“I have decided. I shall lead you to where the Carnyx is.”
Freya shook her head, wondering if she’d heard her right. Modwyn was sitting up on the edge of the bed. She looked at Vivienne, standing in the corner.
“Where is it? Is it far?”
“No, it is very close. We were cunning in our action. We knew that the enemy would go to the ends of the earth to find it and so we kept it here.”
“Okay. .” Freya said. “Really? So where is it?”
“It is in the Beacon,” Modwyn said. “The great building that once illumined all the land. It fell when the yfelgopes besieged our walls, but there is a hidden passage.”
“But this place was so secure-you killed anyone who came into it-why not just keep it here?”
“We feared that the enemy would make a grand assault here, and so it would be safest where it was thought less secure-like keeping your coin underneath a chest instead of locked inside it.” Freya frowned. That only half made sense. “But in eight years, have Gad or Kelm made any serious attempts to get into the Langtorr?”
“They have not.”
“And don’t you find that suspicious?”
“They wish only destruction and ruin-they have that. Chaos is both method and aim. To have one is to have both.”
“So they just sat around here, happy not to finish the job?”
“I do not pretend to understand the wishes of a dark-hearted people.”
“Freya, although I hesitate to say ‘it couldn’t hurt,’ I believe it prudent to follow up on this,” Vivienne said.
“Yes, you’re right,” said Freya. Was Vivienne deferring to her, or is that just how she wanted to make it seem? “Let’s go after Godmund and the Carnyx.”
They filed out of the room and began down the stairway. Frithfroth, as usual, walked before them, escorting the three women.
“Why hasn’t Godmund used the Carnyx?” Vivienne asked.
“It is not the hour of direst need. Only when this island’s enemies surround us shall the horn be blown. Then shall we rise and chase them all into the sea.”
“But the inscription on the horn reads ‘the next army,’” Vivienne persisted. “Doesn’t that mean something different from the army already asleep?”
Modwyn paused. “Why do you ask?”
“I am just trying to understand exactly. The reason we sent Ecgbryt and Alex all over the country to raise these knights is that we were uncertain exactly what the horn would do, if it could even be found. What would happen if we blow it and the knights are already awake?”
“I do not know. The horn is more than just enchanted. It uses a powerful magic-it will summon what help it can, and the help will come quickly, when it comes.”
“Vivienne,” Freya said. “What do you think the horn does?”
“I have theories, but I don’t think anyone really has the slightest idea of what will happen when the Carnyx is blown. It never has been before, and I doubt that it came with instructions. There are no legends for the Carnyx itself, but when legends do speak of such things, they talk of awakening ancient heroes, but also of summoning heroes from other worlds-or of angels.”
“Angels? Seriously?”
“Let me put a question to the two of you,” Modwyn said. “What do you wish to happen when you blow the horn?”
Freya sighed. “Honestly, Modwyn-I don’t understand any of this. I just want it to end. And once it has ended, I want to start my life over again. Move somewhere different, meet new people, work in a completely boring job, and come back home and do nothing. And I want to do that same boring routine over and over again, until all of this. .” She shook her head. “Fades like a bad dream.
“My life has been a literal hell for the past eight years and I believe that I’m fortunate enough to be in a position to rid the entire world of this godforsaken, wretched, dark, dank, underground world, and if that is at all possible, then I want to do it. I want to wipe it all out, Modwyn, and I’m telling you this because I think, deep down, that’s what you want too. It’s what you all were put here to do-to fight this fight. Well, good for you. I’m going to give you what you want. I’m going to do what the Carnyx was apparently designed to do. I’m going to bring you war.”
“What you want is not so different from what we want. We wish every dark day for deliverance, that our presence and purpose underground were not necessary, that war was not our constant reality. But this is the world we chose to enter-what else should we do?”
“It’s a world that you also dragged others into-innocents like Daniel and Freya, and all the children before them. My family-generation upon generation of my family over hundreds of years, down to Alex, the youngest generation-we’re all wrapped up in it as well. What reason do you have for involving us?” Vivienne asked.
Modwyn spread her hands. “This is the world we are in. The lengths we went to, the measures we took, were reasonable.”
“And my brother Alex-who now styles himself Gad Gristgrennar. He looked too much into this world and became warped by it. Do you take responsibility for him?”
“We are not responsible for all the wickedness that men do.”
“And yet you claim to be their salvation?”
“I make no such claim. All must do as much as they may in this world to cast a light into the darkness. And fail or succeed, Ni?ergeard has striven to be the brightest light.”
They continued the rest of the walk in silence until they reached the ground floor of the Langtorr. Frithfroth led them across the hall and through the door beneath the tapestry.
Vivienne and Freya braced themselves for the stinging stench that was about to hit them and followed the two Ni?ergearders through.
“Okay, Modwyn,” Freya said. “Where is it?”
“Underneath the stairs, on the far side, where they join the wall.”
