rogan and the rest back at the Greywoods we’ll fare north. What say you, my friends and comrades?”

  ***

  The aging king slumped on his throne and watched his handsome son gesticulating enthusiastically in front of him. Callanz had all the fire that his father had lost years ago. His eldest now called himself Emperor and flaunted the title openly in front of his father. It was common news throughout court that Callanz was waiting for King Akamates to drown himself in drink. That wouldn’t take long, Akamates thought with a wry smile, as he watched the fire glint in his son’s eyes.

  “Father, we have heard from the first expedition. Pashel Akaz has reached the western ranges. I received coded bird this morning. We can commence the invasion within days!”

  “What of the Urgolais?” Akamates let his smile fall from his face. Callanz had an unhealthy enthusiasm concerning the dark brethren. Akamates and his fathers had served and sacrificed to the Dog People as had been their duty, but his son was unusually ardent in his passion for offering blood.

  Callanz had big dreams. It had been his suggestion and persistence that had led to Akamates bidding one of his three great armies march west into the barbaric lands beyond the Great Plains.

  What lay there was of scant interest to Akamates. He—like his forefathers—had been more than content with subjugating every kingdom surrounding Ptarni and bringing them to heel. Only distant Shen had been powerful enough to rebuff their forces.

  But this wasn’t enough for Callanz. A month ago he had spilled into court, the blood of his last sacrifice dripping from his forearms. “Morak has spoken to me!” Callanz had addressed the court rather than his father. “He says there is a land of vast wealth and treasures rotting beyond the plains. A kingdom ripe for the taking, for its people are lost and their gods forsaken.”

  “What say you, Father?” Callanz had turned and addressed the king, now he had the whole court buzzing. “Those lands parade the western ocean. Once they are ours, we will command the seas as well as most this entire continent. Too long have we sat on our heels!

  This last comment was addressed to the crowd, but Akamates knew it was just another stab at his kingship. For forty years, Akamates had ruled as fairly and wisely as he knew how, but that wasn’t enough, in his son’s opinion.

  The news that the deity Morak himself had spoken of these lands had caused such fervour that Akamates’ only choice had been to give his son his blessing and bid the entire Second Army, under command of the capable Pashel Akaz, range west across the steppes.

  Now Akamates drained his wine glass and smiled his thin smile. That had been a month ago, and this was the first word Callanz had received from that army.

  “What next, Emperor?” The king bid a slave pour him more wine. He slumped back further in the throne and showed his teeth to his preening son. Callanz held the court at his every word. Callanz was loved by the gods and loved by his people, whilst his father was a dry old stick taking too long to die.

  Callanz’s dark eyes flashed annoyance hearing that title. “The people chose that title Father—not I.” Then his face brightened like a child receiving an unexpected gift. “But don’t you see, this is a chance for Ptarni to become the greatest realm that ever was?”

  “That ever was?” Akamates coughed into his wine. “Your ambition might prove your undoing, Callanz. That or your trust of the Dog-People. Ever have we steered a wary course with them, and yet you go full out to sate their every desire.”

  “Father, I —”

  “Go ahead, sack yonder kingdoms, slay and enslave whomsoever you can. And then what? Swim in that foreign sea? Catch cold? The Urgolais will have their price, Callanz, and it will be a high one.”

  “That may well prove the case.” The Emperor’s eyes narrowed to cunning slits of coal. “But they need us too! Morak seeks his old spear—Golganak. With that returned, he would regain his former powers. I have promised to deliver it to him, and in return, he will ensure that Ptarni rises to become the greatest Empire since the days of legendary Xandoria—that fabled, fallen kingdom rumored to lie across the sea from Shen.”

  Callanz stopped as his father rose from his seat of indolent power, spilling crimson wine from his heavy gold chalice and dropping the cup to clatter and roll on the mosaic floor at his feet.

  “It appears I have sired the greatest of fools!” Akamates roared at his son. “That spear is as evil as its master! And while he has been without it we have always managed to appease him. But with it, he will use us as his puppets and then destroy us. He will obliterate Ptarni or else enslave our race when he is done. Morak despises mankind!”

  “But Father —“

  “You, most wretched son, have sold our people to the Dog Lords, and without my permission. I am still king here! Go now, Callanz. Leave my realm whilst I still have the strength to banish you from it!”

  Callanz stood for a minute staring defiantly back at his father. “As you wish… King.” The smirk smeared his handsome face and mocked his father. “But I am the power in this ‘Kingdom,’ and soon you will be dead!” Callanz laughed then, and turning on his heels, swept his golden cloak behind him and briskly vacated the palace.

  Akamates felt both strength and anger fade from his limbs as his son departed. He sank back on the throne and supped hard at the new chalice that had quickly been replaced at his table. So the spear would soon be loosed, and the time long foretold was finally upon them. He was almost glad he wouldn’t live to see it.

