The Shadow King Read online

  “Ageran’s black hammer!” Kjartan suddenly bellowed, and Algeirr turned to see the huge Stag thane looming over the aged skald. He had left his tined helm in the chamber above, and Kjartan’s long red braids swung as he furiously shook his head. “Tell the whelp to keep his hands to himself!”

  The boy’s eyes, round and white and terrified, peered from behind Onndar.

  “Th-the b-b-b – child – w-will be more c-c-care—” the skald began, but before he could finish, Kjartan waved him silent and rounded on Agmandur, his disgust plain.

  “How did your father stomach this one? I’d have torn his tongue out years ago!”

  The Young Bear shrugged, and then he said, grinning faintly, “He sings beautifully.”

  Kjartan muttered something unintelligible, and Algeirr turned away so the thane would not see his own smile.

  They continued on, the Stag thane grumbling to himself, down a steep flight of stairs and past wall sconces carved into the faces of leering demons, the passage swelling until they could all comfortably walk upright. Algeirr heard the trickle of running water, and once something scurried over his boot, disappearing before he could see it clearly. Soon after, Hert stumbled and then had to lean upon Ferrin so he would not fall behind. The Wolf thane had taken an arrow between his shoulders earlier, and now his breathing rasped loud and wet. They all knew that the Nightfather waited in the shadows for him, but Hert’s face was grim and determined. A true Skein, the old Wolf. He would have been the perfect choice to take up the crown; Algeirr worried that none of the other thanes could claim the Frostlands without further bloodshed.

  A blue glow arose at the far edge of his fading torchlight. Almost there. He had returned to the place of his nightmares, with the greatest champions of his people behind him, and yet his heart did not swell with joy and righteous anger. Fear. He felt fear again, as he had the first time he followed Gunmunder down into this abyss to gaze upon the abomination hanging cold and blue in its prison of ice. He remembered the dread wonder thrumming in his veins . . . three years had passed since that cursed day, yet the memory was fresh and immediate, while the intervening seasons seemed lost in mist. Endless days trudging between halls, pleading and cajoling and threatening the thanes so that an alliance could be forged to save the old ways, before the demon they had discovered here in the bowels of Nes Vaneth could devour the very gods themselves.

  The glow strengthened, until Algeirr cast aside his guttering torch and rounded on the Skein following him. Blue light limned their armor and weapons and gave their faces the pallid color of frozen corpses. They watched him expectantly.

  “Three years ago,” Algeirr began, reaching for the voice of his god, the crash and rumble of Ageran the Stormforger, “Gunmunder brought the priests of our clan to this place and demanded that they cast aside the gods and embrace his mad new faith. Instead, each repudiated him, and in return the Raven King collected their heads with his sword, soaking the ice with their blood in an attempt to wake that which slumbered. Only I was spared, despite my own refusal.” Algeirr let his eyes linger on each of the faces before him. “Now I have returned, the old gods are triumphant, and the final blow is poised to fall. Let us strike quickly and mercilessly.”

  Muttered assent followed as he turned again to the glow creeping from around the bend in the passage before them. He moved forward, and was swallowed by the light.

  They stood at the entrance to a vast chamber filled with stone statues carved with the same exacting detail as above in the Bhalavan, except here they writhed in contorted agony, shielding their faces, knees buckling as if confronted by some blinding horror. Tiered stone steps climbed the space before them, and upon the final dais a massive wall of ice rose, seamless and gleaming. The light that filled the chamber emanated from the ice itself, flickering like a flame without heat, casting shadows that coiled and danced across the stricken figures.

  And there he was. The Gray King, Gunmunder, standing tall and crooked upon the final step, a black stone set into the roiling blue light of the ice behind him. He leaned upon the storied runesword Kalikurvan of the Raven thanes, much of the blade’s silvery length lost behind his great beard. The king’s head was bowed, as if he slept. The curved talons of the black-bone crown glittered, clawing the air.

