Edge of Destiny (guild wars)

  Edge of Destiny

  ( Guild wars )

  J Robert King

  J Robert King

  Edge of Destiny

  Prologue

  DREAM AND NIGHTMARE

  The flames were beautiful. They looked like autumn leaves-red and gold, rattling as the wind tore through them, breaking free and whirling into the sky.

  The village was flying away. Thatch and wattle and rafters all were going up in ash.

  Caithe watched the village and the villagers burn.

  She was too late. Everything was fire.

  Still, it was beautiful.

  Caithe, sylvari of the Firstborn, dropped down from the boulder where she had crouched and stalked slowly into the burning village. Like all of her people, Caithe was slender and lithe, the child of a great tree in a sacred grove. She was one with the natural world. Even her travel leathers bore the vine motifs of her homeland. Caithe pushed silvery hair back from wide eyes, watching for signs of life in the burning village. Only the flames lived. She listened for voices, but only the fire spoke.

  Caithe didn't fear the fire. She was young and strong, voracious and indomitable and curious-just like fire. It had drawn her here. It was interesting.

  Who had started it? How? Why? What had this village been called?

  "I love a bonfire," came a voice-deep and dark, feminine and familiar.

  Caithe turned to see a sylvari woman garbed in a black-orchid gown as if this were some fancy ball. Caithe's eyes narrowed. "What are you doing here, Faolain?"

  Faolain gave the suffering smile of an addict. "The fires drew me."

  "A moth to a flame."

  "Just like you."

  In fact, Faolain and Caithe were nothing alike. Faolain's hair was jet-black, as were her nails and her eyes. They had been that way from the moment the two women emerged together from the Pale Tree. Faolain had been all about questions, and Caithe had been all about answers. They were dear to each other and set out together to explore the world. But Caithe's spirit had grown straight and true like a young tree while Faolain's had grown twisted like a poison-ivy vine.

  "Did you set this fire?" Caithe asked.

  Faolain threw back her shock of black hair and breathed smoke through flared nostrils. "A nice idea, but no. It was destroyers-magma monsters."

  Caithe shook her head grimly. "They boil up everywhere."

  "The Elder Dragon Primordus is taking back the world."

  A loud moan came from a burning barn nearby. Caithe rushed to the door, hauled it open, and stared within. The hayloft boiled with black smoke, and the threshing floor was mantled in fire. Against the far wall lay a blackened figure that could hardly have been alive-except that it moaned.

  Caithe wove among the flames to reach the man and dropped to her knees. His eyes were gone, his face, too-just cracked bark over oozy muscle. His lips were half-fused. "Burning beast… burning beast… burning…"

  "I will help you," Caithe said.

  "Such sweet words," Faolain whispered, kneeling on the other side of the man. "Hope is like oil on the fires of misery."

  "Is my skin peeled off?" the man groaned. "Is it?"

  "Yes," Caithe said gently.

  Faolain laughed. "Oh, you're cruel."

  "They came from underground," he muttered. "They scrambled up. Roaches. Black, with bodies of fire-"

  "Destroyers," Faolain said.

  "We'll get you to a chirurgeon."

  "Chirurgeon?" Faolain gripped Caithe's arm and grinned. "You're doing this for me, aren't you?"

  "What? No! It's for him."

  "He's dead already. You're only tormenting him for my sake."

  "No! I'm not."

  Faolain's eyes blazed. "You want me to feel for him. You want me to feel empathy."

  "No!" Caithe said. "I mean, yes, of course."

  "Help me!" the man sputtered, his lip splitting.

  "I will," Caithe said.

  Faolain's eyes slid closed, and her jaw clenched. "You can't win me back."

  "I'm not trying to win you back."

  "Come with me, Caithe. Join the Nightmare Court."

  "I'm saving him!" Caithe yelled, reaching beneath the blackened figure and hoisting him from the floor. Caithe strode toward the barn doors.

  But Faolain rose in her path and set her hand on Caithe's chest. The touch of her palm blazed like fire. Then a different sort of heat bloomed across Caithe's chest. She pulled back to see the farmer's throat fountaining, severed by Faolain's dagger.

