The Broken God (Legends of Fyrsta Book 3)

by Sabrina Flynn

  Timothy took a hasty step forward, turning on his heel and swinging at the phantom. His blade cut through mist with a fitful swirl.

  Morigan put her back against stone, and held her ground, but the soldier was spooked. He struck and sliced at shadows. More emerged, gathering like crows over the dead. She focused, strengthening her weave. A strong wind swept from her hand, creating an orb of clarity around the two. The phantoms retreated, but did not entirely flee. They ringed the edge of her weave.

  Timothy found the foolish courage that terror brought. He charged the nearest, his blade meeting another’s. Steel clashed in the hallway like a gong. This was no phantom, but a man with wild eyes and a real blade. The man gripped his blade and stabbed upwards with a skilled half-sword thrust, catching Timothy under the arm. Timothy stiffened.

  The wild-eyed attacker wrenched his blade free and charged her. In that mad rush, Morigan recognized the man, a scribe whom she had once treated for neck pain. He was lost in his own head, and now she split that skull with a cleave of her axe. He crumpled at her feet and a phantom rose from the body.

  Morigan gripped her axe and took a calm step forward—towards the phantom whose face was more impression than substance. The shadow flashed a maniacal grin, gave her a mocking salute, and faded back into the mist.

  Keeping one eye on the restless mist, she bent to check Timothy, knowing what she would find. He wheezed, pressing a hand under his arm as blood seeped between his fingers.

  The phantom’s parting smile had been like a cat preening over a twitching mouse. And now Morigan was left with the half-dead offering. On the brink of death, she was faced with a choice: leave him and save herself, or save him and die.

  Morigan grabbed Timothy’s jerkin, and tugged. Pain rattled her bones. She gritted her teeth and dragged the whimpering man over the stone, leaving a long trail of blood to mark their path.

  The walls danced, the world flickered, and Morigan fought through the daze. Somewhere in those desperate moments, her weave unraveled, and the phantoms closed in. Leering, hungry eyes glinted with amusement. Whispers hissed against her ears.

  ‘Leave him healer. Save yourself. Leave the foolish human.’

  Morigan ignored the cowards. She had never left anyone on a battlefield, and she would die before that day came.

  Chapter Five

  A commotion snapped Brinehilde awake. Healers and recovering guards rushed to the door, ushering in a stout woman who dragged a dying soldier.

  “Heal him,” Morigan ordered.

  Leiman knelt to obey. A flurry of questions were thrown at Morigan, but she didn’t answer. She was pale and stretched, and her dark, silver-streaked hair was in disorder. That was not like her, not at all.

  Brinehilde cursed the fools, and bullied her way to the forefront. Morigan took a step, staggered, and Brinehilde caught her. The voices cut off in shock, eyes wide with panic. Morigan Freyr was a rock of order, an island of calm who never faltered and never swayed. Until now.

  A fit of coughing wracked her body. Blood came too. Brinehilde looked to the others. “Don’t bloody stand there—heal her.” But as a healer snapped to obey, Morigan pushed herself up and staggered towards a far wall. She lurched, and caught herself on a table. Vials and blades crashed onto the floor, and Brinehilde hastened to her side.

  Morigan made for a cabinet, and a novice rushed over, flinging the doors open to reveal rows of neat vials and jars. “What do you need, Mistress?”

  “The lock,” Morigan croaked, fumbling with a key around her neck. Black lines traced her veins, reaching up her neck like claws.

  The novice’s jaw unhinged. Brinehilde sliced the cord, and jammed the key into the locked cabinet door. “What’s wrong?” she asked the novice.

  “The potions in there are more likely to kill than cure.”

  Brinehilde opened the doors and looked down at her shorter kinswoman. “Well, she’s at Death’s door. It can’t bloody well hurt, can it?”

  Despite obvious pain, Morigan gave a wheezing chuckle. She reached for an incongruous vial that was in perfect line with the rest. A single rune adorned the clay. Brinehilde had no idea what the rune meant, but Nuthaanians were a stubborn bunch. She took the vial from Morigan’s clumsy fingers, and pulled out the cork, passing it back to her.

  Morigan raised it in a weak salute, and pressed the questionable substance to her lips.