  A few steps below him sat Horth Wraithsbane, the last of the Jugurtha, a notched bastard sword set across his lap. The massive warrior scowled when he recognized Algeirr, glancing up at his king. The old priest felt a trickle of apprehension. Here was the greatest champion of the Raven, famed across the Frostlands. As a boy, Horth had been part of a hunting party that lost its way in a blinding snowstorm and was set upon by a pack of wraiths. One by one his clansmen had died, until only he remained. But as the shadows closed on him, they found not hot blood and soft flesh but the hard kiss of steel. After his sword had snapped in the bitter cold he slew the final wraith – a great bull with flaming red eyes and blue talons – by plunging his hunting knife into its breast as it hugged him close and crooned its dark song.

  “Brother,” rasped the old king, raising his head.

  Cold dread closed around Algeirr’s heart. Blood trickled from the sunken pits where once Gunmunder’s eyes had been, following dried black paths that veined his cheeks.

  “You have returned to us.”

  Algeirr tried to keep the tremors from his voice. “Yes, Brother. As I said I would. But how can you see me? What have you done?”

  Gunmunder’s answering chuckle was bone-dry. “I see far more, Brother, than I ever did. Before, it was only in my dreams that I could glimpse the glory of this place – now, it surrounds me always.”

  “Madness,” hissed Kjartan.

  “Madness,” repeated Gunmunder, though Algeirr did not know how he had heard the Stag thane, “is the refuge we crawled into after the light failed and the darkness came swirling down.” The Gray King’s voice echoed in the vast chamber. Down, down, down . . .

  “Like a corpse upon the bier we placed coins over our own eyes, hoping that this would be enough to pay our passage through the Night and into the Dawn.” Gunmunder made a plucking motion over his empty sockets. “I was the first to glimpse the light around the edges of our blindness, but I will not be the last. My awakening came too early, perhaps, but in time you all will see what I have seen.”

  “And what do you see?” Hert asked.

  Gunmunder lifted his head higher at the Wolf thane’s question. “The world as it was, and what it could be again.”

  Algeirr remembered the first breathless descriptions Gunmunder had given when he had finally awoken from his long fever dreams. Avenues of shining white stone strode by men in lacquered masks, the living city answering to their world-cracking voices. Beautiful maids sailing upon the wind with butterfly wings. The towers whole and unbroken, wrapped by vines studded with bright blossoms. Nes Vaneth’s vanished glory, reverberating through the ages.

  A lure with honey-sweet promises. What man, squatting in furs and iron among the ruins of such ancient grandeur, would not be tempted to trade away his soul for a taste of what had come before?

  “Enough of your babbling,” Hroi said, shouldering his way to stand before the Skein. “We who live in the shadow of the Worm have glimpsed the past as well, yet we know it is dead and rotted, and we do not yearn to return it to shambling life.” Night’s Kiss fairly crackled, a shimmering haze surrounding the sword’s strange metal. Hroi laughed and cut the air with the blade. “She’s hungering for your blood, my king. She smells the stink of Min-Ceruthan sorcery upon you.”

  Horth rose ponderously to his towering height, taking up his own sword, and slowly began to descend.

  As if an unspoken agreement had passed between them, the two Skein heroes rushed each other, Hroi bounding up the cracked stone steps, silent as a hunting wraith, while Horth barreled towards him bellowing a war cry.

  The Raven champion chopp
ed down with his sword but Hroi caught the blow with Night’s Kiss, and with a terrible shrieking sound Horth’s blade shattered, fragments spinning away into the gloom. The huge warrior’s momentum carried him hurtling down the steps and the White Worm thane twisted away to avoid him, lashing out as he tumbled past, his sword biting deep. Without a sound, the last of the Jugurtha crumpled at the base of the steps, his face a bloody ruin.

  Shocked silence, and then the Gray King spoke. “Is this what you want?” cried Gunmunder, holding aloft the black-bone crown. “Take it, then,” he finished, and flung it toward the thanes. The crown rang sharply upon the stone floor, but did not shatter, and came to rest at the feet of the Young Bear. The thanes converged on him, all speaking at once. Hroi hurried down the steps and pushed into their midst, jostling for space.

