The Sword of Life (Chronicles of the Magi Book 1) Read online

  Chronicles of the Magi

  Book One

  THE SWORD OF LIFE

  by

  Dave Morris

  THE MAGI

  Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,

  In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones

  Appear and disappear in the blue depths of the sky

  With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,

  And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,

  And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,

  Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,

  The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

  W. B. Yeats

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  “The Magi” by W B Yeats

  The Pommel Stone

  Kalugen’s Keep

  Caelestis

  The Underworld

  The Gift Giver

  The Faltyn

  Death’s Boatman

  Imragarn

  The Chasm

  The Face of Death

  The Lake of Fire

  The Dirge Man

  Icon the Ungodly

  The Magi’s Downfall

  The End of the Beginning

  A map of the world of Legend can be found here on the web.

  One:

  The Pommel Stone

  The old woman hunched over the cards, her breath a misty plume in the chill evening air. Beside her, the campfire crackled and spat sparks up to the grey sky. Altor waited patiently, smiling to himself as he saw the look of intense concentration darken the woman’s wrinkled brow. When she looked up she was not smiling.

  ‘This is an irresistible fate,’ she said, gesturing at the cards. ‘Your destiny is sealed by the Norns themselves. You will undertake some great task, a quest of tremendous importance.’

  Touching a card with one thin brown hand, she went on: ‘From the first card, which is the focus of the reading, the quest will involve the setting to right of some ancient ill. Another interpretation is that you will repair something that has been broken.’

  ‘Perhaps the tiles on the monastery roof need fixing again,’ said Altor flippantly, but the old woman ignored him.

  ‘The Knave here suggests one you shall soon meet. A friend or companion, perhaps. The next card suggests that a long journey lies ahead of you, and the surrounding cards indicate great hardships to be endured along the way. This card, the Hosts of Yeth, shows that those obstacles will be both many and dangerous. Powerful forces will oppose you. Turning to the next card, we see your near future. The Archon, icy of gaze and stern of countenance. A ruler, or at any rate a man who expects to be obeyed. If your quest is not in his interests then you can count on him to oppose you. But take heart, young man, for here beside him is the card we call the Wise Mother. She is the feminine principle—the gentle dreams bidden by lullabies, of tales told by a warm hearth, selfless love and the comforting word.’

  Altor had been listening with amused scepticism, but the woman’s words awoke an old sorrow. Raised by monks from early childhood, he had no memory of his own parents.

  The old woman gathered the cards and began to shuffle them, meeting Altor’s sad gaze with her dark sunken eyes. ‘The Knave, who came first, is a stark contrast indeed to the Archon, and you noticed that their faces on the cards were turned away from each other? Though some will oppose you, the cards seem to say, you may find one to be your friend.’

  Altor shrugged and got to his feet, stretching his broad shouldered frame in a massive yawn. ‘If you say so.’ He dropped two silver coins into the old woman’s hand. The firelight made them blaze like droplets of blood, reflected in the dark pools of her eyes.

  Night was darkening the sky and closing a wall of blackness around the campfires. Altor had joined a number of other wayfarers who for mutual protection had banded together to travel through the great forest of southern Krarth. A pilgrim who had been waiting nearby, seeing that the fortune-teller was finished with Altor, came hurrying over to learn what the cards said about his own destiny. Pondering the meaning of the old woman’s prophecy, Altor walked away across the clearing, which was now bustling with activity as merchants, hunters and pilgrims prepared camp for the night.

  In the time since Altor had sat down for his card-reading, some foresters had appeared with their families and were now roasting haunches of venison on a spit. Altor sniffed the aroma of the meat longingly, but in the cook pot over his own campfire simmered only a thin broth of roots and herbs. He hunkered down beside it and poured himself a bowl, regretting the two coins he had given the soothsayer which might have been better spent to buy a loaf of bread and a slice of venison.

  The plangent notes of a melancholy tune drifted across the clearing. Altor looked over to see a man strumming a lyre. He wore a tunic and breeches of cotton that had once been white, perhaps, but now were travel-stained and grey. As he sipped his broth, Altor studied the man’s strong proud face, idly wondering what had brought him to this desolate spot. The wistful melody he played was nothing like the ballads and jaunty jigs of a typical minstrel. Impelled by curiosity, Altor strolled over to listen to the music.

  The musician looked up as Altor approached. He saw a big youth in the simple homespun tunic of a warrior-monk. In the months Altor had been travelling, his close cropped hair had grown into a corn-coloured broom on top of his wide brow, and combined with his earnest expression and honest yeoman’s face it made him look intimidating and comical in equal measure.

  Without ceasing to play, the musician smiled and said, ‘I noticed you getting your fortune told. Anything interesting?’

  Altor laughed self-consciously. ‘She claimed to foresee a stirring destiny for me. It sounded just the thing for a hero, but I’m afraid that in this case the cards must have got mixed up.’

  The musician nodded as he plucked the strings of his lyre. ‘The monks of your order are warriors, though. Don’t you like the idea of being a hero, lad?’

