A Flame in the North, page 39
The words held a snap of seidhr, a wild striking-out—not at her, but at the thing I could not see, the thing Eol faced, the thing stalking us.
It rose from the icefog, tall and dark, just as the sun slipped below the horizon. At first I thought a white-freighted thornbush had somehow been brought to life, for it was crowned with spikes and more sharp points rose from its shoulders. Its armor was iron, and over it a great sable mantle full of rents like the lich’s spread in waves, faint unhealthy gleams showing as if its very being tore holes in thick dark fabric.
Now I understood, far too late, what manner of horror the North truly held. I cowered against Aeredh even as the thing let out a chilling, piercing cry, for my instinctive, invisible movement had snapped whatever hold it had gained upon us.
The howl was unearthly, and far colder than the Glass’s frigid breath. It pierced me in a thousand places until I was tattered as its cloak, and my heart might have stopped but for Daerith’s voice lifted in return, a mighty sound the likes of which I had never heard.
He was a harpist, true, and even a thrall may compose a saga. But there are those the Aesyr or Vanyr grant music more than earthly to; we call them scvelling or bards or even—when they are great indeed—songmasters, possessed of the granr itself, that holy echo of the Allmother’s own making-voice.
Daerith of Nithraen was a songmaster of the Elder, one who had learned his craft before the rising of the Sun and practiced with diligence ever since. A welter of strummed strings lay under his words, mixing with brazen trumpets and the throb of man-sized drums pounding echoes against a greathall’s walls. He used the Old Tongue, performing the oldest of seidhr like the Allmother herself before the world itself was made.
What is named is known, and may be fought or turned to some use; he addressed the thing before us by its proper word, and his song stripped some camouflage of dread and fear.
Some, but not all. The thing was still deadly, and it lifted a great spiked mace, the head dripping with foul tarry fluid. The weapon’s anointed edges were razor-cruel, and I could well imagine the damage it would wreak in Elder flesh, let alone that of mortals.
We could not expect much aid, for the Elder before and behind us were occupied with other work. They, and the wolves of Naras accompanying each one, were faced with a pair of liches completing the trap—and summat else.
Eol shouted, a thin noise compared to the creature’s malice and Daerith’s song, and the heir of Naras drove forward. The gem in his swordhilt, though wrapped, gave a great white starlike glitter through the leather, and he met one of the Seven with a clash.
Nathlás they are named, those high servants of the Enemy. They draw the dead from well-earned rest to bind lesser liches in his service. The seven great captains of Agramar are terrifying creatures, brought by foul arts from some part of the Unmaking beyond the world and the Allmother’s grace. They rebelled against Hel’s rule as the belroch broke from Tyr’s to follow a different master, one promising them an eternity of wreaking suffering upon existence itself. The greater liches take shapes taller than men or even Elder, with heavy spiked iron helms and armor full of sharp-rent edges. Over it all they wear the black mantles, but those are not woven by any seamstress or even the foul many-legged beasts—larger cousins to those infesting Mistwood—which linger in the Enemy’s dungeons and spin noisome cloth from the agony of trapped thralls. The Seven’s mantles are a seidhr-darkness so thick and foul it takes physical shape, and they spread like oily smoke during battle, to confuse and disorient their prey.
Do something, a voice inside me shrilled. But I was petrified, staring entranced at the thing, as Eol’s cut was parried with a cold ringing clatter and the great mace descended.
The son of Tharos danced aside, handling the weight of his blade with more-than-mortal speed—for the wolves of Naras are granted great strength and quickness, and he used every fingerwidth of the gift upon that eve. From the left, there was a howl shading into a human cry at the end, and an Elder voice lifted as well.
Brought to bay by the Elder, a pair of lesser liches suffered dissolution that day; those who had fought the trap’s jaws were now free to move to its center, granting aid to their companions—or dying with them, for the Seven are far mightier than the restless, corrupted dead they govern.
Soren, slipping between his two forms like a shaggy ink-smear upon an oiled plate, flung himself at the thing. Beside him, Yedras and the other spearmen harried it as well. For all its bulk, it was quick indeed, and the din of steel meeting steel mixed with another of its sharp, unholy cries. It now had a giant sword in its left hand to match the mace in its right. The blade was black, drinking in failing daylight as its mantle did.
