The wind and cold were especially fierce, making it the kind of February day he’d normally stay home with a hot fire and slow stew on the hearth. But today, his old friend Arda, long-time traveling companion and fellow adventurer in days past, would be coming to see him. His food stores needed replenishing if he were live up to the obligations of being a dwarven host, and so he braved the snow blanketing the pine forest.
He rode atop a black mountain horse through the foothills of the Windmane Mountains. His mount was a cob horse, larger than a pony, but one of the smaller, stocky breeds of Ahmbren, right-sized and trusty enough for dwarves. The cob’s long, shaggy mane fell in light-blond layers over his eyes. They were on their way home to Attaris’ mountain cabin after a day at market in the city of Windbowl, saddlebags now filled with food that would live up to his reputation for dwarven hospitality.
It had been three years since he retired from the questing life, and he and Arda had gone their separate ways. He missed her. Other companions had come and gone during their journeys together, but the two of them had been constant. He was both excited and anxious to see the darkling woman. When he had decided to retire and settle near Windbowl, she continued questing, carrying out missions for her Order. She was, after all, a Kaldorite paladin. She couldn’t turn her back on duty.
Attaris, however, had no such oaths to fulfill. He was a chosen runewarden of Modhrin the Storm Lord, an ancient god from before the Artalonian Empire. Like his god’s winds, Attaris was not bound by oaths of duty and was free to make his home where he would. Most dwarves worshipped Modhrin’s craftsman aspect. Being called to Modhrin’s storm aspect was uncommon for a dwarf, for it was a path that got him out of the mountain holds and living under the god’s open sky. Strange as that was, one didn’t always get to choose how to serve a god. The god had a say in the matter. At least his god let him retire when he damn well decided he was done.
He stopped. There was something in the winds. He could smell it as the snow began to fall. The clouds overhead flashed once with silent lightning, and then again. He felt his god’s agitation in his bones. Something was very wrong.
The Archdragons are dying. Words from last night’s dreams resurfaced unbidden to his mind. Just dreams. Such a thing could not possibly be true. The Storm Lord was troubled, however. Attaris was sure of it. A troubled god would explain fitful dreams for a god’s runewarden, even if they were obscure.
He pushed that thought away from his mind as well. If there was something that needed doing, it would be revealed to him in due course. No use letting mortal impatience hurry the cosmic flow of things. No, tonight he would cook his best meal and prepare a feast worthy of a paladin and a lady.
Something caught his eye. He knew these slopes like the whiskers in his beard. Through the line of trees to his left he saw a thin sliver of light shining on the ground.
He dismounted to investigate. “Stay here, lad,” he whispered to his horse before he quietly slipped through the trees to get a better look. His soft leather remained silent as he crept, and boots augmented by runic embroidery charged with divine magic ensured his footfalls made no crunch on the snowy ground.
He stopped several yards away and ducked down in case he was not alone. The light appeared to be coming from a glistening pool of water in the snow. It had obviously been constructed somehow, judging by its perfect symmetry, but he was damned sure it hadn’t been there this morning. Even stranger, it had not frozen.
He started in surprise. Next to the pool, half-buried in snow, was the naked bottom of a woman. She was so frozen her skin was white, and she had strange red markings down her back. He couldn’t tell what race she was from this distance, but whoever called her family would want to know of her death.
He was about to step forward to investigate, but an all too familiar scent caught his nose, an underlying musk beneath the crisp smell of pine sap.
Troll.
He froze beside the tree. The scent was unusual this far north, but he would recognize it anywhere. Trolls were hostile to the civilized world in all things, even though they seemed to have no problem using civilized weapons.
The troll approached from the opposite side. His blue face held large almond eyes, with pupils that filled their expanse with inky black. One eye was uncovered, showing a ring of yellow iris surrounding the pool of black. A monocle encrusted with gears and stacked lenses covered his other eye. From the wicked look of the gadgetry, Attaris guessed it was crafted by ratlings and not of gnomish design. Gnomes had cleaner craftsmanship.
