Frostborn: The Broken Mage

by Jonathan Moeller

  A chorus of war horns rose from the direction of the Market.

  The Mhorites were in pursuit.

  Ridmark waved Morigna over the bridge, and then he and Mara followed them. Beyond the gate was another courtyard, smaller than the first. Another battlement-topped wall rose at the far end, but thankfully its gate stood open. Beyond the second gate Ridmark saw a corridor littered with debris, and scattered around the courtyard lay…

  “What the devil are those things?” said Jager.

  A half-dozen hideous creatures lay around the courtyard, utterly motionless. They looked like giant, man-sized mantises, their carapaces a vivid shade of blue. Their rear and middle legs ended with clawed hands that looked surprisingly human, while their forelegs ended in a pair of massive scythe-like blades that looked deadly sharp. Ridmark started to raise his staff to defend, but then he realized the creatures were dead, and had likely been that way for a long time.

  “War beasts of the Frostborn,” murmured Calliande, her eyes going glassy. “I remember. I have seen them before…”

  “They are called locusari,” said Antenora, and the others looked at her. “The Frostborn woman I fought in the threshold between worlds commanded several of the creatures. She said they encountered the locusari on a distant world, and adapted them to serve as soldiers.”

  “Clearly they did,” said Mara. “Look.”

  She pointed a niche in the wall next to the damaged gate. Within the niche was an intricate maze of gears and cogs and half-smashed machines. A dead locusar hung suspended within the machinery, half-crushed by the massive gears. The creature’s hulk had pinned the gate open.

  “We will not be able to close the gate behind us,” said Arandar.

  “No,” said Ridmark. He caught a flicker of motion from the corner of his eye, and saw Mhorite scouts running into the outer courtyard. “We’re out of time. Go!”

  The others hurried towards the opened inner gate. The corridor beyond was far narrower, and dozens of rows of metallic spikes jutted from the walls, each as long as Ridmark’s leg. A dozen locusari had been pinned upon the spikes, the shafts of dwarven steel still crusted with the dried black slime that had once filled the insect-like warriors. Dwarven bones littered the floor.

  “A fine little trap,” said Jager. “Lure the bugs in and then skewer them.”

  “It was not enough to save Khald Azalar, I fear,” said Caius.

  “Keep going,” said Ridmark. The corridor ended after another sixty or seventy yards, and through the arch at the far end he saw the sullen glare of more molten stone. “Single file, quickly. Don’t touch the spikes, I fear they might be poisoned. Antenora, can you do anything to slow the Mhorites for a moment?”

  “Of course,” said Antenora, and she lifted her staff. Another globe of fire shimmered into existence. She gestured, and it shot through the air and slammed into the ground just within the outer gate. The sphere exploded with a snarling roar, the blast flinging one of the locusari carcasses into the air as a curtain of crackling fire sealed off the gate.

  “That will not last long,” said Antenora, “and the servants of the skull-faced god shall dispel it easily enough.”

  “Then let us put the time to use,” said Ridmark, urging her forward. “Go.”

  “That is sound thinking,” said Antenora, staring forward without hesitation. “You compel obedience quiet effectively, Gray Knight. Did you once command men in battle?”

  Ridmark remembered the battle at the Black Mountain five years ago, remembered the Mhalekites screaming down from the foothills, remembered the fear and hope in Aelia’s eyes as he chased Mhalek to the great hall of Castra Marcaine, the black and white tiles disappearing beneath the spreading pool of blood…

  “Go,” said Ridmark, and he followed Antenora, carefully picking his way over the bones and keeping his cloak from snagging on the spikes. Soon he joined the others at the end of the tunnel, and stepped into a massive octagonal courtyard, large enough to contain the previous two with room to spare. A channel of lava, perhaps two feet wide, encircled the courtyard, and each one of the other seven walls had its own archway. Some of the tunnels went up, some went down, and two opened onto stairwells that climbed higher into the mountain.

  “I don’t suppose,” said Gavin, “that the map happened to say which we should go next?”

  “Alas, it did not,” said Caius. “We should avoid the stairs. This is the Citadel of the West, designed to defend the Gate of the West if it was breached, and those stairs will lead to armories and barracks. We’ll be trapped without an exit.”

