by Edward Cox
“This is not nature’s work,” Üban said.
Unholy energy charged the air.
Cries of alarm came from the women. A figure had appeared, standing on the flat roof of the mausoleum. Head bald, body thin and hunched, she was dressed in dark robes. Her hands were raised to the sun, and her voice whispered around the courtyard with sorcerous menace.
Luca swore.
“Dun-Wyrd…”
A rumble, like a giant bellowing in the bowels of the earth, shook the ground. A wall of hard dirt rose to block the lair’s arched entrance, trapping the knights in the courtyard.
“Form ranks!” Üban shouted.
But the order had barely passed her lips when the sodden ground began to churn and a hand gripped her leg.
Twenty-One
Old Friend
With vision aided by magic, Vladisal sped through the labyrinthine network of dark corridors, the twists and turns tinged with green, the way guided by Elander’s soft calls. The Boskan captain focussed her every thought, her every instinct on reaching the son of her Duchess and spiriting him away from the terrible gloom of Dun-Wyrd’s lair.
Elander’s voice led her into a corridor where mist glowed with pale blue radiance, hovering a foot or more above the ground. Vladisal slowed her pace. The mist swirled as she crept through it. A moan came from directly ahead, where the tunnel ended at the doorway to a chamber.
Vladisal ran forward.
Inside the chamber, the mist reached halfway up her thighs. A person, shrouded in blue radiance, lay curled on the floor by the back wall. Vladisal’s heart pounded, but instinct stopped her rushing to the person. Instead, she took a cautious step backward.
“Elander?”
The figure stirred and stood. Large and thickset, much bigger than the young boy Vladisal championed.
A woman wearing tarnished armour rose out of the mist. Her head was shaven close to the scalp, and in her hands was a mighty war hammer.
Vladisal’s world grew infinitely narrower.
“Dief?”
Face twitching at the sound of the voice, Dief’s eyes remained closed, as though she slept. “Vlad?” Her voice was whispery, distant. “Is that you?”
Vladisal swallowed. “I am here, my friend.”
“I’m sorry, my captain. I tried to end my life in the forest, but she called…” Dief opened her eyes; they glowed with the same blue light as the mist. “Her voice was strong, inside my veins. She brought me here and made me understand her vision.”
Vladisal adopted a defensive stance. “Dief, what has the Bone Shaker done to you?” She drew her sword.
“Showed me the future.” Dief coughed and gagged. “And you have no part in Dun-Wyrd’s vision.” She lofted the war hammer. “Forgive me...”
“Wait!” Vladisal snapped, but the big knight did not hear her.
With a roar of rage and hate, Dief rushed forward, swinging the hammer. Vladisal barley managed to dodge the blow, slashing out with her sword. The hammer easily parried the strike. She spun around Dief, further into the chamber, and managed to put a little distance between them.
“Dief, wait!” Vladisal begged. “You are not yourself. There is magic-”
Dief gave no respite. All humanity lost to her, she charged again.
Vladisal forgot all memory of friendship, and sliced at her neck. But Dief moved with unnatural speed and blocked the sword with the hammer’s long handle, before swinging for her captain once again. Vladisal’s blade met the attack. The force of the blow sent numbing shockwaves up her arm, and the sword fell clattering from her hand, lost in the mist. Vladisal tried to dodge the next strike, but the hammer smashed into her breastplate, sending her crashing into the back wall.
With a groan, Vladisal slid down into a sitting position. She coughed blood onto her chin. Dief loomed over her, face grim and eyes glowing.
“My captain.” A root slid from Dief’s mouth, its tip probing her face. “Farewell.”
“No-” Blood choked off Vladisal’s plea. She could only watch the hammer rise above her.
Dief grunted as her head snapped forward and back again. Her face creased with pain. She turned from Vladisal. A crossbow bolt was buried in the back of her head.
In the doorway, Abildan calmly drew the string of her crossbow, selected a new bolt from her baldric, and slid it into place.
Dief screamed with a demon’s curse that seemed to shake the very foundations of the lair. The feliwyrd sent the second bolt into her face.
