Embers on the Wind: Sword and Sorcery, #7

Prologue

The Wizards

Theron knelt on the wooden deck of the Arasmas .

His father’s sword was in its scabbard, point to the ground, the bottom of the blade and hilt resting over his shoulder.

Your father’s sword is gone. You lost it in Dammar’s Black Cathedral, atop the banished mountain. Remember, Theron?

I remember, Theron said, and the sword became an axe. The head rested on the ground, the shaft over his shoulder.

Chayse, Theron’s beautiful, brave, and brutal sister, sat across the longboat’s deck, staring at him. She was here, alive, and he knew this was a dream. But he was deeply glad to see her, even if she was not real, just a conjuring of memories and regret.

Their eyes locked, and they smiled at each other as the same soft wind that stirred the ship’s sail caressed their hair so that their golden locks flowed like the easy waves ’neath the hull.

I love you, sister. I love you and I am sorry that I am no leader. I am sorry that I am blind, and that I am lame, Theron said, his voice deep and clear, like it used to be before the events of Brasov and the Black Cathedral.

And I love you, brother. Do not be sorry. Do not ever be sorry for the fights you fought. Do not be sorry for those you have inspired to fight alongside you. Chayse shook her head and tears welled in her eyes, then trickled down her cheeks and melted away into the sea breeze. You are not blind, Theron. You are looking in the wrong direction. You are not lame. You are climbing the wrong mountain.

Tell me, then, Theron pleaded. When had she become wiser than him? Where am I to be looking? Which mountain must I climb? I am lost, sister. I am lost. And I am weary of this waiting. I am wary of some coming war of a magnitude that I cannot comprehend. I hear its drums echoing up from the darkest halls of premonition. What is my part to be in this? What is my destiny in the coming chaos?

You know what it is. You know what you are. You are the wolf.

He heard her words through a sudden, stabbing pain in his eye. The agony toppled him forward so that he was on all fours, screaming.

You only have one eye now, remember, Theron?

Dark red blood spilled from Theron’s empty eye socket onto the deck of the Arasmas. His screaming turned to wolfish howling as invisible fire burned the wound shut.

You are the thing that culls, Chayse said. You are the creature that haunts the dark woods of worlds. You are a killer of monsters in whatever form they come, from whatever portal or pit they are spawned. You hunt them down and you take their heads. Chayse’s voice pulsed with fervor as she yelled her words over the sound of the now-growling wind and the rising waves, over the sounds of Theron and the wolf inside him howling.

Chayse got to her feet, put her arms to her sides, and tipped her face to the sky. The wind swirled and she ascended from the deck. Theron stretched his hand toward her, but she was already too far away. He recoiled as her face altered, melting and re-forming until she was Chayse no longer.

Now, she was Mother in a flowing white gown.

You take their heads, as they once tried to take yours. Remember? Remember, my son! The veins in Diana’s neck pulsed and swelled as she wailed the words.

More blood spilled onto the deck, this time from a slash freshly formed across Theron’s neck. His howling halted as he coughed and choked on his own blood. He was certain he would die, that even in this dream, even in this vision, he could afford to lose no more blood.

The prick of invisible stiches made him grit his teeth and the burn of invisible flame made him pant as unseen hands set to work repairing his sliced throat. Invisible drums set his heart to pounding and his soul to raging. He stumbled to his feet… Nay, he rose with strength and ease, once more the man he knew himself to be.

You are not the servant of the king or the peasants for whom you carry out your gruesome work. You are the servant of death, Mother said.

As she spoke, the ocean beneath the ship drained away, the Arasmas left sailing through open sky. A sky that changed color from a light blue spotted with white clouds to a sick and miasmic yellow blotched with drifting bodies of black smoke.

You are a servant of conflict, Mother roared, over the sounds of burning cities far, far below. "You are the servant of yourself! And so you shall remain until the fire takes you and you are no more than embers on the wind. Until a sun dies, and a new one rises and you hunt again." Her body grew translucent, then disappeared altogether, and her head fell tumbling back toward the deck.

Theron blinked. Mother was gone. In her place were Celta and Aldous and Ken. Butcher. The doctor. The child and her dog. Were they here in truth? This was a dream, was it not? He could not say. He felt certain of nothing.

