Devil's Night Dawning: The First Book of the Broken Stone Series

by Damien Black

  ‘They fight well,’ grunted the flame-haired knight as they passed the sparring bachelors, heading towards the gatehouse guarding the inner ward. ‘I see your trust in their abilities wasn’t misplaced – although to be fair you did have first-hand experience of young Ruttgur’s prowess.’

  The Marshal of Graukolos was in no mood to be baited by its best – and most pompous – knight. ‘I did indeed,’ he replied levelly. ‘As you did with bold Sir Corus. A pity he is already sworn to Lord Rothstein, else I would have approached him on the Stonefist’s behalf too – for that swing of his that sent you tumbling in the melee alone.’

  Balthor at least had grace enough to smile at this. ‘Aye, it was a painful reversal of my good fortunes that week, ‘tis true – though had we not been ambushed and taken unawares I feel the outcome of that skirmish would have been very different. What was Rothstein thinking, putting that oaf Sir Reginal in charge of tactics? The man can’t plan a mock battle any more than he can a real one.’

  ‘True enough,’ Urist had to allow. ‘Perhaps his being the younger brother of our gracious host had something to do with it...’

  Balthor snorted, only half laughing now. ‘Yes, well, thankfully he has enough sense not to make that great fool his marshal in real life!’

  ‘No indeed,’ replied Urist flatly, deftly concealing his feeling of triumph. ‘As I recall, he has given that duty to Sir Corus.’

  Balthor’s sudden scowl was not pretty as Urist glanced sidelong at him. It reassured the older knight to remind himself why Balthor would never take his position as marshal – even if he had already taken some of his glory from him. The man could certainly fight: sword, spear or axe, there were few that could live with him on the field of battle. But when it came to tactics, the art of thinking one step ahead in the abstract, Balthor was little better than the hapless Reginal.

  They drew level with the final gatehouse. Above them the walls of the keep loomed, stonily impassive and impossibly high. Urist had only seen one building that was taller, but that had been built by an ancient race of wizards who had enslaved demons and Gigants and used them as builders.

  The Watchtower of Mount Brazen they called it, and it nestled like a great stone weed in the foothills of the Great White Mountains. He had seen it in his youth, when the House of Markward had ridden off to war against the Eorl of Ostveld, whose lands lay to the south-east, after getting wind of his plans to lay siege to Graukolos in the hope of capturing the great prize. It had been a resounding victory: they had turned the tables on the enemy and caught them unawares with devastating effect.

  Yet even still Urist had never forgotten the dread spectacle of that blood-red tower and its peculiar stones, looming like an ill omen over the field of battle. He’d seen it from leagues away, but there had been no mistaking its size even at that distance. And that was long after it had been broken by the wrath of the heavens... who could say how high it had been before?

  But that was aeons ago, if the loremasters told it true. The walls of Graukolos Keep were altogether a less alien and more appealing sight – but it was said the castle also had its roots in magic of some kind. The loremasters claimed its builder Goriath had been a warlock himself, using his scrying arts to peer into the distant past and relearn the long-forgotten stonecraft of the ancients. Nothing so blasphemous as the dark arts of the Priest-Kings of legend to be sure – but even so, his knowledge must have come from some lost era. How else could anyone have built such a monstrous castle six hundred years ago?

  That had been a benighted age, when petty kings ruled in Vorstlund, sulking behind the crude walls of their mottes and baileys whilst the peasantry toiled from dawn till dusk through miserable lives that were mercifully short. Even the great masons of the renowned Pangonian King Vasirius had been hard put to rival Stonecrafty’s monolithic achievement four centuries later.

  Small wonder Urist felt a lingering and deep sense of pride as he stepped up to address the inner gatehouse garrison. Graukolos was a seat fit for a king, and its lord and master had entrusted him with its security. Next to such an honour, his tournament trophies frankly seemed like baubles.

  The gatehouse garrison was a forty-strong force of men-at-arms led by Brigmore Stoutgirt, captain of the guards. He was several years older than Urist but as a commoner he deferred to the Marshal.

