Throne of Scars Read Free Page A

the draugr. They were bones. Just bones. Their faces held no secrets, you could not read displeasure from a raised eyebrow; their voice was a rasp that reached out from their chest, and they were all adorned in fine silk, the garments clinging to their bones. They loved finery, as if being deprived from such ornaments had been the sole thing they had craved for in their long death. Coodarg, an ancient Bardagoon, raised the night Shannon released Hel’s spell, was Kissing the Night, as they called the act of touching the magical powers of creation, the same powers most elves and us few humans saw and felt, but their knowledge in the might of magic was far beyond ours. Few humans could see the fiery molten rivers mixing with Nifleheim’s icy torrents in the Filling Void, but I could, Shannon did, the Ten Tears all had, because of Euryale and Stheno’s meddling with our ancestors.
    The ancient ones saw these powers and more. They could reach into the thicker, deeper fumes and colder, hidden streams of ice. Their long undeath had not made them weak. No, they were much more powerful than most living.
    I embraced the powers. I wanted to. I was cold, and yearned to feel the comfort of the mysterious power. I felt the fire. Never the ice, again thanks to Euryale’s and Stheno’s meddling. I saw the roaring fiery rivers, felt the strings of power, could touch and pull at them, combine the fires, the heat, the vapors in numberless ways and I could make spells out of it. I let my mind caress them, the fantastic, incredible powers, and thought of a million ways of braiding it all together. The heat, the flames, the molten stone, falling to the Filling Void, where all life was born, where it mixed with the ice of Nifleheim. I felt that ice somewhere, but most humans, the few of us, only saw Fire. We were made weapons and fire was the best weapon. And being a novice, I knew but few spells. Braiding one together was a risky thing, and had to be done just right. Few spells were identical and we had been taught some, knew a few on our own but we could learn many more, if we risked all without mentoring, but the creatures around us?
    They knew thousands.
    One of those spells was evident while we stood on the wall. We were staring at a sphere of fire, and Coodarg controlled it and we could see whatever it was he concentrated. I could see long, sturdy ships, the harbor and the dark waves, the commanding draugr in dark chain mail hissing and spitting orders at his legions, spears, and then a raven, croaking somewhere. I turned my head to the dead one, but his skull gleamed and gave away nothing. Where was this place that Coodarg was looking at?
    Thak rumbled, the shape-changing giant man-sized as he often was, his dark skin glistening. The Citadel didn’t accommodate for his twelve feet easily. He spoke. “They’ll see the dead coming. Probably have spies and magic to scout us. Don’t know what Shannon is doing. Why are they marching like this? Didn’t we try this already?”
    Thak rarely had a cross word to say about Shannon. I thought he loved the girl, in his beastly way, and would probably go fight Hel herself for her. Though never fairly , I thought and chuckled. “They are preparing across the water, no doubt,” I said. “I have no idea what Shannon’s about.”
    “They are,” Ittisana agreed in her strange, singsong voice. She put a hand on my shoulder and I wasn’t sure how to react to that. Her hair, snakes the length of her shoulders were brushing my back and I shuddered with dislike. She was friendly, perhaps more. I had a reason to hate her, but couldn’t quite force myself to. The gorgon was the one they had infiltrated into the Ten Tears. She had taken the place of one of us, a girl we never knew, Cherry, who died the night we arrived in Aldheim. Ittisana had stayed with us, mute, her body that of a human girl thanks to our guard, a gorgon called Cosia and her special spell, the shapeshifting one, and Ittisana had