I glanced at her and she smiled, her fangs needle sharp behind the innocent, pretty face. Her snakes were strange. They changed color. Most snakes were venomous, and one could say what each did by the color, but hers had many. Each beautiful gorgon held a man’s eye easily. Their limbs were lithe, their bodies muscular, powerful, and still feminine, and perhaps even the snakes did not bother one, after one spent so much time with the dead. I let the snakes touch me, and dreaded a bite, but none came.
I cursed myself and looked to the mirror. I was going mad.
Dead and gorgons?
And on the other side, elves and men.
Shit.
“They’ll do better this time,” Ittisana murmured, “but not much, I think. They’ll not take the southern shore.”
With such powers like Shannon’s, it was a miracle the southern part of Himingborg, the great Jewel of the North, once the capital of House Safiroon and the gate to the Freyr’s Seat, the Holy Continent, had not fallen yet.
I didn’t want them to fall
, I realized. They were alive. That’s all it took. They were natural, even if they were haughty and didn’t grant humans the rights they should. Equal rights and respect were lacking in elven hearts.
Especially
in the south, where they were all slaves under House Coinar and Daxamma. There Albine, our lost companion was probably making life miserable for the elves. If she lived. Gods, I could use her there.
I sighed. I wanted the dead to succeed as well, because the Safiroons and the Bardagoons, the mighty elven nations were gathering, and Shannon, despite what she was, how she had changed, despite the terrible, unnatural allies was vastly outnumbered.
“Are they there? The elves?” I asked, but the skeletal lords didn’t answer, as if a question pointed at them by a living thing was an affront, or it was an obviously stupid thing to ask.
Of course, the elven army would be there
. The dead didn’t easily get nervous. I was a wreck.
Thak, the jotun, a fire giant of Muspelheim and Shannon’s friend—and hopefully mine—answered to ease my loss of face before the dead. “The elves must know they are coming. The ships are gathered in the harbor. They are not stupid, even if they act like it. They should have attacked the city already. But no, the Regent is still gathering his army to the north.”
Ittisana smirked. “He will attack when the southern elves flood the southern part of the city. He’ll risk nothing.”
“He’s dying,” I said softly. Shannon had given him the Rot, the wasting disease, flesh-eating spell only Shannon might heal, having been the Hand of Life before her death. “Probably trying to figure out a way to force Shannon to retract the spell.”
“I doubt there’s anything she holds so dear now,” Thak said sadly. “It’s a tragedy, really. Almheir will come, one day, and we’ll fight him off.”
“Hundred thousand elves?” Ittisana said softly. “Draugr or not, we’ll
die
.”
I turned away from the depressing discussion. I spoke with the dead wizard. “What about that terrible maa’dark?” I asked Coodarg. “Has there been any sign of her?”
At that, the dead finally found a worthy question to answer. Coodarg spoke, his voice like a lisping whisper. “She will hide again when the army appears.” His skull was turned my way, dark, spotted, and ugly and I shuddered at the sight of it. “But we shall be ready this time.”
Thak waved his hand across the Straits. “That’s what this is about. Getting her killed.”
Last time it had not been so easy. In fact, it had been a catastrophe.
Shannon had tried storming the city over the Straits the week before. The ships had sailed over, helped by magical winds, covered by the darkness, both natural and unnatural. Cover or not, the enemy had charged out of the nearest houses and palaces, battle-ready, thousands strong, gleaming with chain and platemail, powerful fighters, with many lesser maa’dark, spell casters amongst them. But it was the high noble, the elf lady who did the terrible damage. She had appeared only briefly from the midst of the elven shieldwall, and had released a fiery storm that gutted the draugr army. It was an intense wave of swirling heat and orange flames, hundreds of draugr had been immolated to the bone, and their burning pieces had scattered all over the Straits. It was much like Albine’s spell, less powerful than what Dana had been able to do, but it was still terrible, the effect devastating. The draugr had been stunned. Elven troops had stormed the breach, ripped the disembarking dead apart, taking many losses due to the savagery of the dead and their skills with Kissing the Night, spells of deadly destruction and their fine weapons, but Shannon had lost two thousand draugr. The elves had screamed themselves hoarse, and our enemies gathered their bravery. They had tried crossing twice, though they failed. They were still alone, Safiroons, since the Coinar and Daxamma were recent enemies, their dozens of smaller houses still in battle for Trad to topple the House Vautan on the Spell Coast, allies to the Bardagoons and Safiroons. They’d fight together soon enough, and when they stopped trying to kill each other, Shannon would be overwhelmed from all directions. She would, eventually anyway.
