Heavy Lies The Crown (The Scalussen Chronicles Book 2)

by Ben Galley

  Durnus bent to retrieve the head of Sigrimur. White marble of incredible detail stared back at them. To Farden he had an ageless face. Eyes frozen shut in last moments of pain, face a grim mask. Hair wild. Some of its tendrils had broken off over the centuries. Some much more recently.

  ‘What now, Durnus?’ asked Farden.

  The vampyre was walking with the head outstretched, facing it towards him. It was a peculiar dance to watch as he approached the statue. ‘We listen to Sigrimur’s last breath. I do not know why, but this feels right. Would you, Warbringer?’

  The minotaur obliged, though even she had to reach to place the head upon the statue’s severed neck. She held it there in place for a moment, worried to let go.

  ‘Silence, all of you!’ Durnus hissed.

  Warbringer jolted backwards as the statue’s eyes snapped open with a squeak of stone. Blue pinpricks of light shone forth. The head stayed in place. The marble flowed around Sigrimur’s features as if he lived once more.

  It was then the statue spoke with lips unmoving. It was no voice, but a breath held for a millennia, a death rattle. Wisps of faint, frosted vapour flowed with his voice, coalescing into a shape. A key of the most perfect crystal.

  ‘Fool’s path you’ve chosen, headlong to ruin. Trace Vernia’s glow to where a giant drowns and stand upon his brow. Bodies fall in faith betwixt the third dragon’s tooth. There taste forgotten airs and lesser minds. Only the drowned shall know the sepulchre’s secrets.’

  As soon as the riddle was uttered, the ghost-light of Sigrimur’s eyes died and the key fell. Durnus managed to catch it in two hands, and with the sound of stone cracking, the head toppled forwards into Warbringer’s grip. Durnus was already repeating the riddle to himself, committing it to memory as he stared at the crystal key. Farden was so exhausted he had already forgotten them. The voice had left a bizarre air in Sigrimur’s Rest. Everyone present scowled as they pondered the words and the intricate relic in the vampyre’s grip.

  The key held no colour but the skin beneath it. About the length of Durnus’ hand, it had a circular ring at one end and jagged teeth that were far too intricate for Farden’s liking. He imagined a strong breath might shatter it.

  ‘Well, I never,’ Irien breathed. ‘The last breath of Sigrimur was a key.’

  ‘I do not know why I am surprised also,’ Durnus said. ‘It would make sense. Three tasks. Three keys.’

  ‘In a quest where nothing else makes sense, I’ll take it,’ replied Farden.

  ‘Then I wager we are looking for two more keys,’ the vampyre mumbled.

  The mage chuckled. ‘We have fucking purpose at last.’

  ‘We should leave. Discuss this on the road,’ Mithrid whispered, reminding them of their company.

  Farden turned to the Lady of Whispers. She was busy staring at Fleetstar, who had bowed her head to investigate the woman. The mage had to touch her arm to get her attention.

  ‘You have what you come for, at last,’ she said.

  ‘And now you have met a true dragon, as promised. I hope it was worth it.’

  ‘Many times over. Besides, it would have been worth it all just to see what this magnificent beast did to Queen Peskora.’

  ‘I do talk, you know,’ Fleetstar grunted. Irien beamed.

  ‘And where will the Lady of Whispers go?’ asked Farden.

  She regarded him with a fiendish look. ‘I cannot stay here, that is for sure. Peskora will be coming for my blood as well as yours. But it was worth it to see the look on her face. Worth it to see a dragon such as this. I have many friends across the Easterealm and many whispers to trade. I have longed for finer weather for some time. Perhaps I shall go south, to warmer climes! I have plenty of whispers to sell in Normont and Lezembor.’

  After the others had clasped Irien’s hand and bid her farewell, Farden was left standing in the shallow water. ‘Thank you for everything you did for us. Not just your hospitality, but your trust. You saved our skins.’

  ‘Then I’ll be sure to call on that favour. And perhaps we shall meet again on your journey,’ Irien said, leaning close and kissing Farden on his stubbled cheek. ‘She’ll be coming after you now, you know. Watch your back, Farden the Forever King.’ With that she turned on her heel and swept away across the waters.

  ‘Are we ready?’ Farden asked the others.

