I looked at the mask. “I have not.”
“You took it in battle with Strife, and you should. You fought well, killed the champion of the House Coinar and it’s your right,” she said with a smile, her dark, eyes measuring the mask.
“Yes, I should,” I answered, bothered by her suggestion. Naming weapons was probably as old a tradition as using them, but I felt like a fool for trying to think of a suitable name. Almost like a child.
I let my hand strike the surface of the mask. The truth was the thing made me uneasy. I had used it to help Shannon escape and if Kiera had fallen in love with me during that fight, I had nearly made a mess of it. Controlling it had been hard, very hard. Secrets were hidden in the thing. The fiery snake had been Strife’s forte, and since that bastard had been evil as any elf that ever lived, I wanted something different.
But the mask disagreed.
Disagreed?
Yes, I decided. It disagreed. It had disagreed that day. They thanked me for stepping up to save Shannon, to help her fight off Danar Coinar and Cosia, but the moment I had donned it, it had taken over. I had not known what to do. I had tried to guide it, but it had thrust at the enemy before I had even thought about it, and when I fought to control it, it had fought back. The result had been a near disaster. The thing had wanted to reign free. It had wanted to kill as it pleased, to burn and rip flesh apart, and perhaps Strife had done little else but let it, guiding it ever gently if something was to be spared?
There was something inside it. A …thing? Someone? I knew not.
Creating magical artifacts was a skill that was apparently rare, and if Strife had used it, and they fought well together, then perhaps the mask wanted someone utterly reckless and evil to partner with.
Or, I thought, it made Strife reckless and evil.
I frowned. I grasped the mask, and looked at it. I tapped it with a finger, struggling with fear. “I’ll give it a name. Iron Trial.”
Thak rumbled. “It’s a thing of fires. Something more heroic would be—”
Ittisana shook her head. “He is struggling with the thing. Let him name it.” She placed a hand on my shoulders. “The stairs are dark down there.”
Indeed, torches were not burning, and it was pitch black at the end of the stairs. I swallowed panic, but fought it and placed the mask on my face before I could think about it. It stayed on my face, covering everything but my mouth and jaw, held magically. Iron Trial, that’s what you are, I thought.
I felt it.
It was there, the heat in the gauntlets, and that snake, it was slithering inside my head, not unlike Kiera had. Yet, this was not a creature I understood. It had heard its name, and disdained it. I was sure of it. I let out heat, forcing it out of the gauntlets. The snake came out. It slithered out of the cracks in the gauntlet, and the mask felt heavy, pressing against my skull. I took an involuntary step forward, and growled with determination. It was ten feet long now, and it circled me. I felt the mask heating, as the thing turned to look at me closely, flicking a fiery tongue my way.
I cursed and stopped breathing, fighting the thing. I sensed my companions had stopped moving, and the dead were watching my struggle from the shadows.
Fiery dragon, I thought.
That’s what I wanted. Something like the Masked One, the beast that had helped us escape Euryale. It had been a man when it was Euryale’s prisoner, but vast, terrible when it arrived in Himingborg after Euryale’s death. I had gazed at the twenty-foot wyrm with terror, before it flew into Svartalfheim.
The snake rolled in the air, ignoring my wishes. It felt disdainful at my request. It struggled and I held it there, looking at me, though my head was burning. It resisted, it fought, and I trembled with the effort, gods knew how long. Something was different from the last time. What had been a killer of a spell, an evil spirit, was stronger, thicker, much more powerful. I felt drunk with the terrible force, but struggled through the intoxicating feeling and kept on demanding obedience.
Finally, the fiery body pushed out wings, tiny at first, then vast.
They opened, extended, the tail shortened, the head flattened, and the whole thing became small, very small, until it sat on my palm.
I had won, I thought, though part of me wondered if I truly had. When the strength was truly measured, would my will conquer? And why did the whole thing feel so different? I stared at the fiery, tiny thing, and sensed it was much more dangerous than it had been before. Perhaps much more dangerous it had been with Strife.
