The Legend of the Winterking: The Crown of Nandur

by J. Kent Holloway

  “Is that a…?”

  “A Rifting Stone,” Finleara answered. She pulled away from him, and wove in and out of a number of ancient, crumbling sarcophagi until she had crossed the chamber to the large rune-carved monolith at the other end. Just slightly wider than Ulfilas was tall, the Rifting Stone was much smaller than the one Krin had seen within the Vault of Madagus Keep.

  “But how is this possible? Surely Reganus would have found this Stone during his expedition. Why would he not have informed the others as to its existence?” She turned back to Krin.

  He couldn’t answer. He simply didn’t know the man well enough; other than he could honestly say he didn’t like Reganus very much. Still, he found it difficult to believe the magus would have intentionally kept such a find a secret from his fellow Magi had he discovered the Rifting Stone during his exploration of the catacombs.

  But there was something else gnawing at the back of his mind, preventing him from answering her as well. The sarcophagi. There were six stone caskets altogether, with another, more ornate one positioned perfectly on a dais in the middle of the chamber. Each of them were turned so that the foot of the sarcophagus was pointed toward the stone, as if the dead were paying homage to the great stone. Though he couldn’t explain why, there was something unnerving in the way they were positioned around the Rifting Stone. Almost perverse.

  “What is this place?” he whispered, as if the slightest sound might awaken the residents within the tomb. “It’s different than the ossuary niches scattered throughout the passages.”

  Finleara turned a slow three-hundred and sixty degrees, taking it all in. Krin noticed her hand was gripped tight on the hilt of her sword, which did little to comfort him. Apparently, she had felt the same ‘wrongness’ as he about the chamber.

  “I am not sure. Perhaps a Hall of Kings?”

  “Why would they place a Rifting Stone in a Hall of Kings? You said this cairn was dwarven, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, I don’t know the dwarves as well as you, but I’ve spent enough time with Garhet to know that the placement here borders on something akin to idolatry.” He brushed a strand of hair from his face nervously, as he looked at each of the caskets. “From what Garhet said, dwarves are pretty dogged about their faith in the Crafter. This chamber almost seems blasphemous to me for some reason.”

  “I agree. There is something almost ceremonial in the way the sarcophagi are set up.” She moved over to the nearest sarcophagus, examining the etched symbols scrawled across it. “There is something familiar about all of this lettering. Though there are definite dwarven influences in construction, the language almost appears to be…” She paused; one eyebrow raising. “Elven. But that’s not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because elves—whether light or dark—are fanatically secretive about their own language. There are only a handful of objects in all the worlds with elven writing, and they are closely guarded by the highest of nobility. The language is forbidden to even our kind—half elves. The fact that someone has carved elven symbols into these caskets, in a dwarven cairn, no less, borders, as you say, on the blasphemous…but to the elves, not the dwarves.” Her gaze remained fixed on the nearest casket. “I am sorry, Master Krin, but I think we need to turn back. The children we sought are no longer here. We must leave now.”

  “But why? Maybe we can find out where they were taken if we look around some more.” Krin’s eyes moved over to the center of the chamber where the largest, most ornate of caskets sat. Instead of the characteristic stone, cracked and withering, of the others, the central sarcophagus seemed to be made of gold and reflected a warm glow in his torchlight. It contained no markings of any kind. Though the place was giving him even more of the creeps than when they had first entered the catacombs, he was not about to let Finleara know. Besides, though he didn’t quite understand it, he felt compelled to discover the fate of the missing children if at all possible. “Besides…what’s there to be afraid of? These things are long dead, right?” He inched closer to the golden casket a closer look. “Right?”

  She remained silent, moving to the next one, and examining it. Her sword was now fully drawn.

  “Leara?”

  After a pause, she answered. “I have told you. My name is Finleara.” She straightened up and looked at him; her face lined with concern. “And we need to leave this chamber immediately. Be on your guard.”

  As if sensing their intention to flee, a gut-wrenching crack suddenly echoed through the chamber, followed immediately by another. And another. Krin spun around to see the lids of the sarcophagi sliding free of where they had laid for untold centuries, pushed aside by a dozen decomposing hands.

