“They have learnt to fear shadows,” Thak rumbled. “With good damned reason.”
He didn’t love the dead either, I thought. But he loved Shannon, and had saved us before. Yet, Shannon didn’t expect him to fight for her that night, not when she was doing something like this. Killing the living with the dead. She didn’t ask me either.
“Kiera,” Thak said and pointed down towards the former daughter of Almheir, whom Shannon had raised before the Regent’s eyes. He gave me a long, sly look, which I ignored. Kiera was dead, and had an uncanny habit of sitting in the dark, staring at me sleep. She had an agenda, and I was not sure if she liked me, she had when she was alive, or if she wanted to devour me.
I felt sorry for Almheir.
Not for the man, but the father, perhaps. Taking the man’s daughter? Shannon had been cruel. Perhaps he had had it coming, but Kiera had not deserved it. She had been beautiful, happy, and so brave, and I had liked her. Lex, my cousin had as well, I knew, but he had died and was no competition. Kiera was alluring, had been, still was, I thought, and groaned.
She was striding amidst the draugr, dressed in a chain and leather armor, black as night, with tiny carved red dragons circling the metal and the seams of the leathers. She didn’t belong with the draugr. The army was a rotten, terrible thing. Their battle wounds were showing on their cadaverous bodies, their once thick and beautiful hair was dry and lifeless, and their skin was white or yellow-hued, and some, many in fact, Kissed the Night and disguised their horrible condition and adopted a disguise of a living. Not so Kiera. She was like Shannon, odd, pale, beautiful and powerful. She held a sword, long and dark, unbreakable, they said, a weapon of the past, and she held it aloft. It was Heartbreaker, and much like my mask and gauntlets, heavy with magic.
The dead hated her. They hated her looks, they hated to have someone command them. But when she raised the sword, they answered her.
There was an odd thrumming noise coming from the breathless throats, the dead lips, a chanting like a whisper, yet it carried across the land and water. “Shit,” I said. “That’s terrible. Evil.”
Ittisana leaned her head on my shoulder as she gazed at them. The snakes entwined with my long hair and some licked my skin experimentally. I tried to hold still as she spoke. “They belong in Helheim. Evil? I don’t know. They are …death. It’s like a natural force, a freezing wind whipping across Niflheim’s icy fields, or a fiery earthquake in Muspelheim. They are what they are,” she said stoically and smiled. There were around equal number of them to the elves across the Straits, ten thousand. “She had some forty to fifty thousand of them. Not sure if he can raise more, but perhaps she can. One by one. She did raise Kiera,” she said. “There are hundreds of thousands of elves. And they, Ulrich, butcher each other as casually as the dead.”
I opened my mouth to refute her claim, but of course, she was right.
They made war like humans did back home.
The Hundred Houses, the great fives, they competed for the position of the Regent, and while Almheir held on to that after the war, Shannon’s challenge to them all echoed far. Humans were rebelling in the south, perhaps thanks to our lost friend, Albine, the girl who we had to leave behind. Her powers would incite war in the lands where few men had any power. Coinar lands were burning, we had heard.
But north, all along the Spell Coast, here in the Jewel of Aldheim, the humans fought with the elves against the dead. It was Shannon’s dilemma, and she seemed ready to use a sword to solve it.
The dead lurched. The spears twinkled, swords flashed, as they marched for the boats. The draugr began to pile into a dozen ships that were moored at the once bustling trade piers, and while each ship could hold hundreds, I couldn’t understand Shannon. I looked at the mirror, and saw Coodarg shifting the view. There was the odd raven again, then the fiercely chanting elven army, their faces grave, and then Kiera, looking up at us briefly in the Citadel.
“Here they go,” I said softly.
Thak grunted, and scratched his chest. “Shannon is no general, but she will learn. House Safiroon still holds fast to that part of the city, and they’re keeping all their former enemies out, but if they open it up to the Coinar and Daxamma, and the Vautan, then she won’t take it. On the other hand, fighting street to street, house to house will tax the dead, and she cannot afford to lose too many. Ultimately, she must have a plan on how to overcome all her foes.”
