Frostborn: The Iron Tower

by Jonathan Moeller

  She stepped forward.

  The curved far wall had been built of iron.

  Mara examined the wall, surprised. The entire wall had been constructed of one massive piece of rough gray iron. It looked half-melted, the rough edges glinting in the bloody light. Had the men of Andomhaim made this? Or the Artificer himself? It was…

  “The Iron Tower,” whispered Mara. “It is truly is made of iron?”

  “Of course,” said the Artificer, his voice murmuring against her ears. “What else would it be?”

  “I thought it was a metaphor,” said Mara.

  “No,” said the Artificer. “I wrought it with my power. A tower of iron, invulnerable and eternal.” Cold mockery entered his voice. “Ever since the human vermin settled in the ruins of my citadel, they have sought the entrance to my tower. They have never found of it. Some of them believe the tower is a solid mass of iron. But they do not understand. I forged the tower. It is the vessel of my power and it obeys me. Only I may command it. Behold.”

  A shiver went through the air, and a portion of the rough iron wall shimmered and vanished, revealing metal steps that climbed into the tower.

  “Go,” said the Artificer. “The stair will take you to a hidden door in the courtyard. It is night, and the guards shall be lax. From there you can escape.”

  Mara hesitated. “But how will you escape?”

  “My escape,” said the Artificer, “is at hand.”

  “What does that mean?” said Mara.

  But the Artificer was silent.

  Mara shook her head. Something about the iron stairs made her uneasy. For that matter, she could not figure out why the Artificer was helping her. She had spent years around the Matriarch, and the dark elven woman had never done anything that did not benefit her in some way. Mara could not imagine that the Artificer was any different.

  But she was trapped. There was no other way out of the Tower, and she did not want to die here. Her only chance was to listen to the Artificer.

  Though that would not stop her from watching for treachery. She had spent enough time with the Matriarch to know that.

  Mara took a deep breath, drew the dagger in her left hand, and started up the stairs.

  The moment her foot touched the first iron step she felt the chill. The metal was charged with dark magic. Despite the heritage of her blood, Mara had no magical ability. Yet she felt the dark magic flowing through the metal of the stairs and the walls, and she wondered if the entire tower of iron was a thing of unholy life, a creature with iron skin and dark magic pulsing through its veins.

  If he had created such a thing, the Artificer had indeed been a wizard of terrible power.

  Mara climbed the stairs, moving as fast as she dared, her stolen boots clicking against the iron steps. The light from the vault below faded, and she soon found herself in darkness. The thought of touching the iron wall filled her with loathing, but she reached out with her hand and braced herself against the wall, following its curve as she climbed.

  And to her surprise, her bracelet glowed, giving off an eerie green light.

  It had never done that before.

  She raised her left arm and started running, using the green glow to find her steps. The stairs seemed to go on and on. Just how tall was this tower of iron? It felt as if she had gone five hundred feet already.

  Ribbons of shadow writhed along the metal walls, and the air grew colder and colder.

  “Artificer?” said Mara. “What is that?”

  The spirit did not answer her.

  Her unease grew, and Mara kept running.

  Suddenly a tentacle of shadow burst from the wall and wrapped around her forearm. The touch was icy cold, and Mara stumbled, grabbing at the wall for balance. Another two ribbons of darkness erupted from the wall and wrapped around her, and the deathly cold increased. She cursed and pushed away from the wall, expecting the tentacles of shadow to hold her fast.

  But instead she bounced off the opposite wall.

  Surprised, she waved her hands through the ribbons. The tentacles of darkness were immaterial, yet she felt a chill whenever she touched them. And the chill was spreading through her, inch by inch.

  That couldn’t be good.

  “Artificer?” said Mara, turning. “What is this?”

  Another tendril of shadow burst from the wall and coiled around her leg.

  “You are mine,” hissed the Artificer, his voice echoing inside of her head. “Mine!”

  That definitely couldn’t be good.

