Mhorag: Prophecy of Hope Book 2

By Sarah Kennedy

An Ancient Evil
A Promised King
A World Besieged

Mhorag’s name is whispered in every land. For some there is no greater dread; for others no greater hope. But in this new age of rage and wonder, what is hope? In growing darkness, Sgarrwrath’s quest for domination of the world is interrupted by these whispers and prayers, and stars aligning to reveal the Living Flame. All hangs in the balance as the forbidden desire that started it all culminates in a battle of wills that will darken the stars, shatter the Sun and raise the dead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796058567

Sarah Kennedy

Secretly wishing for her own wings to fly, the author of the award-winning Prophecy of Hope Saga, Sarah Kennedy, instead spills her heart upon the page. Writing stories for nearly as long as she can remember, each word is a beat of her heart. She has taken courses with the Institute of Children’s Literature and Long Ridge Writers Group (now known as the Institute for Writers). She lives firmly planted to earth in a small town in Pennsylvania with her family, including a fabulous clowder of cats, while giving wings to the imaginary friends in her head. So let the dragons fly and let the saga continue!

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Sarah Kennedy.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2019913773

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-7960-5857-4

                Softcover         978-1-7960-5858-1

                eBook              978-1-7960-5856-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 09/09/2019

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Darkness

Eve of Damnation

Elysium Fallen

Dead Waking

Heaven Fire

Before the World Goes Dark

Dawning of a Thorn

Darkness

Dawning

Life against Darkness

The Weight of Golden Blood

The Virtue of Oblivion

Cosmic Upheaval

Star-Crossed Dominion

Never-Ending War

Where the Sun Shines Cold

Beginning of Flames

Whispers in the Dark

Pros and Cons of Embracing the Void

Witching Hour

Thorn

The Golden Brand

All in Essence a Void

Beyond Eternity

Time and Terror

Vision in the Flame

Hope at the Edge of the Dark

Beyond the Wayward Sun

All the Devils Are Here

Destiny of Some Kind

From Darkness, Light

This Withered Speck of Time

Divided We Fall

Sunrise of Wonder

Truth’s Shadow

Secrets in Shadows

Kindled

The Breath and the Glory

Heart, Soul, and All

Epilogue

Pathway of the Stars

About the Author and Acknowledgments

Quinn Berger

Understanding the Prophecy of Hope

Guardians

The Races and Resistance

Royal House of Caladrius

What Happened to?

Other books by author Sarah Kennedy

The Prophecy of Hope Saga

Also includes

Sgarrwrath, Prequel to the Prophecy of Hope*

Arising, Prophecy of Hope Book 1**

*winner of three honorable mentions 2013/2014

**second-place winner for Fantasy in Royal Dragonfly Book Awards 2017

www.sgarrwrath.com

Connect with the author at

www.facebook.com/prophecyofhopesaga

www.facebook.com/fantasyauthorSarahKennedy

www.twitter.com/@Sgarrwrath

I am also on Goodreads, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

This

book is for

Riley Kennedy

beloved nephew, storyteller, and Master Summoner

and for

all who have suffered tragic loss

and still endured for the hope of one day

embracing what is higher than yourself.

You are never alone.

DARKNESS

Darkness is alive.

    In a strange sort of way.

        Its substance is twisted and complex.

            Some say it presses in, but true darkness is not so easy to spot.

T RUE DARKNESS BEGINS with a thought. It kisses and whispers, and you let it in. It grows so easily in the deep, moist recesses of life; you scarcely recognize the trap until you are already locked in its cage, and all else is crushed, dominated, and silenced within the black. Such is the nature of dark ness.

I should know.

I am that darkness.

I remember when I was no more than an errant thought in the mind of another. I remember being the wretched stain marring the glory of the Kingdom. I remember biting a god and tasting life for the first time. I am a predator, but I feel like prey, as my heart races in the utter black of this hour, and my substance penetrates upward from the hollows of existence, slowly, painfully infecting the rotting world above, as battered souls still clinging to their lives suffocate in the quicksand of my rising void, as I advance through the broken shields into the matter of life, eating it away like acid.

What does my prey fear in this moment? What do you fear as the world finally fades to black and light dies, and the only evidence of something more is the thud of my hidden heart, driving you slowly mad?

Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud …

A heart I had stolen.

A heart without body, without blood yet still beating, all around …

Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud …

And what do I fear as I listen to the cries of my prey, starved and trapped? Am I so different from them, always clawing for more, never escaping the horror, the futility of my own existence?

Layer upon layer, year upon year, I grow stronger, and yet I cannot stop the whispers breathed out against me so long, long ago.

Hope is still graven into the very fabric of existence, scarred into time and space, emblazoned into the ancient foundations above and below—foundations I have yet to overthrow! And as I rise in this time between times, in this place between places, over this world between worlds, I am forced to acknowledge yet another disruption to my beautiful darkness on this, the eve of damnation.

EVE OF DAMNATION

Part One

of

Mhorag, Prophecy of Hope Book 2

Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to the other shore; into eternal darkness …

—Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), from the Divine Comedy (Inferno)

ELYSIUM FALLEN

City empire of Maehalarys; ruled by the Temple of Fiacre

Long ago:

P LEASE. NUDHUG CRIED weakly as his body dropped, and his weight dragged him down against the manacles binding his mutilated wrists. He hung suspended by his hands over the oubliette. He writhed against the bonds; his face raised toward the only freedom, while his nostrils filled with the reek of aged urine, human feces, and blood rising from the bowels of the temple. His body slapped painfully against close wet walls of ancient stone as he was lowered through the shaft toward his doom. He tried not to think about the mire coating everything when he struggled, pulling himself up against the chains. His quickly numbing fingers groped at his bonds. Already, the numbness was spreading, aided by the cavernous chill of this dungeon. He drew in a rasping breath between chattering teeth. Please don’t do this, father. Fear crept into his voice, nearly paralyzing the sound, even so the faint cry echoed in the untold depths that still waited to swallow him.

