A New Light (The Age of Dawn Book 5)

by Everet Martins

  Walter scrambled to his feet, staving off a wave of dizziness. “That was much too far,” he mumbled, pressing his palm to his temple.

  “What’s that?” the man asked. The Midgaard Falcon soldier had a pointy beard, maybe old as his father.

  “I think I know you,” Walter said, unable to place the man.

  “You do… I remember you now. You and a lass came by my guard house, maybe a year ago. Looking at our logs and such business. Orders from the king, you’d said.”

  “Stacks?”

  “General Stokes,” he grinned, smile lines forming around his mouth. “Never got to talk with you after, but heard you had stopped.” Stokes counted on his fingers. “Three assassination attempts on King Ezra. Takes a lot to impress me, but I’d say you did it.”

  “Was it three? My head’s a mess at the moment.”

  “’T’was. First was a Death Spawn thing. Second was the traitor Malek, his former advisor. Third was his barber.” Stokes rose up on the balls of his feet.

  “You’re right about the first one.” Walter pointed at him. “The others were Death Spawn too.”

  “They were?”

  “Mhm. Malek, well the thing posing as Malek during the assassination attempt at the Falcon’s send off, was a shape-shifting Death Spawn, call ‘em a Metamorphose.”

  “And the barber?” Stokes leaned on his spear.

  “Another Metamorphose.” Walter frowned. “You guys need to do a better job of interviewing new palace employees. I think that’s your best bet at keeping them out.”

  The corner of Stokes’ lip twitched up. “Not my duty, but I’ll pass the message along. What brings you to the lovely palace gardens, White?”

  “Walter,” he corrected. “Just passing through, making my way to the Arch Wizard.”

  Stokes frowned. “There’s no Arch Wizard anymore. Dead with the Tower, sorry lad.”

  Walter shook his head. “The lass who was with me, Nyset Camfield, she’s the new Arch Wizard. We were at the Tower during Asebor’s siege.”

  “You were?” Stokes’ mouth fell open. “How, uh, sorry. Must have been bad, eh?” He scratched his beard.

  “Very. I should be going.” Walter popped the cork from his water skin and took a sip. He offered it to Stokes, who raised his hand to decline.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Stokes said, gesturing with an opened palm.

  “Yeah. Send us some soldiers. Tried with King Ezra, wouldn’t spare a single man for the war, holed up here like a scared turtle.”

  “How many?” Stokes sighed and brushed a speck of dirt from his thigh plate.

  “As many as you can spare.”

  “I’ve got a battalion of about two-hundred and fifty. Where and when should we march?”

  “What’s your angle?” Walter sent him a sideways glance. “What about Ezra demanding the Falcon stay in Midgaard for its defenses?”

  “Fuck the king and fuck his mandates. He’s a coward. He’d rot in a hole in the ground before he stuck his neck out again.” Stokes’ face was tomato red and almost shaking. “I’ll ask one more time. Where do we march?” His voice was steel.

  Walter reached out his hand. “For Helm’s Reach. You’ll find the new Silver Tower on the outskirts, near the whorehouses and taverns.”

  Stokes took his hand with a resounding shake. “We’ll leave at once.”

  “Shit, that was refreshing.” Walter was filled with a burst of energy; what he’d lost summoning portals restored. The sun on his back felt warm and the wind brought in new, crisp air.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing, thanks for the help. But there’s just one thing. Your men need to know this isn’t any ordinary enemy. These are Death Spawn. They take no quarter, no prisoners. You don’t want to know what they do to those they capture.”

  Stokes snickered. “Falcon doesn’t take prisoners either, least of all this kind. We’ve fought them before, remember? Well, generations long past have too, killing them is in our blood. Defending the realm from any invader is our birthright. From demons, pillaging men, the Tigerians… we’ve fought them all.”

  “Right.” Walter nodded. “See you at Helm’s Reach then. There may be a big group of bandits roaming the land, don’t ask me why I know, it’s a long story. Just keep an eye out for them.”

  “The boys like skewering bandits on their spears. We could only be so fortunate to run into them,” Stokes put his spear over his shoulder and started towards a path colored with shades of red flowers.