  Mara started running, her boots ringing against the iron steps. More and more of the shadowy tentacles burst from the wall, wrapping around her and sinking into her flesh. The chill grew worse, her muscles starting to spasm.

  And the Artificer’s voice hissed inside her skull.

  “Mine!” he boomed. “At long last, freedom is mine. I shall have my revenge. I shall burn the pitiful humans that dared to raise their crude towers over my citadel. I shall raise an empire that will put the kingdoms of old to shame. And I shall have my vengeance upon the Warden, I shall make him beg for mercy, inflict a millennium of pain upon him for every second I have been trapped here…”

  She had no idea what that meant, so she kept running. It was getting harder to move, the shivering growing worse and worse. Soon she would not be able to stand, let alone run. Mara did not know what the Artificer was attempting to do to her, but she knew that it was not good.

  So she kept running, the stairs seeming to stretch endlessly.

  Then, all at once, they ended in a blank iron wall.

  Mara skidded to a dismayed halt, reaching one shaking hand out to steady herself. Yet when she touched the wall, it disappeared. Beyond she saw the stone-paved courtyard of a castra, a curtain wall rising in the distance, fortified with battlement-crowned watchtowers.

  The courtyard of the Iron Tower.

  Mara breathed a sigh of relief and strode through the door.

  Or, at least, she tried to.

  Something jerked her short, pulling on her left arm. The bracelet upon her left wrist glowed brighter, and Mara tried to go through the door again. Once more the bracelet flashed with green light, and an unseen force stopped her from reaching the courtyard.

  As if the bracelet was attached to an invisible chain.

  “No!” The Artificer’s voice rang with anger. “You will not escape!”

  Again the bracelet jerked her back, and more tentacles burst from the wall, their insubstantial lengths coiling around her. The chill deepened, her teeth chattering.

  She had to get out of here.

  But she dared not take off the bracelet. The darkness within had nearly consumed her when the Matriarch had found her, and that had been twelve years ago. It would have only grown stronger since.

  “We shall be free together,” said the Artificer, “and we shall bathe the world in blood.”

  “No,” said Mara, straining, the bracelet glowing brighter. “I don’t want to kill anyone.”

  “You killed the guard easily enough,” said the Artificer.

  “Not because I wanted to,” said Mara. “Because I had to. Because he hurt Jager.”

  “No,” said the Artificer. “You are a killer, but you would squander your potential. Join me, and together we shall be strong, strong enough that no one will have the power to stop us. Not the preening fool that rules this fortress, not the Warden, no one. Join me, and we shall be invincible!”

  That sounded dubious, and the shadowy tentacles rising from the walls made her feel cold and terrified, not invincible. She saw scores more crawling from the walls and ceilings, hundreds of them, and sheer terror overcome her.

  She did not want those things to touch her.

  In one smooth motion, she yanked off the glowing bracelet, dropped it to the floor, and stepped into the courtyard.

  “No!” roared the Artificer. “Get back here! Get back…”

  Mara stumbled to a stop, and the door vanished behind her.

 
; With a cry of alarm she turned back to the iron wall. But the door was gone, and she saw no trace that a door had ever been there.

  Which meant her bracelet was gone as well.

  She groped at the wall in a panic. She had to get the bracelet back. Already she felt the darkness boiling in her mind, pouring through her veins and threatening to take control. She had to get that bracelet back. If…

  A shout filled her ears.

  Mara whirled, and saw men running along the ramparts of the outer wall. It was a few hours from dawn to judge by the sky, but she had been seen. Men-at-arms in blue tabards hurried from the ramparts. Mara took a step back and looked up. The tower of iron rose high overhead, almost five hundred feet tall, a massive monolith of rough gray iron.

  A small part of her mind noted that if the Artificer had indeed wrought the metal tower, he had no sense of aesthetics.

  Several shorter towers of stone rose around it, and she saw men hurrying along the top with crossbows.

