“In the eastern land of my birth, no boy becomes a man, not truly, until he hunts and kills an animal of his father’s choosing. I had thought this cat, the poor creature I originally tracked, would be the prey that made me a man. Yet my father laughed at the prospect. After all, I had not killed the cat myself, but only seen what did it. He demanded that I track and kill the demon properly—with a tool that was made for such work. And that was when he gave to me Dawnbringer, and made me swear all the vows of an Ancient Blade. I will not be allowed to marry, or sire children, or lead men to battle, until this demon is destroyed.
“I do not think my father knew how hard that would prove. Or perhaps he did, and wanted me to show that I had not just manhood within me, but greatness.”
CHAPTER TEN
“I returned to the shaft many times, trying to plumb its secrets,” Mörget went on. “It was very deep, running almost three hundred feet down into the mountain. Its walls were perfectly square, cut with precision. The block of stone at its end was cut to almost exactly the dimensions of the shaft. I brought men up there to break through the block, thinking to find my demon waiting just beyond where I could challenge it to single combat. It was not so easy as that. I soon discovered there was not one block, but four of them. They were plugs, you see. When the shaft was finished, its makers brought these four giant stones up the cliff face and slid them down the shaft to seal it forever.
“I could not rest, though, until my demon was destroyed. The blocks were broken one by one, shattered with iron picks, their pieces dragged back up the shaft with the strength of our backs. When we reached the fourth block, we were surprised to find a dwarven rune carved into its face. The thorn rune, which every man knows.”
“The rune of death and destruction,” Croy said. It was true that everyone learned that rune early on. When a dwarf decided something was too dangerous to meddle with, it was wise to take heed.
Mörget nodded. “When we broke through that block, we found it was all a trap. A great underground river was being held back by the stone. The water burst through, filling the shaft and nearly drowning me.
“The demon’s lair could not be breeched that way. I needed another route in.
“For months I searched, looking for another shaft. There was none. I traveled far and wide seeking out wizards who could see inside the mountain, to tell me how I could find my path. The effort I spent was wasted. Yes, they told me, there is a demon in there, which I already knew. Yes, they said, there were tunnels and even whole caverns inside that mountain where the demon could hide. Bah! Useless. At last one told me something I could use. He said to go to the library at Redweir. There I would find my answers.”
“That must have been daunting,” Croy said.
“Oh?” Malden asked.
“Redweir is a city of Skrae,” Croy said.
“Even I know that,” Malden replied.
“It lies on the far side of the Whitewall mountains from Mörget’s home.”
“How was that a problem?” Malden asked.
Croy shook his head. “Forgive me, Mörget, if I say anything that offends. But the … clans of the eastern steppes have been enemies with the land of Skrae since … well, for hundreds of years. It’s only an accident of geography that keeps us from total war.” He looked at Malden the way a teacher will look at a recalcitrant pupil. “You don’t know any of this?”
“I’ve spent my entire life in Ness,” Malden explained. “I never needed to know anything about maps or mountains.”
Croy nodded sagely. “This continent is split in half by a range of snow-capped mountains, called the Whitewall. The mountains are impassible, save in two places, both narrow defiles that are open only in the summer. The passes are well guarded on both sides, on the Skrae side by our soldiers, on the other side by the clans, so that no army can pass. If Mörget wanted to travel from his own land to Redweir, the easiest way would be through those passes, but we would never allow even one clansman through—for fear an army would be right behind him.”
Mörget laughed with excitement. “Give us one chance only, and we’ll do it, too! You’re right, the men at the passes would not let me through, even when I told them I was on a sacred quest. Just as we would not permit one of your warriors to travel east and live, no matter what flatteries and pretty turns of speech he offered,” Mörget said. “Yet come to the western lands—and Redweir—I must. So I took the long way around. I traveled halfway around the continent, on ships that sank and by trade routes beset by bandits. Along the way I taught myself how to fight against magic.”
“How?” Malden asked.
“By finding sorcerers and slaying them, of course. Many times death whispered in my ear, but never did she claim me.” He shrugged. “It was a long journey, and I needed something to do to pass the time.
“At last I came to Redweir, and the library there, which contains more than one thousand books. The customs of the place were strange to me. I could not read your languages. I had to teach myself even the shapes of your letters, and then I had to do many labors for the librarians before they would allow me to even see their books. But eventually I learned what I sought. The shaft I had found, the mountain I wished to enter, was known well to the sages on this side of it. The entire mountain was hollow on the inside, carved out by ancient hands. I learned that no one knew of the shaft I had found, but that on the western side there was a grand entrance to the mountain. I took this as a sign. I could not return to my homeland, not yet. I must enter the mountain here, from this side, if I were to slay my demon.”
“This mountain,” Croy said, “I fear I know its name.”
“I think you might,” Mörget said. “It is called Cloudblade, for the way it splits the storm clouds with its sharp peak. I think perhaps you also know the name of what lies underneath it. Yes, my friend. I learned that the place I sought was the Vincularium.”
Malden frowned. He had never heard the name before. It had to be a very old name, though, because it sounded like a word from the language of the Old Empire—a language no longer spoken in Skrae, and used now only by the church and by scholars. He knew only a few words of that language, but perhaps enough to know what the name meant. “The … Chained Place, no—the House of Chains?” he asked.
“Yes,” Croy and Mörget said together.
“What’s a House of Chains?” Malden asked.
Mörget glanced at Croy. “He knows little of maps, aye, but nothing of his own history.”
“Again, I’ve lived in Ness my entire life. What do I care about the rest of the world? But come, indulge me. What, I ask once more, is a House of Chains?”
“It’s … a tomb,” Croy said. From the look on his face it was a lot more than that. “A very … old tomb. It was built by the dwarves, a long time ago. They say it fills half of the interior of Cloudblade, and that it is a great labyrinth of traps and pitfalls. They also say it is haunted.”
Malden touched his eyes with his thumb, an old gesture for warding off ghosts. He was not a superstitious man by nature, but no good ever came of disturbing the dead.
He shivered as he imagined the place. He’d heard far too many frightening stories about the underground lairs of the dwarves. In his day the dwarven kingdom was a small land just north of Skrae, a place of silent forests and cold, deep lakes. The dwarves themselves never went to the surface because they preferred to live underground. They had a handful of small cities up there built into old mineshafts where they worked tirelessly at their labors and only ever emerged to trade their wares for Skraeling gold. Once, though, their borders had extended much farther. Before mankind had come to this continent the dwarves had been of much greater numbers and power. Most of their underground works had been forsaken as their population dwindled. There were old abandoned dwarven cities left behind all over the continent—they were found as far away as the Northern