  “The tunnels that go up,” said Ridmark. “Any idea where they lead?”

  “Houses, probably,” said Caius. “The dwarves who made their livings from the businesses in the Dormari Market might have lived there. The soldiers who manned the Citadel of the West, as well.”

  Calliande shook her head, her blond hair flashing in the hellish light from the lava. “I can sense my staff. It’s below us, not above.”

  “Then down,” said Ridmark. All of the galleries going down were dark, lacking light from either glowstones or canals of molten lava. “Antenora, if you could work a spell for light, we…”

  “No!” said Antenora. “Do not use any magic!”

  Ridmark frowned, and then looked at the floor. Interlocking octagonal tiles covered the stone floor, and each tile had been carved with a blocky dwarven glyph. Glyphs, in fact, that looked familiar…

  “The trapped room in the High Gate,” said Calliande. "It's just like the trapped room."

  “There are potent wards in the glyphs,” said Antenora, and Mara nodded. “If anyone uses any magic in this room, I suspect it will set off a powerful trap.”

  “I could use the magic of the Well in the High Gate without activating the trap,” said Calliande. “The Mhorite shaman’s dark magic set it off.”

  “This ward looks damaged compared to the other one,” said Mara. “I think it is already partially active. Any magic use will trigger it, and I think…the doors.”

  Antenora nodded. “There are doors over each of those archways. If the ward is activated, I suspect the doors will seal.”

  “Just like the High Gate,” said Calliande.

  Ridmark nodded, a plan coming together in his mind. “Perhaps we can use that to our advantage.” He ran across the octagonal courtyard, checking each of the archways that opened into a downward-sloping gallery. At last he stopped at an archway two doors over from the tunnel leading to the inner courtyard of the Citadel. “There. This one.”

  “Why that one?” said Calliande.

  “The air smells better,” said Ridmark. “We don’t know where your staff is, but we can at least avoid asphyxiation while we search for it.”

  “That is one of the chief rules of survival in the Deeps,” said Caius. “The caverns are often riddled with pockets of bad air.”

  “Get into the tunnel,” said Ridmark. “Antenora, when I give the word, strike the floor of the courtyard with a fireball. Not a strong one, but nonetheless powerful enough to activate the ward.”

  “So you plan to lure in the Mhorites and then seal as many of them in the courtyard as possible?” said Kharlacht.

  “Aye,” said Ridmark, slinging his staff over his shoulder and picking up his bow. “With luck, we can hold them off here for a few days, and maybe even trap some. I have no doubt Mournacht himself will have the power to hammer through the doors, or the Traveler if he proves victorious, but we should be long gone by then.”

  “I will stay with you,” said Morigna, raising her own bow. “You mean to draw the Mhorites in by shooting arrows at them, do you not? They will respond more forcefully to two archers instead of one.”

  “I will remain with you as well,” said Calliande. “If they throw any spells at you, you will need someone to block them.”

  “That will trigger the trap,” said Morigna, her black eyes narrowing.

  “So will any spells the Mhorite shamans cast,” said Ca
lliande. “If this is like the trap in the High Gate, it will take the doors a few moments to close. We can flee through the tunnel then.”

  “Fine,” said Ridmark to forestall any further argument, though he did not like it. It reminded him of the battle in the High Gate, the battle that had separated him and Calliande from the others and nearly gotten them all killed. “Come with me. The rest of you, get into the tunnel. Antenora, when I call for you, cast that spell.”

  Ridmark ran across the courtyard, placing himself before the narrow gallery leading back to the inner courtyard, Morigna on his right and Calliande on his left. Antenora’s wall of fire had faded, and already dozens of Mhorite warriors made their way through the corridor, taking care to avoid the spikes. With so many warriors packed into the small pace, Ridmark could not miss.

  He and Morigna raised their bows, drew back the strings, and released in unison. Ridmark’s arrow slammed into the shoulder of the nearest Mhorite, and Morigna’s arrow shot past the warrior to strike the throat of the orc behind him. She had always been the better shot. The Mhorite Ridmark had wounded bellowed in pain and rage, and the warrior Morigna had killed slumped to the floor. One of the orcs bellowed a command, and the Mhorites began scrambling forward with as much speed as they could muster while avoiding the deadly spikes. Ridmark and Morigna loosed arrow after arrow, killing several Mhorites, but the rest kept coming, stepping over their wounded and slain fellows.

