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  Ekaar was silent. ‘If Sartya is your enemy,’ she said finallly, ‘why is Khronosta not your friend?’

  ‘Because of a man called the eldest. He seeks to travel back before the sundering of Rairam from Acre, as far back as he can, in order to destabilize the empire before it consolidates power.’

  She snorted. ‘Impossible.’

  ‘No.’ Char shook his head. ‘Kyndra’s companion is helping them. He is one of the Yadin.’

  ‘The Servants of Solinaris,’ Ekaar mused, memory in her violet eyes. ‘I thought they’d perished.’

  ‘Most of them did. But Medavle – that’s the Yadin’s name – survived. He says he was the one who defeated Kierik.’

  ‘He defeated a Starborn?’

  ‘So he claims.’

  ‘And this happened in Rairam? That is why we did not know?’

  ‘Yes. Kyndra told me.’

  ‘The new Starborn, I see. She came from Rairam?’

  Char sighed. ‘Would you like to hear the story?’

  She nodded, so he told it, careful to omit the parts about Genge, focusing instead on being hunted by the du-alakat, who’d mistaken him for their Kala. His meeting with Kyndra, discovering the truth about Rairam, learning that she and her companions had come to broker peace. He told of their journey to Khronosta, alliance with the new Republic, led by none other than Sartya’s own general. He related their defeat at the hands of Khronosta, the emperor’s death.

  ‘Few of her decisions sound like those of a Starborn,’ Ekaar said suddenly.

  ‘She …’ Char hesitated, struck by his memories of Kyndra as she had been. ‘She wasn’t like that at first. She was different.’ At that moment, he was glad he could no longer blush.

  But it seemed he’d already given something of his thoughts away, for Ekaar said, quite flatly, ‘I hope you did not mate with her.’

  ‘I … gods, I can’t believe you just –’ He looked away. ‘It doesn’t matter now anyway. I am what I am and she … she is what she is.’

  ‘Good.’ Ekaar seemed satisfied. ‘All know that such unions are cursed.’

  ‘Can we talk about something else?’

  ‘We should return,’ his mother said, shaking out her spines. ‘I wish to speak with the Starborn.’

  Somehow Char did not have a good feeling about this.

  11

  Gareth

  The dead feasted.

  He’d passed a dozen chambers, each with a long laden table as its centrepiece. Once or twice, the chairs were empty, some pushed back as if abandoned in haste. Gareth didn’t want to know where the occupants had gone. More often, warriors like those he’d escaped ground to life when Gareth’s foot touched the stone balcony. But the portcullis doors were many. It had become a simple matter to hurry around the balcony’s edge, hitting the release mechanism to ensure each door came crashing down behind him. He knew this respite was temporary; the dead would find another way around. And when they did, he’d have hundreds to face, a skeletal army.

  Unless he reached Kingswold and the gauntlet.

  Gareth had no plan and only twenty years to his name, unlike the restless knight. But Hond’Myrkr drove him on. The dark gauntlet both yearned for and resented its partner. The man who united them would be the one to command the hosts of Ben-haugr. Something inside Gareth shuddered at the thought. Because no mere human could wield the power of life and death.

  He found himself thinking of Shika again and what would have happened if he’d never found the gauntlet. Destiny, Brégenne had said, but Gareth didn’t believe in destiny. A series of decisions had led him to this moment, blind chance, luck, the influence of others. They’d never have gone to the archives if not for Kyndra. Remove her from the equation and everything – everything – would be different.

  I can’t blame her, he chided himself, crossing into a circular room. After all, he’d been the one to steal the gauntlet.

  Lost in his thoughts, he only just saw the slight floor depression in time. There was a click and Gareth leapt clumsily aside, grasping at the wall to keep his feet. Most of the stone slid back, revealing the real floor below, studded with spikes.

  A living person would have breathed slowly out, their heart thudding relief. Gareth merely pushed himself off the wall, stepped around the hole and continued, following the winding passage through an archway and down a shallow slope.

  Time was beginning to fray around him. He couldn’t work out how long he’d been inside Ben-haugr, caught in its labyrinthine embrace. Were it not for the gauntlet, he’d have been lost. But Hond’Myrkr knew its way; its tugging grew stronger with each step he took.

