The Call of Winter (The Harbingers of Light Book 6)

by Travis Simmons

  Leona swallowed the lump in her throat and wiped the tears from her eyes. “All right,” she said, her voice strained. “Lead the way.”

  Together the ravens, Rowan, and Leona put the rising sun to their left, and headed away from the destruction of their former home, and to the dwarves in the south.

  “We better hurry,” Rorick said. He shouldered past Rowan and into her home. The house was small. A curtained door lay to the right and beyond it was a small chamber with a bed that took up nearly the entire space. Directly across from the door was a small table with shelves of herbs and potions on the wall above it. The table was empty. Rorick imagined it was where Rowan worked when she was away from the greenhouse. He lay Camilla on the table.

  “She will be okay, right?” Rorick asked. It sounded like a hollow question even to his ears. Deep down, despite how much he wished everything would be okay, he knew that Camilla was gone. There was no way she could recover from that. He avoided looking at the ruin that had come of her skull. “Rowan?” Rorick turned to the open door, but the harbinger was gone. A few strides took him back outside.

  An explosion of fire and wood to his right deafened him. Debris thundered around him, and a huge portion of an outer wall slammed into Rorick, knocking him to the side and to the frozen earth.

  A clang of metal and a sharp tug on his wrists brought Rorick gasping awake. The tug came again; shackles bound to his wrists and ankles, with one attached to his neck. They were all threaded with a thick chain.

  A violent tug jolted his arms, sending a shock of pain through his joints. Rorick lumbered to his feet. His head swayed dizzyingly and his stomach churned. Rorick bent at the waist, whatever it was he’d eaten before found its way back up to paint the trampled snow. He couldn’t remember when he’d eaten last, and trying to remember made his head hurt all the more.

  What he did remember was Deborah, her spilled guts when he killed her, the streamers of darklings burning across the midnight sky.

  Camilla dead in his arms.

  His head throbbed again. Slowly, conscious of his churning stomach, Rorick righted himself and gazed up at the sky. Clouds covered the sun, casting the day in gloom. He could still see the trails above him that the darklings had cut through the sky the night before; gray and noxious, as if staring at those trails he was staring at some distant world of darkness and malcontent.

  He didn’t want to look around him at the destruction of Haven. The smell of burning flesh, coppery blood, and the moans of the dying clung to the air. If he paid too much attention to what was going on around him, Rorick was convinced he would suffocate in his own desolation.

  More bodies joined him, but Rorick kept his eyes trained on the ground. He was in a bad spot. He wasn’t sure how he was going to escape, but he had to try.

  Where’s Leona? If she’d made it out, that’s all that mattered. If Leona survived, then Rorick could . . . give up. He felt weary to his very core, as if the last few months at Haven had aged him decades. It startled him how much he wanted to die, how much he wanted to give in to his fate and just stop fighting.

  If Leona’s safe . . .

  Another tug, this time to the shackle around his neck, and Rorick fell into step with the boots in front of him. With each shuffling step his head throbbed more and more until he thought he was going to pass out.

  Rorick knew that he was leaving Haven, but it wasn’t until he’d grown accustom to the throbbing in his head that he was able to look up. At once he noticed the dark-haired man ahead of him, attached to Rorick by the same chain that threaded through his collar.

  “Gil,” Rorick whispered. The man ahead of him perked up a little at hearing his name. He turned slightly to cast a glance over his shoulder. His face was swollen and bruised and his hair was matted with blood and dirt. The corner of his lip was split and crusted over with blood. His brown tunic was torn. Just the act of looking over his shoulder caused him to wince in pain. “What’s happening?” Rorick asked.

  Gil managed a tiny shrug. “I don’t know,” he rasped. “We’ve been attacked by darklings.”

  Ahead, someone tugged on the chain, and pulled everyone back to a shambling march. Now that he was able to see a bit more without his head throbbing and blurring his vision, Rorick could see there were hundreds of them attached to the chain, being led up the switchback trails out of Haven and into the elvish city of New Landanten at the top of the mountain.