  “These haven’t been tested,” the novice said. His thready words pushed the woman over. The vial shattered on the stone, and Morigan followed. Brinehilde caught her and lowered her slowly to the floor.

  Death was never pleasant. The lucky few went quietly, but most took their time reaching the end. Brinehilde knew the look of death. She knew its smell, the small twitches and convulsions, and she knew that glassy-eyed stare.

  Brinehilde would have none of it. A soft voice whispered in the back of her mind; it was like a gentle breeze. She had learned to listen to that voice. And it appeared that the Sylph wouldn’t have any of it either. Brinehilde slung Morigan over a shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” Leiman asked, rushing towards them. “Let me try.”

  Brinehilde grabbed her quarterstaff. “No time.” She barreled over the thin man, pushing to a side door. She kicked up the bar, and yanked the door open. Outside, the mist swirled, and Brinehilde plunged into its depths.

  The phantoms converged.

  Brinehilde only knew one thing about the Shadows: they couldn’t hurt her. And that was all she needed to know.

  She followed the gentle voice that whispered in the back of her mind. It guided her through the fog, around a corner, and to another door. This one, she kicked open.

  Sharp air and pine stung her nostrils. Flurries tumbled from a winter sky, blanketing the castle garden, and small dots of light zipped from the trees. With a flutter of wings, Wisps landed on Morigan, buzzing frantically. Brinehilde followed the voice to an ancient oak. Beneath its broad branches, she set her kinswoman down, where the earth was warm and the roots twisted from the ground.

  As Morigan’s breath rattled, Brinehilde placed her hand on the gnarled trunk and closed her eyes. She searched for the voice that had whispered in her mind, and when she found it, the blood in her body warmed. A spark traveled from her heart to her fingertips. The roots moved and reached, wrapping the healer in a woody cocoon. The earth opened, and the roots gently pulled Morigan into its embrace.

  Chapter Six

  A caw woke the boy. He opened his eyes, and pain stabbed at his temples. Zoshi thought about the big melons split open by the grocers. He was sure that his insides were leaking from his own melon. A blurry dark spot dominated his vision. The crow screeched, splitting his skull anew.

  With care, Zoshi sucked in a breath, and probed his head. There was a large bump, but no cracked skull. That was good. Heartened, he gingerly sat up. With every movement, ice cracked off his fur mantle. He was freezing. The stone at his back was coated in ice. Hoping that he wouldn’t stick to the pillar, he leaned against it for support.

  A dusting of snow covered the floor; and yet, the mist still lingered. Wasn’t it too cold for fog? Tendrils of mist seemed to sniff at the floor between columns, and weaving in and out of sight were other shadows. Phantoms. Zoshi had the sudden feeling that he was an ant in a Forsaken graveyard.

  Crumpet stretched his wings. Odd, the bird was no longer wounded. Using the pillar for support, Zoshi climbed to his feet. He was sore and cold, but he’d been colder. The crow hopped from the ground to his shoulder, and Zoshi winced, waiting for the prick of talons, but they never came. The bird gently gripped his perch.

  “I can’t see anything,” he whispered to his companion. As if in answer, the fog parted, opening a pathway through the gloom.

  Crumpet made a clicking noise, and the boy hushed the bird. There were things in this fog. But where was he? His last memory was fuzzy. The evil man in crimson had stood in the black room, and then the stone had rippled.

  Nothing ma
de much sense, but then a crow that used to be a mammoth was perched on his shoulder, so Zoshi decided that reason didn’t have much use in the Wise One’s castle.

  His fingers brushed a face, and he jerked away, spinning to look at the twisted visage. There were stone faces on the pillars—that’s all it was, not a dead man’s frozen skull.

  Zoshi had spent years gazing at the Spine from afar, imagining what life in the mythic castle would be like. He had imagined mountains of sweets, flying carpets, warm hearths, and water that bubbled from runes to fill baths. It had seemed as blissful as the clerics made the ol’River sound. But this wasn’t anything like his dreams; instead, this place reminded him of the pit where the men had slaughtered his brothers.

