Frostborn: The Broken Mage (32 page)

“No more,” whispered Calliande. “I don’t…I don’t want to see any more. I was happier not knowing.”

“You must,” said Marius.

“Why?” said Calliande, blinking the tears from her eyes. Her mind seethed and buzzed with the pain of the things she remembered. “Will you force me?”

“No,” said Marius. “I have never forced you to do anything, Calliande. You drove yourself onward. Just as you have driven yourself onward now.” 

“All right,” said Calliande. She took a shuddering breath. “All right. Let’s…let’s just get this over with.”

Before her courage could fail, she crossed the hall and gripped the next crystal sphere in her shaking hand.

Again years of memory exploded through her skull in a single instant. 

After that battle, after the day Julian died, the war became more and more desperate. Town after town and castra after castra fell to the Frostborn. The High King, who had hitherto ignored the Keeper’s advice, at last began heeding her counsel, and summoned all his vassals and allies, and a great army of humans and dwarves and baptized orcs and manetaurs strove against the Frostborn. Calliande saw battle after battle, healing wounds and lending her powers to the wards against the terrible cold magic of the Frostborn. At last her skills caught the attention of the Keeper, and Calliande became the Keeper’s new apprentice. 

She grew to love that old woman with all her heart. 

In public, Ruth of Taliand put on the face of the Keeper, stern and commanding and aloof. In private, she was kindly and wise, and taught Calliande a great deal about magic, secrets known only to the Keepers. For the Keepers could use the magic of the Well at Tarlion’s heart, but they also commanded elemental magic, powers that only the wielder of the staff could employ. Just as Marius had become her second father, so too Ruth became her second mother. 

Ruth told Calliande the truth about the war, as she had told Marius and a few others she trusted. Most of Andomhaim thought that the Frostborn were simply another kindred of terrible power, like the urdmordar and the dark elven princes. In truth, the Frostborn came from another world. Most of the men of Andomhaim thought Shadowbearer a myth of the dark elves. Ruth knew better. Shadowbearer had opened a gate and summoned the Frostborn for mysterious reasons of his own. He was possessed by the shadow of Incariel, the great demon the dark elves and the dvargir worshipped, and had spent millennia working evil before turning his attention to Andomhaim at last. 

The only way to defeat the Frostborn and end the war was to close the gate between worlds on the slopes of the Black Mountain.

Calliande’s fingers tightened further against the crystalline sphere, tears streaming down her cheeks. 

At last Ruth had been slain in battle, ambushed as the Frostborn continued their relentless advance from the Northerland to Castra Carhaine. Calliande had taken up the Keeper’s staff, and power and knowledge exploded through her, knowledge that exploded anew through her mind as she stood in the silent white chamber of Dragonfall. Secrets of spells and power, and the truth that the Keeper’s magic was of Old Earth, that there was no power on Andomhaim that could oppose the magic of Old Earth. That secret had allowed the Keeper to defend Andomhaim from dark magic for over five hundred years before Ardrhythain founded the Two Orders. 

And then, as Calliande had taken up the staff and become the new Keeper, she understood how to win the war. The high elves did not interfere in the affairs of other kindreds unless asked, and two hundred years earlier the Keeper of that time had journeyed to Cathair Solas to ask the high elves for aid, and in answer Ardrhythain had founded the Magistri and the Swordbearers. So Calliande had gathered the Keeper’s most trusted followers, Marius and the knight Kalomarus and a few others, and set off for Cathair Solas in the distant north, fighting her way through the lines of the Frostborn. At last they reached Cathair Solas, the last citadel of the high elves, beautiful and powerful beyond measure, and Ardrhythain and the mages who ruled the high elves heard her plea.

The high elves gave Kalomarus the power of the Dragon Knight of old, the repository of the terrible power once wielded by the dragons. The power was a terrible burden, but Kalomarus was a seasoned knight, grim and sober yet with a kind heart, and he mastered the power. 

Together they won the war, driving the Frostborn back and closing their gate, and after fifty years Andomhaim had peace at last. 

Calliande released the crystal sphere and stepped back, breathing hard, her body covered in sweat. She looked at Marius and at the chamber around her, and realized that it looked different.

