The Sceptre of Storms Read online

  The Sceptre of Storms

  By Greg James

  Copyright © Greg James 2013

  Published by GJA Publications Ltd

  London, UK

  First Edition published June 2013

  All rights reserved.

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Any reproduction, resale or unauthorised use of the material or artwork herein is therefore prohibited.

  Disclaimer: The persons, places and events depicted in this work are fictional and any resemblance to those living or dead is unintentional.

  Dedication

  ~ For Evie ~ my goddaughter ~

  Prologue

  The Nightlands lay to the east, at the edge of Seythe, where land ends and the emptiness of the Waterless Sea begins and stretches away into the distance. Logic tells us that worlds must be round, but Seythe is not round, and logic is a new toy. Here, at the edge of the world, the Shadowhorn has stood since the beginning, before the Ages. A soaring goliath of a mountain where poison rivers run, black snow clings like fungus to its crags, and the ancient being known as the Fallen One—the Black Lord Under the Mountain—slumbers in his tomb.

  But the Fallen One is not the only being that slumbers here. Long ago, the armies of the Fallen and the Flame fought a great battle at the borders of the Nightlands. Only four beings survived, only four would continue their fight upon the mountain itself. Each of them was the last of their kind, and none of them walked away from that final confrontation—but that is not to say they did not survive.

  As there is light in the darkness and darkness in the light, life and death can be malleable things for some creatures. The remains of one such creature fell into the Great Abyss at the foot of the Shadowhorn, his bones left to rot and moulder since the last battle between Fallen and Flame. But now, they are to be disturbed.

  E’blis, the fallen creator of men, stood on the very edge of the Great Abyss as the banks of fog and roaming mist that eternally shroud the Nightlands rolled on over wasteland and dark grey desert. Hooded as always, and carrying his one-horned staff, he muttered in a voice that seemed to summon strange cries and horrible groans from beneath the ground. He clashed the base of his staff against the rocks, building up rhythm as his mutterings became a hideous, guttural, wordless chant—sounds that should not be heard or even shaped by a throat.

  Storm clouds gathered overhead, quickly growing swollen and black as E’blis pounded his staff against the stone faster, faster and faster. Finally, he let out an ululating shriek that split the air and lightning lashed down to strike deep into the Great Abyss, illuminating its sheer depths.

  And then, there was a silence.

  It was soon broken by sounds. Sounds of something stirring and waking in the Great Abyss, of flesh and bone grinding together. A great shadow was moving down in the darkness, and it spoke to E’blis.

  “Why do you awaken me, O E’blis?”

  “Because the time has come for you to arise and fulfil your oath sworn to His Shadow.”

  “I was dying when those words were spoken.”

  “And those who serve His Shadow do so in death as much as in life. You know that well enough.”

  “Your tongue is like that of a snake, O E’blis.”

  “I think the snake is more of a brother to you than to I.”

  The shadow crawled higher up the side of the Great Abyss. Steam and fumes billowed around it. Two eyes shone in the dark at E’blis.

  “Why has the time come to disturb me? Speak, E’blis. You bound my soul to my bones. I have not crossed yet into the Lands Beyond to be with my kin. I have slept in this night-soiled ground alone for centuries. I would know why you have put flesh on my back and life into my heart.”

  “Because she has returned.”

  “She ... ?”

  “The one who ruined you. The Flame has been born again and walks the land.”

  “A’aron ... reborn.”

  “Yes, and you know His will.”

  “And I know my will,” the great shadow said, “and it is to destroy. All things will be destroyed. I will tear down mountains, uproot forests and flatten cities and their people into dust just to see her weep. I will burn this world until it is nothingness just to know that she died in the inferno.”

  As the great shadow spoke these words, the ground surrounding the Great Abyss began to rumble and shake. Dust and debris showered down, and traces of white fire began to flicker up from the pit.

