Four Years Later
Amidst the rain and wind and cold
All stories have not yet been told.
Lightning tore the air asunder; bright, angry veins striking at the mountain pass as though seeking to split the ancient grey gorge deeper. Rain pummelled the rocks and turned the sky into a twilight haze. All around, high, snow-capped peaks soared; stolid, oblivious and cold.
A young woman struggled against the storm, a slim figure bent with exhaustion, hugging herself, her booted feet dragging on the trail. The racing mud caught her feet and she slipped, falling hard on her shoulder. Close beside her, a stream roared, leaping over rocks like a white beast. Rain poured down her face so that she could barely see.
She could no longer tell if tears were mingled with it.
The fall had caused her no pain, but knocked what little breath she had left from her lungs. She was numb all over; the rain had a sleety edge to it that coated the ground with a perilous layer of liquid ice. The cold had seeped all the way through her thin silken clothing, through her skin, through her bones, even through her warmest cloak. There was no part of her that it had not claimed as its own. It had seized her thoughts; held her limbs hostage.
She wasn’t sure how she had even made it this far.
She turned her head heavily to look at her right hand, lying on the streaming path as though it belonged to someone else, clenched in a fist so tightly she could not open it; her knuckles stood out bone-white against her light brown skin.
But the small object they held was still there.
A weak blue light glowed between her fingers, trailing off into invisible wisps. It seemed fragile in the fury of the storm, but it was the strongest it had been since she had started her journey. And though the rest of her hand was lifeless, where the stone pressed against her palm she felt a soft, cool caress, as though she clutched a breath of summer breeze.
There was a clattering sound from somewhere ahead and a pair of hoofed feet appeared before her. Then she was being pulled gently but firmly to her feet.
She wasn’t sure that they would support her, but her companion held her steady.
She looked up into his face.
His long red hair streamed with rain, the ebony beads entwined in it shiny. Water rippled over his golden-brown skin like a smooth stone in a river. His expression was steadfast, his dark eyes calm. He looked down at her clenched hand, reached out and carefully took it in his own. A shiver passed through him as the blue light brushed his skin, and his jaw tightened. Then he released her hand, turned back to her and nodded.
They continued onwards.
* * *
Footsteps sent damp echoes flapping away into the black halls, mingling with the steady trickling tinkle of water. The remnants of long-abandoned cobwebs floated forlornly in a chilly, wet draught; stirred into agitated life by the passing of a cloaked and hooded figure, they sought to cling to his shoulders in vain.
The darkness was musty, freezing and oppressive. Cracks ravaged the coal-coloured blocks of the passage, bursting with eager ivy-vines and clogged with patches of vivid green moss. Miscellaneous debris lay scattered about; bones, stones, broken wood, pottery, discarded weapons all tangled up with ragged shreds of crimson-red cloth.
The figure was relieved when at last a corner appeared and he stepped into a wash of light as misty grey as the cloak he wore. Ascending a set of broad, flat, curved steps, he paused beneath an arched portal.
He lifted silver, mirror-like eyes upwards.
Rain fell on his face in cold prickles, but he ignored it. The chains and manacles were still there, still hanging abominably from the rusted grating high above his head. Human and animal skeletons occupied some of them, now shrouded with some kind of foul, dangling green slime.
He turned his attention to the numerous pitch-black, arched openings embedded in the curved walls.
The Murons were gone, of course; they were all dead. He had extinguished the last of them himself when he had written their fate on the walls of Grath Ardan; the magic of that strange, ancient library imbuing every word with literal meaning:
Murons Do Not Exist.
And yet, a sense of faint unease passed through him as he stared at those awful holes, like eye sockets in a monstrous skull. He would never forget his first journey to this valley, kidnapped by one of the black, reptilian creatures; the dizzying flight over the Barlakk Mountains, the sinister sight of the sorcerer’s spire-ridden castle, the gut-wrenching plunge through the hole at the top of the Muron’s eyrie, and the black walls that had closed around him like a giant fist.
He had believed he would never escape.
He closed his eyes, letting the rain patter over his eyelids. How strange it was to be standing here now, looking up at the past.
