The Black Tower
THE BLACK TOWER
BOOK THREE OF
THE SKULLBORN TRILOGY
STEVEN MONTANO
Also by Steven Montano
BLOOD SKIES
THE SKULLBORN TRILOGY
The Black Tower
THE RIKE CHRONICLES
The Last Acolyte*
Dead Planet
Bloodstar
TOOTH & CLAW
The Alchemist*
Crimson Moon
Hellshadow Hill
The Boneyard
OTHER NOVELS
Colder*
SHORT STORIES
* Coming Soon
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2014 Steven Montano
All rights reserved.
Cover by Barry Currey
Map by Liberty Montano
Released by Darker Sunset Press
DEDICATION
To C.J.
I miss you more than you can know.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Liberty for blessing a mook like me with her intelligence, charm and support.
Thanks to Val and Richard for giving us a place to sleep while we figure out this whole “Michigan” thing.
Thanks to all of my family, immediate and extended, for all of your love and support.
Thanks to Danielle for being the best fan/promoter/street team leader a guy could ever ask for.
And thanks to Barry for continuing to wow me when I didn’t think I could be wowed any more.
The angel in the smoke.
He stood there in charcoal fog, his jagged iron wings wrapped tight around his scarred and mangled flesh. Beams of grey light slipped in through hairline cracks in the black stone walls and illuminated a floor covered with dust and bones.
Calladar stood still in the frozen chamber, just as he had for years. Dark ice crystals laced his wings and face, and his eyes were locked open, mummified in the cold dry air. He stared out at the shadows of the massive room, an oubliette filled with the remains of those he’d slaughtered.
It had been three decades since he’d lost her. He wouldn’t move until she returned: his Blood Queen, his love.
He still heard her voice sometimes, sensed her proximity. He wasn’t sure if it was possible for a creature such as he to feel sadness, but he could conjure no other way to describe the void in his soul.
I was too late to save her.
He’d taken revenge on the intruder, of course, knifed through his guts and crushed his limbs, but in the end it had mattered little. Somehow the man had still found a way to escape, but only because Calladar had rushed to Vlagoth’s side as she lay dying, broken and crumpled in a pool of her own blood.
The sight of her lying there had killed him inside. He’d been punished long ago for his crimes and had spent decades serving penance in his false body, a reconstructed monstrosity of steel and armor painfully fused to his flesh. He shouldn’t have had to endure that, to see that child die.
He’d killed the others after that, the ambassadors and servants, the soldiers and assassins who’d called Chul Gaerog their home. They had no place there anymore, no longer served any purpose. They would seek to exploit the magic of The Black Tower, but if he could no longer protect his charge, he’d at least see to it no one gained anything from her death.
I miss you.
Time had no meaning. The world was frozen, a blanket of alternating darkness and light occasionally interrupted by drifts of frost and ash. The vast halls of Chul Gaerog were still. Darkness and silence cloaked him, had become his prison.
Once, a lifetime ago, he’d overstepped his bounds, allowed his passions to drive him. Calladar, the Hellknight, had laid with the woman Aliestrel, a courtesan of renown in Kai-Ren Thoth, and he’d loved her even though he knew what a vengeful man Emperor Azaean could be. It made no sense to him that one could be so possessive of a woman widely known to enjoy many lovers. Aliestral had made Calladar feel alive in a way no woman ever had, or ever would again. His mind had been consumed by thoughts of her honey-golden hair, her emerald eyes, her lustrous skin. He felt her there with him even a century later, now that he was just a bladed monstrosity left to rot in the cold darkness.
His love for Vlagoth was different. At first he resented the child and her stoicism, her dark manner and lengthy bouts of brooding. She was a weapon, a source of power and fuel for the maniac races that held her hostage while they waged a war in her name, a war that was slowly destroying Malzaria.
Let them destroy it
, he’d thought, and now more than ever he wished they’d succeeded. It meant she’d still be alive.
Because over time he came to understand the young Carastena Vlagoth, the child who’d been raised by mystics, bred for a purpose she could never escape. She was a prisoner, just like he was, but unlike Calladar the young Blood Queen had done nothing to earn her fate. There was no crime, no grievance she’d committed to make it so she should be bound to that black throne. She’d accepted her lot with the same grim and silent resolve as he had accepted his.
He’d never had a daughter, had never really cared about anyone aside from Aliestrel, and when Emperor Azaean had ordered her raped by the other Hellknights for violating his trust and then thrown from the top of Kai-Ren Thoth’s tallest tower Calladar had sworn he’d never allow himself to care for anyone ever again, assuming he even survived the Emperor’s wrath, which was unlikely.