  “Draugr!” Finleara cried. Instantly, she was across the room, grabbing Krin by the wrist, and dragging him to the chamber’s only exit. But they were too late, the passage was already blocked by a decomposing mass of flesh and bones that had, at one time, been something like a dwarf.

  The creature’s long gray beard hung in thick knots. Large chunks of hair pulled free from the gray, loose skin around its face. Empty eye sockets glared at the two of them, as it lifted its rusted mace up above its head, and prepared to attack. Before it could bring it down for the killing blow, however, there was another crack and hiss in the room that halted all other activity. The sound of something metallic and heavy sliding, filled the chamber, and Krin risked a quick glance over his shoulder to see the golden sarcophagus now open. Standing beside it, stood the cadaverous visage of a woman, dressed in a ragged dress, woven together from strands of what looked like silver-white elven hair. A tiara, tarnished green, was affixed to her head, and biting into the wispy strands of white hair that still clung to her scalp. She wore a belt around the dress, containing a sheathed sword, and a strange multi-sided ball that dangled from leather straps. The horrific creature looked up, turned her head slowly about the chamber, until she found the two of them, and hissed.

  “Lord Christ protect us,” Finleara muttered in a ragged gasp. “It is the Maera-Wif!”

  ***

  “The what?” Krin screamed.

  “The Nightmare Lady!” Without further explanation, Finleara tossed her torch to the ground, and flew at the decaying old woman, ignoring the six other undead creatures that filled the chamber. Her sword lashed out at the creature, biting into its shoulder with a sickening thwack. Krin wanted to rush to her side, to help her however he could, but the draugr—all but a couple of the long-deceased dwarves had turned their cadaverous eyes in his direction.

  The one nearest him, blocking the passage out, brought its mace came crashing to the floor with a spray of sparks.

  “Whoa!” Krin cried out, leaping backward away from its follow up swing. He nearly tumbled into a second draugr, who shambled across the floor with one leg shattered just below the knee. “How do I fight these things?” he shouted at Finleara, who was locked in a desperate struggle with the gray-skinned woman.

  “I am working on it!” she shouted. Though he had little time to look at her, he thought he caught the faintest trace of blue light radiating up from her lifeglyph as she swung her blade again. When he gave her a quick second glance, the glow was gone. “Just keep them occupied. If I can destroy the Maera-Wif, we eliminate the thing that animates the others.”

  Just then, the creature she was fighting laughed. “Oh, sweet daughter-mine,” the Maera-Wif said. Her voice was the sound of a swarm of locusts devouring the crops of a thousand lands. “You would kill the maiden that raised you with her own two loving hands?”

  Daughter? Raised her? What does that mean?

  But Krin had no time to dwell on the questions. As if sensing Finleara’s intentions, the draugar who had been focused mostly on Krin turned in her direction. One by one, they shambled toward her as she hacked away the dried, leathery flesh of the Maera-Wif.

  Krin didn’t know what was going on; had never heard of the Nightmare Lady before, nor her connection with Finle
ara. But he sensed she was a creature of great power, and very deadly. So he was perplexed why the thing allowed the elf to continue to pummel her freely without so much as lifting a skeletal arm to defend itself. In the end, he figured it didn’t matter. Soon, the army of undead would be on her, and it would be over.

  Drawing Glalbrirer from its scabbard, Krin spun around. The blade, perfectly parallel with the floor, sliced through the neck of the draugr standing guard at the exit with a single swipe. Its spine severed, the head peeled backward, and fell to the floor. Its body followed immediately after into a bony heap, and a hiss of stale, putrid air.

  Bolstered by the ease in which he had dispatched his first undead creature, Krin raced to the next—a slightly larger creature with long pointed ears, and decaying spikes protruding from its spine. Not a dwarf, Krin thought. It’s a goblin! They buried a goblin in a dwarf tomb? As if sensing his approach, the goblin draugr wheeled around to face Krin, hefted its bone sword, and swung. Instinctively, Krin brought Glalbrirer up, blocking the strike before it could connect. The goblin snarled—a sound that reminded Krin of a bag of soaking wet marbles being ground in a miller’s press—and followed up with another swing.

