by Matthew Ward
‘So I get the blame for everything?’ Azzanar sounded more amused than hurt. ‘Believe me when I tell you that if I start interfering, you’ll not even notice until it’s too late. But I won’t. I don’t need to. You’ll embrace me with open arms. You’ll beg me.’ The demon paused, its thoughts coiling around Yelen’s. ‘What did she mean “nearly off the ridge”?’
Yelen snorted in triumph. Not only could Azzanar not read her thoughts, apparently she also didn’t listen all the time, either. ‘We’re cutting through the valley.’
‘That’s a poor idea.’
‘And I should care what you think?’ She recalled her own cautioning words to Mirika, and pushed them to the back of her mind.
‘Yes.’
Temptation prickled at Yelen’s thoughts. What did the demon know? Did she know anything at all, or was she trying to trade for yet another sliver of the clock face?
The rope tugged twice. Gritting her teeth, Yelen gave the all clear. Then, shoulders hunched against the storm, she began the cold, thankless slog once again.
* * *
The skies cleared as they left the last of the marker monoliths behind, giving the impression that the foul weather had retreated behind the ridgeline. And perhaps it had. Yelen had been in Frostgrave long enough to know that even its unnatural climate seemed to possess a brooding and capricious personality. Maybe the defiance of the renowned Semova sisters had driven it to sulk out its storms on a distant field?
That ridiculous thought occasioned a slim smile as Yelen drew closer to her sister. Mirika waited in the lee of a weather-worn sepulchre. Yelen unknotted the safety rope, and Mirika reeled it in, the frayed length hissing through her hands as she wound it into a single coil. ‘Told you it’d be better down here.’
Yelen stared out across the snow-covered mounds and jagged monuments, her unease returning. Emerald lights danced about the broken stones like swarms of mating firebugs in the midday light. They never strayed far, the groups never crossing the rings of stones surrounding each hummock, and certainly never mingling. All told, their behaviour gave Yelen the odd impression they were guarding their territory against others of their kind. ‘You’re sure this is a good idea?’
‘We’re here now,’ Mirika replied, her evasive answer doing little to disguise the uncertainty in her voice. She kicked a spray of snow downhill. ‘The snow’s thinner. We’ll make better time. If we pick up the pace, we can be home before midnight.’
Yelen blinked away a premonition of how the valley would appear beneath the night sky, the snows sickly and wan in the reflected wisp-light. ‘Then let’s get going. I’m not camping here overnight. Not for all the plunder in those barrows.’
Mirika scratched the back of her head. ‘I suppose we could take a quick peek inside, as we’re here.’
Yelen shot her sister a warning look. ‘Mirika!’
She laughed. ‘Oh, stop worrying. I’m joking. I’ve heard the stories, too. Here, your turn to carry the rope.’
‘What am I, your pack mule?’ Nonetheless, Yelen looped the rope over her shoulder.
‘I’m carrying the prize.’ Mirika hefted the reliquary’s haversack. ‘It’s heavy enough. Swap you?’
Yelen shook her head. ‘No. It’s all yours.’
‘Suit yourself.’ So saying, Mirika strode lightly away through the snow.
Yelen shook her head, baffled as usual at her sister’s levity, and trudged on behind. Mirika had been right about one thing, at least – the going was much easier. Up on the ridge, the snow had in places threatened to spill over the tops of her knee-high boots. Here, it barely crested her ankles. It was warmer too without the harsh embrace of the wind, and Yelen’s extremities prickled as life returned to her fingers and toes. Still, the feeling of unease never entirely dissipated, not even when the sun broke through the thin clouds. It didn’t help that Mirika set a brisk pace through the snowy hummocks, powered by a boundless vigour that Yelen could only envy from a distance.
‘This is unwise.’
Yelen wasn’t sure what worried her most: that Azzanar was unusually chatty today, or the worried tone the demon affected. Azzanar by turns delighted in smugness, self-gratification and mockery. The note of apprehension was new. Were they back in Rekamark, surrounded by the bright lights of what passed for civilization hereabouts, Yelen would have welcomed it. Here? If the demon was scared…?