  Crimson light flared in the gallery, the spikes throwing mad, tangled shadows over the walls. Ridmark glimpsed another Mhorite shaman in the midst of the warriors, casting a spell. Calliande drew herself up and started casting a spell of her own, white fire shimmering around her fingers.

  The floor jolted beneath Ridmark’s boots. Every single one of the glyphs upon the tiles blazed with fiery light, and an enormous glyph burned upon the ceiling, so large that it seemed like a stylized moon wrought from a blacksmith’s fire. White light flashed around Ridmark and Morigna and Calliande, and an instant later the shaman’s attack hammered against the ward with a howl. Calliande’s magic proved the stronger, and the killing spell flickered and vanished.

  As it did, every single door in the octagonal courtyard began to slide shut, massive slabs of glyph-carved granite moving to seal the entrances.

  “Go!” shouted Ridmark.

  The women sprinted for the archway. An arrow skipped off the floor next to Ridmark as one of the Mhorites produced a bow, and he ran after Calliande and Morigna. Arandar, Gavin, Kharlacht, and Caius stood at the entrance to the tunnel, just beyond the sliding slab of granite with its carved glyphs. Calliande and Morigna dashed through the closing gate, and Ridmark put on a burst of speed and followed.

  The Mhorites were right behind him.

  Five of the warriors burst through the closing door. Arandar slew one, and Kharlacht killed another. Morigna shouted, purple fire pulsing in the gloom, and a ripple went through the floor, knocking the Mhorites from their feet. Gavin killed one of the orcs with a quick slash from Truthseeker. Ridmark snatched the dwarven war axe from his belt and opened the throat of the fourth. The final orcish warrior fell backwards with a scream, and landed in the archway just as the massive granite slab slid shut, sealing off the courtyard.

  The closing door cut off the light, but just before it did, Ridmark saw the Mhorite orc’s torso explode like a fruit crushed beneath a horse’s hoof. The door’s motion did not slow in the slightest as it crushed the Mhorite.

  The resounding echoes faded away, the only light coming from the shimmering glyphs upon the door’s surface.

  For a moment Ridmark and the others stood motionless, breathing hard.

  “Well,” said Gavin at last. “Now what?”

  Chapter 4: Night Visions

  Calliande took a deep breath, and then another. She felt calm return as the tension of battle drained away. They were safe enough for now. The granite door was two feet thick, and even with Mournacht’s powerful magic to break the warding glyphs, it would still take the Mhorites days to break through that door.

  Safe, of course, was a relative term, but they had make progress. Her staff felt closer. Perhaps they could yet find their way through this maze and reach Dragonfall.

  Assuming they had not just gotten trapped in a dead end.

  “Mara, Antenora,” said Ridmark. His voice was calm, the voice of a man in command of the situation. She knew him well enough by now to realize it was something he had learned, a part of his upbringing as a knight and noble of Andomhaim. Yet, by God and the apostles, it made her feel calmer. “Use your Sight, please. Are there any additional wards in this passage?”

  “None, Gray Knight,” said Antenora. She was a cowled shadow in the dim glow from the door’s glyphs.

  “There’s something wrong with the door, though,” said Mara. She stepped closer to it, a slender shadow in the glyph’s dull glare.

  “The lady of the dark elves is correct,” said Antenora, peering at the door.

  “Ah,” said Mara, a bit of amusement in her voice. “Is that to be my nickname, then?”

  “I do not understand,” said Antenora.

  “You never call anyone by name,” said Mara. “The Gray Knight. The Keeper. The master thief. The orcish warrior. The dwarven friar. In fact, I think the only one you call by name is Gavin.”

  Gavin shifted a little, Truthseeker still in hand. He got along surprisingly well with Antenora, despite their vast differences in age and background. Perhaps it was because they had both lost their homes. The arachar had burned Aranaeus, and Arthur Pendragon’s kingdom of Britannia had passed into the dust of time.

  “We can discuss that later,” said Ridmark. “What’s wrong with the door?”