  Fortunately, the creature’s lack of muscle, and loose strands of flesh flopping through the air as it moved, slowed the draugr down. He ducked the second strike, and came up again with his sword impaling the creature directly in the heart. A self-satisfied grin spread across his face as he turned to the next creature.

  As he ran to meet the dwarf-like draugr, he overheard Finleara questioning the Maera-Wif. “You have been taking children again, I see. Where are they?”

  By now, the female creature had extracted her own sword, and casually blocking Finleara’s own blows aside with the ease that one might swat a fly.

  “I must feed,” the Maera-Wif advised. “And Grandfather needs the vessels for his own dark endeavors.”

  “Since when do you bow down to him? Since the day of your unholy birth, you have done nothing but wage war against the Winterking. What has changed to make you so subservient now?”

  The Winterking? Is the Maera-Wif the Krampus’ granddaughter? A single-bladed axe whipped past his head as the dwarven draugr lunge. Feinting to his left, he dodged the swing, whipped around, and let the momentum carry his blade into the creature’s back. Though he never had any training in sword play, he was finding that he had rather a bit of a knack for it. But the blow had only stunned his adversary. The four-foot draugr howled with rage, spun, then kicked at Krin with a thick-soled boot. The blow sent him sprawling backwards to the floor, and the dwarf leapt at him; its jagged-toothed maw salivating as he lunged.

  But Krin recovered quickly, and rolled to the side as the creature landed. He leapt to his feet before the draugr could right itself, and brought his sword down quickly across the back of its head. The blade imbedded itself into the back of the draugr’s skull with a wet smack.

  Three down. He turned to look for his next target.

  Finleara and the Maera-Wif were still battling; their own sword battle more lopsided than Krin’s. Each swing of Finleara’s blade was easily countered by the crone.

  “You have a Rifting Stone. But how are you sending the creatures back to Wyndter without a half-elf?” Krin heard Finleara ask while dodging a half-hearted swing of the witch’s blade.

  It was an excellent question.

  “You don’t know?” the Maera-Wif replied; a sly smile cracked up her desiccated face. “How easily the mighty forget their own loyalties, and dark deeds done. Perhaps it is time I remind you.” Then the smile twisted into an angry scowl, and the undead woman screamed; the sound of it so powerful, it pushed Finleara backwards; tumbling off the dais.

  “Ichtu nada theleneon cauch!” Each syllable uttered by the Maera-Wif set every nerve in Krin’s body on fire. It was as if an entire choir of nightmarish things spoke at once, and it boomed across the hall with a deep-seeded ire for the interlopers.

  Finleara scrambled backwards on hands and feet, moving away from the thing as it continued to speak. Once again, Krin noticed the slow blue glow radiating from the girl’s lifeglyphs, and marveled.

  “She’s performing an incantation! A curse!” Finleara shouted. Despite the dire situation they both faced, Krin couldn’t help but feel she was holding something back in her words. He knew she wasn't telling him something about this particular curse, which rattled him all the more. “We’ve got to do something before she finishes, or we’re both done for!”

  Suddenly, the entire chamber echoed with the sound of the spell, multiplied by three. Krin turned to see each of the remaining draugr, standing completely still, and facing their mistress. Their mouths opening and closing as if they were little more than automatons mimicking precisely what the Maera-Wif was doing. Simultaneously reciting the arcane words that boomed from her withered lips, and filled the chamber with a strange blue radiance.

  Then, the Rifting Stone began to hum rhythmically to the chanting words until with a sudden pulse of energy, it burst to life with a swirling, blue-black vortex, and a wave of frigid air.

  THIRTY-NINE

  “Ben lachna contono naci!”

  As the witch continued to utter the strange, unholy gibberish, the glow of Finleara’s lifeglyphs blossomed into a full blown aurora, nearly blinding Krin as he stared. That was when he realized that the strange radiance that filled the chamber at the sound of the Maera-Wif’s chants had been coming from Finleara all along, though he had no idea why.