  Chapter 17

  An Old Spot

  “Teaching magic is difficult. Each person must experience it to understand it.” -The Diaries of Nyset Camfield

  Walter summoned portals, hopping over vast stretches of land, traveling no more than a quarter of a mile at a time. That seemed to be his distance threshold before nausea started creeping back in. It began with a subtle headache, the first sign he’d gone too far, the sign he had first ignored. He felt for that now, scanned for that subtle hammering down the center of his corpus callosum. He wasn’t going to test himself again, as the scent of vomit wafting up from his boots was trying to wrench another gag from his throat.

  He traveled to the Lair in the wizard’s quarters of Midgaard, surprised to find his wizard’s tower, formerly Malek’s, hadn’t been razed. The rooms were coated in a thin layer of dust, left much the same as he last remembered. There were still brown spots of blood on the ceiling of the central room where Baylan and Grimbald had fought against the Silver Tower’s assassins. There were no signs of footprints or looting. Perhaps his reputation had finally developed traction in the city. His portal had sliced through the stony floor, a razor thin cut left behind as evidence of anyone recently setting foot behind its walls.

  Order was still well maintained in Midgaard. The city’s denizens lived in their own sort of hell. They were cloistered and protected from the horrors occurring beyond the outskirts of their walls. They lived in abject fear. Most of the farms outside the city had already been pillaged, burned down to ashes and charred timbers from Death Spawn raiders. Midgaard patrols no longer marched beyond the walls, for most no longer returned.

  Those who dared to leave, traders usually, were never seen again. Small hordes of Death Spawn freely roamed the lands, flaying and eating bold travelers and setting fire to carts. Some Death Spawn would rape both men and women to the death, though those grisly stories were rare, and often kept bottled to avoid a general upheaval of the citizenry. The stories that did find their way into barrooms were quickly drowned in spirits. Alcohol was running on short supply. However, the demand magnified. The main producers were beyond the Plains of Dressna, the region where the plains met the sands of the Nether. What Midgaard didn’t know was that most of the plantation’s producers were rotting on pikes. These were perilous times.

  Walter poked his head through one the Lair’s windows, leaned on his elbow, taking in the sprawling city. Wizards towers reached up like spears, looming over modest residences with gable and hipped roofs. He wondered how many other wizard’s towers lay unoccupied. His eye gazed up and down alleys as far as he could see, looking for men in white, the Purists. He saw no sign of them. Perhaps they’d finally given up their fool’s crusade. Perhaps King Ezra finally saw that the monsters inside their walls were a bigger threat that those outside them. Either way, it was a problem King Ezra would have to contend with.

  The king did seem to care about his people, or perhaps he just cared about himself. New archer’s towers had been erected, rising up over the battlements like prairie dogs watching for prey. It seemed more than half of the city was dressed in gleaming steel and sprigs of red, the attire of the Midgaard Falcon. The new sets of cascading walls that were in the midst of construction last time he’d visited appeared to be completed, making the city seemingly impenetrable from ground attack. Did the good king know there were Death Spawn who could fly? Walter had told him so, but had he remembered?

  A few farmers pushed bouncin
g, clopping carts over the cobbled road alongside the Lair, nearly empty, hawking partially grown vegetables. Walter could feel the stress hanging over them, a dark cloud of hunger. He spotted the gauntness in their faces, the bony arms of malnourishment. A boy with scraped knees sat shaking a rusted can, pleading for marks from passersby. A pair of Falcon soldiers turned a corner, one shot a glance at Walter, then saw the beggar. They sauntered up to the child, barking curses, jabbing their spear butts into his ribs. But the boy only sat there. He was numb to their insults and stared up at Walter, shielding the sun from his eyes. Walter turned away. The view was too much. He had to stay focused.

  He summoned a portal into a desolate alley he remembered in the city. He wasn’t sure how he remembered it, though. It might’ve been a memory from the time when they’d first arrived in Midgaard, when he had worn the armor of Cerumal. The thought of that sent a quiver through his intestines. What if he had become like them? The enemy could’ve been anyone he once knew, even friends.

