To Blackfyre Keep Copyright © 2021

  by Anthony Ryan.

  All rights reserved.

  Dust jacket illustration Copyright © 2022

  by Didier Graffet.

  All rights reserved.

  Print edition interior illustration Copyright © 2022

  by Anthony Ryan.

  All rights reserved.

  Print interior design Copyright © 2022

  by Desert Isle Design, LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Yanni Kuznia

  Electronic Edition

  ISBN

  978-1-64524-086-0

  Subterranean Press

  PO Box 190106

  Burton, MI 48519

  subterraneanpress.com

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  To that most insightful modern prophet of doom, and originator of ambulatory corpse tropes, George A. Romero.

  Some who claim wisdom will advise that we must embrace death For death is but part of the eternal circle.

  They are wrong.

  Death must be shunned.

  Death must be denied.

  Death must be despised and fought with every last mote of strength we possess.

  For in embracing death, you reject life, The only true gift you will ever receive.

  —Injunctions of the First Risen.

  Chapter One

  The Stone Bears

  Guyime was no stranger to the icy caress of befogged mountain air, although it had been many years since he felt such a bone-deep chill. Cold and damp, damp and cold, Lakorath said in a doleful mutter, words that had become something of a mantra for the demon as the northlands loomed ever closer. I confess, my liege, I remain baffled why you and your fellow barbarians were so intent on killing each other for possession of so miserable a land. The sword on Guyime’s back shifted as its inhabitant exuded an uncharacteristic if muted thrum of wistful nostalgia. Give me the sulphur dunes of the Tormenting Plain any day. Or the acid waves of the Incubus Ocean. Now there’s a sweet aroma.

  “Sounds delightful,” Guyime returned in a sigh, pausing at the crest of the ridge they had spent much of the morning climbing. He assumed the mountains that stretched away to east and west would have made an impressive sight when viewed from such a vantage point. However, the mist swirled in thick shifting banks around them, the obscuring clouds becoming more dense the higher they climbed.

  Guyime unhitched the water flask from his belt and drank deep. “Makes me wonder why you ever chose to depart the Infernus at all,” he added, squinting at the occluded landscape ahead and seeing nothing beyond anonymous, mist-shrouded rock.

  Chose is not the right word, Lakorath said, his tone taking on a peevish edge. Lured by vile mortal perfidy is far closer to the mark.

  “It occurs to me,” Guyime said, “that you have never told me the full tale of how you came to be trapped in that sword.”

  Lakorath, in a yet more uncharacteristic display, said nothing in response to this pointed observation. Throughout the many years of their binding, this subject remained the only one the demon refused to discuss beyond vague allusions to the untrustworthiness of mortal kind. It served as a useful means of shutting the creature up when his acerbic prattle or dark encouragements grew tiresome, but considering their current mission, Guyime found his unwanted companion’s reticence increasingly intolerable.

  “I’ll have it from you,” he promised Lakorath, glancing over his shoulder at the sword’s hilt. “And soon.”

  Lakorath, once again, said nothing and the sword remained an unmoving length of metal on Guyime’s back.

  Letting out a grunt of restrained frustration, Guyime turned to survey the progress of the rest of the party in scaling the ridge. Predictably, Seeker was in the lead. Despite the unfamiliarity of the climate and the weight of the caracal she carried in a sling across her chest, the beast charmer displayed typical fortitude and resilience in traversing these peaks. Lissah, by contrast, was in a far more distressed state than her mistress, giving voice to a constant string of mewling complaints. Guyime couldn’t tell if the caracal’s agitation stemmed from the cold or the constricting annoyance of the sling. Seeker had resorted to carrying the cat in a blanket of fox furs when it became apparent the frigid air was making the beast both lethargic and unpredictably vicious.

