by Den Patrick
The inn gave one final shudder and disintegrated, raining timber across the street.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Steiner
People often maintain that ogres and rusalka are merely old tales, told to keep unruly children in line. I find it strange that people can believe Kjellrunn summoned a leviathan, but not that creatures similar to humans might exist.
– From the memoir of Drakina Tveit, Lead Librarian of Midtenjord Province
The double doors were the colour of night. Not the deep black of the skies above Cinderfell, but the darkest blue of summer at midnight. And the symbols: such shimmering, shifting symbols and words. None of them meant a single thing to Steiner, for he’d never been able to read. For him, the letters on a page had always moved, but never like this. There was an entrancing beauty to the midnight doors, and so he had stood before them and taken a moment to drink in the sight of it.
He couldn’t tell how long he’d been standing there but Felgenhauer shouted something from behind him. Steiner turned on instinct and found Silverdust shielding his face with one hand and doing the same for his aunt.
‘I’ve closed them!’ shouted Felgenhauer. ‘What is that?’ Something passed between Silverdust and his aunt. Steiner was reminded that not all arcane speech was shared. ‘I thought that was just a myth!’ replied Felgenhauer. ‘What is it doing to Steiner?’
‘It’s not doing anything to me,’ he said as he crossed the room to them.
Steiner?
‘Thank Frøya!’ said Felgenhauer.
‘What’s got into you two?’
It is the Impassable Gate, Steiner. A portal inscribed with words and sigils from every language across Vinterkveld. The doors were crafted by Bittervinge himself so that no man or dragon alive could pass without dying a slow and terrible death.
Silverdust had died twice, in his own way. That he should be so agitated and so wary was baffling. ‘A slow and terrible death? asked Steiner, genuinely confused. ‘What do they say?’
No one knows, but my guess would be combinations of ‘lie down and die’ or ‘stop breathing’.
Steiner looked over his shoulder. The midnight-blue doors flashed and flickered, the sigils and symbols performing their lazy dance.
‘I suppose I have got a headache,’ Steiner conceded.
‘A headache?’ asked Felgenhauer incredulously.
‘But nothing bad. I’ve had worse hangovers, to be honest.’
Silverdust and his aunt were still cowering behind their hands, faces turned away from the source of their fear. Steiner shrugged and approached the doors. After some grunting, heaving and colourful language, the doors opened and the writhing symbols faded.
‘It’s safe now,’ he shouted cheerfully.
Steiner! How did you overcome the Impassable Gate? This enchantment was laid down by Bittervinge himself.
‘So you said.’ Steiner grinned.
Now is not the time for flippancy. Every word on those doors spells death for anyone who looks upon them.
Felgenhauer began to laugh, long peals of helpless laughter that echoed off the walls and sounded down the corridor they had emerged from. Steiner continued grinning and gestured they follow him.
I do not understand.
‘I can’t read,’ said Steiner proudly. ‘Ask my aunt. She tried to teach me once. Absolutely useless! All those words, they’re only meaningful if you understand them.’
Felgenhauer was still struggling to compose herself. She wrapped an arm about her nephew’s shoulder. ‘You magnificent illiterate fool.’
‘I most certainly am,’ said Steiner, entering the Emperor’s vault. ‘And you’re welcome.’
Silverdust wandered away from them and began to light the sconces on the walls. Little by little the room revealed its many secrets to them. It was as big as the antechamber before it, and mounds of trinkets and treasures had been piled up on the flagstones.
‘This is like the Great Library on Arkiv,’ said Steiner. ‘Except with stuff instead of books.’
‘This is more than just “stuff”,’ replied Felgenhauer, her voice full of reverence.
Steiner stood before a glass casket at least twice his own height. Inside, stored in a murky yellow fluid, was a heavy-boned skeleton that towered over him. ‘What in Frejna’s name is this?’
An ogre. Silverdust approached and his mirror-mask tilted upward to take in the brutish skull of the strange creature. Ogres lived quietly in the far eastern reaches of what is now known as the Novgoruske Province. The dragons found them great sport and their numbers were greatly reduced in the Age of Fire. It was no great effort for the Emperor to slaughter the last of them, though I begged him not to.
