Roars of War: The War for the North: Book Two

by Sean Rodden

  And with no hint of hesitation, the Prince of the Neverborn stepped from the ledge, out into the red darkness, and gracefully dropped hundreds of feet through the cold subterranean air. He sank swiftly, black vestment billowing, his legs extended, his arms outspread and holding Nightsong horizontally across his body, making himself seem like a falling cross. The darksome Ath alighted on the stone in an easy crouch a few steps from Rundul’s pack. He straightened, glanced briefly about himself, then peered upward with those eerily colourless eyes, perhaps even a smile.

  “Show-off,” the Darad muttered into his beard. He handed the cable to Eldurion. “Your turn, Fian.”

  The grey Deathward warrior silently slipped over the edge, descending hand over hand, swiftly and effortlessly. The Eldest of the Fiannar had lost little of the remarkable strength and agility of his youth. Only his forbearance of fools had suffered for the passing of nearly three centuries – as one’s time grows shorter, so dwindles one’s toleration of idiocy.

  Rundul went last, one hand grasping the cable above the loop at his belt, the other below it, rappelling downward so quickly that his palms smoked. Landing heavily between the Ath and the Fian, the Darad gave the cable a specific series of tugs, and the anchoring contraption released its grip on the rock, toppled over the rim of the ledge, tumbling through the halfdark into his waiting hands.

  “Show-off,” murmured the Prince of the Neverborn.

  “I swear, you two make the worst travelling companions for someone who thinks aloud as much as I do.” Rundul returned the mechanism to the pack, then began re-coiling the cable. “Your uncanny hearing is my curse.”

  “A curse easily enough broken, Stone Lord,” Eldurion stated blandly. “Stop thinking aloud. Or stop thinking altogether.”

  The Darad chuckled deep in his chest as he replaced the coil and closed the pack. “A feat you have obviously already accomplished, Fian. The second mentioned, anyway.” He lifted the pack and shrugged his massive shoulders into the straps, then slapped the tall grim warrior on the back. “I couldn’t ask for a better teacher.”

  Eldurion’s eyes glistered, but whether that cold light was sourced in ire or in humour was unclear.

  The Sun Lord shook his head and sighed. “Mortals.”

  The Captain of the Wandering Guard led the others down a flight of roughly hewn steps toward the dais at the base of the cavern. Above them hovered the interwoven web of hose, suspended in the rufous gloom like an enormous aerial cnidarian, a colony of intraterrestrial zooids forming a single great bluebottle with hundreds of tangled tentacles. The three warriors carefully avoided the dangling appendages as they descended to the Throne of Bone, each of them conscious of a thin coppery reek that tingled in their nostrils as dripping blood might tickle skin. And just beyond that odour was a yet thinner one, a stretched stench, cold and dark, as though cast by cenotaphs of ice. Even old death stinks.

  Eldurion and Yllufarr climbed the roughly hewn steps of the dais and stood at the foot of the Throne of Bone. The seat was at a level with their eyes. The foul creature that had sat there was gigantic – the Fian and the Ath evidently stood no taller than its knees.

  “The Red Wraith was here. One needs no graven graffiti to read that.”

  “Verily, friend Eldurion. His ill flavour pollutes my mouth, and I cannot trust my tongue for the sting of poison on it.”

  The Darad had not climbed the steps and was standing further back from the edge of the dais, his black gaze fastened on the undulant eels that swam within the murk of the crystal. His wide stance and the specific heft of his weapon betrayed that he sorely craved to attack, to strike out and destroy. The grinding of his teeth was an audible thing.

  The Fian and the Ath peered down into the opaque crystal beneath their feet. Globules of bloodlight seethed and oozed at its core.

  “Are they… is this the earthblight, Stone Lord?” asked Eldurion. His hand sought the cold but familiar comfort of his sword’s pommel. “Is this the foul power of which you spoke at the Stone of Scullain?”

  “No, Fian. This isn’t the urthvennim. Not exactly.” The Captain’s voice was thick with antipathy. “The Hag… the urthvennim is much… more. What you see here is the residue, the dregs. Less, actually. Maybe a memory. Like an echo, or an aftershock of the earth. Detached from the source, somehow. Disconnected.” He frowned, wrung the shaft of his war-axe. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “A lingering shadow, somehow distinct and separate from the object that cast it,” offered the Sun Lord.

