Throne of Scars Read online

  Gods, I thought and grimaced. I wiped my beard angrily, a habit I had grown into since I joined Shannon in her quest. I tugged it and the pain helped, oddly, to calm me down.

  Gods caused it all. Odin, punishing Lok by punishing his lovely daughter, his only lovely child, where others were monsters and omen-carriers of terrible proportions. No, he had to take the pretty girl and make her the ugly guardian of the dead.

  Shit god that. And our only hope was to restore them to the Nine.

  Lok had not stood idle. He had sent Baldr to Hel, murdered the son of Odin by poison and trickery and there, looking on as the fool Baldr came to Helheim, stood before Hel, the First Born, and the mighty gorgons Euryale and Stheno had seen an opportunity. They had stolen the Eye of Hel, and made Hel believe the gods did it in retaliation.

  War raged in the Nine. Hel wanted the Eye back. It was the one thing that allowed her to see the lands she had once so loved. Oh, she had hired armies across the Nine, and released them, and the gods had dithered. They had sat in Asgaard, in Vanaheim, and sent out generals, but did they take action? No. Did they take the war seriously? No. Did they underestimate Hel? Yes. And did the Regent of Aldheim, Cerunnos Timmerion, the keeper of the Eye of Hel, in his greed to keep it, also steal the Horn of Heimdal? He did, he managed that. And so, the gates were closed, Hel’s war simmered down, the gods were lost, and then came Shannon, who rescued the Eye, made her a servant of Hel in her quest to defy the gorgons Euryale and Stheno who wanted to take Aldheim for their own. And Shannon’s sister, Dana, who stole the Horn and fled to Svartalfheim through the one gate that was still open, in the Shining City.

  The Horn was lost.

  Shannon gave everything for it. And so, I, Ulrich, the last Ten Tear to love our friend, would help her with her quest. I was to go and regain it.

  The dead cheered. They sang. The bastards sang. It was an old elven song, and I couldn’t make out the words, but it was both chilling and bloodcurdling, and beautiful in an elfish way.

  What did Shannon expect me to do? Find the Horn? What if Stheno had it? What if the dragon had it? She had sent scouts, and none had returned from the portal.

  The Horn. It’s all about the Horn. I shook my head. Shannon wanted me to kill Dana, who betrayed us to Stheno and Euryale. She took the Horn for herself. She was the cause of all of the misery I witnessed in Aldheim. I frowned. I hated Dana. She had killed my brother, Ron, the day we arrived from the Tenth, our own world. But my brother had been an evil thing, always had, and so I wasn’t as angry as I should be. I once tried to kill Shannon for Ron. I had, nearly. But I had not been able to. Could I kill Dana? Perhaps. Perhaps not. After witnessing the horrors of the draugr, I was not nearly as mad as Shannon was at Dana. She had loved her when they had both been alive. Now she was dead, and perhaps it was her undead goal, and the dead could never ignore their goals. Perhaps she would hate herself later?

  Shannon. Hand of Hel. That dagger of Hel, Famine, she held it. She was a lich, or something like that, but that dagger made her almost unconquerable, and sometimes, when I saw her clutching it, I thought it was more than an aid.

  Perhaps it was a master.

  Did it make Shannon cruel? Did Hel wish to see her wreak havoc in Aldheim, even if she would one day return the Horn for the Nine? Would Hel laugh in her hard-won freedom, as the gods discovered the true extent of death and misery Hel left the Nine in?

  And Shannon, with her dagger, was to both save and destroy the Nine? Perhaps. Were not the dead marching below, to war against the living, no matter how cruel and arrogant the elves were, especially to the humans of Aldheim?

  Poor girl, I thought, rubbed my face and tugged at my beard again. She is fighting to remain human, she must be. Hand of Hel. I don’t know what that even means. Power? Slavery? Some of the dead were more powerful than others. She had killed Euryale, after all. Euryale had been a First Born, mightier than most living beings. Ittisana, the snake-headed minor gorgon ally of ours, the one gorgon kin we could trust visited her often.

  She said Shannon feasted with the draugr. And they served the dead blood. Blood of the elves.

  Blood. The girl I had seen weeping when she had killed for the first time sat with the dead, and drank blood. She feasted with her dead. Ittisana said that. And Ittisana had snakes for hair and that didn’t make me nearly as cold than Shannon’s undeath.

  I draped my robes around me as I thought about her. She had been warm, kind, loving, and weak in her belief in Dana. She had been damned brave. She still was. But not so warm, kind and loving. She looked human, though her undead state was clear as rain. Her left hand and arm was all bones, where the Bone Fetters had once held her. Now, her skin was pale, nearly white, her hair uncannily lustrous and thick, red as blood, and her mood was often cold. She could be horribly murderous, pragmatic after butchery, but perhaps such mood suited a Queen as well as a dead one? No matter if her throne was self-declared.