  He moved on, following the path to the Wall in a series of blinking portals. It had felt endless the last time he’d walked that way. He had been heading for the Silver Tower with Baylan, Nyset, and Grimbald. It was an exciting time, terrifying, yet had presented a world filled with wonders unknown. He stopped where the path started curving north, peered south towards Helm’s Reach, then looked east to the Tigerian Bluffs. It might be worth a visit, but it had to be brief. He would only go there because he had the capability for it to be brief.

  He cast portal after portal, reaching the outside of the Tigerian Bluffs, the place where he found Juzo after he’d vanished into Terar’s terrible hands. He noticed that the more portals he cast, the less they drained him. He was becoming more efficient, he thought.

  He started by following a craggy channel that wound between two enormous plateaus. The path was studded with cacti, polished stone, and thriving weeds that had burrowed down into a hidden source of water. Almost as soon as he’d arrived, he asked himself why he had come. He didn’t have time for this, nor the excess energy to squander. The sun burned away any clouds threatening to prevent it from beating upon the stony land, disintegrating all but a few smoky wisps.

  He didn’t need to stay on the channel as long as he could picture where to place the portal. He looked up at a plateau, long shadows cast over its stratified wall, stone varying in amber hues as it rose up. The portal opened, and as far as he could tell by looking through, seemed like as good of a place as any other. He stepped through.

  Walter’s breath whooped, the sky spinning around. His internal organs reached for his screaming throat, boots flailing at the vast stretch of air between him and the ground. Air! He fanned his fingers, tumbled head first toward a wall of stone. He grabbed the Dragon, blasted the approaching surface with a burst of wind. The opposite force was enough to slow his descent, and he was able to get his legs facing down, dropping into a deep squat, muscles snapping and bones cracking. He tumbled over in a series of fumbling rolls, sharp stones stabbing at his back and punching his ribs. He came to a stop, sprawled out on his back. Dust filled his mouth, sucking up every ounce of saliva. Something was wrong with his left quadriceps, twitching like a dying animal. The Phoenix went to work on torn muscles, minor fractures, and a torn ligament in his ankle. A moan escaped his lips, his lungs heaving like a split bellows.

  He blinked at his portal hovering in the air at least thirty feet up like a bizarre monster’s eye, part of himself still clinging to it like the last thread keeping him alive. He moaned, pain filling his wracked body and let the portal vanish with a fizzling spark. The sun seemed to pulse with heat, stone uncomfortably hot under his back, sweat trickling down his sideburns. He lay there, staring up at the sun for at least five minutes as the pain subsided. He groaned, pushed up onto his elbow, spat out dust and even a few stone fragments. The sun had burned a dark orb in his vision, making it hard to see clearly.

  “No. Please, not teeth.” He looked where he had spat, tonguing around his mouth for broken teeth. “All intact.” He snickered with a wave of relief. “Shit, that was fucking unexpected.” A nick sealed up over his high cheekbones, leaving a razor-thin white scar under his eye. He shook his legs side to side and flexed his knees, the pain slowly slipping away with the Phoenix’s mending. “Thank you,” he whispered, wondering if it could hear him. “What’s wrong with me? Careless, need more sleep.”

  Search for what you seek, the voice of the Dragon said in his head, an ethereal roaring.

  Search and find, the Phoenix crooned.

  “What?” Walter stammered, scanning the empty plateau. He knew the sources of the voices uncomfortably well now, though they still startled him when they spoke.

  Find it, the Dragon boomed.

  End the demon god, the Phoenix said.

  Destroy, the Dragon said.

  It is here. Use your last soul window, the Phoenix commanded.

  I sense its power, it is here, the Dragon hissed.

  “But there’s nothing here,” he protested from the ground. He rose up to his feet, brushing himself off. There was a gaping hole torn through his knee, the tattered flap of skin hanging over the hole, new skin already patched over. “Just weeds, rocks, dust.” He blinked something from his eye, vision blurring with tears and finally sharpening. He drew a touch of the Dragon and a needle of fire emerged from his fingertip. He carefully worked it through the flap of skin, falling to the ground and lightly smoking. “Huh. That worked,” he said, covering his mouth with his hand.

