Frostborn: The Shadow Prison (Frostborn #15)
Jonathan Moeller
FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON
Jonathan Moeller
Table of Contents
Description
A brief author’s note
Chapter 1: Shadowbearer
Chapter 2: Retreat
Chapter 3: Iron and Ice
Chapter 4: Gathering Armies
Chapter 5: Bred To War
Chapter 6: King and Queen
Chapter 7: The Final Defense
Chapter 8: Assassins
Chapter 9: Besieged
Chapter 10: The Order of the Inquisition
Chapter 11: The Hunters
Chapter 12: Visions
Chapter 13: Knights of the Void
Chapter 14: Dwarven Steel
Chapter 15: Last Parley
Chapter 16: Wrath of the Frostborn
Chapter 17: Corrosion
Chapter 18: Dragon Fire
Chapter 19: Breaking
Chapter 20: The Host of the Dragon Knight
Chapter 21: Last Stand
Chapter 22: The Keeper’s Alliance
Chapter 23: Armor
Chapter 24: Ashes to Ashes
Chapter 25: Enlightenment
Chapter 26: Knight and Keeper
Chapter 27: One Hundred Thousand Years Of War
Chapter 28: We Shall Be As Gods
Chapter 29: A Single Moment
Chapter 30: Cost of the Curse
Chapter 31: The Keeper of Andomhaim
Chapter 32: The Guardian
Chapter 33: Destinies
Chapter 34: The Shield Knight
A final author's note
Other books by the author
About the Author
Glossary of Characters
Glossary of Locations
Description
Ridmark Arban is ready to face the terrible Frostborn in a final battle.
But even the mighty Frostborn themselves have been duped, for the shadow of Incariel has used them as its weapons.
Unless Ridmark can defeat the Shadowbearer, the shadow of Incariel shall rise and devour the world for all time...
Frostborn: The Shadow Prison
Copyright 2017 by Jonathan Moeller.
Published by Azure Flame Media, LLC.
Cover design by Clarissa Yeo.
Ebook edition published May 2017.
All Rights Reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.
A brief author’s note
At the end of this book, you will find a Glossary of Characters and a Glossary of Locations listing all the major characters and locations in this book. Note that the Glossaries contain spoilers for all previous books of the Frostborn series.
A map of the realm of Andomhaim is available on the author’s website at this link.
Chapter 1: Shadowbearer
Six hundred and thirty-five days after it began, six hundred and thirty-five days after the day in the Year of Our Lord 1478 when blue fire filled the sky from horizon to horizon, Ridmark Arban opened his eyes from a deep and dreamless sleep.
He was calm. Usually, when Ridmark awoke he was morose from a bad dream, or a flicker of anger went through him as he thought of the Frostborn or the Enlightened of Incariel, but now he was calm. Granted, there wasn’t much reason for calm. The Frostborn might have been repulsed at the battle of Dun Calpurnia, but they would not give up, and even a unified Andomhaim assisted by the power of the Dragon Knight might not be able to defeat them.
Nevertheless, Ridmark felt calm, as if his feet were finally on the right path, as if he had at last taken up his proper role.
The woman responsible for much of that lay next to him, her breathing slow and steady.
Ridmark lay naked upon a pair of cloaks in a silent stone room. Everything around him seemed blurry and out of focus, save for the woman, a consequence of the magic of the sword of the Dragon Knight. Time had stopped for him, but he felt the strain starting, and knew that soon he would return to the normal flow of time.
The power of the sword that allowed him to stop time burned at the back of his mind. Caledhmaer was the sword of the Dragon Knight, and it had been wielded by countless Dragon Knights during the long millennia of the high elves’ war against the dark elves and the urdmordar. The sword commanded great powers, and with those great powers, it tested anyone who presumed to wield it.
It had nearly destroyed Ridmark, seizing upon his weaknesses and convincing him that by killing himself he could undo his existence. The sword had nearly driven him mad.
Calliande had talked him back from the brink.
She lay next to him, her eyes closed, her blond hair a tangle around her head. Only dim light leaked through the room’s narrow window, made blurry by Caledhmaer’s magic, and it painted her skin with pale shades.
Ridmark had never seen Calliande like this, resting and vulnerable.
She wasn’t asleep, though. Her hands had awakened him. They had been sliding over his chest and stomach, but now they moved lower, and her breathing had sped up. He knew what she wanted.
That was all right because it was the same thing that he wanted.
Ridmark sat up and flipped Calliande onto her back. Her blue eyes popped open wide with surprise, and she grinned before he began kissing her.
###
Later Calliande lay back, trying to catch her breath, her heart thrumming against her ribs. A pleasing warmth filled her chest and limbs, and every single one of her muscles felt as if they had turned to liquid.
Ridmark sat next to her, sweat gleaming on his shoulders and the muscles of his back, his left hand resting on her right thigh. His expression was distant, but not unhappy.
