by Stuart Hill
Grinfang snarled contemptuously, and ran after the troll that was slowly dragging itself up the cliff face.
“You will STOP, Grinfang Sky-howler!” Oskan bellowed.
The werewolf turned to face Oskan, his snarling lips drawn back over massive teeth, but his mouth snapped shut as he looked at the Witchfather. The strange rags of mist that haunted the pass had gathered about him and now writhed and billowed as though moved by invisible currents, and the very air itself roiled and trembled as if a heat haze had managed to find its way north through the deadly cold of the Icemark winter.
“You will kill no more unless I sanction it! Do you under- stand, Skyhowler?” Oskan’s voice had become unnaturally deep, and his eyes had rolled back into his head so that the blind whites held the werewolf in their deadly gaze. “Do you UNDERSTAND?”
Medea was fascinated. Her father rarely chose to display his Power in public, and she gazed in wonder and with newfound respect as she sensed the strength of his Gift beating from him in palpable waves.
The werewolf, driven to his knees by some unseen force, nodded. “Yes, Witchfather,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Then there’s no need for any more unpleasantness, is there?” said Oskan, his voice returning to normal and his eyes rolling back into their natural position. “Shall we get on?”
The Ukpik werewolves scrambled hurriedly back to the sledge and waited while Taradan and Grinfang moved the rock trolls’ corpses aside.
“I do hope Their Vampiric Majesties were not responsible for that little display of aggression,” Oskan said lightly. “Otherwise there might have to be some more unpleasantness.”
Taradan looked at the slight figure of the man in the sledge, and shuddered. Not for the first time he found himself grateful that the warlock was on their side in the war. The Snow Leopard shifted his gaze to Medea, who was watching her father as though she was seeing him for the first time. He hoped he was wrong, but he couldn’t quite convince himself that she would use her Power so wisely.
An hour or so later, the envoys entered The-Land-of-the-Ghosts and were descending the steep route that led to the tree-line far below. It was almost midday, and at this time of year, night would fall before they reached the Blood Palace.
Oskan shivered as his sledge finally passed under the branches of the first trees of the forest. Already darkness seemed to have gathered under the evergreen trees, and it wasn’t possible to see more than a few metres to either side of the track, before the shadows closed in and hid everything from sight.
“Odd place, this,” said Taradan, drawing alongside the sledge. “I remember it when we passed this way coming south with the army. If you listen you can hear something talking quietly. You can never quite catch what it’s saying, but it sounds pretty menacing. Like something muttering threats or perhaps some evil incantation. Not sure I like it much.”
Oskan understood exactly what he meant. An odd murmuring undertone drifted through the trees, but if you tried to pin down where it was coming from, it shifted in a weird unsettling way, like some wind of misery uttering evil words and just waiting for an opportunity to make something hideous happen.
“It’s not my favourite place either,” Oskan answered. “I’d sooner be at home in front of the fire with a mug of my favourite beer.”
“Ah, yes. Now you’re talking. Perhaps from the South Riding barrels, in the third cellar along under the palace kitchens.”
“You’re very well acquainted with the kitchen undercrofts,” said Oskan with an amused grin.
“Well, erm . . .” said Taradan, feeling all at once like a naughty cub. “I’ll . . . erm . . . I’ll just scout ahead for any problems.”
Oskan watched the brilliant white pelt dwindling to a pale glow as the Snow Leopard ran on ahead, and he laughed to himself. There was something wonderfully human about Taradan and all his people. What would the Icemark do without them?
Just then the distant grey shadow of the giant cat disappeared. “Commander Blood-lapper, increase the pace, please,” Oskan called to the werewolf leader. “I’d like to catch up with Field-Marshall Taradan.” Something was beginning to make his flesh crawl, and a warlock was always alert to all his senses.