Freya followed Modwyn across the room, through the biers of dead knights. A few times Freya saw Modwyn’s skirts catch and the regal woman awkwardly free herself. Good, Freya thought.
“Vivienne, I suppose you’ve already been to the Beacon?”
“No, I swear, I know nothing of this.”
There was a stairway underneath the one that circled around the Sl?pereshus, which meant that they had to walk around the entire room to get to it; none were eager to walk straight through. Even in the low light Freya could see that Modwyn’s eyes were streaming with tears. She wondered if it was due to the acrid air or sorrow over the lost knights.
The second stairway descended a few flights and then became a snaking tunnel with no slope. Within a few minutes, they came across a gruesome barrier. The corpses of about thirty yfelgopes were lying in a mangled heap, all at the same spot in the tunnel. The pile of their bodies nearly reached the ceiling, but the years of decay had diminished them and they now lay in a sunken, sticky heap.
“I hate this,” Freya said as she tried to negotiate the morbid barrier without actually looking at it. Vivienne groaned. Her boot slipped on something nasty and she swore. “What happened to them?”
“I did,” Modwyn said as she took her first step into the pile of bodies. “I ended their lives the moment they stepped across the threshold of the Langtorr. They were like tiny sparks cast from a fire that I tamped out.”
Freya swallowed back bile and finally made it through the stomach-turning pile. She scuffed her boots against the ground to try to remove as much of the crud from them as possible, and made a mental note not to ever wear them again. The air started to fill with a sickening smell that they had awakened from the bodies they disturbed.
Modwyn walked beside her now and they continued in silence. After a time the tunnel ended in a room that contained a wrought iron circular staircase, which they ascended.
Freya was hit by the smell-different from the decay of death that they had just walked through; this was a living rank filth, which was more like the smell from a zoo-a human zoo.
Freya lifted her lamp higher and slowly turned around inside what she assumed was once the Beacon. Rubble and metal furniture had been piled against the walls, completely blocking any doors, windows, or other portals.
The building-or the inside of it, at least-was round and tapering to a flat roof, rather like the inside of a beehive, if it were hollow. The rubble was not confined to just the walls, but hunks of stone lay in a thick layer on the ground. Freya didn’t know where it came from, at first, but shining the lamp around a little, she decided that it was the remains of the upper floors of the tall structure-floors that were not of wood and masonry, but that had once been carved from solid stone. Broken benches and twisted pieces of metal chairs added to the piles.
And there were people, littered about as randomly as the stones. Some of them were knights, some of them were the Ni?ergeard townspeople-the stonemasons and metalsmiths who kept the city and the knights in repair. The rest of them were yfelgopes. At first Freya thought that they were all dead, but as light poured into the room, heads swivelled toward her. And although the light was very dim to Freya, they shielded their eyes from it-knights and yfelgopes alike.
Both of these things, the sight and the smell, came to her at the same time, as did the sound. A voice was droning in low, croaky, and cracked intonations-with long, slow, and deep basso profundo notes, each of them as long as a breath.
“Where’s that sound coming from?” Freya asked. “It’s ghastly.”
“There,” Modwyn said, pointing toward the far wall, where a ragged silhouette sat in a lumpy, hairy heap, singing its dreary, dire song.
Where are the fighters; are they fled, or failed-
Where the field of battle; the fight would be brought-
The enemies and attackers do not advance anymore,
What damage their hands could do against us-
Our camp in ruins, crows eat our store,
The minds of men, barren and masterless;
Carrion carcasses carrying life, but
where has passion gone, when parted it our chests-
The fire, from our hearts, not from brands has been flung.
Why do we wait, wakeful not watchful.
Swords lie silent, will they not sing-
The fallen cry vengeance beneath victorless feet.
Arms hanging leadenly a leader unleading
He dismisses his warriors and walks all alone.
Death walks between disdaining our lives
Not worth the cost to carry our souls.
It was another obstacle course to reach the speaker, but this time Freya was trying to avoid stepping on the living, not the dead. They looked anaemic, pale and blue, with hollow expressions on their faces. They did not appear diseased or emaciated-the Ni?ergearders did not need to eat, after all-but looking into each one was like looking into the face of death. And each one, so Freya imagined, asked the question “Why?” As if they asked it of the universe, and she just happened to be in the way of it.
“Is that him? Is that Godmund?” Vivienne asked, squinting into the gloom, not wanting to move forward.
The grizzled hair and jutting brow were unmistakable, but his cheeks were sunken and his jaw hung slack. “Godmund. Godmund! Come on, get up. What’s going on here?”
Black eyes turned toward her and shied away when she brought the lantern up.
“It’s me, Freya. I came here when I was young, with Daniel. We went on a mission to destroy Gad, remember?”
Godmund didn’t move or take his eyes off of her.
“We’ve come back. The others are bringing an army. We need you and the other survivors-” Freya looked around the room, still appalled. They didn’t seem like survivors. “We need you to help us.” Her words were losing their passion and conviction as she listened to what she was saying. These people were traumatised. They couldn’t fight. Godmund was still staring at her, dumbly.
