The Call of Winter (The Harbingers of Light Book 6) Read online

  In a great swirling vortex, the golden remains of Garth coalesced through the open ceiling and out of sight into the starry night. The gathered elves began to stir once the last glimmering golden particles of Garth had vanished into the darkened sky, but Charissa stepped forward and cleared her throat.

  All eyes turned to the last remaining councilor as she strode to the front of the dais where Garth had only moments before gone into the light. She waited for all elves to turn their attention to her, and when they did, she folded her gray hands before her waist and peered down at them with black eyes.

  “Garth hadn’t realized I already made my choice of his replacement,” Charissa said. She raised her hands to forestall any argument that she didn’t have sole choice of who replaced Garth. Given the solemnity of the evening, there was little will to fight left in the light elves, and they fell silent soon enough. “I have chosen one who went by the name of Daniken when she was a dark elf. As you can see, now she’s so much more!”

  Charissa turned with a grand gesture behind her, and then bowed deeply to the back of the dais. “Praise her,” she intoned to the floor. Around the atrium the multitude of dark elves raised their praise to the dark sky above them in reverent greeting.

  From the darkness at the back of the dais, a figure stirred. The elf that emerged into the dim light of the chamber looked little like an elf any longer and more like a being from beyond. Her skin was blue, tinged and webbed with frost. Her eyes were dead, glazed with ice, and stared out at the assembled elves with a detached air. From her head rose two twisting branches, like great horns frozen and glazed with ice.

  “Thank you, Charissa,” Daniken said, her voice like the cool touch of winter. She came to stand at the edge of the dais, her white dress glittering in the dim firelight of the atrium. She folded her blue hands before her while her dead eyes took in all those gathered at her feet. “Who here disagrees with opening the scepters?”

  For a time, her words hung in the air like a thunder stroke. Then, slowly, the assemblage began to stir, and moments later several hands began to rise. Daniken smiled softly, nodding to each hand as it rose into the chill evening. Most who disagreed with opening the scepters were light elves, as she knew it would be. Still, some were dark elves.

  “I assure you, opening the scepter won’t destroy the nine worlds,” Daniken told them. “I know many of you fear that.” She spread her hands wide, as if welcoming them all to her knowledge of the esoteric side of the scepters. “In opening the scepters we will spread their purifying light through the nine worlds, cleansing the void of darklings forever.”

  Some hands went down, but not many. Daniken waited several more moments to see if anyone else changed their mind. When no one else did, she nodded.

  “Very well,” Daniken said. She focused on the others who hadn’t raised their hands. “You all know what a grave time this is?”

  They nodded.

  “And Charissa has spoken to many of you of what will have to be done in such grave times?”

  Again they nodded.

  “Very well. Kill those who oppose opening the scepters.”

  Daniken turned and strode from the dais, Charissa trailing in her wake as the first of the dying screams rose in greeting to the starry night.

  Eget Row lay in a constant slumber of summer dreams. It was a land where the sun always shown, though was never so bright as to burn the eyes. Where the air was always warm, but the breeze was just right as to cool the body and ease the mind. The birds and the bees competed in a symphony while the smells of flowers always tantalized the nose.

  But just moments before, a cold wind had shifted through Eget Row, and a shadow of a cloud had skirted through the sky, blotting out the glory of the Waking Eye. If anyone had remained in Eget Row or in the Ever After, they would have seen the cloud, and they would have known what it was.

  The darkling gods had returned to Eget Row.

  The wavering grass bowed to Hilda’s withered foot. She was a tall woman, and she would have been beautiful, if the plague hadn’t maimed half of her body, rotting it away while the other half remained youthful and beautiful. One half a blond maiden, the other half a withered corpse.

  In her wake a giant serpent trailed. Truly he was much larger than her, and could have easily been her master if it wasn’t for the power of the order in which they were birthed and the gods from who’s afterbirth they’d been forged.

  Hilda, forged from the birth of Vilda, was cunning and powerful in wyrd while Gorjugan, the snake, was powerful in muscle, having been forged from the afterbirth of Hafaress.