“She does,” Ittisana said and I jumped when she played with my ear. “She cannot win with arms or power. She expects us to fetch the Horn. That will solve her issues. Return that to the gods, and everything changes when they return to the Nine Worlds.”
“I wonder if the gods, Odin and others even live?” I muttered. “Or care for these wars at all? What if we find Dana, the Horn, and Shannon gives it to Hel, who will blackmail Odin to return her to sanity, and the gods simply say ‘no’. They built the Nine. They might have built a dozen more.”
Thak shook his head. “I don’t know if they can. There are other gods with other worlds and they poured much of their powers into those. That’s what our sages tell us in Muspelheim. And when we go to Svartalfheim, we’ll be in trouble even more. Shannon is getting upset with you. You should go to the great library to study the dark world.”
I cursed. “She told me she’d look into what we should expect. Have you been eavesdropping on her? Is she really angry with me?”
He smiled wickedly. “She did. I was there, eavesdropping.”
“What shape did you take?”
“I was a large bird, feasting on maggots in the high rafters. There were others.”
“Feasting on maggots?” I asked, aghast.
He gave me a withering look. “Look, you know me. I’ll eat anything. Don’t ask and I won’t have to explain. Your belly’s too weak for the truth, human. She isn’t fooled by your lies. She knows you are stalling. She’s doing her bit, but you are just growing fat, brooding. You gave her an oath.”
I was stalling, I was fidgeting, and hoped a miracle might present itself and everything would be changed. Peace, the dead gone, Shannon alive. But it didn’t present itself, and Shannon and the dead fought for their unlife while I fidgeted. I took a deep breath, “I’ll go tomorrow. But she’ll need to find out what is going on out there, even if I help her by preparing for the shitty world.”
“I’ll come with you to the library,” Ittisana said. “I hate the Citadel.”
Thak pushed me around gently. “You cannot easily fool her any longer,” he said seriously. “She is exploring the situation in Svartalfheim. She is making plans. Many, which we don’t understand, I’m betting. Only Kiera will truly know them. She will obey her to her death. Same as I. Hopefully you too. Prepare. She’ll summon you soon.”
I ground my teeth together. Anja was with the elves, our companion, and my former lover. She had betrayed us. So many had lied to Shannon. And now, when she was dead she would not be willing to let me act like a human. I could not stall, nor fidget, nor have regrets, like she had, all these past years.
Why was I stalling?
I was afraid.
I stepped away from Ittisana and leaned on the wall. “If Dana hadn’t fooled her, she’d be alive now. She had better remember I’m the one who is on her side and that she’s made her share of the mistakes.”
“She will try to remember, Ulrich. But she is a Queen now. As for Dana,” Thak whispered, “she knows you are better than her own sister. Yes, even as the Hand of Hel. We’ll have to go soon. Someone will have the Horn. There will have to be a way to gain it. We will have to forget this shitty horror, and help her. And we will.” His tone brooked no argument.
“Stheno won’t have it. She would have closed the gate,” Ittisana said. “She would have blown the Horn and closed the gate they used to attack the world. She is First Born. She can, you know.”
Thak shrugged. “We don’t know. She might have summoned all the kings and queens of the Vastness and beyond and there m
ight be two hundred thousand enemies mustering. She might not need to close it. Be that as it may, we must gain the Horn,” Thak rumbled. “And so we have to go. Soon.”
And that was it. We would take a party through the still open, well-guarded gateway to Svartalfheim. I was to lead it. I wrung my hands, where the iron gauntlets, surprisingly supple gleamed. I had taken them from the dead armsmaster of the House Coinar, and the enemy of Shannon’s elven love. I was missing the mask of the mighty artifact, having left it inside, but I liked the gauntlets. They were like a second skin. They made me feel powerful and confident. Gods knew I needed that. “We’ll go tomorrow. The library that is. Then I’ll meet with Shannon and decide on the date. She must make a plan. We cannot stumble there blind.”