  Dreading what new horrors he would find, he shuffled forward, following the path that cut through the fog. The soft layer of snow turned to ice under his boots and a twining shape materialized. The gate. He touched the iced-over metal and quickly snatched back his hand. It nearly burned. And then he remembered the ice monster. That had to be what caused this cold. After he had been rescued from the dungeon, he had heard the thin old woman chanting beneath the ground. Morigan had said she was binding the monster to a jar.

  Zoshi didn’t know how you could put a blizzard in a jar, but then he wasn’t a Wise One. However Thira had done it, he supposed the monster had gotten loose again, and that meant that it was probably on the other side of the gate.

  Ever cautious, the boy turned away to look for another exit, but the crow cawed right in his ear. Zoshi clenched his teeth at the racket. “Shush!” he hissed.

  The crow cocked his head. Daft fool, he said, and flapped to the floor, tapping his beak on the icy gate.

  “You sure?” Zoshi whispered.

  In answer, the crow hopped between the twining vines in the gate. Maybe the crow knew something he didn’t. That seemed a reasonable thought, considering Crumpet’s mistress was a Wise One. As choices went, wandering around a giant, creepy, fog-filled throne room didn’t sound much better.

  Zoshi pushed at the gate, but it didn’t move. No matter, he was small, and no one made gates with children in mind. He unslung the sack that Morigan had packed for him in the manor, blew out a breath, and squeezed through a crack in the ice, right through the gap between vines. When he was safely on the other side, he reached back through and grabbed his supplies.

  He climbed to his feet and studied the room. Ice covered the black stone, making it cold and the room even darker. Someone had closed the large solid gates, and then something else had destroyed them. One half remained, and the rest of the giant doorway was covered with a strange blue light. It reminded him of a net with tattered patches and holes.

  Zoshi scurried over the slippery surface and, keeping well away from the shimmering blue lines, he peeked through the hanging gate of icicles. A slab of metal lay on the ground, and lots of ice-coated rubble. It hurt to breathe, and he buried his nose behind his fur covering.

  The hound statues that had stood guard beside the gates were gone. Confused, Zoshi looked to the rest of the room, and his breath caught. He saw a hound-statue, only it no longer sat. It was frozen in mid-stride. He wrinkled his nose in puzzlement, and caught sight of another piece—a stone eye coated with ice. At least one statue had been cracked into bits.

  As he studied the frozen palace, something creaked and rasped, like a great, slow breath. Zoshi ducked back away from his icy window. If it was cold enough to crack a metal gate, cold enough to freeze stone statues, then the boy didn’t stand a chance.

  As if Crumpet had sensed his thoughts, the crow flapped to a wall. Beady black eyes narrowed—waiting. Zoshi obliged, chattering his way over to the bird.

  Zoshi was no hero, not like in the legends. He was sure of that. A hero did not fail, and he had done that plenty. He had not saved his brothers; he had not saved Morigan; and all he wanted to do right now was run away. He wanted that so badly that tears pricked his eyes, but he blinked them away because they would have frozen on his cheeks.

  When Zoshi stopped in front of the black wall, the crow tapped its beak on the ice, and then looked at him expectantly. “Is there another way out?” Zoshi asked.

  Crumpet grated out a yes, and knocked on the ice again, insistent. The boy tapped his own knuckles against the cold surface. It split his skin. A few drops of bright blood spattered on his boot.

  The crow glared.

  A thought occurred to the boy. Maybe there was a secret door behind the ice. A castle like this must have more secrets than were good for it. Zoshi rummaged through his pillaged sack. When his knife didn’t turn up, he remembered he had thrust it in a pocket. There were lots of pockets in the fur mantle. He liked the garment very much.

  Blade in hand, Zoshi drove the tip against the ice. It chipped. Encouraged, he kept at it, and the bird gave a trill of approval. The work was noisy and rhythmic and sure to draw attention, so the boy worked faster.

  The ground quaked, and the air turned so cold it burned. Crumpet clawed his way up Zoshi’s clothes, wings stiff with frost. Soon, the boy couldn’t feel his fingers or toes, but he didn’t dare turn; the ice monster was coming. Chip, chip chip, and finally a smack. The blade hit solid stone, black and harder than any sheet of ice. Worse, there was no door.