  Evidence of Lissah’s fractious temper came in the form of the bandage covering the back of Lorweth’s hand. He was next in line behind Seeker, climbing with long-legged confidence that told of a familiarity with high places and little concern for the chill. The druid’s mood had actually seemed to improve upon entering the mountains, the caustic note that usually coloured his many attempts at wit giving way to occasional displays of genuine cheeriness. This had dimmed somewhat when Lissah lashed out to score a series of deep scratches in Lorweth’s hand. The Mareth had made an unwise attempt to pet her when they clustered around the previous night’s campfire. Still, today he climbed with an expression of contented surety which Guyime supposed arose from finding himself in a region so similar in climate to the Mareth homeland.

  Lexius exhibited no such contentment. Even though the scholar’s eyes were distorted by the thick lenses he wore, Guyime still saw the fatigue in the diminutive man’s gaze. Even so, he continued to bear his pack without complaint and maintained a dogged if plodding pace on the slope. As he walked Lexius spoke in a low murmur, Guyime divining he was engaged in continual conversation with the inhabitant of his own sword. The Kraken’s Tooth hung at his side, the occasional glow of the blade becoming noticeable when the light grew dim. Guyime resolved to advise the scholar against conversing so openly with the spirit of his slain wife when they next found themselves in more mundane company.

  Orsena had positioned herself at the rear of their party since commencing this sojourn into the northern peaks. Guyime knew it had nothing to do with a lack of fortitude, since the Ultria of House Carvaro could most likely continue walking to the ends of the earth without need of sustenance or rest. She had discovered this aspect of her unique physicality when they first set out from Atheria. Having awoken to her true nature as a magically animated statue, Orsena opted to forgo eating or drinking for several days. Whilst she grew notably more irritable and reported severe pangs of hunger, she lost no weight nor faltered in a single step.

  “Why?” she had wondered aloud to Guyime at the end of their first week on the road north. “Why afflict me with hunger when I don’t need to eat?”

  “You were never meant to know what you are,” Guyime reminded her. “That was your father’s… Ultrius Carvaro’s intention.”

  Mention of the man Orsena had thought her father invariably drew her features into an expression that Guyime felt to be the closest she would come to ugliness. “Sometimes I feel I should thank Temesia for killing him,” she said, a bitter edge to her voice. “For it spared me the burden.”

  Watching the way Orsena scaled the ridge, Guyime saw that her apparent slowness resulted from her habit of halting now and then to take in her surroundings. Such pauses had also been a frequent vice of hers during their trek through the farmland north of the City of Songs. Despite all the knowledge with which she had been imbued, the memories of the murdered woman she resembled, he knew Orsena to be a soul seeing the world at large for the first time. In many ways, she remained a child, an innocent compelled to follow the most hazardous path. The notion stirred a protective urge alongside the guilt that arose from including her in this grand but most likely fatal mission.

  You could have left her behind, Lakorath pointed out. Spared her all the horrors to come. For you know there will be horrors, don’t you, my liege?

  “She bears one of the demon-cursed blades,” Guyime replied. “There is nowhere else for her to be.”

  His gaze slipped to the curve-bladed short sword in the scabbard hanging from Orsena’s belt. Unlike Lexius, she felt no compulsion to talk to the blade’s inhabitant. However, from the occasional winces and frowns that passed across the Ultria’s unnaturally symmetrical features, Guyime divined the demon imprisoned in the Conjurer’s Blade felt no such reluctance.

  “What’s it saying to her?” he asked Lakorath, drawing a snort of indifferent disdain.

  I stopped listening weeks ago, the demon informed him. She’s dreadfully tedious, I’m afraid, and so pretentious. Prates on endlessly about all things artistic or architectural.

  “She?” Guyime asked in surprise. “You referred to it as a he before.”

  Yes. Lakorath’s response was tinged with scorn at his wielder’s mortal ignorance. Demons are changeable creatures, my liege. Sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes neither, or both if the mood takes us. Gender is a mortal conceit we adopted for our amusement. The arch-bore residing within the Conjurer’s Blade prefers to match the nature of its wielder.

  “And does this she-demon have a name?”

  Not one I’ve discerned, as yet. My kind is always very circumspect in sharing such things.