  ‘Just one moment,’ Durnus said. He was manhandling a fat purse into a haversack. It jingled loudly.

  ‘What is that?’ asked the mage.

  ‘Coin. Golikan leaves, to be precise.’

  Farden stared at the vampyre. ‘Where did you get that?’

  Durnus looked around as if the answer was obvious. ‘I placed a bet.’

  ‘You… you what?’

  ‘I placed a bet on Warbringer versus Rovisk. Warbringer to win, of course. You are not the only one who can follow the threads of logic, mage.’ Durnus patted his purse of winnings. ‘Our quest now has funding.’

  Farden laughed freely. He braced himself as Fleetstar’s claws wrapped around his chest and ribs. The dragon lurched into the air, dragging roof-tiles and guttering down in clumps before she managed to escape into open air. The last Farden saw of Irien, she was half-hidden behind the shadow of a column, watching.

  ‘East, Fleetstar,’ he ordered, resting his hands against her scales.

  PART THREE

  SHADOWS LONG & ECHOES DYING

  CHAPTER 20

  OF GRAVES & PYRES

  The Silent Sea is anything but. It is a battleground of hurricanes and maelstroms, ruled by pirates and monsters any description would fail. Woe betide any stranger to its currents.

  FROM ‘ON FAR-FLUNG SHORES’ BY WANDERING WALLIUM

  The iron keels of the bookships ground against the sand of the island. Anchors were cast into the crystal waters with great splashes. It was just in time. The Vanguard and Revenge were now listing slightly to opposite sides.

  Captain Hereni wiped the sweat from her forehead. Enough came away to drip a small puddle by her side. She cast a scowl to the blinding sun above them. Not a cloud bothered the cerulean sky. Not a single ally to save them from the scorching Paraian heat.

  Hereni stared out across the lump of an island. Its sand bars, reefs and beaches might have spread for miles, but its core was no bigger than Scalussen. A poor excuse for a mountain occupied its centre. Jagged black spurs of rock leaned together. Birds of all kinds swarmed around it in thick swarms. Sporadic forests of palm trees surrounded it like an emerald tiara.

  ‘Where are we, Lerel? Because it feels a lot like Hel to me,’ she yelled to the admiral, high above her in the bridge.

  Lerel tried to laugh and coughed against a raw throat instead. ‘An island off the Falcon’s Spur. Be thankful we’ve still got some of the breeze from the sea and land trading airs. And it’ll grow a little cooler the farther south we go.’

  The so-called breeze was meagre now the mages’ wind had died. Hereni spied some shadow further along the deck and moved between the bodies laying about the deck between the large wreckage. The mages were spent to the point of unconsciousness. The others who had managed to stay awake sat staring out to sea, where the leviathan still thrashed.

  Lerel had led them on a merry and masterful maze through the sandbars and shallow waters. Hereni doubted few other captains in the world could have led nine ships, three of them colossal brutes, through such a mess of sand and crashing waves.

  Beaching the ships was also risky, but as Lerel had informed Hereni, with mages they stood a better chance than the leviathan did at escaping. The monster knew it. It had stayed several miles back. It slapped its tail and screeched with rage as it waited for its prey to emerge.

  As if even the Autumn’s Vanguard sagged into exhaustion, one of the minor spars or rigging decided to snap, bringing down a sheet of black sail across half the deck.

  Lerel rasped orders as she too descended from the aftcastle and moved across the main deck. ‘If you can stand, then do so. Form crews
to get this deck clear and the sails repaired! I need bailers and carpenters below urgently. Others need to help rescue any books or swamped survivors down there. Pass the word to the Revenge and Summer’s Fury.’

  ‘Aye, Admiral,’ several weary officers chorused.

  ‘Come with me, Hereni.’

  The mage groaned as she ducked into a hatch with the admiral. The heat below was somehow worse in the tighter compartments and passageways. The breeze was nonexistent. Hereni flapped her mouth like a fish just to feel the air.

  Several decks of smashed items and wounded, and otherwise sullen looking individuals, below, they found Elessi. She was in the top decks of the vast libraries within each bookship, helping a Siren healer who was busy tending Eyrum. Blood pasted both their shirts and baggy ship’s trews. Sweat soaked them. The Siren kept struggling to get up, then roaring as he remembered his injury. Lerel sprang ahead. The same bolt of shock ran through Hereni, but she faltered in the doorway.

