image [https://i.imgur.com/yFu9mOD.png]

XIII

Payment and Danger

The master mage levitated the rubble and debris trapping my soldiers. Durak was the first to crawl from underneath.

I dusted off his armour and inspected him. No sign of damage.

Any structural injuries?

The black orc performed some exaggerated movements without issue, so I tapped him on the cheek. ‘Glad to have you back.’

His bond pulsed as he knelt. Lich Queen.

Xun—as he insisted I call him—hummed. ‘Are they intelligent?’

‘More intelligent than you think.’

I wasn’t letting a man content watching me die in on anything. But the mage’s emerald eyes lingered on my undead captain, and he seemed to be taking in the sum total of Durak’s existence. What that equation amounted to, I could not tell.

‘Did you have to be so rough, Seph?’ Levi raised his voice. The golden hue sticking to his hands snapped the broken jawbone back in place, making the apprentice yelp.

‘She nearly killed me, Levi,’ I responded simply.

My brother gave the girl a once-over. Her white robes were stained from the mud and dirt I’d wrestled her into, and her face was a mess. Yet her beauty pierced through the grime.

Levi blushed and looked down, coughing into his palm. ‘I apologise on my sister’s behalf,’ he said. ‘She has a bad attitude. Sometimes.’

‘Iss awlrite,’ the girl mumbled (her jaw would need more time to heal fully). ‘Thanx.’

I frowned. ‘I said she almost killed me. Why are you apologising to her?’

‘I just feel like you were in the wrong.’

His response got him a pained smile from the apprentice, which Levi returned.

My gaze narrowed.

Beside me, the magus chuckled. ‘I’m glad to see you’re all getting along.’

Of course he was. She would be in less trouble if my brother was on her side.

I was about to utter my grievances when the faintest of glimmers in the earth caught my eye. Something blue was reflecting within the dirt. Was that what I thought it was?

I purposefully averted my gaze. The two other undead soldiers freed themselves from the mound, and I ordered one to move where I had seen the glimmer.

The mage wasn’t fooled and followed the orc sneaking ahead. But the approach of hooves drew his attention, allowing the undead to do his deed unnoticed.

‘Warden!’ Jaeger saluted. He led my destrier forward.

‘A fruitful hunt?’ I asked, accepting the reins.

He pointed to his men. All of them had a corpse straddled to their horse (though one merely looked unconscious). ‘Your orcs are carrying one as well, Warden, but the horses wouldn’t let the undead mount.’

I indeed sensed the soldiers I lent them further behind. ‘They'll arrive,’ I said and surveyed our group. Everyone was here. ‘Xun, your tower?’

‘I’ll guide us there,’ the mage said. ‘If I may bother you for a ride, Warden?’

My destrier glared at the mage. I barely stopped myself from snarling. ‘Get on,’ I said, and I shuffled forward in my seat.

image [https://i.imgur.com/z6G5s0x.png]

The road towards the tower was tough since we had to climb up uneven mounds and hills while dodging through trees. But the ease with which our horses covered ground surprised me.

I asked Malakai, who pointed at the hooves. An all-black horseshoe surrounded their feet.

‘It’s engraved with runic magic,’ the magus said from behind me—his apprentice was hitching a ride from Levi, which annoyed me in a way I couldn’t explain. ‘It allows for surer footing and a quickened step amongst other things.’

Handy, I thought.

It’s why, not even half an hour later, we reached what I could only describe as a crater. A chunk of the land had been pulled from the surrounding hills, leaving a circular vale, almost like a primeval celestial impact was the origin of this place.

Frostmourne stood in the centre of it all. Its base was the flattened peak of a tor, its stones a massive work of white and dark mortar. A low wall around the fort connected to a wall surrounding a bailey, and within those outer walls were the decrepit remains of a stable and a smithy.

Gazing at the tower as I was…a shiver couldn’t help but shoot through me. I felt a…presence. Like I was being watched.

‘There’s an entrance at the rear,’ the magus said. ‘You can store your horses there.’

So we entered the bailey, passing a strange field of sticks jutting out of the ground on the way. I couldn’t tell their purpose and I didn’t ask.

Our entrance wasn’t more than an arched doorway. I raised an eyebrow. Half of my men were back in Coldmarsh (as escort for the deceased townsfolk and protection for the town), but we still had nine horses. Could we fit inside? My answer came when my destrier stepped across the infinitely thin layer separating the exterior and interior of the tower. The world shifted. Outside, smudge and dirt stained the mortar between the stones, which had crippled at the edges. It made one believe the stories of the tower being abandoned. The inside killed that notion. Phosphorescent globes fastened to the walls illuminated a perfect stable with many stalls and fresh hay.