  ***

  The wood’s thick tapestry was dry and warm after the bitter chill of the wilderness outside, the pines so dense and close no sky could pierce their mantle, and neither could any determined snowflake reach that dense carpet of needles far below.

  Corin walked as one lost in a dream. His arm no longer troubled him, and all fear, fatigue, and chill had vanished the minute he’d ventured deeper into the forest. Darkvale—the name meant little to him. Someone, somewhere, had said something about it. So what? She was waiting for him somewhere within its midst—the woman whose warm promises he felt inside his head and whose smiling green eyes he saw through the trees.

  He
heard her sultry tones as he hurried beneath the drooping limbs of willow, birch, and creaking alder—the pines having given way to older, heavier trees. She whispered more promises to him, beckoning him hurry to claim them, her voice soft as willow brushing soil.

  There were no paths in this forest, but Corin threaded his long limbs betwixt briar and thorn, hardly noticing as they tore deep into his flesh. He walked into darkness, the trees closing in as if listening to his hurried breath.

  At last he reached a glade containing a small pasture, ordered and neat. Corin saw cows grazing and a lone sheep rubbing its back against a fence. A peaceful, gentle scene. Canes were tied in wigwams with beans descending and bees buzzing noisily around.

  It was hot, the snow long forgotten, and a bright sun sent golden shafts of light into the surrounding trees. Ahead rested a cottage, small and thatched with low chimney and steady smoke drifting up into the blue. At its door stood the woman, her arms folded and and the loveliest smile on her lips.

  She beckoned him approach, and Corin almost tripped with eagerness to reach her. There she stood, tall and slender, her tanned ankles and arms hinting at greater delights hidden beneath her deep green dress. She wore a smile like other women wore silk, and her eyes were the green of polished emeralds in firelight.

  As one stupefied with drink, Corin fell into her arms, and she closed her net around him, soft and strong and silent. Snap! Her full lips brushed his, and to Corin it felt that he had never kissed a woman before. Gone was his memory, his purpose, or his reason for existing, all extinguished by this witchy woman’s kiss. She kissed him again and then smiled, letting her hands drop to caress the stirring he felt below.

  “Come inside,” she told him. “I have been waiting for you.”

  “Who are you?” Corin heard himself mutter, though his lips trembled and his words were but echoes lost in that enchanted place. And though he hardly cared for an answer.

  “Someone who knows you well, Corin an Fol, and someone who can heal your pain like no other could even attempt. I have many names,” she told him as she placed a slender arm in his and led him to a leather chair parked easy by the glowing log fire.

  “You can call me Maife; it’s a name I bore in my younger days. Come, Corin, sit by the fire and let me heal your weariness. You have come a long way and achieved much, though little reward have you received. Scant appreciation, save only hints and innuendoes from those who have used you. And they have used you ill. You deserve better, Longswordsman.”

  As she said the final words, her soft hand slipped inside his trousers and eased his tension within. “Love me!” Maife’s voice was husky in his ears and her breath hung over him like honey wine. “It has been so long since a real man entered my domain, and I have been so very lonely cooped up in this wood.”

  Corin groaned as she worked her hand up and down expertly. He reached beneath her dress, sliding his fingers up her thighs, but then she laughed and pulled away. “Later,” she promised. “First you must rest, and to rest properly you need good strong ale.”

  “Ale,” Corin smiled, and before he knew it she’d produced a brimming cup of beer and leaned to placed it in his shaking hands. Corin smiled as her smoky hair brushed his face. He leant forward to kiss her again, but she backed off.

  “Drink it.” Maife’s smile fell away from her face. He didn’t notice, but her eyes had hardened to urgent jade glints.

  So drink it he did, and moments later, Corin slumped into a deep and troubled dream—if dream it was, for the visions that flew at him were hideous and real.

  ***

  He woke inside his dream, his laced eyes blinking in total darkness. Outside, an owl screeched, and something large clawed at the timbers of the cottage. Corin shivered, and looking down, he saw that he was naked, and in horror he noticed there were signs and shapes cut shallow into his flesh. He cried out, and the woman loomed close. Her hair no longer smelt of honey, but stank of decaying death.

  “You are mine now.” She smiled, but there was no kindness in her face. The visage gazing down at him was infinitely beautiful and quintessentially cruel. “Corin an Fol, brave and valiant warrior. The Chosen One—they said. The fulcrum and a new hope! But you are none of those things. Instead you are a fool, weak and easy as any other man.”

  Corin tried to rise, but her hand slapped him back hard on the chair. Those fingers burnt his naked flesh like glacial ice. Their icy touch sapped all strength left in his veins.

  “It was my task to trap you and keep you for a while, at least until I grow bored. And I do get bored most easily!” She laughed in his ear and Corin screamed silently, feeling her long broken nails scraping deep inside the soft flesh of his inner thighs. The woman called Maife laughed. Corin kicked out at her but his feet found no target. The woman had vanished. A show of motion drifted by the door, a shape that faded to grey like day-old ashes in the gloom. He heard distant laughter like wind chimes in a gale.