  "What?" Caithe cried, staggering back and falling to her knees. "You killed him?"

  "I released him. Come with me."

  "I will never turn to Nightmare."

  Faolain's eyes flashed. "My touch-and the sacrifice of this man-have awakened darkness in you." She turned away. "You will be mine again soon."

  PART I

  GATHERING HEROES

  FOOLS AND FOLLOWERS

  Don't move!"

  The huge wolf snapped his head upright, eyes blazing.

  "Stay exactly like that."

  No one else in the world could order Garm to sit still. He was, after all, a dire wolf-five feet tall at the shoulder and twenty stone, with jet-black hackles and fire-red eyes. He was made to lope and chase and drag down. Not to sit still. Not to listen. But he did.

  For Eir Stegalkin, he did.

  Garm flicked a glance toward the norn warrior. She was tall, too, her hand rising to the rafters twelve feet up and snagging a mallet that hung there and bringing the thing down in her brawny grip. Her eyes darted toward Garm, who glanced forward again and tried to look fierce.

  It wasn't that he feared this woman and her big hammer, which she swung just then with terrific force, pounding a massive chisel and striking a wedge of granite from a huge block. Garm hazarded a look at that block, amorphous and pitted from chisel strokes. Soon, it would be a statue. A statue of him. But that wasn't why he sat still.

  He sat still because she was the alpha.

  The mallet fell again, the chisel bit, the block calved. More chunks of stone crashed to the floor, first in wedges and then shards and chips and finally a shower of grit.

  Garm's figure was taking shape.

  Eir stepped back from the sculpture and dragged an arm over her sweating brow. Her face was statuesque, her eyes moss green. She had drawn her mane of red hair back out of the way, bound by a leather thong. The leather work-apron she wore freed her arms but protected her chest and legs against stone shards. An intense look grew on her face, eyes etching out the shape in the stone. "This could be my masterpiece."

  Garm looked around the log-hewn workshop at her other sculptures-a rearing ice-bear, a great elk with sixteen-foot antlers, a coiling snow serpent that stretched from floor to rafters, and of course her army of norn warriors captured in stone and wood. They hadn't started out as an army, but individuals who had come to be immortalized before going off to fight the Dragonspawn-the champion of the Elder Dragon Jormag.

  Now only their statues remained.

  "Hail, house of Stegalkin!" came a shout at the door. A norn warrior thrust his head in-long hair like a horse's tail and a face like what might be beneath. "By the Bear, the place is packed!"

  Someone behind the man hissed, thumping his shoulder, "Them's statues!"

  The warrior in the lead nodded, his hair flicking as if to shoo flies. "Course they are. Statues. That's why we're here." He paused to hiccup. "Soon, one of them will be me. I mean, I'll be one of them. I mean, I'll get my own. By the Raven, you brew it strong, Uri."

  Eir stood there unmoving except for the vein that pulsed in her temple. "Patrons." With mallet and chisel in hand, she strode toward the door.

  Garm b
roke from his pose to lope at her heels.

  The man in the doorway nearly stumbled off the threshold.

  Eir said, "You have come full of… courage, but it smells of hops."

  "Yes!" the man enthused, glancing back at a group of twenty or so norn warriors swaying in the courtyard. "I am Sjord Frostfist."

  "Sjord Foamfist?" she mispronounced, raising an eyebrow.

  "Exactly. And I have come by Snow Leopard and Raven and Bear-by every living beast-to declare war on the Dragonspawn!"

  Eir nodded. "You've come to the wrong place. I am not the Dragonspawn."

  Sjord laughed. "Of course you aren't. You are norn, like me."

  "Not quite like you."

  "No! Of course not," Sjord said, suddenly earnest. "You're an artist. While I carve up monsters, you carve up rocks."

  The warriors laughed.

  Eir's fist flexed around the mallet handle as if she were about to carve Sjord himself.

  "No offense meant, of course. Somebody has to make statues of us."