  They would kill her if they caught her, and she had to get out of the Iron Tower. Yet she could not elude so many men without drawing upon her power over the darkness. But she already felt the darkness in her blood raging, spiraling out of control. Using her power over the shadows without the bracelet would only make it worse.

  But if she did not command the shadows, she was going to die here.

  Mara took a deep breath, attempting and failing to reach calm, and drew on the shadows.

  At once they rose at her command, with a force and savagery she had not seen since her childhood. She almost collapsed, her resistance overwhelmed. But she knew what the darkness would do to her if she gave way, and the Red Family had trained her well. The discipline the master assassins of the Family had instilled took hold, and she drove the shadows back, commanding them to yield to her will.

  But the effort was exhausting, a tremor going through her limbs.

  And for just a moment she heard the songs.

  The creatures of the dark elves, the Matriarch had told her, could sense the aura of their masters from a long way off. Their minds interpreted the aura as a song, a beautiful, terrible song, so lovely they had no choice but to obey their masters.

  And to die for their masters.

  But Mara’s discipline held, and she forced the shadows to heed. The song faded from her mind. But without the bracelet, she could not keep the shadows in her blood at bay. They would consume her …

  Shouts rang over the courtyard, and Mara snapped out of her internal struggle. If she did not start running now, the guards were going to kill her.

  Perhaps that would be better than what awaited her if she transformed.

  No. She wanted to see Jager again.

  Mara ran along the base of the inner towers, the shadows wrapping around her. Men issued from the keeps, running across the courtyard. They were making for the gate in the curtain wall, to make sure she did not escape. Mara kept running and scrambled up a flight of stairs to the curtain wall’s ramparts. A pair of men-at-arms ran past, making for the gatehouse, and Mara crouched until they passed, the shadows keeping her unseen.

  Then she sprang onto the ramparts and ducked into the watchtower the men had just vacated. It was well-stocked with quarrels, torches, and supplies, letting the guards barricade themselves within should the castra fall to an enemy.

  And the guardroom also had a length of thick, sturdy rope.

  Mara took the rope and darted back to the battlements. She knotted one end around one of the stone battlements, threw the rope over the wall, and started climbing. Her muscles trembled with the effort as she descended, but she braced her legs against the wall and descended foot by foot. If she could just get down the wall and slip into the woods, she could escape.

  Of course, she had no food or supplies. She ought to have taken some before fleeing the Iron Tower. Still, she had survived on forage as a child, and the skill had not left her…

  “There! There she is!”

  Mara saw a man-at-arms leveling a crossbow.

  She released the rope, dropping the final ten feet as the quarrel hissed past her to embed itself in the earth. She struck the ground, rolled to her feet, and started running, heading for the darkened forests to the north.

  And as she ran, she heard the rattle of the Iron Tower’s portcullis opening, the thunder of hooves and a sharp, loud barking noise.

  Dogs. They had dogs. That was very bad. Mara’s power let her hide in the shadows, but it did nothing to baffle the keen noses of hunting dogs. If the dogs caught her scent, they would not let her go.

  Something within her whispered that if she embraced the darkness, let it transform her, she could kill the dogs with ease, along with every other living thing in the Iron Tower.

  Mara ran as fast as she could and vanished into the forest.

  Chapter 4 - Unyielding

  The sun set, and Ridmark looked at the walls of the Iron Tower.

  The Lake of Battles stretched to the south, a broad, blue-gray expanse, the waves rippling in the wind. The Iron Tower rose at the lake’s northernmost edge, its shadow falling long and dark to the east. Ridmark had seen stronger castras. The High King’s mighty citadel in Tarlion, or his father’s seat of Castra Arban. Or perhaps Castra Marcaine, where he had served as a Swordbearer in Dux Gareth’s court and had courted Aelia.

  But the Iron Tower was nonetheless a strong fortress.