The troll had a beast-like nose and feline face, and was covered head to toe with a fine downy layer of blue fur. Tusks swept down from his cheekbones and curled forward in front of his mouth. His ears were long and tapered, jutting out from the side of his head like two great horns. His lower legs bent backwards, with long three-toed webbed feet and a rear fourth toe protruding from each heel. He might have crested seven feet were it not for his stooped gait. Nevertheless, he moved with a primal grace, crouching to study the body. Bright yellow hair, tufting softly like a lion’s mane, capped his head. The troll wore a loose fur cloak over fitted leather armor that was bound and wrapped by buckled straps. He hadn’t noticed the dwarf. He too seemed fixated on the strangely glowing water and the naked female corpse.
“So it is true,” the troll whispered softly to himself. He breathed tiny puffs of frost over his tusks.
He laid a blue furred hand on the woman’s arm. The underside of his hands and arms were bare, with light blue skin, and each hand looked human but for it only having three fingers instead of four. He rolled her over, exposing her front and face to the sky. Her hair was long and straight, as silver as her body. An elf, judging by the almost human face and long, tapered ears.
Her body moved too easily to be frozen.
A slight breath of frost puffed from her nose.
Not dead!
Lightning flashed silently overhead once again. He suddenly felt as if this pool of water was both cherished by the Storm Lord and the cause of great sorrow, as if the god’s very tears had fallen and given form to beauty itself.
“All right then,” he muttered under his breath to his god. “Just let me be home in time for dinner.”
Attaris loosened his hammers from his belt, firmly taking one in each hand. He stepped forward, making no effort now for silence.
“Hey there!” he called to the troll. “Don’t touch her! By the Storm Lord himself, if you don’t leave now, I’ll see to it you never do.” Attaris felt his kinship with the lightning above, and sparks of electricity manifested and crackled along the heads of his hammers.
The troll hopped a step back, a slightly amused expression on his face as he eyed up and down the dwarf’s diminutive stature. “Careful, chal. It is you who best leave.” He drew a gold-plated revolver, adorned with a series of compact, intricately spinning gears. “I am not here for killing. Only the girl.”
Attaris snorted, unimpressed. He held one hammer to his lips, whispering an invocation to his god, and then the other. The runes responded, and the hammers bathed him in golden light. Strength surged through his body as he raised his weapons.
The troll aimed and fired, reporting two loud cracks. The bullets must have been enchanted, for they streaked yellow flames behind them. Attaris, reflexes heightened by the glow of his hammers’ runes, tumbled to the right and narrowly avoided the gunshots. The blue troll pounced forward with feline grace, a dagger drawn in his other hand. He reached for Attaris, but the dwarf swung his left hammer forward in an arc, knocking away the troll’s arms. The runewarden slammed the two weapons together upon his enemy’s knee. Lightning flashed between the two hammers’ heads with a loud crack of thunder, shattering the troll’s joint and filling the air with the scent of cooked flesh.
The troll snarled and fell. He limped back, trying to put distance between himself and the runewarden. He fired the revolver three more times. The warm light of the hammers’ runes gave Attaris the speed an
d reflexes to step out of the path of the first two shots. The third hit his left shoulder.
“I told you,” the dwarf grunted over the pain. “You had your chance, but now you will never leave this place.” He bounded forward with surprising speed for one so stocky, bringing his right hammer down onto the troll’s head. The enemy’s skull caved beneath the powerful blow, and the thing crumpled to the ground.
Attaris panted a moment to catch his breath. Seeing the blood on his shoulder, he remembered the wound and grunted in annoyance as he reached into his pocket. He withdrew a smooth, round runestone and tossed it on the ground in front of him. A beam of blue light extended into the air, and the glow suffused his body. He grunted again as his bones knitted together and his flesh regenerated. Finally, the magic pulled the bullet out of his arm and the tiny hole in his skin closed. Satisfied, he retrieved the stone and turned his attention back to the girl.