  Rundul nodded silently.

  Eldurion slipped his naked blade from his belt. “Has this lingering shadow any power here?”

  Rundul stared. The grating of his teeth could have shattered diamonds. He lowered his war-axe, slipped one hand into his pocket to curl about the stone that the Earthmaster had given him. The smooth pebble felt like a sharp shard of ice against his hard palm. Scarlet serpents reeled on the surface of his eyes.

  “No, Fian. Not here. Not now.” A moment bottled in time and aged by truth. “Not yet.”

  Eldurion first tilted, then inclined, his hooded head. “Very well.” There was a certain supinity to his tone, as of the inertness of stone. Nevertheless, the grim Fian’s long cold sword remained at the ready in his hand.

  “What and where now, friend Rundul?” Prince Yllufarr looked from one vast arched portico the next. Coldwhisper and Nightsong chanted silently at his back and in his clasp, like the shallow yet steady respiration of sentient beings in a light sleep. “Though we have but four choices, the choosing is beyond me.”

  “Down,” responded the Darad. He stamped up the steps of the dais as though his legs were cast of lead, glaring at the Throne of Bone with the blackest contempt. “We go down.”

  “Which of the four passages descends?”

  “None. They all lead upward to the monstrosity that is New Ungloth.” Rundul walked unhurriedly around to the rear of the monstrous chair. “But the Blood King isn’t there. He remains far below.” The Darad pointed with the centric spike of his war-axe. “And our way there begins here.”

  The Ath and the Fian moved to the back of the Throne of Bone. Beneath the seat, between the rear legs – legs, coincidentally, fashioned of entwined femurs, unfleshed fibulae and tibiae – a crudely carved stairway descended into total blackness. A draught of stale air, chill and dry, gusted up at them, smelling vaguely of old blood and arid bones and the dusts of dead things.

  “Death breathes,” whispered the lean grey Fian, his lungs tight within his chest, “and I do not.”

  “Breath isn’t the only thing that won’t come easy here,” rumbled Rundul.

  The Sun Lord of the Neverborn placed a black-gloved hand on the Darad’s broad shoulder.

  “So we have at long last come to your cherished halls of stone, friend Rundul.” Yllufarr’s pale eyes glowed like crescent moons in the gloom. “Are you quite contented now?”

  The Captain of the mara Waratur snorted into his beard.

  “Never been more miserable in my entire life.”

  And down they went.

  Eldurion was ill pleased.

  The Eldest of the Fiannar followed the hulking Darad in stolid silence, his mouth but a hard narrow line above his grizzled chin. His eyes were as chips chiselled from the very crystal through which he descended, only clearer, brighter. His thoughts, however, were decidedly darker, if rather random, and his heart was far heavier than his footfalls.

  The stairwell spiralled into the depths of the earth, its walls coarse and uncomfortably close, its steps of irregular rise and run. The crystal was cold and dry, and brushed with fine soot of a sort, a slippery substance, feeling on the fingertips as might oil had it come in powder form. The air sat heavily in the Fian’s lungs, and pushed against the curvature of his eyes, dimming into utter pitch as he descended. But despite the dust and the dark, the Fian found that he could breathe the tainted air unhindered, and that his sight was not impeded save for the ability to ascertain c
olour. His visual perception was ringed by a fine circle of pale fire, and within that flame-framed vista he saw the world in vagaries of grey and black and sullied shades of white. Respiration and vision where neither should have been possible – subtle gifts granted him by the eldritch artefact concealed in the bundle upon his back.

  How very feeble I must seem to them. They could frolic and dance in this darkness, whereas I must rely upon a magic sword to survive.

  His duty was to destroy the Blood King. And to accomplish that terrible task he had been bequeathed the Deathward’s most powerful relic – Grimroth, the Blade of Defurien. Forged by Cothra in fire ignited by the First Words of the Teller’s Tale. The legendary sword of the Father and First Lord of the Fiannar. The weapon that had slain the Other, had brought ruin upon unholy Unluvin the Treacher. But the Blade had done so in the capable hands of Micyll, the greatest King and mightiest warrior of the Athair of First Earth. And it was far from lost on Eldurion that the Father himself had failed in the feat, however valiantly, and in failing had determined the dread doom of that World.

