A Prayer of Hope and Bones Read online

  1

  Alfred woke in the dark with a great weight on his chest.

  He didn't think he was breathing but he wasn't dead. He hung in the moment like a spider on a strand of silk, blowing in the night. He had no bearings. No sense of where he was or who he was. He thought the underworld a very dull place indeed.

  Consciousness poured in and Alfred had the overwhelming desire to breathe and live.

  He sat up screaming. Rubble fell from him and dust poured from his face. He looked around. Alfred was sat amidst devastation on a pale morning somewhere in the wilderness. Mountains loomed in the distance. Collapsed masonry lay scattered all around, smoking and crisping.

  Bodies too.

  The corpses of mutated creatures wrapped around stones and dismembered. Their putrid flesh sizzled. Some of them once people but some dark sorcery had melded their bones.

  A terrible battle had taken place here. A massacre.

  Yet Alfred lived. He didn't remember fighting, and he recalled not being good at it.

  Alfred looked down at his half submerged torso.

  What am I wearing?

  Alfred was an initiate of Angall, at the seminary school of Old Vassonia. The only thing permitted the dark robes of a holy man. Not this cumbersome suit of...armor. Like an idiot, he tapped his metal fingers off the shining carapace on his other arm.

  Why am I dressed as a knight?

  It was no armour he recognized. Too big, too cumbersome to allow him to move. Alfred was not a strong person. Always the runt of the family. His mind agile and strong, but his body and willpower weak. He felt different now.

  Alfred glanced over at the chunks of rock he had just prized from his body as he erupted from the rubble.

  How in the name of the light did I move those stones?

  Alfred reached out a tentative hand and laid it on top of the nearest rock. It was a hexagonal chip of granite once part of the ceiling high above. He did not know why, but he squeezed his hand tighter.

  The granite pulverized into marbles and dust.

  Alfred stood, more rocks falling from his legs. He looked down and as the dust settled saw he was clad from neck to toe in the strange metal. Light on his frame, and supple. More like it was part of his skin than something foreign. As if it responded to his movement and thoughts. He could not remember where it had come from. He had no idea how to take it off. He glanced around him at the aftermath of the otherworldly battle. The sky pale grey streaked with dirty clouds. Crows flitted above and a chill blew between the ruined buildings and rubble.

  Alfred had a vague recollection that he had been indoors prior to losing consciousness. Deep underground. Looking up, this building was once a high domed chamber. A third of it remained, jutting out into space.

  A crow landed on the outcrop and it was enough to prize some masonry free. The chunk of rock seemed to fall in slow motion but Alfred knew he would not dodge it in time. He turned his head, hunched up and closed his eyes, waiting for a quick death.

  Something closed over his face. In his shock Alfred stood straight just as the lump of rock bounced off his head with a toll like a church bell. Alfred's hands came up to his face. He let out a squeal of panic. His hands clanged off more metal and Alfred could feel a face-shape. Fast as it appeared, the helm split in half and folded itself back on his pauldrons.

  Alfred stood there in shock. The armour had saved him. Like it knew he was in danger.

  He saw something out the corner of his eye. A shaft of metal protruding from the rubble. He walked closer the metal began to glow with a soft golden light. He grabbed it and his hand felt in spasm as if lightning flowed through it. For all his new found strength, Alfred could not let go. In a fluid motion he pulled the thing from the rubble.

  A warhammer as tall as himself. The hammerhead like a shard of rough cut diamond, shining with inner light.

  Alfred Sorrowhammer.

  The name came to him like in a clear silver note. It reverberated through his mind, recalibrating the shocked and confused matter into shape.

  It all flooded back to him at once.

  In the crystal hammerhead visions swirled. A group of young people fighting in a chamber beneath a ruined city. Unnatural creatures closing in all around them, slavering and howling in madness. The three figures clad in shining armour alive with sorcerous light. They fought with ferocity and skill no human could muster. But the mutated army was legion. For every wave they destroyed, more spilled in to pour down upon them. One figure took something from inside his armour.