  “We’re prisoners,” a woman said behind him. He cast a glance over his shoulder, as much as the shackles would allow. She was a dark elf. Tall and slender, as was characteristic of dark elves, with short silver hair and dazzling blue eyes. “If you have any kind of wyrd, don’t try to use it on these shackles, they will turn the power back on you. We’re trapped.”

  “Who has us captive? The darklings?” Rorick asked, turning his attention back to the way ahead.

  “And the other dark elves,” the elf said. “And some light elves.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Rorick said.

  “It makes perfect sense,” the elf told him. “Most of the dark elves want the scepters open, and so do some of the light elves.”

  “But the harbingers of darkness are helping them. If the scepters are open, it’s to drive all of the darklings from the nine worlds, right?” Rorick asked.

  “It’s likely the darklings are up to something. There has to be some reason they want the scepters opened,” the elf said. “For now, the dark elves have what they wanted. A way to open the scepters.”

  “What are they going to do to us?” Rorick asked. It was the first time he’d felt anything akin to fear since coming to Haven. Even facing Deborah hadn’t scared him. He’d had his weapons then. He’d been able to rely on his own strength and cunning. Now he had nothing. Now he had no one. He was at the mercy of someone else.

  The elf shrugged. Rorick knew she shrugged because he felt the chain around his neck shift, and heard the chain around her neck clang with the effort. “I assume they are going to use us in some way to open the scepters.”

  Rorick said nothing. He wasn’t sure he could speak if he’d wanted to. His stomach was in turmoil and just the thought of what they might be up to was enough to make him sick again. He remembered Abagail, what seemed like ages ago when they were trapped in the Fey Forest. She was floating in a web of shadows above the group. Daniken had opened Celeste’s scepter then. She’d jammed the weapon through Abagail’s midsection and it had opened with what should have been Abagail’s dying blood.

  But we aren’t harbingers, Rorick thought. We are just people. Unless they planned on finding out who among those captured were harbingers? He glanced at Gil ahead of him. The man acted as though he hadn’t heard a word the elf had just said. Maybe he hadn’t.

  Rorick had wanted so badly to open the scepters before, when he thought it would be a simple task, when he thought it would rid the nine worlds of the darklings and the pain he’d felt when the darkling tide had claimed his family. He thought it was reasonable, even if it meant a possible destruction of the nine worlds. He’d been assured that risk was very low. One thing was certain and it had been the only thing that mattered, opening the scepters would rid the nine worlds of darklings. Now he didn’t feel that it was such a grand idea. Now he felt that opening the scepters might not be a good thing if those who wanted to open it had to resort to taking prisoners in order to do it.

  The trails opened up onto New Landanten. With as ruined as Haven was, Rorick expected to find New Landanten the same way. It wasn’t. The white marble buildings were pristine and towered up to the gloom of the heavens. They looked freshly washed, and if it wasn’t for a trail of blood that led down the main street of the city, there would have been no way for Rorick to tell anything was amiss.

  The only thing that alerted him to a difference in New Landanten was a pile of charred bodies at the far end of the street, at the base of the great tree the elves revered. The pile still smoldered, and the tree drooped, as i
f it were weeping for what it had lost that morning.

  The chain was pulled again, and the prisoners steered down a side street and away from the congested main street. While this street wasn’t wide enough to support a lot of traffic, there was still a lot of people jammed into the ally. Ahead, Rorick could see a large barn with its wide doors flung open.

  Their captors were forcing the line of people through the opening and into the darkness of the barn. The smell of urine and blood turned Rorick’s stomach. The moans of wounded prisoners, and the weeping of children freshly torn from their mother’s arms clouded the air.

  There were already people inside, and as Rorick’s sight adjusted to the darkness, he could see that the prisoners were fastened to the walls, the chains around their wrists bound to hooks high on the walls, affording them just enough room to rest on a narrow bench positioned under the hooks.

  Light elves and humans alike squinted in the light that poured through the door.