  This, at least, Guyime knew to be true. He hadn’t learned the name of the creature he was bound to until it had been spoken by the Mad God. In truth, it occurred to him that much of the information he possessed about demon-kind had only been garnered since he embarked upon his mission to find the Seven Swords. To claim them, he would need to acquire more.

  “What is that?” Seeker said, halting as she came to his side atop the ridge. Her face, no longer bearing the monochrome paint that had once masked it, narrowed in careful scrut
iny of the next rise. Following her gaze, Guyime saw a large shape revealed by a thinning of the mist some fifty paces off. It remained a vague, formless slab of twelve-foot-high stone in the haze, but he knew it of old.

  “The first of the Stone Bears,” he said, starting forward.

  As the statue came fully into view, Guyime was struck by the scant changes it had suffered in the many years since he last passed this way. It was weathered and cracked in places but still recognisable as a representation of a rearing bear. Its maw gaped to reveal large, curved fangs, granite lips drawn back in a snarl.

  “Is it a marker, my lord?” Lexius enquired as he and Lorweth joined them. The scholar’s distorted eyes lost much of their fatigue as he peered up at the stone beast with his usual unquenchable curiosity. “A signifier that we are now in the Northern Kingdom?”

  “Many take it as such,” Guyime replied, his gaze shifting from the statue to scan the surrounding slopes. “But the Stone Bears were originally raised as a warning.”

  “Trying to scare of southern invaders, eh?” Lorweth said.

  “No.” Guyime quelled a grimace of annoyance at the obscuring vapour all around. “They tell travellers what they’re likely to encounter if they climb high into these peaks.”

  “You mean…” Lorweth’s handsome features tensed as he looked again at the statue. “This? There are bears this size nearby?”

  “The proportions are exaggerated, but not by much.”

  Seeker angled her head to peer up at the bear’s snarling maw. “I know not this breed,” she said. “And it’s rare for bears to live in high places.”

  “They’re a rare sort, to be sure,” Guyime told her. “Legend tells of a mage using the ancient bones of a long-extinct creature to raise up an army of bears to fight a battle in the latter stages of the Kraken Wars. Supposedly, when the battle was done and their master slain, the bears took to the mountains where they remain to this day, subsisting on goats and the occasional unfortunate traveller.”

  Guyime’s gaze lingered on Seeker, brows raised in a question. The beast charmer had a peerless sense for natural dangers, although she hadn’t seen fit to unlimber her bow as yet. “I sense nothing,” she said, words partly smothered by a fresh bout of aggrieved yowling from Lissah.

  “It would be best if you kept her quiet,” Guyime advised. “It’s said a stone bear can hear a goat fart from ten miles away.”

  Her brow creased but she duly placed a hand on Lissah’s head, the cat falling to instant silence. “I’ll lead,” Seeker said, starting off into the drifting fog. “Since there’s something nearby likely to eat us.”

  Guyime lingered to wait for Orsena as Lorweth and Lexius followed Seeker. The Ultria’s features betrayed a distracted air, one that switched to curiosity when she caught sight of the statue.

  “I hadn’t expected to find a cousin in stone,” she said, a smile rising then falling from her lips, her head taking on an angle that Guyime knew signified an interjection from the inhabitant of the Conjurer’s Blade. “It finds the carving crude and primitive,” Orsena reported. Guyime saw how her hand went to the sword’s hilt, twitched a little then shifted to her belt. “Apparently, it’s rather keen on reshaping it.”

  “She,” Guyime corrected. “Your demon bane is female now, so I’m told.”

  “Ah.” Orsena frowned then let out a short laugh. “That actually makes a strange kind of sense.”

  Seeing her hand twitch again, Guyime added, “We’ve no time to waste on vandalising ancient art,” he said.

  Orsena winced, the sword at her side giving off a faint vibration. “She didn’t like that,” she said, forcing a smile.