“Move!” Aeredh shouted in my ear, and though an Elder’s strength handily outmatched mine, I was so frozen with terror he had some difficulty lifting me bodily off my icebound feet.
But there was nowhere to run, unless we wished to leap into the deep, sheer-sided ravine we had been working along the edge of. For Gelad, Karas, and the Elder with them were driven back by the appearance of a fresh evil. It was a hungry floating thing, screaming as it burst upon us with a puff of freezing-foul breath, mouth gaping wide and its tattered feathery raiment flapping like giant wings, buffeting its prey.
Upon the Glass, a snow-hag might even be worse than one of the Enemy’s greater captains.
Lich and Snow-Hag
Dark strength they are given, those who serve the Enemy, and foul cunning of hand and eye. Some may speak honeyed words, others entice with promises, yet in the end it all arrives at the same place; the disguise is dropped, the blade unsheathed, the corruption unveiled. All rots under their touch, swiftly or slowly, for swearing allegiance to evil is to court Unmaking itself.
—Aenarian Greycloak, Aphorisms
A skeletal yellowed face, serrated rows of clashing teeth, great staring swollen black eyes with foxfire sparking in their depths—if I were to describe a snow-hag I might halt there, for every Northerner knows of what I speak. But it does not express their deep dry unholy reek, or the sound when its multiple bone-veined wings clap, nor can it portray the utter wrongness of the creature. At least the great lich, nathlàs in the Old Tongue, is shaped like an Elder or Secondborn or even dverger: Two arms, two legs, a body, and a head.
But a snow-hag… it shifts as it floats upon a cushion of tinkling ice-shards ground so fine by whirlwind they can flay a great antlered deer to bone in moments. Through the cloud, stabbing insectile legs may be glimpsed, and its segmented hide is tough and hairy. It does not grow sluggish amid the cold like the weavers of Mistwood; only when sated does it slow. This one was hungry, having been leashed and brought on a hunt much as any man might bring a good hound, letting loose only when the quarry is in sight.
Gelad bled from a gash in his shoulder and another across his ribs, and even shifting between forms did not stopper the flow. He staggered away while an Elder—it was Kirilit, his paired blades flashing in a complicated pattern—darted at the hag, driving it back.
Aeredh halted, snapping a glance slightly to our left—but Arn cried out, a howl of baffled rage, and skidded to a stop before me; Daerith had loosed his hold. She leveled her spear at the hag, for though its bulbous eyes flickered with nictitating membranes, it stared unerringly at me.
I felt its attack, a great sticky-soft brush of seidhr so foul I can barely avoid a shudder at the memory. They are quick, those winter-cloud hunters, and their many-jointed, clawed legs are dangerous.
But the chief way a snow-hag catches its prey is with its gaze, black as a pitch-pool and dangerous as a bog. Red coral in my hair turned to chips of burning ice, and there was a sharp twinge against my scalp—Astrid’s fingers while she braided in great hurry, swift-sure and merciless in their love.
Two of the hag’s legs flickered. Kirilit was flung toward the crevasse; Karas blurred into his second form, streaking for his fellow fighter. The wolf of Naras caught the Elder just at the crumbling edge, driving his sword into frozen ground as a woman will pin a fold to hold it in place for sewing, and my terror was such I almost did not notice. Aeredh hauled me aside, but there was Arn, and the hag was almost upon her despite all the Northerners’ efforts.
My shieldmaid was going to die keeping this thing from me, and I was once again fishgutting, utterly useless.
Another sharp tug against my braids. This time ’twas Idra’s fingers, an ungentle tweaking.
Then act, child. I almost… no, I heard my teacher, in an eerie moment of silence between another piercing cry from the great lich almost behind us, Daerith’s song faltering as he fought for breath, a featherbrushing breeze as Arn’s spear trembled upon the edge of swift movement, and Aeredh shouting something, I know not what.