  Garm looked to his master, wondering why she didn't just kill the man. She could. This man and all the others. Or Garm could. With just a word from her, he would tear the man's throat out, but Eir never gave the word.

  "You want a statue in your image."

  Sjord put his finger to his nose, indicating that she understood exactly.

  "Pick any you wish," she said, gesturing to the statues behind her. "Brave young fools just like you, who gathered at the moot and drank and decided to save the world. I've met you before, a hundred times. Each of these men went to fight the Dragonspawn."

  Sjord's grin only widened. "Then we understand each other." He thrust a bag of coins into her hand.

  Eir stared levelly at him. "Take your money. Go rent a room. Go lie down and sleep. You cannot defeat the Dragonspawn."

  Sjord stepped back, affronted, and the warriors behind him raised their eyebrows. "You are saying we should give up? You are saying that our people should get used to fleeing our homelands? Why do you oppose a man who would fight our foe?"

  "I do not oppose you. I warn you."

  "Warn me of what?"

  "You cannot defeat the Dragonspawn. You will go to fight him but will end up fighting for him."

  Sjord shook his head. "I will fight him and kill him, and you will commemorate what I do. There is your payment."

  Eir slipped open the drawstring. The bag held a small fortune in silver. She sighed. "Come, Sjord Frostfist. Let us select the block of wood that will be your memorial."

  "Monument," he corrected. "And, it will be stone, not wood."

  "Silver buys wood. Gold buys stone."

  Sjord scowled, hanging his head. "Wood, then."

  Eir pressed past him and strode into the courtyard, with Garm loping behind. "Fir is better than stone, anyway," she said, passing a row of blocks and boles along one wall. "Fir is alive. It grows out of stone. Its roots break the stone into sand."

  "Yes," Sjord said, the hopeless twinkle returning to his eyes. "Which of these great boles will become my statue?"

  "This one." Eir stopped beside a fir trunk three feet wide and ten feet tall. "This one will immortalize you."

  Sjord stared at it as if he could see his own figure trapped in the wood. He slowly nodded. "Good, then. Carve me."

  Eir nodded grimly, hoisting the huge bole and planting it on the ground in the center of the courtyard. "You, stand over there."

  Sjord moved into position and gestured excitedly to his comrades, who gathered around, quaffing from their flagons.

  "Don't move!" she ordered.

  Sjord snapped his head up, trying to look ferocious.

  Garm sympathized.

  As the man posed, Eir returned to her workshop. A few moments later, she emerged, wearing a carving belt filled with dozens of blades, from axes and hatchets to knives and chisels. The band of warriors gazed in awe as Eir strode up before the fir bole.

  "Spirit of Wolf, guide my work."

  A few of the armsmen tittered, but their laughter tumbled to silence as Eir brought the first blades out-a great axe in either hand. Both weapons began to rotate in slow, deadly circles above Eir's head.

  Garm sat down to watch the show.

  These warriors had no idea what they had unleashed. Eir was no mere sculptor. That was no little prayer she'd spoken. It was an invocation, channeling the powers of the boreal forests to make her art.

  And they did.

  Out of that thunderhead of swinging steel, an axe dived down to shear away the bark from one edge of the bole. The other axe followed like a thunderstroke, stripping the opposite side. The blades rose again, spinning, and fell. The broad bole grew slender. Already, it was taking on the lines of the man.

  Sjord no longer posed, but gaped.

  Eir circled the fir bole, axes slicing down in rhythm, cleaving away all that was not Sjord Frostfist. Halfway through this ecstatic dance, the axes slid back into the belt, and the hatchets came out. They chopped at the form, flinging off chips and rounding the wood into the figure of the man.

  "Straighten up!" she reminded without stopping.

  Sjord jerked back into his noble pose.

  And just in time, for the daggers and chisels were out now, fitted to sleeves on her fingers that brought them to bear with intricate care on the wooden form. Now it was down to shavings, curled ribbons of wood cascading around the rough figure.

  "It's me," said Sjord breathlessly.

  And so it seemed, the bole taking the shape of the man.

  "Bear, guide my work."