I felt tired, supremely exhausted, and staggered forward, the dragon lighting the way on my palm. Ittisana appeared next to me, staring at the thing. She frowned deeply. “It detests you. And I feel it’s really different—”
“Oh,” I said, grasping the railing as I stumbled down. “I know. It’s willful. It’s like a partnership where nobody’s the boss. And it is different. I’m not—”
“It belonged to an elf,” she smiled. “An evil elf. And you are a human. It feels insulted. Just my guess. But it seems more powerful than when I’ve seen it before. Be careful.”
I snarled, the mask almost too hot on my face. “I killed Strife, remember? I killed him, and shoved my sword in his elfish gut,” I growled. “It should respect that, if nothing else. I’ve seen it murder dozens, but it must know I can fight well enough.”
Ittisana sighed. “I said you are a human. A brave one matters little to it, perhaps. And I also said evil, didn’t I? You lack that as well.” The dragon slithered in my palm, as if in agreement. “But it is yours until you die. It will have to accept that.”
“Perhaps it will get him killed then,” Thak rumbled. “Work with it, Ulrich.”
I nodded. “I will. But I’d rather use my own powers.”
“Remember,” Thak said from behind, “that you are leading us against a First Born and the dragon. The dragon is no less dangerous than Stheno. That artifact? It might be able to hurt something like they are, indeed. Especially if it is somehow even more powerful. I think it will be useful. Perhaps you should let it rule and you just let it do its thing? Besides, it covers that nasty Bone Fetter that mars your fair skin.”
I looked at my left hand. The gauntlet covered the Bone Fetter indeed, the magical shackle the gorgons and Euryale had used to shut us humans off from the magical weave. Shannon had dealt with the dragon, made a Dragon Pact with it, and it now controlled the fetters. But not me. We all had unique skills. Shannon could see what spells others gathered. She could see the dead, even before she died. Anja could open any lock. Albine knew when someone lied, and I? I could not be shackled. But Thak was right. The artifact was important. But to let it rule me?
No. “I’ll keep working with it.”
Thak let out an exasperated sigh. “Do. But it might be best if you let it fight for you. Just remember that.”
I saw darkness below and knew the great central gallery would be there. “What if it takes over and never lets me go?” I asked with a strained voice, truly afraid it might happen. I fought the urge to grasp the mask off my face. Iron Trial, indeed.
We reached the bottom floor, and I sent the fiery thing roaring across the wide, long arched hallway, lighting the ancient, colorful and masterful paintings in the ceiling, the cobwebbed stools, and the dead who hid in the shadows, standing guard. Ittisana nodded. “You have to be careful. Do not insult it. Don’t try to break it. Never try that. It will fight you. It might even try to control you. Dverg-made artifacts are all somewhat sentient, you see? But Thak is right as well. When the time is right, the battle worth fighting, you should let it rule you. Otherwise someone might be able to get it off you, if they were fast enough.”
Thak grunted. “I could. No fire can kill me, not even dragon fire.”
He was right. He was a jotun, a fire giant.
Soon we reached the portcullis, entered the guardhouse, and waited for a drawbridge and another portcullis to be lowered. I grasped the mask with difficulty, and pulled it off. It came off easily, the fi
re disappeared and I put it in my belt. I wiped the sweat from my face, tottered forward, my chest aching terribly. Damn Kiera. Ittisana put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it for support.
When the doors were open, and the moat could be crossed, we stepped out where the market had once spread across the harbor. A gentle wind was blowing from the Straits, ruffling the abandoned booths and stalls forlornly. Mar, Aldheim’s star was pale, a slab of reddish clouds covering half of it. We turned and took the Silent Way past the high walls of the Citadel of Glory. We passed the towers and fortifications of the ancient bastion of might, walked under the shadow of the walls that guarded the White Court, and took to the abandoned alleys leading north. We walked for half an hour, and finally passed the place where we had saved Shannon from Danar Coinar and Cosia, who had hoped to kill Almheir Bardagoon in the library. There the battle spells had incinerated hundreds of elves, and even if the bodies had since been removed, the place was a wreck. Walls of the mansions had fallen, pillars toppled and broken like child’s toys, the cobblestones torn up across the whole square. The ancient fountain still spewed water, and I stopped there to drink greedily. I looked up to the library, a squat, towered white building of immense. The pennants of the Safiroons were still fluttering on top of it. The dead had removed most, but not these ones. “Why?” I asked Ittisana. “Why can’t commoners go inside?”