  The Siren’s right leg was gone. The flesh that remained just above his knee smoked and steamed as the leviathan’s drool still ate away at him. The healer was daubing an oleaginous paste over his wounds to halt the bleeding and burning. Elessi was trying her best to keep the Siren on the table they had cleared. Hereni imagined she had started off pleading with him, but now she was cursing at him to bloody lie still.

  ‘What happened?’ Lerel said as she pressed Eyrum’s shoulder down as best she could. ‘Hereni!’

  The mage recovered herself and leapt to help. She seized his huge forearm, barely even able to reach halfway around it.

  ‘Fucking leviathan happened!’ Eyrum seethed before falling back into his native dragonspeak.

  Elessi grunted through the effort. ‘He was fighting on the forecastle.’

  ‘It came from behind me, spitting water and poison.’

  Hereni almost left the floor as Eyrum slammed his fist down. She strained, looking around at the shelves of books instead of the wound. The infirmaries must have been overwhelmed. More injured lay on tables along the length of the library. More healers and survivors scurried around.

  The paste now caked his leg. The bleeding had stopped, thank Evernia, but the pain still wracked him. The Siren healer pressed her hands to his forehead and whispered aloud. Hereni knew a spell when she saw it. It took several attempts, but it at last took hold, calming the Siren’s pain to the point where he managed to pass out.

  ‘Better for him,’ the Siren said, before rushing away to the next victim.

  Nerilan clattered her way along the corridor. She burst through the door with some more wonderful news. ‘The leviathans burned a hole through your front deck.’

  ‘That means the fuckers have managed to grind two bookships to a halt,’ said Lerel.

  Elessi hissed. ‘And I count two of them dead.’

  ‘Perhaps it is time you listen to us, General Elessi. We can’t keep pressing forwards. That leviathan will drown us all before we are halfway to Farden.’

  Lerel already looked done with this argument. ‘There’s a better time to discuss this, and that is later!’ she yelled. ‘We’ve been given a chance to take a breath. Let’s not spend it at each other’s throats. Or, you can all get the fuck off my ship and go argue on the beach.’

  Elessi and Nerilan stared at each other but said nothing.

  ‘The armada isn’t going anywhere without repairs and supplies. Maybe you can help with those, instead,’ Lerel hissed. Her voice failed her before her last word, and she left the library without excuse. Hereni knew that anger: one born of pain.

  ‘She’s right,’ Elessi said. ‘We go ashore.’

  ‘Thank the gods for that.’

  Hereni hadn’t realised how much her legs had missed the feel of firm ground. Wet sand, to be precise, but still joyous. Hereni suspected it had a lot to do with the fact the leviathan was trapped in the sea. She felt safe again, as though she were back behind the black fortress walls of Scalussen.

  Shivertread and Kinsprite flanked her, sniffing at the white sand. Ahead of them, the shadows of palms washed back and forth over the beach.

  Bull was nudging at the shell of a crab picked empty by birds or fish. Its shell was a bright pattern of pink and white, and about the size of a child’s shield.

  ‘Sea spiders is all they are,’ he was muttering.

  The mage stretched her arms. Her crimson armour felt tight after days spent in sailor’s garb. She rubbed her hands together and sparked a flame before quenching it. The magick flowed easily here. As strong as she had known in the north. She spread her fingers, letting them feel the wind of the power infused in every leaf and sand-grain. Learning to sense it as Farden does had taken her years. She felt its almost imperceptible threads washing across the island.

  ‘I don’t feel any magick besides us.’

  Behind them, a small herd of crew members, Sirens, and survivors were busy kneeling in the sand, exhausted but finally safe. For a while, at least, and for all they knew, thought Hereni. She scrutinised every shadow between the palms, every bird that swooped too close. Many had called her a pessimist in her twenty winters. Paranoid even. But Hereni called it practicality. After all, she had learned firsthand and early what evils could dwell in an another’s heart.

  ‘I smell beasts. Pigs, maybe,’ Kinsprite replied.

  ‘Lerel and Elessi said we need water most. Sate your hunger later, you hungry beast.’