‘If you want to tell me something, then tell me. But I’m not asking.’ Inspiration struck. ‘What happens to you if something happens to me, I wonder?’
She felt the demon’s hesitation. Her discomfort. Neither was so strong as the spark of delight at turning the tables for a change. ‘This is a cursed place.’
‘That’s rich, coming from you.’
‘There’s hunger here. Older than the city. And you’ve skipped gaily into the larder, poppet.’
‘We haven’t “skipped” anywhere,’ said Yelen. ‘As long as we don’t cross the ghost-rings around a barrow, they’ll leave us be. They can’t break their bonds.’
‘And who says that?’
‘Delvers come here all the time.’ That was an exaggeration. Desperate delvers came to the Wailing Reach occasionally. The tombs of Frostgrave’s long-dead nobility might be stacked with the wealth of ages, but cracking a barrow was a high-stakes gamble. A wight’s touch was not to be taken lightly. ‘There are plenty of stories.’
‘I’m sure there are.’ Azzanar’s voice lost its reluctance, taking on the aspect of a tutor disappointed in a promising student. ‘And who tells those stories?’
Yelen frowned. ‘Azra, for one. And Markos. Real people. Not dusty myths or jumpy demons.’ She tried not to think of the tales that ended with the teller’s companions turned mottled blue by the chill grasp of a vengeful wight.
‘You’re missing the point.’
‘And what’s that? I’m getting bored of your games.’
‘The stories you’ve heard? They’re all told by folk who came here and lived to speak of it. What tales would the dead recount, if you could but hear them?’
‘That’s just scare-mongering, and you know it!’
‘Really, poppet?’ Azzanar’s voice grew angry and… desperate? ‘And what do I have to gain?’
Yelen considered. ‘Maybe you want me to run off in a blind panic, abandon Mirika so you have me all to yourself.’ The words rang hollow even as she spoke them.
‘Fine. You caught me.’ Derision dribbled from every silent word. ‘How’s it going?’ Azzanar pressed on before Yelen could reply. ‘Let’s try something different. What marks the bounds of a ghost-fence?’
‘The stones.’ Yelen frowned. ‘They’re sanctified. Pure. That’s why the wisps don’t cross them.’
‘Mortals.’ The sneer bled into laughter. ‘These barrows aren’t prisons, they’re fortresses, buried by the passing aeons, and enchanted to prevent intrusion by rival spirits. The ghost-fences keep things out, not in.’
‘I’ve never heard of such a thing.’
‘Which of course means it’s not true. Look behind you.’
After a brief hesitation, Yelen did as instructed. Snow-covered hillocks stretched away towards the grey skies of the ridgeline, the dancing wisp-clouds swirling not around the statues on the crests, but along the trail of footsteps and freshly churned snow. They were following. At a distance – the ebb and billow of the swarms almost furtive – but they were definitely following.
‘Mirika?’ Her sister was gone, out of sight around the next bend. Eyes still on the wisp-clouds, Yelen picked up her pace.
‘Don’t worry about them. Fragments of soul stuff, the remnants of cremated servants.’ Derision bloomed through Azzanar’s tone. ‘They’re drawn to the time-spoor. To your sister.’
‘What?’
‘You think the undead have any hunger for flesh and blood? What use are they? No. Eternity is the coin in which they trade. Your beloved sister is steeped in it.’
Yelen licked dry lips, head jerking back
and forth as she tried to watch the path ahead and behind at the same time. ‘Mirika? Where the hells are you?’ Her shout bounced along the barrow-slopes, unanswered. ‘How can I stop them?’
‘They’re not even aware that they’re aware. They certainly can’t harm you.’ Azzanar paused. ‘Their masters and mistresses? They’re another matter. The hierarchy of the undead is as rigid as it is simple. The servants keep watch, and the masters prepare. I’d imagine they’ll be waking up any time now.’
The ground shook beneath Yelen’s feet. A dull rumble echoed from around the shoulder of the next barrow. ‘Mirika!’
Receiving no answer, she broke into a run.
* * *
The snowscape groaned, the force of the quake rattling Mirika’s teeth in their sockets. Then she was falling, end over end, into the darkness.