She had troops. Tens of thousands, everyone who died in the Shining Court certainly, but the elves, when finally united, would have many hundreds of thousands.
Thak leaned on the railing. “It’s nearly time.”
The army was heaving to the harbor, spears, swords glinting, and none of the warriors in that army were alive enough to appreciate the horns that began ringing across the Straits, warning of an attack.
Himingborg’s northern bank, the city of the dead was dark and lightless, like the force that occupied it. What had been beautiful and alive, was a dead and shadow-filled land. There were the occasional stabs of light, where some survivors stubbornly risked a fire in homes and mansions of the once richest elven city of Aldheim. There were some spontaneous fires as well. And then, there were the unexplainable fires and Thak thought the dead did that on purpose, while seeking treasure, because the army of the corpses Shannon had raised was cunning, clever, and most all of them could Kiss the Night.
I cursed the gods, the dead, and the gorgons, the sisters Stheno and Euryale, who had cursed the worlds with their greed.
How well they had succeeded in thrusting Aldheim, and the other Nine Worlds, to chaos.
“How many do you see?” Thak asked.
I shrugged, and stopped from hugging myself. “Too many,” I breathed. “Far too many. But not enough to take the city.” Ten thousand draugr were marching for the water’s edge. Himingborg was a city split in two by the sea as well as war. Between, there was a waterway, the Strait that split the holy northern continent from Spell Coast.
The jotun snorted. “I don’t get it,” Thak said, and had probably read in my face the disapproval. “She needs to hold Himingborg. She should have used all forty thousand to start with. And now again, only ten? It’s like she’s feeding the dead bastards one by one to elven swords.” Coodarg said nothing to the giant’s suggestion, and didn’t seem offended.
Ittisana was frowning. “That would make no sense. They don’t really need food, so it’s the most economical army in the world. Why would she—”
Thak chuckled. “I was jesting. She is planning for something today. Keep an eye on the mirror.”
Ittisana shook her head so that the snakes caressed my neck. “Himingborg is curious. Only one wall, and the Straits and the Citadels. One would think there would be walls inside the city. Back home, forts are much more formidable. Sure the walls are tall and thick and magical, but still.”
Thak stretched. “Maa’dark should hold the city if it were attacked, and the might of the Bardagoons have safeguarded the Safiroons,” he noted.
Across the water, bells and horns began to clang and bellow. The city had already suffered when House Coinar and Daxamma overran it in the chaotic war before the dead, but what remained prepared for battle again. Elven regiments arrayed, far across the water. We could see their silver and golden armor, the green tabards, and black rampant beasts on the larger flags. There were ten thousand elves, more, as they streamed out of the buildings. Their mages would grasp at the power we used, Embrace the Glory as they called it, and already, light spells lit across the field, over the halls, and the water.
“They have learnt to fear shadows,” Thak rumbled. “With good damned reason.”
He didn’t love the dead either
, I thought. But he loved Shannon, and had saved us before. Yet, Shannon didn’t expect him to fight for her that night, not when she was doing something like this. Killing the living with the dead. She didn’t ask me either.
“Kiera,” Thak said and pointed down towards the former daughter of Almheir, whom Shannon had raised before the Regent’s eyes. He gave me a long, sly look, which I ignored. Kiera was dead, and had an uncanny habit of sitting in the dark, staring at me sleep. She had an agenda, and I was not sure if she liked me, she had when she was alive, or if she wanted to devour me.
I felt sorry for Almheir.