It’s easy to make vows when you know your time is short.
But he
had
survived, and it seemed the One Goddess had a way of punishing those who made promises they couldn’t keep. He wasn’t sure exactly when it was he’d come to care for the child he’d been conscripted to protect, or when he even realized he was still capable of love. So little of who and what he’d once been even remained. Most of his limbs were Veilcrafted iron, painfully seared to his flesh. Razor-sharp wings shielded his torso, and an iron face-plate covered everything below his dead and hollow eyes. He wondered if anything inside was still living. It was after the Emperor ordered Calladar beaten and tortured and thrown into the River Grey to drown that the real nightmare had begun.
Little of the event remained fresh in his memory – he remembered darkness and blood, screams and flayed skin, hot metal and inhuman voices. He remembered seeing Corvinia, and hearing her laughter.
He was recreated with Vossian Veilcraft, made into a warrior of blades, an angel of razors. Born again for a new purpose.
But now she’s gone. You failed her, and this eternity is yours to spend alone.
But he wasn’t alone. Not anymore.
Calladar had known all along that some force within the Black Tower had tried to draw others there, though to what purpose he could never be sure. He’d tried in vain to destroy the presence, smashing every Veilcrafted relic he could find, but even after he’d razed most of Chul Gaerog’s interior he still felt it, some unseen and intelligent force buried in the twisted black walls, as desperately afraid and alone without the Blood Queen as Calladar was himself.
Just leave it be
, he’d wanted to tell it, that presence, the Tower, whatever ghost it was that haunted him.
She’s gone.
He thought about her all of the time, remembered the first time she’d gripped his hand, the first time he’d carried her through the Tower, for the machines her captors linked her to had drained so much of the little girl’s strength she could barely even stand.
The weight of her in his arms was what he missed the most. He’d never felt anything so warm, so familiar, not even Aliestra.
Someone is here.
He sensed the change. There was no outward signs of intrusion, as well there wouldn’t be. He’d seized control of Chul Gaerog’s Veilcrafted defenses, which were formidable enough that no force on Malzaria could hope to breach them, not without his allowing it. The Black Tower was impenetrable.
Yet someone was inside. They’d come tumbling through some cleft, a gap he hadn’t even known existed. For the first time in thirty years another living presence inhabited Chul Gaerog.
And for the first time in thirty years, Calladar stirred.
One
Kruje kept to the shadows. He’d managed to find a building whose roof remained intact even though its front walls had crumbled away, and the structure offered him some cover while he looked out over the streets of Corinth. The wounds on his back and neck were slow to heal and the Gorgoloth
shek’taar
he’d used to defend himself was on the verge of snapping in half. Razorcats were his biggest worry, for the beasts ran rampant through the city, mauling mercenaries and slaves as they sought cover from the strange magic at the center of the Galladorian ruins.
The air was thick with Veilcraft, energies that clearly originated from the Black Tower. It didn’t matter that Chul Gaerog stood hundreds of miles to the south, deep in the blighted Heartfang Wastes – someone had found the means to breach the Tower’s defenses from within Corinth, which could only mean they’d found the Scarstones.
Years of planning, for nothing
, he thought bitterly.
For as much deference as the Voss pay to the Third Iron Crown, they certainly never listened to us when it came to our dealings with Vlagoth.
Kruje and his family had been one of the few houses opposed to uniting with the Blood Queen. Once Vlagoth was killed the giants finally pulled out of the Rift War, only to turn on one another for another decade of fighting, this time for control of the vast underground city of Meledrakkar.
Blasts of fire and electricity scoured the atmosphere. The streets were rife with conflict everywhere he turned, and it hadn’t taken long after Dane had gone on ahead for the fighting to find Kruje. A few of Chairos’ mercenaries had died by the giant’s hand, as had a pair of Razorcats. The smell of fear and burning bodies lay heavy on the wind.
Kruje looked out on the rubble-strewn roads. Blocks of Galladorian marble lay half-buried in sand thick with thousands of fire-scorched bones, the remains of Drage who’d been incinerated when the Voss had detonated an armada of Bloodnaughts to destroy the corrupt human empire some thirty years past.
The stifling heat dulled his senses as he rested his back against a wall, and Kruje wiped a thick sheen of sweat from his face. His black muscles tensed with anticipation as he moved deeper into the shadows. He heard another Razorcat go roaring by outside.
The J’ann hate a coward
, Kruje thought.
But they have great respect for those with enough sense to know which battles to avoid.
The giant felt his wounded arm slowly knit itself back together – the dark flow of black blood slowed as the tissue painfully sealed.