  Kinsprite hissed before jumping into the sky. She flew above them in tight circles as if she were the carrion bird and they the corpse.

  Shivertread wound his way across the sand beside her. His scales shifted hypnotically as they washed the colour of white sand, then striped as he passed beneath shadows. The dragon’s wings were arched but not spread. One hooked over Hereni slightly to give her shade. His claws probed the sand like a stalking cat. The mage stepped in turn with him. A slight trail of flame wound around her fingers.

  Bull brought up the rear and the crew of workers. His bow was sideways and an red-fletched arrow knocked.

  ‘Hear that?’ Hereni whispered to Shivertread.

  The dragon’s spines rattled as he twisted his head. ‘No. What is it?’

  ‘Nothing. No birdsong. No animal noises. Just these damned palms rustling.’

  Shivertread’s scales turned black as jet. Smoke curled from his nostrils.

  The deeper they progressed into the forest, the thinner the palms became. Before long they walked in the raw heat of the sun again, across black rock and palm-leaf scrub. Dirt and sand mixed together underfoot. Ahead, the small mountain rose up from the island’s gentle slope. A pungent smell of bird shite now wafted from its black rocks. The birds had been proven to be crows. Skinnier than the northern ravens Hereni knew. They flocked together in hundreds. Dozens already hopped around them, watching their progress through the scrub.

  Kinsprite hovered over them. Several of the crows nearby exploded in a ball of feathers trying to get away from the dragon. The wind of her wings was strong and cold. Hereni barely listened, she was so thankful for the moment of cool. Her pale skin was already scorched around her neck. Skin flaked from her nose.

  ‘There’s some kind of settlement near you, just over that small ridge.’

  ‘Anybody living there?’

  Kinsprite shook her head. ‘Looks long abandoned, but it’s near a waterfall.’

  Hereni and Bull almost had to hold back the crew of workers from sprinting ahead. The mage felt their excitement. She was parched as well. Caution overrode her thirst.

  As they trod the hill of dead grass, Hereni saw the first skeleton. The crows had picked the bones spotless. The sun had bleached what was left. Even the sand had started to reclaim it.

  The second lay just beyond, the third next to it. Hereni was counting past a score when she rose above the ridge.

  Across the small plateau, half-buried skulls peered from the sand with one dark eye, or grinned at them with toothless jaws. Hereni saw no weapons left beside
them or scars on the bones. The camp buildings hadn’t been burned down, just left to rot and disintegrate in the heat. Nothing had overgrown them. What was left of a small garden of crops had withered to dust.

  The clatter of a waterfall splashing on the far side of the plateau was all that mattered. The crew sprinted towards it. Hereni and Bull hung behind, still curious of the reason these mysterious people had all died together. With the sounds of an officer yelling orders in her ears, Hereni bent to look at a smaller skeleton. The draught of Kinsprite’s wings brushed the sand away in gusts. One by one, a child’s bones were revealed. Long gone was any muscle to give expression. It was the position of the arms that made Hereni pause. Even in death, though the bones had fallen into heaps, Hereni could tell the child had died with her hands around her throat.

  ‘Hereni.’ Shivertread was sniffing at the air. ‘This island…’

  But the mage was already sprinting to the waterfall. ‘Don’t drink the water!’ she yelled.

  It was too late. Cries already filled the air. One of the Siren helpers was clutching at his throat and retching. The tiny scales around his brows and cheeks were quickly fading to grey.

  ‘Spit it out, man!’ everybody was shouting. If they weren’t, they were panicking, trying desperately to make themselves vomit the water they had just drank.

  Two more crew sank to their knees with strangling cries. Their eyes bulged as if they fought to take breath.

  ‘Kinsprite! Shivertread! Get them back to the ships! Every one of you, back away from that water. Put those buckets and pails down!’

  Nobody needed encouragement to follow her orders. The dragons seized the afflicted and tore leaves from palms as they rocketed back to the ships. Hereni could still see the forest of masts beyond the palms. She kicked at a nearby skull, shattering it against the stone. Its shards fell into the waterfall, and tumbled across the narrow gully it had carved. With the black rock beneath it, the waters looked soiled by ink. Its pleasant splash upon the rocks was like the callous laughter of a murderer.