Not for the man, but the father, perhaps. Taking the man’s daughter? Shannon had been cruel. Perhaps he had had it coming, but Kiera had not deserved it. She had been beautiful, happy, and so brave, and I had liked her. Lex, my cousin had as well, I knew, but he had died and was no competition.
Kiera was alluring, had been, still was,
I thought, and groaned.
She was striding amidst the draugr, dressed in a chain and leather armor, black as night, with tiny carved red dragons circling the metal and the seams of the leathers. She didn’t belong with the draugr. The army was a rotten, terrible thing. Their battle wounds were showing on their cadaverous bodies, their once thick and beautiful hair was dry and lifeless, and their skin was white or yellow-hued, and some, many in fact, Kissed the Night and disguised their horrible condition and adopted a disguise of a living. Not so Kiera. She was like Shannon, odd, pale, beautiful and powerful. She held a sword, long and dark, unbreakable, they said, a weapon of the past, and she held it aloft. It was Heartbreaker, and much like my mask and gauntlets, heavy with magic.
The dead hated her. They hated her looks, they hated to have someone command them. But when she raised the sword, they answered her.
There was an odd thrumming noise coming from the breathless throats, the dead lips, a chanting like a whisper, yet it carried across the land and water. “Shit,” I said. “That’s terrible. Evil.”
Ittisana leaned her head on my shoulder as she gazed at them. The snakes entwined with my long hair and some licked my skin experimentally. I tried to hold still as she spoke. “They belong in Helheim. Evil? I don’t know. They are …death. It’s like a natural force, a freezing wind whipping across Niflheim’s icy fields, or a fiery earthquake in Muspelheim. They are what they are,” she said stoically and smiled. There were around equal number of them to the elves across the Straits, ten thousand. “She had some forty to fifty thousand of them. Not sure if he can raise more, but perhaps she can. One by one. She did raise Kiera,” she said. “There are hundreds of thousands of elves. And they, Ulrich, butcher each other as casually as the dead.”
I opened my mouth to refute her claim, but of course, she was right.
They made war like humans did back home.
The Hundred Houses, the great fives, they competed for the position of the Regent, and while Almheir held on to that after the war, Shannon’s challenge to them all echoed far. Humans were rebelling in the south, perhaps thanks to our lost friend, Albine, the girl who we had to leave behind. Her powers would incite war in the lands where few men had any power. Coinar lands were burning, we had heard.
But north, all along the Spell Coast, here in the Jewel of Aldheim, the humans fought with the elves against the dead. It was Shannon’s dilemma, and she seemed ready to use a sword to solve it.
The dead lurched. The spears twinkled, swords flashed, as they marched for the boats. The draugr began to pile into a dozen ships that were moored at the once bustling trade piers, and while each ship could hold hundreds, I couldn’t understand Shannon. I looked at the mirror, and saw Coodarg shifting the view. There was the odd raven again, then the fiercely chanting elven army, their faces grave, and then Kiera, looking up at us briefly in the Citadel.
“Here they go,” I said softly.
Thak grunted, and scratched his chest. “Shannon is no general, but she will learn. House Safiroon still holds fast to that part of the city, and they’re keeping all their former enemies out, but if they open it up to the Coinar and Daxamma, and the Vautan, then she won’t take it. On the other hand, fighting street to street, house to house will tax the dead, and she cannot afford to lose too many. Ultimately, she must have a plan on how to overcome
all
her foes.”
“She does,” Ittisana said and I jumped when she played with my ear. “She cannot win with arms or power. She expects us to fetch the Horn. That will solve her issues. Return that to the gods, and everything changes when they return to the Nine Worlds.”
“I wonder if the gods, Odin and others even live?” I muttered. “Or care for these wars at all? What if we find Dana, the Horn, and Shannon gives it to Hel, who will blackmail Odin to return her to sanity, and the gods simply say ‘no’. They built the Nine. They might have built a dozen more.”
Thak shook his head. “I don’t know if they can. There are other gods with other worlds and they poured much of their powers into those. That’s what our sages tell us in Muspelheim. And when we go to Svartalfheim, we’ll be in trouble even more. Shannon is getting upset with you. You should go to the great library to study the dark world.”