The riven gate, p.1
The Riven Gate, page 1
The Riven Gate
Spells of Earth ~ 2
In the
Fae Mark’d World
By
Remi Black
Remi Black’s The Riven Gate
Copyright © 2022 ~ Writers Ink and Emily Dunn
First electronic publishing rights: 2022
All rights are reserved.
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NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
Published in the United States of America
Cover Illustration by Deranged Doctor Design
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Contents
The Riven Gate
Contents
Remi Black’s Works
~ 1 ~ Motes of Souls ~
~ 2 ~ Earth and Iron ~
~ 3 ~ Potential in Earth
~ 4 ~ Jewels on the Wing
~ 5 ~ The Caves of Trantorr
~ 6 ~ A Queen’s Warning
~ 7 ~ Distant Explosions
~ 8 ~ A Costly Battle
~ 9 ~ The Wind Arch of Selinnia
~ 10 ~ Fate’s Bloody Balance
~ 11 ~ The Deep Power of Earth
Thank You!
Remi Black’s Fantasy
Remi Black’s Works
Fae Mark’d Wizard
Wield a Wizardry Web
Sing a Graveyard Song
Dream a Deadly Dream
Fae Mark’d World
Spells of Air
To Wield the Wind
To Charm the Wind
To Curse the Wyre
Spells of Earth
The Wyrded Forest
The Riven Gate
The Mysts of Sorcery
~ 1 ~ Motes of Souls ~
“Who is dead?”
The funeral pyre flames leapt high, fueled by the wood stacked around and under the platform as well as elemental Fire. The Kyrgy Lord Horst had kindled Fire to give Honors to his killed knights and dames.
The massive blaze created a steady illumination for those who surrounded it, honoring those who had died. The riders chanted grief and well-wishes for their fellows as motes of souls rose with the smoke and sparks.
The rider who asked was newly returned to Horst’s forest palace. He pitched his inquiry to the knight nearest to Desora. She didn’t hear all of the knight’s response. At the end, he gestured to her. “This one was there.”
So the rider came to her. “Lady, at the stable they said that a pack of wyre attacked. I saw your horses with our lord’s. Did you and yours flee here, wyre on your tail, and they attacked my lord?”
She scowled. Like the other riders sworn to Horst, he had his lord’s aspect: the moon-silver hair and marble-white skin, now burnished by the flames. He’d served the Kyrgy a long time, for his eyebrows had become angled slashes and his teeth had sharpened. His oxblood leathers lacked any warmth from the pyre’s illumination. “No, Rider, you think wrongly. When we arrived, the wyre had already attacked your lord. They’d already killed these knights and dames. They were dying, as much as they could while Horst’s mantle gave them life. Captain Brax and his men saved your Kyrgy lord.”
He scoffed.
“True,” the other rider said. “Our lord would not have died, but they could have held him captive. What, then, would we have done? How could we aid our lord?”
The man bent his head. “My apologies, Lady.” When he looked up, firelight danced in his obsidian eyes. “I have seen you before, Lady, have I not? Several solstice turns ago. Wizard, aren’t you?”
“No, Rider, I am a mere wielder of Earth, not a wizard. I did come here, six years past, to honor your lord. I live at the forest border between the Wilding and the Lowlands.”
“You come from Mulgrim?”
“That village is nearest my abode,” she confirmed without agreeing.
“I do remember, Lady. You were once a wizard. You asked our lord permission to live near his Wilding. You came second to our lord. First you honored the Maorn of Bermarck.” He waited to ensure that Desora knew her offence in visiting a Lucent Fae before the Dark Fae. “Now, Lady, you will tell me what happened here.”
“The wyre attacked Horst.” She understood that the knight didn’t want to interrupt his fellow riders’ grieving. Yet why had he not asked the guards and rangers scattered around the bonfire? “We came too late to save them, but we did drive the wyre away.”
“Why did they attack?”
“A question you must ask your lord,” Desora snapped. She had her speculations. Without evidence, only a fool would share them with a knight loyal only to Horst. “I am not privy to a wyre pack’s motivations.”
Recognizing her offense, he bowed. “Truth. Again, my apologies, Lady.” His gaze swiveled to the pyre. “Who do we honor?”
“I do not know their names. Of those guarding Lord Horst, I know only Ambrois and Guilbert survived.”
“Five dead. They will be missed,” he mused. “Who are these others? Who are these who ride with you? Who is this Captain Brax?”
The knight’s use of ride did not mean only those who had sworn loyalty to his lord. She looked across the fire at Captain Brax, standing next to the Kyrgy lord.
Brax and four of his men had come from Iscleft Citadel to find her. Wearing armor and leather, he looked ready to face any opponent. The flame’s light danced over his features, stalwart, resolved, blank of fear or worry or anger. What does he see in the flames? The past he claims we had together? Battles he claims we fought in the past? Others who died as they fought sorcerers and wyre?
“The men with armor are from Iscleft Citadel. The others are rangers, sworn to Maorn Harte.”