‘Welcome to Frostmourne.’ The magus smiled. ‘Make yourselves at home.’

image [https://i.imgur.com/z6G5s0x.png]

We left the stables and entered a hallway bedecked with red carpet. A golden chandelier above us replaced the pity light of any phosphorescent globes, and an ambient violin tune played, coming from all sides at once.

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The magus was waiting near the entrance together with his apprentice. The master wore a short tabard that hung to his waist, over trousers tucked into oversized boots. A maroon cloak hanging from his shoulders swallowed his thin frame. The apprentice was draped in a violet robe that had the embroidery of a winged serpent on the side of the leg, which curved around her thigh and must arch up past the small of her back to come out over the right shoulder. A dark, wooden wand was strapped to her hip, but it wasn’t the staff she had used earlier.

Standing beside each other as they were, though the girl was taller, I could see the resemblance between them, especially with their hair the same shade of gold and both looking young.

‘You cleaned up quick,’ I commented. That caught me an elbow from Levi, but the glare on the apprentice’s face made it worth it.

The magus coughed. ‘Please, do not bully my apprentice overly much, Warden. She’s already shaken.’

‘Am nawt,’ she mumbled. Yet she rubbed her jaw.

‘Whatever you say,’ he said. He turned to us. ‘The long night must’ve tired you. My chef has a meal prepared. After replenishing yourselves, you will find a hot bath waiting for you.’

That wiped any suspicion for the magus still lingering amongst my men. I huffed. Let Levi pray to Ruelle that we weren’t being played, or we were all dead.

A winding staircase scaled the far wall, leading to higher floors. The first stairs ended on a level platform, a circular room with a long hallway extending into the distance. Strange. The tower was narrow and tall, not wide—there should be no way for the hallway to extend that deep. More magic, I decided.

The magus climbed another staircase. Two more followed before we reached the banquet hall. A heavy-set central table dominated the room, surrounded by modest chairs. On our right was a gallery that overlooked the hall, which seemed to have another exit and entrance altogether since there was no staircase leading to it. Left of me was a podium where hung a giant curtain. Those curtains parted after we all took a seat, revealing ghostly silhouettes playing the violin tune that could be heard all throughout the tower. If that wasn’t enough to woo my men, cutlery and plates floated into the room on nothing but air. Bowls filled with vibrant green soup swirled as if stirred by an unseen hand, and the rich aroma of earthy mushrooms and fragrant spices was enough to nearly behead me of all my common sense. Loaves of bread—dark as the soil of the larch woods—steamed as they landed. When the roasted quail glazed with honey and garnished with sprigs of thyme came in, the fervour of my men could no longer be stopped.

‘En—’ the magus was cut off by Drake’s cutlery smashing against his soup bowl. ‘Enjoy,’ he finished.

No one spoke a word as they devoured their meal.

image [https://i.imgur.com/z6G5s0x.png]

A hellishly good dinner and warm bath later, Jaeger, Levi, Malakai, and I had retreated into the magus’s observatory at the very top of the tower. The observatory was a circular room infested with clear windows at every turn. Globes illuminated numerous curved tables with all manners of devices clustered on top of them: a sphere of a planet here, stacked notebooks there. On the left wall also hung a map that took up most of the space. It showed…the Duchy? I recognised some of the places but the area was too big.

I wanted to study it but forced my gaze to the centre of the room, where both apprentice and master lounged in chairs made of canvas and carved wood. My head tilted at the sight of the mage. His ears. They had turned pointy, though I was certain they hadn’t been this entire evening.

He noticed where my gaze lingered. ‘I disguise my ears with a spell when I go outside. Takes a while to wear off.’

‘Are you a highblood, Sir?’ Jaeger mouthed with something akin to reverence.

‘You almost never see us outside Queleth, do you?’ he smiled.

Queleth was the highblood capital city, I knew.

‘A shame,’ Levi said. ‘The highbloods have been valuable allies to our cause since ancient times.’

‘That we have,’ the mage said. ‘It’s why forming a pact with your family was quite easy.’

We had a pact? Must have something to do with how he was the master of this tower despite it being our land.

My gaze went outside. Utterly dark. ‘Let us not dally and discuss reparations.’

That uglied the bubbling mood in the room but I didn’t care.

‘Do we have to?’ Levi asked. ‘No one got badly hurt in the end.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Though I am not aware of the particulars of our pact, Xun, I assume it discusses our conduct towards each other—how we are expected to behave as neighbours.’

‘In quite some detail,’ he said, crossing his legs.

‘Then besides the breach of laws,’ I continued, ‘your apprentice destroyed one of my soldiers. A valuable soldier. One whose replacement she also stopped me from retrieving.’