The High Priest appeared above him with a cold smile that parted a mature face in a subtle ripple effect through the ample folds of well-nourished skin. Anfalen was not an old man. His brown hair still held the succulence of youth, yet there was a wild roughness about him attained only by a lifetime of violent and charismatic existence. The Master is suffering, my boy, he answered with insane fervor.

Nudhug’s eyes locked with his father’s. Even at this wrong angle, he could read the evil determination in them. He gagged around a strangled cry as the bindings shuddered beneath Anfalen’s controlling hands. His body sank deeper, further from freedom. The already pitiful sound of his cry degenerated into a whimper, resounding down into an ominous silence. He spiraled over the secret chamber, feeling its menacing shroud coil around him as if it was alive.

Anfalen’s smile quickly faded as he watched the boy cast a wild glance downward; ratty blond hair whipped haphazardly around the younger one’s face as he looked further down the hole of this forgotten place. No doubt his son prayed the sound had not been heard, but prayers were empty in this land. Hope, a fool’s dream. The priest forced himself to feel nothing as he marveled silently at the deeply embedded, scarred and rescarred knots of tissue standing angrily out of the rest of the boy’s bruised, undernourished flesh. The bite of the Master. Some would say the bite of a monster or a demon. He had heard the whispers of the firstborns in their cages, and he knew all about the scourge that was the lowborns: outcasts, criminals, stolen firstborn sacrifices, street rats, haters of the sacred all, whose primary goal was to undermine this temple, destroy the Master and his dependent hoards, and thus transform the infrastructure of their entire reality by any means necessary!

Sudden anger seized the high priest even as the first sounds of movement slithered through the hidden waters, up to their ears from the lord’s abysmal bed. One heartbeat of horror, and Nudhug writhed upward again with enough strength to clutch desperately at his father’s fingers, stiff in their constricting red leather gloves, yet the boy’s thin face was empty of hope and dignity; depravity was written in his hollow eyes, beaten there since birth. The boy knew what was coming even before his hands slipped away, and he fell jarringly downward against the shackles. He knew hope for reprieve was useless. He knew he was nothing. Still, in another time and place, Nudhug could have been a prince, a commander of men and fanatic loyalty—he was of the right stock and bloodline even now, but in Maehalarys, being human came at a high cost, and being firstborn meant only one thing, and it was not power.

Anfalen manipulated the chains, allowing Nudhug’s body to drop a little further. As long as the Master suffers, all Maehalarys will suffer. Every second hastens the demise of the entire empire. You know as well as I there is no peace without bloodshed; no bounty without sacrifice. Accept it, son, one must face the raw, inescapable anguish set before us, and better it be you than I.

Nudhug cast another wild glance downward. A sick feeling lurked in the pit of his stomach. The thick residue of the air coated his taste buds with the foulness of the monster sliding up the veiled throat of the pit.

Soltar has set, Anfalen continued, as if this fact alone justified his actions now.

Everyone knew the four bright stars that governed the heavens over Maehalarys. The most constant were the twins Athoondal and Azuel, supergiants looming high and distant over the land with the fixed point known as true North spaced between them; their blue light lent its soft glow to the long hours never waning, never waxing. The third star was Quazel, which revolved around Athoondal in cycles of reflected light and shadow. While the fourth, Soltar, the brightest star, shone for periods measured in decades and then vanished for an equal measure—the cause of such a phenomenon was unknown and unavoidable. Its rising and setting was the arbiter of unpredictable seasons of bounty and deprivation. In the cages, they knew well the cost of Soltar’s setting. Nudhug squirmed defiantly in his chains, though every effort of escape was futile. Nonetheless, his muscles rippled with his every desperate movement.

Already the shadows grow long, and the waters rise, and the deep cold sets in! Do you know what that means for Maehalarys if the Master’s Warming should fail? The High Priest studied the boy he had never allowed himself to love, so much like the beloved mother, lost to them both. He clenched himself against the feelings tearing at him. You know, he said slowly, it speaks to your strength, my boy, that you have lived to bear so many scars. There is always such a shortage of good specimen. I am proud of you. He gave Nudhug a derisive smile. But with these days of deprivation coming hard and fast upon our world, the Master is in greater need. I wonder if you will survive this time. If not, it is no great loss, I don’t suppose, and you should have no regrets. Seventeen is rather old for a firstborn human, don’t you think? He mused more to himself than to anyone else.

The hatred in the boy’s eyes said more than words ever could. Anfalen felt nothing as the boy dropped closer and closer to the black mouth of the commodious pit, whose bottom was deep and dark and wet, whose occupant was awake and cold and voracious with hunger. Nudhug sucked in a hiss of pain as his body twisted back from the moist slapping sounds creeping nearer to his dangling feet. He choked around another cry. Sweat trickled down his armpits as he struggled to no avail against the bonds. This was not the first time he had been forced to face the monster who held the entire realm in thrall. He knew he couldn’t outrun it, not merely because of the chains or the walls or even the armed men above with his father. His skin crawled; his breath quickened, and for several horribly long moments, the whole scene took on a dreamlike quality before his unblinking eyes. A dream in which he remained a frozen observer, while his mind screamed and his lungs heaved. His ragged breaths puffed whitely in the air. The seconds were dragging. The hole yawned before his wild eyes, stretching with increasing darkness into unimaginable depths, out of which came a shrieking howl. In that moment, he felt the horror anew as the icy chill of the creature’s breath crept out of the hole and into his bones. The howl of the Master permeated the whole of Maehalarys—high and low and everywhere in between.

Slowly, a form breached the surface.

Nudhug swayed in its cold aura, feeling its ice run deep. His throat closed around a scream. A sickening wave of terror welled up from his belly. His mind raced even as that familiar sinking feeling crept through him.

The thing worshipped by the world shuddered toward him. Each lost inch robbing him a little more of hope. He swallowed at the lump in his throat. Soon, all the Master’s parts would take control of his every move; it would rob him of his very life. It would beat and break and steal his humanity from him, and even then there was no guarantee he would die and it would end. His every instinct screamed for him to run, but there was nowhere he could go. The Master caught him by the ankle; a great weight pulled him down. Searing pains filled his chest; he felt as if he was being stretched from all sides, and abruptly, the loud popping sounds of his arms being torn from their sockets echoed around his twisting frame. He screamed then; the sound cut short as the air was knocked from his lungs by the intense cold crawling inside him. His bare foot plunged into the murky hole as the creature groped higher … calf, thigh, part by part, slowly higher … intrusive in its touch. Nudhug’s nostrils filled with its reek. His heart hammered in his chest. His breath came in even more ragged gasps.