  “You speak well, as ever you did,” said E’blis. So saying, he stepped away from the Great Abyss, and as the storm clouds rolled overhead, he struck his staff against the earth until the smouldering base was buried in the black soil. A column of searing fire burst upwards from the Great Abyss and a curving snouted head, horned and dark-eyed, loomed out of it and over E’blis.

  “Arise, O Malus!” cried E’blis. “Arise, O Necrodragon!”

  Chapter One

  Sarah Bean was home. She was back in the decaying fairground where it had all begun. She stepped out of the shadows, leaving the Hall of Mirrors behind. The old rides, the dusty ground, and beyond them, the palm tree grove that Trianna and her followers had dragged her into more than three years ago were all still there. The sun was bright and high in the sky. It should have been a boiling hot Florida day.

  Should have been. But it was not.

  Something was wrong.

  As she walked on towards the palm trees, she realised what it was. There was no sound. Not silence, as such, but a stillness to everything, as if the world were holding its breath. How could that be? What did it mean?

  Looking down at herself, Sarah saw she was still dressed in her rough travelling clothes from Seythe, and that the bladeless hilt of A’aron was there, bulging from where she had thrust it into her belt. There was nothing wrong with her, apart from the clothes really.

  And the fact that I’ve been missing for three years, she thought.

  What was she going to say to Momma, or anybody else for that matter? How was she going to explain where she had been for so long? People only turned up like this after being kept prisoner by someone crazy. She had seen stories like that on CNN. But she wasn’t hurt in the same way as them. She had lost Ossen and Jedda. Woran and little Barra were safe, but she could never see them again now.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “How’m I going to explain that to everyone? Being basically okay?”

  Despite the ash-heavy stillness weighing her down, she strode into the palm trees, knowing she had to go home. Her brain spun with explanations of where she had been—none of them sounded even vaguely believable. And it wasn’t as if she was going to make up something sick in place of what did happen, even if it might sound more plausible to everyone but her.

  ~ ~ ~

  As she walked home, she saw no one. No people on the streets of Okeechobee. No cars on the road. No voices. No one. Nothing. The city was dead as dead could be.

  “Am I in the right world?” Sarah wondered aloud.

  Thirteen worlds—that was what she had been told. Thirteen worlds, all growing out of the Wood Beneath the Worlds. How could she be in the wrong one, though? That was not what should have happened.

  Sarah pulled the Sword of Sighs free from her belt, turning the hilt over in her hand. She shook it, banged it against her palm in the same way someone might fix a malfunctioning remote control. She waved it back and forth through the air.

  Nothing. No whispering voices and no blade of firelight.

  She wanted to scream at it. “What did you do? Where have you brought me? I want my World, my home! Not any of the others. I’ve had enough of this. Enou
gh!”

  She swung her arm back, and then flung it forward and hurled the hilt away from her down the street ahead. She heard it come down with a dull clang and a clatter, and it was then that Sarah saw where she was: on the highway outside Raulerson Hospital, miles north from where she had been.

  “I never walked that far; there wasn’t enough time.”

  The highway was as dead as all of the other roads. Sarah turned to look at the low, angular hospital, each white building crowned by a neat polyhedral roof. No cars were parked on the expanse of tarmac outside, and the leaves of the decorative palm trees did not stir as Sarah crossed the parking lot to the hospital entrance. Something bright winked at her from the cool shadows. It was the Sword; its engraved metal catching the light of the high sun. Sarah stared up at the sky, shielding her eyes with a hand.

  Yes, she thought, the sun has not moved an inch since I stepped out of the Hall of Mirrors.

  She looked down at the hilt, which was now in her hand. Turning it over once again before thrusting back into her belt, she said, “You’re not done with me, are you?”

  The hilt made no sound; it just glittered in the light.

  ~ ~ ~

  Inside the hospital she found the same still air and deadness as there had been outside. It was also somewhat gloomier. The lights didn’t seem to be working as Sarah made her way through the antiseptic labyrinth of its interior. As she passed the open door to a ward, she looked in, stared at the beds.