How much had changed.
Opening his eyes, Ferrian began to make his way carefully around the circumference of the large, circular chamber, his grey boots crunching awkwardly on bones with every step. He reached out a hand and ran it along the wall to his right as he walked, both for support and to avoid missing the entrance to his destination.
Water shimmered down the walls, making them appear alive.
Ferrian cast a glance at the enormous pile of bones heaped in the middle of the floor of the chamber. They, too, were overgrown with moss, slime and weeds. A small pine sapling had established itself in the middle of them.
He looked up again at the alcoves. They were empty, nothing to be seen, and yet… the uncomfortable feeling persisted. He wasn’t sure if it was just his memories or…
A sudden rattling sound came from the mound beside him, and Ferrian started despite himself.
It was followed by an irritable, high-pitched squeaking.
He took a deep breath to steady himself as a skull detached itself from the pile and toppled away, chased by a furry rodent.
Scowling, he cursed himself, not understanding why he was so jumpy, and continued on quickly.
He could not be entirely certain that all of the Murons were gone. It was possible that one or more of them still existed somewhere in the world, hiding in some forgotten corner of the Barlakk Mountains or Arkana or elsewhere. But four years had passed and he had not seen or heard any sign of them, so felt it safe to assume the black Dragon-like creatures were never coming back.
Besides, he thought darkly, he had worse things to worry about, now…
His trailing hand suddenly encountered empty space. Ferrian stopped and faced the wall. It looked exactly like any other part of the tower’s base: solid black stone, slightly curved, stained grey with mildew. But his hand went through it as though nothing was there.
Without hesitation, he strode forward.
He found himself in a narrow, dark passage. The first few feet were dimly lit with grey light from outside that quickly faded into impenetrable blackness. Snapping his fingers, Ferrian summoned a small icelight. It hovered silvery-white above his palm, emitting gentle crackling noises as ice crystals formed and re-formed in a sparkling ball, throwing shifting ghostly patterns on the walls.
He went ahead into the darkness.
Behind him, out in the eyrie, the rain continued to fall, making puddles amongst the bones. The rat, its fur wet and scruffy, inspected the skull, then suddenly tensed, its whiskers quivering in the air.
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Something disturbed the rain droplets, there was a flash of shiny claw, and the rat disappeared.
The skull looked on dispassionately, rain falling through its empty eye sockets, its black, razor-toothed maw grinning.
Ferrian pondered, as he slowly climbed the cramped spiral staircase, how on Arvanor a bulky Grik had managed to squeeze its way up here, all those years ago. He saw evidence of the rocky creature’s struggle as he went; long scrapes on the walls, crumbled chips of stone littering the steps. It had practically ripped half its shell off during its determined ascent.
The thing must have been either mad, he thought, shaking his head, or stupid.
He found himself wondering, also, what would have happened had the Grik not discovered this place, and the powerful weapon that was hidden at the top. Would Lord Arzath’s minions still have mutinied when they found out their master had lost his magic? Would Arzath have finally claimed the Sword for himself?
Would Ferrian have never ended up becoming a sorcerer?
Wiping a cobweb out of his face, Ferrian sighed. He could find out the answers to all of those questions. They lay tantalisingly within reach. He could use his Sword and enter any reality that he wished, alter the world any way he pleased, see the outcomes of all decisions that he had ever made, or ever would make.
But he dared not.
He would not.
Everything that had happened, had happened. But he couldn’t help wondering if all the terrible events that had occurred had been the best possible outcome, or the worst...
He arrived a short while later at the top of the tower, at an open door. It had been a decent climb; he paused for a moment to catch his breath. The wooden door was sealed against the wall by a thick mass of spiderwebbing. Ferrian swiped an arm through the sticky threads, clearing the entryway, and pushed inside.
The room beyond was small and crammed with all sorts of peculiar paraphernalia; something between a study, an experimental laboratory and a metalworking shop. There were mysterious apparatus looming in corners, tools, a weapons rack, benches and boxes, and jars and bottles so grimy he could no longer discern their contents, and books upon books shoved haphazardly into every conceivable remaining space. In the very centre of the room was a metal tripod with a melted stub of candle on a chain hanging above it.
