Trials of the Twiceborn (The Songreaver's Tale Book 6)

by Andrew Hunter

  The Emissary’s jaws opened again, and he sucked in a desperate breath. He thrashed his way to his feet again, his eyes wide with terror as he looked across the terrace toward the grinning vampire girl.

  “How?” he finally managed to gasp.

  Marla calmly pulled her goggles from behind her and slipped them down around her eyes before reaching inside her robe to find the folded scrap of parchment there. She held the parchment out before her now, her enchanted goggles revealing every detail of the rune she had painted there in the dim light of the moon and stars. She focused her thoughts upon that single, intricate name-rune, feeling a sudden, inexplicable connection with a place she had never been before.

  “How did you do that?” the Emissary demanded, still rasping for breath as he scrambled toward her on unsteady claws.

  “See you in Maizan,” Marla said with a parting smile as a golden mist rose from the ground to envelop her group, filling her senses with its glorious song of radiance.

  Marla shut her eyes and drew in a breath of living light. The name-rune of the Empress’s city burned in her mind with arcs of gold and motes of silver light that blazed like stars. Then, the rune seemed to unravel itself around her, stretching out in concentric circles that grew suddenly vast enough to encompass a great city. Her eyes now opened to behold the city, a sprawling citadel of rose-colored domes, spread for miles across rolling, forested hills, beneath a sky full of mist and stars and soaring dragons. She stood now at the center of a large, circular platform of pale stone, atop a tall hill near the center of the city. Slender columns of white stone ringed the perimeter of the platform and stretched upward and inward, arcing over Marla’s head to form a roof of stone latticework directly above. A ring of silver metal framed a great skylight there that half eclipsed the moon in the misty sky.

  “Marla?” her father whispered from behind, and Marla turned to see her companions now rising groggily to their feet on the platform behind her. She smiled to see that Brother Tye had been swept along with them in Marla’s hasty escape. The draconic monk turned a slow circle, taking it all in with a look of stunned wonder on his face. Berrol stripped off his red hood and regarded his daughter with unbelieving eyes.

  Claude helped Alyss to her feet as Zizi flew wild circles around the moonlit aerie, trilling excitedly at the sights of the city below. Nerrys crouched beside James, patting his back as he knelt on hands and knees, hyperventilating a little.

  “You think that...” James gasped between breaths, “maybe you could warn us... next time?”

  Marla let out a girlish giggle and grinned, too breathless with joy to speak.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Astorra

  The wisps led Garrett past three more hanging trees on the path to the place the Astorrans called the fairy mound. He knew the moment they came in sight of the great, weed-shrouded hill, this was no place for fairies. Curious boggarts oozed from dark fissures in the side of the great burial mound, and ancient, flickering wisps rose from tumbled stones whose time-blasted runes showed, barely visible in the predawn light.

  Garrett reined his horse to a halt as he took it all in, and the shambling horde of Hanged Ones behind him let out an anguished groan.

  “This won’t take long,” Garrett called out to the twisted undead they had gathered along the road.

  “Revenge!” hissed one of the half-rotten corpses, his eye sockets blazing with the orange fire of the gallowgeist that animated him.

  “Listen,” Haven called back to the noose-strung revenant, “You’ve waited this long to get payback, you can wait another few minutes while Garrett rounds up some more ghosts.”

  “It burns,” one of the fiery-eyed shamblers moaned, clawing at her mangled throat.

  “Then think about revenge or something then to take your mind off of it!” Haven growled. She had not been happy about Garrett’s decision to raise more of the hanged Astorran outlaws, but she had seen the reason in stacking the odds in their favor as much as possible before they reached Braedshal.

  “So, who do I talk to?” Garrett asked as Sender flew back toward them from the mound.

  “It’s a bit tricky, Songreaver,” Sender sighed, “The wisps are led by the spirit of an elven lord named Laasaef. It means Starweaver in your language.”

  Starweaver, the voice in Garrett’s mind chuckled, I remember him.

  “The boggarts serve under a ghost called Crookjaw,” Sender explained, “a rather unpleasant beast, possibly once a troll.”

  Crookjaw was no troll, Brahnek’s voice laughed.

