Heavy Lies The Crown (The Scalussen Chronicles Book 2)

by Ben Galley

  ‘Mithrid Fenn!’

  It was not enough. Her best shot, powered by all her fury, had barely touched him. The doubt raced through her, usurping the cold touch of her powers.

  Behind her, Farden said nothing, merely staring north and east as if this battle was boring to him.

  ‘He’s too strong, Farden! Even stronger than before!’

  ‘You don’t need to fight him for long.’

  ‘What?’ she spluttered. ‘I need to kill him!’

  ‘Tell your witch to surrender, Farden! And I will make your deaths quicker than you deserve!’ Malvus beat his chest. Magick poured from him now. It washed across the snow and black rock like a tide. Even the touch of it pounded in Mithrid’s head. Her shadow shrank away, spiralling around her arms instead.

  She picked at every scab in her mind, dragged up every pool of blood in Troughwake, and even then, she barely held back his next barrage of spells. The onslaught forced them to the foot of the slope, towards the precipice. Loki lingered behind Malvus, where his retinue of broken soldiers, fenrir, trolls, and daemons had appeared.

  Mithrid saw Gremorin, standing without his crown. Blood roared in her ears. ‘Tell me you have another plan, mage!’

  Farden said nothing.

  ‘You are too weak, Mithrid!’ Malvus bayed over the inferno spinning in his hands. The heat was palpable even from a stone’s throw. ‘And you, Farden! Cowering behind a child. You are no champion, no marvel any longer. I can feel how weak you are! Your true might lies in my skin now. I have become the pinnacle of power, forged by magick and daemonblood. Face me, you cur!’

  Fire poured towards her like the breath of a dozen dragons. Mithrid fell against Farden as it railed against her wall of shadow. With gritted teeth and sweat pouring down her face, she pushed against Malvus’ might. Pain surged through her as the spell scorched her hands.

  And still, the mage did nothing but stare at the dust-heavy sky that loomed perilously close.

  ‘What in Hel are you doing, Farden?’ she bellowed.

  But Farden was already standing tall before her, sword out and the fire swirling around his boots in the wake of the monster’s spell. A smile had spread across the mage’s face. To Mithrid’s confusion, the thunder of the magick had yet to subside. Snow and shadow spinning about her, she stared after the mage.

  ‘Malvus!’ Farden roared.

  Malvus grinned, spread his glowing arms wide as if to embrace an old friend. ‘At last, you greet your death as a man.’

  ‘It’s a fine army you’ve brought, Farden called. ‘I so happened to bring one of my own.’

  Malvus looked around at the empty wasteland and cackled, lips spreading grotesquely wide as if he had ripped his cheeks. ‘Your tricks will not work on me!’

  Loki had noticed the same rumble as Mithrid had. No thunder. No magick. A dark band had appeared in the fog-wrapped hills to the northeast. ‘Malvus!’ shouted the god.

  At last, Malvus’ singular attention, as distracted by vengeance as Mithrid had been, turned as the horns began to blow.

  Farden beamed.

  ‘What the fuck?’ she gasped.

  ‘Redemption, Mithrid, and in the hands of our enemies no less!’

  Mithrid watched, enraptured, as the dark band swarmed down the hill. Soldiers. Thousands of them. Beasts crested the hilltop in close pursuit. Armoured coelos with banners streaming behind them. Chariots drawn by galloping birds. Even Cathak cows, bred for battle. And three colossal beasts with forts built upon their backs, tusks the length of a ship’s mast, and strange trunks that reached the floor. Their bellows were louder than any battle-horn. The pebbles shook around her as the armies swept towards them.

  Mithrid saw Harmony gold and the green banners of Golikar riding together. Mithrid considered every slashed throat, every slight in the Tourney, even the burning of Belerod’s camp.

  ‘You planned this all along,’ Mithrid breathed. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘That I did.’ Farden laughed coldly and with a shake of his head, as if he were a tired builder, at last looking upon a finished work of toil and sacrifice. ‘Tartavor and Oselov gave me no choice and Irien’s warning about Queen Peskora following me to the ends of the earth gave me the idea. I knew Loki had created something to stand in our way. We needed protection. I stirred up enough trouble to have it all come after us. And now, by the looks of it, my gamble has paid off. We have an army of our own, thirsty for blood.’

