by Mark Anthony
“I ride into Shadowsdeep.”
Grace made her way to the secret passage, where a horse was waiting. She rode down the tunnel and out into the vale. She glimpsed the silver-and-blue banner of Calavan and urged her mount into a gallop, pounding across the battlefield. Cheers rose up as the men saw her. One of the guards rode behind her, bearing the banner of Malachor.
Grace reached Aryn and Teravian. Tarus was with them, a grin on his face. The young king and queen were more somber; all the same, their eyes shone.
“We’ve done it, Your Majesty!” Tarus said. “The Pale King’s army is no more.”
It was impossible, but it was true. The warriors circled around the last knot of feydrim. They didn’t bother to drive the creatures against the wall, but instead slew them with lance and sword. It was over. The blue sheen faded from the wall of the keep; the magic of Gravenfist was quiescent again. A great roar rose from the army, echoed from the keep above.
“Your plan was a sound one, Your Majesty,” Teravian said. His gray eyes were thoughtful. “King Boreas would have been proud of you.”
Aryn glanced at Teravian. “He would be proud of all of us. And so would Durge.” She looked older than Grace remembered. All traces of the mild, tentative girl she had been were gone. She was a woman now, a queen. Yet she was still Aryn.
“So now what do we do?” Teravian said.
If she hadn’t been so exhausted, Grace might have laughed. For so long, all her thought, all her being, had been focused on fighting this battle. Only now did she realize she had never expected to survive it, for she had no idea what came next. She opened her mouth, unsure just what she would say.
It didn’t matter. A deafening sound rent the air, like the call of a horn, only at once more shrill and more thrumming. The air trembled. All around, men held their hands to their ears. Slowly, the sound faded to a low sound of rumbling; the ground vibrated like the skin of a drum. The men turned toward Shadowsdeep, confusion on their faces. Then confusion gave way to a new emotion: fear.
Sir Tarus’s grin vanished. Teravian and Aryn stared, eyes wide. An unseen hand squeezed Grace’s heart.
She was a fool. How could they believe they had fought all of the Pale King’s army when they had not seen the Pale King himself? Her hand sweated around the hilt of Fellring.
He’s coming, Grace. He’s coming for you.
The army that marched toward them made all the others that had come before it seem no more menacing than a swarm of flies. It advanced across Shadowsdeep like a black wave, stretching from wall to wall of the vale. There were not ten thousand creatures, but ten times ten thousand. And still they kept coming, pouring out of the Rune Gate, as though it were a mouth breathing a fog of darkness.
A hundred siege engines jutted up from the churning sea, fire spurting in gouts from their summits. Feydrim, trolls, and men all marched under the black banners of the enemy. The sound of drums shattered the air, and the gloom was sundered by the light of a thousand wraithlings.
The Warriors of Vathris stared, unmoving. The cheers had turned to silence. No orders were given, no swords and spears were raised. It was they who had been caught this time, between army and keep, between hammer and anvil. Already the vanguard of the dark force had come level with the entrance to the secret passage. There was no retreat, and against this force they could not prevail.
The prophecies were true. The Warriors of Vathris would fight gloriously in the Final Battle. And they would lose.
“What do we do, Grace?” Aryn said beside her. Her voice was not panicked. Instead it was quiet.
Grace shook her head. There was nothing they could do, save die. We’re coming, Durge! she called out in her mind.
A fear such as she had never felt before pierced her. At the head of the army, on a black mount twice the size of a horse, rode a terrible figure. Spikes jutted from his armor, and on his snowy brow was a crown wrought into the twin shapes of antlers. In his hand was a scepter of iron.
The scaly mount tossed its head and snorted fire. It stamped its hooves, sending off sparks as it turned in Grace’s direction. So it had seen her. The Pale King rode toward Grace, his eyes two hot coals in his white face. An iron necklace hung against his breast, and in it was embedded . . .
. . . nothing.
A note of confusion sounded in Grace’s mind. Shouldn’t there have been a stone in his necklace? A Great Stone?
