Roars of War: The War for the North: Book Two

by Sean Rodden

  A great white grin thrust through the Darad’s mud-spattered beard.

  But the former Marshal of the Grey Watch recovered almost instantly, and he straightened, the glitter of his eyes narrowing to the slightest yet brightest of needle points.

  “But if I did that, Captain Rundul, this raft would surely pitch perilously, and you might tumble ass over axe into – ”

  The grey warrior’s voice faded into the fog as he raised one foot.

  Rundul’s smile died. His face went white.

  “Fair enough, Fian.”

  The bones were as polished marble, smooth and solid and strong. Woven into a morbid tapestry of fossilized death and fused by long centuries to form a single continuous, contiguous structure, the skeletal remains of Gan Gebbernin’s fallen provided the Sun Lord with ample traction as he climbed the curved wall of Maol an Maalach. Here his fingers clung to the blackened fibula of a slain ogre, there his feet found purchase in the ruined ribs of a dead dragon. He progressed slowly, ever so slowly, no swifter than the shadow cast by a gnomon upon the plate of a Gendurii sundial, and twice as quiet. An unseen adumbration seeping over an irregular continuum of time and space. Moving meagre fractions of an inch, from a finger’s breadth to a thumb’s, from a palm’s width to its length, from foot to cubit, step to pace to perch. With the patience and perseverance only a Prince of the Undying might practice.

  And all the while psychically assailed by the sulphuric diatribe of the demon.

  Prithee! Speak to me, thou grand lamenter, ere I groweth weary of mine own song. Loosen thy tongue and impregn this abysm with sweet, sweet words.

  Climbing, climbing, crawling upward over bone.

  Wherefore dost thou abstract thyself from my fine company? Must thou imbosk thyself in such forstraught darkness?

  An ascension of inches and hours, arcing in imperceptible increments toward the apex of that morbid dome of the dead.

  I beseech thee, thou craven creeper, affordeth this lost and lonesome creature the pleasure of thine honey tongue.

  Inches, inches, sheer slivers of inches. With neither waver in concentration nor waning of strength.

  Dost thou knoweth no tales? Hast thy tongue been taken? Will thou not maketh a gift of thy name?

  Handhold after toehold, foothold following fingerhold, dexterous digits flexing about fossilized femurs, feet lodging between petrified pelvises, edging across the curved calcified ceiling toward its zenith, as surely and as steadily as a spectre of death.

  A name! A name! This kingdom of bone for thy name!

  As he approached the apex of Maol an Maalach, Yllufarr sensed a wave of demonic divination slither surreptitiously across his subtle athamantic shield. Instantly motionless, his flattened form pressed fast to the bony matter above him, the dark Prince of the Neverborn stilled his breath, his mind, his very heart. Trusting in his fortifications of sublime Light, he remained passive and inert, yet aware and alert. A rage that was not his own flooded across his defenses, viscous and vicious, but did not linger, neither slowing nor stalling. Ulviathon’s enfuried scrutiny of the Dam’s osseous skies slid away from the Sun Lord’s arcane guard like the passing of momentary madness, leaving naught but numbness in its wake.

  Thy name! Thy name! Give me thy name!

  Yllufarr promptly slid into the slipstream of the demon’s psychic probe, gliding along the ceiling with some speed, achieving the zenith of the bone dome in mere minutes. There he idled in immobility only long enough to inspect the integrity of his shield, seeking cracks, flaws, faults in the grid. Finding none, he clasped his knees securely about the huge humerus of a long-dead giant. He closed his eyes. Concentrated. Flexed his back and abdominal muscles. Carefully released the bone protrusions gripped in his hands, first the horse’s rib, then the human tibia. He smoothly swung his torso backward and down, bending at the knees, lowering himself headfirst into the extreme and utter blackness of Maol an Maalach.

  Thy name, thou skulker upon skulls! Thy name or thine heart most foul!

  Virtually kneeling on the ceiling, the Prince of the Athair spread wide his arms, an inverted cruciform of cloth and muscle and bone.

  Thy name, thou stinking slinker in shit!

  The Sun Lord opened his eyes. Looked down.

  THY NAME!

  And let himself fall.

