Nonetheless, it thundered in his ears like a drum. Ridmark turned his head from side to side, but the sound did not change in intensity or variation. He turned in a circle, but the sound did not change. At last, he put his fingers in his ears, and he realized something strange.
He didn’t hear the sound at all.
It was inside of his head.
Yes, it was definitely time to talk to Calliande.
Ridmark strode along the length of the barge, weaving his way past the stacks of grain sacks and barrels and other supplies. One of Tagrimn’s men-at-arms stood at the railing, watching the river and the eastern bank for any signs of foes, and Ridmark stopped next to him.
“Do you hear anything unusual?” said Ridmark.
“My lord?” said the man-at-arms, tilting his head to the side. “I…do not think so, my lord. Is something amiss?”
“No,” said Ridmark. “Thank you.” He kept walking, heading towards the bow of the barge where Calliande had bedded down for the night.
She found him first.
Calliande stepped out from between two stacks of barrels, her hair disheveled from sleep. “Ridmark?”
“Aye,” said Ridmark, trying to find the words to explain what was happening inside of his head.
“Can you hear that?” said Calliande.
Ridmark blinked. “That heartbeat noise?”
“Yes!” said Calliande, her blue eyes widening. “It’s inside my head. You hear it, too?”
Ridmark nodded. “Is it magical?”
“I don’t know,” said Calliande. “The Sight detects nothing. I tried casting a spell, and I didn’t detect anything. I had just gone to sleep, and I woke up hearing that noise. I don’t think anyone else can hear it, either. Just us.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Ridmark. “Why…”
The heartbeat faded away. Ridmark blinked in surprise.
“Did…did it just vanish for you, too?” said Calliande.
“It did,” said Ridmark.
“If it were just me,” said Calliande, “I would have thought I was going mad, or that I just needed some sleep. But both of us…”
“Do you know what it might be?” said Ridmark.
“I don’t,” said Calliande. “And yet…God and the saints, I’m sure I’ve encountered this before somewhere.” She hesitated. “But…I might have removed my memory of it.”
Ridmark frowned. “Why?”
Calliande let out an aggravated sigh. “I don’t know. If I could remember, I would know. I swear, Ridmark. Morigna was right. Sometimes I want to go back and slap my younger self for being overly clever.”
“You are still alive against all odds,” said Ridmark. “Perhaps you were just clever enough.”
Calliande smiled, shook her head, and watched him for a moment.
“Did you have another dream?” she said.
“I might have,” said Ridmark. “I don’t remember if I did. I woke up quickly, but I had fallen asleep on those sacks of grain. It wasn’t particularly comfortable.”
She smiled a little. “As if you care about discomfort.” Her face relaxed, her eyes taking on the dreamy, half-focused look of the Sight. “I…don’t see any active magic around you, or around me.” She shook her head, and her eyes came back into focus. “No. Nothing.”
“If we’re watching for the dvargir and for Enlightened assassins,” said Ridmark, “then we might as well keep watch for whatever this is as well.”
“Aye,” said Calliande. “I wish I could see you while you’re having one of those dreams. They’re caused by some kind of magic or another. If I could observe you with the Sight as they happen, perhaps I could learn something useful, but I suppose I would have to sleep next to for you to manage that…”
Her voice trailed off as she realized what she had said.
They stood in silence for a moment.
“So you want to sleep next to me, then?” said Ridmark.
“Ridmark.” Her eyes glimmered in the moonlight. “Yes. I want to sleep next to you.” She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Under you…”
He couldn’t control himself any longer. Ridmark pulled her close and gave her a long kiss. Calliande shivered and pressed close, one arm coiling around his back, the other digging into his hair to press his face closer to hers. An increasingly small part of Ridmark’s mind pointed out that this was not the time or the place for such things, that they had larger concerns, but the rest of his mind and the entirety of his body did not care.
Calliande kissed him again, and Ridmark answered in kind, pushing her back until her hips bumped against the stack of grain sacks. She blinked and then grinned at him, a deep red flush spreading across her face.
“Ridmark,” she whispered. “My tent…”
“Keeper?”