  “It doesn’t matter what she likes.” Guyime met Orsena’s gaze squarely, putting a hard note of authority to his voice. “You are the wielder, not her. You have to remember that or she will make you her slave.”

  At first, Orsena bridled at his words, her bearing that of a noblewoman suffering an affront delivered by a commoner. Then her expression softened, the perfect planes of her faces shadowed by grim resolve. “As you’ve said before, your highness,” she reminded him. “Many times.”

  “And will again, Ultria.” Guyime stepped aside and bowed as he gestured to the rise ahead. “As often as it needs saying.”

  When Guyime had first traversed this path there had been a dozen Stone Bears marking the route. Now there were ten. What became of the other two would remain an unsolved mystery, though Seeker opined that the creatures they were intended to represent had toppled them in a fit of annoyance.

  “Bears the world over are prideful,” she said. “They don’t like to be mocked.”

  Having never heard this woman utter a word that could be taken as a joke before, Guyime doubted she was doing so now. Although she continued to sense no danger throughout their trek along the statue-marked route, Guyime was relieved when the last granite monolith came into view near nightfall. It sat atop the steepest ridge they had yet climbed, the crest descending in a shallow arc to a broad plateau. A march of a dozen miles across this relatively flat expanse would bring them to Iron Shield Pass, the fortified cut through the mountains that marked the true border of the Northern Kingdom. Guyime disliked the notion of camping under the gaze of the Stone Bear, knowing Orsena’s demon would pester her to rework it, but to press on in darkness invited disaster.

  “This is the last of it,” Lorweth said, dumping his supply of firewood into the circle of stones Lexius had gathered. “And what fine feast, may I ask, will you offer us tonight, my learned friend?”

  “Porridge,” Lexius said, extracting the sack of oats from his pack.

  “Careful now.” Lorweth gave a sour grunt as he slumped beside the fire, watching Lexius strike his flint to the kindling. “So much variety will surely confuse my palate, and it’s a delicate thing, y’know.”

  “I once had a master who liked to feed me raw fish guts.” Lexius offered Lorweth a bland smile before blowing gently on the burgeoning flames. “And make me eat them again when I spewed them up. So you will, I’m sure, forgive my dearth of sympathy, Master Druid.”

  Seeing Orsena engaged in a close inspection of the statue, Guyime moved to rest a hand on her shoulder. “Lessons?” she asked, glancing up at him.

  “It befits one who carries a sword to learn how to use it.”

  Teaching her the basics of swordcraft had become a nightly ritual during the trek north. Guyime had offered to teach Lexius too but the scholar avowed little interest, saying, “When one possesses a blade capable of levelling a building with a single bolt of lightning, the nuances of thrust and parry seem somewhat redundant, my lord.”

  Orsena, by contrast, quickly became a keen student, absorbing a good deal of Guyime’s tutelage with a swiftness he knew no mere human could match. Her creator had imbued her form with a grace and litheness the equal of any dancer whilst her muscles, if they could truly be called such, possessed a strength and stamina beyond any mortal warrior.

  “Good,” Guyime said, the wooden staves they used for practice clacking as they rebounded from one another, Orsena adopting a typically perfect sideways lunge to parry the slash he had directed at her shoulder. His approval dimmed, however, when, instead of pressing the slight advantage she had gained, she retreated a step to resume a defensive stance. He had noticed her lack of aggression before and found it worrisome. Soon they would be in the Northlands proper, a place where, if all he had heard of his former kingdom proved true, they were sure to encounter trouble.

  “You don’t win by retreating,” he told her, jabbing a thrust at her belly which she easily evaded by means of an elegant pirouette.

  “Why win when you can run?” she replied, fending off his follow-up strike at her legs. “Why kill when there’s no need? I have been gifted with sufficient endurance to outlast most opponents. It’s my hope to simply tire them into submission.”

  She spoke with a light tone but Guyime knew her words reflected a sincere inner conflict: she didn’t want to kill. No stomach for the fight, my liege, Lakorath observed. Won’t do at all. Best drop her off a cliff, eh?