Frostborn: The World Gate (2 page)

So she ignored the dark magic and instead worked a spell of earth magic.

She gestured with her free hand, and the ground rippled and folded, looking almost like a banner snapping in a brisk wind. The wave surged beneath the boots of the charging arachar and sent them sprawling. Morigna worked another spell, calling upon the earth to rise and fill the air with poison. A ball of white mist shimmered into existence over the stunned arachar, roiling as if it contained a miniature storm. Morigna gestured, and the ball of mist rolled over the head of the nearest arachar. 

There was a hideous, sizzling hiss, and the arachar shrieked as the acidic mist chewed into his flesh, melting the skin and muscle from his head. Morigna gestured again, and the ball of mist soared from the dying arachar and towards his two companions. Both arachar snarled in fury and scrambled to their feet, getting away from the mist, and Morigna lost the spell, the mist unraveling. The orcish warriors caught their balance and charged at her again, swords drawn back to strike. 

Morigna swept her staff before her, focusing her will and her magic through the wood. The symbols she had carved into the staff’s length pulsed with purple fire, and her will reached into the ground beneath her boots, commanding the roots to obey. The roots uncoiled from the ground like the writhing tentacles of some great sea beast, and wrapped around the legs and arms of the remaining two arachar. The roots would not hold them for long, not with their enhanced strength, but they slowed the orcs long enough for Morigna to cast another spell. 

Again the white acidic mist rolled over the arachar warriors, the skin of their faces bubbling and hissing. The mist flowed into their nostrils, killing them. 

Their precious spider-scars had not saved them.

Morigna watched them die without the slightest flicker of pity. They would have killed her, if given the chance. Or they would have taken her for their urdmordar to devour. Or they might have killed Ridmark, and anyone who lifted their hands against her or Ridmark deserved whatever harm she could inflict upon them. 

Thinking of Ridmark snapped her head around, and she sought him as she summoned more magical power. A half-dozen dead arachar warriors littered the ground, and Ridmark fought two remaining arachar swordsmen, the black staff a blur in his hands. Morigna started to bend her will towards his opponents, but it was hardly necessary. The arachar were skilled and fierce, and the urdmordar poison in their veins made them stronger and faster than Ridmark.

He was just better than them. 

His staff snapped right and left, parrying the thrusts of the arachar swords, and he spun the weapon, the end catching the nearest arachar in the face. The orc’s head snapped back with an agonized roar, and Ridmark crushed his throat with a two-handed swing of the staff. The surviving arachar attacked, and Ridmark parried and shoved, knocking the arachar warrior off-balance. Before the orc recovered, the staff licked out, breaking his kneecap, and the arachar fell with a howl of pain. 

Ridmark brought the staff down on arachar’s head, ending the fight.

Morigna looked back and forth, casting another spell of earth magic. With the spell, she sensed the pressure of those standing upon the ground, allowing her to detect any enemies. She felt the corpses lying upon the earth, still and motionless as their blood seeped into the dirt. Yet save for Ridmark, she sensed no one else nearby. 

They had won the battle.

Ridmark took a deep breath as he lowered his staff with his right hand, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his left hand. 

Morigna retrieved her bow, slung her staff over her shoulder, and hurried to join him. 

###

It took a moment for Ridmark to pull his mind from the focus of battle, to turn his attention from the next few moments. In the heat of combat, his fears for the future faded away, replaced by the demands of survival… 

“Ridmark,” said a woman’s voice, low and quiet. 

Morigna stood a few paces away, staring at him with her deep black eyes. Ridmark rebuked himself for his moment of inattention. He had lost Aelia to Mhalek’s dark magic because he had failed to defend her. He had no wish to repeat that experience with Morigna. 

Of course, he had never gone into battle with Aelia at his side, either. 

That was an entirely different sort of fear. Ten years ago, as a new Knight of the Order of the Soulblade, the thought of going into battle alongside a woman had been so alien that it had never even occurred to him. Aelia had possessed a great strength of character, but in Andomhaim women did not fight save at the most desperate need. 

Ridmark pushed aside the musings. Now was not the time for them.

“You’re not hurt?” said Ridmark. 