She was an elf, he was sure of it, but she was the tallest damned elf he had ever seen. She must have been over six feet in height! He couldn’t believe she was still alive. Her entire body was an unnatural white, strange for an elf. The cold must have frozen her, sapping the color from her skin. Yet, she lived.
Well, there was nothing for it then. He was here, and she needed help. Again he had the strange feeling that the Storm Lord watched his actions at that very moment.
He unbuttoned his coat and covered her as best he could to protect her from the cold, blushing at handling her naked body. He picked her up and unceremoniously draped her over his shoulder. She wasn’t heavy enough to give him pause, but her height made carrying her awkward. At least it was only her hands, and not her head, that dragged in the snow behind him. Taking her back to his horse, he laid her over the saddle and hopped up behind her, urging the cob to hurry them to the warmth of hearth and home, away from the biting cold.
2 - Windbowl
The City of Windbowl sat nestled in a wide crater valley ringed by the Windmane Mountains. A belt of evergreens descended from the slopes until they opened into a hundred square miles of fertile land, with the city at the northern tip of Crystalmere Lake. A patchwork of hamlets, farmland, and pastures, punctuated by veins of trees, surrounded the lake and the city. Each of five mountain passes acted as tightly controlled border checkpoints guarding the edge of the only pocket of freedom within the Artalonian Empire’s vast expanse. Trade was strictly regulated, but for the most part, Artalon left Windbowl alone.
No one knew why the Empire suffered Windbowl’s independence, but many suspected it was because Windbowl was the birthplace of Aaron, the immortal God-King of Artalon, who had been ruling for a thousand years as the living vessel of the resurrected god Karanos. Perhaps the God-King held a soft spot in his heart for his homeland. Whatever the reason, the Empire’s lack of attention to Windbowl allowed the city-state to continue largely untroubled. Windbowl embraced the Empire’s outcasts, welcoming wolven, orcs, and darklings to live alongside the human majority. A few gnomish families resided inside its borders, and even sorcery was allowed under Duke Montevin’s sanctions, as long as it was practiced in private. All who kept the peace and contributed to Windbowl’s prosperity and defense were welcome.
Although Aaron had been born there, the free people of Windbowl did not call him God-King.
To them, he was the Shadowlord, the one who devoured the light of freedom from the Nine Realms.
On a cold February night, in the year 1013 of the Shadowlord’s reign, two women sat side by side in the Torchlight Tavern and Inn drinking ale. They made a striking pair: Anuit’s brown skin, dark eyes, and black hair contrasted with Seredith’s pale skin, blue eyes, and sunlight-colored hair.
Anuit smiled, feeling pleasantly warm from the first half-cup of ale she’d drunk. That, and she enjoyed sitting close to her best friend and stepsister.
Seredith’s mother, Marta, who had adopted Anuit when her parents had died in a house fire, sat at a nearby table, conversing with Duke Montevin and Hylda, the duke’s dwarven secretary. They were close enough Anuit could hear their conversation, but not so close that she had to participate by quietly listening.
“You’ll never believe what I found today,” Seredith said.
Anuit kept staring at the other table, trying to overhear. Marta was probably talking Weavers Guild business. So boring. Surely she wasn’t talking about their other family tradition, sorcery, out in public. Sorcery was tolerated, and Marta sat on the duke’s council as an advisor representing the various covens, but most Windbowl residents were uncomfortable being reminded some of their citizens dealt with demons.
Seredith jabbed Anuit’s side.
“Ouch!” Anuit almost dropped her ale. She stared at Seredith. “What?”
“Pay attention. I said, you’ll never believe what I found.”
Anuit tried to scowl but couldn’t manage it. The older they got, the more she found Seredith’s eyes helplessly disarming. “Fine. What?”
Seredith reached under the table where she had laid a small basket. She withdrew a red apple and placed it on the table in front of Anuit.
Anuit stared at it. “Surely not! Is it wax?”
“It’s not wax.”
