Frostborn: Excalibur (Frostborn #13)

by Jonathan Moeller

  “I don’t think I would lock up a malophage in the Tower,” said Calliande, but she nodded. “That is wise. I should have thought of it myself. I’m…distracted.”

  “So am I,” said Ridmark. “I wanted to be in bed with you by now.”

  “Ridmark!” said Calliande in a shocked tone, but she grinned.

  He found himself smiling back. “You hadn’t realized that? When a man asks a woman to marry him, that’s usually at the top of his thoughts.”

  “Don’t tease,” she said, but she smiled again and squeezed his hand. She looked so happy. If they lived, if they were victorious in the war to come, he hoped he could make her that happy.

  Blue fire swirled again, and Third reappeared, breathing hard.

  “I spoke with Kharlacht and told him that we were entering the Tower of the Keeper to see if anything of use could be found within it,” said Third.

  “True enough,” said Ridmark. “Thank you.”

  His good humor cooled. All his life, the Tower of the Keeper had been a place of mystery and danger. It was possible that Calliande had indeed locked something dangerous within the Tower, and they would need to be ready to face it. His mind was clouded with a mixture of strong emotion and raw physical desire, and he needed to keep his thoughts clear.

  They circled around the base of the Citadel’s hill, came to the Via Ecclesia, and the Tower of the Keeper came into sight.

  It had not changed since Ridmark’s previous visit. Gray mist still swirled and danced in the windows of the Tower, obscuring any view of what lay within. The oak trees stood at the base of the tower, wreathed in mist. Ridmark could still hear the heartbeat inside his head, and he was certain it was coming from the domed chamber at the apex of the pale white tower.

  Calliande stared at the Tower as if transfixed.

  “Keeper?” said Third.

  “Calliande?” said Ridmark.

  For a moment, she said nothing, her eyes fixed upon the mists.

  “I…I remember,” she said at last.

  ###

  Pieces of the past blurred through Calliande’s mind.

  She had thought she had recovered her complete memory at Dragonfall, but that had been wrong, hadn’t it? She had regained nearly all her memory except for her memories of the Tower of the Keeper because the Tower was dangerous.

  Or, more specifically, what awaited in the highest chamber.

  Hideously dangerous.

  It had been one final safeguard.

  Even if she had failed, even if Tymandain Shadowbearer had captured her and drained her mind of its knowledge, he would not learn this last, dangerous secret. But he had asked her, hadn’t he? On the day she had awakened, he had captured her and dug into her mind, asking her for the location of the staff and the sword. Her staff had been hidden in Dragonfall, safely out of his reach, the memory removed from her mind.

  But the sword…

  “I did this,” said Calliande. “I remember now.”

  “Did what?” said Ridmark.

  “It was after the war,” said Calliande. “The first war, I mean, against the Frostborn.” The words tumbled out of her as the memories came into focus. “After I realized what Tymandain Shadowbearer intended, after I founded the Order of the Vigilant and built the Tower of Vigilance. This…this was the last place I stopped before we departed Tarlion for the Northerland. Kalomarus was with me.”

  “The Dragon Knight,” said Ridmark.

  “Yes,” said Calliande.

  She stepped through the gate in the low wall, and the enspelled mist that filled the trees drew back from her approach. Why should it not? She was the one who had summoned it centuries ago. Her Sight saw the power flickering through the mist, the steady glow from the wards upon the Tower.

  Some of those wards she had set herself.

  “I need to have a look within the Tower,” said Calliande. “I’ll…be back in a few moments. You should…”

  “No,” said Ridmark at once, stepping to her side. “Whatever is in there, you should not face it alone.”

  “The lord magister is correct,” said Third.

  Calliande hesitated, trying to find the words to describe her fears. Looking at the tower filled with a strange sense of dread, as if doom awaited them within its walls, some terrible fate that she could not escape.

  Suddenly she knew, beyond all doubt, that Ridmark’s dreams were connected to the thing waiting for them within the tower.

  “All right,” said Calliande. “All right. We’ll go together. But…be careful. Don’t touch anything unless I say it is safe.”