“I am not,” said Morigna. She spoke Latin with a peculiar sort of archaic stateliness, a legacy of her malevolent teacher. “You were the one in the thick of the fighting.” Her eyes flicked over him. “Are you hurt?”

Ridmark shook his head. “No. I don’t think they expected to find us. Humans are rare in this part of the Wilderland.”

Morigna glanced at the mummified corpses hanging overhead. “One cannot imagine why.”

“They assumed us to be easy prey,” said Ridmark. 

“You taught them otherwise,” said Morigna, something flashing in her dark eyes. 

She reached up with her free hand, pulled his face close, and gave him a hard kiss upon the lips. A victorious battle always seemed to arouse her, and Ridmark felt himself responding in kind. Had they been anywhere else, he might have taken her then and there. But they were surrounded by the corpses of their slain foes, and the dead orcs’ surviving companions concerned him far more. Their living companions…and the creature they worshipped as a goddess. 

“We had best go,” said Ridmark when they broke apart. “We might encounter another band of arachar, and we must warn the others.”

“Practical as ever,” said Morigna. “Lead the way.”

Ridmark nodded, lifted his staff, and hurried into the web-mantled trees, Morigna keeping close pace after him.

###

Calliande of Tarlion, the Keeper of Andomhaim, stood at the edge of the ruined ring fort and gazed into the web-choked forest. Her left hand gripped the staff of the Keeper, the wood worn smooth by the grasp of hundreds of Keepers before her. Calliande had been parted from that staff for over two hundred years, yet it felt as if she had only let it go yesterday. 

She felt as if she had gone into the long sleep below the Tower of Vigilance only yesterday…but over two centuries had passed. 

Two centuries, but her purpose had not wavered. 

“What is it?” said a soft, quite voice. 

Calliande turned her head. A short woman stepped to her side, pale and thin with enormous green eyes and pale blond hair than hung loose around her sharp face. From time to time the cold wind coming down from the mountains stirred her hair, revealing the elven points of her ears. She wore armor of dark elven steel, and seemed delicate, almost fragile. Yet Calliande had seen Mara carve her way through the midst of a furious battle, the dark power in her blood allowing her to disappear and reappear a dozen yards away, her face calm and detached as she wielded her short sword with surgical precision. 

“Nothing,” said Calliande, looking back at the forest. “They haven’t returned yet. And to the Sight…”

“Dark magic,” said Mara. 

Calliande nodded. The Sight had returned to her into Dragonfall, the vision that beheld the flows of magic around her. To her Sight a faint cloud of dark magic saturated the web-choked forest like fumes rising from the furnace of a blacksmith. A thing of tremendous dark magic dwelled nearby, a creature of great power. 

Calliande had seen such an aura centuries ago.

“An urdmordar,” she said. “Old and strong and deadly, grown fat from the lives of countless victims.” 

“Then you have faced an urdmordar before?” said Mara. 

“Yes,” said Calliande. “Long ago, as Keeper, not far from where we are now standing. And more recently at Urd Arowyn, but I was not as strong back then.” 

“That is not what is troubling you,” said Mara.

Calliande looked at the shorter woman. “Given that we may soon face an urdmordar and her minions, any rational person would be troubled.” 

“But you’ve already faced an urdmordar and been victorious,” said Mara. “Ridmark has faced an urdmordar and triumphed, and he had neither a soulblade nor the power of the Keeper at the time.”

“Twice,” said Calliande. “He actually overcame an urdmordar twice. He was still a Swordbearer the first time.” 

“So between the two of you, you’ve defeated the three urdmordar,” said Mara. “Dangerous as they are, you’ve still faced them before. Something else troubles you.” 

Calliande sighed, shook her head, and laughed a little. “Are you always so perceptive?”

Mara said nothing, her expression placid. 

“I thought,” said Calliande at last, “that when I recovered my memory, when I learned who I really was, that I would know what to do.”

“You do,” said Mara. “We will find Shadowbearer, kill him, and stop him from opening the gate to the world of the Frostborn.”

“True,” said Calliande. “I did not think I would face…such doubts about my proper course. I know what I must do. I am uncertain how to do it. Or if I am even strong enough to do it.” 