  Altor reddened, not sure if the man was teasing him. ‘I had a letter for Brother Emeritus, one of the sages of our sect. Having delivered it, I’m now on my way back to Osterlin Abbey, in Ellesland. It’s not my duty to go off involving myself in mysterious quests, even if any came along.’

  Altor waited, but the musician had nothing more to say. He seemed lost in his oddly poignant melody. Altor looked past him to the edge of the clearing, where a circle of foresters wrapped in long grey travelling cloaks were peering intently at a game of Krarthian chequers being played by two tall men. The chequers players hunched over the board, which they had placed on a flat stone between them. Patting their hands to stave off the chill, they crouched like dire wolves in their mantles of blue-grey fur, so engrossed in their game as to be oblivious of the onlookers.

  The rules of Krarthian chequers differed from the version played in Altor’s homeland, but he understood enough to follow the basic moves. Instilled with a warrior’s training, he found the military precision of the game fascinating and, forgetting the musician, drifted over for a closer look. The players had deployed their pieces across the board like two generals sending forth troops to battle, so it was with surprise that Altor saw one of them abruptly move a piece into a position where it was swiftly taken. A cunning trap, he wondered, designed to lure the opponent into a costly exchange of pieces? But no, the other player swiftly captured several pieces without risk.

  Soon, as night settled over the forest, the game ended. With the white counters forced together in the middle of the board, the player controlling the black pieces surrounded and eliminated them all.

  As ea
ch piece was taken, one of the onlookers would lose interest in the game and, turning, go back to his bedroll. Altor, absorbed in the game, failed to notice this until the last white piece was swept away and he looked up to find he was the only spectator left.

  The two fur-cloaked players rose and nodded curtly to each other. Neither winner nor loser showed any emotion. Altor wondered if this was because of sportsmanship or sheer indifference.

  ‘I’d like a game,’ he said, ‘if either of you gentlemen would care to explain the moves.’

  They ignored him, packing up the board and pieces without even giving him a glance. Altor was left alone to watch them walk away through the flickering orange glow of the camp fires.

  A sense of unease gnawed at him. There was something odd about the game, and something very sinister about the foresters themselves. Or then again, it might just be his imagination... Altor shook his head irritably. The abbot had believed him mature enough to be entrusted with this mission. He was ashamed at himself for getting spooked by the loneliness of the spot and the unfriendliness of strangers. He strode back and fed some more wood to the fire before climbing inside his sleeping bag.

  All around the clearing, the sounds of talk and laughter gradually faded as people turned in for the night. But, much to his annoyance, Altor found that sleep would not come. He shut his eyes, but the sounds of the crackling fires and the sighing of wind in the pines remained to disrupt the stillness of the night.

  Suddenly he sat bolt upright, every nerve in his body tense. Just on the verge of sleep, a sudden thought had startled him back to wakefulness. Staring around the clearing in the dull gleam of the campfires, he saw now what he had failed to notice before. The pilgrims and ordinary travellers were arranged as the white pieces had been in the chequers game. The fur-clad foresters who had watched the game had placed themselves around the perimeter of the clearing in the same deployment used by the black pieces just before the game had reached its sudden end.

  Cursing himself for a fool, Altor snatched his sword from its scabbard and jumped to his feet. That was why the chequers players hadn’t cared about the outcome of their game—they hadn’t really been playing at all, they had been planning their attack! A cry of warning whipcracked from Altor’s lips even as he bounded across the clearing towards the spot where the two chequers players lay. Whatever skulduggery was afoot, those two were obviously the ringleaders.

  The nearest of the two started to rise with a growl. Quick as he was, Altor was quicker. He planted his sword-point at the man’s throat and met his glare of furious hatred with a stolid look. Behind, the other man crouched like an animal at bay.

  ‘It’s past your bed-time, isn’t it?’ said Altor in a level tone. ‘Planning some mischief?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ a voice called blearily across the clearing. ‘Keep it down, can’t you? Some of us are trying to sleep.’

  The chequers player deliberately leaned forward so that the tip of Altor’s blade pricked his skin. A tiny bead of blood formed at his throat. Then he drew back, and at once the wound closed. As Altor stared in astonishment the man smiled, baring long canine teeth that filled his mouth.

  ‘We are not as you,’ said the other, edging forward. ‘We are night’s brood, the brothers of wolves...’

  ‘Werewolves!’

  Altor threw himself backwards. He acted not a moment too soon. Unconcerned by the steel sword that was powerless to harm him, the first werewolf brought his hand up in a scything cut. Talons slashed at thin air. The attack would have ripped out the young warrior-monk’s bowels if he’d been a fraction slower.

  The commotion had roused one or two of the sleeping travellers nearby. They woke just in time to see some of the fur clad foresters leaning over them, then long knives snuffed out their lives.

  Altor, rolling across the ground, flung aside his sword and instead pulled a burning log from the fire. One of the werewolves barked an order and a group of the silent foresters loped forward to the attack. Altor thrust the burning brand into the nearest man’s face and, as he reeled back with a scream, pushed him onto the knives of the others. Blood spurted in the firelight. Altor nodded to himself with grim satisfaction. Even if he couldn’t slay the werewolves themselves, at least the foresters who served them were not immune to death.