To Theron’s left stood his man, always his left hand, Kendrick the Cold, the Dahkah now, with tattoos of black snakes running down his cheeks from the lower lids of his sharp, beady eyes. He held a curved knife that looked much like the curved tooth of some great saber-fanged beast. Ken’s left hand remained a stump, the Dahkah’s darkness dormant for the moment.

To Theron’s right was Celta, his wife, the woman he had been promised to when she was just a girl. Theron had thought himself a man then, but he had been just a boy. That boy had run away from her, broken his oaths to her. But she was here now, by his right hand, and he by her left. She held a small axe and a shield.

Across the deck from her stood a tall and lanky man, facial features sharp and intelligent, like some sinister bird.

A raven, I think. Yes, Gaige is one of Aldous’ ravens made into human flesh.

His eyes were an unnatural crimson and his hair was of the same color. In each of his hands he held a gleaming scalpel, the tools of his trade.

Beside the doctor stood the center of their adventure: Aldous Weaver, Theron’s ward, the boy Theron had saved those few years ago…those many, many years ago.

Time is relative to the space that one finds oneself in.

Aldous, who had loved Chayse. Aldous, who had been torn asunder by Dahlia the Dog Eater. Aldous, who had watched his own father burn alive, who had been locked away in a church basement when he received news of his mother’s suicide. The boy born to a twisted fate, Aldous, the young Red King.

He was a boy no longer. He was a killer of demons and a wielder of magic most terrible and magnificent. His long black hair was slicked back into a tight topknot, his shoulders wider than they had been. He smiled at Theron, a friendly smile, a brotherly smile, a loving smile. And Theron felt the muscles of his own face pull into the exact same expression.

The echo of drums punched through the yellow sky, the sound reverberating from the black sun moon that cast its shadow over this nightmare realm.

As the beat pulsed, so did that dark sphere in the sky, swelling and shrinking to the rhythm of those invisible and ethereal war drums.

Theron gripped tightened on the shaft of the long axe in his hands. He spat on the deck and looked to Aldous’ left, where stood a scarred mutant of a man. Butcher. He had his meat cleaver in hand.

Who are you, he who looks so much like a monster? He who brought us through the portal to this place? Theron had only uttered the question in his thoughts, but Butcher answered anyway.

I am but the Red King’s most trusted doorman, is all, said he, and although his already exposed teeth could not make a wider smile, a glint in his eyes indicated that he held a kind of pride in his position.

In the circle’s center was the little girl, Bruna, and her white dog. She was an orphan the group had taken in. She was clearly afraid, as was her dog, as they looked frantically between the monstrous mortals that made up her adoptive tribe. When Theron reached down and said, I am no beast, the girl whimpered, crawled backward like a crab and cried, Devil, monster…keep away!

Her little dog yapped and nipped at Theron’s hand. He pulled away and looked hopelessly to the others.

Is it even possible, I wonder, for the mighty to ever know how to nurture the meek? Again, Theron’s words were confined to his thoughts. Again, came a response to what had not been said.

The warrior’s way is not a path upon which to raise a child. And so, for better or worse, she is with us now, and like us she shall become, said the crimson-eyed doctor.

It was how my father raised me. Like a man, like a beast, and three husbands lie dead behind me on this road, Celta said in mournful agreement.

Aye, Kendrick said. But a broken, lonely lad, an orphan filled with fear and hate was I when the conscription was signed and I marched until the marsh was the sand and the fog was a dust storm, until west was east and a devil I became in a foreign land.

Pay attention! boomed a voice that did not belong to any in their group.

Theron turned and set eyes upon the man-giant, Stiggis. He had appeared from nothing, sitting now with his legs crossed and back upright against the ship’s mast in a meditative posture. His hair and beard of white gold swayed in the wind as the ship soared through open sky.

Something moved in the periphery of Theron’s vision. A white snake—

He spun.

The girl and her dog were there no longer.

Theron’s belly sank. The horror and guilt of losing the child so early in the quest nearly dropped him to his knees. But anger kept him upright, anger at the things that had taken the girl and her dog, the things that had followed through the hole in the sky.

Theron hacked through writhing white tentacles. Celta swung at a bulbous white head, an explosion of yellow gore spraying out over the lot of them. Kendrick summoned his phantom limb, the serpent arm of the Dahkah punching a hole through the creature’s squishy white chest.