The way Dief rocked on her feet, it was though she had been struck by a sudden thought rather than a bolt from a crossbow. She tried to take a step, faltered, and dropped to her knees. The war hammer hit the floor with a dull clang. Through swirling mists, Abildan pounced, sabre in hand. Silent, with an utter lack of emotion on her feline face, she hacked at Dief’s thick neck – once, twice, three times before her head tumbled to the floor and her body fell to one side.
Abildan crouched beside Vladisal and placed a hand on her dented breastplate, muttering words of a dark and sorcerous tongue.
White fire sank into Vladisal’s chest and she yelled in pain. She felt broken ribs mend, damaged organs repair. She coughed more blood, and then the pain eased and was gone completely.
Abildan helped her to her feet with a smirk. “That’s twice I’ve saved your life now, Sir Knight. Such a shame you probably won’t survive to repay your debt.”
Vladisal placed a hand against her dented breastplate. She looked down at Dief’s body in the mist and swallowed her grief. “I take it your search was fruitless.”
“Quite.” Abildan reclaimed the sword from beneath Dief’s leg and gave it to the knight. “I can feel Dun-Wyrd’s magic, but…” She closed her eyes and cursed. “Of course. The Melding Arc.”
“What is it?” Vladisal said.
Abildan cursed again. “To fuse the spirit of Elander with an Ulyyn, Dun-Wyrd will utilise a device called the Melding Arc. To power this device, she needs the light of the sun-”
Abildan cocked her ear, listening to something beyond Vladisal’s hearing range. She bared her pointed teeth.
“It seems that we must work together after all, Sir Vladisal.” She headed for the door. “Do try to keep up.”
Twenty-Two
Old Enemies
Tree-demons besieged the Knights of Boska. Dun-Wyrd surveyed the pandemonium.
Her army rose from the ground, clambering free of the earth, churning flat terrain into a rough and treacherous battlefield. Trapped in the courtyard, fighting beneath a brilliant sun, the knights rallied with brave hearts. But the tree-demons came as thick as ants spilling from an anthill. Protected by coils of armoured wood, poisonous roots whipping from their mouths, they met the knights with a single purpose.
The mergings hungered for blood, but they would not feed, would not infect. Not today. Dun-Wyrd wanted these women of Boska captured.
Up on the mausoleum roof, the Bone Shaker had cast a magical barrier. Translucent energy wavered gently in the air, and sound struggled to pass through it. The tumult of battle was nothing more than a dull and distant noise. These knights had already proved themselves to be clever and pragmatic, and Dun-Wyrd would take no risks with her plans.
Turning from the battle, she inspected the progress of the Melding Arc.
The fat stone body hovered on its back. Its doors were open, the magic in its belly exposed to the sun. The spell was nearing completion. Greedily, it drank natural energy from the pure and golden rays. Earlier, Dun-Wyrd had watched the magic swell, and two vaporous, tentacle-like arms had burst from the green radiance, first reaching for the sky before coiling tightly around the two captives who stood immobile on either side of the Melding Arc.
Elander remained unconscious. His young features were slack, lined by tendrils of lank, raven hair. Prince Kyjah, however, openly stared at his captor. His expression appeared defiant, but the Dun-Wyrd could see the fear hiding in his eyes.
“Not long now, lit
tle prince,” Dun-Wyrd promised him. “Soon, none of this will matter to you.”
Kyjah spoke in his native tongue: a single click followed by a harsh grunt. Dun-Wyrd understood the Ulyyn language and recognised the insult. She smiled at the boy’s bravado.
A dull ticking, followed by a snapping sound, distracted the Wyrd.
Boskan archers were loosing arrows upon her. But they could not hit their mark. Each arrow shattered upon the invisible barrier, causing it to waver and spark, before they dissolved to energy that was absorbed by the magic. It would take much more than mundane projectiles to stop Dun-Wyrd. Still, she was irritated by the audacity of the archers, so she pulsed a command to her tree-demons, ordering them to climb the stairs to the ramparts and put an end to their petty attacks.
Down below, the knights fought with ferocity and skill, but they were heavily outnumbered. Dun-Wyrd had culled the entire population of three villages to create her army. They might have been slow and lumbering, but they pressed the attack with no regard to defence, and they were many.