Medea too was aware of her flesh crawling, and it excited her. She was listening hard to the murmurings of the forest, trying to decipher what they were saying, but try as she might she couldn’t quite make them out. Nevertheless, she was enjoying the atmosphere of The-Land-of-the–Ghosts. It had a feeling of deep and abiding nastiness that she found quite charming. Perhaps being forced to join the embassy to Their Vampiric Majesties would prove to be to her advantage after all. She found herself looking forward to their arrival at the Blood Palace.
A high-pitched yowl erupted into the air – a Snow Leopard’s alarm call. Immediately the sledge leaped forward as the Ukpik werewolves surged to top speed. Grinfang charged on ahead, howling as he went, and they thundered round the long bend where Taradan had disappeared.
Abruptly they scrabbled and slithered to a halt. Before them crouched the Snow Leopard in the attack position, facing a party of zombies that stood across the track.
“Wait, Taradan!” Oskan called. “What do they want? They don’t look aggressive.”
The great cat sat upright and waited, though a deep growl still rumbled in his chest.
“Hit them! Hit them hard now, before they can attack!” Grinfang snarled.
“No, wait,” Oskan commanded, and climbed down from the sledge. The werewolf muttered mutinously. Medea watched and waited, but after the earlier display of warlock Power, the werewolf didn’t dare go against the Witchfather.
Oskan walked forward and faced the zombies. “You are impeding the progress of a Royal Embassy sent by Queen Thirrin of the Icemark, Tharaman-Thar of the Icesheets and King Grishmak of the Wolf-folk to Their Vampiric Majesties of The-Land-of-the-Ghosts. State your business, or be swept aside by the Snow Leopard and werewolves!”
A silence fell, and Oskan gazed at the zombies in revolted fascination. There were more than twenty of them, in such an advanced state of decomposition that he could hear tiny damp thuds and tired slithers as pieces of flesh, and even hands and feet, fell to the ground.
Obviously this party had orders to stop the embassy, but beyond that their purpose remained unclear. Oskan was about to demand their business again when the largest of the zombies shuffled forward.
“Follow usss!” it lisped in a deep voice muffled by a tongue and lips that had almost rotted away.
“Why should we?” Oskan demanded. “How can we trust you?”
“Vampire King, Vampire Queen sent ussss.”
“Well, well, we have a reception committee after all,” Oskan said to Taradan and Grinfang.
“I don’t trust them,” said Grinfang.
“Neither do I,” said Oskan. “But even if they’re lying, at least we won’t have to fight them for a while if we do as they ask.”
“We’ve no real choice anyway,” said Taradan. “Apart from abandoning the embassy and trying to outrun them as we head home.”
“Follow them it is, then,” said Oskan. “I wonder how many other envoys have had such lovely escorts?”
The Ukpik werewolves took up the traces of the sledge again, and Oskan settled himself under the furs before calling to the zombies, “Lead on, then. We’ll follow.”
The undead creatures set off at a tremendous speed, loping and rolling along at such a rate the werewolves struggled to keep up. But for Oskan, the worst aspect of the journey was the smell of rotting flesh and the shreds of matter that flew off the zombies. Once or twice nameless lumps of meat landed on the sledge and he was forced to use a stick, grabbed from an overhead branch, to scrape them off.
“I’m sorry about this, Medea,” he said as the sledge surged on. “But this is the true nature of any embassy: often beneath the elegant diplomatic speeches lies corruption and decay.”
“There’s no need to apologise,” she replie
d giving him one of her rare smiles. “I’m enjoying myself immensely.”
Instinctively knowing she was drawn to The Land-of-the-Ghosts, a spasm of fear rippled over Oskan’s flesh, raising the hairs on his arms and making him shudder. It was time for further talks.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Medea frowned in puzzlement. “What is?”
“The temptation of the Dark.”
Her black eyes revealed nothing, but undeterred Oskan went on. “The excitement of going against what’s expected of you; the glory of being . . . different, terrible, frightening! ”
Medea stared ahead, her black hair rolling out behind her like dark smoke in the wind. She knew her father had magically drawn them aside from the physical world. The Ukpik werewolves were suspended in mid-stride, as was Taradan, whose huge powerful body remained delicately balanced on one grounded paw. She and her father had entered the place between the material and spiritual dimensions, and this alone warned her of the gravity of the situation.