The Master mounted him like a serpent slithering over a rock yet with all the weight and will of a man beneath its slimy, wet frame. He saw its face emerging from the dark. It seemed to glow against the black. Its variegated cyanotic albino flesh hung loose in places reminiscent of a snake shedding its skin. Its eyes were ringed in crimson; its stare, hypnotic.

Nudhug swallowed dryly at the knot constricting his throat. The Master was everywhere, rippling and oozing along his body. He wanted to turn his face away and grit his teeth against the excruciating brush of its icy, gelatinous flesh, yet his body hung limp as the Master slowly took him, and its damp coldness coated every nerve. Pain scorched through freezing synapses. His body convulsed, flopping beneath the Master, suddenly and violently, like a fish out of water in its last suffocating seconds of life. There was something about the pain—its blinding shock—that strangely comforted him and eased him toward surrender.

He was almost thankful when the moment came that he could no longer feel the weight of his own body. He was drifting beyond … weightless … suspended outside the confines of flesh and bone. His vision blurred, and yet somehow, he could see—no longer the seemingly bottomless chamber and its merciless Master—but something further beyond, which appeared to be falling into him. Some deep part of himself wanted this impossible reality, succumbing for one blessed moment to the calling and its strange awakening fire. A rush of heat sheathed up through him like an invisible flame through his synapses, through his muscles and organs and even his bones, while the portion of his mind imprisoned in the moment knew it couldn’t be real! Could it?

A faint heartbeat echoed beneath the surface of his altered awareness. Halos of light swelled with its rhythm through the shadows. Each pulse more real than the last riding on the air that whistled eerily through the entombed chamber. The whisper of presence seeped in, circling his body in a rushing wave before alighting before him in a slowly spiraling wind that even more slowly took on a darkly insubstantial semblance of humanity—as if a veil was being drawn back. Drops of light began to dew from strands of air back to the breathing vaporous apparition before him.

And then a very real hand reached out to him through the light as if in answer. The specter had become one with a fuming fire, controlling the light, transcending it. A boy hovered there now with skin having a shimmering opalescent luster as it bled flame from bending light in spreading undulations and wild shades of color. His hand was pale and flawless, wreathed from within by streams of gold, and from without by cascading Flames of blue and white and purple, and holding an ever-expanding universe in its palm. Those same delicate fingers that held the impossible brushed his eyes. Nudhug gasped as his body jerked beneath the weight of both the Master and the otherworldly vision. His eyes rolled to the whites as time ground to a halt. Another cry was strangled in the taut line of his throat, but not even the Master’s cruel touch could pull him back from the edge. He was afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. Afraid of the other world opening before him, even knowing the horror he was being allowed to leave behind. At least for one moment. At least in his mind …

An oasis sprawled on the horizon. Too far away, almost nothing … just a shimmering fracture of light, yet upon that spark stood radiant beings. More wraith than substance, they stood in utter silence, as still as stone. Everything frozen around them. Everything holding its breath as they remained too still. Their breath lasted days without sun and nights without moon, and yet the flame of that world only grew.

How did he know that?

A whisper indiscernible from the light resounded across the breach, flowing over the hand that somehow seemed to be pulling everything into itself.

Did he really hear the words that sounded in his brain? Or was it all in his mind? I have searched you and known you. My eyes saw you when you were not yet formed. I formed you and covered you. I laid my hand upon you. Come to me and take of my life, and I will give you a heart to know me. Your flesh shall rest in hope, and I shall be its strength. You shall be bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, a limb of my body, my flesh, my bone … And I will make you a great nation; all who bless you, I will bless; all who curse you, I will curse; your people will be like the stars, innumerable, and your throne will not fall, your line will not fail, and your bones will not turn to dust till the Promised comes … Do you believe?

Nudhug lifted his head deliriously. That was not the voice of either a man or a monster he heard upon the air. Phantom breaths of Flame crackled over him. He could almost see the one who called. Burning, always burning, the starlit hand still reaching for him, only one small part of a greater whole not yet seen. He watched Flame spark up the temple mount, seeming to ignite all its high towers against the darkness; glass and steel mimicking the movement of candlelight as they scraped the sky for miles, giving definition to even this murkiest bowel of Maehalarys that was not so forgotten and far removed from the world as it appeared. He shuddered as he turned his pale face into the sudden burning wind flowing through the expanse.

More whispers slipped through the folds of time and space. The radiant ones beyond coming to life. Their voices dripped from everything like the voices of angels singing. They emanated through the light and the galaxies spinning upon the beckoning hand that made two very different worlds touch. Let the Light shine forth and awaken hope. Let Mhorag arise. Let the Promised come …

Do you believe?

The question echoed around him, demanding he face the deepest truths of his heart. Did he believe those unimaginable promises? Could he believe these whispers? These unexplainable visions? Did he dare to hope?

Do you believe, Nudhug Phlegon? See, I have stopped the world for you! Will you accept me? Or will you remain the prey caught in the mire?

Nudhug trembled. Who was this one that called him by name? Whose very words gripped his heart, pulling the hidden parts of himself toward an eternal precipice of fate? I— He hesitated.

Every sensation struck deeper, searing like lightning through his body. Flame was everywhere. He could smell it; taste it. It was becoming real. He wanted it to rise and burn this world … It wanted to rise and purge; he could feel the power, the contained fury, roiling from the fabric of existence. His breath ragged, he rode the burning sensations between distorted realities. Was he calling now without knowing how? Old fears and new gripped him, pulling him in opposite directions. Reality was a blur, which slowly tried to dig its way back into his mind, while his heart hovered in Flame … only Flame, not of this world.