There were no windows in the chamber, as such, but rather a series of iron shutters punched with finger-sized holes.
Everything was covered in a layer of undisturbed dust, save where one shutter was rusted open, letting in the rain.
Gloomy light fell upon a gleaming object, incongruous amidst the must and mould.
Ferrian walked over to it and stared down pensively.
His Sword.
The Sword of Mirrors.
He had replaced it here four years ago, when he had made the decision to study with Lord Arzath in this valley. Back then, he hadn’t been able to use it; his magic was lost, scattered to the winds. It had fled from him when he died, when Lord Requar had used the Sword of Healing on him to end his miserable half-existence and restore the White Dragon to life.
But then Requar had sadly sacrificed his own life to save Ferrian.
With the Winter gone and demon-wraiths on the loose, and his friends infected and in peril, Ferrian found himself left with little choice but to regain his magic the hard way: through dedicated study, meditation and practice.
It had returned to him remarkably quickly, within a year or so. Arzath had told him that his body and mind had become attuned to it since birth, that using magic was second nature to Ferrian. And it was true that he had easily mastered most basic spells. But full control of the Winter still eluded him.
The White Dragon insisted that it would return eventually, that it just needed time to recognise Ferrian again.
Listening to the rain hammering on the slates of the roof, he wondered if that were so. The current mid-spring storm had lasted longer than normal, and was unusually freezing.
The thought lifted his spirits.
But the time had also come to reacquaint himself with his Sword.
He touched the handle gingerly with his fingertips. He wore grey fingerless gloves, and the exposed parts of his flesh felt eerily vulnerable. The Sword was sheathed in an old, faded grey but elegant scabbard, the silver embellishments partially worn away. He had taken the scabbard from the library of Grath Ardan, from the bones of a long-dead Angel sorcerer who had met a terrible end at the hands of Murons. Now it protected his own Sword.
Or rather, he corrected himself, it protected everything ELSE from the Sword...
But the hilt was still visible, and it was the glimpse of black embedded at the crosspiece that caused his hesitation.
The trigonic dagger had settled itself snugly into its recess. So snugly that there was no visible gap around its lethal curved and jagged edge: it seemed to have melded with the silvertine of the Sword. There appeared to be no way of removing it, and neither he nor Arzath was inclined to try.
Ferrian let a deep sigh out through his nose. The Sword of Mirrors frightened him. But it was his Sword, he had chosen to set the dagger into it, and so he must learn to live with the power he had created.
The best he could do was use it responsibly.
Leaving the Sword where it was for a moment, he walked over to the open shutter and peered out.
Rain swept across the valley, back and forth in shimmering curtains. A line of white water plunged roaring from the high cliffs to his left, into a churning river. Lush green grass swayed with the rain along the riverbanks and bluffs.
And directly opposite Ferrian, perched loftily against the eastern wall of the valley stood a grand castle.
It was not white.
It was not black.
It was both.
Striking and magnificent, its many towers and spires raced for the sky in contrasting and rebellious harmony, shadows and light built one upon the other; a challenge, a statement of defiant endurance to the great grey snowy peaks that surrounded it. To the north, a complicated network of scaffolding and pulley systems entombed the newest, black-stoned wing. Clustered around its base, tiny at this distance, like walking pebbles, were numerous lumbering forms.
Griks.
He and Arzath had enlisted a team of Griks to help with the reconstruction. They had been hired rather than coerced; although sometimes, when Arzath was in one of his happier moods, Ferrian found him threatening them.
He supposed old habits died hard.
They had carefully dismantled Arzath’s ebony keep and reused the blocks to rebuild Requar’s castle. The white castle had been severely damaged in a Dragon attack, but much of it was salvageable. They had left the Muron’s eyrie untouched; the Griks refused to go near it, for some reason.
Ferrian stared at the castle through the storm and allowed himself a small smile at their accomplishment.
Castle Whiteshadow. The new School of Magical Studies. And it was almost completed.