“Have we really reached this point in my education already? I thought revealing the true nature of the Dark would come later, when the matter of my choice becomes critical,” she said, her tone calculated to give just the right impression of unconcern.
Oskan could only admire her intelligence. He’d hardly begun the lead-up to that terrible revelation of true evil, but she’d guessed his intention and had disarmed him with easy contempt.
“Clever words don’t dilute the truth, Medea. You’re tempted by a Power that is corrupt and foul. Let me show you something.” His mind began to weave an image of a wide snowy tundra under a dense field of stars. She immediately put up barriers against him, but his Gift was by far the stronger and she was forced to watch.
“This is the Seventh Plain of the magical realms, known as the Circle of Dark, Medea. Here dwell my father’s people.”
She gasped and stared at him. “Then you do know who he is!”
“Oh yes. And so do you.”
She turned back to stare ahead again, her silence confirming what Oskan suspected. “You find him admirable and strong. But you’re afraid of him too.” Oskan smiled, his face transformed into a cat-like mask. “That’s good, Medea. That’s very good; fear enables us to control those ambitions that might otherwise destroy us. You have to accept that you’re not strong enough for the Dark. Its evil would smother you; it would stop up your head and your senses with its cloying Power and you’d be lost, drained to nothing, empty and trodden under the heel of my father’s strength.”
The image he’d been weaving clarified into stark and startling brilliance. “Look, Medea. What do you see?”
Reluctantly, she let her mind wander over the wide vision he’d created. “I see frozen wastes, snow, ice. Nothing unusual for the northern world.”
“But this isn’t the northern realms of the physical world,” he said quietly. “We see the Spirit Plains. We see the Dark.”
“Surprisingly ordinary, isn’t it?” she said lightly.
“Far from it, as you well know. Nothing is as it seems in the Dark. It can only reflect, and mock the reality of the spiritual and physical worlds. The stars in all their beautiful constellations are nothing but distilled hatred given form; the distant snow-covered mountains are built from the pain and horror that people have suffered down the long millennia—”
“And I suppose the snow is nothing but the powdered bones of little babies who died in innocence at the behest of Evil,” she answered, her voice high-pitched, quivering and mocking.
Oskan found himself admiring the strength of her resistance. She was a sorceress with a potential that terrified him.
“No bones make up the snows of the Dark, Medea,” he replied. “Look closer.”
Under the pressure of his Magical strength she had no choice. “I see flakes of ice,” she answered defiantly. “I see crystals with a delicate lacy symmetry, and below that I see the void that exists between matter.”
“But this is the Spirit World, Medea,” Oskan replied with measured calm. “There is no matter. Look again. Look again at the crystals of ice.”
With an exasperated sigh she applied her Gift and studied the snow again. At first, she could see nothing out of the ordinary, but then she discerned an odd structure in the ice crystals. She gasped. The snow was spirit! Each and every crystal of ice was a soul captured and held by some incredible Power so that the spark of life itself had condensed and frozen into tiny glittering shards!
“Now look around you,” Oskan instructed.
Medea looked far into the immense, endless sweep of frozen waste that was the Dark, as far as her Magical Eye could see. She trembled uncontrollably, and her body slumped forward in the sledge.
Oskan looked at her and nodded. “The snows of the Dark are made up of the souls of those who were tempted by its Power. Does it tempt you still, Medea?”
She moaned and closed her eyes, then seemed to slip away into unconsciousness. Her father heaved a sigh of relief dragged from the very deepest depth of his being. At last, he’d touched her mind! He’d reached out and drawn her back from the edge of the most terrible abyss! For a moment he slumped back in his seat and allowed the cold winds of The-Land-ofthe-Ghosts to wash and coil over him. Then, wearily, he sat up and with a nod of his head, he and his daughter re-entered the physical world.