  ‘Sire,’ said Brigmore curtly, acknowledging him with a deferential nod before motioning to the guards to raise the portcullis.

  He was a man of even fewer words than Urist, and the Marshal liked him for that: he got on with his job and he did it well. A family man with a strong sense of duty – the common folk threw up a few good apples once in a while, and Brigmore was one of them.

  Urist knew that he blamed himself for the theft, and had taken pains to reassure him to the contrary. It was clear that no earthly powers could have prevented such an unearthly break-in, and it was hardly Brigmore’s fault the common soldiers had been too afraid to guard the Werecrypt. It did not take a perfect or an Argolian to see that some devilish work was afoot.

  The archway of the inner gatehouse centred on a huge boss. Carved of the same slate grey stone as the rest of the castle, this depicted a mighty fresco of Ludvic the Builder, fourth king of the House of Tal that had founded the Old Kingdom of Dulsenar. Ludvic had ruled what was now the Griffenwyrd of Dulsinor more than six hundred years ago, and took his epithet from the mighty castle he had commissioned.

  That was the way of things, Urist reflected wryly to himself and not for the first time: lesser folk did the toil, but it was the scions that ruled them who were honoured for the fruits of their thankless labour.

  Or at least, that was the way the scions of the House of Tal had intended it to be – but in truth Goriath Stonecrafty was far better remembered than the petty king he had served.

  Two pairs of crossed long-axes hung on either side of Ludvic, portrayed as a bull-necked giant of a man clad in crude old-fashioned mail and resting two broad hands on a mighty war-hammer. If the old histories were to be believed, Ludvic had been as renowned for breaking things as for building them. But then, Urist supposed, King Ludvic the Breaker didn’t carry quite the same legacy.

  Above the frescoed boss was draped a great silken cloth the height of several men, pinned at each corner with a shield. All five bore the Markward coat of arms.

  In far-gone days it would have been the arms of Tal standing proudly on display, but it had been nearly three centuries since the red heron had flown from the walls of Graukolos, when the last scion of that once-great house breathed his last on the sword of Ranveldt Longyear, first Eorl of the House of Markward and Wilhelm’s ancestor.

  Above the great coat of arms the huge keep stretched towards the firmament, its crenelated parapet biting the darkening skies with broken teeth. Torchlight glinted on helm and hauberk as more of Brigmore’s men patrolled the walkways high above the courtyard. Higher still loomed the westernmost turrets of the inner ward. The summit of the one to Urist’s right shone yellowy green in the light emanating from the keep’s many window slits.

  The creeping ivy was the Lady Adhelina’s unique touch. Her knowledge of the natural arts had more practical uses though: the Marshal of Graukolos had lost count of the number of brave knights and men-at-arms whose lives or limbs she had saved during the last war.

  Thinking this he felt a twinge of pity for the heiress of Dulsinor: being married off to the likes of Lord Hengist was poor reward for her services, for all that he was rich and powerful. But duty demanded it – and duty was everything.

  With a metallic screech the portcullis ground to a halt above them. The clash of arms could no longer be heard from the training yard; the two gallants had called it quits with the oncoming of night. Thoughts of swordplay would be rapidly giving way to contemplation of a hearty meal and a few stoops of wine to wash it down.

  The inner ward gatehouse ran twice as deep as that of the middle. As well as the obligatory murder holes lining the ceiling of
its main tunnel there were doorways from which the garrison could sally forth to fight intruders if need be. In the rooms beyond, off-duty soldiers would be idling or playing at dice as they awaited the tolling of the bell in the barracks mess hall to summon them to supper.

  With another curt motion Brigmore signalled for four guards to accompany the two knights into the last courtyard. Secure as they were in peace-time this was hardly necessary, but Brigmore and Urist were both sticklers for protocol. Flanked by their honour guard the Marshal of Graukolos and Dulsinor’s greatest knight entered the gatehouse.

  Observing the two knights from her lofty perch, Adhelina heaved a sigh and turned back to face her room. All about her everything seemed the same: an abundance of herbs and poultices hanging up to dry, filling her expansive chamber with a pungent aroma but making it seem much smaller than it really was. A riot of good green colour, just the way she liked it; a smile from the archangel Kaia to cheer the cold grim stone of Ezekiel.