  On a subliminal level, deep within whispering ether of his being, the Lord of the Shaddathair was aware of the old man and the earth spirit at his back. Aware of, yes, but thoroughly indifferent to, dismissive of – for they were not of the Teller’s cherished Fore Told, were neither Hiathir nor Athair, and as such they were inherently inconsequential. So much so that they would have done well to merit scorn. The former was feeble, fragile, and reeked of mortal decay; the latter, like all its vile folk, was but little more evolved than the inanimate rock from which it had sprung. Both would die eventually, inevitably, and neither death would matter.

  Indeed, few deaths ever did.

  For several long hours, Sammayal’s cold white regard had concentrated upon the curve of Maol an Maalach where the wretched remains of Prince Yllufarr’s slain Sul Athaifain were laced and plaited and braided with deplorable disdain. Such cruel contempt had no place, no purpose there, neither in that world nor in any other. A dark and ancient pall stirred in the black Shaddath’s brumal essence, and the song that swayed about him became less a lament and more a refrain of restrained rage.

  Some deaths, it seemed, mattered terribly indeed.

  “Our friend is angry.”

  “He’s not the only one,” grumbled Rundul, his massive arms folded across his chest and resting upon the butt of his war-axe.

  “Must I apologize, Stone Lord?”

  “Only if you’re responsible for the existence of water and Time, Fian.” The Darad glowered at the mist-manacled morass of Coldmire. “Water and waiting, waiting and water – both are absolutely endless in this Mother-forsaken place, and I’m a lot more even-tempered when I’m surrounded by things that I can, well, end.”

  “I share your frustration, friend Rundul, though my reasons may differ.” Eldurion adjusted the anomalous bundle strapped across his back. “I remain behind, again, while another stands in my stead.”

  “This is the Ath’s battle, Fian,” Rundul retorted. “You know that.”

  “Knowing it does not soothe the sense of helplessness, of… futility. This obligatory apathy as another sallies forth is all too sorely familiar.”

  “Yllufarr is not Amarien, my friend.”

  Eldurion said nothing for an extended moment. The hood of his cloak dipped indiscernibly, a minute movement more sensed than seen. Furtive fingertips absently tested the bare blade at his belt. Then –

  “No. He is not.”

  Rundul scowled against his own reckless insensitivity. “I meant no – ”

  “And I took none, Stone Lord.” The steel in the Deathward warrior’s voice was greased with ice. “Some things just… are.”

  “There is purpose to the Ath’s mission, and – ”

  The Darad’s eyes swelled into spheres of black horror as he realized the inadvertent implication of his words. His mouth formed a perfectly circular black hole in his beard.

  The aged Fian’s hood tilted toward him. Somewhere in the mist and shadow purling in the cowl, pale lips formed an arcless smile.

  “You simply do not know when to abort while you remain reparably behind, do you, Darad?”

  Rundul’s eyes gradually reverted to their usual size, then vanished beneath the fiercest of frowns.

  “Apparently not,” he growled.

  Eldurion settled his glittering gaze upon the Dam of the Damned once again. Hour upon hour had passed, knell after knell, and no sound issued from that ghastly grey structure. No roar of challenge, no clash of arms, no thunderous rumble of battle. Naught but silence, cold and damp, like the chill dank still that enshrouds a vault of the dead.

  “My brother… Amarien… had purpose.”

  The Dar
ad did not respond, as he intuited, correctly, that no response was required.

  “Amarien had good cause to venture into the Dunelands.” The grim Fian’s voice was so faint that he seemed to be speaking more to himself than to his hulking companion. “No fickle whim, no capricious sense of adventure drew my brother to that dreadful place. He was following a dream – a vision, rather, a vision we had shared for many long years.” An undertone of lost wonder recalled and revered: “He was seeking a star.”

  Rundul simply listened.

  “We were very young when first we saw the star. Though we were not particularly prone to prophecy, Amarien and I had both seen the star fall in our dreams, a blue-white light slicing across the skies of our sleep for weeks, months on end. Each night we drew progressively nearer to the star, and in due course we saw that it was, to be precise, not a star at all, but a great burning blue rock with a long tail of white fire – a meteor, we were told, by some in the Halls of Lore who possessed knowledge of celestial phenomena. A common enough occurrence, we were assured, both in the skies of Second Earth and in the dreams of young lads, and we should not concern ourselves with such untoward distractions.”

  The Darad shook his head with some vigour, but said nothing.

  “Our father did not concur.”