The burning filled him, quickening in his heart and the blood roaring in his ears, to the point that, for an instant, he thought he could reach out and return the touch of the beckoning hand, despite his numbness, despite his chains, despite his disjointed bones. It seemed so close. So real. The individual stars of its universe suddenly seemed close enough to take on distinctions all their own. Each one orbiting into alignment upon the palm of that beckoning hand. Nudhug trembled, his eyes struggled to focus. Darkness was closing around him. His vision faltered. He fought to maintain the sight, clenching himself desperately upon the one coherent thought filtering through his sluggish mind.

I want to believe. He gasped.

The walls and the darkness shifted in and out as if they were breathing with him. The Master seemed to change. Nudhug thought he could see through that consuming flesh, bone, into the stolen heat within. A horrible stillness swallowed away all sound, even his ragged gasps. The atmosphere shimmered.

Will you help my unbelief?

The caller didn’t speak. The faint shimmer of gold from the faded form of a hand didn’t move. Only the stars moved on those ghostly fingers … tiny sparks that burned with everlasting fire and slowly thawed from the dark, becoming real again. The air popped with the smell of fire.

Nudhug did not comprehend how his face shone like a sun in that moment; nor how the Master shrieked, rising off of him in a perverse undulation of fear and need at the unseen breath, which ignited that crackling storm of fire.

Flame rushed in from all sides.

The air shifted.

Nor did he know all that would come in its wake as his spirit stretched between where his body hung and where the flame pulled.

Steel warped and glass cracked, and the whole Temple of Fiacre began to shatter down the face of his world in an ominous rain as the burning snatched him forward by his bones.

He was falling, and the darkness was falling.

Both of them into the flames.

Nudhug did not feel the burning as it purged him of the broken pieces of the only life he had ever known, and consumed him for a hope and future he could not even begin to imagine, yet that future came upon him with a roar. So beautiful was the sound, so consuming, every weight bowed before it.

The air no longer felt misaligned around his body. His skin no longer crawled. He raised his head, forced his eyes to open. With his head still spinning, Nudhug staggered to his feet. A strong arm came around his middle; he had not come through the flames alone! The arm anchored him against the beating currents of great white wings that caught the light of a strange new star, flaring and shimmering in the too-bright sky. Even as darkness came shrieking down upon those racing wings, it ruptured into flames—burning shadows wherever it touched the life before them. A life that hung upon the heavens, pierced through by the greater light of a still higher Flame, burning and rising. Darkness battled around that Flame, yet the holy fire seared its mark in a perfect circle, driven wide by the whirlwind flying off those churning wings. Its embers filled the air with the intoxicating scent of life even as blood dripped down the shining visage of the great white salvation.

Cure! His heart shouted. Life! Caladrius!

Of purest white was that noble creature called Caladrius, on that day, by that chosen youth. Having no color, nor blackness, not in its graceful body of glassen scales, nor in its feathered wings, nor in tail, nor talon, nor especially in voice. And, yes, a voice can have a color, but that is a tale for another time. The sound that came from Caladrius’s lips was as pure as a dawn, and like a dawn, it heralded a new day. Light glistened in Caladrius’s whiteness. Only in its eyes did color leak through, and, oh, what color! Those eyes, they burned in wheels of blue fire pierced through with gold as Caladrius loomed up out of inevitable doom. Caladrius—a merciful and righteous winged protector; a fierce scaled beast; breather of fire, a shield in a raging storm; a formidable and yet gentle being, whose footsteps shook the earth, whose voice exceeded any instrument with its beauty and any weapon with its power; bringer of Light and blessing, hope and cure.

Flame burned within it, rising to the bidding of its higher Source. Holy fire seared through every vessel of that great body. Flame ignited its heart, but it was the dreams of God that flowed out. Caladrius was the slave. Living Flame was the Master. Caladrius gave himself over to that primordial fire with a long shuddering sigh of lighted breath, for this Flame, unlike all other flames, comes from life, power … everything …

And the elements bowed.

And the air filled with the intoxicating scent of life.

And to its shadow came a people out of time and flame, from origins now shrouded in legend. Refugees of a society of death, they chose to be harbingers of a higher life. Their world is lost to the fluidity of time and space, yet this much is remembered; they came flooding across dimensions interconnected by an all-consuming power and promise to a new world. No sign of that rejected ancestral land remains except what these few words express for, as it is recorded in the stories of the ancients, in Caladrius’s shadow a new life began. Time stood still to bring them safely into a land that was not their own, by a will not Caladrius’s own, but one that has left both kinds bound.

Not in my name, nor in yours, Caladrius said. But in His, and the great white salvation looked heavenward as Light poured down upon them.

Who is He? Nudhug asked.

He is Cure. He is Life. He is Hope. He is Highest. You have been chosen, but the choice is yours.

I heard a voice beyond compare, and it drew me here to this moment—to you, Caladrius. There is no turning back, Nudhug whispered, inclining his head. Place His mark.

May His Mark shine forever, Caladrius said softly as blood dripped from his eyes. Lest all go ill for your seed and mine, for one day, my seed and yours will be one. One day, the shoot of our union will end your line and reign forever! The blood tears sank ominously into the earth. The world shook.

I swear it, Nudhug answered, adding his blood to the trembling ground.

The earth screamed. Flame breathed softly around them. And where they met, the Shrieking Stone erupted from the earth, an enduring monument to the promise.

Out of you will arise Hope for all, Caladrius continued, the fiery gaze of its eyes far away upon the future. Let the Light shine forth and awaken hope. Let Mhorag arise. Let the Promised come. Slow and deliberate, Caladrius wrote in the flesh of Nudhug’s face with his great talons. And let all the ages of your line and people remember, in your darkest hour look to your deepest foundation.

Nudhug Phlegon took upon himself the Mark of the Promised and the name of Caladrius and freely surrendered his will and that of his seed to that which was higher. Sealed with fire and blood. He is first of the royal House of Caladrius, which began there, blessed among Men, chosen to rule this paradise of light in the name of the One who will come … the Promised Caladrius King.

Yet Light would soon be surrounded with darkness, though hidden generations would thrive in the burning breath as the rest of existence faced peril beyond imagining.