Screams echoed through the burning sky. So much smoke billowed up from the blazing city it was hard to know if it was day or night. Kruje took slow and even breaths. He knew what he had to do.
I’m no coward.
There was a time when he couldn’t have said that: he’d lost everything to his brother, had practically handed him the keys to Meldrakkar.
How much death did I cause because I was unwilling to fight? And how much more will I cause trying to set things right?
He thought about Dane. He’d only known the man a short time, yet felt closer to him that he ever had to any Voss, even Hel, who he’d intended to spend his life with before his father’s death had driven him away from her in search of the killers. Kruje had foolishly left everything in Zan’s hands, trusting he’d protect the Voss’s interests while he tracked down those responsible for Kral’s death.
Kruje gripped the broken
shek’taar
for a moment, then tossed it aside. He looked around and found a large rock, which he decided would suit him just fine until he could find something better.
Maybe I
am
a coward
, he thought.
Maybe I wasn’t meant for great things, which is why they’ve always been taken away from me. Father, the Third Iron Crown, Hel...now Dane...
The J’ann had foretold that he’d have to kill Dane – that in order for him to regain what was rightfully his he’d need to sacrifice the one who saved him. Some took dream visions granted by the J’ann lightly...Kruje used to be one of them, until a vision had shown him what Zan would do even before his brother had sent the assassins, even before he’d declared Kruje an outlaw and banished him from Meledrakkar forever.
None of that matters now. All that matters is stopping the Dream Witch, and these J’ann cursed idiots that are trying to kill her.
He just hoped he wasn’t already too late. He readied himself. Everything stank with the taint of dark magic and spilled blood. The Black Dawn was approaching.
Thirty years ago the Voss had gotten themselves involved in a ridiculous war so they could get close to Carastena Vlagoth. A child or no, she possessed immense power, and the J’ann had driven the Iron Crowns to action. The houses had acted as much out of their desire to enslave humans and keep their eye on the Arkan as they were to prevent the Blood Queen’s mad plans from ever coming to fruition. Vlagoth was dangerous, and if not controlled her mastery of the Veil would have spelled disaster for all of Malzaria.
And it may still
, Kruje thought grimly.
But what now? It seemed their troubles had ended when the Blood Queen had died, and once the Arkan and Tuscars in the tower were summarily slaughtered by Vlagoth’s guardian it became a simple matter for the giants to seal the Black Tower tight, keeping the power within safe from any imbeciles who’d seek to use it for their own ends.
Not that it did any good.
Kruje slipped outside and kept to the shadows. Pools of blood and burned bodies littered the ground, but even with his twelve-foot vantage he couldn’t see much through the maze of crumbling sandstone structures and smoking haze. Heat pushed in on him, and soon his grip on the rock was slick with sweat as he slowly waded through loose soil. He kept his back to a ruined building barely taller than he was.
He held Kar-Thelud at the edge of his thoughts, ready to enter the Trance of Violence at a moment’s notice. Months spent in the gladiatorial arenas had done little to temper the giant to combat – he was a craftsman, and always had been, and no amount of crossing the Bonelands with a half-mad knight was going to change that.
What did he plan to do? Dane seemed hell bent on helping Ijanna, who Kruje believed was one of the Skullborn, a creature created by Vlagoth’s curse to help carry out her plan to destroy the world and save the One Goddess, Corvinia.
The better question is, what are
you
going to do?
Stopping or capturing the Dream Witch, or any of the Skullborn, was at best a stopgap measure. Vlagoth might have been dead but the Janus Tree was not, and that twisted monstrosity had a will and purpose all its own. It would not be stopped.
There has to be a way
, Kruje thought.
There just has to be. Nothing is inevitable.
Kruje stayed low and watched for signs of enemies. He had to find Dane. He’d been a fool to let his friend go on alone in the first place.
The giant’s back was knotted with tension. Smoke blocked sight of the ruined city beyond a hundred yards, and at any moment he expected something to launch out of the shadows. Exhaustion hit him in waves, and with every step he felt more and more like he was sloughing through a quagmire.
It occurred to him how long it had been since he’d had any sort of rest, since he’d been in a place where he felt safe. His arms started shaking. Doubt weighed heavy in his chest, and for a moment he stood there in the shadow of a crumbling building, the dank red sun barely visible through swirling blood fog, and wondered if he shouldn’t just give up. The irony that a creature of his size and stature should stand there feeling weak and afraid wasn’t lost on him, and he imagined if any humans saw him they weren’t likely to guess what was happening inside the horrifying Voss’s head. To them he was a monster. Children grew up thinking of his kind as devils, creatures of myth who rose from the darkness to consume the good people of Malzaria while they slept.