  A cold metallic light now crept across the scene. Glancing aside, Altor saw the rising disc of the Blue Moon, one of the five swift comets that swept the skies of Krarth. As its beams struck the two chequers players, they began to transform. Hair bristled on their hands and feet, their faces stretched to the shape of vulpine snouts. They dropped to all fours as the fur spread across their bodies. Slavering jaws spilled hot saliva on the frosty grass as they fixed their eyes on Altor. Then, raising their muzzles to the Blue Moon, they gave vent to long horrifying howls of murderous intent.

  It was a chilling sound, and more than enough to rouse any of the travellers who had not already woken. Some screamed and caught up their belongings, intending to flee. The foresters fell on them swiftly, slashing with their long knives. Some of the pilgrims took up cudgels and quarterstaves, determined to fight to the last.

  The night was split by roars of anguish, the moans of the injured, the screams of the dying. Altor struck at one of the silent foresters, catching him across the brow, and the man fell in a shower of red sparks. Another came charging forward with a loud cry. Before he could reach him, Altor wrestled the knife from the fallen man’s hand and flung it to impale the other in the throat. He collapsed across the body of his comrade.

  Altor planted himself with his back to one of the campfires so that he could not be outflanked. Flailing desperately to right and left with the burning brand, he managed to hold his foes at bay. Soon, seeing no way past the young warrior’s guard, the werewolves’ henchmen fell back. Altor took advantage of the respite to look how the others were faring. Some of the pilgrims had fallen, others were fleeing into the gloomy depths of the forest. A brave few still fought on as he did. Further away, on the other side of the clearing, a group of Kurlish traders were rallying their hired guards to attempt a charge.

  Another adversary lunged close, almost taking Altor unawares. The man ducked under the arc of fire from the swinging brand, but Altor twisted aside and smashed the heel of his left hand against the man’s jaw, sending him sprawling. Even as he fought, part of Altor’s mind had time to wonder why the werewolves had attacked. Not merely for the traders’ gold, surely? More likely for the sake of wholesale slaughter, but that too was strange. Normal wolves preferred to pick off solitary prey rather than choosing a battle where they would be outnumbered.

  He looked around for the werewolves themselves. There was one—a great hunched shape with eyes that blazed balefully in the dark. It was crouching over a fallen figure and gore ran freely from its jaws, black like oil in the dim light of the Blue Moon. Altor heard its snarling voice as it called to its brother, and by concentrating he could make out the distorted words of its speech.

  ‘He does not have the stone,’ it said.

  The other werewolf prowled nearer, gave the corpse a sidelong glance. ‘He has hidden it. No matter—he will never get to find it now.’

  ‘Our work is done, then,’ growled the first. ‘Come!’

  The last word rose in a long eerie howl. At once the fur cloaked foresters paused and fell back, turning to follow their werewolf masters into the forest. In moments they had been swallowed up by darkness. Altor and the survivors of the travelling band stood dumbstruck amid the carnage.

  Despite his youth, Altor was the first to recover from the shock. ‘Check the wounded,’ he said to the leader of the Kurlish traders. ‘Use torn blankets to staunch the bleeding. You,’ he added, pointing to one of the pilgrims, ‘you have a bag of herbal remedies, I believe? If they’re at all effective you’d better fetch them now.’

  The mercenaries whom the traders relied on to protect their wares had done little during the fighting, too stunned to do much more
then grab their swords and shields. Now their captain came forward and offered to organize a search of the surrounding forest. ‘We need to round up those who fled or they’ll die of exposure,’ he said.

  Altor was on the point of joining the search party when he noticed a feeble stirring from the werewolves’ savaged victim. There was a groan and, stooping, he recognized the musician he had spoken to earlier. ‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘I’ll get help.’

  The man stared at him from a face as white as clay. His eyes were fiery with pain. ‘I’m beyond any help,’ he gasped. ‘But they didn’t get the stone...’

  His voice trailed off momentarily as blood came bubbling to his lips. Altor, who had been trained in all aspects of warfare, recognized that death was near. He did not try to delude the man. ‘It’s true you’re dying. Tell me your name; I’ll see you get a decent burial.’

  The man stared back and then, mustering the last of his strength, struggled to a half-sitting position. ‘Haversack...’ he muttered. Altor saw it lying nearby and put it into the man’s hands. Reaching painfully inside, he took out a parcel wound with velvet cloth. His hands stained the velvet as he unwrapped what lay within. It was his lyre.

  Altor thought that the man intended it to be buried with him, but suddenly he began to pound it against the frost-hardened ground. Altor saw that the effort was causing him agony and tried to gently take it from him, but the man was determined. On the third attempt, the base of the lyre broke open and a round glittering object rolled out.

  Altor picked it up. It was a magnificent jewel that sparkled with inner light, catching the blue moonbeams and the red glow of the fires and transmuting them into a blaze of vivid colours.

  ‘The Five are gathering power...’ gasped the dying man, somehow finding the strength to raise himself on one elbow as he spoke his last words. ‘Soon they’ll return to the world. Only the swords can stop them—the Sword of Life and the Sword of Death. That gem is from the pommel of the Sword of Life. You must find the other pieces.’