  A torn page of vellum covered in golden lettering.

  He placed the page on the stone floor and laid his hand upon it. The Angallic script ignited and the golden light issued forth. It became so bright Alfred was forced to cover his eyes. When it subsided he stood for a moment encased in his unnatural armour.

  They had been fighting the Sorrow. Trying to reach the chamber where the Archangels slept. So they could commune. Merge with ascended souls to fight the war. He had used one of the prayers from the Libram of Ashes in Ironghast.

  A Prayer of Dusk and Fury.

  Everything had gone bright then dark. Alfred spun around, scanning the broken rubble. He searched for movement.

  "Deena!"

  Alfred scoured the wreckage for signs of armour. Any clue he was not the only survivor.

  "Deena! Manzak!"

  A hand thrust up from beneath the rocks. A shining gauntlet inlaid with swirling Angallic script, pale as moonlight. The hand flexed. Alfred ran across and was amazed at his dexterity in the armour. He ran faster than he ever did in robes. When he reached the hand he grasped it and pulled. An armoured figure stood and the stones and dust fell away. Alfred saw the red hair first and fierce blue eyes. Those eyes darted for a moment as she tried to gage where she was. They fell upon Alfred and stared at him.

  "Deena, it's ok. You're alive. We beat them. We beat the Sorrow. Do you know where you are?"

  Deena scanned his face in wonder for a moment.

  "Alfred?"

  He smiled and noticed the change in her.

  "Yes. Yes it's me."

  Deena reached out and touched the side of his face with a cold gauntlet.

  "What's happened to you? You look...different."

  Alfred wiped the dust from her cheeks and he saw what she meant. She too had changed. It was Deena, the same girl he had entered the Torrent with, fought with and bickered with in Ironghast monastery. But everything about her was transformed in myriad tiny ways. Her hair had always been red. But now it was living flame, vivid and vibrant. A colour no human hair could grow. Her skin had always been pale, but now as smooth and hard as marble. Without blemish or line. There was a glow to it, like the moon reflecting off white lilies. He eyes always blue, but now aquamarine glass capturing light whenever they moved. Deena stepped from the rubble pit and moved with a grace and strength at odds with her size. As if her armour weighed no more than silken robes. Alfred was captivated the way a drunken man can get lost staring into a fire. Her every detail was a work of art. He glanced around and realized he was seeing everything this way, unsure if it was just Deena's beauty or his new eyes.

  Motes of red rock dust floated before him and Alfred was able to count every floating grain. The pattern swirled in the wind in ways he could stare at for hours. Deena's hand touched his arm. They looked at each other in disbelief. Deena shook her head and laughed in amazement.

  "Can you feel it, Alfred? We did it, we communed with Angels. We are Angall's true soldiers now."

  Alfred could feel it. There was a vitality flowing through him he had never experienced. He could feel a great work taking place inside. Transforming his inner architecture minute by minute. His
eyesight sharper and seeing subtlety in every detail. The crows flying overhead shaped the language of portents. The smoke rising from smoldering rocks was a song. The beauty of it overwhelming.

  Alfred remembered master Phillip of Tyne telling him Angall's Riddles were hidden in nature. We just had to look with better eyes. He turned to Deena.

  "I can still feel it moving through my veins. Something asleep but dreaming."

  Deena nodded just as a slab of rubble moved on the far side of the chamber. Alfred and Deena ran towards it just as Manzak stood, overturning the granite like it was paper.

  Grinning at them. His brown eyes now deep warm amber. His black braids had faded to a smoky colour, like strands of hemp rope. He carried the same vitality about him as Alfred and Deena. His armour a deep copper shade inlaid with grey. In his hand a double headed axe. The shaft the same warm copper as Manzak's armour, but the two curving blades were a green so deep it appeared almost black. He still had many gold rings in his ears and nose, and swirling black tattoos on his cheek and brow.

  Alfred and Deena helped him from the rubble. The three stood there with hands on each other's shoulders. In his thick accent Manzak spoke. The little ruby in his front tooth gleamed.