  Nevertheless –

  I will do this thing.

  The clouded crystal of the stairwell had given to glossy black rock, carved in the same manner, uneven, rough. The spectre of a smoky smell, burned and dirty, haunted Eldurion’s nostrils, and upon his tongue a scorched sensation, the foretaste of fire. He comprehended then that he and his companions were descending through a massive seam of anthracite, a bed of the hardest black coal, the piceous heart of a howling inferno awaiting ignition. The stern grey warrior considered the symbolism of that to be rather fitting.

  Images of fire returned him in mind to the dormant flames of Grimroth.

  The Lord of the Fiannar had charged him with the destruction of the Blood King – a grave and perilous burden. The ruin of the Red Wraith could only be achieved with a weapon of great power, thus the resolution to send him with the Blade of Defurien in hand had been wholly practical, logical. But that was before the Athain Prince had reacquired his weapons of olde. The spear Sibryddir and Canneas the sword had changed things. The practicality of the original decision was no longer relevant, the logic had ceased to apply. The reasoning was rendered redundant.

  Redundant.

  And feeble.

  Ah, my dear nephew, your faith in me is so terribly misplaced. And what is faith but the conscious belief in lies? So permit me to beg another mindful lie of you, a final harmless fib… tell my daughter that her father –

  “Only the strongest and most honest of men truly question their worth, friend Eldurion,” said a cool voice behind and above the Fian. “They set the highest standards, and whip themselves bloody when they fail to touch the sun. But some standards are simply set too high. If you are not blameless in anything, it is that. So you are free to continue questioning, and doubtless will do so, but you shall have my answer now.”

  Head bowed, cowl pulled low and close, Eldurion scowled irritably at the irregular steps as he continued down.

  “I did not know you could read minds, Prince Yllufarr – though, admittedly, genuine surprise eludes me.”

  “I read not your mind, but rather the stoop of your shoulders and the shuffle to your gait. Even hooded and cloaked and turned away, a man’s demeanour might be easily apprehended, along with it his doubts, his pains, his fears. Even his demons. And at present, friend Eldurion, your own are screaming at me.”

  At present? Is that all? They have been screaming at me for a hundred years.

  “And what do they scream, good Prince?”

  The brief silence that ensued was almost absolute, and was entirely so in the blackness at Eldurion’s back. The former Marshal of the Grey Watch could not hear the Sun Lord on the steps above him, could neither smell him nor discern his movements in the stone, could not detect him at all. The Fian’s heightened and honed senses served him naught, nothing whatsoever, until the Ath decided to speak again.

  “The question of your worth is already answered, and answered well, son of Alvarion the First – but I shall lend my voice. The Lord of the Fiannar selected you; the Lady seconded him; and all the heroes and high ones about the Stone of Scullain readily concurred. But it does not end there. Your own blood burns with a legacy of the utmost merit: Even now your father stands at Defurien’s one shoulder, and it is no great secret that your daughter shall one day find her place at the other. These truths concerning your worth should suffice – but you are an obstinate man, not one given to loosing your grasp on your beliefs with ease. So I shall share with you a thing you do not know.”

  Eldurion raised his glittering gaze, stared at the hulking pack-laden form of Rundul on the steps below him. The Darad proceeded downward as though he had heard not a word, and the Fian could not but wonder if that was truly so – for the shrouded ways of the darkling Prince of the Neverborn were ever a mystery.

  “Grimroth itself has chosen you. For although all sons and daughters of the House of Defurien may wield the Blade, not all might be protected and uplifted by it in the manner that you are now. That you can see in this darkness, that you can breathe this coal dust and grit and not blacken your lungs, that the mortal perils of this journey fail utterly to thwart you – these things are not certainties, they are not givens. But they are gifts. They are gifts of Grimroth bestowed only upon ones found worthy, and not every scion of Defurien – nay, not even every Lord of the Fiannar – can claim that lofty laurel.”

  Gifts? Who else knew of this? Why was I not told? Why was I not –

  “You were not told because none doubted you,” the Prince of the Neverborn nearly whispered. “Not your nephew, not the Sun Lords, not the Blade itself. The only doubt here is your own, friend Eldurion. Such is the nature of the humble sons and daughters of the House of Defurien – they have always doubted themselves, and will ever do so. Perhaps this contributes to their greatness and remarkable leadership. Doubt certainly has its time and place. But that time is not now, that place is not here. I suggest you muster your doubts, good Marshal, and dismiss them utterly.”