The reliquary’s haversack slipped from her grasp. Colour blazed behind her eyes as her head hit stone. Pain rushed in behind. A river of pebbles and fragmented ice spattered around her, heralds to a yawning, creaking groan. Mirika didn’t see the boulder fall. She heard only the rumbling crack as it struck the floor somewhere beyond her outstretched legs.
Shaking her head to clear it, Mirika peered out into the gloom. Bright light revealed a jagged hole a dozen feet above, a thick layer of permafrosted soil visible above a cracked archway. The gap was easily twice as wide as the funeral path they’d followed down from the ridgeline. Just her luck to have been standing atop it all when it had finally chosen to give way.
Her pulse, racing from the shock of the fall, began to slow. The path had collapsed into the barrow below. Not ideal, but it could be worse. At least, if she got out before the occupant realised she was there. Fortunately, from what she could see of the chamber, it was a passageway, rather than one of the crypts. At least, she hoped so. There was too much darkness to her front.
Planting her hands against the chill stone, Mirika tried to rise. Her right foot wouldn’t move. There was no pain, merely pressure. She recalled the spill of rubble that had accompanied her fall, and pursed her lips, pulse picking up. She’d feel it if something was broken, wouldn’t she? What if she were numb with shock?
Instinctively, Mirika reached out for the light of times past. It fought her, dredged up from an era so distant, she couldn’t guess at how far it had travelled to reach the present. Obsidian walls glinted all around her, the inlaid runework picked out in gold and scarlet. Alcoves lined the passageway, each home to a serpent statue with golden scales and multifaceted gemstone eyes.
As for her foot, it was trapped beneath a mass of stone and ice. The reliquary, thrown loose of its haversack by the fall, lay nearby. A deep crack split its once-marred flank, a gentle golden light spilling out from within.
Mirika swore under her breath. Master Torik had sworn the Szarnos reliquary was vital to curing Yelen’s condition. If it had been damaged…
Turning her attention to her trapped leg, Mirika grasped the underside of the largest slab, and heaved. It didn’t move an inch. Nor even a fraction of one.
‘Fine,’ she muttered. ‘If that’s how you want to play it. Dust it is.’
Gathering her concentration, she reached out into the timeflow, and turned her attention to the stone’s dolorous tempo.
As she did so, something touched her mind. At least, that’s the only way Mirika could describe it. All at once, she felt a presence, ancient and withered, pressing in on her thoughts. Numbness crept across her mind. Not cold exactly, for cold was simply the flipside of the same coin as heat. This was a creeping, insidious senselessness, trickling through her soul like a cursed amalgam of every thought of loss and sorrow. And it was hungry. Mirika didn’t know how she knew that, but the certainty was as sudden as it was unshakeable.
Down the passageway, lost to sight beyond an arched junction, something moved. A clatter of bone upon stone. A breathy hiss that carried no language Mirika recognized.
‘It’s your imagination, that’s all.’
Then the hiss came again, and she knew it wasn’t.
Trying to ignore her pounding heartbeat, she returned her attention to the slab. The pressure grew stronger as she reached into the timeflow, thin fingers raking across her thoughts. Shivering, Mirika released her grip on the slab’s tempo. At once, the pressure abated. Her magic, she realised. The wight was responding to her magic.
Hurriedly, she let go of the light of times past. Darkness rushed in. The presence retreated from her mind, leaving only a memory that chilled her to the marrow.
‘Yelen?’ Mirika called softly. ‘Are you out there?’
She realised her mistake at once. Whether Yelen heard or not, the wight might. Or the wights.
‘It didn’t hear you,’ she muttered. ‘It didn’t. Azra said they don’t sense the mortal world like we do.’
Unfortunately, Azra said a lot of things, and not all of them were true.
As if in confirmation, the clattering, clacking sound came again from the now pitch-black passage ahead.
Too late now. Abandoning all subtlety, Mirika called again, this time at the top of her lungs. ‘Yelen!’
No reply came.
The darkness at the end of the passageway took on a greenish hue. The breathy hiss came again, more insistent. It arrived in Mirika’s mind before reaching her ears, the soft, feathery caress of the sound like spiders on her skin.
Where the hells was Yelen?