The knight gestured abruptly, sharp, profane, an obvious disdain for the Lucent Fae lord who ruled Bermarck.
Another aspect he shared with his Kyrgy lord. Lucent and Kyrgy were not enemies, but they had enmity between them.
Desora added, “We have the same goal as Lord Horst: to rid this Wilding and the Lowlands of the sorcerer and his wyre as well as an eldritch monster, the like that I have never seen. Your lord said this monster attacked a deer herd bound to him.”
“Aye. That was my mission, to discover this monster.”
“It also attacked a flock of sheep. It killed on one night then returned the next to feed. We fought it.”
He turned fully toward her, surprised at last. “Fought it? How?”
“Earth-covered iron. It retreated from us.”
“You lost men to it?”
“We were lucky. Is this what you discovered with the deer?”
“Many deer were gone. The dead had thrashed on the ground. Of the carcasses that remained, we saw no wounds from weapons or claws. Something burst from inside them.”
That matched the second attack on the sheep. It didn’t match the signs first seen when she reached the High Meadow.
“We had no track to follow. We scoured the trails but found no sign. We found the few deer that had fled and herded them to a meadow near here.”
“They were in a meadow? When the monster attacked?”
“Aye. What think you, Lady?”
Desora didn’t know. Deer in a meadow; sheep in a meadow. Is that significant? “You have no track to follow because this monster moves as a vaporous miasma. We saw it attack an apiary of sprites. It took them in the air. It moves rapidly in that form.”
“Air-borne. That explains much. My thanks, Lady. I will inform my knights. I am Morcain. With my lord’s approval, you may ask my aid. I will be honored to fight at your side.” He bowed then faded back into the darkness where the pyre’s illumination didn’t reach.
Why had Morcain not questioned his lord? Was he wary around the Kyrgy lord? That was wise, for Dark Fae were mercurial and capricious.
More riders came from the stable, slipping into those around the pyre, knights and dames who must have ridden with Morcain.
Desora decided to return to the palace. Horst and his riders kept watch over the pyre; Brax and his guards and the rangers, with him. She had no place here, sworn neither to Dark Kyrgy nor Lucent Fae and not familiar with Brax. Any common memory she had with that Iscleft captain had burnt out in the rebounded spell that destroyed her wizardry.
Yet before she left the pyre’s light, a hand caught her upper arm, tugging her to a stop.
She looked around with a scowl. Who thinks he has rights to touch me?
Brax’s hand dropped from her arm. He glanced at the riders then lowered his voice. “We must talk.”
Desora resumed walking. He matched her.
Had Lord Horst’s arrogance irked him? When Brax’s men had reported they’d lost the fleeing wyres’ trail, Horst had laughed. “The wyre are mine to punish.” He’d snapped his fingers, and a spark flew. Brax had protest
They had faced trouble for two nights running. Would something attack tonight?
“I set Klemt and Alwin as sentries. What can you sense of the sorcery?”
Ah, his worry matched hers. She bumped his elbow with her own. “Magic enables the wyre to shift. Magic leaves a trace.” Does he not know this from his years fighting the sorcerers of Frost Clime? “Lord Horst will find that trace.”
“He leads the Wild Hunt. I expected him to hunt tonight.”
“He honors his fallen.” They had reached the steps that climbed to the palace’s entrance. She turned and looked at the pyre.
Fire leapt to the sky, illuminating more than the people gathered around the platform. Knights and dames, guards and rangers, they stood shoulder to shoulder, silhouetted by the flames or burnished by them.
The Kyrgy lord walked a perimeter behind his encircling men. He didn’t speak to his knights; he didn’t gaze at the flames. As she watched, he completed a circle and began another. An enchantment.
“Is he working a spell?”
She nodded, and Brax didn’t ask further. Having worked with Lucent Fae at the Citadel and during his weeks with Lord Harte, he wouldn’t probe for more. Horst was like and unlike the Lucent Fae, as magical and unpredictable, as sword-straight in his dealings yet without the tempering integrity that accepted the mundanes’ differences.
Nor would he truly understand his own knights, once mundane yet now bound to him. Limited, for they’d cast away their autonomy when they chose the Kyrgy lord’s mantle. Still mortal as any mundane yet long-lived as long as that mantle remained. Steady soldiers—as long as Horst remained an ally.
“What do you know of Kyrgy, Captain?”
“They’re Fae. Dark Fae. Dangerous. They stay in the Wildings, not Faeron. They have mundane riders, not Fae sentinels. I hear they move freely between their Wilding and Faeron.”
“Dangerous,” she repeated then changed it to “Lethal. Malicious as the Lucent Fae are not. Devious as they are not. Never question his word, Captain. Never disagree openly. If you disagree, keep it to yourself until you give orders to your men, outside of his presence.”
“You don’t trust Horst?”
The Dark Fae had completed his second circuit of the pyre. The flames still leaped high though no new fuel had been added. The wood stacked around the platform that held the dead riders burned steadily. Four knights and a dame, given identical honor, identical words of parting, their only difference in the wooden branch they held: oak and beech, elm and ash and chestnut, forest giants.
