“There is no chance of that,” I snarled. “Only ice runs through the veins of this heartless creature.” That earned me disparaging stares.
My maternal grandmother Angharad was undeniably beautiful – beautifully horrific. That bitch’s magic-wrought facade masked one of the cruellest hearts I had ever encountered. Her unending youth made a mockery of the resemblance to my own beloved and lamented mother when by all rights this thing’s inner corruption should be represented by a rotting corpse. I had to fight back the nauseated shudder and the venom clamouring to spray from my tongue. The scars running down the right side of my face and neck pulled tight and hot. This thing was no kin of mine!
The girl opened her human eyes, if eyes they could still be called when amethyst orbs sat inside hollowed-out sockets. Mercifully the third, sitting in a hole carved in her forehead, remained hidden behind its strip of leather.
When she spoke her voice was old and weary rather than youthful and exuberant, and her accent was not quite that of the modern Clanholds but of a people long since dust. “The stones welcome ye Granville o’ the line of Buros, and ye also Cormac o’ the line o’ Feredaig.”
Her face turned to each magus as she spoke and they all felt discomfort. There was something incredibly off putting staring into a blind woman’s inhuman crystal eyes and knowing she could see deeper than any human should. “The winter winds welcome ye, Bryden, son o’ Araeda and Emlain. The fires of our hearths welcome ye Vincent, son o’ Fion and Bevan. The Sun and Moon and stars welcome ye Secca, daughter o’ Grania and Turi.” She looked to Eva. “No spirits welcome ye, Evangeline o’ the line o’ Avernus, but the hearts and sword-arms o’ our warriors will praise your arrival through the coming days.”
Then she looked to me. And said nothing.
I was not welcome in Kil Noth. I never had been. I was merely cattle that had escaped the slaughterhouse.
I scowled and imagined my hands around her throat, squeezing until all three sodding eyes popped out. “You lot forced me to come back, Angharad, so stick your welcome up your arse. Your face makes maggots gag in a bucket of guts.”
Everybody but Secca was staring at me with mouths agape – our magus of light and shadow was frowning and scanning the steep slopes of the surrounding valley as if searching for something.
Angharad rose to her feet and felt not a scrap of shame or shyness despite wearing only tattoos in front of so many strangers. Even given the looser physical morals of Clansfolk this bitch was brazen, but then she was old and terrible and beautiful so who would dare rebuke her?
She gazed down at me from atop her fallen stone, expression inscrutable. “Ye offer your poor, lonely granny no respect, Edrin Walker, nor a hug.” Her words found great purchase among our men, mostly thanks to her naked beauty.
A hug? Really? Was that the best she could do to try to alienate my army from me? It was a mere drop in the ocean of dislike. All she cared about was forcing me to become what my mother was originally meant to be.
“Oh don’t pity her,” I said. “She’s older than any of us and her hand-me-down eyes are probably older than the bloody Arcanum itself. If you stick your cock in that foul creature it will rot off. If only this little runt of a supposed seer was better at it then she might have seen this war coming in time to do something about it.”
She convulsed. Her head snapped up to face suddenly roiling clouds. When it snapped back to me her blazing eyes stained the snow purple with their inner light. Blood drained from her lips, and all colour from her tattoos until they too were white as snow. My Gift was wide open and magic poured through me, ready to kill.
“Enough.” A chorus of voices rang out in unison from all sides, causing the Arcanum magi to open their Gifts and our wardens to draw their weapons. Two dozen Clansfolk druí stepped out from shadowed crevices in the cliff walls, or simply appeared in front of us, all wearing grey and green clanless plaids, all Gifted. Secca grimaced and looked most affronted at having missed whatever illusion had masked them. That was all well and good – but how in all the shitting hells of heathens had they hidden themselves from me?
Eva set a firm hand on my shoulder. “Shut your mouth,” she hissed. “Please, just for once. We need to fight with these people not against them.”
For her I shut my flapping jaw. She was right, here and now was not the place to rip the beating heart from my grandmother.
I had to be more cunning and ruthless than I’d ever been. I hated to think it, but I had to be more like her. Anything less and she would have me tangled helpless in her web while she tried to make me into something I was not.
Angharad was studying my reactions and seemed disappointed with what she found. No change there then. “Drop your weapons and let go o’ your magic. Any attempt to embrace it will result in your death, and ye will stay out o’ our minds, tyrant.”
I glared at Eva, I warned you.
Surrounded by their Gifted, we had no choice but to comply. Swords and shields, spears, bows and implementia arcana all dropped to the snow.
Angharad smiled, cold and hard as her heart. “Ye may now enter the sacred hold of Kil Noth.”
Warriors armed with circular hide-covered shields and basket-hilted broadswords escorted us, and at first the others could not see our destination. Only as we grew close could they discern the lines of carved stonework blending into the natural rock, the arrow slits, windows and chimneys of the upper reaches of Kil Noth.
We were taken along a concealed pathway to a massive circular doorway carved into the side of the mountain. The stone bore ancient protective runes and wards chiselled in harmony with vine leaves and thorny thistle stalks. Some of the wardings I recognised, the usual variety granting strength and durability to withstand ice and fire and hammer. For others, even my respectable experience with wards offered no answer. Some even resembled those found on the Tombs of the Mysteries back in Setharis that no magus had ever deciphered, or broken.
Angharad laid a hand on the doorway and the stone ground back to admit us to a place where I had once been tortured. I swallowed my fear of enclosed spaces, steeled myself against the horrors of the past, and entered Kil Noth.
Chapter 13
In the summer of six years past, I had entered that very same door to Kil Noth with hopes of salvation in my heart instead of blackest dread. I had been ragged in body and mind from four years of constant running, hiding, and futilely hoping that the daemons hunting me would eventually give up and leave me alone. I had faked my death and succeeded in throwing the Arcanum off my trail, but even that cunning victory had not offered as much respite as I had yearned for – the shadow cats had proven relentless and would never, ever, give up the hunt.
I had been so sick of travel, terrible food and bad drink in grimy rural taverns, dicing for coin with rigged dice and then moving on – always moving on after only a few short days. All the faces and names blurred into one, and it had got to the point I’d barely taken notice of tavernkeeps and serving girls as separate people: they were all just actors on a stage playing the same old roles.
If my survival in exile had not been all that ensured the safety of my old friends Lynas, Charra and Layla, then I might have ended my life long before then. Many a time I had stood atop a cliff and looked down at the white-topped waves crashing against jagged rocks while thinking of a home I would never see again. I had often pondered taking that single short step forward. A growing part of me had urged me to do it and find some rest and peace, but I never could – I loved my friends and I was too stubborn to let the enemy win. In any case, I’d always been good at putting things off until tomorrow, always the next tomorrow…