“What is the true name of the sword?” said Ridmark.
“The sword’s name,” said Kalomarus, “is Caledhmaer.”
Ridmark took a deep breath and grasped the sword’s hilt.
“Caledhmaer,” he said, and drew the blade.
“God go with you,” said Kalomarus, “Dragon Knight.”
He leaned back into his throne, closed his eyes, and died.
Ridmark just had time to note that the sword looked like an unremarkable longsword of steel, and then the woman gowned in flame exploded into a whirling vortex of flames and sparks. The fire poured into the sword, seeming to sink into the blade like water soaking into a sponge. The sword transformed in his hand, the blade becoming a strange metal like red gold, the pommel reshaping itself into a roaring dragon’s head.
Caledhmaer burned in Ridmark’s hand, the blade crackling with fire hotter than anything that even Antenora could conjure.
The sword’s power exploded through Ridmark’s mind like a storm.
He stumbled back with a grunt of pain, his right hand gripping the sword’s hilt in a death grip. Ridmark had carried weapons of magical power before. He had carried Heartwarden as Knight of the Soulblade, and again after the sword had rejected him. He had carried Excalibur itself into battle against Tarrabus, after convincing the sword that he intended to return it to its rightful bearer. The taalkrazdor he had worn in Khald Tormen had been powerful, its will as implacable and unyielding as dwarven steel itself.
Caledhmaer was far more powerful than those weapons.
Fire and a torrent of knowledge exploded through his mind. Memories of past Dragon Knights flickered through his thoughts, showing him the sword’s power. The Dragon Knights had used the sword to command elemental fire, to slow and speed time, to fold time and space somehow to allow them to travel vast distances in the blink of an eye. With such powers, they had won great victories against the dark elves and the urdmordar, though the Dragon Knights were almost always killed in battle.
It was overwhelming. Ridmark felt like his blood was on fire, like his head was about to explode. The memories of the Knights manipulating time burned before his eyes. Yes, that was it. That was the secret. Caledhmaer could undo the past, and if Ridmark killed himself with the sword, he would never have existed, and so much pain would be undone.
Burn with me…
Yes. That was what he had to do. It was his duty to destroy himself.
Ridmark raised Caledhmaer, preparing to cut his throat with it. He looked at the sword burning in his hand and noted that the fire seemed to be sinking into his veins, making them glow beneath his skin. The fire had even reached his heart, and he saw its glow shining through his dark elven armor. He had seen that before, hadn’t he? No, it had been described to him. Someone had once seen a man die like this.
Calliande, that was it. Calliande had told him about this.
The thought of his betrothed froze him, made him forget about his duty to kill himself.
He couldn’t leave her. He had promised Calliande that he would see her to the end of this. He had promised to marry her. Ridmark had to keep those promises.
But, the power in his mind murmured, wouldn’t it be better for her if he had never existed? Wouldn’t she have avoided so much suffering? Andomhaim itself would have avoided so much suffering. Yes, he ought to destroy himself now, at once.
He had promised to return to her.
Ridmark stared at Caledhmaer’s fire, caught between the two imperatives warring in his mind.
Kalomarus had said to trust Calliande.
Ridmark had promised to return to her.
He turned and left the throne room, Caledhmaer howling with fire in his fist.
Chapter 22: Too Late
Calliande watched the flickering mist, fighting against her growing horror.
She stood with Ardrhythain before the curtain of mist, alternating between watching the doors of the Tomb for Ridmark and looking at the scenes of the battle raging at Dun Calpurnia. Because time was moving slower at Cathair Solas than the rest of the world, it was impossible to grasp more than scattered images. Calliande saw flashes of images in the mist, like paging through a book and glancing at the illustrations.
The images she saw alarmed her.