Fear dulled her brain; she couldn’t think. Fellring. She had to draw the sword—it was her only hope—but she couldn’t move. Beside her, the others were frozen. Even the horses stood still. The dread majesty of the Pale King paralyzed them all.
The dark army jabbered and jeered. The beast the Pale King rode drew near. Berash raised his iron scepter. His crimson eyes burned into Grace, and she bowed her head. Who was she to stand against one so great?
There was a booming sound, like a clap of thunder. The sound struck Grace, ringing in her head, and for a moment she wondered if that was it, if the Pale King’s scepter was shattering her skull.
New shouts rang out: the terrified cries of men. And of monsters.
Dazed, Grace raised her head. The Pale King still held the scepter above her, but now he gazed up at the sky. Grace looked up as well.
Above Shadowsdeep, the clouds boiled, then parted, revealing a cold blue sky. Dawn had come at last—only there was something wrong. A dark line ran across the sky from east to west, like a jagged crack. Men cried out. Feydrim barked and whined. The Pale King’s eyes blazed with a new hatred.
Grace didn’t know what it meant. All she knew was she had one chance. With his scepter raised, his steel breastplate had pulled upward a fraction. Beneath its lower edge was a narrow chink in his armor.
There’s only one operation that will cure this, Doctor, spoke the dispassionate voice in her mind. Make your incision now.
Grace drew Fellring and thrust the sword upward with all her might. The tip of the blade found the gap in the Pale King’s armor—then passed through it. The sword shone with silver light as it plunged deep into his chest. There was resistance as the blade met something hard—then clove it in two.
With a flash, Fellring shattered in her hands.
There was a scream, a terrible sound of fury and anguish that should have frozen the marrow of her bones. However, Grace hardly heard it. A coldness came over her, freezing blood and brain. Dimly, she realized she was falling. There was a crunching sound as she struck the ground, and she saw a shadow above her, crowned by antlers. The iron scepter descended toward her head.
Then came another clap of thunder, and the sky broke open.
56.
It was a hooting noise that woke Travis.
The sound was soft, like the calling of doves at day’s end, only deeper, so that he could feel it as a thrum through his body. Though toneless, the sound seemed to weave a shroud of music around him, warming his ice-cold body, breathing breath back into air-starved lungs.
Gentle hands touched his legs, his arm, his chest. Travis opened his eyes and stared up into strange brown faces. He tried to move, but pain tingled up and down his limbs, paralyzing him. Had his bones been crushed to splinters when he struck the ground? He had fallen what seemed like forever.
Fingers fluttered across his forehead. The face above him came into focus, and a queer, wrenching feeling filled Travis. It was like looking into a mirror only to see a stranger’s visage gazing back. Yet despite the differences, the face was not so alien compared to his own. It was a human face.
The man studied Travis with brown eyes, small and wise beneath a thick, jutting brow. A leather thong held shaggy hair back from a sloping forehead; his nose was flat and broad, and his cheekbones as sharp as the chipped planes of a stone axe. A scraggly beard covered his jaw, which was chinless and receding but delineated by bulging muscles on either side. He wore simple clothes cut of aurochs hide, colored rust orange with ocher.
Others knelt in a circle around Travis, watching him with gentle brown eyes
: men and women, and even a few young ones. All of them had the same jutting browridges, the same flat noses, the same chinless jaws. However, unlike the man who touched Travis’s forehead, their aurochs hide clothes were not colored with ocher.
“Who are you?” Travis asked. The words came out as a croak.
The man in the ocher-stained hides made a series of sounds. To Travis’s ears they were a stream of toneless hoots, clicks, and guttural purrs. However, in his mind he heard words; the magic of the silver half-coin was at work.
We are the ones who waited.
“For what?” Travis said, and the words were still hoarse but louder now.
More hoots and grunts. For you to fall from the sky. We knew you would come. The end of all things is near.