  The cruel, hooked spear in her healthy hand thudded softly into the ground. The grass was so green, so full of life, that the spear known as the God Slayer looked that much crueler. It was made of iron, rusted from age and the horrible deed it had been forged for, killing the God of Peace. To look at it, Gorjugan would never have known that it had been made in the forge of Muspelheim. It looked like any normal, misused weapon.

  A lone howl rose cold on the warm air. All around them the songs of insects and birds stilled, listening to the wail of the predator trapped by gossamer thread to a root of the great tree. Hilda stilled as well, her feet coming to rest beside one another, one having been exposed to the plagued waters of the Elivigar that surrounded their island home.

  They’d been exiled from the Ever After and Eget Row before Anthros had been leashed to the Tree at Eget Row, and so they were going by scent of his wyrd. Hilda must have been slightly off her mark, for she turned slightly to the right and began their trek up a knoll and away from the world tree.

  Gorjugan didn’t follow her immediately. It had been too long since he’d seen the world tree that he didn’t want to give the sight up. The tree towered higher than any tree should ever been able to tower. It was comprised of leaves and needles, fruit, nuts, and berries of every tree that had ever existed or ever would exist. Everything about the tree seemed to glow, be it the red of the apples that hung fat from thick branches, or the leaves the whispered against one another in the ever-present breeze.

  At the top of the tree glowed a nimbus of white light. Their ancestral home. The land of the gods and the honorable dead, the Ever After.

  Around the base of the trunk, seeming so small compared to the greatness of the tree, was a ribbon of a well. Gorjugan knew this not to be true. From his distance and compared to the massive tree, the well might seem small, but in actuality it was large enough that stairs were needed for human or giant to reach its rim.

  “Gorjugan, come,” Hilda barked from the top of the knoll. Gorjugan slithered to answer his sister, coming to her side quickly so as not to keep her waiting longer than he already had. Hilda picked up her limping pace once more, her healthy foot striding strong through the verdant grass, her rotten one barely able to support her weight in the span it took her healthy foot to find the ground once more.

  Gorjugan’s eyes slipped back to the God Slayer in her hand. Moments before the two of them had come to Eget Row and like all times before, whenever darklings tried to win passage onto the rainbow road, they were greeted with the might of Heimdall, the guardian God who was to keep all of Eget Row safe from the encroaching darkling tide. But they’d came armed with the God Slayer, and moments after he appeared in a nimbus of power from the edge of Eget Row, Hilda had used the weapon on the God.

  Though the spear couldn’t possibly have hit any vital organ Heimdall had died nonetheless. His body had jerked, his eyes flashed with the power of death and he crumbled to the rainbow cobbles of Eget Row.

  Another howl sounded, this one closer than before, and Gorjugan was brought back to himself. Hilda’s rotten foot parted a way before him, her healthy foot trampling down grass as she went. The cold cloud followed them. Her black robe whisked around her ankles like a curtain billowing in a stormy breeze.

  Then they were pushing out of the tall grass that rested at the edge of a great lawn. The howl came again, this was the closest Gorjugan h
ad been to Anthros since they were thrown from the Ever After. The cry chilled the serpent to his core; his blood ran cold, his eyes clouded as if in molt, and a shiver ran through his scales. The howl was so loud and full of power that Hilda covered her one healthy ear, the one ear that was still capable of hearing.

  When his eyes cleared once more, Gorjugan gazed upon his brother. Anthros was a giant of a wolf; so tall that he stood well above the well that ringed the Tree at Eget Row. His fur was white as the first snow, shot through with frosty silver locks. His aqua eyes peered down at Gorjugan and Hilda like the orbs of realms hanging in the cosmos.

  Despite his great size, he had been bound for ages to one powerful root of the great tree by a gossamer thread. In eons past he’d stopped trying to break the chain, for he knew it was forged in Muspelheim, and the only thing that could break it was a weapon forged in Muspelheim.