  All this time, she had thought him mindless. Reckless. But there was method to his barefaced madness. Despite her doubt, the Forever King was as sharp as ever. Mithrid stood, weak but already feeling bolstered. ‘Just one problem: aren’t they thirsty for our blood?’

  ‘Malvus doesn’t know that, does he?’ Farden answered. ‘And I’m sure he’ll be happy to introduce himself!’

  Just as predicted, the furious creation ordered his daemons readied. Their thirst for souls and carnage could always be counted upon. Fenrir bounded to meet the enemy ranks. Malvus clawed at the air, bringing lightning bolts down on the front ranks. It was all the excuse the army needed to unleash arrows upon the daemons. If they had ever seen such beasts, Mithrid did not know, but they did not falter. She saw the daemons ploughing into spears and soldiers with almighty roars. One daemon was immediately impaled on a colossal tusk. A fenrir clawed curiously at the giant beast’s side while archers filled its face with arrows.

  ‘Curse you, Farden!’ Malvus bellowed across the wasteland. Mithrid flinched, expecting a charge, but the god at Malvus’ side had other ideas. Loki yelled something at him over the clash of battle.

  Malvus raised his hands to the sky. ‘Witness what true magick looks like!’

  ‘Is he doing what I think he’s doing?’ cried Mithrid.

  ‘If Evernia was right, then yes!’

  Mithrid was already reaching, but her shadow crumbled before the blistering waves of magick. She took a step, but Farden held her arm. ‘But we have to stop him! He’ll tear down the sky if we don’t.’

  ‘I’ve seen it happen before,’ he muttered, dark memories crowding behind his eyes by the look of his glower. Had he not just magicked an army from the snow and sand, she would have shrugged him free. It took her all to hold still.

  ‘Only the spear matters!’ Farden said.

  She watched the mage mouth the dragon’s name as he called out to her. Fleetstar.

  The ruckus of magick and battle triumphed over the battering waves. All that could be seen of the clash was the lightning that scored the sky above the castle. One bolt even struck a chunk from the highest turret and sent it spinning into the foaming waters. Seabirds fled in flocks.

  Durnus could feel the pressure against his skull. Magick from the outside. Ravenous hunger and bilious anger from within. His thoughts were a tangle of worry for the mage and Mithrid, never mind the battle of his own heart.

  Warbringer’s shout shook him free. ‘Durnus!’

  Once again, he peeled himself away from staring at the obsidian cliff behind them and pressed his fingers against another mould-encrusted wall. Fleetstar spouted fire into the hallways, burning moss and years of vines from the vampyre and minotaur’s path.

  The search was desperate yet fruitless. The ruin held all manner of hollows and dark spirals into the darkness within the rock. Dilapidated caverns of halls above dripped sea-spray. Snow fell through open roofs and turrets. The black stone held old murals, once chiselled and painted but now fallen to two thousand years of decay and wear. Durnus knew the feeling.

  For all the stone doors that remained on hinges, most already lay open, as if the inhabitants had dashed to leave this stronghold. The others needed only a barge to open, or did not fit any of the three keys.

  Much to Warbringer’s dislike, the search led them down into the darkness. A broad spiral stairwell, large enough for the dragon, escorted them to halls hewn from the bare rock and carved into ornate coiling architecture. Great vaulted ceilings lay in darkness. Durnus sparked a light spel
l and found statues of steel looming from pedestals or lying face down on the stone. The seawater permeated from somewhere, leaving a film of muck on the floor. The only sound became the steady muted crash of the waves. Durnus could feel their rhythm in the soles of his feet.

  Forges lay silent past the statues. Complicated machines of crystal and iron cogs lay broken around them. A stone table lay at the centre of the greatest and final hall. A dim shaft of light pierced the roof above, bringing the day’s feeble light and the occasional snowflake floating down. The table looked half an anvil, half an altar. Workbenches and broken kilns lingered in the shadows at a respectful distance like a hushed congregation.

  The daemonblood fought against the magick in Durnus’ veins, but he pushed through the sharp sting beneath his skin and expanded his spell. The white light in his palm reached the edges of the round room. Warbringer and Fleetstar were already searching them, but the rocks were smooth as parchment.