  Rundul grunted, nodded emphatically, approvingly.

  Eldurion pulled his cloak closer about himself as a shiver ticked his frame, a shiver born not of cold but of memory, the sentimental tingle of a time when awe and wilderment were commonplace occurrences.

  “Like his grandson who is Lord of the Deathward now, the first Alvarion was a sage and sensible soul. He saw the wisdom in hearing all voices, even those which spoke in tongues he did not understand. He revered the insights of his Seer, esteemed the intuitions of his Lady, and valued the visions of his precocious young sons. ‘Hear all, heed well’, he would tell us, ‘lest your own voices go unheard.’”

  The Darad smiled in silence.

  “Many years passed, and the dreams – ”

  Eldurion’s voice trailed away, trickling into the algid air, the silvery sparks within his hood quietly gliding from Maol an Maalach to the black back of the Lord of the Shadowfolk. There he sensed a tension in the Shaddath’s stance, a certain raptness, as of one readying to receive tidings of great gravity – or of one bracing for impact. A gust of cold born not of wind, but of wet, shivered the air. Ominous ripples radiated outward from the Dam of the Damned.

  Rundul’s smile slid away.

  “Something happens,” hissed the Fian. “Something. I know not what.”

  The dark waters of Coldmire swelled against the sides of the raft, liquid tongues lapping, licking the lashed logs like a pack of swamp dogs at salt stones. Casting apprehensive glances to one another, the Fian and the Darad strode to stand with Sammayal of the Unforgiven, one to a shoulder. The three peered from the prow toward Maol an Maalach, black eyes agleam, white eyes aglow, grey eyes aglitter.

  “What is it, Shaddath?” the Eldest of the Fiannar sliced into the silence, the edge to his expression sharper than any blade. “What transpires in that wicked place?”

  The Lord of the Shaddathair did not respond. He evinced no suggestion, no indication that he had even heard the dour Deathward warrior.

  A low thunder of warning rumbled in Rundul’s breast.

  Eldurion’s subsequent whisper was the sound of knife drawing across a throat.

  “I ask again, Lord Sammayal, and I will have your answer: What happens in Maol an Maalach?”

  The Unforgiven remained unresponsive. He did not look upon Eldurion. Nor did he speak. He only stood there, towering and terrible, seemingly engrossed by whatever doings he detected being done within the distant Dam. He had heard the Fian, certainly, but suffered no compulsion to reply – and the threat implicit in the feeble mortal’s words neither warranted nor deserved the dignity of acknowledgment.

  Eldurion seethed in silence. A strange warmth seemed to emanate from the bundle at his back, coursing through him like a wayward wave of golden fire. His fingers flowed with flawless familiarity about the grip of his sword. His lips peeled away from clenched teeth. When the grey Fian spoke again, his voice was become the ooze of blood about the edge of the blade, and the Shaddath’s persistent insolence was the arched and bared throat.

  “I am Eldurion, son of Alvarion the First, direct descendent of Defurien who was Father and First Lord of the Fiannar. The blood of heroes flows in these veins. The Light of the Athair shines in that blood. And the love of the Teller thrives in that Light. You will hear me, Unforgiven. You will hear, you will harken, and you will abide. And in abiding, you will live.”

  Ever so slightly, the Lord of the Shaddathair inclined his hooded head. He remained thus for a moment, still and statuesque, his aspect a masque of mist and shadow, his black form spangled with sparkling stars. Whether his assumed posture was an expression of respect or of resignation – or of another thing altogether – was indeterminable, entirely unknowable. The aria in the aura about the Shaddath faltered into an arrhythmic chant, incohesive and inconsistent, a dirge for the damned, broken, fragmented, dissipating in darkness.

  “You are not Defurien,” Sammayal sighed past pursed lips. His eyes shone like polished stars. “Nevertheless.”

  One long arm rose, voluminous black sleeve billowing, and a pale hand extended, a single slender finger pointing toward Maol an Maalach – the very spectre of Death directing lost souls to the doors of their doom.

  “Behold.”

  And Eldurion and Rundul beheld.