The draugr finished loading the ships. The decks were filled with them, to the brim, and there were so many ships. They stood in silent groups across the decks, spears bristling, but they didn’t open the sails, as many grasped long oars beneath the deck. The ships were sleek, multipurpose coast-huggers, wide and galley-like, but they would not withstand the elven war-magic. Indeed, I could see dozens of Safiroon nobles on the other side, walking ahead of the gleaming wall of steely warriors.
“What the shit is she doing?” I complained.
“Maybe they have been invited for a feast,” Thak suggested with a nervous chortle. “I don’t see Shannon. She is not down there. Where is she?” We turned to look at Coodarg with the question but neither he nor the other dead casters showed any sign of humoring us.
And so we waited. The ships moved out, and spread into a line of thirty vessels. Shields were packed to the front of the ships, I saw Kiera sprinting from one draugr to another, and I couldn’t help but draw comparison to the way she had skipped across the deck of the Bardagoon ship we had escaped with when she had still been alive. Now she was something else. I felt her eyes turn my way, and I knew she had sensed I had thought about her.
How? And why did she stare at me so often?
“Don’t,” Thak muttered. “They have odd powers. Don’t make yourself vulnerable. She was a springy flower of the summer, but now she s a frozen lily.”
“Can’t help it,” I said and hugged my chest.
Ittisana slapped my arm. “She’s beyond you.”
I laughed bitterly. “Far beyond. She always was, and now especially. I’ve got other things to think about than women,” I murmured, but for a moment, I thought thinking about women might be the only sane thing in my life.
The ships, dark behemoths rowed across. The silence was such you might cut it with a knife. The elven armies were waiting in silent ranks, bravely defending their city. They looked splendid as knights, martial as gods might. They had repulsed smaller attacks all that week, and I knew the draugr disguised themselves as the living and killed and roamed in a campaign of terror across their city, but the elves had found many and stopped such tactics with magic.
How many women and children had Shannon’s order killed?
None spoke of it. But many, I was sure.
The ships rowed on, and then I saw the elven maa’dark move to action. My hair stood on end as the enemy grasped strands of ice and fire from the great power, folded, braided, combined them in many fantastic ways, and released the powers at the ships.
“Fiery beard of Zon!” Thak roared as he witnessed the spells.
Most were fire spells. Many were balls of fiery death, hurtling and sputtering, dropping tears of flames across the pier and water as they hurtled towards their target, but some were even more deadly. They were powerful gusts of ripping wind.
We felt such spells all the way across the Straits.
My robes fluttered, Thak frowned as several of the draugr-filled ships dipped, rose, and turned, just as the fiery balls hit them. The result was oddly beautiful. The draugr, each able to see the magical powers since their death, summoned guarding energies. Spheres of white and red sprung to being, but the forces hurled at three of the ships did horrible damage. “Madness!” I yelled as one ship was torn in the middle by a flaming ball. It simply rolled over. It tossed the undead army to the sea, many burning, ship-parts raining high, and then another ship was blazing, the draugr jumping to the sea.
The rest of the ships kept on going, many with burning wood and shattered bodies, and the elven nobles, dozens of them pulled at new energies.
“They will be slaughtered,” Thak said desperately. He pulled a man-sized sword, which I knew would be giant-sized if he grew to his full height. He stepped up to Coodarg and roared. “What in the name of Odin’s dripping nose are they doing?”
Coodarg ignored him.
And that’s when the surprise hit the elves.
The dead didn’t breathe. Thousands of arms reached up from the water. Heads appeared like rings on water during the rain. Spears and swords followed, they heaved up, so fast. The elven mages faltered, as the small beach before them filled with a savage enemy, many of whom were grasping at spells. Fire and ice ripped out of the draugr army. Files of elven army fell in ruin. Many maa’dark screamed and died and then they braided defensive spells, retreated for their army, and unleashed spells at the thousands of the dead charging them savagely. Spells, spears, arrows, flew back and forth, and there was a boom of thunder, which reminded me of Shannon and her powers. Thousands of the dead charged forward, spears glittering, throwing befouling energies as they went, dark fire slapping a swath of terror across the elven ranks and they hit the enemy shields head on. They hacked, the enemies in a fierce battle and our ships doubled their speed, Kiera shrieking orders. The elven ranks bent, they stepped back, warriors falling as the undead hacked at them, grinning at them with their dead faces, terrifying the living.