Still, it is also written: The Promised shall arise, a blameless son of a divided house …

*     *     *

Present

Nithrodine, Isear; Kingdom of Men

Reign of Armahad Caladrius, the Daystar, An Taoseach of Isear and Emperor of Light:

Captain Taig Highgrail stood a step away from the now ancient foundation of that great empire. He could only imagine the burning glory, the sheer magnificence, of the life Nudhug Phlegon Caladrius had embraced here. Tonight, only madness lurked upon this once sacred ground, not glory. His piercing blue gaze took in the bowl of dying earth, naked of all adornment save for a single lump of legendary stone, stained with history and mythology and blood, breaking proud and erect from the ground. In this age, to all but Mydrian eyes, the stone was merely a stone. Visibly rough in texture, it looked to be made of unique pebbles all plastered together within a mass of gray, cracked and weathered with age. The round hole in its crown, lipped like an open mouth, was the only remarkable thing about it, but that mouth had been filled with drops of Nudhug’s life and the legendary Caladrius’s fire and blood and with higher things besides. The blood of every marked son of the royal house of Caladrius had deepened the stain. He was bound to that union of blood and flame … to that promise. He could feel the residue of lives lived still calling from stone and earth and air. It was no great secret that the bones of Nudhug lay below this little mound; it was said that the first An Taoseach gave the stone its voice, and one by one, his heirs had joined him here, at the spot where he had encountered Caladrius, and each had borne the mark of fealty to the One long Promised.

Taig could still hear the voices of dead kings whispering around this sacred space, led by the great cry of the stone, as if the bones of the earth itself shouted for the true and rightful king. Taig shivered, but not from the cold, as the sound rose up, piercing through the horrible deathlike silence that gripped this one circle of a land fallen into chaos all around them.

A low roll of thunder rumbled through the sky in ominous answer. The entire day had been spent under a rolling quilt of darkness, the color of bruises that choked out the Sun and all hope for reprieve. Rain followed abruptly on the heels of the thunder, beating down hard and relentless. Wind whipped around the Shrieking Stone and the great king digging in the dirt, completely bereft of reason, while the unnatural seething of the air pushed at the silent and watchful ranks of the Mydrian who, even in their black battle dress uniforms, stood out against the encroaching blackness. A blackness not of night, nor of nature. A blackness unknown in this land.

Taig tried to ignore the foreboding that seeped with the rain down his back; a sick feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. One of his hands roosted upon the hilt of a sword sheathed among the conspicuous arsenal strapped to his body. The metal was cold and wet beneath his bare fingers. He did not draw the blade as he braced his legs wide against the onslaught. For as far as his eyes could see, the perimeter held. Layers of protection surrounded this position. A circle of Mydrian stood within reach, and beyond them more to the north, south, east, and west, and beyond them from strategic positions counterassault teams waited to divert any attack and protect the escape routes. From here, there were four such routes, one in each of the four cardinal directions. Two thousand Mydrian held this sacred bowl of earth from the world, and more Mydrian were only a horn blast away, but was it enough? Was it enough when nature itself seemed to be turning against you? Was it enough when a full-blown war waged in the distance, coming nearer? Was it enough when every hope twisted into a lie?

No Mydrian had raised the alarm, yet nothing felt right in that moment. Something was coming, he could almost taste the change on the air growing with the darkness. The captain leaned forward, placing his other hand on his king’s back. Even that simple action, taken so many times before, suddenly felt very wrong. Deep inside himself, he no longer recognized the life of the one he was sworn to protect. Not like he recognized the marks of life upon the Shrieking Stone, pulling at his bones with whispers of promise, which fought to emerge anew from the shattered memories of old ways and the broken bones of an empire of light.

Captain Taig swallowed his bile and focused upon the king under his hand. Sire, we must withdraw.

Armahad jerked away from his touch; his face whipped toward the hand as if he would bite it off. Every hint of humanity gone from his sunken eyes.

Taig pulled back, raising his hand appeasingly. Peace, Majesty. It is only I.

Armahad’s sanity did not return. No recognition filtered down through his wasted features as his lips twisted back from discolored teeth in a grotesque snarl, dripping with blood and puss. The royal face bore the deep furrows of wounds never inflicted upon his flesh but implanted long ago. A history kept now only by the Mydrian. The face bore only one true scar, where the light of the sovereign mark died and promise rotted upward from the inside out … one tear of flesh after another. A mark of ruin and woe devouring the glory, the fire, the breath that had quickened in Nudhug so long, long ago, and passed son by marked son down the ages, to this …

Captain Taig shuddered despite himself as he looked upon the mutilated face. Majesty, can you hear me? We need to move. Now. He reached for his king a second time; his every instinct firing with the encroaching sounds of war, the unsettled atmosphere, and training which demanded action, yet he scarcely recognized this man in the dirt who clawed the earth in a desperate frenzy, seeking a lost prize of power that was never his to possess. Was this truly the same man for which he was sworn to die, if need be?

Armahad ripped the earth, his hands black with dirt, the whole time screaming into the darkness.

You promised me! he shouted to the blackness. You said the power of the Caladrius would be mine! If a Caladrius roams this earth free, my throne would fall! My line will end! A Caladrius will reign supreme! Dirt flung in great heaps around him. Where are you?

The blackness didn’t answer.

Sire! Captain Taig descended upon him. His sword drawn. His face panicked. Sire!

Armahad dug deeper into the earth.

Sire, please! the Mydrian captain shouted. You are not safe here! The Resistance is coming in force!

The clash of steel rang around them. Screams of war filled the dark.

Armahad shook his bodyguard off. Leave me! he screamed.

Just then Princess Yelizaveta emerged from the black. Her hand lightly trailed along the line of her father’s shoulders. Let me speak with him, she said to Captain Taig.

Captain Taig Highgrail nodded once and took a step back, allowing father and daughter a moment of privacy.

Daddy.

Armahad ignored his daughter. Dirt hit her legs.

Daddy, Yelizaveta said unpleasantly. She yanked him around to face her. I have a gift for you. Simultaneously, she plunged a little dagger up under his ribs.