  "Alfred. You might have mentioned what the page was going to do. I was expecting a puff of smoke."

  Alfred looked around at the devastation. The Sorrowbeasts and risen dead lay scattered all around.

  "No one knew what the book could do. I'm the only one able to read it for centuries. If I knew what it did, I would have been too scared to use it."

  Manzak gave his easy grin. The bleaching effect of the angelic spirit had given an interesting hue to his once olive skin, fading it to a pale grey. He clapped Alfred on the shoulder.

  "Look at you, little bookworm. You look taller. Or am I standing in a hole?"

  Alfred smiled. He did feel taller. Manzak clanged his metal fist off Alfred's breastplate.

  "You suit being a paladin, bookworm. I'd never have thought you could pull off this look, but you do."

  Alfred could not help but laugh. The relief of being alive mixed with new found power rushing through his veins was intoxicating. Every sight, sound and sensation so acute, so heightened and exquisite. He could see Deena and Manzak experiencing the same thing. And becoming more intense by the moment. Manzak frowned and gave Deena a cheeky stare.

  "And you. If anything you look fiercer."

  They leaned in to one another and fell silent as the wind blew around them.

  The three of them stood there, their foreheads touching. Drinking in the realization they were alive and offering a quiet moment of reflection for those they had lost.

  As they took in the moment, all three of them felt the Magus Heart inside them begin to glow warm. The small heart shaped organ below their ribs kindled and the magic flowed through them, easy and slow like honey. They looked up, their eyes taking on the same dawning glow. Stronger than it had in Ironghast when the aspirants had first met. It eased their fears and they drew strength from each other. It was communion.

  They didn't know how long they stood there in the ruin of the Torrent. It could have been moments or years. But when they separated, it felt as if their cups had been filled to the brim with mead.

  Alfred took in the devastation around them.

  "I think we destroyed the Torrent. Do you think father Bluheart will punish us when we get back to Ironghast?"

  Deena looked at the carnage.

  "Whatever the sorcery was keeping at bay, it's gone now. We should find our way back."

  Deena walked across to the rubble. She reached into the rocks and pulled forth a broadsword made of the same strange metal as her armour. Its blade as reflective as a mirror.

  "There's a war waiting on us."

  The three paladins turned to leave when they heard voices from a broken archway leading outside. The three readied their weapons. They heard a familiar voice.

  "Alfred! Anybody!"

  A moment later the long pale face of Malcolm Bluheart appeared at the top of the archway. Several monks gathered at his as shoulders, peering down at the three armoured figures. Behind them, the shaggy figure of Cyrus Blackweather. Huddled between them, the decrepit old figure of brother Latherus. His mote of Angall’s Whisper hovering in the air. Father Bluheart stopped when he saw them. His arms fell to his sides and tears trickled down his cheeks. He laughed under his breath, pure joy.

  He shook his head in disbelief.

  "When the Torrent fell, most did not think anyone could still be alive inside. But I knew Angall had not blessed you for nothing."

  He walked down amongst the rubble, staring at the three in amazement.

  "The others?"

  Alfred bowed his head.

  "There is only us left, father."

  Bluheart reached out and touched the eldritch armour Alfred wore.

  "That is not of this world."

  Bluheart looked up and saw Alfred's eyes.

  "And neither, I think, are you anymore."

  Deena stepped forward and Bluheart clasped a hand on her armoured shoulder. Deena's fierce eyes shone.

  "I don't know quite what we are anymore, father Bluheart. But we can be useful in a fight."

  Bluheart turned and walked back towards the slope leading to the outside world. At the top of the slope, he turned and scowled down at Alfred.

  "Alfred of Durn. It is not becoming of a paladin to engage in theft. You must be a paragon of certain virtues now. The order will not tolerate such behavior. I expect page returned to the sanctum."

  Alfred found he was staring at his armoured feet.

  "Yes father Bluheart. I am sorry."

  When he looked Malcolm Bluheart stared down at him with a wry smile.