* * *
They were back in the sledge. Medea felt the shift as they left the in-between state, but she kept her eyes shut; she had to think. Carefully, silently, she built barriers that hid her thoughts even from Oskan, the most powerful of warlocks. He might have been able to force her mind to look at the scenes he had created, but he couldn’t force her to engage with them emotionally. Her real thoughts and intentions were hidden, even from her father. There was no witch, warlock or wizard who was better at that than her.
Only when every vestige of thought and emotion was hidden behind barriers of Magical Adamant did she allow herself to exalt. She had never even begun to guess at the extraordinary Power of the Dark! How incredible; how amazing; how wonderfully superb!
One day she would triumph, she would make her grandfather proud – but first, it might be worth getting to know some of the lesser evils. The wickedness of Their Vampiric Majesties seemed to stem from the Dark. So, perhaps they had some safe means of accessing it. She smiled to herself; this diplomatic mission was definitely proving to be useful.
After more than two hours without a rest, Oskan caught his first glimpse of the sickly green light that outlined the battlements and turrets of the Blood Place, the seat of the Vampire King and Queen. They thundered on through the icy night, and as they drew closer details added themselves to the dark mass of the building. At first the black eyes of hundreds of windows watched their approach. But then, unnervingly, a fitful green light began to grow in the topmost casements and spread to more and more of the windows, until at last the entire palace seemed aflame with the sickly fluorescent glow that oozed down the walls like mucus and flowed out on to the terrace that surrounded the building.
“Not a comforting sight,” said Taradan, drawing alongside the sledge. “It looks like it’s been carved out of the corpse of some giant animal.”
“Yes,” Oskan agreed. “And its occupants are like the maggots and mould that are slowly eating it away.”
“How can you say that?” said Taradan in mock horror. “You’re speaking of our allies!”
“Indeed I am. And it’s our task to remind them that that’s exactly what they are.”
“Oh, what fun,” said Taradan morosely.
“Precisely,” Oskan answered. “So the sooner we get it over and done with, the better.”
Medea shivered with excitement. She’d heard so much about Their Vampiric Majesties, and now she was actually going to meet them. There was something wonderfully sinister, and even romantic, about their rule that had continued unaltered and unchallenged for more than a thousand years. And if they did have some safe means of a
ccess to the supreme Power that was the Dark, then perhaps through them she’d find her true spiritual birthplace.
They’d almost reached the palace. The zombies led the party on to the terraces that surrounded the building, and finally stopped. The werewolves sagged in the traces of the sledge, gasping for breath, their hairy forms almost hidden by a haze of steam that condensed on the freezing air and settled on their muzzles.
“We’re heeeeere!” the head zombie boomed, its brain too rotten to grasp that it was stating the obvious.
“So we are,” Oskan said brightly. “Just run along in and announce us, will you?”
The undead creature seemed confused by that, and turned to the palace, then back to Oskan, its cold face working as it tried to decide what to do.
“Oh, never mind, we’ll announce ourselves.” Oskan turned to the Ukpik werewolves, who had already recovered enough to be gazing around at the hideous beauty of the palace icegardens, where marble skulls and frozen fountains in the forms of spectres loomed out of the darkness. “You may as well all come along. You’ll freeze out here, and who knows, perhaps it’ll actually be warmer inside.”
He led the way over the terrace to the towering double doors of the palace. Taradan and Grinfang joined him, and they all stared up at the iron-studded woodwork that stayed firmly closed.
“I’ll announce us,” said Grinfang, and he hammered on the doors with his massive fists. They could hear the boom echoing hollowly through the palace, but nothing happened. The werewolf hammered again, harder this time. The doors shook in their frame, but still there was no acknowledgement of their presence.
“Oh, enough of this!” Taradan said, and rearing up to his full height, he smashed his weight against the doors, which burst open, slamming back against the inside walls and falling off their hinges.
“Crude but effective,” said Oskan as he and Medea walked through the now gaping doorway and into the darkness beyond. After a moment’s hesitation the others followed, edging cautiously into the gloom.