  A grizzled man inside was ushering the prisoners forward. Men and women in dark clothing were fastening the prisoners to the wall, close enough to their neighbors that they couldn’t help but touch when they sat on the benches.

  “Kill the harbingers of light,” the grizzled man said. There was a patch of skin that looked somehow melted over his eyes. The diminutive cyclops appraised the new arrivals, waving his hand forward to motion them deeper into the barn.

  Rough hands pushed Rorick backwards, fastening him to the wall. He struggled, but a sharp crack to the head loosened a tooth. In the rush of pain and nausea, Rorick slumped to the bench beside Gil. His arms were stretched so far above him that sitting was uncomfortable at best, but he didn’t trust his legs just then to support him.

  Hands tore at his clothing and prodded him here and there, checking between his legs, under his arms, the smooth skin of his palms and even his feet. “Clean,” the man said, and moved on to Gil, not bothering to put Rorick’s clothing right.

  The young man knelt before Gil. He pulled up Gil’s sleeve but found nothing. Gil was one of the few harbingers who hadn’t been marked by the plague. But they searched him as they’d searched Rorick.

  “Clean,” he called.

  Rorick slumped back against the wall. Relief rushed through him that at least Gil hadn’t been taken…yet. The harbinger squirmed beside Rorick, trying in vain to cover himself with the torn garments they’d left behind. It didn’t really matter though, no one was looking as most of them were being rallied up before the barn doors.

  Soon the line of harbingers cleared from the barn.

  “What are they doing?” Gil’s voice quivered.

  “I think we’re about to find out,” Rorick said.

  A thin man stepped inside the barn, his long green jacket swirling on the cold breeze. His face was angular, his aqua eyes intense and burrowing. He wore a tight smile and clasped his hands before him. His dark hair was peppered with gray. Rorick knew him on sight, it was Fen.

  “Do we have one?” Fen asked the dark elf guard by the door. She pointed to a light elf not far inside the barn. “And does it work on them?” he asked. The guard gave a curt nod and Fen smiled. “Good. Bring her to me.”

  Fen strode to the center of the front wall of the barn, well enough in the light that those gathered at the back of the barn could still see him. The guard retrieved the light elf and forced her to her knees before Fen. Fen bowed slightly, raising the elf’s soot smudged face to look up into his eyes. She tugged away from him, but his gaze held hers and she couldn’t look away.

  Rorick hadn’t remembered him with aqua eyes before.

  “Do you know what’s going to happen to you?” he asked, his fingers trailing down her bare arm.

  She didn’t’ answer.

  Fen stood and looked to the prisoners along the walls. “Do all of you know what’s going to happen to you?”

  Down the line a child whimpered, only to be lulled by his mother’s comforting tone. No one answered.

  A dark elf entered the barn carrying a load of scepters in her gray arms. She lay them beside Fen, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “No? Well then, let’s show you.” Fen tugged his glove off to reveal a hand blackened with plague. Quick as a striking snake, he gripped the elf by the throat. The blackness on his hand slithered and whorled out of his grip and around her neck. She gasped and struggled back, but his hand, and the plague that extended from it, tightened their hold on her. She was too late anyway, she had already been infected.

  “First you’re infected,” Fen said, removing his hand. The portion of his plague remained behind, like a hand print of soot around her throat. “At that point, you either join us, or . . .” the woman struggled to stand, but the dark elf who’d brought the scepters in pushed her back down and drew a long knife from her belt. Before the newly made harbinger could say a word, the knife slipped across her neck, gashing open her throat.

  The elf coughed and blood gushed forward. The dark elf dragged the struggling, gurgling light elf to the scepters, and lay her over them. Her body slumped, draining of fight even as her crimson blood washed over the crystalline scepters in a hum of power, like wet fingers along crystal.

  The scepters glowed in answer. Their tips spun, opening like flowers to show a glowing crystal shard within.

  Rorick closed his eyes, tears rushing to the surface. He’d known how the scepters had to be opened, and it had been okay with him once upon a time. He had thought the harbingers of darkness would be hunted down and used to open the scepters, but now he couldn’t fathom how he’d ever been so naïve.