The Friends of the Void, Theron said through heavy, panting breaths, chunks of white slopping off the edge of his axe and onto the deck.

They are here, said Stiggis. As he rose, a great deluge began to pour from the sky, the black sun moon turning azure blue before blinking crimson. With a flash of purple lightning, it went back to azure and back and forth, red to blue and red again. The torrential downpour put out the flames of the burning world below, and, in a manner only possible within the mad confines of a dream, the ship once again sailed over a raging, stormy sea.

The longboat rocked, and Theron spun around as white tentacles reached out from the waters and into the ship. Green-scaled claws by the scores gripped firm the rails and then heaved themselves over and onto the deck. They came, fiends of the sea: scaled Murlur with glowing yellow eyes, hulking with muscle, hopping forth on thick, froglike thighs. More of the bulbous-headed Friends mixed among the throng.

What if we never escaped Dentin? What if we still fight them there?

What if we never escaped the church when it burned in Baytown? What if you and I still lie therein? Celta asked through heavy breaths as she blocked an incoming spear thrust by one of the fish-men. She parried the blow, and her own one-handed axe sank through muscle and cracked through the green-scaled thing’s clavicle with a sound like splitting wood.

What if this is all just a dream? Aldous asked.

And what if the dream is mine? said Butcher, his cleaver sinking into a foe, sending blue and yellow blood spraying in all directions.

Lightning cracked the sky as Ken pointed his blade backward toward the ship’s mast and the one that stood before it. Worse yet, what if the dream is his?

All eyes went to Stiggis. The blue runic tattoos that covered the man-giant’s body pulsed with a blue glow along with the alternating colors of the moon.

Not his, came a voice from the sea and the sky.

Stiggis squinted and, with a glower, raised his axe high. Snow fell from its ice-enchanted tip as he pointed. Turning once more, Theron looked up to where the sea was rising before the ship, up, up, up like a monolithic tower of black water. Standing atop it, with arms outstretched and palms upright like a monk praying to the Luminescent, was a man.

Not a dream, he said. A nightmare…

More and more fiends of the sea crawled their way out of the waves and onto the Arasmas’ deck. Stiggis joined his companions in hewing down the foes, but when one fell, another slid into its place.

It is the nightmare of the one who sleeps, said the man atop the tower of water. It is that terrible terror that sits in the mind of the one who dwells so far in the fathomless deeps!

Once more, lightning tore the sky asunder. For that horrible and doomed instant, Theron saw beneath the surface of the rising tower of water. He saw the one the deeps held within, the one he had seen before in Dammar’s vision, too horrible to look upon, as tall as a mountain, a mountain of scaled flesh and cold blood, of fin and tentacle and claw, of many hydra heads and a single visage that resembled the gigantic face of a humanoid babe, with sharp fangs as tall as ancient oak trees. The dreamer of this nightmare.

It cried out, a sky-splitting, mountain-cracking call, like the whole world was folding in on itself. The sound clawed at Theron’s mind and his head felt like it would explode. He fell to his knees, and around him, his companions did the same. Blood ran from their eyes and noses and ears.

The tentacled and scaled creatures on the deck were unaffected, perhaps even spurred onward by the cataclysmic sound.

Rise! The man-giant’s mouth moved as he shouted the command, but Theron could not hear him over the call.

Theron was shoved down, monsters piling atop him. He called for Celta and Ken and Aldous. They could no more hear him than he could hear Stiggis. He could do naught but flail and fight a futile battle as all were overwhelmed, even the man-giant. All Theron’s strength and fury, all his rage and skill, were not enough, not near enough to break free.

He fought for breath.

A scaled elbow rammed into his face and pressed against his jaw, pinning his head between monster and deck. That same elbow exerted pressure until Theron’s jaw hinged open against his will. He tried to scream, to squirm, to get an inch of space, but he could not move. He could only look on in horror as the white eel slithered across the gore-spattered deck toward his pried-open mouth.

He prayed then to his mother, to Dammar, to any god or demon that could intervene. But alas, no one and nothing did as the pale white thing wormed its way in and the wizard atop the tower of the sea that was Leviathan roared.