Mirika grabbed the slab again. In the instant she touched the timeflow, the presence returned, hungrier than before. It took every scrap of self-control she had remaining to break contact, to choke the magic back down. Part of her wanted to stay, transfixed like a fly in a web. Heart in her throat, Mirika ripped her hands away.
‘Yelen!’
The darkness in the cross-tunnel was no longer complete, but lit with a hazy green glow, like torchlight, save for the colour.
‘Yelen!’
Mirika hammered at the slab with her free heel. On the third strike, it shifted in a spill of rubble. But not enough to free her ankle.
Flickering, mist-like tendrils crept across the junction floor. The hiss came again, fibrous and insistent. Mirika slammed her heel into the slab again and again. She begged. She swore. She pleaded.
She might as well have saved her breath for all the good it did.
‘Yelen!’
A dark shape appeared, silhouetted against the sky. ‘I’m here. What happened?’
What did she think had happened? ‘My leg’s trapped! I can’t move!’
‘Don’t go anywhere.’
Mirika bit back her response at the ill-timed humour. ‘Hurry up! Something’s coming!’
Yelen jerked back from the edge. ‘What? What’s coming?’
‘Just hurry!’
The mist at the cross-tunnel thickened, billowing like smoke from a damp timber fire.
The tail of a rope struck the rubble nearby. A thin hiss of gloves rushing against cord followed, and Yelen’s boots crunched down. ‘The other end’s tied to a statue,’ she gasped. ‘It should hold.’ Her eyes widened as she took in the mist-filled cross-tunnel. ‘Hells…’
‘Help me!’ Mirika seized the edge of the slab. Yelen’s gloved hands joined hers. ‘On three. One. Two… Three!’
The sisters heaved as one. The slab shifted. Not enough to free Mirika’s trapped leg, but enough to give her hope. ‘Again! One. Two… Three!’
At last, the slab slid clear, crunching down the rubble spill. Mirika scrambled to her feet and flexed her ankle. Sore, but not sprained – and not broken, thank gods. ‘Go on! Get out of here!’
Yelen hesitated.
Mirika shoved her towards the rope. ‘I’ll be right behind you.’
With a sharp, worried nod, Yelen locked her hands around the frayed cord and began to climb.
Turning her back, Mirika glanced desperately around. In the confusion, she’d somehow lost track of the reliquary. Had she buried it in her desperation to get free? A creaking hiss drew
her gaze back to the cross-tunnel, now awash in green mist, a dark shape visible at its core. Master Torik had insisted there was something about Frostgrave’s undead spirits more terrible than the largest troll or the most ferocious snow leopard. She’d not believed him. She wished she had.
‘Right behind me, you said!’ Yelen’s shout echoed down from somewhere above.
Her reverie broken, Mirika twisted away. ‘I’m coming. I just…’
There it was, lying beside the slab. Skidding across the rubble, Mirika snatched up the reliquary, only for it to break apart in her hands. She couldn’t explain it. One moment, it was as solid as… Well, as solid as a rock beneath her hands. Then the onyx shell was broken fragments slipping through her fingers, and a golden orb, no larger than an eyeball, sat cradled in her palm.
‘Oh, spit.’
Mirika stood motionless for a long moment, the orb’s warmth seeping into her skin. Then she stuffed the orb into her haversack, and flung herself at the rope.
CHAPTER FIVE
The snow returned as night fell, this time as gentle showers more suited to fairytale than the dour reality of the frozen city. Mirika watched it from her hidey-hole within the collapsed house, an alchemist’s fire burning at her back.
Yelen lay snoring away beside it. She’d not so much fallen asleep as passed out, exhausted by the pell-mell run across the valley, the tomb wisps dancing along air currents in their wake. The narrow escape in the barrow had spurred them on to unsuspected vigour, neither one wanting to chance that the wight would follow them into the open daylight. Azra had sworn that it wouldn’t – that the sunlight burned them like fire. Then again, Mirika clove to the truth of Azra’s stories far less readily than she had a day ago. But fear-lent endurance carried a body only so far – Yelen had been dead on her feet by the time they’d reached the relative safety of the streets. They’d chosen a suitable shelter, set a fire in the doorway to discourage wild animals, and called it a night.