  “The spells are…decaying, I think,” said Antenora. “Yes. They are damaged, just as the ward within the Citadel was damaged. They will break at some point in the next few hours. I think…”

  “Fifteen hours,” said Mara. Antenora looked at her. “When I was younger, precise timing was often important in my profession.”

  Calliande cast the spell to sense the presence of magic. “They’re right. The glyphs are weakening…and the weaker they get, the easier it will be for Mournacht to break through them.”

  “Then let us be gone from here,” said Ridmark. “Antenora. Can you provide light?”

  “Of course, Gray Knight,” said Antenora. She tapped the end of her staff against the floor, and the sigils carved into its length grew brighter, flickering as if a fire burned within the wood. Soon it seemed as if Antenora held a staff-shaped bar of fire in her hand. It was a decidedly peculiar effect, but useful.

  “Since we have no other choice, we will go forward,” said Ridmark, starting down the tunnel. Unlike the galleries near the Dormari Market and the Citadel of the West, the walls were smooth and unmarked, lacking the ornate, blocky glyphs and stylized reliefs. Calliande suspected that she was using the servants’ halls of long-dead Khald Azalar, or at least the streets of the commoners. “Caius, do you have any idea where we are?”

  “None, I fear,” said Caius. “Beyond the Dormari Quarter, I have seen very little of Khald Azalar.” He gazed at the wall for a moment, the flickering light of Antenora’s staff making him seem like a solemn statue robed in brown. “If I were to guess, I would say that this tunnel leads to either a residential quarter, a quarter for artisans, or some farming caverns.”

  “Farms?” said Gavin, surprised. “The dwarves had farms within Khald Azalar? I thought the dwarves grew their food in the Vale of Stone Death.”

  “Oh, they did,” said Caius. “Some crops require sunlight.”

  “But what could grow in this lightless place?” said Gavin. “In Aranaeus we grew wheat and barley and grain and all manner of vegetables, but they required the light of the sun.”

  “Mushrooms do not,” said Caius. “We constructed cisterns to capture snowmelt from the sides of the mountains, and used the water to grow mushrooms and edible mosses. We also stocked ponds with eyel
ess fish, and kept herds of murrags for meat and leather. There are many wild things that grow in the Deeps or hunt in the Deeps, and the ones that are edible we have tamed.”

  “There are also things in the Deeps,” said Ridmark, “that find dwarves edible.”

  “Or humans or orcs or halflings, for that matter,” said Caius. “That is the reason for the siege doors.” He sighed. “Though they availed my kindred little against the Frostborn.”

  They lapsed into silence after that. The tunnel sloped downward, and began to cut back and forth as it descended deeper into the bones of the mountain. Calliande found her attention wandering, and forced her weary mind to focus upon her surroundings. They had not had much chance to rest at the Travelers’ House, and their journey across the Vale of Stone Death had been tiring and dangerous. She could not help but admire how Ridmark showed no sign of fatigue, even though he had to be exhausted.

  Her lip twitched a little. Morigna had to be exhausted, too, after what…

  Calliande banished the thought. It was not a worthy one, though a petty, jealous part of her wanted to brood upon it further.

  “Keeper,” said Antenora. “Is anything amiss?”

  “What?” said Calliande, jerking out of her thoughts. “No, I am sorry. I am tired, that is all. My mind wandered.”

  “This is a dangerous place,” said Antenora. “An ill one for wandering thoughts, if you forgive my presumption.”

  “There is no presumption,” said Calliande. “Not when you are correct. Tell me. Are there any places like Khald Azalar upon Old Earth?” A conversation would help keep Calliande’s mind from wandering. She also wanted to learn more about this strange woman who called herself the Keeper’s apprentice.

  “Like this?” said Antenora. “No, not precisely. The engineering prowess of the dwarves is very great.”

  “Thank you,” called Caius from where he walked next to Ridmark.

  “It is only in the last century that the sciences of the men of Old Earth permitted anything like this,” said Antenora, waving her free hand at the wall. “The great empires of Old Earth used places such as this to house their most terrible weapons of war, machines that could turn a city to ash in the blink of an eye. Or so I think. I…may have seen such a place once, but it has faded from my memory.”