  I knew not. But I knew she had changed.

  She called herself a lich, a magical thing, living beyond death by Hel’s curse and here, in Aldheim she was to punish the elves for their treachery, for their haughty disdain for humans. She had so many goals she probably didn’t know what to do first.

  But she knew she wanted Himingborg.

  She had the best part, the key to the Holy Continent, the foothold to the Regent’s lands, and she wanted the city on the south shore as well. And that’s what the dead would try again that night.

  I shuddered and gazed at the mass that kept marching for the harbor.

  I heard a clacking sound as shadows moved near us.

  She had powerful allies. I turned to look at them. They were terrible, merciless, power-hungry creatures, and they accompanied us on the rampart. The ancient ones around Ittisana, Thak the fire giant, and me were also different from the draugr. They were bones. Just bones. Their faces held no secrets, you could not read displeasure from a raised eyebrow; their voice was a rasp that reached out from their chest, and they were all adorned in fine silk, the garments clinging to their bones. They loved finery, as if being deprived from such ornaments had been the sole thing they had craved for in their long death. Coodarg, an ancient Bardagoon, raised the night Shannon released Hel’s spell, was Kissing the Night, as they called the act of touching the magical powers of creation, the same powers most elves and us few humans saw and felt, but their knowledge in the might of magic was far beyond ours. Few humans could see the fiery molten rivers mixing with Nifleheim’s icy torrents in the Filling Void, but I could, Shannon did, the Ten Tears all had, because of Euryale and Stheno’s meddling with our ancestors.

  The ancient ones saw these powers and more. They could reach into the thicker, deeper fumes and colder, hidden streams of ice. Their long undeath had not made them weak. No, they were much more powerful than most living.

  I embraced the powers. I wanted to. I was cold, and yearned to feel the comfort of the mysterious power. I felt the fire. Never the ice, again thanks to Euryale’s and Stheno’s meddling. I saw the roaring fiery rivers, felt the strings of power, could touch and pull at them, combine the fires, the heat, the vapors in numberless ways and I could make spells out of it. I let my mind caress them, the fantastic, incredible powers, and thought of a million ways of braiding it all together. The heat, the flames, the molten stone, falling to the Filling Void, where all life was born, where it mixed with the ice of Nifleheim. I felt that ice somewhere, but most humans, the few of us, only saw Fire. We were made weapons and fire was the best weapon. And being a novice, I knew but few spells. Braiding one together was a risky thing, and had to be done just right. Few spells were identical and we had been taught some, knew a few on our own but we could learn many more, if we risked all without mentoring, but the creatures around us?

  They knew thousands.

  One of those spells was evident while we stood on the wall. We were staring at a sphere of fire, and Coodarg controlled it and we could see whatever it was he concentrated. I co
uld see long, sturdy ships, the harbor and the dark waves, the commanding draugr in dark chain mail hissing and spitting orders at his legions, spears, and then a raven, croaking somewhere. I turned my head to the dead one, but his skull gleamed and gave away nothing. Where was this place that Coodarg was looking at?

  Thak rumbled, the shape-changing giant man-sized as he often was, his dark skin glistening. The Citadel didn’t accommodate for his twelve feet easily. He spoke. “They’ll see the dead coming. Probably have spies and magic to scout us. Don’t know what Shannon is doing. Why are they marching like this? Didn’t we try this already?”

  Thak rarely had a cross word to say about Shannon. I thought he loved the girl, in his beastly way, and would probably go fight Hel herself for her. Though never fairly, I thought and chuckled. “They are preparing across the water, no doubt,” I said. “I have no idea what Shannon’s about.”

  “They are,” Ittisana agreed in her strange, singsong voice. She put a hand on my shoulder and I wasn’t sure how to react to that. Her hair, snakes the length of her shoulders were brushing my back and I shuddered with dislike. She was friendly, perhaps more. I had a reason to hate her, but couldn’t quite force myself to. The gorgon was the one they had infiltrated into the Ten Tears. She had taken the place of one of us, a girl we never knew, Cherry, who died the night we arrived in Aldheim. Ittisana had stayed with us, mute, her body that of a human girl thanks to our guard, a gorgon called Cosia and her special spell, the shapeshifting one, and Ittisana had suffered with us, watched us, and utterly failed Euryale as Ittisana learnt to admire Shannon. I partly wished she would feel closer to Thak, since Thak was also a shapeshifter, an inherent ability of many of the jotuns, but no, she hung on to me. Perhaps she deserved the right. There were not many live ones with Shannon, and she was faithfully stuck with us in this trap called Himingborg.

  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 ha
d 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.