Travis tried to remember what had happened. He had spoken the rune of breaking, and he had felt the gate shatter around him. His last thoughts had been of Beltan and Vani, and he had fallen into the Void. Only then something had happened. A crack opened in the Void between the worlds, and it had pulled Travis in, swallowing him.
He gazed upward, past the faces of the strange people. Above, sickly gray clouds swirled in wild circles, cauterized by forks of red lightning. The sky. There was something wrong with the sky.
Again he tried to move, and this time he succeeded. His body was not shattered, just stiff as if it had been frozen. However, warmth radiated from the people leaning over him, seeping into him, and it was this that caused the pinpricks of pain. Strong hands helped him sit up. His skin was unbroken, but his clothes had been torn to rags.
Mountains loomed all around, black as iron, raking at the bleeding sky.
“What is this place?” he murmured.
The place where hope ends. The man pointed to the bone talisman that still hung around Travis’s throat. The place where hope begins.
Travis didn’t understand. Or did he? With a shaking hand, he gripped the rune of hope the hag Grisla had given him what seemed so long ago now. First came birth, then life, then death. Then birth again, as the circle went round and round.
The strange people reached out, removing the last remnants of his clothes with gentle motions. He shivered but did not resist, too weary to be ashamed of his nakedness. With deft motions they clothed him again in garments of soft, warm aurochs hide, and soon his shivering subsided. A leather cup was pressed into his hands; it held water laced with some bitter herb. He drank it down, and he felt his mind clear and strength flow into his limbs.
Travis stood with the help of several strong, brown hands. He was taller than they; even the men stood no higher than his chin. However, all of them—men and women alike—were powerfully built, their shoulders rounded and heavy.
They were in a narrow valley between two toothy ranges of mountains. The valley was barren of life, its floor covered with a deep layer of ash, its air cold and metallic on the tongue. A few twisted shapes that might once have been trees jutted up from the ground, their blackened limbs cracked and splintered. An eerie feeling of familiarity came over Travis. He had seen these mountains once before, only from the other side.
“This is Imbrifale,” he said softly. “This is the Pale King’s Dominion. But that’s impossible. The only way in and out is through the Rune Gate.”
The man in orange gestured with his hands. We know other ways through the mountains, ways unknown to the servants of He-Who-Wields-The-Ice. Or to most of them, at least. We knew we would be here when we found you, and so we came.
Again Travis was struck with wonder. “Who are you?”
“I think they’re the Maugrim,” said a familiar tenor voice behind him.
Travis turned around, and a feeling of joy almost too powerful to bear came over him. “Beltan!”
He ran to the big man, and they caught each other in a fierce embrace.
“By all the gods, I thought I’d never see you again.”
“So did I,” Travis said, and held him tighter.
At last Beltan pushed him away.
“Who are they, Beltan?” Travis said, aware of the people gathered behind him. “Maugrim—I’ve heard that word before, I think.”
Beltan glanced at the brown-skinned people. “Falken told us about them. They’re the first ones, the people who were here when the Old Gods dwelled in the forests and fields. The stories say they vanished long ago. Only King Kel said the Maugrim still existed. It looks like he was right.”
Finally, Travis understood—that was why they had seemed familiar to him. He had seen paintings of them in books, had seen dioramas in museums where wax facsimiles of them had held spears or squatted over fires, working bone and flint. According to the textbooks, on Earth, the Neanderthals had vanished over thirty thousand years ago.
Only maybe they didn’t vanish, Travis. Maybe they went somewhere else.
Beltan touched the hide jerkin they had given Travis. “They’ve dressed you in orange. Just like their shaman.”
Shaman? Travis glanced over his shoulder. The man who had spoken to him, the one whose hides were stained with ocher, gazed at him, his eyes unreadable.
Travis turned back. “How can you be here, Beltan?”
“We used the gate artifact,” Beltan said, brow furrowing. “As we stepped through, we pictured the city of Omberfell in our minds. It was the only place both of us had been to before that was close to Gravenfist. Vani said it’s safer to choose a destination you can envision clearly.” He shook his head. “Only something went wrong. There was a crack in the Void, and we fell through. It seemed like we fell a thousand leagues.”
