The Book of the Sword (Darkest Age)
Read The Book of the Sword (Darkest Age) Online
Authors: A. J. Lake
Also available in the DARKEST AGE series
BOOK ONE:
THE COMING OF DRAGONS
Prologue
The walls of the cave were of stone and ice, but fire blazed at its heart. A deep crack snaked through the rocky ground, its dull red depths pulsing in time with the rumbling that filled the air. At the heart of the cave, molten rock had escaped from the earth below, pooling in a hollow filled with glowing fire. And over the hollow, red-lit in the gloom, was a great slab of black basalt, forming a makeshift anvil. The clang of a hammer mingled with the growling of the earth, and made the black rock shake.
The smith, a short, barrel-chested man, struck tirelessly at the strip of metal before him. He might have been fifty: his thick hair and beard were grey, but his powerful build and bright eyes suggested that he had lost little of his strength. He glowered down at his work, hunching jealously over the glowing strip before him.
The hammer’s clangs became higher and sharper, then mere taps, as the metal faded from brilliant white to red, and the smith took a step backwards, letting out his breath in a great sigh.
‘Is it done?’
A young woman stepped forward from the cavern’s edge. She could have been a part of the cave’s ice and shadow: slender and black-haired, her skin almost as colourless as the white shift she wore – but her face was bright with eagerness.
The smith raised his lined face and looked full at the woman for the first time.
‘It’s shaped,’ he said heavily. ‘You’re resolved on this?’
‘Yes!’ Her voice was fierce.
‘It’s time, then.’ The smith knelt for a moment by his primitive forge. On the ground, scratched in the basalt of the cave floor, was a rough circle a few arm’s-lengths wide, and in it lay an intricately wrought metal gauntlet. He raised the gauntlet as delicately as if it were glass, turning it in his hands with a craftsman’s pride. Even in the dimness, out of the fire’s glow, the gauntlet seemed to glitter, its hundreds of tiny links reflecting the light like fish-scales. The smith sighed again, and slipped the gauntlet on to his right hand, where it fitted like a second skin.
He got to his feet and picked up the still-smoking sword, his shoulders tensing as if it were unexpectedly heavy. He stood for an instant breathing deeply – then raised the blade in the air and stepped into the stone circle.
The woman crossed swiftly to join him. As she entered the circle she began to chant, low at first but raising her voice to a shrill keening, her eyes fixed on the firelit blade. The song came to an end, and she bowed her head. At the same instant
the old man lowered the sword so that the point brushed her chest, above her heart. He hesitated, and she reached out with both hands to grasp the smoking blade and pull it towards her, one sharp tug that lasted for ever and less than a heartbeat.
There was a sudden hissing sound and the woman’s face contorted in agony, though it was the old man who cried out, still holding fast to the sword’s hilt. Her blood ran down the blade, falling in red drops on to her white dress. The two faced each other across the circle, surrounded by wreaths of steam from the hissing blade. Gradually the woman’s face relaxed, and now clear light was welling from beneath her hands, stealing along the sword and spreading like frost along her bare arms. The light filled the stone circle till it blazed like the sun, sending shadows fleeing to the distant ice walls. The woman was calm now, smiling faintly. She seemed suddenly transparent, as if the light shone through her.
There was a rush and clatter of footsteps, and a man burst into the cave.
‘
No!
’
He was young by the sound of his voice, and desperate, though hardly to be seen in the blackness around the sword’s glare. He hurled himself towards the circle – and staggered back as if the dazzling light were a barrier. He beat at it with his fists, soundlessly.
‘Please!’ he howled. ‘Take me instead!’
From inside the circle the woman turned her head to look
at him, her smile touched with regret. Her body seemed transfixed, and strangely insubstantial in the unravelling light. When she spoke it was barely more than a whisper.
‘You could not … Can only be me.’
She was shimmering now, her skin wavering into motes of light. Only her eyes stayed fixed on the unseen figure for a moment longer, dark and clear.
‘Goodbye … my love …’
The sword’s light was dying, and she faded with it; her body drifted into smoke that swirled briefly around the still-glowing sword. Then the sword itself began to disappear; motes of light sinking into the surface of the blade and vanishing; the blade becoming insubstantial. Once again the cave was lit only by the dull glow of the fires under the earth; even the molten rock beneath the forge had retreated, leaving the great slab of stone dark and bare. And the two who remained had no words for each other: the young man sobbing on his knees, and the old one, staring in disbelief and terror at his empty right hand.
I knew even then that the fiery light in the north meant war. But I could not know how much that war would take from me. [
The Book of the Sword
]
Elspeth screamed.