  A massive iron monolith rose from the castra’s heart, standing nearly five hundred feet tall. The thing had a rough, unfinished look, its surface rippled and jagged. According to some stories, it was a single solid piece of iron, while other tales claimed there were dozens of hidden chambers within the tower. A citadel of the dark elves had once stood there, destroyed in battle a millennia before Malahan Pendragon and his retainers had first come to this world, and the castra had been built over the ruins. Four strong drum towers rose around the iron monolith’s base. They barely reached a fifth of its height, but Ridmark saw catapults and ballistae waiting upon their parapets. A curtain wall, nearly thirty feet tall, encircled both the tower of iron and the drum towers. Octagonal watch towers rose from the wall, topped with more war engines. At the southern end of the fortress, a barbican jutted into the lake’s waters, providing a secure harbor where boats could dock to unload supplies and prisoners.

  Ridmark stood motionless in the shadow of a tree, wrapped in his elven cloak, and watched the movement of the men upon the walls.

  The Iron Tower was the realm of Andomhaim’s northernmost outpost, the final fortress between the High King’s writ and the vast expanse of the Wilderland. The Dux of Caerdracon held the Iron Tower in the High King’s name, and traditionally appointed one of his vassals as the Constable of the Iron Tower.

  An office currently held by Sir Paul Tallmane.

  Ridmark had thought Sir Paul a brute even before his banishment. Then he had learned that Paul was one of the Enlightened of Incariel. After that, Jager had told him of Paul’s crimes, how Paul had convinced Jager’s father to take the blame for murder.

  Now Paul was holding Jager’s lover Mara prisoner in the Tower.

  And he had the soulstone, and Shadowbearer would come to claim it.

  Ridmark had to act soon.

  He did not know how much time they had before Shadowbearer arrived. Based on what Kharlacht had told him and what Morigna remembered from her final conversation with Coriolus, Shadowbearer was often absent from his minions for months at a time, his arrivals and departures erratic. They could have weeks before Shadowbearer arrived to take the soulstone.

  Or Shadowbearer could be taking the soulstone even now.

  But Ridmark did not think so.

  Something was wrong in the Iron Tower.

  He saw it in the posture of the guards. They seemed on edge, their eyes scanning the trees ceaselessly. The war engines were manned and ready to release. They looked like men expecting an attack. Twice he had seen bands of armed men ride from the gates, patrols sent to scout
the countryside. Had they been attacked by orcs from the Wilderland, or perhaps by raiders from the Deeps? Or maybe Paul had simply roused the garrison and sent the patrols out to find Ridmark.

  There was little chance of that. Calliande and Kharlacht and the others were hidden well, and if one of the patrols located them, the men-at-arms would find more trouble than they expected.

  But the Tower seethed like an anthill.

  There was opportunity in that. Opportunity in chaos, as Jager liked to say.

  Of course, Jager’s attempt to exploit chaos had gotten him imprisoned in the Iron Tower in the first place.

  The men upon the walls were vigilant, but with so many patrols riding back and forth, perhaps Ridmark could disguise himself in a blue Carhaine tabard and sneak into the Tower. Or maybe he could gain entrance through the castra’s fortified dock.

  Or maybe he could get himself killed.

  He rubbed his jaw for a moment, thinking. The beard stubble rasped beneath his palm, itching damnably. A shave would have been welcome, but there had not been time since pursuing Paul from Coldinium.

  Ridmark’s best chance was to overpower one of Paul’s men, disguise himself as a man-at-arms, and enter the castra. He could locate the soulstone and Mara, and then escape the Tower. It was a risk, but it could work. But he could never get the others to agree to it. Calliande had made him promise not to take futile risks, and Jager would insist upon entering the Iron Tower to rescue his lover.

  And Ridmark needed more information before deciding upon a course of action.

  He knew just where to get it.

  ###

  Morigna closed her eyes, feeling the mental link to the ravens.

  She had bound a dozen of the birds and set them to spiraling over the Iron Tower and the surrounding forests. Her magic was strong enough to bind a score of the creatures, but she could not look through more than three or four sets of eyes at once. Any more than that and she developed a splitting headache and lost focus. So instead she cycled through them, looking through one set of eyes and then another.