Calliande smiled at him. She hadn’t known what her first time with Ridmark would be like. Two and a half centuries she had lived (even if she had been asleep for most of it) and she had never been with a man. Calliande had spent so much time treating wounds and illnesses that she knew the mechanics of what happened when a man lay with a woman, knew the act was a sweating, undignified thing. She had known it might hurt but hadn’t cared about the possibility. Calliande had spent so much time healing wounds, absorbing the agony with her magic, that a little pain hardly seemed daunting.
But she hadn’t known it would be like this.
God! Calliande had never known what she had been missing.
She would never have accepted any husband except Ridmark. It would have been him or no one. And as she looked at him, knowing that she belonged to him and that he belonged to her, the thought made her so happy that her heart felt as if it would burst.
If it had been within her power, Calliande would have stayed with him here, in this room where he had stopped time to be with her, forever.
Yet she could not.
Calliande might have become Ridmark’s wife, and that role was now first in her heart. But she was still the Keeper of Andomhaim, and he was the Dragon Knight, and they had duties. The whole might of the Frostborn was driving like a dagger into the heart of Andomhaim. Worse, the Frostborn themselves were only pawns, even if they were too arrogant to see it. Imaria Licinius Shadowbearer was Andomhaim’s true foe, infused with the shadow of Incariel itself. If Imaria was not stopped, she would release Incariel from its prison and plunge the world into a hell of chaos that mirrored
the evil and madness within her own mind.
Against such foes, even the power of the Dragon Knight might not be enough.
Calliande knew that both she and Ridmark might die in the battle to come. But even if they did, she would be his wife and he would be her husband as long as they both lived. She would always remember the moment when he had taken her into his arms as his wife for the first time.
Calliande just wished they could have had more of those moments.
“You’re crying,” said Ridmark.
“A little,” Calliande admitted, wiping at her eyes. “But it’s happy crying.” She smiled. “It is my wedding day, after all. I am entitled to a little weepiness.”
“Yes.” Ridmark smiled a little. “The first time I was married, Dux Gareth told me that a woman could cry whenever she wished, and a wise man would simply accept that.”
Calliande hesitated. Once, mentioning Aelia or Morigna would have sent Ridmark into a black mood or a burst of anger. Now, he seemed only contemplative as he thought of them. Sad, yes, but not dominated by the grief as he had once been.
Wiser, she realized. He had grown wiser through his losses. Or perhaps the sword the Dragon Knight had finally forced him to confront the part of himself that raged at grief.
“I am sorry that Dux Gareth fell at Dun Calpurnia,” said Calliande, watching him. “And your father as well.” She felt her own grief at their deaths. Gareth Licinius and Leogrance Arban had been good men and just lords, pillars of the realm. She hoped the Dominus Christus received them kindly.
“As am I,” said Ridmark. His hand left her thigh to grip her hand, and she squeezed back. “You might have known my father better than I did. I wish he could have understood why I did what I did. But…he was the Dux of Taliand. The Dux of Taliand had to do what was proper.”
“He asked me about you, sometimes,” said Calliande. “Maybe he did.”
They waited in silence for a moment. Then Ridmark sighed, leaned down, and kissed her.
“I’m afraid,” he said, straightening up, “that we should go.”
“I know,” said Calliande. She took a deep breath and sat up. Ridmark’s eyes flicked to her chest as she did, lingering there for a moment, and Calliande was surprised by how much that pleased her. “Our duty awaits.”
“Yes,” said Ridmark. He got to his feet and held out a hand. Calliande grasped his hand, his fingers heavy with calluses, and he drew her up after him. “Also, the sword can only stop time for so long. It’s almost at its limit. Too much longer and we’ll return to normal time, and Caius and Third will wonder where we went.”
“We just got married,” said Calliande. “I don’t think they’ll wonder where we went.”
Ridmark smiled. “Then if we’re not careful they’ll get an eyeful.”
Calliande laughed. “Then we had better get dressed, hadn’t we?”
Though she did watch with some regret as he pulled on his clothes. His features were too hard to be handsome, but he was heavy with muscle from years in the wilderness and fighting, and there was a raw masculine energy to him that she found very compelling…
She laughed at herself.
Of course she found it compelling. She had married him, hadn’t she?
A few moments later they were dressed. Calliande collected the staff of the Keeper from where she had placed it against the wall and gave her belt one last tug, the dagger that Ridmark had given her shifting in its sheath. She looked for the black staff of Ardrhythain and then remembered that Ridmark had emerged from the Tomb of the Dragon Knight without it. He hadn’t spoken of what had happened to the weapon, just as he hadn’t spoken of what had passed within the Tomb.
It was not as if he needed the staff as a weapon any longer.
“Ready?” said Ridmark.
Calliande took one last look around. The room was such a bare, rough place. Strange that she never wanted to leave it.
“Ready,” said Calliande.
Ridmark led the way back to the great hall of Castra Marcaine, to the place where he had been married twice and his first wife had died. The Frostborn had ripped down the roof of the great hall when they had taken the castra, and it lay in heaps of broken rubble across the floor tiles of patterned white and black. The walls still stood, as did the pillars that had once supported the ceiling.