  "To Ironghast then. If our horses are strong enough to carry your new weight. The death of so many of their kind will not go unnoticed. I fear the Sorrow has begun to make their move against mankind. We must pray you three are not too late to help turn the tide."

  2

  Invar Ironbound's hand started to close like a flower robbed of sunlight.

  Poison coarsed through his blood, blackening his veins. He massaged his twisted left hand, trying to relax the cramping tendons. The spiderweb of dark blood vessels rising under the skin.

  He had been bitten in the fight against the warped rats. The first mutated soldiers of the Sorrow to attack the city. Invar did not remember feeling the creature's teeth sink into his arm. He had fought off so many. Hacked stinking chunks of filthy fur and been spattered with black blood. The horrible high pitched screams of the beasts as his sword opened them up.

  Rats as big as hunting dogs falling down upon them. Writhing in a mass of tails and bulbous bodies.

  It had been a desperate last stand until the rat catcher had appeared and led him through the tunnels to safety. Safety! Invar almost laughed. Now they were all trapped in the one place. Little food or water remained. Only a little wood for the fires. Their courage drained along with their strength. It was freezing in the catacombs beneath Crowburgh but his forehead stung with sweat. Pain shot through his old bones and his mind was infected with festering thoughts.

  The old paladin had read of Mournefever but never seen anyone die of it. What he read was not pleasant.

  He did not have time to die. Not yet. There was Angall's work to be finished. Just a few more hours of fight was all he needed to muster. No doubt if he ever made it back to Ironghast monastery, the monks would take delight in making a case study out of him. Keeping him alive as the disease progressed and mutated his body and brain. Until it possessed him and he was just a thrall of the Sorrow.

  A pox on that, thought Invar.

  He would go down swinging, protecting as many of these people as he could. He tried to stand but a sudden wash of weakness forced him to lean upon his sword. He took the flask from his travel-stained robes and glugged down a mouthful of plum brandy. His stomach rebelled, making him queasy and threatening to
vomit, but Invar swallowed the bile. There were only a couple of salvaged braziers but they burned low. Terrified residents huddled around them, their eyes darting across the walls at every creak or bump. Waiting for something with dark wet fur to break through. The catacombs stank of sweat and piss, shot through with the stench of fear.

  Crowburgh was only a week's ride from Monolith on the white cliffs. The centre of the spider's web the Sorrow was spreading from. A plague spreading across the land like the web of black veins on his skin. There were monsters in the walls. It would not be long now before giant rodent teeth gnawed through the oak doors. Jagged yellow incisors feasting their way into bellies. The rat catcher Middigan Smythe had rallied the survivors and led them to this stronghold of wine cellars and forgotten tombs. The city beneath the city, long built over and forgotten.

  Invar felt the war raging in his flesh. Born with a blessing marked him out as a paladin, the Magus Heart glowed inside him. A golden second heart woven of sinew and tissue unlike any other in a living body. An organ nature designed for one purpose. To filter and process sorcerous energies lethal to common man.

  The hidden mutation few possessed was as random in expression as a Livretti's dice. In humans there was no telling what blessing it would give. The power to heal or prophesize, to make fire or poison with a touch. To breathe beneath the waves or to speak the language of birds. It was something the King could not control. He feared it and the Sorrow feared it. The night before, Invar blessed the water of a fountain in the town square, turning it into a font of holy light, burning the foul flesh of the monsters. It had taken his last reserves of energy. Now the few slivers of holy light left within him were fighting in the secret battlefield of his flesh. Sending their glowing cavalry against the bubbling venom taking him over.

  Invar had fought so many secret battles over the years. Rescue missions to find those blessed few the Witchfinders had not captured or killed. Or on a quest to find some rare beast the forces of the Sorrow would see hunted to extinction. He had gathered so many lost souls into the sanctuary of Ironghast monastery. Invar took another sip of plum brandy and shivered. He sniffed up a gobbet of snot and spat it out into the cold mossy corner. When he heard his name, he slipped the hip flask away and covered his festering hand.