It was Gavin’s voice, and he was coming closer.
Ridmark closed his eyes and almost snarled in frustration.
Calliande sighed and rested the back of her head against the grain sacks. “Maybe this isn’t the best place for this.”
“No,” said Ridmark, his reason reluctantly taking hold once more.
“You’re right, though,” murmured Calliande.
“About what?”
“These sacks are uncomfortable.”
Ridmark laughed a little and stepped back, and Calliande straightened up, trying to put her clothes back into order. Given that she had been awakened by the sound of the heartbeat, perhaps it was just as well that she already looked disheveled.
“There you are, Keeper,” said Gavin, stepping around the pile of grain sacks. “Antenora wondered where you had gone. She…ah.” His voice trailed off as he saw Ridmark.
“Good night, Keeper,” said Ridmark with a slight bow.
She smiled. “Good night, lord magister.”
Ridmark walked back to the stern of the barge, lost in thought. His conversation earlier with Gavin had convinced him of something. He might lose Calliande in the battle to come, and she might lose him, no matter what he did or how hard he fought.
But if he did die, at least she knew how he felt about her.
Perhaps he could soon do more than tell her how he felt.
Contented with that thought, he went to sleep.
Chapter 7: Seven Corpses
If Imaria insisted upon summoning a Deep Walker, Tarrabus decided to make a show of it. Perhaps that would show his wavering followers the folly of disobedience.
He ordered a space cleared before his pavilion, and Imaria busied herself by drawing a circle on the ground, dotting its circumference with seven smaller circles, each one just large enough to hold a single person. Tarrabus ordered Dux Timon, Dux Septimus, and Dux Verus to attend, along with their chief Comites and knights. All the nobles obeyed since they were of the Enlightened and sworn to heed his commands as leader of the Enlightened.
Malvaxon of Great House Tzanar was nowhere to be seen. Tarrabus’s lip crinkled in disgust. The dvargir Rzarn was too cowardly to face the risks and gain the rewards.
Or maybe he was much smarter than Tarrabus.
Imaria began to cast spells as she walked the circumference of the great circle, shadows writhing around her fingers and seeming to bleed from the veins in her arm. The shadows poured forth from her and sank into the circle, and soon it seemed like a gash carved into the surface of the earth itself, a window into the dark places between the worlds. Power crackled in the air around her, dark magic old and potent, and Tarrabus felt the power of Incariel within him stirring in response to that call.
“A show of useless mummery,” said Verus in a quiet voice, scowling at Imaria. “Unless she can wave her hands and bring the walls of Tarlion crashing down, this is a waste of time.”
“Do you dare to question the power of the Shadowbearer?” said Timon, ever eager to score points against his rival.
“I question doing this in front of the men,” said Septimus, with a wary look around them. “Most of those fools fail t
o understand our purpose and believe us to be demon-worshippers. Why turn them against us further? Already morale hangs by a thread. When the hour of battle comes, they might throw down their weapons, or worse, side with the bastard prince and his superstitious rabble.”
“Be silent,” said Tarrabus, though he shared Septimus’s misgivings. He hoped Imaria knew what she was doing. “She is the Shadowbearer, and the mantle of the shadow of Incariel is hers. Do you think she desires our defeat? No. She shall bring us victory.”
“A fine job you both have done of it so far,” said Verus with scorn.
Tarrabus stiffened. A little grumbling was one thing. But this was too far. He opened his mouth to rebuke Verus, or perhaps to order his knights to seize the Dux of Tarras on the spot, but another voice rang over the camp.
“High King Tarrabus Carhaine!”
Imaria walked to the edge of the circle, twisting shadows rising from it like steam from a pot of boiling water. The hundreds of men watching her had been speaking in a low voice but fell silent as she stopped a dozen yards from Tarrabus. Her shadow flowed out behind her like ink, a dozen copies of it pointing from her in all directions and spreading across the ground like a vast cloak.