Armahad gasped, his eyes widening in disbelief. Why?

Yelizaveta laughed bitterly. As if you don’t know, she said. Her skin sagged over her bones in loose wrinkles like wax from a burning candle. Madness and power. She pushed him away from her into the hole he had dug. You dug your own grave. You changed me! You changed yourself! You changed everything!

It all happened too fast. Three seconds. Maybe four.

Taig shouted at the first flash of the blade. Who could have imagined the princess an assassin before this moment? But the An Taoseach was already clutching his chest.

NO! The Captain was screaming.

Taig ran for his king, automatic, reactive, even before the princess pulled back, slinging blood from her dripping blade.

Mydrian ran from posts all around the circle.

Taig gave them no thought. They knew their duty. He had eyes only for his king.

Armahad Caladrius fell; his body crumpling in a seeming slow motion toward the ground as Mydrian hands surged beneath him. His blood gushed out over those hands, hot and precious, and rushing into nothingness.

Captain Taig Highgrail dropped to the earth baring the weight of his dying king, refusing to let the An Taoseach simply fall.

Majesty, he cried as the emperor choked around his own blood. I have you!

Armahad gasped, perhaps trying to speak around the crimson gorge.

I have you! The Mydrian Captain cried again as he desperately tried to staunch the flow of blood from the An Taoseach’s chest. All too aware of the sounds of battle encroaching further upon their position, he pressed the wound futilely. Blood oozed out between his fingers. Taig could feel the alien movement of the blood. He pressed down harder, refusing to think of anything beyond this moment. Stay with me, sire.

The An Taoseach convulsed; his eyes went so wide they were mostly white. What have I done? Armahad nearly screamed spitting his precious blood over the Mydrian Captain as he convulsed unnaturally.

Taig couldn’t hold him down. His slick hands slipped as a violent shudder ripped through Armahad, snapping bones one by one, tearing open flesh.

Beneath the bones, the stink of rot had already taken hold. Darkness sighed out of the riven flesh, flinging fumes that sent the captain reeling backward gagging on the deaths of every oath he had ever made; every bond of duty and loyalty broke inside him, releasing him from his king, but not the greater promise. Only a Mydrian knew the strength of that bond. Captain Taig swallowed the wave of nausea. Deeper than blood. Stronger than bone. Older and higher … The Shrieking Stone went quiet too. No true and rightful king stood upon its sacred ground any longer. Even the voices of the dead kings distorted in his ears, and the lingering, phantasmal hum of their lives seemed to shift.

Captain Taig backed away from the mangled body, which was somehow still grasping enough life to whisper after him. Keliah. My children. The baby!

The earth began to tremble. All of Nithrodine shook as the An Taoseach’s soul was eaten away and the decay of his Mark spewed into the land.

Mydrian watched the An Taoseach’s eyes empty and the royal body, shredded from within, at last go still.

Fall back. Captain Taig ordered, his voice tight and low. He surged to his feet; his eyes fixed on the dead even as he began to back away. He had failed. The blood was on his hands!

Darkness continued to rise like steam from Armahad’s rapidly cooling flesh.

The carcass jerked upright; the movement generating from the center: torso arching first, the body lifting into an extreme back bend. Then the limp head rotated toward the captain. A sinister leer on the mutilated face. The baby, it hissed.

Taig shook; his mouth widening in mute horror.

Darkness breathed out of Armahad’s leering mouth. Samhail stalked forward, slowly closing the ranks of the encroaching void, narrowing every possible avenue of escape.

Captain?

Two thousand swords slid through the inaugural shades as Mydrian prepared for a fight. Instinctive response to the feral pack, whose hands and snarling mouths already dripped with blood. Taig scarcely seemed to notice the inhuman army prowling toward him. His gaze was locked with his king’s—only the eyes were not his king’s—not anymore. They were red like blood. And the royal body twerked upright, a puppet manipulated on strings of darkness.

The baby is MINE! The dead mouth cried.

A hand gripped his shoulder, pulling him from the grip of terror. Captain!

Taig’s voice came out strong and sudden. Fall back. Now. To the palace! To the Heir!

DEAD WAKING

T HE ORDER GIVEN, Mydrian withdrew; rank by rank, never exposing their backs to the enemy as they backed in unison toward Nithrodine’s strong w alls.

Captain Taig Highgrail lingered a moment longer than the rest. Long enough for the Darkness to wrap around his body. Long enough for his dead king to walk toward him. It looked like a son of House Caladrius. It sounded like the Emperor of the Light. It even moved like his fallen An Taoseach, yet it was not. Deep in his soul, Taig knew. The bands of his yoke to his king were still broken, the power of those oaths had completely emptied from his heart.

They stood face-to-face now, a short distance between them.

Captain Taig raised his sword, useless steel against the formless, fathomless void breathing from the cracks and orifices of the dead. By all that is holy, what are you?

A shudder ran down the king’s spine as the captain brandished his blade, yet Armahad laughed. You know what I am, he answered. Shadows choked the air, coiling and angry. I am thought; I am hunger; I am the Evil that Devours.

Darkness rushed at him, devouring the empty space in a heartbeat.

Captain Taig reeled backward, the movement quick but controlled; his sword closing the line; his eyes never straying from that sinister red gaze as he countered the thrust of the thick, black breath.

Darkness displaced around the blade and reoriented, yet Taig saw hesitation enter the eyes looking out of the dead. He noticed the gaze drop to the sword. His sharp eyes caught the reflected glare on the metal as he again countered the move. If there had been substance in the dark, his action would have drawn blood, instead he watched the blackness retreat a fraction. The sword seemed to draw a line between them. A hot hiss rent the air in two as if he wielded fire instead of cold, hard steel.

