Then, of course, he’d started the end of the world. No, that was the gods. They were having the sort of temper tantrum reserved for sleepy infants. But the end result was the same. The end of the world, if he could not stop them.
Yes, in the darkness, his thoughts were the sort he didn’t want to have.
“I’m lost, Nora.” He sighed the words. His eyes stung with unshed tears. Here, alone, he could finally say it. “I’ve gone and been a fool. I tried to save you, love, but I couldn’t, and now look at the mess.” The words echoed through the area.
He rested his face against his palms and tried to breathe without sobbing.
Nora did not respond. She couldn’t. She was dead, after all.
Somewhere inside the vast cavernous space the wind must have been getting in. He felt a cold breeze blowing. The air was frigid already, but this was chillier still.
Brogan looked around and saw the faint movement of light pulsing through the crystal shards. Not like a flame. Not as bright as that, but more like the light reflected from a flickering candle. He could not hope to follow that shimmer, but he could watch it and he did, filled with a sense of wonder. Nothing moved. He knew he was alone, but the luminescence danced around him in counterpoint to the odd cold breeze.
“You’d have liked this, love. I never knew it was here.” He thought of Braghe and the twins and knew they’d have been both horrified by the giant’s remains and ecstatic about the lights. They’d have gasped and told each other a hundred tales.
The shards were wonders by themselves, vast as the skies, it seemed, and as he looked at the closest, he saw the glow move through it, highlighting the red hues and ignoring the paler areas. He followed the progression as it moved up toward the ribcage above him and touched the bone. In those spots where the light touched the skeleton it seemed, if only for a second, as if there was flesh again.
Several times he heard sounds in the distance, clicking noises and rustling sounds, but whatever made them stayed well distant.
Despite the odd disturbance, Brogan was drifting off into a deep sleep when the louder noises came from where he’d traveled. They were soft, but after the deep silence they may as well have been screams. Something had entered the same way he had. That someone, or possibly that group, now moved, seeking out something in the darkness.
There was only one thing to seek as near as he could tell. Brogan stood as quietly as he could and drew his axe, his sword. He did not hold them, but placed them within arm’s distance.
The trick, according to his father, was to relax, just as one did when hunting. Make no noise that you did not have to make. He had traveled most of a day, near as he could figure, but he’d gone at a leisurely pace. Whatever followed him might try to come on faster. If it were human, it might take a while to find him, or it might go in the wrong direction. If there were hounds they’d find his trail easily enough.
Brogan frowned. No hounds. He’d have heard them by now. He’d never in his life run across a hound that didn’t make noise. In the bundle at his feet the hide of the Undying he had captured and skinned shuddered and let out a noise like a sigh.
He managed not to scream.
Staying perfectly still was impossible and rather than try, Brogan let himself relax against the vast crystal shard that was nearest. The damned thing vibrated. It was not a harsh thing, but it was noticeable. He found it oddly soothing, like the sound of rain falling on the roof of his home.
Though he did not sleep, exactly, Brogan relaxed and drifted.
He came fully awake some time later when he heard the shouts from closer than he wanted to think about.
Whatever it was that cried out, there was more than one of them. He did not move. He did not need to. The things that were coming were likely after him.
There were more screams. And then there were other noises. Wet sounds, and the very distinct noises made when large bones are broken, enhanced by still more screams.
Somewhere along the way, Brogan raised his axe. Both hands held the haft and he kneaded the damned thing like bread dough.
When the noises stopped he swore to himself that he would stay where he was. He didn’t need to see. Knowing wasn’t important. He meant it too, right up until the time he moved carefully around the vast crystal column and started back the way he’d come. Because sometimes not knowing was worse.
Then again…
The carnage was impossible to miss. His eyes had long adjusted and he could see the shapes where they lay among the rocks and the dirt. They were broken. When Sherla was young she would make wooden figures. They were not very well crafted, seldom more than a few twigs that she tied together with thread she stole from her very tolerant mother.
His daughter loved to play with the damned things for hours. She would have conversations, give them names, move them about. She could have, he had no doubt, made armies and towns worth of figures if she’d had the time, the extra thread and no twin sister. Much as Sherla loved to make her dolls, Leidhe delighted in breaking them. She would always claim it wasn’t her, even when she was caught in the act, and she would apologize if forced to, but everyone knew she never meant it. The little hellion simply thrilled at crushing those wooden shapes, as if she were jealous of them. Perhaps she was.
In the grander scheme of things, that memory was a small note in the book of recollections Brogan had of his lovely daughters. He likely wouldn’t have considered it for many a year.
The memory was forced on him. The ruined shapes on the ground looked eerily like those broken stick dolls. The limbs were shattered and bent. The bodies twisted until the original shape barely existed any longer.
Each of the forms was a shadow in the cavern, but there was enough light to see the odd metal masks that each wore over their faces.
And there was enough light to see the thing that had shattered them.
