The Last Witchking Read online

  Praise for

  A THRONE OF BONES

  “This is a book designed with a single primary purpose, to revive epic fantasy as a rooted form, and most readers of fantasy are going to receive this story as such. They will not be disappointed.... A THRONE OF BONES is doorstopping fantasy for far more than its physical dimensions. Metaphysically, it shuts the door to the world we know and provides an escape to a better reality, and one far more dangerous than the one in which we now dwell. It expresses longings in such richness of detail.”

  —DANIEL ENESS

  “A THRONE OF BONES, by Vox Day, is one of the more ambitious epic fantasy novels I have read.... I enjoyed the historical verisimilitude of the novel, especially the depiction of the Amorran republican legions.”

  —JONATHAN MOELLER, PULP WRITER

  “It's a delightful experience.... There are beautiful moments, there is clever dialogue, there is deep mystery. It took some level of genius to write it. I recommend you read it.”

  —THE RESPONSIBLE PUPPET

  “If the author can successfully complete at least a trilogy from this world he has created I think it can stand to become one of the great SF/F series, and garner him accolades along with Martin, Tolkien and other fiction greats. I would recommend this book, without reservation.”

  —ZERO SUM

  “I've read every one of the books in A Song of Ice and Fire, and this beats the pants off all of them. Even A Storm of Swords. Seriously. It's that good. This book works because it doesn't pretend to be more than it is- an epic historical fantasy novel.”

  —DIDACT'S REACH

  “All I can say to my fantasy-loving brethren is that you MUST read this.... It's amazingly well done, seemingly historically accurate. It echoes A Song of Fire and Ice by Martin in its complexity, political machinations, and story telling. It's gritty, dirty, and immensely fun.”

  —Amazon Review

  “If you are a fan of George R.R. Martin, then give A THRONE OF BONES a read. It is what you wished Martin had done, except even better.... one of the best SF/F novels of the past decade, if not longer.”

  —Amazon Review

  The Last Witchking by Vox Day

  Published by Castalia House

  Kouvola, Finland

  www.castaliahouse.com

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Vox Day

  All rights reserved

  Cover Design: James Simonsen

  Version 004

  International Standard Book Number: 978-952-7065-04-4

  To Andrew

  My oldest friend and the man who never met a devil for whom he could not advocate.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Praise for A THRONE OF BONES

  The Last Witchking

  The Hoblets of Wiccam Fensboro

  Opera Vita Aeterna

  A THRONE OF BONES

  A SEA OF SKULLS

  SUMMA ELVETICA

  Castalia House

  The Last Witchking

  The sounds of battle were getting louder, and the smell of smoke penetrated the chamber despite the heavy wooden door and the single shuttered window. Inside, a man and a woman lay sprawled on the bed, breathless and entangled, their long, white limbs unencumbered by clothing.

  “Do it,” she murmured, her face pressed against his chest. “Do it now, my love.”

  “How can you ask it of me?” His voice was filled with anguish. “Why did you not let me send you away with them?”

  “He will be safer without me. They would know. They would break me.”

  “They cannot break what they do not find.”

  “They know I am yours. They would hunt me down. And besides, I will not live without you!”

  He pulled away from her, looked down at her, stroked her long, pale hair. Tears filled his eyes as he smiled at her. “How fierce you are. How beautiful.”

  She looked up at him and returned his smile. Her eyes were dry and fearless.

  “Have courage, my lord. I regret nothing. Not a single moment.”

  He wiped at his eyes. “The dream is dead, but it was glorious indeed.”

  “Then you must give me a glorious pyre, my love. My body cannot be found. They must never learn I bore you a child.”

  “Not a child, my love. A son. Our son.” The man nodded and caressed her cheek. “They will love him. They will raise him as their own. But he will learn the truth in time.”

  “Blood will tell,” she agreed. “Blood will always tell.”

  A clash of metal from just outside the chamber caused them both to start.

  He met her eyes.

  “I loved you from the moment I laid eyes upon you. From the beginning to the end.”

  She laughed and shook her head.

  “No, my lord, there is no end. You are mine and I am yours, from the beginning of time to the end of whatever lies waiting on the other side of the grave.”

  “There will be no grave for you, my love. My wife. My life. I would burn all the earth and sky if it would save you now.”

  “I know.” She closed her eyes. “Now, my love. They are coming for you, and there is no more time.”

  He kissed her lips. Then he folded her to his breast again and held her tight as a single tear slowly made its way down his bloodless cheek. Softly, gently, he whispered the killing words. She did not move or make a sound, she merely seemed to relax against him, as if giving herself entirely to him once more.

  She was gone.

  He kissed her forehead, then gently laid her down, lifeless, on the bed. For a long moment he stared at her, drinking in her beauty one last time. Then there was a shriek outside the chamber, followed by a series of triumphant shouts. A moment later, something heavy crashed against the door.