  The Dam of the Damned began to glow. Bright white light, pure and pristine, radiated through the cracks and crevices created by the woven bone of the dome. Every fissure, every gap – long and short and deep and shallow – betwixt the skeletal thatch of the Dam was afire, as though a fallen sun flamed fiercely within. Silver lances of light streaked skyward, spearing the low monochromic empyrean over Coldmire. But no sound issued forth from Maol an Maalach. No rumble of battle, no shriek of rage, neither scream of pain nor roar of triumph escaped those wicked walls. And this quietude was as disquieting as lightning without thunder in a rampant tempest.

  The Captain of the mara Waratur gripped the haft of his war-axe tightly.

  The Eldest of the Fiannar slid his bare blade from his belt.

  “What happens, Sammayal?” the latter demanded, the edge to his voice notched and dulled by the beautiful horror of what he saw. “What happens in that hellish place?”

  The Lord of the Shaddathair slowly lowered his hand, raised his gaze. His eyes glimmered, wide and white. And he said only –

  “The deed he left undone.”

  Prince Yllufarr plummeted into blackness. An utter unbroken blackness bereft of air, of warmth, thick and viscid with the stench of sulphur. Time slowed as he plunged downward. Feeling fled his extremities, the chill void through which he dropped instantly depriving his body of all sensation. His lungs were empty, his skin was numbed, anaesthetized, but the thoughts of his mind were as the knives concealed in his rippling vestment, honed and keen, and the blackness of the vacuum was no barrier to his pale colourless eyes.

  Directly below him lay Ulviathon, coiled and curled, motionless. The demon had not stirred for the entire duration of the Sun Lord’s extended climb along the inner wall of Maol an Maalach. All throughout its relentless psychic bombardment of the furtive foe, the fiend had remained completely and perfectly still. As static as a stone. Indeed, only the gular pumping of its throat and the intermittent sliding of the secondary lid across its solitary eye betrayed the beast lived at all.

  And even now, as death dove down upon it in the darkness, unholy Ulviathon did not move.

  THY NAME!!

  The Sun Lord tucked his arms in at his sides, streamlining his headlong descent, as aerodynamic as an Athain arrow. He arched his neck at a hard angle so that he might better see that which awaited him at the end of his fall. That which he himself had waited for nigh upon
twenty centuries to see. That which he now saw.

  And the Light within him exalted.

  For lo! The shaft of a long spear protruded from the demon’s ruined left eye, and the haft and hilts of a sword jutted from its teratoid skull. Both weapons were splendidly wrought of white gold and black steel. Both were of the finest Athain design and manufacture. And both had been forged and formed by Yllufarr’s own hands.

  Sibryddir and Canneas.

  Nightsong. Coldwhisper.

  THY NAME!!!

  In the last possible instant, the Sun Lord spun effortlessly in the acerbic ether above Ulviathon, alighting in a crouch upon the beast’s huge head, between the frontal and parietal plates, just shy of the left eye. One hand flashed out and wrapped about the shaft of Sibryddir, the other around the grip of Coldwhisper. Immediately, a blast of pure Light burst through the black steel of both weapons, silently screaming into the skull of the demon, exploding within its cranial cavity. And with the horrible screech of arcane metal ripping through immortal scale and skull, Yllufarr leapt nimbly away and clear.

  The subsequent concussion of eldritch power rattled the walls of woven bone.

  Maol an Maalach groaned.

  Lithely alighting upon the bank of bones, the Ath assumed a fluid fighting stance, his spear and sword fast in his fists and smoking with Light. The fire in his eyes no longer doused, the puissance within him dimmed no more, the Sun Lord shone like a star stolen from the very skies of eternity.

  And he but barely whispered –

  “I am called Yllufarr.” A pause like a smile. “I am a Prince of the Folk of Gavrayel in Gith Glennin, and a Lord of the Sun Knights of the Athair.”

  Silence.

  The Sun Lord peered past his arcane athamantic shield to the demon, his pale eyes searching, alert to the most minute of movements, attuned to the smallest of spasms. He extended his awareness as one might reach out a hesitant hand, cautiously, uncertainly, tentatively feeling about the enormous body of the beast, hide and horn, crest and claw. The translucent nictitating membrane had ceased its slide midcourse across the demon’s right eye, bisecting the dilated pupil like a half-drawn curtain. The throat no longer thrummed. No intimation of breath quivered the slitted nostrils. Illumined by the thrown glow of the Prince’s prodigious power, Ulviathon remained motionless, inert and insensate, exhibiting no indication that any semblance of life yet dwelt within the shell of its being.