  You know these guys? Garrett silently queried the Spellbreaker’s ghost.

  I buried them here, Brahnek answered proudly.

  “Uh,” Garrett sighed, “maybe we better leave these guys alone.”

  “Why?” Haven asked.

  “‘Cause they probably won’t like me very much,” Garrett said.

  “They don’t have to like you,” she said, “they just have to dislike the Astorrans more.”

  “Yeah, but, I really don’t think they’re gonna like me,” Garrett chuckled nervously.

  “Brahnek!” shrieked a monstrous, ghostly voice from the barrow.

  Even the gallowgeists fell silent at the sound of that horrible voice.

  You’d better let me deal with this one, boy, the Spellbreaker’s ghost sighed in Garrett’s mind.

  “How’s Shortgrass doing?” Garrett asked, turning to look at the little selkie who carried the unconscious fairy in a makeshift backpack.

  Mualip reached back to lift the flap of the pack and peeked inside. “He yet sleeps,” the selkie answered.

  “Brahnek!” the monstrous voice roared again, and Garrett turned to see the entire hill now swarming with inky boggarts while seething red wisps formed ghostly ranks in the air above.

  Garrett sighed and nodded toward Sir Baelan and Mirion, still seated in their saddles with blank faces, oblivious to the brewing conflict. “Look after them for me,” Garrett said, “I’ll be right back.”

  He turned and rode his horse down into the high grass that stretched between the forest road and the great barrow.

  A movement of darker shadow before the hill drew Garrett’s attention, a boggart the size of a wagon now seeped its way down across the broken runestones, and the churning masses of its brethren followed close behind it.

  “I knew you’d come back someday, human!” the enormous boggart rumbled, and Garrett’s horse reared in fear.

  Garrett quickly dismounted as soon as he had the horse under control again. Even the past few days spent in the presence of the undead had not prepared the brave-hearted animal to face this monster. He patted the horse on the rump as it wheeled and galloped back toward Haven and the others. Then he turned to face the roiling mass of shadow that bore down upon him from the burial mound.

  Suddenly an arc of red lightning hissed upward from the ground between Garrett and Crookjaw. Both the necromancer and the boggart leapt back a step as the crackling column of electric fire coalesced into the rough outline of a man, or rather, an elf.

  “Brahnek, elf slayer,” the elven ghost greeted him, bowing his head slightly. Though Garrett could make out no details of the elf’s shadowy face, the sputtering flames of his eternal rage silhouetted the outline of a plumed helm and the elf’s long ears.

  Garrett almost raised his hand in greeting but then leapt back again as the elf lifted a ghostly sword of sizzling flame, leveled at the boy’s heart.

  “Your flesh is warped and stunted, elf slayer!” the red ghost hissed, taking a step forward as Garrett retreated beyond the reach of the fiery blade, “Have your sins so corrupted you that you now seek release from the pain of living?”

  “I’m not stunted!” Garrett cried.

  “You will find no mercy here!” the elven ghost spat, “For you showed my people none!”

  “I give you half, elf lord, Crookjaw rumbled as he oozed forward to flank the flaming red ghost, “You want his top or his bottom?”
<
br />   “You may have his flesh, war-bred,” Starweaver’s ghost rasped, “I claim his dark soul, and I will flay it with the cries of the murdered children of the Song.”

  Help? Garrett whimpered inwardly as the boggarts moved quickly to surround him, cutting off his retreat from the fiery red ghost.

  Relax, boy, the Spellbreaker’s ghost chuckled, they know not to whom they speak.

  Garrett started to reach for his sword, but two slender boggarts darted in, sinking their long talons of pure shadow into his forearms. He grunted in pain as they restrained his arms to either side, and his hands tingled with a thousand pinpricks as he flexed them.

  “Kneel, son of dust!” Starweaver’s ghost commanded, and the boggarts pulled Garrett to his knees in the tall grass.

  The elven ghost lifted his sword as though to plunge it into Garrett’s chest.

  “Garrett!” Haven cried out as she rushed forward.

  “Stay back!” Garrett shouted.

  “I remember him bigger,” Crookjaw mumbled as he towered above the kneeling boy.