She watched as Arandar fortified Dun Calpurnia, preparing to meet the Frostborn there. The dwarves and the Anathgrimm marched from the west and the manetaurs and the tygrai from the east, but they would be too late. The vast host of the Frostborn flooded down from the north, and Calliande saw the trap. The Frostborn had as many soldiers as the allies combined, drawn steadily through the world gate over the last year. The army they had sent to Dun Calpurnia was only the vanguard of their strength. Lord Commander Kajaldrakthor and his lieutenants planned to draw the army of Andomhaim into a trap, crush it utterly, and deal with the allied armies one by one before they could unite.
The revenants marched beneath the waters of the Moradel, their eyes glowing with blue fire.
Calliande watched the army of Andomhaim driven out of Dun Calpurnia. The host of the Frostborn surged around the town, thousands of medvarth and khaldjari and revenants and locusari moving to finish the battle.
And Imaria watched a safe distance from the fighting, laughing as the Frostborn destroyed the obstacles between her and the Well of Tarlion.
“I should have been there,” said Calliande. “I could have stopped it. I could have warned Arandar. This was my fault. I am the Keeper of Andomhaim, and I failed to save it.”
“The shadows of the future,” said Ardrhythain, “are not yet decided.”
Calliande didn’t know what to do. Should she ask Ardrhythain to transport her to Dun Calpurnia? A human traveling that far through an elven transport spell might go irreparably insane, but maybe the time had come to risk it. Yet Ridmark had not emerged from the Tomb, and she could not leave him.
A metallic creaking noise cut into the storm of her thoughts, and Calliande’s head snapped around.
The doors of the Tomb swung open.
###
The revenants spearheaded the attack.
Gavin gripped Truthseeker and braced himself. The army of Andomhaim had managed to reform itself into some sort of order, with lines of spearmen standing ready, the heavily-armored knights and men-at-arms on the wings, though they had lost most of their horses in the frantic retreat from the burning town. Crossbowmen and archers hung back, holding their fire until a living foe approached. Master Marhand had gathered the Swordbearers into a massive fist of steel, ready to attack the Frostborn themselves once the High Lords took the field. Master Kurastus had been killed in the attack, but the Magistri had gathered near Arandar’s banner, ready to cast defensive wards.
The High King’s banner flew at the center of the host, and Gavin stood there with Antenora, Kharlacht, Caius, Camorak, and the rest of the High King’s surviving bodyguards. Arandar waited at their head, Excalibur burning in his hand, his face stern and cold as he watched the approaching enemy. Third stood near him, ready to carry messages, but there was no more need for carrying messages.
They would fight, or they would die.
Though as Gavin watched the enemy approach, he realized that death was the most likely outcome.
The wall of revenants charged, and Gavin fought.
Antenora flung a sphere of fire that ripped through a score of the revenants. The Magistri cast their spells as well, throwing shafts of white fire into the charging enemy. Elemental fire and the white fire of the Well cut down hundreds of the undead, but there were thousands more.
Gavin swung his shield, bashing an orcish revenant in the face, and drove Truthseeker into the stunned creature’s ribs. The white fire of the soulblade pulsed and quenched the blue flame, and the revenant collapsed. A second revenant reached for him, its dead hands burning with cold blue fire. This one had once been a dvargir warrior, and still wore armor of black dvargirish steel, though the void of Incariel in its eyes had been replaced w
ith the icy flame of the magic of the Frostborn.
The creature’s fingers brushed Gavin, and he felt a chill, but he took no harm from it. The great spell the Keeper had worked before the first battle of Dun Calpurnia still held, and protected him from the freezing grasp of the revenant. Gavin aimed blows at the revenant’s thick neck, and on the third blow, the head rolled off the shoulders, the black-armored corpse falling to the ground.
Thanks to Calliande’s magic, the revenants were not a serious threat. They were hideously strong and felt no pain, but they carried no weapons, and without their freezing touch they could only kill a man with their bare hands. The army held against the revenants, holding them back with sword and spear and axe.
But with the revenants holding them in place, they could not maneuver, and the second wave of the attack came.