If they were sticks, this was bone. It stood a full head taller than Brogan himself and was leaner. It was not skinny, but neither was it wide. The body was naked, but as it seemed only partially formed, it lacked any sense of awkwardness that might have come along. There was no sex to the shape. The legs were long. The arms were long. The body was long. The head was long and bore no face. That was the part that was the worst. There were no eyes, no nose, no mouth.
No. The creature looked down at the carnage it had wreaked upon once-living things and at that angle it had no face. As it stared, Brogan had time to study the entire form. He saw the bloodstains on the hands that reached all the way to the elbows. He saw the crudely formed hands themselves, which bore no fingernails and barely seemed to have joints enough to move.
And then Brogan forgot all about the hands when that blank face turned toward him. No. Not featureless. Not really. There was a rudimentary form of a face there. A hint of a nose, a slight curve where a mouth might be, and two deeply bored holes where the eyes should have settled.
Those two dark pits seemed to stare directly at Brogan. In the near darkness he could not tell exactly what color the standing figure or the corpses were, but all were paler than he was. Paler, save where the blood covered them.
That was enough. Brogan backed away, keeping his eyes on the tall shape. He made sure to know where it was at every second, because whatever it was, it had killed at least a half dozen things that looked like they’d been pulled out of nightmares, and it was looking in his general direction, as close as he could figure, and that was a notion that did not sit comfortably at all.
“I’ve no argument with you.” Oh, how his voice echoed. Did he sound nervous? Of course he did. He could barely see his opponent and whatever it was, it had just torn several people apart.
It stayed where it was and looked at him, as still as a statue. After he had moved back several feet, it stepped toward him but it did not move quickly. It merely started keeping pace. When Brogan stopped, so did the pale form. He saw the texture of the flesh and thought of the pale white trees of his homeland, the bark not quite as rou
gh as many other trees, but often peeling like burned skin trying to heal. There were no peeled layers to this, but the texture was similar just the same.
He shook his head and contemplated his companion. If it wanted him dead, it would attack. If it wanted to follow him from a ways off, well, frankly, he wasn’t so sure he minded the company so long as it didn’t try tearing his body into a new shape.
He walked back to where he’d left his sword and his supplies and settled in. The air was still cold, so he wrapped himself in his furs and his tartan and he did his best to sleep while the pale sentinel watched.
It was not a restful sleep. It was haunted by thoughts of his family and by the thing that stared at him but moved no closer.
When the morning came, the light from the sun moving through the crystals once again made seeing an easier task.
His silent companion was still in the same spot. It looked in his direction, but once the illumination was strong enough, Brogan could see that his earlier estimation was true. There was no real face to the thing, but there were two deep holes where eyes should have been.
“What are you?” He didn’t expect an answer. The thing had no mouth, after all.
He was not surprised when he got no reply. The thing simply looked at him, as still as any statue.
“Fine then. You mind yourself and I’ll have no reason to argue with you.” Brogan gathered his things and started walking. He still had no idea what he was looking for. If it was a trinket, he’d never find it in the vast area.
Above him the remains of a giant remained impaled by a thousand crystal shards larger than all the homes in Kinnett and the king’s palace besides. Next to that, everything else seemed trivial. Except that none of it was. The world was ending.
He had to fix that problem if he could.
To that end he started walking a little faster and did his best to ignore the thing that followed behind him.
Harper Ruttket
Harper shook his head and looked at the rest of his gathered forces. They were few in number.
“Well, that ended poorly.” He spoke only to himself.
“Aye.” Bump nodded his head. Not for the first time Harper wondered if Bump was truly the man’s name. Someday he might even get around to asking, but at the moment it seemed a trivial thing.
They were together, and they eyed the slaver encampment. The gods might be angry with them but it seemed that surely something must be showing them favor to have allowed them to avoid capture for so long. There were over a hundred men in the camp, and by the looks of it fresh reinforcements had just shown themselves. The creatures that had chased them and captured a good portion of the party were nowhere to be seen and that was a worry. Like as not they’d be chasing after them again in the near future if they weren’t already.
Mearhan Slattery looked at the gathered forces and shook her head. Somewhere in that collection of savages, Laram and others had been captured. Their fates were surely sealed. She looked genuinely worried about the man.
Harper said, “Unless Brogan pulls off the impossible, Laram is dead. You already know that. Why are you looking so worried?”
Mearhan looked back at him and shook her head. “I know he’s soon to die. I don’t want him to suffer. Also, I keep hoping that you and yours might actually manage to escape this madness.”
The winds picked up and snow started drifting from the skies. The cloud cover was weak yet, but that would change. The gods had ordered the death of the world. The storms coming would not get gentler. If the snow came first, it merely meant they had to work faster to achieve their goals, lest a blizzard stop them from going anywhere.
“Are we going after them?” Bump scratched the back of his head as he stared at the forces gathered against them. Harper looked on, watching as more of the people in the camp began setting up tents.
“I just don’t know. I hate the notion of leaving anyone behind, but we do them no good if we’re caught.”