  There were shapes in them, under the sheets. She could see heads, pale and faceless, resting on the pillows. Sarah retreated, pulling the door shut behind her. The hinges whined and one of those bleached, eyeless heads turned her way and began to rise from the pillow. She slammed the door shut and ran. What was going on here? Where were the people? What were the inhuman things in those beds?

  This was getting too weird.

  Sarah ran around a corner and fell back onto the floor as she collided with someone.

  The figure was bent, thin, and frail. He was dressed in stained overalls and work boots. One of his eyes was missing, only a pink fleshy pucker remained, and the other was a striking sapphire that glinted and glittered.

  “Ossen?”

  “My name’s Oswald, Miss.” He reached out and helped her to her feet. “I’ve been moppin’ these halls for ten year now. Maybe a year more’n that. Just a janitor job, y’know. They said you’d come.”

  “They?” Sarah asked. “Who’s They?”

  “They is the Doctors, Miss. This is their hosp’tal.”

  “Uh-huh. Right. So where is everybody then?”

  “You seen the patients?”

  “Those white things?” She shivered. “Yeah, I did. What are they? Where’re the people?”

  “Those’re jus’ after-images, Miss. Nothin’ to be ’fraid of. Memories of what used to be in them beds. An’ the people are here, you just can’ see them s’all.”

  “Why can’t I see them?”

  “’Cause you’re not of this world.”

  “Yes, I am! I was born here!”

  “True so, but so was I. When you’re just moppin’, people don’t pay attention to you, don’t mind their words, so you get to hear things you shouldn’t. That’s all I’ve ever done, Miss, is listen. Listenin’, really listenin’, is the key to understandin’. When you listen, you hear the truth been spoken.”

  “What’re you talking about? Why am I here? I wanted to go home!”

  “You can’t go home, Miss. No more’n I can. I listened too much, learned too much and ’fore I knew it, I was here with the after-images. They don’ like it when you learn a bit too much about the Worlds and how they work.”

  “Who don’t?”

  “I tol’ you, Miss. The Doctors. They’re with your mom right now.”

  “Momma’s here?”

  The words came out, but not with the joy Sarah felt they deserved, and it seemed that nothing could invoke joy in this dead, quiet place.

  “Sure is, Miss. S’why I’m here. Was sent to fetch you.”

  Oswald led Sarah by the hand deeper into the hospital. As they went on, she found herself fingering the sword hilt in her belt more and more.

  Can I use the Flame here? she wondered. Will it come to me now I’m not in Seythe?

  Oswald stopped outside a shuttered room. He turned to face the shutters and rapped on them with a bony knuckle. A moment later, the shutter slid upwards, rolling out of sight and revealing the room within.

  Sarah’s mom was on the bed, looking as washed-out and pale as the faceless things she had seen before. She was not asleep; her eyes were open but unseeing. Her red hair was lank and sweat-soaked. Sarah could see that she was drugged, hooked up to an IV drip and breathing gas and air through a perforated face mask. Sarah shouted and banged on the glass that separated her from Mom.

  “What’s wrong with her? Why is she in here?”

  “She’s sick, Sarah. Very sick. Bad kinda cancer, from what the Doctors said.”

  Cancer—a simple word that could turn the air in any room ice-cold.

  “Cancer?” Sarah said, tearful. “No. Why? Why did they do this to her?”

  “They di’n’t, Sarah. The Doctors di’n’t. They brought her here ’cause she was sick. She di’n’t have long left to go, but here she can have all the time in the world. Here is in-between, not-quite-there, happening-all-at-the-same-time.”

  “You mean she won’t die?”

  “No. She will, Sarah, but being here stops it for a while, makes the going very slow.”

  “Then why am I here? Why show me this?”

  “Because they want to save her for you, the Doctors do. But you gotta do something for them before they can do that. They need something.”

  “What? What do they need? Anything. Just tell me what. I’ll do anything.”