  Ridmark and Third nodded. Calliande took a deep breath, turned, and walked deeper into the woods, Third and Ridmark following. The mist rolled back at their approach and closed again behind them, encircling the three of them in a ring of gray haze. A path of white stone wound its way over the mossy ground, and Calliande followed it to the base of the Tower. Eight steps of white stone led up to the double doors of bronze, untarnished despite the passage of the centuries, and the doors glowed with a powerful ward to Calliande’s Sight.

  She climbed the stairs, struck the end of her staff against the doors, and waited.

  After a moment, the doors opened on silent hinges, the wards unlocking.

  For Calliande was the master of this tower.

  The memory of the chamber in the base of the Tower returned even as she stepped into it with Ridmark and Third. The floor was an elaborate mosaic showing Malahan Pendragon leading the exiles through the gate from Old Earth. Statues of white marble stood in niches along the walls, images of Keepers past. An elaborate bronze chandelier hung from the ceiling overhead, its tips glowing with pale white flames. Stone stairs wound their way higher into the Tower.

  “I was taught here,” said Calliande. “Once I became the Keeper’s apprentice. Not for long, though. The Frostborn were in the north, and the Keeper and her apprentice were needed. I learned of the Sight here and the powers of the Keeper’s mantle…”

  Her voice trailed off, and she felt herself start to shiver. Ridmark gripped her right hand, and she closed her eyes and squeezed back, trying to get herself under control. She hated to show any weakness, but if she could not show weakness in front of the man she wanted to marry, then to whom could she show it? And it was useless to try to conceal things from someone as wise and observant as Third.

  “It has to be a weapon,” said Third.

  Calliande opened her eyes. “A weapon?”

  “You must have concealed some fell and terrible weapon here lest it fall into the hands of your foes,” said Third. “It is the only logical conclusion. Else why would you have removed the memory?”

  “You did the same with your staff and the mantle of the Keeper,” said Ridmark.

  Calliande looked at the staff in her left hand. “Yes.”

  “Is it the sword of the Dragon Knight?” said Third.

  Calliande gave her a sharp look. “The Dragon Knight?”

  “The Dragon Knight disappeared after the Frostborn were defeated,” said Third. “No one knew what became of him, not even my father. Could you have left his sword here to await the hour of need?”

  Calliande hesitated. It did make sense…

  “No,” she said. “No, Kalomarus was with me when I went to Dragonfall, and then he went with me to the Tower of Vigilance. He was one of the last people I saw before I went into the long sleep. I don’t know what he did after that.” She shrugged. “If I had to guess, I would say he went back to Cathair Solas. The sword of the Dragon Knight held the power of the ancient dragons, power entrusted to the high elves after the dragons departed from this world. That was how Kalomarus and I met, actually. I realized we could not defeat the Frostborn without additional aid, so I traveled with a party of knights to Cathair Solas to petition the high elves for help, just as the Keeper did during the war against the urdmordar. That led to the creation of the Two Orders. Ardrhythain answered my plea as well. He gave Kalomarus the Sword, and…and he be
came the Dragon Knight. The first human Dragon Knight.” The memories started to come back into focus. “All the previous Dragon Knights were high elves, their traditional war leaders. For a human to carry that Sword…it almost killed Kalomarus. It almost drove him mad.”

  “At least it isn’t here, then,” said Ridmark.

  Calliande looked at him, another wave of dread going through her. There was no way the sword of the Dragon Knight could be here. Yet she knew in her bones that the heartbeat was somehow connected to it. That Ridmark’s dreams were connected to it.

  Morigna’s warning flashed through her mind, the warning something was coming that would destroy Ridmark. Was that what the spirit had meant? Soulbreaker had also prophesied that Calliande would lead Ridmark to his death. Surely that was no more than the final taunt of a defeated foe, but the Deep Walkers possessed great powers of magic…

  Calliande wanted to leave the Tower, but the heartbeat in her mind had grown more urgent, more insistent. She swallowed, squeezed Ridmark’s hand once more, let go of him, and led the way to the stairs.