  And then it was not knives and chisels in her hands but living claws, long and sharp, sliding along every contour of the figure. And it was not the lashing brawn of a norn warrior beneath that apron but the ancient muscle of a grizzly. The artist had been transfigured in her art.

  Then she stepped back from the figure, the bear aura melting away. She was Eir Stegalkin once more, artist and warrior, slumping on a nearby bench and staring at what she had made.

  It was magnificent. The sculpture was the man-Sjord Frostfist in wood. Indeed, the man and the statue stared at each other with such unrelenting amazement that few could have told them apart.

  The swaying brothers began to chant, "Sjord! Sjord! Sjord! Sjord!" They hoisted the man who would lead them into doom.

  "Not me!" Sjord protested, laughing. "The statue! The statue!"

  The men lowered their friend to the ground and snatched up the carving. "Off to the market! Off to the market!" they cried joyously. "Sjord will stand forever in the market!"

  "And nowhere else," Eir murmured as Garm loped up beside her. She was spent. These ecstatic moments of creation always left her drained. She looked down at Garm and said bitterly, "He can't save us. He can't even save himself."

  That night, Eir couldn't sleep. Garm had seen many such nights. The spinning in the bed, the pacing, the muttering, the sketching. She was imagining something, conceiving it as other women conceived children.

  Garm rose from his blanket and trotted over to the workbench and looked down at the page where she drew.

  It was an army of wood and stone.

  For a week, she didn't carve but only sketched in her workshop or paced through the courtyard or stared past the bridges that joined Hoelbrak to the Shiverpeaks all around. Garm had seen this look before. Eir was waiting for something. He knew by the way she sharpened her blades and oiled her bow.

  A fortnight later, as the cold sun descended into clouds, the sentries of Hoelbrak began to shout.

  "Invasion! Invasion! Icebrood!"

  Eir turned from a sketch and strode to the wall where her battle-gear hung. She dragged off her work tunic and strapped on a breastplate of bronze. She girded herself and threw on a cape of wool, strapped on boots, and slung a quiver charged with arrows. To these, she added also her carving belt.

  She looked to Garm and said, "Today, I carve Sjord Frostfist-again." Lifting her great bow, Eir headed for the door. "Come."
>
  Garm followed his alpha out into the courtyard, where the shout of sentries was joined by the thud of boots. Eir charged into the lane, Garm loping beside her. Bjorn the blacksmith spotted them and trotted from his smithy, iron armor clattering on his smoke-blackened figure. They passed the weaver's workshop, and Silas emerged with short bow and shafts. Olin the jeweler and Soren the carpenter formed up with them as well. They were the crafters of the settlement, and Eir was their leader.

  "Some of these icebrood will seem to be norn," she advised as they rushed down the lane toward the northern bridge, "but they'll not be. They are newly turned, their minds stolen by the Dragonspawn. They'll still have flesh and blood within their frozen husks, and killing them will be like killing our own kin."

  Bjorn shook his head in anger. "We send our fools north, and the Dragonspawn sends its armies south."

  "There are other, more deadly icebrood, too," Eir reminded. "They're mindless beasts of ice. There's no reasoning with them. Only shattering them."

  Beside her, Silas nodded. He was a thin norn in the twilight of his fighting days. "So, for the ones that look like norn, it's arrows then, yes?" he asked, hoisting his short bow.

  "Yes. We must kill as many as possible on the tundra before they reach the forts, but if the horde is great, the battle will push past the forts and reach the bridges to the hunting hall." She glanced at the rest of her militia. "Then there'll be plenty of work for all of us."

  There was no more time for words. The group ran onto a bridge that stretched from Hoelbrak out to the fields beyond. At the end of the bridge stood a wooden defense-work that already bristled with warriors, including Knut Whitebear and his handpicked warriors-the Wolfborn. More norn streamed in each moment.

  Eir led her group past the cluster of fighters to a thinly defended ridge and gazed out on the darkening northern fields. Mottled moss and torn lichen stretched to the misty distance, beneath towering mountains of ice.

  "I don't see anything," Silas said, squinting.

  "There," Eir replied.