  Above them, Gunmunder slowly turned away and moved towards the glistening blue wall. Algeirr abandoned the thanes to their argument and climbed the steps as fast as his old legs would allow, until he stood panting upon the final dais. The ice loomed over him, alive with dancing blue flames, and he glimpsed shapes recessed deep within, some man-like, others not. Coldness radiated from the wall like heat from a fire, stinging his exposed flesh. The Raven king seemed not to notice the chill, his bare hand touching the ice and his head lowered as if in prayer. Algeirr approached him, the soft scuffing of his boots lost beneath the heated babble of voices from below.

  Yet Gunmunder still heard. He spoke without turning from the wall. “Kill me, Brother. Send me to her arms.”

  It was then that Algeirr noticed the shape hanging within the ice, just beyond where Gunmunder’s fingers touched the slick surface. A babe’s blue-tinged body, its eyes closed and tiny mouth open.

  Revulsion filled Algeirr. He remembered the steaming blood of old Berand Godsinger splashed upon the ice, Gunmunder imploring the child to wake as he stood over the headless corpses of the Raven priests. The madness of that day still haunted his dreams.

  “I thought by now you would have cut into the ice,” Algeirr said, drawing forth his dagger.

  Gunmunder leaned forward, resting his forehead against the wall. “I could not,” he said softly.

  Algeirr nodded. He understood his brother. What if the babe was nothing but cold, dead flesh? Algeirr stepped forward, poised to slip his dagger between the gaps in his brother’s armor, but Gunmunder stilled him with a word.

  “No,” he murmured, thrusting out his sword’s hilt. “Use Kalikurvan. I would die by the sword of my ancestors, wielded by my closest kin. It is a fitting death.”

  Algeirr’s gnarled fingers closed around the runesword’s hilt, smooth metal carved into a falcon’s likeness, its outstretched wings the crosspiece. Shimmering runes were incised down the blade’s silvery length. How many years since his father had let him touch this sword? He remembered that day, his older brother boasting to him that eventually he would wield Kalikurvan and rule all the Frostlands, and then his father’s indulgent laughter filling the Bhalavan. A lifetime past.

  He lifted the blade and brought it down upon his brother’s bowed neck. The spell-forged steel passed through flesh and bone without the slightest hesitation. Algeirr closed his eyes, not wanting to see Gunmunder’s corpse slide to the floor and the gouts of blood that would flow across the stone. He felt no joy, only a sense of closure, and a great weight being lifted. He could turn the blade on himself now if he so chose, end the line of Vesteinn Croweater and join his ancestors in their eternal feasting upon the Stormforger’s high benches. His grip upon the sword’s hilt tightened. He imagined the cold point sliding through his belly, bringing release and freedom from the tragedies of this world, his limbs slackening in the Nightfather’s comforting embrace.

  No. There was still something he must do.

  Exhaustion washed over him as he opened his eyes. Algeirr stepped over his brother’s corpse and faced the thing hanging in the wall. He raised Kalikurvan and smashed the runesword’s pommel against the ice. Cracks webbed the surface, shards falling away . . . again and again he struck, gouging chunks from the wall until one tiny foot extended into the chamber. Carefully, he scraped more of the ice away, marveling at the softness of the babe’s flesh despite its centuries of imprisonment. Finally, the child slid free into his arms, cold and blue and dead.

  Algeirr brushed closed the babe’s purple lips. It had been a girl, he could now tell. All the terror, all the tragedy had come from this, and yet really it was just a small dead thing, some innocent victim of eons-old sorcery. What madness, Algeirr thought, clutching the tiny corpse to his chest.

  And it moved.

  He nearly dropped it when he felt its leg twitch, and before he could dismiss it as some trick of his tired mind, the babe drew in a shuddering breath and wailed. Tiny fingers groped for him, tangled in his beard. Pale blue eyes opened and found his own. Impossible.

  His first instinct was to swaddle it in furs, to shelter this spark of life in the desolate frozen hall, but his mind screamed at him to dash the babe against the ice. Demon! Algeirr raised the squirming body, his arms trembling.

  But then he knew. He felt the god’s voice, gentling his soul, purging him of his hate and fear. The whispers boomed within him. Twice before, Ageran had spoken to him: once when he had been a boy crouched over his first steaming kill, telling him that he had been chosen to take up the hammer and drink of the blessed mead; and the other time in this very chamber, as the blood of his fellow priests coursed along the cracks threading the ancient stone floor, revealing what he must do, the hard path he must follow. And now it came again, showing him the way forward, like a lightning strike on a moonless night.