A remembered agony shot through her right arm, and with it a sense of overwhelming grief and loss. In the blackness behind her eyelids the vision persisted – the young man kneeling, head bent; the old man staring horrified at his bare hand, both bathed in red light. And the scene stirred memories of her own: of another fire-lit cave; a metal gauntlet found in a sea-wracked chest, and the sword that had sprung so unexpectedly to her own hand. In her strange dream, she knew she had seen the forging of the crystal sword – the blade that was as much a part of her now as her own arm. But who was the young woman – not so much older than Elspeth herself, perhaps – who had
played such a willing part in the painful ritual, and had disappeared?
Her arm still throbbed; hurting worse now than it had in the dream. Elspeth suddenly realised that both her arms were pinned painfully to her sides, and she could not feel her legs at all. Was she in prison again? Had the sorcerer Orgrim recaptured her? But surely she and Edmund had escaped, had defeated Orgrim. They had been feasted by the King of Wessex himself … hadn’t they?
A gust of cold stung her face, and she opened her eyes … to find nothing but freezing mist, whipping around her in an unseen wind. She might have been back on her father’s ship, carving a path through a winter blizzard – were it not for the way she was gripped, feet dangling, her arms clamped to her body by two great, scaled talons.
Memory scorched back: the dragon! It had ripped the roof off the king’s hall; seized her and Edmund … Elspeth’s heart was suddenly knocking so hard that she could hear it, and there seemed no air to breathe. Biting down on a cry of panic, she peered desperately through the greyness for any sign of Edmund. But there was nothing. The suffocating fog pressed against her on all sides, and she was entirely alone.
No. Never alone.
The voice filled her head and ran through her nerves like lightning. Her arm was throbbing again: looking down, she saw the familiar light of the crystal sword in her right hand,
pale and indistinct at first, but growing stronger, more brilliant as she watched.
Beneath her, as if dispelled by the sword’s light, the fog had begun to clear. Elspeth could see land far below: an indistinct expanse of white and black glimpsed through swirls of mist. A moment later the last of the mist had gone, replaced by clear blue sky and the dazzling rays of an early morning sun. The dragon had been flying inside a cloud, Elspeth realised. Below her now was a landscape of ice and snow, barred with soft light. To one side lay a swathe of stippled darkness that might be a forest; to the other, the sun was just showing its face between mountains white with snow, their tops pink-lit by the dawn sky.
I am with you until our task is done.
What task?
Elspeth wondered. What was she expected to do, in this alien land? Did the sword have some plan for her, even now? The blade’s glow in her hand seemed to pulse, like the heartbeat of a living thing, and a sudden suspicion seized her:
the sword wanted me here.
What are you doing to me?
she demanded.
Did you bring me here?
The voice in her head was silent.
Answer me!
she insisted.
This is where we must be
, the voice said at last.
But not like this – not carried in the dragon’s claws.
And a sudden terror filled her: the sword’s fear that, after all, the great plan would fail – if Elspeth could not free herself.
‘
What
plan?’ In her exasperation, Elspeth had spoken aloud, but the wind whipped her words away before her ears could hear them. At that moment the beast holding her banked, tilting her sickeningly sideways as it veered towards the mountains, and she saw Edmund.
He was hanging limply from the dragon’s other front claw, too far away to call to, even without the whistling wind in her ears. From this angle she could see little but his white-blond hair and the once-fine blue cloak, now hanging around him in tatters. His head hung down as if he were unconscious, and what she could see of his face was as pale as his linen shirt.
There was a flicker of movement in the air above him, and Elspeth’s gaze flashed in alarm to the great blue-scaled foreleg that held him. It was as thick around as an oak, double-jointed like a lizard’s and folded back against the great barred underbelly that filled the sky above her. The sheer size of the creature that held them made her shudder afresh, but there
was
something moving there, something small and fast, even higher up. She twisted her neck painfully, scanning up and along the blue-black mass to where it joined the body … There. A tiny brown figure was clinging to the dragon’s shoulder. No, not tiny: a grown man, with a rope around his waist and a sword in his belt – who looked down and jerked his head in greeting.
Cathbar!
She had no time to wonder how the captain came to be there. He had passed his rope right around the dragon’s great
forelimb: his perch was precarious, but he had both arms free as he signalled her. He pointed to the snowy ground far below, making opening and closing gestures with one hand. Then he drew his sword.
Elspeth understood him at once, and her first response was:
No!
He could not attack the dragon in flight! The fall would kill them, all three. But Cathbar was gesturing again, his face impatient. She looked down again. They were much closer to the ground than before. The black clumps below were recognisable as trees; she could even see the snow on their top branches. But Edmund still dangled unconscious from the dragon’s claw – how could he survive?
Cathbar pointed again, straight ahead this time. She followed his gesture – and suddenly understood. They were heading for the mountains. Jagged cliffs of grey stone loomed ahead of them: there would be no surviving
that
fall. And if they did not fight – if the dragon were allowed to take them to its master … whoever that was. Orgrim had been blinded and driven mad, so
who summoned Torment now
? One thing was for certain – this was no friend or ally who had sent the dragon to snatch them from Beotrich’s hall.