  ‘I see no door,’ said Warbringer. She cast around in stomping circles. ‘What we do, Durnus?’

  But the vampyre was staring at the table. The more he considered it, the more it looked like an altar, not an anvil. Durnus approached it, stepping across rings of patterns carved into the floor. He spread his fingers across the dust and scattered snow. The altar was flat and unmarked. The vampyre frowned. He had expected something more than bare stone. He cast around, probing every edge before he lay the first key on the altar. There was no effect. Then the second, and third, and still nothing.

  ‘What is in your mind?’ Warbringer demanded as she loomed over him. ‘This is no door.’

  ‘Sacrifice,’ he said aloud, speaking the persistent echo in his mind. ‘What if this is an altar. What if…’

  ‘Durnus!’ the dragon roared. ‘Farden is calling for us!’

  ‘Gods damn it!’ Durnus felt urgency becoming panic.

  ‘Move, grey-skin,’ Warbringer ordered. ‘You not use your eyes as you should. Mind too full. Too busy. This an anvil. No altar.’

  Barely before Durnus could scatter out of the way or protest, Warbringer swung Voidaran over her shoulder and down onto the stone with a painful clang. The hall refused to give up the echo.

  ‘What have you done!’ Durnus yelled.

  His words were still falling on her when the anvil began to split into pieces. Not under the force of the hammer, but into perfectly divided segments. A star-shaped void appeared beneath Voidaran’s touch to the scrape of stone. Stale air belched free. Choking dust rained.

  Durnus and Warbringer recoiled as the pieces kept recoiling. The intricate floor’s rings spun beneath their feet, almost tripping them into the hole before they could reach the safety of the hewn floor. They clattered to the dust.

  On their knees, with the dragon peering over them, the vampyre and minotaur stared down into a perfect bore through the obsidian rock. It fell thirty feet before it ended in another spiralling floor. This one was smaller, made of crystal and set within a thick ring of plain stone. Peculiarly, statues ran along its sides, not fallen, but perfectly horizontal and at peace on their plinths.

  ‘I go. Catch you,’ grunted Warbringer. As always, the minotaur’s words were not discussion but narration of the actions she was already undertaking. She was already on her hooves and aiming for the stone below.

  Warbringer fell barely five feet before she slumped against the sheer side of the pit. Durnus had to rub his aching eyes.

  ‘By Thron’s balls,’ whispered the dragon above him.

  Warbringer stood upright, level with the statues and completely perpendicular to the floor Durnus stood on.

  ‘Dark magick,’ the minotaur growled.

  ‘Tell Farden we’ve found the door!’ yelled Durnus, as the light above began to fade dark, and furious crimson. Taking a breath, he jumped headlong into the pit.

  CHAPTER 32

  EVERY GOD & MORTAL’S FEAR

  Three tasks every god and mortal fears to face await. Three duties yet fulfilled of blood, breath, mind, and soul. Three cursed keys to three doors to be left locked evermore. If that be your fate, your errand, the first task lies in Eaglehold’s roots before the serpent’s shimmer, by Gunnir’s last blood. Hear the last breath of retribution’s lesson. Follow its call to your screaming end.

  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.

  Torrid waters fail to halt you, yet the highest price awaits. Turn where men fail to tread without sinking, with shadow in your right eye at dawn ’til roaring waters. West lies Utiru’s wrath. Scarred sister’s light burns the path, terror dark and crystal sharp. Cut the throat of your sweetest dreams or lose your mind.

  Madness you may have survived but darkness calls you on. South, go you, to Gunnir’s birthplace. Nothing but the wrath of the gods awaits you behind cursed doors. The final payment to claim Gunnir awaits. The highest price.

  THE DOOMRIDDLE, WRITTEN BY THE CULT OF THE ALLFATHER

  Clouds billowed in concert to Malvus’ clawed and clasping fingers. A whirlwind blew around his boots, half-sunk into the sand under the weight trying and failing to crush him.

  Daemons bayed and howled around him, keeping the intrusive army at bay with their claws and fire and blackened swords. Arrows swarmed around Malvus. Either they were caught in the wind or burned up in the heat that was now turning the sand to molten glass beneath him. And still, Malvus toiled to tear down the sky.