"This is his nightmare, oh great Leviathan, and I am his light. I am the light! I am the sun in the sea. I am the Father of the Arcane Church of the Great Dark! I come from the great below, and the worlds of men shall reap what they have sown. I will take your souls. I will make you mine. I will break you all at the Tower of Aldrone!"

Part I

The King Is Dead

If these be the demon days,

I bid thee, shake hands

With your devil.

If this were the age of a golden god,

I’d bid ye, kneel

In the shallows.

Yet a sneaking suspicion

Hath bid me to feel,

The God, the Devil

They are naught

But the same fellow.

The monster in your mind,

In the chair, in the corner.

The dark, the shadow.

Silently screaming,

Eyes like embers

Burning yellow.

Chapter One

The Man-Giant’s Path

Lykke ran on all fours.

You will not question the words of Bodan’s son, Celta had said when Theron ordered Lykke to run. And so she had run.

She ran in the form of the wolf. Her tongue dangled from her mouth and her heart beat like the drums of war, pounding so hard in her chest that she thought it might burst. Her lungs swelled so large that they risked skewering on a rib.

What had she seen? What was that thing that had opened in the sky?

That demon…that demon had spawned right out of Theron’s eye.

And yet Theron lived; Bodan’s son lived.

But he was in danger, and Stiggis Halfjotun had to be warned. Therick had to be warned. There was an enemy here in this country far worse than the Brynthians.

She did stop to eat or drink; she just ran and ran until she reached Baytown. She followed Stiggis’ scent to the great hall, and only then did she return to her human form. She threw open the oaken doors and was about to yell at the nearest warrior or maiden to hurry the hells up and get the man-giant from quarters.

But to Lykke’s shock, he was already there. In the center of the hall.

It was not the sight of Stiggis, her master, that stunned her. It was whom he was with.

Thirteen Shahidi monks stood with the man-giant. Men from all races, all wearing black robes and black turbans. They looked at her, not just with the eyes she could see. She felt them watching her with eyes hidden behind the black cloth of their headdresses.

Stiggis stood with his back to her.

Stiggis! Lykke gasped for air and fell to her knees.

Lykke, Stiggis said, sounding like he was expecting her, and whatever the reason for the expectation, it wasn’t good.

I saw them disappear. Lykke got the words out between laboured breaths.

Stiggis shook his head. The drape of white-gold hair swayed on his tattooed back.

No, Lykke, you did not see a thing, Stiggis said, icy calm.

A shiver ran through Lykke, straight to her bones.

She stayed there, on her knees, as a symbol emerged upon the stone floor of the hall, a five-pointed star, as if invisible phantoms drew with thick blocks of crimson chalk. A circle appeared around the star, and then two primitively drawn wolf heads on either side. The form of a woman covered in scars appeared at the top. When the drawing was done, crimson mist swelled up from the lines.

Lykke surged to her feet and stumbled back. She was no stranger to rituals, for as a lycan in the Coven of the Fang, she had participated in many. But while she recognized this as a ritual, it was not one she knew.

Her gaze flicked around the room at the strange men who stood so close to the master she so dearly loved. She did not want to speak in front of them, but Stiggis appeared in no hurry to leave them, and her information was urgent.

Stiggis, I saw the very fabric of reality tear in the sky and pull Theron and the one you call the Red King, and Princess Celta and that whole fucking little town of Dentin, up and into it. Lykke’s words tumbled one against the next. I have failed. I have failed the others, my brothers that you sent with me to protect Theron. They too are gone from this world, their bodies left behind. They were slaughtered by creatures the like of which I have never seen. What were those things, Stiggis?

It matters not, Lykke, sweet Lykke, who has failed me. Stiggis’ calm was touched with sadness, and that sadness turned Lykke’s unease to genuine fear. Something told her to turn back into the wolf. Something told her to run from this place, to find some woods and hunt there and stay there and never again say the name Stiggis. But terror held her rooted in place.

Because all at once she understood. It wasn’t just that she had lost Theron—it was that Theron was lost, and she was not lost with him.

And whatever she had just seen, she had seen too much.

Stiggis, she whispered. I’m sorry. I saw nothing. I shall ask no questions. What is it you need me to do? Only ask.

Lykke, said Stiggis, and then he finally turned, and her fear turned to horror.