‘Ogres?’ Steiner shook his head. ‘I’ve never even heard of them.’
Is that not the way the Emperor works? He does not simply kill, but he erases all trace of those who displease him. Just as he erased me. I happily relinquished my old name and became Silverdust when my mortal body died on Vladibogdan. Now you would be hard pressed to find any mention of me in the histories of the nascent days of the Solmindre Empire.
‘I don’t suppose there’s a spare Ashen Blade down here,’ said Felgenhauer with a sardonic smile.
If only that were so. Had the Emperor ever troubled himself to slay Veles, then this is most certainly where he would have kept the blade.
Steiner picked his way carefully through the room, where stuffed animals he had never seen before stared back at him with glass bead eyes. Chests of money glittered, though they contained currencies that Steiner didn’t recognize.
‘There’s a whole world down here that I never knew existed,’ he said, lifting the lid on a mahogany crate. A coffin, he realized – too late. The inside contained only dust and bones, and the skull was missing all its teeth.
‘I imagine they were knocked out before they died,’ said Felgenhauer from over Steiner’s shoulder.
‘They’re missing their finger bones too.’ He grimaced in disgust. ‘Imagine torturing someone to death and then keeping the body.’
‘I can imagine it all too easily when it comes to the Emperor,’ replied Felgenhauer. They took a moment to rest on a rug that had undoubtedly belonged to a now extinct tribe. Felgenhauer released a long sigh and slipped into a gentle doze.
I am not convinced I burned all of the poison from her wound. Silverdust loomed over her sleeping form. I am sorry.
Steiner nodded but said nothing. He didn’t want to think about a world without Felgenhauer so soon after losing his father. He crossed the room, keen to find a distraction in the winding paths that led between armour, paintings, furniture. Another ogre skeleton loomed in a glass casket before he discovered a mirror almost as tall as himself and stood before it. The edge was decorated in gold, cast in a pattern part spiral and part roiling ocean wave.
I see you are enjoying my treasures.
Steiner looked around. The voice that had sounded in his head was not Silverdust’s, nor did it belong to anyone who had contacted him in such a way before. The surface of the mirror rippled and the reflection showed a pale man with a high forehead, attired in black, with pale eyes and a piercing gaze. There was something unwholesome about the apparition in the mirror, as if death itself had taken form and dressed in the clothes of a man.
‘Volkan Karlov,’ said Steiner instinctively, his grip tightening on the sledgehammer.
The reflection nodded once. I am here to offer you a truce, Steiner Vartiainen. You have proven yourself time and again and even the best of my people do not stop you. Can we not come to some arrangement? Must we resort to crude violence to settle this ages-old dispute between our families?
‘You don’t have a family,’ replied Steiner. ‘You just prey on mine, causing misery with every passing generation.’ He struggled to say the words, his throat thick with emotion. ‘And not just my family but all families across Vinterkveld, especially those with witchsign.’
I simply wish to maintain the natural
order.
‘There’s nothing natural about you.’ To Steiner’s eyes Volkan Karlov looked no older than forty. ‘It’s not natural how you last down the decades while everyone else grows old. The way you recruit Vigilants isn’t natural, and there’s nothing natural about the Ashen Blade either.’
I can see you won’t be reasoned with, so let me try a different tack. You will surrender to me or the life of your father is forfeit.
‘Forfeit? He’s already dead.’
He is safe. There’s barely a scratch on him; you have my word. Volkan Karlov smiled but there was no humour there, no warmth, nothing. Steiner couldn’t say how he knew, but something glittered in the Emperor’s eyes, something cold and insincere; it was as sharp as any knife and just as unfeeling.
‘His shade visited me, along with the shade of my great-grandfather.’ Volkan Karlov’s ice-cold smile faltered and his eyes flicked away a moment. ‘They told me everything.’
Lies. You have no vestiges of the arcane; you cannot commune with the dead. Volkan Karlov’s expression soured to a spiteful sneer. Steiner hefted the sledgehammer and rolled his shoulders. What are you doing?