Armahad snarled. Your blade, it burns. It makes me remember. He slouched away, darkness pulling, displacing dirt and rock with a violent and immediate erosion, yet the Mydrian stood his ground. His sword leveled toward the king’s dead heart, gripped in shadows that would soon burn. The king trembled as the darkness trembled. The bound fury of the sword was but a phantom reminder of a greater burning. Ancient memories of burning … Who are you? What are you? You are not Everliving. I remember the Kingdom and High Ones. Again the dead and the dark shuddered with memory and dread. Nor are you Guardian. Nor even a chosen king. For a third time, the dead and the dark recoiled from memory and sword, rending tombs of Men before and behind. The skulls and bones of long-fallen kings rattled from their broken sarcophaguses, smiling up with eerie light and unbroken Mark. The line of Nudhug, the deepest foundation of all House Caladrius … everywhere! And everywhere the Mark of the Promised, a symbol of Prophecy! Arrgh. He growled, darkness flying, bones scattering; their light stabbing across the miles like small earthbound stars, defiant even in their lifelessness!

Captain Taig eased backward. He needed to move. Now.

Darkness deepened with agitation.

Your bones are not like their bones! You are just a man. Just a man? Armahad mused more to himself than to the captain. I smell your flesh, its vulnerability … its weaknesses, yet you wear no armor. Don’t you fear death? Kings’ bones crunched beneath the dead feet as the dark and the dead drove nearer. I can taste your sweat but not your fear. How can there be no fear? How can you wield Light and Prophecy against me? How can you stand before me? ANSWER ME! ANSWER YOUR KING! Armahad suddenly screamed, clutching hold of the captain’s hands, the cold grip unnatural and strong, crushing his hands more tightly around the sword they still held at the ready.

You are not my king. I was known to my king as he was known by these dead kings, as they in turn were known at the deepest foundation, and are still known by the Promised they served.

As he spoke, the king’s carcass sagged beneath the form of another. A shadow that crawled and quivered and moved, and every other thing that crossed it seemed to sink into its blackness as if it were a breach torn in space. Its formlessness aspiring for more as it scratched along the ground, as it wafted at the air, as it protruded over greater blackness, seething a rancid breath.

You speak to me of being known? It laughed. What can a mere mortal know? Were you there when the foundations of the light were laid by the Everliving? Were you there when I gripped life in my hands? Do you presume to know what it is to burn, little man?

Taig rotated arms and body, subtly fending off the seething vapors of the void. Simultaneously, he shifted backward, a slow, unremarkable retreat through darkness moving at odd intervals against itself. The bones of the dead rattled furiously after him; the earth quaked. I am Mydrian, known as my fathers and mothers before me, as my sons and daughters after me. It is in the blood and the bone forever. In the Flame of the Promised Caladrius King our watch began.

NO! The false Armahad wailed, while the dark thing around him growled.

How a single word could span eons in its depths, Taig could never fully comprehend, and yet he sensed the timelessness of that feral cry. So old, so inhuman, the sound, it stripped the flesh from Armahad’s bones. The earth ripped downward. Earth and stone collapsed quick and deadly. Taig scrambled back from the breach barely fast enough, and from the darkness kneading the air around his king’s used-up body, and the darkness clotting beneath those broken bones, blackness rushed over the great hole, with the heat and violence of fire, whipping in towering spirals as high and thick as castle walls as it tore nearer, eating up great chunks of air to feed its frenzy. More and more air was pulled in, hastening the swirling inferno, raising higher and higher, extending the scream beyond a single fixed point, casting it like a poisonous, invisible gas between heaven and earth. The very sound clogged the air, making it hard to breathe, and underneath its shroud came Death.

Captain Taig broke away with a shout, diving for cover behind Nithrodine’s long impenetrable walls.

Darkness rushed the edifice with the force of a tornadic wind. Its flame fluming higher and higher, along the imperceptible cracks and ridges of timeworn stones.

TO THE HEIR! TO THE HEIR! Taig shouted as he vaulted to his feet and began to run. Nithrodine swarmed with Mydrian heeding the call.

Darkness hurled fire, air, earth, and the shining bones of long-dead kings high and wild, raining over the walls of Nithrodine like a deadly flood, shrouding all in a darkness, blacker than the blackest night, consuming every light save the unrelenting shine of the kings. Burning embers, ash, and debris spread through the royal city, pouring down the castle walls, surging inch by inch toward its coveted prize, swallowing everything and everyone in its path as that single scream echoed through everything even time and space.

Beneath that sound, no one heard the Shrieking Stone begin to cry out again. No one saw the skeletal hands reaching up from the earth bit by bit, from Nudhug’s long-held bed. No one heeded the first king’s slow, deliberate rise. No one saw him take up the fallen crown—no one and nothing but the promises given long ago beneath a greater burning of Flame than the darkness would ever wield.

HEAVEN FIRE

T HE BURNING CAST over him from above, a baptism of heaven fire. Nudhug Phlegon bowed beneath the profusions of Flame … burning … forever burning … yet not destroying. He was lost in those overflowing depths. His entire reality spread beneath the covering, like a thick cloud with thunderings and lightning and smoke as a golden stream flowed down, a spine in the center of the undefined. The world shook, and not just the world but everything beyond: beyond this moment; beyond himself; beyond even the s tars.

He felt the world spinning to the burning presence. He smelled its smoke, a pleasing incense. He tasted its nectar, the cool sweetness of water, the essence of spring, of life, every goodness known and more besides, and it drew him up beyond himself. His spirit lifted to the brush of a cosmic hand. He hovered in existence completely outside the bounds of time, yet he could feel it breaking all around him still, like a wind in the night. Sunrises. Sunsets.

Nudhug felt he was flying with whispers of light breathing around him, filling his senses. Those whispers were nothing compared to the voice that called him higher and higher.

Arise.

The voice that spoke to him resonated from everywhere seeming to have no place it was pinned to.

Nudhug slowly raised his head from the earth. The soft voice was like gravity; he couldn’t help but follow.

Arise, it beckoned again from all around him. The burning was running like a river with that hushed command; growing; flooding to impenetrable heights and depths. Its bounds fixed yet not in a present, tangible way. Even so, the glory was consuming. It drew him with longings and desires he had never known before.

Nudhug wanted to obey. His eyes fixed upon the golden spine.

Ancient power thrummed through his senses, touching each one in a way he couldn’t define even to himself.

A glamouring¹ Light fell away, and with it all his desire for anything that was not the higher Flame abandoned him in the space of a single heartbeat. His own heart beat in time with that eternal pulsing.