There were, however, as yet no students: apart from himself.
His smile fading, Ferrian sighed again. Arzath’s standards for entry were extremely high, perhaps to the point of ridiculousness. The sorcerer had so far turned every single person away at the door.
Frowning, Ferrian turned away from the window. There was something wrong with Arzath. Well… more wrong than usual. His master had become very reclusive, and yet obsessive about the building work and fastidious about getting every little detail the way he wanted it. Often, he wouldn’t be seen for weeks at a time, only to suddenly appear and order the Griks to put down their tools, determined to carry out all the work himself, using his magic to split and haul blocks until he was exhausted.
Then he would disappear again, into the depths of his black-walled private tower.
He left most of the day-to-day running and organisation of the place to Ferrian. Occasionally, he deigned to teach Ferrian magic – when he could be bothered, which was increasingly less often, and usually in the early hours of the morning, waking Ferrian from sleep. Or in the middle of lunch, or precisely when Ferrian was busting to use the lavatory. Some of it was deliberate, Ferrian was sure, but some was absent-minded. And lately, odd things had been happening: mysterious ‘accidents’ that had delayed the construction work to practically a standstill.
Arzath had tried to blame the Griks, but Ferrian was suspicious. It almost seemed as though, bizarrely, Arzath didn’t want the School to be completed...
Ferrian stared around his master’s old workroom, feeling worried. He was fairly sure he knew the reason for the strange, erratic behaviour, but was reluctant to talk to Arzath about it, fearing he would make matters worse.
Requar had been gone a long time. But Arzath had been deeply affected by his brother’s death, and had not found a way to deal with the loss.
Pushing the dismal thoughts away, Ferrian busied himself gathering up as many dusty books as he could carry, stuffing them in a rucksack he had brought with him. He was scavenging the last of Arzath’s things in the desperate hope of finding a scrap of knowledge that might help him find a cure for the wretched trigonic infection that was slowly killing his friends.
Having loaded himself with books, Ferrian straightened, adjusting a stack of them under his left arm. Then he grabbed his Sword from the tripod and left the tower to the spiders.
Dumping the books and his Sword in a heap on the floor in front of the hearth, Ferrian pulled off his dripping cloak and tossed it over a chair, threw another couple of logs onto the fire, then proceeded to unpack the rucksack. That done, he moved over to a nearby armchair and slumped into it.
The books were damp, and some were mouldy. He needed to let them dry out before attempting to read them.
He sat quietly, listening to the steady distant patter of rain, the crackle of the flames in the silence, and his own brooding thoughts, tapping his fingers idly on the upholstered arm of the chair. Little spots of frost bloomed briefly where his fingertips touched.
He found himself quickly growing drowsy. Fire had that effect on him. Perhaps it was merely psychological, a lingering remnant of the time he had spent as a corpse, but he had developed a low tolerance for heat. Hot sunshine, too, made him feel slightly queasy.
Despite the discomfort, his thoughts broke up and drifted, and his eyes closed…
A loud banging sound scattered his dreams and startled him awake.
His first thought was to wonder what nonsense Arzath was up to this time, but then the sound came again: a series of sharp, ringing knocks.
Then he realised what it was.
Someone was at the door!
Surprised, Ferrian scrambled to his feet. As he did so, the knocks came again, more rapidly: urgent.
Who could be at the door? he thought, perplexed, as he hurried from the dining room and across the pristine foyer. The Griks were forbidden from knocking lest their thick fists crack the wood, and certainly Arzath had never knocked on a door in his life, let alone the entrance to his own castle.
But who would be visiting in such atrocious weather? More prospective students?
Reaching the grand double entrance doors, Ferrian paused, frowning. He had explicit orders from Arzath not to let anyone in without his presence. But he could hardly let them stand out there in the storm.
He glanced momentarily up at the stairs. Gods knew where Arzath was. Holed up in his tower or anywhere…
Shaking his head, Ferrian took hold of the golden handle and pulled the heavy door open.
He wasn’t quite prepared for the sight of pure misery that confronted him.