She watched Horst begin a third circuit and lowered her voice to answer Brax. “A Lucent Fae will listen to your counter argument, even if he intends to ignore it. A Kyrgy will listen then punish you for daring to disagree, even if you are right. They are vengeful, jealous of their rights. We are only mundane with short lives and weak reason. Watch your words. Watch your very eyes, Brax, and tell your men to do likewise. He will be eager to enlist new riders. Offer no bargains, to him or his knights and dames. Play no games of hazard. Did you and your guards swear an oath to the Maorn Harte? To any Fae?”
“No. The rangers would have. They are only temporarily assigned to me.”
“For how long?”
“Until we begin our return to the Citadel, you with us, Desora.”
Brax would be disappointed that she remained here, but Desora could no longer fight against Frost Clime.
Iscleft Citadel sat astride a rocky passage between craggy mountains, an ancient miracle of engineering to defend the pass into the Wilding from the Shifting Lands, with the desolate Wastes behind that narrow border. The Earth power she wielded drew upon growing things, the power in nourishing soil. The rocks around the Citadel had no potential to draw upon.
She would not return to people who expected great wizardry from her, powerful spells that lit the night brighter than the sun, enchantments that spun twisty magicks that defeated the sorcerers.
She shuddered. Her memory of the wizard she had been, working great spells, came from a healer who didn’t understand Desora’s wailing, after. That power was gone from her, destroyed in the backlash of a spell. Only the barest flick of Earth power remained to her. She was caught between the Adalse of her past and the current self she despaired of knowing.
“Thinking of that monster?”
Brax’s question drew her out of the past.
He was right to focus on the monster. A strange miasma had concealed it. It swallowed sprites and absorbed dead creatures, the vapor changing color with the consumed magic and blood. It moved like the fog did, but it was quicker, much quicker. What could it be?
“We’ll find a way to destroy it. Unless that sorcerer calls up another one.”
“Gods, I hadn’t thought of that.”
He grinned, his teeth flashing white in his night-darkened face, a sight that echoed in her memory. Reckless. Eager to fight.
The words colored the memory. She’d not seen brash action from Brax, not in their battle against the monster or the gobbers or the wyre. Perhaps he’d learned caution in the past six years.
How do I know what he was like?
Desora turned away, looked away from the pyre, toward the sentries that Brax had set.
Something moved in the air behind them. Firelight flickered over it, warming its strange greeny light. A cloud, drifting aimlessly under the tree canopy.
Ice crept into her bones.
That wasn’t an aimless drift. The cloud shifted and gathered, thinned and reached, nearing the first buildings of Horst’s compound.
Nearing the sentries on watch.
“It’s here!”
~ 2 ~ Earth and Iron ~
Brax drew his sword as he shouted the warning. “Archers! We need archers!”
As long as the monster stayed aloft, Desora had nothing to use against it, but she still called Earth, gathering the power into a green-gleaming orb.
The vapor hovered above the two sentries. Klemt and Ambrois, neither with a bow, only cold steel.
They needed iron. Steel, tempered by fire and double-quenched, had had no effect on the monster. Refined steel was too far from the iron mined from the earth.
The two sentries brandished their swords at the miasma. Its progress slowed. The vapor bloomed outward. Then it gathered in and whorled into a sphere, swirling eldritch green, a sickly color that had none of the Earth goodness of her own sphere. It ignored the two guards and flowed on. It seemed slow, yet it reached the stable before the sentries. It settled on the roof. The vapor poured over the mossy shingles. Then it oozed over the eave, down the weathered boards. It didn’t extend to the ground. It slipped between the boards as it dropped, until it had vanished into the stable.
The horses didn’t scream or kick at their stalls.
The sheep hadn’t panicked when it had settled over them—and absorbed them, leaving no trace.
The deer had thrashed on the ground, Morcain had said. Most of the white harts and hinds were dead. Had their wildness helped them recognize what was happening to them?
Riders ran past, swords drawn, with rangers behind them, nocking arrows as they ran. Brax leaped down the steps to join them. Then two spheres of swirling flame zoomed over their heads. Horst, using pure Fire to light the battle. His spheres raced the men to the stable.
Wielding Fire against this monster had to help. Horst’s palace had wood and crystal, murals with pigments ground from the earth. Gold and silver sparkled, enriching his palace. Did he also wield Earth?
She followed the men. She would need a small chance to wield her small element, half as powerful as Fire, but she would be ready.
The sentries reached the stable. They hauled open the doors, and a lighting sphere swooped into the building. The other sphere remained outside. The riders ran inside. The rangers stayed back, no doubt remembering their stand in the High Meadow.
Lord Horst appeared beside her. Two more spheres grew above his flattened palms. The encapsulated flames leaped wildly, wrenching to be free. Why didn’t he throw the spheres?
A half-dozen horses galloped out of the opened doors. They thundered toward the palace. Brax and his men leaped away. The Kyrgy jerked Desora out of the horses’ path.