I flung both hands out, and though Idra oft said smaller is better, the gout of seidhr I tossed was the entirety of the stock granted me that moment. A supreme effort, sparing nothing, and by chance it was the one thing that mattered. My mantle’s hood was knocked back, the rest gale-whipped and almost torn from me.
Spending so long calling aelflame into being day after shadowed day in the Mistwood, both with Elder preparations for the fuel and later with will alone, meant the blue fire was what erupted through me now. My fear added force to the burning; well it was so, for a snow-hag is resistant fuel indeed. It was like trying to shift a boulder in a muddy field, my feet slipping as Aeredh’s fingers bit into my mantle-sleeve and he sought to keep his grasp.
The very fabric of the hag’s body fought my kindling touch. Its gaze was a great vat of rotten pitch attempting to suck down and drown me.
But I know pitch, as any daughter of a river steading must. Blackened tar or tree-dropped resin is sticky, and it burns.
I heard shouting in the Old Tongue, my voice high and silver-clear weaving a net of seidhr. Aelflame erupted from the hag’s hairy skin, its tattered rotting vestments, its feather-rags. One of its great bulbous black eyes popped with a loud crack and the whirlwind underneath its abdomen exploded, a cloud of grit and sharp icicles flung in every direction. Arn’s spear jerked, the leaf-tip smacking flying debris aside before it could touch her.
Chance saved us once again, for Aeredh had gained his balance and dragged me toward him with a convulsive effort. I still had a seidhr-grasp upon the hag, however, holding the flame as I had all through the solstice night. The bright blue-burning mass streaked past us, tumbling like a wheel and shedding razor ice-knives. It barely avoided Yedras, who lost a chunk of his dark hair to flying debris. Daerith scraped the dregs from his lungs, a last burst of song rising with terrible vein-popping triumph as Eol brought his blade down in one final, irresistible sweep. The leather wrapping at its hilt was burned away and the colorless stone sang too, a high crystalline note matching my scream. The eldest son of Tharos clove the great lich’s mace-hand free even as the nathlàs’s sword-tip plunged into his shoulder, and the captain of the Enemy would have struck Eol down nonetheless…
… had not a burning wreck of maddened snow-hag crashed into the great lich with a titanic, world-ending noise. I fell, Aeredh’s hand curling around the back of my head as he landed atop me with more grace than can be believed if not witnessed, meaning to shield me from both the great lich’s next attack and the sudden explosion of debris. There was no recoil of expended force echoing through my inner hallways, for it had taken all my strength to hold the flame.
I was simply empty and dazed, sprawled under an Elder as the Glass shredded to pieces around us.
Love Latecomers So
We are not great lords, it is true. But we live in the shadow of Tarnarya called Haergaril in the Old Tongue. Her strength runs through our bones, as does that of the Rivermother in our blood…
—Gwenlara the Golden, Lady of Aen Haergar
The lich and the hag tumbled away, and such was Daerith’s mastery of song that he pressed the attack, managing to gain a full draft of breath as the flaming mass skidded across the Glass’s icy floor. Another great crack-ravine yawned some distance from us, not terribly wide but riven deep, and the force of Daerith’s singing aided the mad struggles of the hag as it roasted from the inside out.
It must have been a terrible death.
They tumbled over the lip as the edges of the ice-hole shuddered, great chunks breaking free to follow lich and burning thing down. A ripple spread through the frozen floor of the Glass, as if the earth itself cringed at violation. Aeredh rolled aside, lunging upright, his own blade suddenly free and twinkling in the foggy gloaming. “Make for the trees!” he cried, the words weaving into the last of Daerith’s music, and almost before the sound died Arn was upon me, hauling me to my feet with no gentleness at all—the print of her fingers remained, dark-bruised, upon my arm for days afterward.
I did not care, for I was dazed and head-ringing, drained almost to transparency by the spending of vital force.
The Elder move swiftly when there is need, and my seidhr-bag jolted and banged against my hip as we ran along the rim of the ravine that had almost trapped us. Its deep cleft curved northward, tapering to a spear-point, and we could finally use a narrow bridge of solid land we had been aiming for, allowing some slim chance of escape.