The head of the sledgehammer hit the mirror with a crash that startled Felgenhauer from her sleep on the other side of the room. Steiner looked down at the broken pieces of silvery glass, unable to think, unable to even breathe.
Steiner. What has happened?
‘The Emperor reached out to me asking for a truce.’
‘What did you see in the mirror?’ asked Felgenhauer, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
‘A liar and and a killer.’ The overwhelming sadness for his father rose up and threatened to engulf him, but he fought it down. He would grieve later. ‘We’ve come so far. We have to finish this.’ A sound in the antechamber caught his attention. ‘Quick! Close the doors.’
All three ran to the Impassable Gate and began to shove as hard as they could. Corpse spiders scuttled from the corridor beyond the antechamber, one after another rattling across the flagstones on chitinous legs.
‘They must have found a way around the cave-in,’ shouted Steiner as he pushed one of the doors closed. Felgenhauer and Silverdust slammed the other door just as the first of the bone-coloured horrors ventured through. Two of its spindly legs were crushed and the creature hissed in agony.
‘What now?’ shouted Felgenhauer as the corpse spiders slammed against the doors.
‘There must be another way out,’ replied Steiner.
I can sense a breeze, a disturbance in the air. Silverdust moved to the centre of the room and looked upwards, raising his hand to better feel the source. More and more bodies crashed into the doors on the other side and Steiner’s feet began to slide.
‘There are too many of them!’ he shouted. ‘Get me something to wedge this shut.’
There! Silverdust pointed to a square of darkness in the ceiling. Steiner hadn’t seen it until now, but a small viewing gallery had been built on the level above. Felgenhauer ran from the doors and levitated to the level above, gliding upwards effortlessly.
Now, Steiner. Run!
Steiner did as he was told, but the corpse spiders forced their way through the moment he moved away from the Impassable Gate. A slight gap between the doors appeared, then yawned open to let the unholy creatures into the vault. Silverdust remained at the centre of the vault, casting flaming javelins of arcane light at the breach. The spiders leapt and dodged as they advanced; some were blackened and scorched but they did not relent. Felgenhauer had landed on the level above and reached out for Steiner with both hands. Her mastery of the arcane plucked him from the floor.
‘Silverdust!’
The cinderwraith cast another two javelins of fire as the corpse spiders closed with him, before wrenching the mirror mask upwards and unleashing a torrent of fiery breath.
Steiner landed on the viewing gallery with a thump, using his hand to steady himself. A spider attacking Silverdust began to petrify under Felgenhauer’s stern gaze.
‘You can’t fight all of them!’ she shouted.
Silverdust plunged a flaming hand into the jaws of a corpse spider; then he floated up from the ground. The creatures leapt and skittered, but the cinderwraith slipped from the gouging tips of their legs and their champing mandibles. Robbed of their prey, the corpse spiders retreated from the vault, scuttling away with alarming speed.
‘I really hate those things,’ said Steiner.
‘You’re not alone,’ replied Felgenhauer, looking pale. She rubbed the cauterized cut in hand, prompting a pang of concern from Steiner. ‘We’d better move,’ she added. ‘No knowing when or where they’ll next appear.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Kimi
Some call it the Battle of Khlystburg. The final reckoning between Bittervinge and Kimi’s cohort was nothing short of titanic. I have recorded a dozen accounts of the battle in the skies above Khlystburg and while the stories differ many used the same expression time and again. It was as if night had fallen early on the capital city, deep shadows full of terrible purpose. Some say the sunlight was blotted out by the great commotion of dragons’ wings. This is why I refer to that aerial battle as Nightfall.
– From the memoir of Drakina Tveit, Lead Librarian of Midtenjord Province
‘We can’t do it here,’ said Taiga, looking around the cove at the stony shingle. ‘I need soil to invoke the goddess.’ Rain clouds had crept back across the horizon, threatening a miserable day to anyone by the shoreline. ‘Stone is fine but soil, that’s where things grow. Soil is renewal.’
Soil. Stonvind prodded Tief with his great snout and gently took his collar between his lips. Slowly, Tief was lifted into the air, and Stonvind climbed up the cliff face. Kimi watched all of this with a shocked fascination.