  They want to open the scepters to rid the nine worlds of darklings, but how is it better for us to treat one another this way? At least the darklings have an excuse . . . they’re evil!

  He turned his attention back to the light elf, bleeding her last out onto the scepters that whirled and whistled open beneath her gashed neck.

  The dark elf pulled a sun scepter out of the bunch. The handle was slick and sticky with cooling blood. But underneath it swirled a power Rorick hadn’t seen in the sun scepter before.

  “It’s unlocked,” the dark elf whispered, almost reverently, as she stared at the end, blossomed open to reveal the golden glowing shard of crystal within.

  Fen smiled at her.

  Abagail woke with a start to the steely gray of predawn. Wrongness hummed along her skin. Something wasn’t right. Something was out of place, and what was more, something was missing. She felt an incredible sense of loss, of death. It was palpable to her, as if she could smell hundreds of bodies burning nearby.

  She stood with a start, startling mountain dwarves that rested nearby, chatting in hushed tones around the glowing embers of a dying fire. They grumbled a little, appraising her with earthen eyes. They were all earthen. To Abagail, the dwarves could have been hewn right from the earth itself. Their hair, their skin, their clothes, everything was the color you’d find in the earth, browns, blacks, greens, and burnt oranges.

  Abagail paid them no mind. She patted her body, her pockets, all over, trying to figure out what it was she’d misplaced. Then she remembered, the God Slayer. She’d had it with her when she’d fallen asleep, but now it was gone.

  Okay, just because it’s not here, doesn’t mean it’s been stolen, she tried to tell herself, but she didn’t believe it. Elyse and Dylan had been after the God Slayer. Muspelheim had been attacked to retrieve it. Now the weapon was gone, and no matter how she tried Abagail couldn’t make herself believe that it was just misplaced.

  She cast her gaze around, but the inside of the cave was too dark and receded too far back in the mountain for her to be able to see clearly from her vantage point.

  Through the central part of the cavern campfires still glowed from the night before. It was colder outside than anything the harbingers from Muspelheim had experienced in their lives, so through the night dwarves had tended to the fires, keeping the cave warm, if not as hot as it was in Muspelheim. Dwarves were tending
to the morning fires, stoking the embers and adding wood to the fires. Flames answered in turn as gouts if sparks streamed up into the air.

  Dwarves and harbingers from Muspelheim sat here and there around drowsy fires. Their indistinct chatter sounded to Abagail more like the buzzing of bees on a night breeze. They spoke in hushed tones so as not to wake anyone, but those that were up seemed well rested and ready for . . . something.

  Abagail wound her way through sleeping bodies and clusters of those enjoying the warmth of fires and the comradery of each other. She smiled politely when groups stopped talking to look up at her. Everywhere she went, however, her mind wasn’t for the dwarves or those that she’d come from Muspelheim with.

  All she could think of was the old lady, Marggie, who had shown her a place to rest. She’d been limping; favoring one side as if she were afflicted, or as if that side didn’t fully work. When Abagail had come through the portal from Muspelheim and to Agaranth, she thought she’d left Hilda behind. She remembered the grip the darkling Elyse had on her, and she thought that connection was broken when she stumbled through the portal . . . maybe it hadn’t. Maybe she’d brought Hilda through with her.

  And into Marggie, she thought. Abagail frowned.

  She made a full circuit around the cave not only looking for the spear, but also for Marggie. She found neither.

  Abagail went back to where she’d slept and searched the area thoroughly, hoping there was a fissure or some kind of hole she hadn’t searched. There wasn’t any place the spear could have slipped in the night. She wrapped her heavy blanket around her shoulders, and with a sigh, she stepped out of the warm cave and into the cold morning.

  There were more campfires outside the cave, though not nearly as many as were inside. There’d been so many harbingers from Muspelheim that the dwarves had to find additional places to sleep. Being used to the weather in Agaranth, most of the dwarves had opted to sleep outside around large fires.