A great elven general roared defiance, and then fell flaming, as a draugr unleashed fire across his face and chest.
Another golden-helmeted elf screamed an order from the last ranks. We could see him from the mirror. It was a male elf with white, hugely thick hair. A general? A noble? The enemy took heart, chanted savagely, stopped retreating, and hundreds of spears reached over the first rank of elven infantry, and pushed at the draugr. Dozens fell, the attack faltered into butchery. Spears stabbed, swords hacked, and spells blasted living and dead to Hel’s hands. It looked like a wave of dark pushing at a castle of silver and green, and the elven skills with arms were well matched by the magic of the draugr. I saw the enemy flatten against the dead, pushing them back to the water in places, and then the ships arrived, and hundreds and hundreds of draugr poured to the mad melee. I saw Kiera, at the stern of one of the ships, eyeing the battle. She wasn’t giving orders. The vision in the mirror shifted to the raven again, then the battle. Coodarg was moving his hands subtly and we saw archers, then Kiera again. Arrows flew around her, one hit her on the thigh, but she simply pulled it away, and then her eyes fixed on something.
The vision faltered and we saw a group of elves.
At the rear of the elven army, there was a lizard, and on the lizard sat an elven male. Then, someone tugged at him, and he argued, then dismounted cursing and an elven female climbed on. She was delicate, short, pretty with pouty lips and hugely blonde hair, and she was frowning as she gazed at the huge melee. The vision in the mirror shot to the raven, then Kiera, who was speaking, but not to anyone we could see.
The elven female stood up on the saddle with superb balance, and began calling for mighty powers. I felt it. She was filled to the brim, and it was a large vessel. She was one of the daughters of the dead Safiroon lord of their House, and a mighty arch-mage in her own right. She let go of the power, and icy wind rose from the sea. Swells rose up. It looked unnatural and mighty. “Oh damn her,” Ittisana whispered.
“I think she will be,” Thak muttered. “Look. Wait.”
The sea heaved like a fist, lifting the remains of the burning and toppled ships, and slapped with dreadful force across the beach filled with the draugr, and twenty ships simply shattered. And the icy torrent slapped at the back of the drau
gr army, ripping at flesh, slaying hundreds, and then abated, just short of the elven army.
Thousands of the draugr were destroyed.
The elves shrieked with glee, they yelled, they hollered and hacked and pushed at their distraught enemy, and the draugr were pushed back to the sea, slowly, but inexorably.
The vision changed, we saw Kiera, wet and her hair dripping with icy water, and she was still speaking as the draugr swarmed around her, the elves very close. An arrow hit her in the chest, but she ignored it.
She let go of a spell. A glow surrounded the elven female. She blanched, she jumped from the saddle, but the bright, shining light could be seen anywhere.
“Thousand, two?” I asked, horrified. “So many lost.”
“Three to four thousand died,” Thak corrected me and I believed him. “That lady did well—”
“Look,” I said, as the vision changed.
There at the edge of the battle, was a house. It was a grand affair, three-storied, full of color and precious metals etched into its walls, but its roof was covered with birds, many of which had taken off after the horrible storm wind. But not all. A dark band of them sat still, and I realized what was happening.
Some of those birds twisted, fell into one, single shadow, and something stood up.
“The Queen,” I said.
“She wanted to find her,” Thak said with a roaring laughter that probably carried across the Straits. “She wanted to find their arch-mage! That’s all.”
Shannon wore a robe, dark blue, etched with silver. Her red hair was wild, her face white as marble, and her hand—the left one— was only bones, but she clutched Famine, Hel’s dagger, and that dagger gave her spells mortals could only dream of, and powers beyond the living. Perhaps she had such spells inside her, but the dagger whispered of goddesses’ own spells, and Shannon was not shy to use them. She stalked to the edge of the roof, glared down, and Kiera, who had found the enemy while Shannon was probably too well hidden to observe, swam away, and disappeared under the waves.
Throne of Scars Page 3