A man and a woman stood facing the dais, frozen in time. The woman was tall and lean, clad in close-fitting dark armor, her face pale and her hair as black as her eyes. It was pulled back to reveal the points of her dark elven ears. The man was a dwarf, short and broad and gray-skinned, bald with a bushy gray-black beard. He wore the robes of a mendicant friar, a wooden cross hanging from a leather cord around his neck, and a few hours ago he had just married Calliande and Ridmark.
Though she supposed from the perspective of Brother Caius and Third, less than a second had passed.
Ridmark held out his right hand. Harsh yellow-orange fire appeared in his fingers, and a heartbeat later the sword of the Dragon Knight came into in existence, the blade crackling with fire. The sword looked as if it had been forged from a strange metal like red gold, though Calliande knew it was sharper and harder than any other metal she had ever encountered. The pommel had been shaped into a roaring dragon’s head, and it looked hot to the touch, as if it should have scorched Ridmark’s fingers. Yet he held the blade comfortably.
The fire around the sword brightened, and a flicker of fear went through Calliande. The last time she had seen that fire, it had been burning through Ridmark’s eyes and veins and chest. The sword’s power had almost devoured him. Guilt followed the fear. The sword had almost killed him, and she had set him upon that path.
Both the fear and the guilt vanished as Ridmark lifted the sword, his expression calm. The sword had almost killed him, but he had mastered it. He was now the Dragon Knight, as Kalomarus had been so long ago, and Calliande would not have been able to defeat the Frostborn the first time without the help of Kalomarus.
Perhaps the new Dragon Knight would do the same.
Ridmark gestured, and the world blurred around them. Calliande felt a sharp sense of dislocation, much as she had when following Ridmark through the sword’s gates. Then the blur vanished as the ruined hall snapped back into focus around her, and time resumed.
“Give you a moment?” said Caius, his confusion plain. He turned and saw Ridmark and Calliande. “How did you do that?”
“The sword,” said Ridmark, gesturing with the weapon. “It does have a useful trick or two.”
“Plainly,” said Caius. “Where did you go?”
“Most probably,” said Third in her cold, precise voice, “given the urgency we face, the Dragon Knight stopped time to permit himself to consummate his marriage to the Keeper.”
Caius blinked, and Calliande felt her face warm.
“I see,” said Caius, and he smiled. “Well, that’s none of my concern, is it? I only hope your marriage is blessed with happiness, prosperity, and many healthy children.”
Children. Calliande knew full well that was a possibility. She might even now be carrying Ridmark’s child, though given that she was closer to the end of her fertile years than the beginning, she knew it might take longer. But if that happened, she would greet it with joy…but more than a little fear. She was the Keeper of Andomhaim, and the realm needed her for the war against the Frostborn. How could she attend to her duty and raise children at the same time?
Well, as Ardrhythain had reminded her, the Keepers of the past had done so, often quite successfully. Some of the sons of past Keepers had become knights of renown and legend. If they had fulfilled their duties and raised children, then so could Calliande.
Though if the Frostborn and Imaria were not stopped, there would be no more knights and no more Andomhaim.
Only the shadow of Incariel, howling as it devoured the world forevermore.
“Thank you,” said Ridmark. “We need to get moving. The Frostborn will not have been idle while we were gon
e, and Arandar will need our help.”
“To Dun Calpurnia?” said Caius.
Ridmark nodded. “Aye. It’s been…ah, I lose track of the time. I suppose for them it’s been about three hours since we left.” Third nodded. “Arandar will be in haste, but the army will not have gotten very far. We’ll find them and consult with the High King.”
“Perhaps it would be better,” said Calliande, “if we didn’t return to the High King at once.”
Ridmark looked at her. “I don’t think even the Dragon Knight can fight against the Frostborn alone.”
“No,” said Calliande. “I mean it might be better to find Queen Mara and King Turcontar and King Axazamar. If you can travel anywhere with the sword, we have a good chance of finding them before the Frostborn do. If the Frostborn destroy their armies one by one, we’ll lose. If we can unite our forces, we have better odds. Even if we can coordinate with our allies, we will have a better hope of victory.”
“You’re right,” said Ridmark. “We’ll look for our allies. But first, we should talk to the High King.” He grimaced. “I fear I left abruptly.”
“You weren’t quite yourself,” said Calliande.
“No,” said Ridmark. He took a deep breath and lifted the burning sword. “Let’s…”
The Sight blazed to life within Calliande, warning her of danger.
It had already awakened thanks to the titanic power of the sword, showing her the ancient and unyielding magic within the blade, more potent than any soulblade. Now the Sight detected another power within the ruined castra, a power dark and cold and malevolent. The sword stirred in Ridmark’s hand, reacting to the coming darkness, and both Calliande and Ridmark looked towards the doors to the ruined hall.
“What is it?” said Third, turning and drawing her short swords. Caius reached over his shoulder and produced the dark elven warhammer he had taken from Urd Morlemoch.
“The shadow of Incariel,” said Calliande. “One of the Enlightened? No, it’s too strong, it’s…”
“Her,” said Ridmark, lifting his face.