  They passed through several chambers as the stairs wound their way higher into the ancient Tower of the Keeper. One room was the library, holding copies of magical works and spell books too dangerous to show to the Magistri. Another room held an armory, storing magical weapons and armor gathered from before the time of the Two Orders. The room above that was the living quarters of the Keepers, the furnishings preserved through magic, and included a large and comfortable bed. Calliande could not but help think that would have made an excellent bed for her first night with Ridmark. Certainly, no one would have disturbed them here.

  But the heartbeat drew her onward.

  At last the stairs ended in a bronze door carved with symbols of glowing white fire, and another memory returned to Calliande.

  “The Chamber of Sight,” she said. “The Sight was enhanced in there, made stronger. The Keeper could look into the past or the future, see lives that might have been, but there was always a danger of madness.” She took a deep breath. “Whatever’s making the heartbeat is in there.”

  Again, she felt the overwhelming urge to turn back, the certainty that harm would befall Ridmark if they entered the room. Yet she was just as certain that she had to enter the room, that something even worse would happen if she did not enter the Chamber of Sight.

  Calliande swallowed and opened the bronze door.

  ###

  Ridmark walked with Calliande and Third into the Chamber of Sight.

  It was a domed chamber, with narrow windows looking over the city and the woods below. The floor was polished green marble, carved with interlocking rings of magical symbols, and there was no furniture in the room.

  Part of Ridmark’s eyes noted the details, but he barely registered them.

  The woman standing in the center of the room held the entirety of his attention.

  She was tall and pale, and she would have been naked, but instead of clothes, she wore flames, flames that curled up her slender limbs and wrapped close to her skin. Her features shifted and changed as Ridmark looked at her, seeming to become Aelia’s one moment, Morigna’s the next, and then those of Calliande a heartbeat later.

  The woman was also just slightly translucent, as if she wasn’t really there.

  She held out a pale arm to Ridmark.

  “Burn with me,” said the woman.

  Another woman stepped next to the woman gowned in fire, and for an instant shock froze Ridmark.

  It was Morigna.

  Like the woman gowned in fire, she was translucent, and she looked just as she had on the day she had died, the same clothes, the same tattered cloak of green and brown, the same pale features and imperious dark eyes. For a moment Ridmark thought it was a trick or a trap, that she was a creature like the urshanes the Sculptor had thrown at him.

  Then Morigna gave him a sad smile, and the memory thundered through him.

  He remembered it all.

  The dreams.

  The hall of white stone.

  The old knight upon his throne.

  And in one of the dreams, the vision of the shadow of Incariel boiling up from Black Mountain to devour the world.

  “She has found you at last, my love,” said Morigna, “and I am sorry for it. I hope you are ready.”

  “Burn with me,” said the woman gowned in fire.

  She and Morigna vanished, and in their place a pillar of gray mist erupted from the floor, ripping open into a rift to another place. A howl filled Ridmark’s ears as a gale screamed through the chamber, so strong that he could barely keep his feet.

  Calliande could not. The wind picked her up and threw her forward, and she tumbled into the strange rift, vanishing from sight.

  Ridmark threw himself after her.

  He tumbled into the rift, and gray light swallowed his vision.

  Epilogue

  Mara, Queen of the Anathgrimm and of Nightmane Forest, fought for her life.

  Qhazulak, Zhorlacht, and Jager had all agreed that she needed to be kept from the fighting, and since her Champion, her chief wizard, and her husband never agreed on anything, she had acquiesced, hanging back with the Queen’s Guard near the eastern bank of the River Moradel as the Anathgrimm raided the columns of Frostborn troops marching south along the Moradel road.

  Unfortunately, the Frostborn had different ideas, and so Mara fought.

  A medvarth lumbered at her with a snarl. The huge warrior looked like a bear that walked upon its hind legs like a man, though it was stronger than any mere bear. It also wore armor forged by the khaldjari, and in its clawed hand it carried a massive battle axe.

  Mara reached for the power in her blood and traveled. Blue fire filled her vision, and when it cleared she reappeared behind the medvarth. The creature paused in its charge, confused, and Mara leaped upon its back and ripped her short sword across its throat. The medvarth let out a gurgling groan and collapsed, blood spraying from the wound.