  Gareth tried to roll the stiffness out of his shoulders. He gritted his teeth, wondering how he must look to the creatures of Ben-haugr. Nearly one of them, he supposed; the only difference being that he still had free will. He glanced at the gauntlet. If you could call it that.

  Gareth halted at a small sound, listening. When he heard nothing more, he edged forward again, peering around the next corner.

  A narrow chamber, ringed by a balcony, each wall broken by a portcullis door. A fifth was set into the floor, like the gate to a feeding pit. Gareth eyed it closely, but couldn’t see any depressions that indicated traps. Still, the feeling that pervaded him would have raised hairs all over his body. He was being watched.

  Sarcophagi dotted the chamber. All had carven lids, mostly battle scenes, but four were engraved with Kingswold’s emblem: two crossed fists. They were larger than the others; each stood vertically against a wall facing into the crypt’s centre.

  There was a tug from the gauntlet. His path lay across this room, through the wide archway on the other side. He was close now, so close, and he lifted a foot, preparing to set it down onto the patterned floor.

  Without warning, wind rushed into the chamber, carrying Kingswold’s voice with it. ‘Awake, arise, ek kalla. I summon you out of sleep.’

  Crack.

  He’d been half expecting it, but the whiplash noise was so loud, so terrible, that Gareth jumped. His raised foot touched the floor.

  Crack. Crack. Crack.

  Lids fell forward, ancient stone shattering on impact. Figures stepped from the sarcophagi. Rooted to the ground, Gareth could only stare. They weren’t like the skeletal warriors he’d already encountered, for flesh still covered their bones. It was leathery and brown, sagging in places, stretched in others. Lank hair hung from mottled scalps, brown teeth set in the grinning rictus of skulls. They wore sets of plate armour, but incomplete. One lacked gauntlets, another greaves. Only two had helms, horned and silver. The nearest bore a shining breastplate, its surface buffed to a mirror finish. Down here, amongst the tarnished relics of a buried age, it looked out of place.

  At first their movements were as slow and stilted as Gareth’s, but once hands closed upon weapons, rigidity left them. Gareth found his fist wrapped around the hilt of his mother’s sword. He didn’t remember drawing it. Holding it up before him, he took a step back into the corridor, so that they couldn’t encircle him.

  The undead knight with the breastplate reached him first. Unlike the lesser warriors he’d already encountered, this one didn’t attack in a blind flurry. He regarded Gareth as one opponent sizes up another, horned head slightly tilted. In the breastplate’s mirrored surface, Gareth saw himself; a ragged figure not unlike the dead that stalked him. His clothes hung off his wasted frame. Waxen-skinned, his face stared back at him, eyes like sunken wells. Ironically, the gauntlet was the only thing that had substance. If he met another human here, they would think him part of Kingswold’s forbidding host.

  Disgust warred with fear inside him. No matter his appearance, under the knight’s gaze, Gareth felt very human. He wished Brégenne was here beside him. He wished he was not alone.

  The moment his sword clashed with the knight’s, Gareth knew who the better fighter was. It was all he could do to defend, parrying an upper cut, a lower, a reverse thrust to the ribs. The other knights press
ed in, forcing him back. Gareth’s parries were fierce and inaccurate; he could hear mocking laughter in the air, in the swishing wake of each knight’s swing.

  The dead could never tire, but his opponent drew back, lending the fight to a comrade. The eyes had long ago shrivelled; pinpricks of light gazed out at Gareth from empty sockets. The second knight had no cuirass, just greaves and pauldrons, but it fought as well as the first. In his normal state and without the Solar, Gareth knew he would be exhausted by now, covered with bleeding lacerations where he’d not been swift enough to counter. But the lacerations didn’t slow him; neither did they bleed.

  The knight’s foot came down on an uneven patch and Gareth saw an opening, thrusting his sword into the creature’s chest, blade shearing through leathery flesh.

  The warrior stumbled and Gareth found himself grinning. Then, feeling resistance, he glanced down. Just as his blade was buried in the knight, so was the knight’s buried in him. Bound together, they stared at each other. The knight twisted his sword; Gareth felt nothing. He was still standing, so the blow had missed his spine. Instinctively, he copied the knight’s movement, turning his blade inside the creature’s chest.