For the Sight had returned to her.

The Keepers had the Sight. How could she have forgotten it? She saw the power of the threshold flowing around her, the awesome power gathered in the dragon skulls. She saw the flows of power and understood them, the knowledge of generations of Keepers flashing through her mind. Calliande turned to Marius and saw the complex threads of the spell that bound him to the mortal plane, the oath that bound his spirit to her across the long centuries of sleep. 

“We won,” she said. “I remember…Kalomarus and the sword of fire. We swept the Frostborn from Caerdracon and the Northerland, and broke their gate upon the slopes of the Black Mountain.” The final battle, she remembered, had taken place where the Tower of Vigilance now stood. 

“We did,” said Marius. “After fifty years of bitter war, Andomhaim had peace at last.”

“What went wrong?” said Calliande. “The war was over. We had defeated the Frostborn…wait.” Her new memories clicked together. “The Frostborn were never our true enemy, were they? They were just the tools of our ultimate foe.”

“We defeated the Frostborn and closed their gate,” said Marius, “but Shadowbearer remained. For a hundred thousand years he pursued his goal, Calliande. For years beyond the capability of human minds to count. We had defeated one of his tools…and at last the full weight of his malice turned upon Andomhaim. Come. There is one final crystal, and then you shall have the fullness of your memory.”

“Wait,” said Calliande, scrutinizing the mist with her Sight. She now possessed a mastery of the Sight beyond Antenora and Mara. In fact, if she lived through this, Calliande could instruct them in its use. Yet even with her skill, her Sight discerned no trace of the Devourer. The Keepers were ancient, and their knowledge had passed to Calliande. Keepers had stood guard over humanity in Britannia and the Empire of the Romans upon Old Earth, over kingdoms and nations and empires since the days when the men of Sumer had raised pyramids of mud brick and the Yellow Emperor brought civilization to his people in the lands of the Han. 

Yet the Devourer was older than that, older than human civilization, and her Sight could not find it. 

“Go,” said Calliande. “Take me to the final crystal.”

Marius bowed. “As you command, Keeper.”

Calliande flinched. Yet she was the Keeper, was she not? She knew it in her bones. It was her duty to protect the people of Andomhaim, and she could not turn away from it. 

“Yes,” she whispered. “Thank you, my friend.” 

The mist swallowed her again, and Calliande walked into it, her stride purposeful, the Sight guiding her. She noted the way the magic flowed around her, and saw the touch of Ardrhythain in the work, just as she had seen his touch in the soulblades he had forged, the disciplines and the spells he had taught the Magistri. He had done well to build Dragonfall, to hide the skulls of the ancient dragons away from those who might abuse their great power. The dragons’ skulls themselves powered the spells upon Dragonfall. It had been the perfect place to conceal her staff. Shadowbearer could not have come here, even if he had known the location. 

But why? Why had she hidden herself away, concealing her memory in this place? The war had been won. The Frostborn had been defeated. 

No. The Frostborn had been defeated, but Shadowbearer had summoned them. Shadowbearer had summoned them, and he had faded away into the shadows once they had been defeated, preparing to plot new evil. Suddenly Calliande remembered that she had fought Shadowbearer upon the slopes of the Black Mountain on the day the war had ended, the day she had closed the gate. Their duel had been inconclusive, but the bearer of shadow had promised that he would return, that her victory had been but temporary…

She remembered nothing after that. 

Not yet, anyway. 

She looked around the mist, wondering where the malophage was. 

“What is it waiting for?” said Calliande.

“I do not know,” said Marius. Calliande looked at her old teacher, her old friend, another surge of emotion going through her. “The malophage should not have waited to attack again. You are now stronger than you were when you entered.”

“Perhaps it was not strong enough,” said Calliande, sorting through her recovered knowledge. Before Coldinium, she had never faced a malophage, but other Keepers had, and their knowledge had passed to her. Malophages existed simultaneously in the material world and the threshold, granting them a continuous supply of power to fuel their swift healing and ability to change form. Passing through the wards upon the doors of Dragonfall would have inflicted terrible damage upon the creature, but once here, inside Dragonfall, it could draw upon the magic of the threshold to heal itself …

“Ah,” said Calliande. “I am stronger, too, but so is the Devourer. It is a race, then, to see which of us can become the strongest first.” She glanced around the mist. “It can hear us, you know. It’s probably following along just out of sight.” 