  A giant icicle shook loose, shattering on the floor. Bits of ice swirled in the frigid air, making it too painful to breathe. Desperate, Zoshi pushed at the obsidian stone, and it swallowed him whole. He fell right through, tumbling into pitch black. A hiss and a flap of wings fluttered at his ears. The crow’s weight left his shoulder, and as Zoshi bounced and tumbled in darkness, he envied that bird. Crumpet had wings; he did not.

  Chapter Seven

  Rivan sat against the bulkhead, half-dozing in the heat. The small cabin was stuffy, and sweat trickled down the back of his neck. He yawned, shook himself, and focused on his charge—a man who had lived through the Shattering, some two thousand years ago. Currently, Marsais was sweating out a bottle (or three) of rum, and looked more like a pirate than the former Archlord of the Isle of Wise Ones.

  Marsais both scared and fascinated Rivan. The man was a relic from another age: The Era of Blight, a time only seen in fragments of stone and at the end of dates in tattered tomes. And apparently this man was also the Trickster—the man who had challenged the Sea God. The tale was told to every Mearcentian child.

  There had been a name with the legend, but his mother’s voice was distant. It drifted further away every year, until he had forgotten her face. That had been a little over a decade ago. What would two thousand years do to a man’s memory?

  The thought made his head hurt. Rivan remembered feeling loved and safe sitting in front of a hearth. That fire had kept everything at bay—until the Fomorri came. Memories of the savages filled his mind: howls, claws, and grotesque misshapen forms charging from the night.

  He shivered. A part of him had hoped that the storm would take the ship before they set foot on Fomorri soil. It would be better to die now than fall into Fomorri hands.

  In the creaking quiet, Rivan studied the ancient. Marsais was all lean muscle and bone—a king, a warrior, a madman, seer, and legend. And an associate of fiends.

  Marsais groaned, rolled to the side, and retched into a bucket. Bruises from the sea-creature’s attack mingled with a twisted, puckered maze of old whip scars on his back. Were those the marks of a criminal or slave?

  Marsais dragged a hand across his lips and squinted at the paladin. His grey eyes were like steel, piercing flesh and bone. Rivan stiffened, sitting straight as a board.

  “By the gods,” Marsais groaned. He put a hand over his eyes. “One never gets used to overindulgence—or a stout cudgel.” He rubbed the lump on his head. Rivan watched the seer’s long fingers as he massaged his temple. Even hungover, the man carried himself with a confidence and elegance that Rivan could not ignore. He could watch the man all day long.

  “Where am I?”

  Rivan cleared his throa
t, heat rising to his cheeks, wondering if the seer had divined his thoughts. “The Mearcentian cutter—the Squall. We are sailing to Fomorri.”

  Marsais sighed. “Is Oen all right?”

  “Yes.”

  Marsais blew out a long breath. “When Oen overindulges, he destroys a tavern. When I drink, I...” the man trailed off, his voice full of grit. He waved a hand, a careless gesture that brought to mind the wind.

  It seemed like the sentence wanted finishing so Rivan filled the lapse in memory. “You tell the sea god to go plow himself?”

  Marsais paused, he lifted his hand enough to crack a steely eye at the paladin, pinning Rivan to the bulkhead. “Did I say that?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Marsais began to tremble, and a second later, coarse laughter wheezed from his cracked lips. Laughter turned to tears and a fit of coughing, and he sat up, reaching for a waterskin. He drank long and deep, his Adam’s apple bobbing with every gulp. When he was through, he wiped the tears from his eyes, and let his head fall back against the bulkhead.

  Rivan was torn between comforting the seer, and fleeing. Indecision saved him from making a choice.

  “Can you fetch that parrot of yours?”

  Rivan felt the blood drain from his cheeks. “The parrot?”

  “Yes—the brilliant red parrot that lives on this ship.”

  Rivan stared at him. “There’s fruit and bread and cheese...” he trailed off as Marsais frowned.

  “I don’t intend to roast the bird.”

  “Oenghus has been threatening to eat it,” Rivan explained.

  Marsais looked at the overhead and muttered something rude. In a clearer voice, he repeated, “I am not going to eat the parrot.”

  “What do you want with it?” Rivan asked, slowly.