Anuit picked it up. “In winter? Snow’s not going to be gone for at least another month.” She pressed her fingernail into it, splitting the skin to form a juicy crescent in the apple’s flesh. “Sorcery?” She had never heard that the powers of the Dark could create food.
“No,” Seredith said. “Honestly, I can’t explain it. But guess where I found it.”
Anuit took a small bite. It tasted how she expected it would taste. “Where?”
“Guess.” Seredith broke into a grin.
“No. Really?”
“Our tree.”
As children, they had often played hide-and-seek. Once when it had been Seredith’s turn to be “it,” Anuit had climbed into an apple tree, higher than she should have. She’d wanted to make sure Seredith couldn’t find her, but had climbed too high and fallen. The moment before she’d hit the ground, something soft and invisible had seemed to catch her. She’d floated for a few seconds, two feet from the grass, and then dropped harmlessly to the field. Anuit had always known she had something special inside her, something her parents had been afraid of and hated, and on that day Seredith had seen it. Seredith had asked if Anuit was going to attend the magic academy. Anuit’s parents, both shepherds, had hated all things magical. Such things were unnatural, they told their daughter when she would ask why they wouldn’t let her attend the magic academy. People who dabbled in such things always caused problems for normal folk, and they wanted Anuit to have no part in it, they’d told her. Wizards were just as bad as sorcerers as far as they were concerned.
“My parents won’t let me,” Anuit had said. “Please don’t tell them what you saw. They’ll hate me for it.”
Seredith had solemnly promised, and it had been then that Anuit had known Seredith was her best friend.
Sitting there in the inn, Anuit stared at the apple. “It’s bloomed?”
“No. I just found it in the snow. I’m pretty sure it’s where you fell to the ground.”
“It must have fallen before the first snow and been preserved by the cold.” Anuit placed the apple on the table.
“A symbol of our friendship.”
She made a face. “So dramatic. Best friends and sisters forever, is that it?”
Seredith snorted. “Something like that. I just thought you’d find it interesting.”
“I do. I’m glad you saw what happened that day. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have asked your mother to take me in when my parents died.”
A month after the incident beneath the apple tree, a house fire had made Anuit an orphan. Seredith had brought her home to her mother Marta, one of the premiere seamstresses in the city and head of the Weavers Guild. Marta had taken the girl in and begun teaching her to become a clothier. As Anuit’s magical talents had taken root in the cloth she wove, Marta had reveale
d her other family craft: sorcery.
Anuit had been astonished to learn her new mother and her best friend were sorceresses. Sorcerers risked corruption from extended contact with their demonic servitors. No matter how much their power helped defend Windbowl’s borders, people feared it, tolerating it as a necessary evil. As such, sorcerers practiced in private and kept their coven membership quiet from the general public. The duke kept watch over the covens with wolven guards, whose abilities allowed them to sense demonic magic. The city trusted that the duke’s men maintained a safe watch, and the people were happy that covens practiced discretion.
Although being taken in by sorcerers should have frightened Anuit, the idea of mastering dangerous magic thrilled her. Now, years later, she loved being an initiate in Seredith’s family coven. She even had her own imp named Belham.
She knew not to trust the secret discourses she held with Belham, but she enjoyed the power sorcery gave her over her own life. She didn’t understand why most people feared sorcery. How was it any different from wizards or runewardens, except that it came at the cost of greater personal risk to the sorcerer? Not to others. That’s what Belham had pointed out. It made sense. As long as she was careful, things would be okay.
Seredith was even more talented than Anuit. The blond woman effortlessly pulled off wonders with fire and entropy. She would make a powerful coven leader someday, and Anuit felt better knowing those like Marta and Seredith helped maintain Windbowl’s safety and independence. She aspired to live up to their standard.
A group of young men, apprentices she recognized from some of the various shops in the city, were staring at the two women.
“They’re making eyes at you,” Anuit said.
Seredith grimaced. “You know I have no interest in boys. They’re so boring compared to demons.”
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 2