  “Anthros,” Hilda whispered. At the sound of his name, the wolf twitched an ear. He tried to step close to his sister, but the chain that held him in place was already stretched as far as it would allow. He couldn’t budge. He whimpered, and he pawed great swaths of earth from the ground. All around Gorjugan could see rivets in the ground where Anthros had been trying for ages to claw his way free from the tree, but since he’d given up hope of escaping so long ago, they’d all grown over with grass and weeds.

  “For so long you’ve been held captive by the All Father. Now you will be free!” Hilda promised.

  Anthros howled longingly at the sky and at the white ball of the Waking Eye far above Eget Row.

  “Yes,” Hilda said, drawing nearer Anthros. The giant wolf cowed before his sister, lumbering to the ground, laying before her perfectly still, his eyes trained on the God Slayer. She took care with it around him. The slightest cut from it here in Eget Row would end any of godly birth.

  Hilda went woodenly to her knees beside the gossamer chain that held the wolf. Stronger than any material known to the nine worlds. She clasped it in her dead hand, and with the blade of the spear, she sliced through the thread with ease. The chain withered and crumpled to ash on the emerald lawn.

  Anthros rose and shook out his shackles, and in the blink of an eye, he vanished from Eget Row to begin his conquest of the nine worlds.

  Fen had dedicated himself to the darkling gods almost as soon as he’d been infected with the shadow plague. He’d prepared himself for the coming of a darkling god, even worked himself to a place of power within the harbingers of light so that he’d be a prime host. He knew his time would come. He knew that in time he’d feel the power of one of the three dark gods coursing through him, filling him with their essence, marking him as their servant. But as time drew on, and he aged, he began to doubt that he’d ever fulfill his deepest desire.

  Until Anthros came to roost in him. It was power he never imagined; more power than he could ever have fathomed before. It was more than he’d prepared for. Fear screamed out in terror as the darkling cloud swarmed through his mind and pushed aside everything he wanted, everything he yearned for. Everything that made him Fen washed away in one chaotic moment.

  Erased and replaced by Anthros.

  Maybe erased was the wrong word. He didn’t cease to be, just ceased to be in control of his own body. He was there, he could see, hear, and feel what was happening to himself, but he was no longer concerned with any of the mortal trappings he had been before. The daily running of Haven no longer mattered to him. There was only one thing that mattered to him now above all others.

  The All Father, he thought. It was all he could think about. The one consuming thought that plagued his mind.

  He pushed the heavy maple door of his home open and stepped out into the cold gray light of predawn. The air chilled through his long green jacket and froze in his nose. If there was any bit of sleep that clung to him before this moment, the cold washed it away. Fen’s angular face turned to the heavens, watching as trails of shadows cut their way across the cloudless sky like swords through flesh. Where they passed, the shadows seemed to leave scars, trails like burning embers in their wake.

  He closed his green eyes and took a deep breath. The part of him that was now Anthros could smell the darkling wyrd on the air; could smell the chaos. He could smell a god in his midst, but he knew it wasn’t the All Father.

  Hafaress, he thought. And Vilda. Though he’d known from Fen’s memories that Vilda was helping the darkling cause now . . . for some reason. Even when he was nothing but a pup, he’d known the Goddess of the Sleeping Eye had been indifferent to humans and scornful of the love her father and brother shared for them. Could it be that her jealousy was finally making her take a stand?

  Yes, kill the humans so that you can have your family back among the Ever After. But this war you bring upon yourself will be your last, Vilda, mark my words.

  When Fen opened his eyes once more, they were no longer green, but the aqua blue of the wolf god. A smile ghosted across his face as the first of the blackened tendrils reached out of the sky and plummeted to the earth before him.

  Black smoke smashed against the ice-glazed cobbles. Snow kicked up around Fen as the shadows coalesced and a grizzled, bearish man stepped out of the midst of the darkness. There was a wildness to his eyes that spoke of a darkling that had spent too much time away from humans and more time among the animals of the Fey Forest.