  And yet things were not as they had been – indeed never would be. As if her own personal troubles had not been enough, now this calamity had befallen the castle, and her father was at loss as to how to deal with it. It certainly did not make him more receptive to her entreaties that he delay her nuptials.

  Turning back to gaze languidly across the torchlit courtyards of the middle and outer wards, Adhelina cast her mind back across the events of that fateful night.

  The rumours had spread quickly enough, as she had known they would. There had been a break-in of some sort, and a theft – that was about all they agreed on. That and one other thing. Some devilry was behind it – how else could any common thief break into the most unassailable castle in Vorstlund? Though most of the assembled nobles had been far too drunk to notice anything untoward, the two-hundred strong garrison of common soldiers would not have all been off duty.

  The Lanraks had packed themselves off that day with all due pomp and ceremony, the future Grand Herzog of Stornelund-Dulsinor still reeling from too much wine and struggling to stay upright in the saddle. The Eorl of Dulsinor and his household had seen them off with all due courtesy nonetheless, but his only daughter had marked the troubled frown that creased his rugged face.

  By then the rumours had had more time to embellish themselves. It was a great war-chest of golden treasure that had been stolen, remnant heirlooms of a vaster hoard gifted to Oberon the Wise, the last petty king of Dulsenar, who had bent his knee to King Gunthor of Vorstlund without bloodshed. It was a great tome written by Goriath Stonecrafty, in which he had laid down the secrets of his masonry, and many other hermetic arts he had learned. It was the heart of Ludvic the Builder, preserved by the sorceries of Goriath – legend had it that so long as the magic organ stayed buried beneath the walls of Graukolos the castle would never be taken, hence its theft portended a great calamity.

  Adhelina knew better than to believe such tales. She was far too well-read not to know the truth of the matter, and besides that as the heiress of Dulsinor she had been made privy to many of the castle’s secrets by none other than old Berthal himself.

  Her feverish reading of the past few days had well reacquainted her with the truth, which was potentially more frightening than all the superstitious rumours put together.

  The fragmented shard of the world’s most powerful artefact had never been a welcome inheritance, but like the cares of rulership it came with the castle, a responsibility that could not be shirked.

  Yet shirked it had been nonetheless – and during her father’s tenure to boot. As was to be expected, Wilhelm’s common soldiers would do virtually anything their liege told them to – but they would not stand guard in the Werecrypt.

  It had never been the most salubrious of duties, sharing the silent vaults with the noble families of Dulsinor that had been laid to rest in them for centuries. But for generations the authority of the liege and the honour attached to the service had seen it performed without question.

  That was until several years ago, when things began to change.

  Sentries coming off duty from the Werecrypt would return to the barracks pale-faced and trembling, going to bed and board with troubled eyes that told a fearful yet wordless tale. Many would wake screaming in the dead of night for weeks after their service, until finally Wilhelm had quietly ordered the duty dropped, for fear of mutiny.

  Whatever was stirring in the bowels of the Werecrypt, it clearly inspired more fear than the iron laws of mortal men.

  With equal discretion, her father had summoned an Argolian friar to investigate the matter. The monk had remained in the castle a single night, holding vigil in the Werecrypt before seeking the Eorl’s solar for a private audience at dawn. Then he had ridden back to his monastery, to be heard of no more.

  As far as Adhelina knew, since then no one had set foot in the mausoleum – indeed normally there would have been no reason to until she, her father, Berthal or any of his family members died. It was only the peculiar custom of the castle, bound up with some older tale of legend known to few, that dictated a sentry guard at all times in the Werecrypt.

  After the duty was dropped the afflicted soldiers had gradually shrugged off the pernicious curse and returned to normal. But not one of them could ever hear the name of the Werecrypt mentioned again without blanching.

  If the nature of the ‘treasure’ they had used to guard had been more widely known, Adhelina reflected grimly, her father might not only have faced a mutiny among his superstitious soldiers.