  Search, they both said together, though with a bit less conviction. They seemed to fade back into the background of his mind, there, but in the shadows.

  Search. Find. Even to himself, the words were like madness to his ears. Was he going mad? Was madness hearing voices in your head you knew were there, but could never prove their existence to anyone else? He supposed his powers were a fair defense against any accusations of insanity.

  There was something about being alone in the wilds that always seemed to make him feel the grip of madness. The lands seemed to draw on the feral urges in man. When the facade of civilization fell away, our roots emerged. What was it about having another person to travel with that assuaged that fleeting fear?

  He shook his head, gathered up his satchel and waterskin, torn free from his body during his graceless tumbling. The waterskin’s cork had been blown off, precious water staining the light brown stone, rapidly evaporating. He peered around for a few seconds looking for the cork, guessing it was down in the ravine between the plateaus. He slung the empty waterskin and satchel over his shoulders then looked inside the bag. Walter sighed. The foods once separated by pouches were now all mashed together, congealed by the gooey white lard. Finding water would now be his primary concern.

  Search! The Dragon bellowed. He supposed its wishes were his new primary concern, he thought with a mock grin.

  “Right.” He nodded. He started towards the rim of the plateau, walking its perimeter. As far as he could see, he was in a maze of these of monstrosities. He could see their heights varied from up here though the differences were slight. From afar, they would look much the same. He kicked a stone, sent it clattering onto rocks below, echoing as it nestled its way into a new home between two boulders. He snorted. “What do you expect me to find here?”

  The voices were quiet as graves.

  Walter realized that this was the view that Juzo had of he and his friends when they had walked these ravines, searching for him. How long had Juzo waited upon these strange flats before showing himself? Walter finished the circuit around the plateau. “Shit. This is a waste of—” Something caught his eye.

  It shone like a diamond through a haze of weeds and stone. He squinted at its glinting, strode over towards it. This was something important, could feel it in his thundering heart. He squatted down, parted a ball of scraggly weeds, pushed aside a pair of overlapping stones.

  This, this, this, the voices were a torrent of whispers.

>   “What the?” There was a big leather bag sitting in what looked to be a chipped out alcove. There was a tear through the side, a tiny metallic point sticking out. Walter felt his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth, throat going tight. He slowly untied the pouch and carefully inverted it. Metal softly clinked against metal. Chain links spilled from the bag and into a neat little pile, followed by a gleaming handle, molded with indentations for fingers. Ornate engravings of the Phoenix and Dragon entwined together spiraled around the handle.

  “Bonesnapper,” he whispered, his eye wide. What else could it possibly be? How did it get from his house to here? Some questions could never be answered and had to be let go. “Doesn’t make sense.” Few things did, he thought.

  There were three chains, each terminated with a curved edge as long as his hand. He reached for it, then stopped mid-way. Could it hurt him somehow? Was this another trick like the Cerumal’s armor? He narrowed his eye, resolute, and seized the grip. To his great relief, nothing happened. What struck him as odd was how cool the metal was as if it had been sitting in ocean water all this time. The grip felt like a natural extension of his arm.

  He rose to stand, chains clinking by his side, gleaming with the white fire of the sun. There was a central chain bonded with the grip that split into three smaller chains after about a foot. He held it out to his side, a straight line from shoulder to the first gleaming chain link, the rest hanging limply by his side. This was a lash, a weapon he was intimately familiar with. It had been far too long since he’d last held one, but the feel of it came back in an instant. A smile crept across his lips as he raised the Chains of the North behind his shoulder. Its weight was perfect; it felt as if it had been built for him.

  He whirled Bonesnapper, the Chains of the North, around his head. He cracked it towards the stone and Stormcaller sprang to life, fiery tendrils intertwining between the chain’s links in the same instant. They flashed with an amber brilliance. A great Dragon’s roaring penetrated the air, echoed through the ravines and boomed in his chest. The burning chains struck the plateau’s surface, throwing up ragged chunks of rock and debris into the blue sky. Walter closed his eye, stone chips hissing across his cheeks.