‘As she should’ve,’ Levi started. ‘You would’ve made him an undead, Sepharin—’

‘Levi,’ I said sharply, and he quieted. My back straightened so I loomed over the room. ‘Allies or not, undead or not, that she interrupted our operation is a fact. Moreover, the aid of a magus can perhaps save all of our people. I won’t allow them to get out of this for free.’

That last sentence dug up memories of corpses stuck in the frozen mud, and faces went dark.

‘What has happened to your people?’ the mage asked in the stretching silence.

‘The orcs, Sir,’ Malakai answered. He gave a quick recounting of the events.

The magus considered for a moment. ‘Abductions…I did notice a disturbance west of the Wall.’

I locked in on that detail. ‘In the miasma, you mean?’

The mage’s golden hair bobbed up and down. ‘The energies beyond the Wall are chaotic by nature, but a few days ago they stabilised…like they were being harnessed.’

‘The portals?’ I asked.

‘No. The signature was too uniform. This was a single spell of considerable magnitude.’

‘Of what kind?’

Xun’s slender fingers stroked his chin. ‘It could be anything. However, given the abductions…’

We waited.

‘A ritual wouldn’t be out of question,’ he finished.

‘A ritual, Sir?’ Malakai whispered.

My tone went cold. ‘What rituals do you know that require live sacrifices?’

‘Many,’ he said with a shrug. He chuckled at Levi’s frown. ‘Sacrificial rituals are amongst the easiest and most diverse spells, which is why even insignificant cults practise them.’ He turned back to me. ‘But many of those rituals wouldn’t result in the destruction of a Duchy—I assume that’s what the orcs are after. For that, there’s only one feasible category.’

‘And that is?’

Xun paused. Beside him, his apprentice shifted in place.

‘That would be a summoning,’ he said. ‘Most likely demonic in nature.’

You could’ve heard a nail drop in the room.

‘A demonic summoning…?’ Levi was lost for words.

My hands linked in front of my face to cover a snarl.

‘Your men must be familiar with them,’ the master mage said.

‘We are.’ Jaeger said. ‘But their sightings have decreased vastly in the last year for unknown reasons. We thought it was because of the orcs.’

I’d learned by now that demons roamed outside the Wall. But “demons” was an umbrella term. An unknowing villager would coin an orc a demon just as soon as they would an eight-footed monstrosity from a different dimension. It also didn’t help that no one knew the exact layout of the north beyond the wall and the Wailing Forest—not even the frostguards, whose scouting operations didn’t reach past the first stretch of kilometres.

However, hearing that the demons were “taking a break” was concerning. Demons, true demons (as I knew and hated them), didn’t require sleep. Something was going on if they were inactive.

One problem at a time, I sighed, and I tapped my legs. ‘Can you tell what they’re summoning? A horde or a single entity?’

‘If they’re summoning anything,’ he said, ‘a horde would be my guess. I would need to see the spell for any certainty.’

Which was the worst option. The frostguards’s manpower problem had skyrocketed after the attacks. Depending on the size of this horde, we would have no way of safeguarding our territory, especially not with the orcs’s use of portals. This needed to be stopped. And quick.

‘We’re leaving first thing in the morning,’ I said.

‘Ith out a lowkatian?’ the apprentice said, a smug smile on her lips.

I blinked. ‘What?’

‘She’s asking if we’re going there without a location,’ Levi translated.

I turned to Xun. ‘You know where the disturbance is, do you not?’

He shook his head. ‘The presence has since been masked. All I know is that it was in the west.’

I glanced at Jaeger but of course our scouts would not have any information. They would be hearing of this for the first time same as I was.

‘I suppose this is where we can return to your reparations, Xun.’

Getting any legally-binding and long-term compensation would be difficult (who wouldn’t write some sort of diplomatic immunity into their pact?), so my focus was on immediate services or goods which didn’t require promises or trust. Helping me deal with the orc threat was priority number one. Whatever else I could drain out of him would be a bonus.

The highblood magus locked eyes with me. They were dancing again, and it felt as if a monstrous astral computation was happening in mere moments. When it finished, he regarded his apprentice.

‘Since you were so kind as to offer, Leah, I’m certain the Warden will appreciate your help.’

The apprentice frowned. ‘Wath?’

But the master disregarded his student and addressed me. ‘We have been neighbours for many generations of your family, Warden. No conflict has ever come between us. To show the same truth still holds, in addition to yet to be discussed compensations, I offer the full services of my apprentice until the resolution of the ongoing conflict. She will travel with you and be as your companion, to ensure the growing orc threat is dealt with.’

This time, Leah’s jaw didn’t dislodge because of anything I did.