She sat down and ladled water to her fanged mouth. “If Shannon forced the draugr to, then they would, but they are afraid of it. The library is the work of generations of Regents, and only those who can See the Glory can be trusted to treat it and the tomes respectfully. They say most books are covered in gold and silver, and even in Aldheim riches tempt the poor. So, only the highest nobles were allowed to delve into the mysteries of the great library. The draugr, though tempted by the riches, won’t go anywhere near it. They slink away, stand in front of it, skulk around it at night, but they are slaves to their past.” She looked up at the place with a squint. “I think Shannon’s happy to keep them out of there. There is a well of knowledge to be studied, and she always loved such stories, didn’t she? She doesn’t trust the draugr to move them to the Citadel.”
“Let’s do it, then,” I said. We trekked away from the destroyed battleground and across pristine courtyards, silent spaces of beauty where human and elven life had thrived. There were toys scattered in the corners of elaborate playgrounds, craftsmen had dropped their hammers and tools across the street called the Crafter’s Run, and there, the Safiroon arms factory had been left burned, a gigantic smithy called the Pride of Soot. It was all quiet now. We got close to the library and hiked through fantastic alleys, filled with statues and brazen colors and subtle details everywhere, and that horror was only challenged by the rotting corpses, hundreds of dead left by the draugr on one particularly wide courtyard.
“What the hell—”
“Shit,” Ittisana agreed. The dead. They had been positioned as if they were alive. They were rotting, hacked and ripped, but seated and left leaning on walls, their hands grasping their partners in a grisly scene that resembled a feast. There were many human children there, dead the lot of them. The draugr had created a joke, or art, and I cared not which it was. I fought the need to pull Iron Trial out and go hunting for the creatures.
And I fought for this? For Hel? Ittisana pushed me on, and Thak looked down. Did they have any misgivings? Probably not.
I shook my head, hardened my heart for the time, and we took the final stretch for Haven. There, the draugr started to show up. Occasionally, we saw some of them squatting in the doorways, having claimed a house to loot, a temple to search for treasure, and they truly coveted it, since I saw three such dead elves utterly mesmerized by a chest filled with silver, hardly noticing our passing. Thak drew his mighty sword, the sword of a jotun, a dverg-crafted weapon that would grow or shrink with him, and I was happy he was there.
Finally, we had reached the steps of the library.
The portico that guarded the gate was shaded and coated with gold, and as we walked the steps, I could see the windows were adorned with jewels, sunk into glass in artistic patterns. Vines grew wildly along the white walls and the squat towers. We reached the fine, red doors, and Thak shrugged and pushed them open without any ceremony.
Inside, silence and darkness.
Thak went first, using his huge sword to push back the swinging doors, and dusty fog billowed out
Inside, shadows reigned. Ittisana scowled and stepped forward, and I knew she was braiding spells. She lifted her arms and from them and many bright lights escaped. “Best leave the snake—”
“Dragon—” I murmured.
“The thing in the artifact,” she said patiently. “Best not ignite anything, right?”
“Right,” I said sullenly as I watched dozens of bright balls of light scatter all over the bottom floor, lighting it very well indeed. “I have no wish to call for it anyway,” I said and then went quiet. In the midst of the central chamber there was a huge, circular stairway that went up for six levels. On each level, there were colorless windows the size of an elf; hundreds of them, and beams of light shattered the shadows and the darkness.
Between the windows, there were jotun height bookshelves of thick, red wood.
“Quite something,” I breathed.