“The hour has come, High King of Andomhaim,” said Imaria, her eerie double voice ringing over the camp. Tarrabus saw Timon go pale, saw Verus swallow and brace himself beneath the awful weight of Imaria’s mirrored gaze. Tarrabus remembered the unstable young woman he had once seduced, compared her with the creature now standing before him, and tried not to shudder. “I require the vessels.”
“Bring them out,” snapped Tarrabus to one of his household knights.
His men-at-arms came forward, escorting seven women with their wrists bound behind their backs and gags stuffed into their mouths, their eyes rolling back and forth with terror. They were of no importance, merely seven women who had followed the army and turned to prostitution to keep themselves from starving. They had been sealed inside the siege walls with the rest of Tarrabus’s army, though no doubt they would have fled long ago if they had the power.
He looked at them and felt nothing but a mild contempt for their weakness and uselessness.
Still, in their deaths, they would prove more useful than they ever had in life.
At Imaria’s direction, the men-at-arms dragged the terrified women to the circle, and one by one they shoved the women into the smaller circles along the edge of the larger one. As each woman entered an individual circle, shadows erupted up around her, wrapping around her like ropes and binding her in place. The men-at-arms pushed the camp followers into the circles, and soon seven women stood spaced evenly around the large circle. It put Tarrabus in mind of a circle ringed by seven equidistant candles, if candles burned with shadow instead of fire.
That thought didn’t surprise him. He had seen many such ceremonies in the decades since his father had first inducted him into the Enlightened of Incariel.
The air grew colder and colder, and Tarrabus’s breath started to steam in the air despite the heat of the summer night. Imaria walked the circumference of the circle, chanting in a language he did not know, shadows streaming and dancing around her hands. On her second circuit, she raised her right arm, and some of the armor plates upon her forearm unfolded, reshaping themselves into a two-foot long blade of serrated dvargirish steel.
She slashed the blade across the throat of the nearest trapped camp follower.
The woman died with a shudder, blood spraying from her torn throat. Or it would have, had the blood not been caught in the currents of shadow writhing around her. The shadow seemed to suck all the blood from her flesh at once, adding it to the darkness whirling around the circle. One by one Imaria killed the helpless women, the shadows drinking away their blood, and soon a circle of both darkness and flowing blood writhed before Tarrabus. Strangely, the corpses remained standing, bound in place by the dark power that Imaria had summoned.
Imaria stopped at the head of the circle, facing Tarrabus from its other side, and began to chant. The air grew colder and colder, frost crystals forming upon the ground, and plumes of breath rose from the men-at-arms watching the spell. Some of them slipped away, fearing the dark power that Imaria summoned, while others quickly crossed themselves. Under other circumstances, Tarrabus would have taken note and had them punished for cowardice and superstition.
But he could not tear his eyes from the dark magic unfolding before him.
A shadow took shape within the circle, a shadow cast by nothing within the camp. Imaria raised her hands over her head, her chant growing louder and louder, her voice rising to a scream.
Suddenly she switched from the strange language to Latin.
“Come forth!” she shrieked, her alien voice ringing over the camp. Tarrabus wondered if they could hear her behind Arandar’s walls. “Come forth! By the power of Incariel, I open the way! By the power of Incariel, I call you forth! By the power of Incariel, I summon you. Let this gift of blood and death be pleasing to your taste! Deep Walker! Harvester of Souls! Master of Masks! Thrice I name you, and thrice I summon you. Come forth!”
It was a clear night, but a blast of blue lightning howled down from the sky and struck the center of the circle, the earth within it erupting into ghostly blue fire. A huge shape seemed to rise from the flames, something that looked like a ghastly mixture of insect, squid, and spider. The shape swelled and expanded, seeming to fill the inside of the circle, and then it shrank, vanishing like black oil poured down a drain.
The shape flowed down the throat of the nearest slain woman.
The motionless corpse staggered, the shell of shadows around it collapsing. The dead woman stumbled a few steps, and then went motionless. Ghostly blue fire filled the dead eyes as if candles of blue light had been placed inside her skull. The head swiveled back and forth, regarding them, and the woman took a few steps towards Tarrabus, her dead face twisting in a toothy smile.