Fog thickened, curds of freezing air clot-splashing in every direction. I do not know how the Northerners managed, but the Elder closed around Arn and me, bearing us along—Daerith staggered as he ran, his face twisted enough to show his great age for a few moments until he began to breathe in great bellows-gasps, the strain easing. A stitch sank vicious claws into my right side but my feet hardly touched the Glass all that last distance, for Aeredh had my right wrist and golden-haired Hadril was upon my other side, his arm about my waist, bearing me bodily at more-than-mortal speed.
We plunged out of mist and into powdery snowdrifts as black-bark firs rose upon either side, their embrace welcome after the endless swamp-bowl. Kieris and Kirilit bore Arn along, and she made no demur though a shieldmaid does not oft suffer a man to lay hands upon her in that fashion. Even in that state, however, she kept tight hold of her spear.
Behind us, the entire Glass reverberated with screaming. The hag’s death-struggles were terrible, and though it would take much more than that to kill one of the Seven—given strength beyond even their great ken by the Enemy himself—we could at least hope to slip from that particular lich’s notice while it dealt with an aelflame-maddened, dying hag and the collapse of an entire ice-ravine.
We had, albeit barely, survived the Glass.
Wild headlong flight sputtered to a halt amid tall columnar trunks; I collapsed to my knees in deep soft powder-snow and heaved. There was nothing but Elder draughts in my stomach to lose, and I did not manage to produce more than deep retching sounds as my body attempted to turn itself inside out. At least I retained enough control to keep from soiling myself at the other end.
It was a mercy I was grateful for, though only much later when I had time to truly think upon the battle.
Stragglers arrived around us—Daerith recovering quickly but propped half-bent against a tree while he did so, his elbows upon his knees as he struggled to breathe deeply enough, Kieris and Kirilit setting Arn upon her feet, their faces alight and their blue eyes blazing, Hadril and Yedras bearing a bleeding Soren, the Northerner cursing foully in a whispering monotone using both the southron speech and the Old Tongue by turns.
I heartily concurred.
Our remaining companions appeared one by one. Last of all, there were branch-snappings and thrashings; Efain appeared between the trees, hauling Eol. The Northern captain staggered, his sword-tip dragging and catching in undergrowth though he, like Arn, would never lose hold of his weapon even while unconscious; both men were covered with ice and Efain’s face was bloody. Eol was almost limp, his breath coming in wheezes, and if he had looked ill during the escape from Nithraen he looked outright deathly now, his eyelids fluttering and a strange pasty greyish tint to his skin.
Aeredh gave a swift glance, counting our companions. “How are we still alive?” he muttered, and caught himself, glancing at Daerith.
“The alkuine lit it on fire.” The harpist coughed; his words were rough as a carpenter’s scrapestone used to shred softwood. “I begin to see why you love these latecomers so, my lord.”
Arn went to her knees next to me, her spear-butt sinking deep into a drift. “Sol,” she husked, and flung her free arm over my shoulders. “Are you…”
The heaving would not let me answer immediately. I finished my miserable cough-retching and gasped, my arms locked over my middle, swaying on my knees as melt trickled upward through mantle, my skirts, under-breeches, and woolen stockings to dab at my knees. “Arneior,” I finally moaned, grateful for her shelter. We made a wall against the wind, my shieldmaid and I, our combined shape more stable than either could ever hope to be alone. “I hate… the fishgutting… North.”
My shieldmaid let out a harsh, cawing chuckle. “On… on fire,” she gasped.
“Don’t… laugh.” I longed to spit, to clear my mouth. All I could taste was thick copper fear; at least the Elder draughts meant I produced no burning bile. “I could… think of… nothing else.”
We regained our breath in fits and starts, leaning against each other as if a riverboat had wrecked and cast us upon a sandbar. Soren’s shoulder was swiftly bound, both that wound and the gash across his ribs already healing, but his gaze rested anxiously upon his captain. Eol’s dark eyes glittered feverish under half-closed lids, and he was only semiconscious.
“Always he does this,” Efain muttered, holding his leader upright while pressing his palm hard against Eol’s shoulder. “He will not think of staying back.”