  Had she been one of the Anathgrimm, Mara supposed she would have made a cloak from the medvarth’s furry hide. It seemed a savage thing to do, but after a year of war, the Anathgrimm were not inclined to show mercy to their foes, not that they had been all that familiar of the concept of mercy to begin with.

  That and a medvarth fur cloak would have been impractical. Compared to the Anathgrimm, Mara was small enough that the cloak could have served as a tent.

  She whirled, seeking a new foe, and saw that the battle was going their way. The Anathgrimm had pushed back the medvarth column. The medvarth were strong and brutal warriors, but the Anathgrimm were just as brutal, and they had an unyielding discipline that the wild medvarth could not match. The medvarth were falling back, and Mara heard Qhazulak’s hoarse growl of a voice booming out orders. Just a little more, and they could retreat over the Moradel and…

  A flare of magical power burned before her Sight, magic of cold and death knitting itself together into a killing lance. Dread stabbed through Mara. Had one of the Frostborn themselves come to take charge? The scouts thought that most of the Frostborn were several miles back up the road with Lord Commander Kajaldrakthor, but perhaps they had rushed south to bring their deadly power to bear in the battle.

  No. Not a Frostborn. A cogitaer, another of their slave kindreds.

  Mara drew on the power of her blood again and traveled, covering ninety yards in the blink of an eye.

  She reappeared behind the cogitaer as the creature finished its spell, freezing wind spinning around its delicate fingers. The cogitaer stood barely five feet tall, just about Mara’s height, its features thin and delicate, its skin a pale blue color, silvery hair stirring about its head. The cogitaer wore a gray robe, and it floated a few inches off the ground, its full attention on the battle.

  The creature never knew what killed it, and its spell collapsed as its body fell to the ground. Mara shook the cold blood from her sword and traveled again, reappearing next to Qhazulak.

  “My Queen!�
� he rasped. To outsiders, the Anathgrimm with their masks of black bone and spines of bone jutting from their flesh looked all the same. Mara could tell them apart at a glance. “We feared you were slain…”

  “Not yet,” said Mara. “We should withdraw. Now. Any longer and the enemy will overrun us.”

  Qhazulak let out a growl and glared at the locusari scouts circling overhead. “Aye, my Queen. Withdraw!” His voice boomed like at thunderbolt. “Withdraw! To the river! Return to the fords!”

  The Anathgrimm fell back in good order to the Moradel, leaving the slain medvarth and cogitaers behind.

  ###

  That evening, in the eerie, blue-lit gloom of Nightmane Forest, Mara sat with her husband and her commanders and discussed the news.

  They were still alive, and Nightmane Forest had not fallen. That was the good news.

  The rest of the news was bad.

  “The medvarth the Anathgrimm fought today came from the siege of Castra Marcaine,” said Jager in his deep voice. Her husband was an inch shorter than she was, and the Anathgrimm towered over him like giants, but they listened to him. Mara was the Queen of Nightmane Forest, but her whole life had taught her to remain quiet and unnoticed in the background until the time was ready to strike. It was a useful skill for an assassin, but less useful for a Queen. Jager had the forceful personality and eloquent tongue that she did not, and she usually made her wishes known to him, and then Jager made sure the Anathgrimm carried out her will.

  She could not have ruled Nightmane Forest without Jager.

  Fortunately, her husband did like to talk.

  “I fear this means that Castra Marcaine has fallen,” said Jager.

  “Almost certainly the Prince Consort is correct,” said Zhorlacht. He wore a black priest’s robe expertly cut to fit over the bony spikes of the Anathgrimm orcs. Caius had explained that the priests of the Dominus Christus were forbidden from spilling blood with the sword. Zhorlacht, ever pious, now used a wooden club in battle that probably weighed more than Mara did. “Between the reinforcements from the world gate and the troops freed up from the fall of Castra Marcaine, the Frostborn can fortify the eastern bank of the Moradel against us. Any more raids across the river will end in disaster.”