  He dressed without hurrying. By the time the wood began to splinter, he was fully attired in rich black velvet. He wore a cape, and his pantalons were tucked into the high leather boots of a cavalryman.

  He pointed at the door, and it exploded outward, eliciting screams from those who had been striving to break it down. He raised his left hand, and the bed behind him erupted in white flames hotter than any blacksmith’s forge. He did not look back at it.

  The first elves to enter the room could not have seen more than a tall shadow cast by the bright backdrop of the blazing fire. They would not be able to see a body already safely enshrouded by the raging flames. None of them were mages, he observed with the faintest hint of a contemptuous smile. Even in victory they feared him. The elven warriors stood before him uncertainly, each holding two swords drawn as if they were waiting for him to strike them down. But he merely stood there, in silence, until Silthalael, the High King’s Magister of War, finally entered the chamber.

  “It is over, Ar Mauragh,” the elf told the tall man. “The other towers are taken. Your fellows have all been slain. You are alone.”

  “It is over,” the witchking concurred.

  “Will you consent to come with me to the Collegium Occludum? Your life remains forfeit—that cannot be changed. But before you die, my colleagues have many questions they would like to ask of you.”

  “I will come with you,” Mauragh answered.

  As he walked with Silthalael away from the tower, stepping carefully around
the bodies of elves and the corpses of men, his servants, who had fallen in the last battle outside, he stopped abruptly and turned back toward his burning home.

  The fire had already eaten its way through the wooden shutters that covered the window of his bedchamber, so with a single word, he caused blue and green flames to begin leaping and dancing from inside the stones themselves.

  Cries of alarm filled the air as the victorious remnants of the elven army began to run away from the tower. There was a thunderous roar, and the earth began to shake. In a matter of moments, the mighty tower collapsed in a cataclysm of fire and stone as rapidly as water plunging down the side of a mountain.

  No grave, my love. No tomb. None shall disturb your ashes.

  “I had hoped you would view us as more than mere enemies,” Silthalael said, his face ashen, “that you would see us as worthy inheritors of your knowledge. There must have been over a thousand books and scrolls in that library!”

  “Not all secrets may be shared,” Mauragh told the elf.

  Six months later, having answered all of the questions he was willing to answer, his usefulness was deemed at an end. The great witchking died in front of the assembled magisters of the Collegium Occludum. Ar Mauragh died screaming, shrieking in agony, his white flesh tormented by earth, water, and fire, his soul ripped into a thousand pieces, his haughty pride humbled, perhaps even humiliated.

  Even so, he embraced death like a long-awaited lover, for he knew that when the sorcerous elven flames finally turned his bones to char and ash, they would ensure that his most cherished secret was safely sealed.

  In the eyes of the villagers of Pretigny, Speer Gnasor was a boy not terribly unlike any other. He was taller than the other boys his age, but someone has to be the tallest in every village, and no one ever appeared to think it odd that at nearly thirteen years of age, the top of his father’s head barely cleared his shoulder. Speer was quick-witted but not remarkably so, although he was both envied and mocked by the other boys for his ability to read.

  He participated in their games, albeit in a desultory manner. He was not unpopular, and if he had exerted himself even a little, he might well have made himself a leader of one of the little packs that divided the children of the town on lines roughly conforming with their fathers’ occupations.

  Per Gnasor, his father, raised bees and made candles, and his mother raised the small flock of geese and chickens that provided him with his daily egg, and on feast days, the fowl for their little family. His two passions were fishing and books, and it was said that he had read every one of the twenty-eight books in the village at least twice.

  The Gnasors themselves were said to possess seven books. By Pretigny standards, this amounted to a family library of almost mythic proportions. He dutifully attended the small church of the Immaculate twice each week, and if he ate the wafer and drank the wine given to him by the priest with little thought for what it represented, in this he was no different than any other boy in the village.

  He was not an unhappy lad, and he was entirely content with his life as he found it. He did not, like some of his youthful acquaintances, chafe at the smallness of their familiar surroundings or dream of one day seeking his fortune in what, from the perspective of Pretigny, was considered to be the great city of Niederholen. Even the rumors of the riches of distant Stalchwil on the banks of the Ghlêne more than a ten-day journey away held little fascination for him. He learned to tend his father’s bees, to twist wicks and shape wax, and slowly, but surely, he even began to take notice of the butcher’s daughter. She was a tall, slender girl with a wide mouth and pale blue eyes who was nearly of a height and an age with him.

  Left to his own devices, allowed to pursue his homely dreams, it was likely that Speer Gnasor would have married the butcher’s daughter, learned the butcher’s trade, and eventually become a fine, upstanding pillar of the local church and community.

  But on his thirteenth birthday, everything he knew about himself and the world around him was forever transformed by a letter from his father.