  “You stupid ettin,” Garrett laughed, his voice thick with Brahnek’s accent, “I was bigger when we fought here... you nearly had me, you know. That poisoned shiv you stuck me with put me abed for a fortnight after the battle!”

  “By what fell magic do you still live, child of dust?” Starweaver’s ghost demanded, bringing the tip of his blazing sword within an inch of Garrett’s chest.

  “By the oldest magic, cousin!” Brahnek chuckled through Garrett’s lips.

  Starweaver hissed, drawing his blade back in dismay.

  “Didn’t know we were related, did you, Starweaver?” Garrett said with a grin, no longer feeling the pain in his arms as the Spellbreaker took control of his body and voice.

  “Huh?” Crookjaw’s shade said, his glowing violet eyes narrowed in confusion.

  “Yes,” Garrett’s voice said, “related by marriage. I’d have invited you to the wedding, of course, but I had already killed you long before that, I’m afraid.”

  “No...” Starweaver’s ghost whispered, the blade of his sword wavering in his grasp, “You’re lying.”

  “No,” Garrett answered sadly, his eyes falling to the waving grass, “No elven blade ever reached my heart... but I fell just the same. Her eyes took the sword from my hand, and her love filled my hollow breast. With a single look, my sweet Elaraenu did what you and all your mighty hosts never could.”

  “No!” Starweaver’s ghost raged, plunging his crackling blade again and again into Garrett’s chest, “You lie!”

  Garrett closed his eyes, feeling no pain as the ghost repeatedly stabbed him. An overwhelming sense of peace filled him, an undying love for a woman it seemed he had always known and yet had never met. Garrett’s heart ached with an unspeakably sweet sorrow, and tears of azure flames poured down his cheeks.

  “Garrett!” Haven screamed, but her voice was muffled by the seething masses of inky boggarts that now crowded around Garrett vying to rend his flesh with black claws.

  Garrett felt only the fluttering touch of a thousand anguished souls, grasping at him with ripping talons that tore away glittering fistfuls of blue fire from his body.

  What’s happening? Garrett demanded of the voice within as he struggled to control his panic.

  They must take their vengeance upon me, Brahnek’s voice groaned, It is the only way.

  Garrett wanted to ask more, but the great shadowy jaws of the ghostly ettin behind him closed over his head and snapped down, driving spectral fangs into his throat.

  Garrett felt nothing, but Brahnek’s voice screamed in agony as their shared body convulsed in the grip of the vengeful ghosts.

  “Stop it!” Haven yelled, wrapping her arms around Garrett’s body from behind. She cried out in pain as the boggarts turned their ghostly claws upon her as well.

  “Get back, girl!” Brahnek shouted through Garrett’s lips, “This is not your battle!”

  “This is my boyfriend, you stupid ghosts!” she raged, dragging Garrett backwards slowly through the clinging spirits of the dead.

  “Haven!” Garrett cried, wrenching control of his body from the Spellbreaker within. He blasted the boggarts backward with a concussion of blue force and then collapsed into Haven’s arms in the tall grass.

  “Garrett?” she asked, looking at him in confusion.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” he gasped, his arms still tingling with the prickle of the boggarts’ grasp.

  “What have you done?” demanded the voice of the elven ghost. The spirit of Starweaver stood, wavering in the light of dawn, as though buffeted by a strong wind. He held his phantom sword at arm’s length in both hands, and it wrenched from side to side as if fighting against his control. The blade now glowed with an intense blue light, and the azure glow slowly spread up the elven spirit’s arms like frost.

  The great black shadow of Crookjaw fell to his knees beside him in the grass, his oily jaws spread wide in a soundless scream as he clutched at the sides of his head. Jets of blue flame shot out from between his clawed fingers as the Songreaver’s power burned away his curse from within.

  All around, boggarts staggered back, staring down at ghostly three-fingered paws where moments before their inky talons had dripped pure malice. Here and there, a phantom goblin or troll rose on trembling knees and shook themselves free of their shadowy nightmare. Above the field, the gathered wisps crackled and seethed with arcs of blue lightning that spread through their ranks, quenching their fiery wrath.