  Turning from the window she picked up the weighty tome she had asked Lotho to procure from her father’s solar. She knew he wouldn’t mind: he never had the patience for reading and was in any case too concerned with the present evil to be overly concerned with its antecedents.

  The more fool him. An inscription in Decorlangue embossed on the musty leather cover in spidery letters proclaimed the title: A History of the Lords of Graukolos, Past, Present, and Those to Come.

  The whimsical last part of the title referred to the book’s unwritten pages, those that Lotho and his descendants would write about her father, her and her future offspring – assuming she had any. Castle custom dictated that a lord’s life would only be written in the great tome once it had come to an end. She presumed Lotho kept notes, to aid his wine-sodden memory or his successor when her father’s time came.

  Sitting down at her desk as Hettie busied herself with tidying up her chamber, the heiress of Dulsinor turned to the page she had marked with a scrap of cloth.

  The ink was old and faded, written by a hand that had rotted in the grave some four centuries past. The heading read: The Reign of Ludvic, Second Jarl of Freiholt-Dulsenar, called by some ‘the Stone-Cursed’. Drawing a tallow candle nearer, she began to read the words again:

  And though Ludvic was blessed with an unusually long life, perishing only in his ninety-fifth year, his reign has been marred by a great evil, that some say brought sorrow to all his days thereafter.

  For it was ordained that into his path should fall one of the most diabolical artefacts crafted in any Age, namely a fragment of what loremasters and perfects have dubbed the Headstone of Mammon, greatest of the devil-worshipping Witch-Emperors of antiquity. And how this accursed anti-relic was broken by the Northlandic hero Søren and brought thereafter to the mainland other tales tell, and it will suffice here merely to recount how one of the four shards came into the realm of Vorstlund.

  By most accounts the fragment was discovered by a merchant, one Manfried of Wernost, returning to his homeland after a voyage of trade to the northlands. Becoming lost in the Argael Forest, he and his party of hired swords stumbled upon a secluded clearing, overgrown with choking weeds. Amidst these they found the skeletons of other warriors, their armour and weapons long rusted. It appeared that they had killed each other in battle, though strangely their apparel and equipage were similar enough to suggest they all hailed from the same region of a foreign land, perhaps Thraxia or Northalde.

  Searching the cl
earing for booty Wernost and his men are said to have come upon a shard of peculiar stone, the size of a man’s torso and covered with strange markings that seemed to catch the fading light unnaturally. If the most reliable accounts are to be believed, Manfried appears to have been unusually wise for one of his class, and sensing he had stumbled upon an artefact of unusual provenance he decided to bear it to the fortress dwelling of Alaric the Prescient, then ruler of Upper Thulia, whose thrice-cursed name still justly redounds in notoriety to this day.

  At the time, that noble was held to be a man of unusual learning; for as well as keeping a library of more than a hundred tomes it was whispered that he had, using ancient lore unknown to latter-day men, constructed an observatory in the summit of his tower, from where he would stay up late into the night scouring the firmament in search of secrets only the stars can tell.

  And upon receiving Manfried and his retinue and learning of the purpose of his visit, Alaric offered the former two hundred gold regums for his prize. Being primarily motivated by profit and perhaps secretly glad to be rid of the mysterious burden, the merchant readily agreed, and departed the following morning without further ado.

  What little is known is that Alaric installed his new possession in his observatory, from whence over the next ten years peculiar sounds were said to be heard almost nightly, and a series of malign and baleful events befell the lands around. Peasants and wayfarers frequently went missing, and werewolves and revenants were said to multiply in number, howling on moonlit nights and stalking the woodlands of that unhappy region. Rumours abounded of abductees meeting a grisly and horrible fate in the summit of Alaric’s fortress home, further evidenced by the discovery of a hecatomb of corpses in varying stages of decay in a cave overlooking a stream not two leagues from his castle.

  During this time it is said Alaric was seen less and less by his vassals; when he did appear none could miss his increased pallor and sunken eyes, and the superstitious say he began to resemble the dead more than the living.