  After a dinner that featured rare treats such as Valoyan sausages and the sweet cheese called Niederholt, Per Gnasor sent him into the forest armed with nothing more than his warmest coat and a small shovel and told him to unearth his birthday present one hundred paces north of his favorite tree.

  Both excited and confused, he lost little time in finding the peculiar oak with a thick lower branch that twisted over its leftmost neighbor, and paced off the distance. He had to dig a hole that was deeper than his knees before he struck something hard. With a little more work he saw it was a small wooden chest. His heart beating faster, he extricated it from the ground and opened it.

  The first thing he saw was a letter written in an unfamiliar hand. Despite the shadows cast by the looming trees, there was just enough light breaking through the leaves to permit him to read it.

  To my son and my heir,

  You are not what you think you are. You are more, so much more. Kings and princes would tremble and scour the earth in search of you were they to hear even a rumor of your existence. It was to save you from their wrath that your mother sacrificed herself. It was to protect you from their vengeance that you were hidden away even from yourself. The man and woman you believe to be your parents are my true and loyal servants, and they have raised you at my command, even as they release you now to your destiny as they have been instructed.

  You will be told many lies about your true kind, we whom the vulgar and the frightened wrongly named witchkings. But this is nothing more than fear. It is the shameless perversion of history by the vicious little minds of its victors.

  As you will learn, we Wahrkönigen were simply dedicated to the truth and only the truth, regardless of its consequences and heedless of its costs. And what was this fearful truth, this dark god that struck such terror into the hearts of Men and Elves, Orcs, and Dwarves? Only this: There is no Good and there is no Evil. There is only what Is. Nothing more. Have the courage to grasp this fearful truth, and you shall be a worthy successor to the long line of kings before you.

  I have prepared the means that you will require to learn both the Lesser and the Greater Arts. Master them well. An arduous task lies before you, but I know you will succeed, for you are my son and you will surpass me. And in the place that has been prepared for you, you will also find the answers to your inevitable questions, including your true lineage.

  You are a phoenix raised by sparrows, my son. Now it is time for you to fly. When you have grown into your strength and become worthy of your heritage, you will set the world on fire.

  These are the three charges that I lay upon you, my son. Instruct the Elves. Break them of their ancient pride and shatter the remnants of their kingdoms. Humble the Northmen. They must pay a tithe of blood for their treachery. Harry them throughout their islands and drive them into the sea. Preserve the Blood. You must not be the last of your line. Father many children, on many women, but instruct only the most worthy in the Wahrkunst. The Blood will tell.

  You are young and you are alone in a harsh and unforgiving world, but never doubt that you were loved as few sons have ever been loved. For your mother and your father so loved you that they died for you, not once, but twice. We allowed ourselves to perish and we erased ourselves from the minds of mortals, so that you might live.

  Your enemies, and they are many, will not find you until you are ready to be found. Be brave, my son, be strong, and never permit yourself fear. For you are a true Wahrkönig, and in your veins flows the pure blood of the greatest and most powerful sorcerers the world has ever known. Embrace your greatness, my son, embrace the Blood, embrace the challenges I have set before you, and one day, you will teach the world that you are harsher and more unforgiving than it could ever dare to be.

  Avenge me, my son. Avenge your loving mother. Avenge your noble race,

  Mauragh, son of Thauragh

  King of Thauron, Nordandir, and the Wolf Isles

  At t
he bottom, there was a note in a more familiar hand. It was from his father, or rather, the man he had always believed to be his father, Per Gnasor.

  Dearest Speer,

  It has been the greatest privilege of our lives to have been of service to you and your parents. Please forgive us for keeping you in ignorance, but it was the only way to preserve you and the noblest bloodline this world has ever known. Even now, your life is forfeit should anyone learn who you are and what you are, which is why this must be a note of farewell. I only hope that my wife and I have been able to provide you with some sense of the great love that your mother and father bore for you. You bear a mighty destiny, and we are grateful beyond all measure to have been given the opportunity to be a small part of it.

  In this chest, you will find a key, a ring, and directions to your inheritance. There is also a blade and sufficient gold to pay for your passage. Do not return to the cottage or permit yourself to be seen by anyone from the village, as they will believe you to have perished in the fire with us, your loyal and loving mother and father.

  Your true name is Dauragh, son of Mauragh.

  Fare you well, son of my heart, if not my body.

  Speer stared at the paper in disbelief. Then he slipped it into his pocket, closed the chest, and dropped it back into the hole. He threw the shovel on top of it and began running through the trees as fast as he could run toward the village and the little cottage in which he had lived for thirteen years.

  Before he reached the treeline that ended at the wheat field on the perimeter of the village, a reddish glow that was much too close to be the setting sun told him that he was already too late. He could hear shouts and cries as the people of Pretigny tried to set up a bucket line. Judging by the height of the flames, though, the entirety of the cottage’s roof was already engulfed.