  Algeirr lowered the babe, cradling it in the crook of his arm as he turned from the wall. Below, the knot of arguing Skein quieted as he descended the stairs, the silence broken by the shriek of the runesword’s tip scraping stone.

  Onndar the skald was the first to speak. “He-he’s d-d-dead, then?”

  The thanes shrank away as he reached the final step – all except Hroi, who actually leaned forward to better see the unnatural child he held.

  “My brother is dead,” Algeirr said, shielding the babe from the gaze of the White Worm thane.

  “And what will you do with that?” Hert hissed through teeth gritted with pain.

  “The Stormforger has told me.” Algeirr strode across the chamber and laid Kalikurvan across the outstretched arms of a cowering stone maiden. “I will leave you thanes to choose a new king to rule in Nes Vaneth. Where I go, I must go alone. Do not follow me. And never speak of this day, nor of what was drawn from the ice.”

  “Algeirr—” Ferrin began, but the old priest held up a hand to silence him.

  “Swear on your clan’s heartsblood, lest the Nightfather’s shadow darken your hall.”

  Algeirr waited until he heard mumbled promises from all the thanes and the ancient skald, and then with a final, lingering look upon the dread chamber, he carried the ice-child into the twisting passage that led upward, to Nes Vaneth and daylight.

  She moved among the dead in a chamber of ice. The corpses watched her with frost-rimed eyes, traceries of blue veins sunk beneath their pale skin. Some of the dead were clad in ancient, ornate armor, runes carved into black-metal cuirasses, while others wore the tattered remnants of once-fine dresses, tarnished silver torcs and bracelets hanging loose around their withered limbs. Many had raised their arms, as if in an attempt to ward away the doom that had come swirling down from above.

  Cho Lin found herself at the base of the tiered dais that dominated the vast, silent hall. She began to climb the steps, and the scrape of her slippers on the stone sounded unnaturally loud. Before her loomed the wall of ice, its depths illuminated by a cold blue light. She shivered, her lungs burning with every gasping breath she took of the frozen air. Cho Lin glanced down, and was surprised to find that she wore only the red tunic and black breeches of an appre
ntice daisun monk. How foolish, to journey into the far north dressed like this. Her father would have chastised her.

  Cho Lin reached the top of the dais. Shapes roiled deep within the ice, blooming and then wilting. She concentrated, trying to discern their true nature, but the effort only left her dizzy, and she had to put her hand on the surface of the ice to steady herself. The wall was not seamless – a hole had been crudely hacked at about eye level, and gleaming shards were scattered on the floor. There had been a babe here once, she had been told, placed within the ice long ago to protect it as the sorcery of the Star Towers had consumed the holdfasts. Cho Lin approached the wall. Who had drawn the babe from its prison? Had it survived, as the Skein king had claimed?

  Wait – there was a tiny body inside, entombed deep within the wall. She could see a pale blue arm, its small fingers curled into a fist. Her heart hammering, Cho Lin reached inside the hole, until her shoulder bumped against the wall. The tips of her fingers brushed the babe’s hand, and the prickling coldness almost made her recoil.

  But she did not, and beneath her touch she felt the child twitch. Its small hand clutched at her finger.

  Pain.

  Cho Lin screamed, trying to withdraw her arm, but it was held fast. Her other hand pushed frantically against the surface of the wall; the thing inside was too strong, though, and she was pulled forward, her body ground into the ice. She felt a pop as her shoulder slipped from its socket. The agony was unbearable; it was going to rip off her arm. Sobbing, her legs collapsed, yet she did not fall; the unnatural strength of the thing within the ice kept her upright.

  She fought against the blackness that threatened to carry her away. Sharp, stabbing pain enveloped her wrist. She struggled to understand what was happening, her mind unable to accept the horror. Her hand . . . her hand was thrust down the throat of the babe – its mouth had grown, its jaw distending like a snake as it began to swallow her. Cho Lin moaned as the needle-sharp teeth crept up her arm. Where they had passed, she felt nothing.