  More streamers of darkness followed the first, raining out of the sky until Fen and the grizzled man were surrounded by a bank of dissipating blackened fog. An unseemly lot stood around him. Women, men, and beings that appeared nothing more than children, though twisted and malign through their long years spent in the clutches of their darkling wyrd. If these child-like creatures were, or ever were, human, Anthros couldn’t tell.

  “Sons and daughters!” Anthros called, raising his hands high. His voice came gruff, almost dry. A growl skirted the edge of his words. He could feel the awe the humans and child-like creatures had for him. He could smell the rush of their blood and feel the thrum of their thoughts along his skin. How grand it felt to be among the human realms again. “Too long you’ve hidden in the light. Tonight we make out stand. Tonight, we take Haven!”

  Knees bent and each body bowed before their master; bowed before their god, Anthros.

  “One is missing,” Anthros said, lowering his arms and looking around. “Where is Vilda?”

  “Who would ever have thought I’d be in league with you?” a musical voice greeted his question. The darklings gathered around Anthros shifted to the side, allowing a silvery form entry to their midst.

  “Ah,” Anthros said, a wolfish grin split his face. “You do me honor.”

  “This is only a momentary truce,” Vilda said, stepping into the light.

  “A dark elf,” Anthros nodded. He appraised her silver skin, webbed with frost, her eyes little more than orbs of ice, her silver-white hair parting around two wooden horns that stretched from her scalp, sheathed with ice.

  “Here I’m known as Daniken. Let’s keep it that way,” Daniken said. “It wouldn’t end well for people to know who I really am.”

  “Of course. One of the holiest holies working with the castaway darkling god.” Anthros gave a deep, mocking bow in Daniken’s direction.

  Daniken crossed her arms under her breast and looked down at him from half-closed eyes. “I only work with you to bring my father and brother back to the Ever After.”

  “How . . . unfortunate that they forget they are gods.” Anthros rose and picked at the pointed cuff of his jacket.

  Daniken sniffed. “They spend far too much time . . . embroiled with mankind.”

  “After tonight, there will be less mankind to . . . embroil.”

  Daniken turned her head just enough to speak over her shoulder to the darklings still supplicating before Anthros. “Capture who you can, kill who resist you.”

  Each darkling figure shivered to a stand, physical forms melting away to black fog before shuttling up into the sky and away across Hav
en.

  “Capture?” Anthros asked, quirking his eyebrow.

  “We do intend to open the scepters, don’t we?” Daniken asked. She turned to the harbinger settlement that rested on subsequent tiers beneath her perch. Her eyes followed one black trail out of the sky as it smashed into a home and the timber of the house burst into flames. Screams issued from the house and silhouettes of people poured from the door. Another bolt of a shadow struck then, tumbling out of the sky, barely forming into a child-like figure, cutting the family down, before melting once more into shadows and spiraling off down the cold and lonely road.

  “Indeed,” Anthros said, stepping up beside her.

  “And there’s only one way to open the scepters.”

  “With the blood of an unclaimed harbinger.”

  “If you scan his memories you will see we don’t have to wait for harbingers to come to the plague on their own. How about we encourage a few?” Daniken reached over and tugged the fur-lined glove from one of Anthros’ hands. Underneath she revealed fingers and a palm wreathed in shadows. At once his memory painted an image of a girl, hair blond and curly, fleeing from him, her grip breaking from his. As her fingers left his, shadows trailed from his plague to her body, where the infection now resided.

  Screams rose into the air and fire roared in the distance. Haven was coming down around them. An army of unclaimed harbingers to unlock the scepters.

  “Get inside!” Libby said.

  Leona barely had time to register the streamers of darkness cutting trails of embers through the night sky before the blond elf pushed her back through the door and slammed it shut behind them. Leona really wasn’t sure what good a shut door would do them. Early that evening the house had been attacked and there were more holes than anything else in the walls. She could clearly see people racing here and there up the alleyways that separated her home from that of her neighbors.