You’re not far wrong
, he thought bitterly.
But even monsters can be afraid. Even they sometimes wonder if it isn’t wiser to just give up.
But that wasn’t an option, and never really had been. He’d had his chances to end it all, to let himself die, but he’d struggled on. Whether he was escaping his brother’s assassins, toiling in the diamond mines of Hellstone Deep, slaughtering gladiators at Maddox’s behest or fending off Razorcats, Kruje had found a way to keep on fighting long after he should have been dead.
Giving in now would just be a disappointment.
But even as he moved around a corner and set foot on a wide lane strewn with dead soldiers, Kruje thought of the Crown he’d never again wear, and the home he’d never see.
Never say never. A Kruje and a human have joined forces. Nothing is impossible.
The rock weighed heavy in his hand as he came to a wide road wreathed with smoke. Images from tales of the Voss forebearers came to mind, stories of massive and ungainly brutes with no brains, wandering around in their loincloths with a penchant for smashing each other to death with tree trunks and stones not unlike the one Kruje wielded now. He couldn’t help but laugh, but it didn’t make him feel any better.
He moved as quickly and as quietly as he could along the cracked streets. Dust pushed up through the broken cobblestones like a dry sea. A tingling sensation ran up his spine, and he felt eyes watching him from the shadows.
The sky was still, and as he drew closer to the heart of the city the air grew alarmingly quiet. He clutched the rock in his hand and winced as each of his steps crushed pebbles and debris. He approached a large building, some sort of Galladorian courthouse. The broken facades littered the ground in an almost concentric half-moon formation, and the inside of the once formidable structure was plainly visible even with drifts of silver mist and burning fog sweeping across his path.
The Razorcat came out of nowhere, vomited forth by the shadows. Dark teeth glittered like black knives. Its oversized head was a blur and black smoke billowed from its unstable body, a shifting colossus of dark vapor. Kruje acted without thinking, brought the rock forward and smashed it against the side of the feline’s head with a sickening crack just moments before its shark-like teeth would have torn out his throat. The creature fell to the ground in a heap. The giant stood stunned, his chest heaving with fright.
His reverie lasted only a moment. Blinding white fire blazed from around the edge of the building. He heard a terrifying howl, and the nauseating stench of burning animal clogged in the back of his throat. He heard humans shouting, so he lifted the blood-soaked rock and moved closer to the building. The ground was hot, but Kruje bit his tongue and kept moving until he was just inside the open face of the building and out of sight. He gripped the rock tight and tried to still his breathing as he gazed through gaps in the wall to what he thought was the origin of the fire.
A pair of humans in dark cloaks stood on a low mound of fallen stones and loose earth. They fought what appeared to be a losing battle. A Razorcat corpse lay smoldering on the ground before them, its dark innards roasting in the sickening heat, but three more of the creatures bore down on them from the opposite end of the ruined courtyard. Shadow-clad bodies faded in and out of the unnatural silver-grey smoke. Red eyes glared at the human meat from out of the darkness, and their collective growl sent a razor chill down Kruje’s spine and turned his blood to ice.
The humans – one male, one female, both with unruly blonde hair – were armed with staves, the woman’s long like a quarterstaff and the man’s dual sticks shorter and capped with iron.
Now who in the J’ann’s name are
these
idiots?
Kruje wondered. They weren’t any of Chairos’ thugs, which meant they belonged to one of the other forces he’d seen battling in the city.
One of the Razorcats blurred forward, and its claw ripped the woman’s cloak from behind. She screamed as she fell but aimed her stave at its face, and before it could lift and pounce a burst of blue lightning shot forth from the tip and smashed into the creature’s maw, throwing it back with a stink of ozone and burning fur. Even injured it had her cloak snagged on its talons, and as it tried to retreat into the shadows she was dragged along behind it.
The male Bloodspeaker tried his best to reach her. He held his staves to his sides and blasted into the approaching Razorcats with streams of white and blue fire which scorched the shadow-furred beasts and sent them back, but there were more. The creatures poured from the shadows, a swarm of claws and teeth sheathed in smoking midnight fur. An entire pack was making its way into the courtyard – their shifting forms appeared as little more than silhouettes in the dusk light, and their razor growls peeled the air apart.
Kruje looked around for something that could be used as a weapon other than that damn rock, but there was nothing in sight.
Blasts of Veilcrafted fire went wide. The Razorcats were wary of the man’s attacks and used their ability to melt into darkness to their advantage. The cloaked man blasted left and right with an impressive barrage of firepower, but none of his attacks connected with anything more than the crumbling stone walls. Chunks of broken rock flew through the air.