Locusari scouts fell from the sky like blue bolts, flying in formation towards the Magistri and the men-at-arms who had managed to rescue some of the portable ballistae from the wreck of Dun Calpurnia. The scouts were no serious threat to the men-at-arms or the Magistri, but they distracted the men long enough for the frost drakes to close.
A dozen frost drakes flew over the host of Andomhaim, pillars of freezing mist shooting from their fanged mouths. The Magistri managed to recover in time to cast warding spells, and the men-at-arms sent a volley of ballista bolts into the sky. Three of the frost drakes went down, pierced with iron bolts, and some of the white mist hardened against the the wards of the Magistri.
But most of the freezing mist swept across the unprotected lines of the army, and hundreds of men died in an instant, sealed within cocoons of granite-hard ice. The frost drakes banked away, circling away to the north as they prepared for another pass.
Gavin could pay them no heed. The enemy on the ground occupied his full attention. Bands of locusari warriors surged through the revenants, charging towards the High King’s banner, and Gavin fought them, Truthseeker rising and falling in a white flame. A locusari sprang forward, its scythed forelimbs slashing at Gavin. He caught the first attack on his shield and the second. Sheer exhaustion kept him from getting his shield up in time to block the third, and the warrior’s forelimbs hit him in the chest. The armor of the dark elves proved stronger than the chitin of the locusari warrior’s limbs, but Gavin felt the impact through his entire torso.
He staggered back and stabbed Truthseeker, ripping the soulblade through the warrior’s thorax. Thick yellow slime dripped from the hideous wound, and the warrior fell dead at Gavin’s feet, twitching atop some of the destroyed revenants. Gavin killed another locusari warrior, and another, and then a third, even as Antenora flung fire into their charging foes and the frost drakes circled high overhead.
Through the haze of his exhaustion and his battle fury, he noted that they were losing ground, that the mass of undead and locusari were pushing the army back. How much more punishment could the men of Andomhaim and the orcs of the baptized kingdoms take? He feared that the army would break, that some of the lords would begin calling for a retreat to Castra Carhaine. If that happened, the victorious Frostborn would hunt down the shattered pieces of the army and eliminate them one by one.
A thunderous roar cut into Gavin’s concentration, and he looked up from a dying locusari.
Lines of medvarth warriors charged from either side of the town, thousands of medvarth warriors. Despite the fighting at the northern wall, the medvarth seemed fresh and eager for blood. Perhaps the Frostborn had held them in reserve for the critical moment of the battle.
Gavin lifted Truthseeker and his shield, his shoulders and arms trembling with exhaustion, and braced himself for the next wave of attack.
###
Arandar slashed Excalibur upwards, opening the medvarth warrior from groin to throat, the sword’s edge slicing through flesh and bone and armor like butter. The medvarth’s roar of fury turned to a gurgle of pain, and it fell over, its blood sinking into the trampled ground, its corpse joining the carpet of the dead that covered the land.
He feared it would not be much longer now.
Around him the knights and Swordbearers of his bodyguard battled, cutting down the medvarth warriors and the locusari and the revenants. Third flickered in and out of the melee in pulses of blue fire, gutting the medvarth from behind and disappearing again before their comrades could strike. The Swordbearers fought with fury, standing fast against the tide of the enemy, but they could not endure forever.
An explosion rang out to the west, not far from the bank of the River Moradel, and Arandar glimpsed a half-dozen fireballs soaring through the air to land in the battle. The khaldjari had moved their massive trebuchets south along the River Moradel, and from the middle of the frozen river, they had a perfect platform from which to hurl their burning missiles into the army of Andomhaim. Arandar could not ask any man to stand and fight in the face of that barrage of alchemical fire, but his army was trapped. They could not retreat to a strong place, and if they tried to flee, the Frostborn would tear them apart.
It looked as if the Frostborn would tear them apart no matter what they did.
Another roar boomed over the melee, and Arandar saw a wedge of medvarth warriors running towards him. These medvarth were taller and broader than the rest of their kindred, and armored from head to foot in dull gray steel plate. Enormous tower shields rested on their left arms, and in their right hands, they carried huge axes.