“Ain’t there others supposed to be joining us?” That came from Davers, who was wrapped as tightly in his cloak as anyone had ever been. He’d never been fond of the cold.
“There are. They might be on their way. They might have been stopped. Some of them came with us. You know we are wanted. If anyone recognized them, well, we might never see them again.”
Bump spit at the ground and shook his head. “So. Go find the buggers.”
Harper looked his way. “Come again?”
“You go find the fuckers that are supposed to be joining us. Me? I’m going to get our guys back.” Bump didn’t bother looking his way. He continued to study the camp.
“And how are you planning that?”
“I’m working on it. I need Sallos, Jon and Desmond with me.” He paused a moment and then, “You all right with that, lads?”
Desmond hesitated. The other two nodded immediately but Desmond thought hard for a moment. Finally he nodded as well.
Harper looked at Bump and shook his head ruefully. “I’ll say this for you, Bump, you’re either fearless or deeply mad. We’ll do it together. I don’t want us weakened any more than we have to be.”
“Then let’s be to it. The port of Morella is waiting for us to buy a ship, as I recall.”
Harper looked at the man for a long moment, then nodded. “I believe whatever those bastards are planning, it’ll probably involve torture. Let’s do this as quickly and carefully as we can.”
Bump nodded and then started moving. “Come on, lads. No time like the present.”
The three he’d chosen started after him, not a one of them looking very confident in his planning skills.
Harper watched them go and then looked to the rest of the group. “We’d best be off then.”
Mearhan looked his way and shook her head. “Just like that?”
“Do you want Laram back? Or no? We haven’t time to make elaborate plans. We go in, we find them. We leave.” Harper stared into her eyes for a long while and finally she looked away. He did not gloat. There was no time for that. “Stay with the horses, please.” It was a signal of trust. He hoped she understood that. By rights she should have been bound and gagged at the very least.
The horses were a distance away, secured, but left unguarded. There weren’t enough of them left to post guards. Mearhan would have to do. Above them the clouds had already hidden the sun. It was not quite as dark as night, but it was heading in that direction.
Chapter Six
Snowfall
Interlude: Roskell Turn
The Kaer-ru islands are not hard to find. On a clear day they can be seen on the horizon from the city of Torema. The city would not exist if it didn’t service the islands and offer transport to and from the various ports.
Torema was a vast city, one of the oldest in the Five Kingdoms, and with a population that was larger than in any other place in the entire known world. Torema was built in layers, and unlike most of the major cities there were no walls or defenses around the area. They simply would not do much good. Anyone wanting to seize power in the city would have had to figure out where, exactly, the true seat of power was. There was a palace, of course, but though Hillar Darkraven was the nominal head, those who understood the politics of the city knew that there were others with almost as much power, and that those others tended to stay well away from the public eye.
The streets were uneven and mostly moved uphill away from the docks and into the foothills to the west and the plains to the north. On the very best of days the city was dark with age. On the worst nights, the city was murky and fog-ridden.
The fog was indeed heavy when the boat arrived at the port of Morella, Torema’s main docking area.
There were seven major ports in Kaer-ru and one smaller port that seldom got as many travelers. Few people wanted to travel to Galea. It was said to be a dark place, full of sinister intent. According to most, Galea was home to witches, demons, and monsters of all sorts. Most of the people who said that had never been to Galea, of
course, but there were always exceptions.
The long boat coming in from Kaer-ru carried over fifty people. Most of them were passengers. They paid a few coins and they reached the mainland a few hours later. The same boat would likely not make another trip that night. The sun was setting. The darkness came, and with it the winds that blew from the north and the east. The cold winds were early. They weren’t expected for at least another month.
At the docks four men grabbed ropes and tied the long boat in place. Boards were placed to allow the passengers to get from boat to dock and the men nodded at the newly arrived by way of greeting.
Few of the passengers seemed in good spirits, but there were always exceptions. Roskell Turn was not a large man. He was a half head shorter than average and he was slender. His skin was dark and his hair was darker. He dressed in loose clothing, the better to stay cool, and if the chilled air bothered him, he showed no sign of it.
He was engaged in a conversation with a woman who was taller than he was, with equally dark skin and a smile that was positively infectious. Daivem Murdrow was better dressed for the weather, with a heavy fur-lined cloak and warm leggings under her heavy tunic. She carried a short walking stick, and every time she moved her left leg the stick moved with her, tapping the ground.
“How long have you been here?” Roskell found the woman immensely fascinating. He paid attention to her every word, and when she failed to speak for too long he tried to find new topics of conversation.
Daivem smiled, fully aware of what he was doing. “For a few months. I have stayed busy, but I haven’t had a chance to reach the mainland yet.”
“In my entire life I’ve never gone to the mainland. Most of my kind are not particularly welcome.”
“Your kind? Galeans?”
“Just so.” He smiled and looked around the docks. There were few people around, well, few of good intent. Several were watching the two of them and the rest of the passengers, looking for easy marks in some cases, looking for actual prey in others.
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