  Light fled the room then, and dark things rushed at him. He heard screams, the clash of steel on steel, and as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Corin found himself inside a broken roofless shack with man-size cobwebs glistening in the moonlight. The dark winking owl perched on a beam, its eyes green as emeralds.

  Corin tried to rise, shout out, and break free from the dream in any way he could. But his words would form no sounds and his body felt weak and cold as though invisible chains cut into his skin. His flesh crawled and shivered, and looking down in horror Corin saw there were tiny grey things scurrying up his legs, whilst others crawled around his face, occasionally settling to bite his forehead and cheek. And all the while that metallic laughter filtered through from the chilly black outside.

  The scene shifted. Corin stood beneath a city’s great walls, a pile of corpses all around, and a cloaked figure approached with a long black spear held aloft in both hands.

  Corin felt the corpses stir at his feet and gasped as they reached up and tugged him down through the soil. The cloaked figure loomed over him, and Corin screamed as the black spear skewered his flesh, and all strength, will, and courage leaked out from his veins.

  This is not real!

  A small voice reached him—maybe it was his own voice, but he couldn’t tell.

  Do not surrender to the dream—THIS IS NOT REAL!

  Corin wrenched his lips apart in a silent scream. “Help me!” The words scurried like rats from the room, and above his head Corin saw a shadow growing like a huge bat and hanging over his bleeding body. Looking up, he cried out as Maife’s feral eyes bore like beetles deep inside his head.

  But suddenly Corin was aware of another shadow, a warm shadow of copper and gold filtering into his dream. A voice he recognized broke through the dark. “He is not yours, cousin! You must release him—you have no right holding him here!”

  The bat-like shadow folded its wings and stretched along the walls, becoming a spider. As it crawled, Maife’s whispers followed it like the noisome buzz of blowflies on a corpse. “You trespass, Vervandi. You have no power here. This is my realm!”

  “But he is mine, and his destiny awaits him. You have no sanction here, Undeyna. It is you who trespass, dark cousin who so long ago betrayed the light!” The shadows met and intermingled, Corin felt a tingle all over his body as the fusion in the air erupted like plasma inside his head.

  The faint shadow of Vervandi flickered as the greater spider shadow surrounded it and smothered its honey glow to black. A bell tolled, and a silent scream fled into the night.

  A crashing thud revealed Vervandi lying prone at his feet like a broken doll, twisted and torn. The spider/bat shape folded and dropped to the floor, becoming Maife again. In her left hand was a dagger, long and black and twisted. It shimmered slightly in the gloom. She crouched low over Vervandi’s prone form, and yanking her head back by her copper hair, scraped the blade along her white throat. Vervandi’s blood oozed out, soaking Corin’s feet.

  “Now it’s your turn.” Maife’s smile at Corin was
as twisted as her knife. She leaned low over Corin’s struggling body and plunged the knife hard into his belly. Corin roared as the red pain tore open inside him; even in his dream state he felt his consciousness fade and his butchered self float like a cloud above the oozing wrecks that were his and Vervandi’s bodies.

  A sound broke through his pain, driving it into the background. The long doleful note of a horn. Corin felt his inner self crash back inside his body. He opened his eyes.

  Silence. Vervandi was gone. Gone too were the other woman and the gaping rent in his belly, the shapes cut in his flesh, and the crawling creatures. Corin gasped out loud with relief. He heard a croaky chuckle coming from somewhere close. Corin shifted his body until he saw who stood in the doorway with arms folded, surveying him as a butcher studies hides.

  An old man, but no stranger to Corin. He watched the Wanderer stoop low beneath the broken doorway at the entrance of the shack. A single damning silver eye fell upon Corin, and then the Huntsman crashed through the room and swept Corin’s body up in his iron-strong arms as though he were a lamb.

  “Am I still dreaming?” Corin asked, as the Wanderer summoned his eight-legged horse, and after tossing Corin over the saddle, clambered on Uppsalion’s back and bade the mighty deathsteed carry them up to the night skies above. “Am I dead?” Corin felt the chill of winter night return as that silver gaze fell upon him again.

  “You live.” The voice was a blunt saw scraping metal. “Your time has yet to come, Corin an Fol,” the Wanderer told him. “But come it will.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “To meet your father.” The Wanderer raised his great horn to his lips and blew a long cold note. Corin felt an icy rush of air followed by a sense of falling through dark, then the cold soft touch of snow settled all around him, blanketing his fall.

  Corin opened his eyes and blinked in bright sunlight. The Wanderer had vanished. Instead, Vervandi was seated close by on a large flat stone, Clouter gripped in her slender hands. Corin almost wept to see her lovely face.