Mara shrugged. “We all have doubts.” She shook her head. “If we live through this, I shall find myself the Queen of Nightmane Forest, with an army of orcs who think I am the heir of their dead god.” 

“Aye,” said Calliande. “A grave responsibility. Have you given any thought to what you shall do if we are victorious?”

“I have not,” said Mara. “I suppose I should ask them all to be baptized, so they no longer revere my dead father as their god. The Traveler kept armories of dark artifacts in Nightmane Forest, to say nothing of his creatures and his slaves. All that shall have to be undone.” She shook her head. “It would be the work of a lifetime.”

“Worthy work, though,” said Calliande. 

“I think so,” said Mara. She smiled at that. “I was an assassin and my husband was a thief. I do not think we knew what worthy work really was until we met you and the Gray Knight. Though your task is heavier than mine. Shadowbearer would destroy Nightmane Forest, and everything else alongside with it.”

“Aye,” said Calliande in a quiet voice. She reached for her Sight and cast it over the forest again, seeking for Ridmark. She could not find him, but that did not mean that he was dead. As the Keeper, she possessed the power of the Sight to far greater degree than either Mara or Antenora, but the Sight itself was wild and capricious. Sometimes she could reliably view far-off events, or see into the past or even the future.

Sometimes she could not. 

Likely the shroud of dark magic that hung over the forest had something to do with it. If she could have avoided it, Calliande would not have traveled through this part of the Wilderland. The urdmordar ruled here, worshipped by tribes of fanatical arachar and preying upon anyone who came within their grasp. Of course, it was not as if Calliande had been given any choice. Had they fled Khald Azalar through the Gate of the West, they would have run into Shadowbearer and his army of Mhorite orcs. 

So instead they had fled through the Gate of the East, and found themselves in the upper Wilderland, in the forests surrounding the northern River Moradel. Now it was a race to see whether they could reach the Black Mountain before Shadowbearer. So long as Shadowbearer held the empty soulstone, he could not travel through magic and had to make his way upon foot. Shadowbearer also had an army, and Calliande and Ridmark and the others could travel quickly. Though if the urdmordar ate them, their advantages in speed would not matter at all…

She laughed a little at herself. They could do nothing until Ridmark and Morigna returned from scouting.

“What is it?” said Mara.

“I am still fretting over things I cannot control,” said Calliande. “It seems to be a failing of mine, both in the past and in the present.”

Mara shrugged. “We have grave tasks, both of us, but we do not have to do them alone.”

As if in answer, the sound of swords clanging upon swords rang out from the ring fort, followed by a man’s voice shouting instructions. 

“No,” said Calliande. “We do not.”

She walked through the ruined gate, Mara following. Calliande had no idea who had built the half-ruined ring wall atop the hill, and neither did Ridmark. It had been abandoned for a long time. Likely a desperate band of orcish or dvargir raiders had constructed it as a refuge from the urdmordar, only for the spider-devils to overwhelm them. 

Hopefully they would not meet the same fate. 

Her friends stood in a loose ring within the crumbled wall, Gavin in the center. The boy held the soulblade Truthseeker in his right hand, and to Calliande’s Sight the weapon blazed with power. On his left arm he held a shield of dwarven steel he had found in Khald Azalar and taken from the ruined city. His brown eyes were hard and determined beneath his mop of curly brown hair, and the soulblade did not waver in his hand as he faced his opponent.

He looked less and less like a boy every day. 

He stood facing Kharlacht, a towering orcish warrior in blue dark elven armor, a greatsword of the same steel in his hands. Kharlacht’s face was stern and impassive behind his tusks, his head shaved save for a single warrior’s topknot. Jager leaned against the wall and watched the fight, wearing his usual boots and trousers and black leather vest over a crisp white shirt, his expression amused. Brother Caius stood next to him, solemn in his brown robes, a wooden cross hanging from his neck. Antenora watched the fight like a ragged shadow in her long black coat and vest, both gloved hands wrapped around her charred staff, her harsh yellow eyes fixed upon Gavin. Sir Arandar stood halfway between Kharlacht and Gavin, his beaked nose making him look like a fierce bird of prey, his black hair shot through with gray at the temples. 

“Again,” said Arandar. “You did well that time.”