She was moving far more gracefully in death than she had in life.
“Isn’t this unexpected?” said the dead woman in flawless Latin. Her voice was a melody, smooth and beautiful, but so inhuman it sent a chill down Tarrabus’s spine, and he had seen a lifetime of unnerving sights. “Why, a gathering of hairless monkeys!” She let out a ringing, jangling laugh. “And monkeys that think to imitate the dark elves upon their path to ruin. How delightful!” Her smile widened, and her face started to shift and flow, her features become more wolfish. “I have killed many dark elves, but not as many humans as I might wish. Well, there is no time like the present, and…”
Tarrabus reached for his sword, which he carried on his back since he had to keep Excalibur upon his hip. If this horror that Imaria had conjured up and bound within a corpse thought to challenge the High King of Andomhaim and the leader of the Enlightened of Incariel, he would teach it the folly of its ways.
“Deep Walker!” said Imaria, her voice like the crack of a whip.
The dead woman turned, and a little sound of surprise came from her as she faced Imaria.
“The shadow of the imprisoned angel!” the creature said in astonishment. “Fallen over a human monkey? Remarkable indeed!”
“I am Imaria Licinius Shadowbearer,” said Imaria, her quicksilver eyes falling upon the animated corpse, “and I bear the shadow of Incariel. By that authority, I compel you. Speak to me your name.”
The corpse laughed. “My true name cannot be spoken by human lips, lest your hearts wither to ash in your chests and your minds shatter in horror. Yet I am the devourer of hope. I am the enemy of joy. I am the breaker of souls. Hearken! Before your kindred walked this world, the dark elves called me Soulbreaker, and this title is suitable enough.”
Soulbreaker. A suitably pompous title. Yet as Tarrabus looked at the animated corpse, he suspected that the creature inhabiting the dead flesh could make true upon its boast.
“Then Soulbreaker I name you,” said Imaria.
“As you like,” said Soulbreaker with indiffe
rence. “To what purpose have you summoned me, Shadowbearer? Even your predecessor only summoned me in the direst of circumstances.”
“To slay my enemies,” said Imaria. “Soon Incariel shall be freed from its prison, and all mortals shall be liberated from time and the flesh.” Soulbreaker let out a sneering little laugh. “My enemies threaten the purpose of Incariel. They must be slain.”
“Your enemies, Shadowbearer?” said Soulbreaker, turning in a circle. Her blue-glowing eyes fell upon Tarrabus. “Ah! Or this man’s enemies, perhaps? You are the bearer of Incariel’s shadow, Imaria Licinius Shadowbearer, but the coils of Incariel have wrapped themselves tightly around the soul of this man.” She glided forward, her head swaying back and forth atop her neck like a serpent, a strange sort of delight upon her features. “Who are you, human? Who presumes to play with dark powers far beyond your understanding?”
Tarrabus glanced at Imaria, but she said nothing. With a surge of irritation, he realized that this was a test, that she was putting a trial before him to see if he was worthy. It was the way of the Enlightened of Incariel, and Tymandain Shadowbearer had been fond of such petty little tests, though he had rarely killed his minions for failing him.
A pity. Perhaps if Tymandain Shadowbearer had done so, someone more competent would have been in command of the Iron Tower and Ridmark and the Keeper would be dead.
“I am Tarrabus of the House of the Carhainii,” said Tarrabus, “High King of Andomhaim and the Initiated of the Seventh Circle of the Enlightened of Incariel.”
Soulbreaker laughed at him. “Such proud words to describe such dross! Andomhaim? A patch of dirt upon the spinning face of this world, an ephemera a mere millennium old. The House of the Carhainii? Your family is younger than your realm, High King, and yet you speak of it as ancient nobility. The Enlightened? What do you know of enlightenment? Have you looked into the dark heart of the void between the world? Have you heard the whispers of the creatures that dwell in the lightless places? Have you spoken with Incariel and its kindred in their prison, and heard them speak the words of power that would rend your heart and turn your soul to a pulp if you heard them?”
Frostborn: Excalibur (Frostborn #13) Page 10