‘It was like—’
‘—a mother cat,’ provided Taiga with a smile. ‘Yes. They continue to surprise me.’ The two women gathered their things and headed up the steep cut in the cliffs. Waiting for them at the top were the three dragons, who had cleared an area of refugees.
‘There are so many of them now,’ said Kimi. She imagined a third of the city must have fled here, praying and pleading for a ship to come.
‘Bittervinge must be reaping quite a toll on Khlystburg,’ replied Taiga. She caught Kimi’s wounded look and added, ‘That wasn’t a criticism, just speculation. We’ve lost time, it’s true, but we will succeed.’
‘The rain will make a lot of problems for these people,’ said Kimi, looking towards the darkening skies. ‘They don’t have tents, and many don’t even have a change of clothes.’
‘Neither do we,’ said Taiga with a wry smile. ‘Something I intend to remedy when all this business is finished with.’
‘All this business,’ repeated Kimi. Taiga had said the words as if slaying the father of dragons and wresting power from the Emperor himself were no more than daily chores. ‘I shall have a bath and purchase new dresses,’ continued Taiga. It was then that Kimi realized her friend was distracting herself from the monumental task ahead. Stonvind had laid Tief on the patchy grass of the cliff top and retreated twenty feet. Namarii and Flodvind took up positions, forming a triangle around the wounded Spriggani.
‘What now?’ said Kimi.
‘Now we see how good my memory is,’ replied Taiga. She took out the silver knife, a weapon given to her by Frøya herself. ‘And if those runes on the shrine actually meant anything.’
Kimi felt an awful pang of powerlessness as Taiga carved symbols into the soil around her brother. A delegation of Yamal diplomats came to watch as the high priestess did this, whispering reverently to themselves. Taiga continued to work, often pausing to take a step back from her work. The symbols took shape at the cardinal points around Tief’s slumbering form. More city folk came, intrigued by the Yamal people’s interest, putting aside their fear of the dragons to venture closer and satisfy their curiosity. Kimi reached into her tunic and pulled forth the Ashen Torment, holding it between both
her palms.
‘I turned away from you while I was incarcerated on Vladibogdan,’ she prayed quietly. ‘And when Taiga and Sundra kept their faith, I did not. Nor did I ask anything from you through those long, dark years.’ She pressed her hands together harder, so the hard edges of the Ashen Torment hurt her palms. ‘And I’m not going to ask anything from you now, not for myself.’ Taiga stood back from the last of the symbols and nodded that she was ready. ‘But I’m asking you now, Frøya: return Tief to us so we may prevail against the father of dragons. Restore Stonvind so he may fight in your name.’
‘Come on now, Your Highness,’ said Taiga brightly, though the high priestess’s smile couldn’t hide her shaking hands. The rain clouds were overhead now, leaching the colour from the land. ‘I barely know why we’re trying to revive the truculent old fool. It would be kinder to let him sleep.’
‘You don’t mean a word of that,’ said Kimi as she approached.
‘No, I suppose I don’t,’ replied Taiga. Kimi knew full well how powerful the bond between siblings was. Hadn’t Steiner’s motivation for leaving Vladibogdan been his sister? Hadn’t her own brother caused abject despair when he’d named her as an impersonator? Taiga needed Tief. She’d already had to leave Sundra behind, and that had cost her enough.
‘Don’t be nervous,’ added Kimi. They began to kneel by Tief’s feet, when the dragons did something unexpected for the second time that day.
You will all pray to the goddess Frøya! It was not Namarii’s voice she heard, or Stonvind, or Flodvind, but all three, joined together in a chord of exhortation. She felt the words as much as heard them.
‘But we are praying.’
We were speaking to them. Namarii raised one claw and pointed a single talon, a curiously human gesture. Hundreds of refugees had dropped to their knees, mirroring Taiga and Kimi. Many held hands and a few shared shy smiles. To pray to Frøya was forbidden to Imperial citizens, and Kimi could almost feel the thrill of excitement emanating from the crowd.
Can you feel that? Flodvind enquired of her kin.