  He thought he sensed a faint confusion from his opponent, the vestige of emotion, before the knight tore his blade free. Gareth did the same and both of them stumbled. He took another step back, wracking his mind for a plan, any plan. Why had he let himself be backed into this corridor? He couldn’t retreat, knowing what pursued him. Caught between the two forces, he would be hacked to pieces.

  The gauntlet pulsed again; he heard that spectral laughter. This battle was being watched. The third knight shouldered his way forward, a two-handed greatsword held ready. They would fight until they brought him down – it was Kingswold’s will driving them on.

  Kingswold who wielded the light gauntlet.

  White raises, black fells.

  Gareth glanced at Hond’Myrkr. He was its master, despite Kingswold’s claims. Hadn’t it done his bidding before? But I wasn’t myself, he found himself thinking. Whenever I used it, I felt him working through me.

  He fended off a swing from the greatsword, but the strength behind it staggered him and the edge cut deep into the meat of his left arm.

  There was no pain, but the arm flopped in response when he tried to lift it, now truly a dead weight. Gareth crushed a fresh surge of fear and sheathed his sword.

  The suicidal action must have taken the knights aback, for they halted. Gareth could smell them; sweet rot like fermenting fruit. He glanced at the gauntlet, tried to swallow, but death had turned his mouth dust-dry.

  Crouching, he thrust his fist into the stone.

  Or tried to; the gauntlet simply rebounded. Wide-eyed, Gareth tilted his head to look up at the nearest knight who stood over him, blade raised to strike. With a strangled yell, he launched himself at the warrior’s legs, brought him crashing down. The moment the gauntlet touched that dead flesh, Gareth felt it, saw it in his head – a connection like a thin blue thread that tethered the knights to Kingswold’s will. It ran throughout their bodies, lending them life.

  Black fells. Gareth tightened his hold.

  The same dark tendrils that rotted men’s flesh spread over the knight’s form, latching on to the blue threads. As the two forces fought, Gareth thought he heard a wordless melody, a siren song, bright but terrible, and instinctively he knew that it was Hond’Lif, the light gauntlet, its name springing into his mind with its cry.

  As the blue threads dimmed in one knight, they strengthened in another and Gareth had to throw himself aside again, or lose his head. The knight in the silver breastplate swung; Gareth steeled himself and caught the blade on the edge of Hond-Myrkr. Immediately, its dark tendrils flowed up the sword, into the hand that held it, extinguishing the bright threads. The knight’s fist opened; sword clattered to stone.

  Gareth didn’t hesitate. He forced a charge, thrusting the falling knight into his comrades, bringing them all to the floor. He struck again with Hond’Myrkr – the power that had trapped him in this decaying form – and that same power ripped the life from the dead as easily as it did the living.

  There was a roar of fury, or was it more laughter? Gareth stood up, stepped over the now-inanimate bodies of the knights and returned to the chamber.

  It was filled with shambling figures.

  There must have been twenty, cracked skin stretched tightly over bone. Some held swords, others bows of yellowed ivory. The nearest opened its mouth wider than it could have done in life and screamed at him. It wasn’t quite wordless. Gareth caught expressions of anger, of mockery, as if directed at an enemy about to be engaged.

  This was Kalast, he recalled. A great battle was fought here, perhaps on the very ground he stood upon. The Kingswold Knights against the Sartyan Fist. If Kingswold hadn’t given in to desperation and donned Hond’Lif, might the outcome have been different? Gareth grimaced at the irony – in another time and place, these warriors might have been his allies, both of them united against Sartya.

  There was no more time to reflect. When Gareth dropped into a crouch, an arrow whistled through the space his head had occupied but a moment before. Without hesitation, Gareth plunged Hond’Myrkr into the floor.

  This time the gauntlet sank through stone, halfway to his elbow. Gareth gritted his teeth, forced the tendrils to spider out, climbing up the legs of each warrior, stripping Hond’Lif’s power from them. Those struck toppled silently and Gareth found a reserve of anger, which he channelled into the gauntlet. Kingswold, he cried silently, enough of this. Come out and face me yourself.

  There was no reply. Except, a moment later, those warriors still standing dropped like cut puppets to join their inert comrades. Gareth could see Hond’Lif’s power withdrawing from them, curling out of dried pores. A challenge accepted. He stood and walked towards the archway.