  Eldurion peered past Rundul’s broad shoulder. His vision sharpened within its ring of white fire, and colour bloomed where only degrees of darkness had been. He inhaled deeply, his chest swelling with cold black air, then exhaled through the thinnest and grimmest smiles.

  “I will, good Prince. Eventually. You have my word.”

  And then I will do this thing.

  The stairwell ended in a long horizontal shaft so narrow that the muscled Darad was forced to navigate it shoulder-first, dragging his heavy pack behind him and grumbling all the way. He emerged from the passage in a decidedly ill humour, stomping aside to allow his companions to exit the rift in the rock.

  The Fian and the Ath stepped forth, swords drawn, swiftly assaying the strange place to which they had come. The former started slightly as Rundul’s pack thudded against rock somewhere nearby.

  “There is nothing like a little uncanny stealth in the heart of the enemy lair – is that not true, Stone Lord?”

  “No need for it here, Fian,” the mara Warator responded gruffly. He hefted his great war-axe from one hand to the other. “This place is a tomb, and even the dead have deserted it.”

  “Verily,” said the Sun Lord as he slipped Coldwhisper back into its sheath and relegated Nightsong to the crook of his arm. His pale eyes shone like pearls. “A house of the dead, indeed.”

  They had entered a large necropolis, a subterranean mausoleum of explicit opulence and luxury. The crypt was elliptical in shape, about twice as long as it was wide, tapering to near points at both ends. All surfaces had been worked smooth, and nowhere was the actual stone of the vault visible. Ornate and diverse tapestries adorned the intricately tiled walls above three tiers of interment niches. Impressive support columns were set at regular intervals and inlaid with silver and gold. The vast domed ceiling was elaborately painted, broad bold brush strokes depicting the horrific degradation of a young woman by several sinister r
ed-robed figures. Millions of tiny tesserae fashioned a complex mosaic on the floor, portraying the same atrocity as that on the ceiling, though with dozens of victims and scores of grinning perpetrators.

  The three companions moved into the grotto, fanning out, striding in solemn silence. None of them was particularly familiar with the crime exemplified in such lurid detail above and beneath them. That specific brutality belonged to Man, and to men. Truly, no moral darkness existed that surpassed the night which dwelt in the heart and soul of the evil man. His was an evil of choice, invited and received, nourished by corrupted need, nurtured by all-consuming greed. The hunger, the wanton lust for power and control, however subtly camouflaged by sweet smiles and bright eyes, was ever suckling at the teats of the male psyche, chewing the soft round mounds of conscience, gnawing at the tender nipples until blood stained the teeth and soured those saccharine lips.

  What dark motivation drove the artists who painted such portraits, who arranged the tiles of such mosaics, who carved the salacious friezes and told with abounding ardour their titillating tales of violation and defilement? Wherefore the quickened thud of their hearts, the eager gleam in their gazes, their sudden breathlessness? Whence came the inspiration for their abhorrent and aberrant visions? Did they seek to satiate their own deep-rooted desires or those of their patrons? The bearded bard sings his song of deviance and perversion, his audience madly applauds, and both defend with rabid rectitude his right to sing the song. But why would one recite such a sordid refrain? And why would any man so fervently praise its place and merit?

  Unless the song is one to which he has known the words all along.

  “Blood Mages,” said the Sun Lord blandly as he inspected the series of sepulchres to the left. “Hundreds of the horrid creatures.”

  Each cell held a single sarcophagus, cinerary urn or ossuary, and each of these was of a different place, different period, different dynasty in the history of Second Earth. There were heavy oaken coffins from icy Var, Norian caskets of burnished bronze, gold-plated cists from the gravesands of ancient Appyt. Orderly columbaria carved of the rock of the netherearth housed a diverse range of funerary amphorae from every region of the Southfleetian Empire: Colourful glass vases from Bhaskar; stoppered steel flasks from Noggo; whittled wooden jugs from Unga Boon. And toward the far end, elegant sarcophagi of uncertain origin – uncertain, that is, to all there save the Prince of the Neverborn, for he alone could recall the doomed Turian Empire of the Elder East.