“The Carnyx,” she said. “Why didn’t you blow the Carnyx?”
Godmund made a sound that made her think that he was going to start singing again-but then she found that he was laughing.
“To save us would be to destroy us. That is as certain as the darkness. Our general has abandoned us. No, worse! He conspires against us. Our whole army, formed along a precipice, to do battle with the air. How do you fight the wind? To step forward is to perish. We are the walking fallen, still retreating, searching for a way out of the miserable reality. I have seen the hand that moves us in the darkness-a game of chess with all the pieces of one colour. A game of chance with a die that has just one side. A house on stone, but with walls of sand. What use has. .”
Godmund continued babbling. Egads, thought Freya. He’s completely lost it.
“Honourable Godmund,” Vivienne broke in. “We need you to fight now. We need you to rise up and chase away the invaders of the surface world. It’s. . it’s being invaded, Godmund: trolls, goblins, dragons, were-bears, ogres, all manner of sprites and hobs. . the time has come!”
Godmund spat. “I have no honour. And neither do you.”
Freya could only look down on the ancient being, who was once a brave, bullheaded warrior. Uncomplicated to a fault, if anything, he seemed, even to Freya’s young mind, as the ideal general-smart and capable, but largely unquestioning of his command, which at that time had been Ealdstan and Modwyn.
“I understand the disenfranchisement, Godmund, I do,” said Freya. “But please answer my question: why didn’t you blow the Carnyx when you could to end all of this?”
“You have no conception of that which you ask.”
“So tell us.”
Godmund grimaced and bared his teeth, like a wolf defending his territory. “The curses that object will bring upon the world are too many and deep to account. The breadth of evil it would bring would be incomprehensible. It would open a hole and blow out all the goodness and hope in all the realms of this world.”
“How do you know this?”
“It speaks to me. It tells me its secrets.”
“Right. Okay. So. . does that mean that it’s close by?”
Godmund raised a hand and gestured to the darkness behind him. Moving the light of the lantern, Freya saw the large copper horn propped against the wall. When she had seen it last it had been securely fastened into the centre of a small fortress, a fortress that lay within the second wall of the hidden city and that was designed to keep it and it alone safe. But the brilliant copper that had once glowed like fire was now dull and dim. A black patina was spreading across it, turning to an oxidized green in many places.
“It’s been here how long? Was it-did you bring it with you when you came here? When you escaped?”
“Yes, I brought it. It’s been here with me this short while, and we shall grow old and crumble apart together.”
“But-why just sit here?” Vivienne said. “Why not escape? Why not fight, as you have done for centuries?”
He did not reply.
“What happened, Godmund?” Freya said, her voice straining with frustration and annoyance. “Why are you so scared of fighting now?” She looked to Modwyn, to include her in the tirade. “Both of you, seriously, what happened here? What’s changed?”
“Nothing changed. Nothing. Here I lie. Buried, forgotten. There is no war to fight-there’s nothing to fight against. There is no evil army rising against us. We were tricked.”
“What?” Freya said. “But the yfelgopes. Daniel and I found gnomes, an elf. Alex-the man who brought us back here-he’s been finding trolls, dragons.”
“A dragon?” Godmund said, his eyes darting to Freya with the first sign of the fire of his previous passion-anger mixed with joy-that she had seen yet. “Did you see the dragon?”
“No. But he did,” Freya said with shaky conviction.
The fire died and Godmund’s gaze became blank again.
“I don’t understand,” Freya said to Vivienne. “If the horn is really as bad as he says-if it’s really so terrible-then why make it at all? And once it’s made, why go to so much trouble to make sure no one ever uses it?”
“I do not trust his grip on reality,” Vivienne said. “But we’ve found it now. There is no point in not using it.”
“Really, Viv? I thought you would be more cautious. I thought you might want to study it, or. . or. .”
“Or what, indeed? Now that Modwyn is awake, and anyone is free to enter the Langtorr once more, they could easily overrun us. With no easy way out of the tower-I’m not sure how long we’d have to wait for a portal to open, or how many may enter through it when we find it-I think that we are now in very, very deep trouble. I look around and I see yfelgopes in this very room, and I think we need help. Blow the horn.”
Freya was taken aback. It was unlike herself to actually minimize the danger of the situation that she was in, but Vivienne was right-they were in a tight spot.
She crossed slowly over to the horn and laid a hand on it. It felt cold and unremarkable beneath her fingers. She felt a moment of doubt.
“Seriously, Godmund,” she said, turning. “What actually, tangibly happens when the horn gets blown? No more philosophy.” Godmund lowered his brow, leaned forward, and said in a quiet, gravelly voice, “Destruction. The destruction of this realm.” Freya straightened. His voice was quiet enough that she was certain no one else had heard him, and he was holding her gaze in such an even and intense manner-was he trying to communicate something else to her? Did he want her to do it?
“Good enough for me.” Freya hoisted the heavy horn to her lips. .
And blew.