  “What’s happening to you?” he asked, fear gnawing at his gut.

  “Never mind that. Go for the dodecahedron hanging from her waist!”

  “Lachna contono leambichi!”

  A gust of chill wind swept in from the portal and whipped through the chamber like a miniature tornado, and nearly bowling Krin to the ground.

  “The what?”

  “The dodecahedron!” Finleara shouted. She tried to stand, but the howling wind pounded her back to the floor. “The geometric ball fastened to her belt. It is the talisman that is supplying her with power—and the draugr with life!”

  The sound of the chanting increased in proportion to the wind, nearly deafening Krin as he peered at the hag’s waist. After a second or two, he spotted the dodecahedron, which was about a palm's width across, with twelve pentagonal sides; each containing a small hole in its center. It looked hollow, and Krin couldn’t fathom how such an object could do much more than hold a sheaf of papers to a desk. The idea that it had the power to animate the dead—or even more inconceivable, power the Rifting Stone—seemed preposterous to him.

  Despite his skepticism, he decided to trust her. Krin placed two hands on the hilt of his sword, and ran pell-mell toward the dais. The Maera-Wif caught the movement from the corner of her eye, and wheeled in his direction; her mouth now silently mouthing the recitation. The moment his eyes met with her empty orbs, his mind instantly filled with a vision so shocking, it felt as though he had been struck in the gut with a sledgehammer—Nicholas, his throat slit from ear to ear and hanging at an odd angle, from a thorny old cross; Garhet drowning in a vat of molten ore; and a final vision of Krin himself, being pulled by the decayed groping hands of thousands of children into a vast worm-filled grave.

  With the Crone's gaze locked on him the nightmares continued to pummel him, driving him to his knees in of despair.

  What is this thing? He clenched his eyes shut to block out the horrific images. After several long seconds he managed to slowly exorcise the specters from his mind and his heart rate decreased.

  The chanting, however, continued to increase in volume despite his small victory. And with every gain in decibels, came a rise in the velocity of the wind blowing through the Rifting Stone, kicking up an ever-growing whirlwind of dust, sand, and debris.

  Wind alone wasn’t Krin's biggest worry. When he opened his eyes once more, and peered cautiously around the room, he could just make out the ghastly forms of hundreds of tormented faces bo
rne upon the wind storm—swooping in and out of his line of sight. Faces of children from all across the Four Worlds. Disembodied visages of boys and girls twisted with sorrow, fear, and hate. Spectral fingertips lashing out at him like bolts of lightning.

  “The children!” Krin screamed. “What has she done to the children?”

  Only a fierce howl of the phantom wind responded. Alarmed, he looked around the room—which appeared to be growing dimmer for some reason—and saw that two of the draugr had made their way over to Finleara, and now held her down, supine on the ground. The Maera-Wif glided casually over to her; her empty dead eyes radiating with the same blue glow as that of the elf’s lifeglyphs.

  “Leara!” he scrambled nearer, but was again brought to his knees by the swirling faces that lashed out at him with accusing eyes. To block their maddening glares, he screwed his own eyes shut again, and shouted to Finleara. “What are they doing to you?”

  “She is feeding on my will! She is trying to reclaim control over me. She lost it years ago!” she answered, struggling in vain against the heavier dwarven draugr. “She was the first of the dark elves, who has sustained her life for centuries by feeding on the willpower of the young, and she used me to open the Rifting Stone portal. You must take the dodecahedron from her now!”

  Reeling from the revelation, Krin tried once more to find his footing, and opening his eyes in the whirlwind whipping through the chamber. I need to put a stop to this. And fast!

  Ignoring the disembodied faces flying within the gale, Krin focused in on the hag. His eyes stung from the spinning debris, but as he studied her, he could just make out the faintest trace of her own lifeglyphs scrawled across her leathery hide. He looked down away from the tattoo and once more to the wide leather belt adorning her emaciated waist, and the dodecahedron. The twelve-sided object appeared to be emitting its own glow of blue radiance.