  Hond’Myrkr continued to take from him; when Gareth looked at his arm, the flesh had blackened to his elbow. He felt a sick horror at the sight, at the knowledge that the gauntlet could speed his body’s decay. He needed that body to fight Kingswold. Even if he managed to win, if he wrested Hond’Lif from the ancient knight, would there be anything left of him to wear it?

  He entered a wide corridor, walking slowly, eyeing the sarcophagi that lined the walls. But no more dead rose against him. Piles of dusty gold sat in tribute between each tomb. Emeralds peeked out from ornate cups. Rubies gleamed. A drinking horn, chased with silver, balanced atop like a ship on a swell. Gareth wondered whether it even had value any more; according to Kyndra, Acre had abandoned gold as a currency. Back home, though, just one small heap would make him a rich man.

  Gareth left it behind.

  Reliefs adorned the walls. They reminded him of the one in Stjórna, his mother’s hall, of the battle scene on the throne-room doors. In these, warriors with streaming hair clashed against giants and nameless beasts of claw and snout. Here was a body pierced by a curving talon, agony etched forever on the warrior’s stone face. And there was a man with an improbable sword as long as he was tall, felling, in one swing, two vast opponents. The engraver had picked out the giants with surpassing detail, from their bandolier trophies of skulls to the crinkled leather of their great sandals.

  Gareth realized his feet had slowed. Everyone knew giants were a myth to frighten children, but then why had the unknown engraver chosen to depict them?

  Only one thing was certain: Ben-haugr wasn’t a tomb for the Kingswold Knights. It must have existed long before they were buried here. Perhaps it had lain under Kalast for centuries, pre-Sartya, when Acre wasn’t even Acre but a wild place that had never known the hand of civilization. And yet the artistry in these carvings was the finest he’d seen.

  A door blocked the way ahead. Semi-circular, it bore two concentric rings, one white, the other black. Without hesitating, Gareth pressed the gauntlet against the dark ring. For a moment, nothing happened, but then the circle turned counter clockwise and the whole door r
ose with a grating of stone on stone, showering his boots with dust.

  Gareth stepped inside.

  The chamber was the largest he’d yet seen, vaulted ceiling disappearing into the gloom. Bluish torches illumined the area, burning with the light of Hond’Lif. He stood at the head of a bridge, but a bridge over what? Darkness reigned to either side of it, concealing air or water or stone, he couldn’t tell. Only that he did not care to lose his footing. The bridge, guarded by two great carven beasts, led to a small dais. And on the dais …

  It was the vision he’d seen so often in his waking mind, in his dreams. A throne, hewn out of the rock. And on the throne a man, who would have been broad shouldered in life, but who was now little more than bones. Upon his lowered head sat a horned helm, and by his side a sword, its ivory grip browning with age. Armour hid what wasted flesh remained to him. His hands curled around the armrests, one bound in iron, the other –

  Hond’Lif shone like white gold. In the dim crypt, its light was almost blinding. Sigils clustered; graceful, faintly sinister at second glance, as if they had changed their shape in the blink of an eye. Gareth felt the same allure as in the archives, when he’d first seen Hond’Myrkr resting in its niche. The same urge to slip it on, to clench his fist and watch the metal mould itself to his skin. The things he could do with both, the power he would wield …

  The figure on the throne raised his head. Eyes flared in empty sockets, blue-white fires drawn from Hond’Lif. Just as the dark gauntlet kept Gareth from death, so did the light keep Kingswold. They were both doomed, bound to the will of the gauntlets. Once again, Gareth felt an unwelcome kinship with the man.

  Kingswold knew it too. And he knew, like Gareth, that only one of them could unite the pair. Only one of them could use that power to return to the world outside. The other would lie in Ben-haugr forever.

  12

  Kyndra

  With its ambertrix renewed, Magtharda was a sight to behold. Its rugged towers and waterfalls had already impressed her, but now that power flowed through the streets once more, the city was unlike anything she had seen. Magtharda made Market Primus and Cymenza – the only other major settlements she’d visited – seem like farmsteads in comparison. It was the future, Kyndra thought, as she listened to the low-level hissing of the ambertrix. This power could be used by everyone if the dragons deigned to share it with the world. But look how that turned out, she reminded herself, picturing Sartya’s war machines, its marching legions, the cities burned, the people slaughtered. Perhaps humanity could not be trusted with such a power.