  The voices wailed in his pounding head.

  Burn it all.

  Bring it down.

  Then make them all bleed!

  Malvus indulged them.

  He knew not what he grasped for, except the very stars themselves. He could feel them like burning coals of light in the maelstrom above him: searing hot, yet worth every bolt of pain. The bones of his legs screeched in protest at the effort it took to stay upright. His muscles were aflame beneath his skin with the weight of his spell.

  ‘Keep pulling, Malvus! This is what you strived for! Not some mage’s head, but the very sky and stars themselves!’

  He saw the god from his sweat-filled peripheries, grinning as madly as he was. Fists clenched, cheering him on.

  Malvus felt the spell reach its crescendo at last, blasting past the clouds and the very firmament to where he felt the daemon struggling in the void. It ached to be free, and Malvus sought to break its shackles with all his might, focused and pure. To destroy the ancient spells the gods thought unbreakable. How wrong they were. Malvus tore them down with an inhuman roar.

  The resulting uproar was so loud the battle fell still for a heartbeat. The daemons were slowly being overwhelmed and pushed back. One of the giant bastion beasts was charging straight for them, crushing its own ranks in the madness with tusks and tree trunk feet. Yet even that dumb creature turned to face the sky as the clouds burned red and the air split in two.

  A star wrapped in fire and brimstone punched through the storm and crashed directly into the bastion’s back. The castle exploded in flame as the beast was floored, immediately gutted. Wings of black shade and a tail of fire emerged from its smoking corpse. Hundreds of soldiers sought to flee while thousands more kept pressing them in.

  Malvus’ amusement was a shrieking cackle. Despite his fingers cracking under the strain, he seized the next star, and the next. ‘Even the gods will bow before me, Loki! Beginning with you!’

  But the god was not listening. He was staring beyond the army. Beyond the fallen daemon. He was looking to Farden and Mithrid, who stood defiantly in the face of the chaos.

  Loki began to stride towards them, knife low and purposeful.

  ‘They are mine, Loki!’ Malvus boomed.

  Mithrid’s whole body trembled. The sky was falling before her eyes, and with it, every shred of confidence in her power crumbled. This was beyond her. Th
is chaos was of edda and song, not a reality she could grasp.

  Farden hissed in her ear, as loud as he dared over the noise of battle. ‘Finally! They’ve found the door!’

  Mithrid wrenched herself away from gawking at the pandemonium. ‘And just how were you proposing we get to them?’ she asked, voice cracking.

  ‘We don’t. Now, we’ve forced Malvus’ hand we keep Loki away from the spear until the last moment,’ Farden snapped back. Mithrid was still glowering at him, a single eye narrow. ‘Trust me.’

  ‘I would, except Loki is coming straight for us.’

  Mithrid spoke true. The god was striding towards them, head craned and eyes searching the sky beyond them.

  ‘I feel it, Farden!’ he cried. ‘I feel your dragon’s voice in the air. I feel the magick long lost and unfelt. Did you think you could trick me, mage? My puppet strings stretch across Emaneska and back to places you’ve never dreamed. My hooks have been in you for years, swallowed by your flesh and bone. You cannot pull the wool over my eyes. I am inescapable!’

  Farden clomped down the slope, sword spinning. ‘Keep him from leaving!’

  ‘Where is your magick, Farden!’ challenged the god. This was a different Loki than she had seen. No coy wit any longer. No charm and flitting eyes. He shone with magick of his own. He clenched a fist, shattering a nearby thrust of stone into shards that pelted their armour.

  Mithrid reached for him with her shadow. He held it just beyond his reach, but Mithrid felt the strain in him.

  ‘It’s not possible,’ he sneered. His form wavered. The air buckled around him, yet he could not escape.

  ‘Damn you, Mithrid Fenn! I should have let you die.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You should have!’

  Mithrid was pushing him skidding through the snow when the daemon fell to the dirt between them. Fire and rock exploded in her face. She felt herself flipping through the air. Sky and sand pirouetted until one of them chose to drive the wind from her. Blood dripping from a cut in her face, Mithrid tried and failed to push herself up.