She recognized that stare, the stare he had worn so many times into battle, so many times before he killed. A steady rage, a fury, burned in his gaze, not at his victim, but at the gods themselves, a fury for his fate, a fury for his purpose, and a fury for the path from which, for whatever reason, he could never wander.

It is I who am sorry.

Don’t be sorry, Stiggis, she said. Don’t do what you feel compelled to do.

I need what is in your head. Stiggis strode toward her, his hand extended, palm open, fingers outstretched. Something rattled and clanged like a storm inside the structure on the upper floors.

Lykke glanced up, fighting every wolfish compulsion to flee, succumbing to every bit of doglike loyalty that made her stay.

The monks… They need to know what you saw.

She nodded frantically. I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them everything.

The telling is not enough. They must see for themselves.

Lykke choked on her fear. The ceiling exploded. Splinters of timber and chips of stone tile showered the hall. Stiggis’ mighty axe soared through the air into his grasp at the beckoning of magical call.

The man-giant’s massive muscles tensed as woe and sorrow fought their hardest to show themselves from behind dead, frozen eyes. The glimmering axe head came barreling down.

And Lykke closed her eyes.

Stiggis’ hand did not shake as he tossed his dear Lykke’s brain into the center of the sorcerous sigil. The brain sizzled.

There is your key. Now open my door, Stiggis said to the gathered monks. He looked at each and every one of them, his stare of disdain lingering.

Stiggis felt contempt for all of them, and they all seemed to take great joy in his disdain. But they obeyed the man-giant nonetheless, for they were bound to him. The Shahidi were to help Stiggis, and Stiggis was to support the Shahidi in keeping their seat in the Black House of the Deadmen, to help them destroy the brood of Afrit, those demon worshippers who had attacked and desecrated the already near-ruined Shahidi temple in Keldesh.

And so, the dark meditations began.

The Shahidi gathered in a circle around the sigil of crimson chalk drawn on the stone tiles of the great hall floor. In the center of the mark, the now-smouldering brain was completely subsumed in blood-red flame.

The Shahidi chanted and the sigil grew hotter still, until one of the Shahidi—it was Fitza—vomited blood, laughed for a moment, then fell over dead as a stone. He too began to burn on the sigil. His robes smoked and a small fire started. The other monks stopped chanting for a moment, and they each had a chuckle as they watched Gulgrim pull Fitza’s corpse from the circle.

That is how he wanted to go, Gulgrim said sarcastically. Digging through a wolf-bitch’s mind until the madness in it suffocated him and his lungs and heart popped. That is exactly how he wanted to go into the Great Dark.

Wolf-bitch? Stiggis let his rage pour free.

And may he die this way a thousand times! he shouted. Unoffended, the Shahidi laughed. Stiggis scowled, heart heavy. Lykke had failed to keep Theron safe. She had seen too much, and Stiggis needed every small detail of what she had seen in order for the Shahidi to replicate the portal. There had been no way for her but death. He knew that. But he didn’t have to like it. Get back to it. I don’t have all day to waste.

Give us a moment, Winter Wizard, a monk whom Stiggis did not know by name said. Or we will all end up like Fitza and the poor young wolf-woman whose brain sits burning inside the sigil.

I am anxious to get this done, Stiggis said.

The Shahidi stopped laughing at this display of honesty. They separated into small groups and partook of the hookahs and jugs of beer, mead, and wine they had brought with them. The monk who had spoken earlier offered Stiggis a goblet. He shook his head, unwilling to draw closer in either the physical or psychic manner.

As much as the Shahidi aggravated Stiggis and stirred his dislike, he could not help but be endlessly intrigued by them. In some ways, he greatly admired them, for he had been taught by the great, many-eyed monk, Allain, Dammar’s father himself. And although Stiggis had never managed to grow additional eyes, he had learned much from the monk. He had learned that a cynic, a villain, a vagabond, and a hermit could still have purpose. They could still have reason and they could still have drive. Stiggis was the vagabond and the hermit. He was the cynic and the villain. But he saw beyond the image of himself. He saw his ambition. And ambition was not a thing just of the self; it was a thing inherited from the gods.

The Shahidi formed a solitary line, and in silence each stepped forward, poured a chug of spirits onto Fitza’s corpse, and blew hookah herb smoke into his dead