The aura of a boy emerged upon that horizon. The rising Sun burned around him shining darkly in his wake. Golden blood swirled visibly in his pale flesh, the sound of the pulsing river filling the silence, as the mysterious presence walked forward.

Nudhug didn’t know how, but his eyes suddenly saw all the shades of time that stretched between them. He could see every ill-defined nook and cranny, every bend of matter; every distinct pathway of space; a continuum of realities protected and preserved from one another by convoluted shifting of air and warped barriers of Light underneath a smooth surface that kept its mysteries well.

Darkness mired every inch of it and reached ever higher and ever wider seeking to encircle, to enslave and to fill all that expanding universe with its mindless hunger. In a way he could not define or explain even to himself, Nudhug felt the pull of opposing powers pressing in and dragging through his corporeal form, catching where his bones should have been as they continued to drag against the joints and sinew of his body.

Light. Hope. Flame.

Darkness. Despair. Flame.

A mere breath both linked and separated the two. Burning. Forever burning.

So much burning lay between them. Mountains of it, all mere ashes in the furnace of that life, which stepped forward in that moment, one glorious, flaming footstep after another.

His ears heard the sound of raging fire.

All other life dropped away.

Arise, the voice called again, a crackling of flame, more insistent.

Nudhug crawled up from the dirt, letting earth fall completely away with all the horrors of his beginning. The pull of that higher Flame lifted him in its gravitational embrace. His soul was like a star rising to orbit its planet.

Arise, and take up my crown, Nudhug Phlegon Caladrius. No one shall escape it. No one shall resist it. Not when I have drawn it from its sheath.

Nudhug’s hands grasped the offered crown that glowed like a bright torch as he drew it across time and space toward himself. The words were strange. More suited to a sword than a crown, it seemed, yet he took up the bright, unornamented offering, feeling its power and its price sear into his bones.

Light and Darkness cascaded together in his mind, a murky cauldron of power into which his path extended. There was one path, and one alone, and the connection of heart and Flame was the compass. Without looking to his right or left, or even behind, Nudhug stepped into the great unknown.

He walked forward, a king, following the path revealed, knowing in his soul it was meant for him.

Moment by moment he let himself be consumed in the ever-present burning. His skin shone, and deeper, his bones changed. Everything changed. Everything caught the light and the life of the burning one. Till his flesh was not his flesh. Till his bones were not his bones. Till his life was not his life but was drawn from another.

He could feel the call of Living Flame in the beautiful scars even as its Source drifted slowly beyond reach.

His bare feet still walked on the falling embers of that guiding life, and yet an utterly black void swallowed his path. He felt himself moving rapidly through the long dark, sensing himself floating beyond his body even as he made the conscious decision to follow.

Nudhug walked through eons of time, radiating a mere reflection of burning from a face forever marked by light.

His ears gradually filled with the sound of an infant’s screams. The cry of a baby spread through unbound existence, drawing an ever-darkening tide in its wake. Strange that he could recognize a darkness, darker than the dark all around him. The infant’s screams filled that greater darkness and slowly pulled Nudhug through the burden of all that time.

Time leaned heavily upon him.

He felt bloated with it. Nudhug uttered an agonized groan and convulsed in upon himself as time wrote its lines upon his flesh. It ate through him into his very bones. Blood bubbled from his orifices. His flesh melted from his bones, and still he walked, his footsteps seeming much too loud, and with each stroke, the darkness stirred. As his feet came down again and again, the whisperings of the light returned to him.

The blackness, the void, could not stop them, though foul things moved around him; snarling shadows not quite whole as they rushed at him from the great dark expanse. The whispers carried him.

Nudhug impulsively clutched the Promised One’s crown. Shadows broke against the vein of light holding his bones together as he pressed into the agitated dark, but the crown blazed like lightning, streaking through a storm.

The atmosphere shuddered beneath the waves of its rising power. He surged through the heat and substance as his path poured into the eerie ruins of that spot of earth he had departed, it seemed, just moment before. The Shrieking Stone leapt up before his hollowed eyes with a keening cry. Its voice shook up into the aura of decay hanging heavily over the kingdom. Nudhug knew what was about to happen when the earth shook. He did not hear its cry so much as feel it rattle up through his bones as his feet touched earth again. A new reality broke around him with a long sickening pop.

He staggered out of time to the distant purl of warning bells. His body grazed the stone; its cry roaring through him. Ca-la-drius. Ca-la-drius.

Armies rushed passed him, oblivious of his arrival. They did not feel the earth’s thundering as their melee streaked across the land, wetting the ground with blood. Their minds were too clouded by darkness to sense the presence of light, though it rose in their midst. They were rabid in the grip of their bloodlust, too lost to see how they were driven by fell forces away from every beckoning hope. Men had forgotten the sign that broke around them from the deepest foundation.

Nudhug dropped upon the sacred mound, where all paths converged; his skeletal fingers reverently trailed through the dirt torn by violent, angry, and forgetful men. The golden brand holding his bones together flared; their constant pulse of power pushing against the heavy quagmire of the air, and while he reeled with horror of this brutalized place, he heard the voice of the Promised calling again … from earth … from air … from above … from below … a circling wind.

Arise. Arise, Nudhug Phlegon Caladrius, and take up my crown!

Nudhug thrilled to the sound of that voice. When had he let the crown go? When had he let it fall? When had the darkness made him lose sight of it? Frantically, he clutched for the relic in the dirt; at the same instant, the great walls of the nearby fortress began to shift and brake, and men screamed as they met Death.

The crown had gone dark, cooled in the clotting blood and rotting earth staining the very ground where he had once received new life. Its metal felt hollow in his hand, as brittle as a used-up coal that could crumble into a million pieces of dust and scatter so thoroughly on the wind no one could reclaim enough to make it whole again. In this place, in this time, hope had become like such. Hope was like a dead, used-up dream, and yet not dead. His finger bones flexed around the symbol of the promise made long ago, as he thrust its decayed circle into the air obediently. Ca-la-drius! He wailed for all the ages of time he had just walked; for all who had died in hope; for all