Like a plague, the tree-demons spread across the courtyard, strangling the knights’ manoeuvring room. The weapons of the Boskans were fast becoming useless, and for each foe they cut down, more pressed in on every woman.
Dun-Wyrd’s eye was drawn to the oldest knight on the battlefield, the one they called Üban. She fought especially hard; she was obviously well-trained and canny enough to reserve her strength. She would make a fine caniwyrd - an obvious choice for pack leader. The archers were useless to Dun-Wyrd’s needs. The tree-demons could feed upon their blood. The rest, once merged with the spirits of wolves, would make seasoned warriors. A vicious and loyal personal guard.
Even as she relished this thought, Dun-Wyrd narrowed her eyes and cast her gaze further over the courtyard. There would always be at least one irritating loose end to tie up.
Abildan.
The feliwyrd was nowhere to be seen, but she was close by, somewhere. Dun-Wyrd could feel the taint of blood magic in the air. Abildan was too skilled to be blindsided by the little surprise that Dun-Wyrd had left in the labyrinth below the lair, but she wasn’t so strong that she could deny her breeding, ignore the calling in her blood.
Dun-Wyrd gave a thin smile.
She would break Abildan’s conditioning, force her to abandon the orders of Mya-Siad, and… well, a feliwyrd would make a handy servant for what was to come.
Sobbing.
Elander had awoken. His eyes were filled with tears and terror as he stared at the coils of green magic holding his arms to his body. He noticed the Melding Arc, looked at stoic Prince Kyjah on the other side, and finally his eyes found Dun-Wyrd’s.
“Please,” he begged between sobs. “Let me go.”
“Rejoice,” Dun-Wyrd told him. “You cannot yet imagine the wonders you will see.”
Elander fell into uncontrollable weeping. Kyjah glared with loathing.
At that moment, the sun completed its work. The Melding Arc activated. The spell flared and droned, pulsing with bursts of emerald that spun around the captives, and the merging of their spirits began.
Twenty-Three
For Mya-Siad
Abildan ran from the mausoleum into bright sunshine and chaos. The desperate shouts of fighting women mingled with the emotionless groans of tree-demons. The wet chopping of sharp metal against soft flesh and pulpy wood smacked around the courtyard like a busy day in a butcher’s shop.
Abildan headed through the chaos with no thought for helping the knights. Her blood magic had already weakened; she had not expected the healing of Vladisal’s wounds to drain so much power. The feliwyrd had neither the strength nor time to fight a hopeless battle alongside these frantic women.
The battlefield was now as treacherous as a freshly ploughed field. Already, a few knights were buried beneath groups of tree-demons, whose roots and claws scratched and pulled at armour. The rest were surrounded by animated corpses, the room to swing a sword slowly diminishing. But the tree-demons were not trying to feed; they were harvesting the women of Boska, preparing them for Dun-Wyrd’s experiments.
And the Wyrd herself was up on the mausoleum roof, surveying her work.
Abildan needed higher ground, and fast.
The tree-demons paid the small assassin little mind as she dodged and weaved, nimble footed, running in a blur of blood magic. They were too focussed on the knights. Sir Üban noticed her, though.
“Abildan!” the old knight roared. “Where is Vladisal?”
The feliwyrd kept running, but risked a glance back.
Beside Üban, Sir Luca slipped and fell. A horde of tree-demon’s descended on her. Üban herself was on her knees, clearly exhausted, swinging her sword at her foes with clumsily, tired strokes.
“Help us, you bastard!”
Abildan ignored her. Üban bellowed like a beast. Tree-demons swarmed and her voice fell silent.
Wending her way along the lair’s right side wall, Abildan side-stepped two children fighting over the bloody remains of an archer, and she bounded up the steps to the rampart.
Ahead, the narrow path was littered with tree-demons feeding upon two more archers. Clearly, Dun-Wyrd had no interest in using them to create her caniwyrd. With supernatural speed and agility, Abildan vaulted and danced, until she was clear of the monsters. She drew level with the mausoleum and stopped.
Dun-Wyrd stood with her back to the feliwyrd, supervising the Melding Arc and the two captives connected to it. Elander and an Ulyyn boy were limp in the grasp of green, pulsing magic that fed a swollen spell like a mighty jewel. The Melding Arc had activated. Soon, these children would be joined to create an oracwyrd.