There were millions of books and scrolls in Haven. All glittered with gold and silver, and I could only gawk in silence. They stood in silent vigil like dutiful soldiers waiting to be relieved. The books were worth an empire, and probably a dozen kingdoms to boot. And quite a few of the books glowed gently, being magical. I walked across the black tiled floor, and went to stand near the staircase, where I leaned on a silver statue. The railing was decorated with gold and gems, there were building-high pillars supporting the stairway, all made of some pink-hued stone. There were more statues hidden between the bookcases, some were standing on the stairs, pondering problems, images of long-lost scholars and mages and lords. Perhaps one was of Coodarg? I thought. They were beautiful and delicate, the sort of feats of unimaginable skill that left the onlooker waiting breathlessly for them to move.
Thak was looking around, his sword out, and he smelled the air carefully. “Where do we go?”
Ittisana squinted up. “Kiera said the works on Svartalfheim are on the third level. I’ll show you. She walked up the stairs and I went after her, wondering at each new sight. We reached the third floor, and Thak stood by the stairway, looking around the shadows carefully.
Near the stairs, there were coaches of green and gray velvet, and Ittisana nodded at me. “You just take a seat. Relax. I’ll find what we need.” She rushed to find the works on her homeland, her sword slapping on her thigh and I pulled a couch next to the window. There, I plopped down on it. I squinted in the light of Mar that shone through the window, and got up to push at it. After a moment’s struggle, I discovered they opened inwards and now clear, fresh air moved into the room.
The sight was breathtaking, opening up towards the north. The land, the Holy Continent that was called Freyr’s Tooth rose steadily from Himingborg. There, Bardagoons guarded what was Freyr’s Seat, the lost god’s hall where Lex and Shannon had died, and where Dana had betrayed them. There, also, before the passes that led to that wondrous land, red forts guarded the roads. Before the forts, a vast camp of silken tents spread across hillsides. They looked like people on a peaceful outing, like a nation out camping, but there too glittered thousands and thousands of spears, and I knew the might of Safiroon and Bardagoon houses, and their dependents were preparing. There, Anja was, her skill in opening anything with her touch a potent weapon for Almheir, who would attack the city with fury. There too, Hannea Coinar, the sister of Ompar Coinar and Shannon’s love, helped Almheir by pretending to be the Hand of Life, disguised in the lost armor of the office. Fifty thousand? At least that many. And another fifty to come soon, no doubt.
There was no way to win, I decided. None. Why did Shannon try? What could she do a
nyway? Why not flee?
I sat there and enjoyed the silence, despite the ominous sight of the enemy. “I’d love to stay here for a long while,” I whispered.
“Nothing to eat, though,” Thak predictably complained from behind, where he had looked over the land in silence. “Surely the guards and the keepers had to eat something.” He looked at me guiltily. “You mind—”
“Go and find the kitchens,” I sighed and sat there, happy for a moment.
In an hour, Ittisana slumped next to me. “I asked Thak to check all the doors and trapdoors. There are some below, but they are all magically locked.However I found a lot, and you have a lot to consume.”
“Food and ale?”
She giggled, an odd sound from such a deadly creature. “Information,” she said. She reached over me and there, on a desk were dozens of books. I groaned. I’d be buried in information. Ittisana pulled out a book and opened it up.
***
An hour later, I rubbed my face and she blinked. Even the snakes looked surprised. “You are not interested?”
“I—”
She slammed a gold-rimmed tome closed. “It is my home. My homeland. And you are not interested?” The gorgon was rarely riled, but she was now.
I raised my hands disarmingly, but she was not impressed. She was tapping her sharp nails on the book and I felt lost like a pup, not sure how to repair the damage. “I don’t get it,” I said.
She let out a long breath. “What don’t you get, human dolt? Maybe I should train you like Cosia trained you in Euryale’s sweet care? Flay your flesh a little?”
I scowled and swallowed the angry retort. Kiera had flayed me enough for the day. “You are telling me stories of the past. Cities, ancient and old, the land of the shadows, of the darkness, and the beings that inhabit it. Svartalfs aplenty, millions of them, dozens of cities where their rulers call themselves kings and queens, and that warfare and thievery are part of life. Ruugat ...”
Throne of Scars Page 5