The Frostborn themselves came with the armored medvarths.
Nearly a hundred Frostborn strode behind their soldiers, each warrior carrying a huge greatsword that swirled with freezing white mist. Their gray armor made them look like advancing glaciers, and their eyes shone with cold light. Many of the Frostborn were casting spells, and they hurled blasts of jagged ice or bolts of cold fire into the men of Andomhaim. The Magistri tried to cast defensive spells, and some of the freezing blasts shattered against the wards.
But many more spells got through, killing men in an instant and sheathing their bodies in ice.
The Frostborn cast another spell in unison, and a wave of blue fire erupted from them, rolling across the battlefield. The blue fire lingered on the corpses of the slain and sank into their heads, shining like azure candles within their eyes.
Slain humans and orcs and medvarth rose one by one from the ground, joining the ranks of the Frostborn army as new revenants. Arandar killed another medvarth and saw the wedge of armored medvarth and the Frostborn heading right towards him.
Of course. They saw the banner of the High King, and they knew that killing the High King would demoralize the army and break its leadership.
And Arandar realized there was nothing left for him to do but die.
He had failed. At least Accolon and Nyvane were safe with the Anathgrimm for now, and he hoped those who came after him would succeed where he had been defeated.
Arandar said a quiet prayer, commending his soul to God and asking for forgiveness for his failures, and lifted Excalibur and prepared to die with a ring of slain foes around him.
###
The doors of the Tomb of the Dragon Knight opened, and Calliande saw a flicker of harsh, fiery light.
“Ridmark?” said Calliande, taking a step forward.
Ridmark walked from the Tomb of the Dragon Knight and into the cavern, a sword in his right hand.
Calliande knew that sword. She knew that sword very well.
It looked as if it had been forged from red gold, but it was far stronger and far lighter than any other metal. Its pommel had been wrought in the shape of a dragon’s head, and the last time she had seen that sword, it had been in the scabbard at Kalomarus’s belt as he escorted her to the Tower of Vigilance. The blade burned with yellow-orange fire, so hot that the sword itself looked white with molten heat.
It was the sword of the Dragon Knight.
Calliande started to smile, and then took a better look at Ridmark and froze in alarm.
His eyes were…burning, somehow, as if they had b
een filled with fire. More fire flowed through his veins, visible even through his clothing and armor and skin. She saw the glow of his heart burning through his chest.
The last men Calliande had seen who looked like that had been the six knights the sword had killed before Kalomarus had been able to master the blade. The Sight blazed to life within Calliande, responding to the powerful magic in the sword, and she saw the tendrils of its power pouring down Ridmark’s arm and sinking into his heart and mind.
It was devouring him.
“Oh, God,” said Calliande. “Ridmark.”
This was her punishment, the retribution for her pride and folly and her failures. All her clever plans had brought her to this, to watch her betrothed devoured by the sword. She had fallen in love, and she would see the man she loved killed even as the Frostborn destroyed the army of Andomhaim. She had done this to him, and she had failed Andomhaim.
All her duties and her hopes would turn to ashes in a single moment.
Yet the fire did not spread. It was trying to sink deeper into Ridmark, to burn him out from the inside, but he was resisting it.
“Ridmark,” said Calliande. She heard Ardrhythain step closer. “Listen to me…”
The burning eyes turned towards her. “Calliande.”
His voice was a hard rasp, the sound of a man in terrible pain.
“Yes, I’m here,” said Calliande.
“Should it be undone?” said Ridmark.
“Should what be undone?” said Calliande.
“Everything that I have done,” said Ridmark.
He came closer, the sword burning like a torch in his fist.
“The sword showed me,” said Ridmark. His expression was strange, almost twisted, caught halfway between agony and ecstasy. “I’ve made so many mistakes. I’ve failed so many times. The sword can undo it all.”
Frostborn: The Dragon Knight (Frostborn #14) Page 28