  “You gotta go back, Sarah. Back to the seventh world and bring something out of it to here.”

  “What?”

  “The Sceptre of Storms. The Doctors said it can make your mom better.”

  Oswald nodded, and his one eye shone blue. Bright blue. Very bright. A blinding blue.

  “No, wait. Don’t send me back! Not yet. Let me speak—”

  Chapter Two

  The great doors of the Highmount Palace court opened. The way up to the empty throne was lined with dour, slack-faced soldiers clad in the roughly stitched armour of mercenaries and outlaws. Fellfolk, every one. Their souls were gone, stripped away, and their bodies served the Black Lord Under the Mountain. The pupils of their eyes, which were now His eyes, glowed the deep red of the possessed. A strident fanfare sounded, and a figure separated itself from the shadows beyond the doors; clad in a pitch-black hooded robe, the figure strode between the Fellfolk ranks. Each of the men seemed to stiffen somewhat as the figure passed. If they had still possessed the senses they were born with, they might have noticed the court growing colder and a dimness settling about the flames of the torches, which flickered in their sconces. Somehow, the shadows seemed stronger, thicker and heavier than before. The figure ascended the steps to the throne and then turned back to face the way it had come. The hood than hung low over its face concealed its features well.

  “Bring the child to me,” the figure intoned.

  Two of the Fellfolk brought forward Venna, the Queen-in-Waiting, her crippled legs dragging across the rough flagstones. She raised her head to the figure upon the throne, and then bit her lip as the Fellfolk flung her to the ground. She would not cry out. Though her body was weak, the gaze Venna fixed upon the throne was not; it was stronger than it had ever been before. She hawked in her throat and spat at the figure.

  “I curse you as a traitor in the sight of the Mother for what you have done today, Fellspawn.”

  The figure on the throne stood and threw back its hood, revealing the narrow, beard-fringed face of Mikka Wyrlsorn. His protruding eyes were bright with anger as he wiped Venna’s spittle from his cheek.

  “I am not a Fells
pawn! I am the Fallen One’s avatar, second only to E’blis in His eyes!”

  Venna licked spittle from her lips before she spoke again. “You are even less than that. You are the worm wriggling on the teeth of a fangtooth fish, thinking itself the kin of that which will one day swallow it whole.”

  Mikka’s eyes swept over the court. Silence hung over the assembled throng. It was the silence of the soulless, for every one of them was a puppet of the Fallen One. Mikka could not let the Master see him being spoken to like this. He stamped down the throne steps and snatched Venna up by the throat, pulling her close to his face.

  “I’ve won, daughter of Ferra. I sit on your throne. The Shadow of His Darkness falls across the land. The Three Kingdoms are in my hands. If you wish to live, you will make one last decree: that all will pledge themselves to me.”

  “I will make no such decree, Mikka Wormtooth.” She smiled. “You have taken my father’s city by the weakness of treachery, not by strength of arms. You are the one who has fallen into darkness, and none of the people beyond these walls will serve you willingly. They will merely watch and wait for the day that the fangtooth fish chooses to swallow you whole. No tears will be shed for you when that day comes. Not one.”

  Mikka shrieked, threw her to the ground, and kicked her in the stomach. His bitter cries and Venna’s dull grunt of pain echoed horribly around the court, but still the dead red eyes watched the scene impassively.

  “If my sister were here,” Venna hissed, “she’d see to you. She’d run you through as she would have run through Ianna.”

  Mikka’s face was flushed, his lips drawn back over his thin teeth. His fists clenched and unclenched as he thought of the things he would like to do to the girl who was besting him with words alone. He gestured at the waiting Fellfolk.

  “Take her away. Put her in the cell that her sister once called home.” He cast a lingering look at Venna as she was dragged away through one of the arches that led deeper into the palace. She went with neither kick nor scream, but with her back firm and straight. Mikka looked forward to breaking that backbone of hers.