She half-expected the Devourer to appear and attack, but nothing moved in the mist save the mist itself.

The gray walls of fog spun around her, revealing another hall of white stone, dragon skulls gazing from the gleaming walls. A plinth rose from the center of the floor, holding another crystal globe that pulsed and flickered with pale light. 

“The last memory,” said Marius. 

“I know,” said Calliande. At last she would learn why she had done this to herself, why she still lived centuries after she should have been in her grave. 

The time for hesitation was past. She strode to the plinth and placed her hand upon the crystal.

The final memories exploded through her mind, years of experiences filling her thoughts in an instant.

The war had been over. The High Kingdom was rebuilding. Yet Calliande was troubled. Shadowbearer would return one day, and he would work evil anew. Perhaps years in the future, centuries in the future, long after Calliande was dead. She took an apprentice of her own, a young woman named Lydia, and began teaching her the secrets of the Keeper.

And then Lydia tried to murder her. 

Calliande killed her in the resultant fight, and the truth became clear. Shadowbearer had tried to destroy the realm of Andomhaim through force, summoning the Frostborn to rid himself of the Magistri and the Swordbearers. Brute force had failed, so instead he turned to corruption. He had corrupted the dark elves and the dvargir, turning them to the worship of Incariel in ancient days. Now he did the same thing to Andomhaim, walking among the proud and the powerful, promising them even more power and immortality. 

The Enlightened of Incariel, the secret society that had tried to kill Ridmark and Arandar, the cult that spread through Andomhaim like a cancer through a man’s limbs. Shadowbearer started it soon after the Frostborn had been defeated. He would turn the men of Andomhaim away from the God of the church to darkness, to worshipping the shadow of Incariel in hopes of making themselves gods. 

And so Andomhaim would rot from the inside…and when the Frostborn returned, the realm would fall like a tree hollowed out by disease.

Calliande could not stop it. She had but a mortal life. Shadowbearer was immortal, and could shape Andomhaim over the centuries as she pleased. The Swordbearers and the Magistri had prevailed against the dark elves and the pagan orcs and the urdmordar and the Frostborn, but they could not defeat a subtle, insidious threat like this. Already Shadowbearer had corrupted the Keeper’s apprentice, and had Lydia not failed, she could have waited until Calliande died and become the Keeper. Shadowbearer could spend centuries infiltrating the nobility and the church and the Two Orders, bringing a few more into the fold of the Enlightened with every passing generation. 

When the Frostborn returned again…Andomhaim would not be strong enough to resist, not with the Enlightened eager to carry out Shadowbearer’s bidding. Calliande could have warned the High King and the nobles and the Orders, but it would have been futile. Her warning would pass into history and then obscurity. The Enlightened would soon become free to do as they wished, and no one would have been left to oppose them.

Instead, Calliande formed a plan.

She founded the Order of the Vigilant, devoted to watching for the return of the Frostborn. She spoke with Ardrhythain of her concerns, and the high elven archmage told her of Dragonfall. She concealed the staff of the Keeper there, and then worked a mighty spell upon herself. Her memories went into Dragonfall, into the crystal spheres, and she entered a deep sleep beneath the Tower of Vigilance, to awaken when the conjunction of the thirteen moons allowed the gate to the world of the Frostborn to be opened once more. 

And now, over two hundred and thirty years after she had gone into that sleep, she had reached the climax of her plan. The thirteen moons had gone into the necessary conjunction for a day and a month, and Shadowbearer could open the gate if he obtained the empty soulstone. 

Here was Calliande’s chance to stop him. 

Here was, perhaps, her chance to destroy him once and for all, to put an end to the evil he had worked for uncounted millennia. 

The last of her memories clicked into place as she remembered closing her eyes in the darkness below the Tower of Vigilance, and her whole life was restored to her, from her earliest memory to the moment she had walked naked through the golden gates of Dragonfall. Ridmark and the others awaited her there…