Travis crossed his arms. “I saw the crack in the Void, too. It pulled me in, just like it did you. But why did we end up here, in this place?”
Because this is where it was broken, the Maugrim man said in his alien language.
Travis shivered. “Where what was broken?”
The shaman gazed up at the tortured sky.
Dread spilled into Travis’s gut. He looked at Beltan. “Where is Vani?”
Beltan’s green eyes were troubled. “I think you’d better come.”
Beltan moved across the dusty plain, and Travis followed, the Maugrim shuffling behind. They crested a rise, then came to a rough half circle of stones that offered some protection from the wind. In the center, a fire burned in a pit. Travis didn’t know where they had found the wood—maybe one of the few withered trees—but the fire drew him forward like a moth. A group of women clustered near the fire; he saw Vani in their center.
He ran the last remaining steps. “Vani . . .”
She looked up and smiled. The expression broke his heart. Her face was lined in pain, as gray as the ashes on the ground. She wore aurochs hide clothes like Travis and Beltan, and another hide, fur side in, over her shoulders.
The Maugrim women drew back, and Travis knelt beside her. “Vani, what is it?”
She only shook her head; tears ran from her golden eyes, snatched away by the dry air.
“There’s something wrong with the baby,” Beltan said.
Vani drew in a sharp hiss of breath. Travis looked up. What was Beltan talking about?
“How long?” Vani said, her voice trembling. “How long have you known I am with child?”
Beltan’s face was sad, thoughtful. “Since the white ship. It wasn’t hard to figure out, even for me. Your sickness in the mornings gave it away.”
She bowed her head. “I wanted to tell you.”
“I know,” he said.
This didn’t make any sense. How could Vani be pregnant? Travis and she had never been together, not that way. He looked from her to Beltan, and all at once the sorrow on both their faces made the answer clear.
He staggered to his feet. “How?” It was all he could say.
Vani shook her head.
“It was the Little People,” Beltan said, not meeting his gaze. “On Sindar’s ship. They tricked us. We came upon each other in an impossible garden, only we each thought . . .”
Travis clutched his arm.
“You thought what?”
“We each thought the other was you,” Vani said, looking up at Travis, her gold eyes anguished. “We lay together, and only when we awoke did we know the truth. Why the Little People did this to us, we know not. Only that they did.”
A tide of emotions surged in Travis: shock, betrayal, jealousy, dread. Vani and Beltan had made love? He fought for comprehension. Only it didn’t matter if he understood. The Little People were ancient, and they were not human; their purposes were a mystery. Besides, all that mattered was that Vani was with child. With Beltan’s child. And that child was in danger.
Travis took all feelings save love and put them aside. He sank again to his knees, hesitated, then laid his hand on her stomach. Vani tensed but did not resist. He could feel it: the first swelling of her belly.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.” Vani grimaced in pain as a spasm passed through her.
One of the women pushed past Travis. She was old, her face as soft and wrinkled as her robe of aurochs hide. The robe was marked with several bright ocher handprints. She brushed knobby fingers across Vani’s stomach and made hooting and grunting sounds deep in her throat.
The cold of the Void has harmed the child. Its hold upon the mother’s womb has been loosened.
“What can we do?” Travis said.
The woman looked him up and down, her eyes like hard pebbles. She jabbed a finger at Travis’s chest. You are a wizard. Cold has frozen the child, and only fire can warm her. You must use the Stone.
Travis stared at her. No, that couldn’t be the answer. Fire couldn’t save, it could only burn.
“What is it, Travis?” Beltan said. “I could almost understand her, but not quite.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the Imsari. Krondisar, the Stone of Fire. “She said the cold has harmed the baby, that only fire can save her.”
“Her?” Vani clutched her stomach. “The child is a girl? But how can she know?”
The old woman let out a chortling sound. She is awake already. It is too soon, but she speaks to me all the same.
Travis relayed these words, though he did not really understand them.