Abildan unhooked the crossbow from her belt and drew back then string. Dropping to one knee, she laid the weapon aside and reached inside her jerkin for the slim, wooden box she had carried all the way from Mya-Siad.
The black bolt lay inside. The silver, conical head glinted in the sunlight. Abildan took it out with a steady hand and slid it into the groove of the crossbow.
Using the last of the blood magic, she breathed upon the bolt, ruffling the grey feathers of its flight. The magical symbols and words engraved into the spiralling blade began to glow. Dark vapour rose from it like smoke from a candle. The bolt vibrated in the crossbow, eager to be loosed. Abildan took aim at Dun-Wyrd’s back.
“For Mya-Siad,” she breathed and pulled the trigger.
The bolt flew across the courtyard, high above the battle, whining, trailing dark smoke. With a sharp snap of lightning, it struck the magical barrier surrounding the mausoleum’s roof. The air rippled like water, the bolt appearing to be stuck in nothing. A heartbeat passed, and then the bolt began to turn, its spiralling blade screwing into Dun-Wyrd’s magic.
The Bone Shaker turned in surprise. She took a moment to stare at the projectile drilling into her defences, before looking across at the rampart to give Abildan a baleful glare. She raised a hand. The air shimmered as she added more power to the barrier.
The bolt stopped as though it had become lodged in midair.
A brief look of disdain passed over Dun-Wyrd’s face as she turned back to the Melding Arc.
The tree-demons lost all interest in the dead archers. Their glowing eyes turned to Abildan. She dropped the crossbow and drew her sabre. The blood magic was spent. The tree-demons shuffled towards her.
“Things will pass as the oracwyrd foresee,” Abildan muttered coldly.
She leapt into battle with a yowl of defiance.
Twenty-Four
For Boska
Vladisal took the wide and uneven steps two, three at a time, rising from the bowels of the lair to the mausoleum roof. When fresh air and warm sunshine hit her, she became aware that something was wrong with the atmosphere.
She saw Abildan fighting on the rampart. She saw her knights fighting for their lives down in the courtyard. They were losing. There were tree-demons everywhere. But the sounds that reached Vladisal’s ears were dampened, dist
ant. The air rippled and fizzed with magic.
Her breath caught when her eyes found Elander.
He was unconscious, held by more magic, pulsing and flaring, connecting him to a strange contraption of stone. The Melding Arc, Abildan had called it; and, just as the feliwyrd had predicted, an Ulyyn boy had also been connected to it. Vladisal knew little of supernatural ways, but judging by the way the Melding Arc’s drone was rising in pitch it was preparing to merge the spirits of two children.
The Ulyyn was staring at Vladisal. With a nod of his head, he drew the knight’s attention to something behind him.
Seething hatred boiled in Vladisal’s soul.
Hunched and withered, Dun-Wyrd stood with her back to the Melding Arc, studying what appeared to be a crossbow bolt stuck in midair. Vladisal’s lip curled. She raised her sword and charged the Bone Shaker.
Dun-Wyrd twitched. Her hand shot out.
Energy hit Vladisal’s chest, punching her onto her back. The sword clattered from her grasp. She lay gasping, gaping at the sky. The sound of fighting seemed to come from a dreamlike place. Dun-Wyrd’s shadow fell across her.
The Bone Shaker lowered her hood, revealing a skeletal face and a head shaved smooth. For a moment, she seemed amused by the Boskan knight at her feet. But then she expressed pity and finally hatred.
Dazed, Vladisal tried to reclaim her sword. With another flicker of magic, Dun-Wyrd numbed all feeling in Vladisal’s arms and legs.
“At least you’ll die knowing that you tried,” the Bone Shaker said.
Vladisal sank back, looking at the Melding Arc.
The spell inside the stone body was growing and bubbling, threatening to spill over as if the green magical energy was viscous fluid boiling in a pot. Elander and the Ulyyn boy were shaking, mouths open and eyes closed. Magic swept between them in dazzling flashes, feeding their spirits into the Melding Arc. Elander would soon be lost forever. His champion had failed him, failed her women.