Ross Lawhead - A Hero's throne

“My life has been a literal hell for the past eight years and I believe that I’m fortunate enough to be in a position to rid the entire world of this godforsaken, wretched, dark, dank, underground world, and if that is at all possible, then I want to do it. I want to wipe it all out, Modwyn, and I’m telling you this because I think, deep down, that’s what you want too. It’s what you all were put here to do-to fight this fight. Well, good for you. I’m going to give you what you want. I’m going to do what the Carnyx was apparently designed to do. I’m going to bring you war.”

“What you want is not so different from what we want. We wish every dark day for deliverance, that our presence and purpose underground were not necessary, that war was not our constant reality. But this is the world we chose to enter-what else should we do?”

“It’s a world that you also dragged others into-innocents like Daniel and Freya, and all the children before them. My family-generation upon generation of my family over hundreds of years, down to Alex, the youngest generation-we’re all wrapped up in it as well. What reason do you have for involving us?” Vivienne asked.

Modwyn spread her hands. “This is the world we are in. The lengths we went to, the measures we took, were reasonable.”

“And my brother Alex-who now styles himself Gad Gristgrennar. He looked too much into this world and became warped by it. Do you take responsibility for him?”

“We are not responsible for all the wickedness that men do.”

“And yet you claim to be their salvation?”

“I make no such claim. All must do as much as they may in this world to cast a light into the darkness. And fail or succeed, Ni?ergeard has striven to be the brightest light.”

They continued the rest of the walk in silence until they reached the ground floor of the Langtorr. Frithfroth led them across the hall and through the door beneath the tapestry.

Vivienne and Freya braced themselves for the stinging stench that was about to hit them and followed the two Ni?ergearders through.

“Okay, Modwyn,” Freya said. “Where is it?”

“Underneath the stairs, on the far side, where they join the wall.”

Freya followed Modwyn across the room, through the biers of dead knights. A few times Freya saw Modwyn’s skirts catch and the regal woman awkwardly free herself. Good, Freya thought.

“Vivienne, I suppose you’ve already been to the Beacon?”

“No, I swear, I know nothing of this.”

There was a stairway underneath the one that circled around the Sl?pereshus , which meant that they had to walk around the entire room to get to it; none were eager to walk straight through. Even in the low light Freya could see that Modwyn’s eyes were streaming with tears. She wondered if it was due to the acrid air or sorrow over the lost knights.

The second stairway descended a few flights and then became a snaking tunnel with no slope. Within a few minutes, they came across a gruesome barrier. The corpses of about thirty yfelgopes were lying in a mangled heap, all at the same spot in the tunnel. The pile of their bodies nearly reached the ceiling, but the years of decay had diminished them and they now lay in a sunken, sticky heap.

“I hate this,” Freya said as she tried to negotiate the morbid barrier without actually looking at it. Vivienne groaned. Her boot slipped on something nasty and she swore. “What happened to them?”

“I did,” Modwyn said as she took her first step into the pile of bodies. “I ended their lives the moment they stepped across the threshold of the Langtorr. They were like tiny sparks cast from a fire that I tamped out.”

Freya swallowed back bile and finally made it through the stomach-turning pile. She scuffed her boots against the ground to try to remove as much of the crud from them as possible, and made a mental note not to ever wear them again. The air started to fill with a sickening smell that they had awakened from the bodies they disturbed.

Modwyn walked beside her now and they continued in silence. After a time the tunnel ended in a room that contained a wrought iron circular staircase, which they ascended.

Freya was hit by the smell-different from the decay of death that they had just walked through; this was a living rank filth, which was more like the smell from a zoo-a human zoo.

Freya lifted her lamp higher and slowly turned around inside what she assumed was once the Beacon. Rubble and metal furniture had been piled against the walls, completely blocking any doors, windows, or other portals.

The building-or the inside of it, at least-was round and tapering to a flat roof, rather like the inside of a beehive, if it were hollow. The rubble was not confined to just the walls, but hunks of stone lay in a thick layer on the ground. Freya didn’t know where it came from, at first, but shining the lamp around a little, she decided that it was the remains of the upper floors of the tall structure-floors that were not of wood and masonry, but that had once been carved from solid stone. Broken benches and twisted pieces of metal chairs added to the piles.

And there were people, littered about as randomly as the stones. Some of them were knights, some of them were the Ni?ergeard townspeople-the stonemasons and metalsmiths who kept the city and the knights in repair. The rest of them were yfelgopes. At first Freya thought that they were all dead, but as light poured into the room, heads swivelled toward her. And although the light was very dim to Freya, they shielded their eyes from it-knights and yfelgopes alike.

Both of these things, the sight and the smell, came to her at the same time, as did the sound. A voice was droning in low, croaky, and cracked intonations-with long, slow, and deep basso profundo notes, each of them as long as a breath.

“Where’s that sound coming from?” Freya asked. “It’s ghastly.”

“There,” Modwyn said, pointing toward the far wall, where a ragged silhouette sat in a lumpy, hairy heap, singing its dreary, dire song.

Where are the fighters; are they fled, or failed-

Where the field of battle; the fight would be brought-

The enemies and attackers do not advance anymore,

What damage their hands could do against us-

Our camp in ruins, crows eat our store,

The minds of men, barren and masterless;

Carrion carcasses carrying life, but

where has passion gone, when parted it our chests-

The fire, from our hearts, not from brands has been flung.

Why do we wait, wakeful not watchful.

Swords lie silent, will they not sing-

The fallen cry vengeance beneath victorless feet.

Arms hanging leadenly a leader unleading

He dismisses his warriors and walks all alone.

Death walks between disdaining our lives

Not worth the cost to carry our souls.

It was another obstacle course to reach the speaker, but this time Freya was trying to avoid stepping on the living, not the dead. They looked anaemic, pale and blue, with hollow expressions on their faces. They did not appear diseased or emaciated-the Ni?ergearders did not need to eat, after all-but looking into each one was like looking into the face of death. And each one, so Freya imagined, asked the question “Why?” As if they asked it of the universe, and she just happened to be in the way of it.

“Is that him? Is that Godmund?” Vivienne asked, squinting into the gloom, not wanting to move forward.

The grizzled hair and jutting brow were unmistakable, but his cheeks were sunken and his jaw hung slack. “Godmund. Godmund! Come on, get up. What’s going on here?”