  Garrett looked back to see his own small army of the dead moving forward to join the ghosts in the field. The boggarts of Gob’s Hollow led the way, slithering forward like living smoke to greet their ghostly comrades in arms. As the ghostly goblins and trolls moved to embrace them, the inky bodies of Garrett’s boggarts fizzled away, revealing the laughing ghosts of the war-bred creatures beneath. Garrett’s wisps as well now mingled with the host of spirits in the morning sky, and he smiled to see the merry flashes of color that rippled through the increasingly disordered ranks of the elven dead.

  A rattling sigh drew Garrett’s attention back to the ghost of the elven commander. Starweaver fell to one knee, leaning against his ethereal blade for support. He gasped as beads of icy blue light dripped from his brow, withering the grass beneath him as they fell.

  The ghostly figure of a monstrous war-bred beast, larger than a troll, now sat in a blackened patch of grass beside the elf lord. The heavily muscled creature rubbed at his face with his massive, three-fingered hands. He regarded Garrett with a bewildered look in his lambent blue eyes and a bemused smile on his lips.

  A ghostly goblin at Crookjaw’s side chattered something in the language of the war-bred.

  Crookjaw gave the little goblin a questioning grunt.

  The goblin tapped his chin with a ghostly finger and then gave his commander a sharp-toothed grin.

  Crookjaw frowned and stroked his own smooth jawline with one clawed finger and then gave a surprised laugh. The goblin joined in as well, and the monsters’ laughter soon spread across the hill.

  Starweaver wiped his brow and rose, shakily to his feet again. His wisps now stood as elven spirits, faintly glowing against the creep of dawn over the barrow. Ghostly pennons fluttered in the morning breeze atop glittering spears, and sparkles of azure light played across the ethereal armor of a thousand or more phantom elves. Here and there among the shining ranks of elven dead, Garrett saw soldiers embracing unarmored loved ones, reunited again, and a dozen ghostly children rolled and tumbled together down the side of the grief-stained hill, filling the morning air with their laughter.

  Haven’s eyes glistened with tears as she hugged Garrett close, and Mualip stood, gape-jawed in wonder. Sender flitted among the elven ghosts, laughing merrily. Only the somnambulant Astorrans, still astride their horses, and the rage-haunted Hanged Ones seemed unimpressed by the great awakening of lost fae.

  “Who are you?” Starweaver’s ghost asked, his voice thin and
weary.

  Haven helped Garrett to his feet again, and he peeled a few blades of crushed and withered grass from the knees of his robe before wiping his gloves on his hips and facing the dead again.

  “I’m the Songreaver,” Garrett said.

  Crookjaw’s laughter died away.

  The little goblin at his side whispered a question in its harsh language.

  “Gul’Vedrak,” Crookjaw muttered, his lambent eyes wide, and the ghostly goblin shrank back in fear.

  Garrett saw the look of dismay in Starweaver’s eyes. The elven shade took a step backward and then turned to look toward the ghostly host behind him. He turned his shining eyes toward Garrett again.

  “Have you come to... end us?” he asked.

  “No!” Garrett laughed, “I’m here to help you!”

  “You help us?” Crookjaw scoffed.

  “Yeah,” Garrett said, “that... and, I kinda need your help too.”

  The ghost of the elven lord and the war-bred commander looked at one another and frowned.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Maizan

  The streets of Maizan reminded Marla of Upper Thrinaar. Crowds of brightly dressed humans and fae strolled the lantern-lit lanes between the rose-colored domes. The Laprians’s chattering voices filled the air, mingled with laughter. Their strange language seemed descended from Draconic but was spoken too quickly to follow. Marla could catch only a few words, here and there, not enough to make any sense of their conversations, but they seemed happy enough. No one seemed to pay any heed to the group of robed vampires moving through their midst, and even the fae folk passed by, unaware of the danger that stalked among them.

  “Just a little bite?” James groaned as Berrol dragged him away from a passing elf girl that had returned his obvious interest with a pleasant smile. “Please?” the desperate vampire begged.

  “Mind your manners!” Berrol growled, pulling the younger vampire away from temptation.

  “I hate to admit it, but I could use a drink myself,” Alyss whispered, “I don’t suppose you know where to find one, do you?”