A Cold God, Chapter 15

Malathax brought his hands together. His eyes were closed. His staff lay on the ground beside him, the runes upon its length glowing faintly. He sat on an ancient white stump that used to be Wierwood Tree, before it was cut down decades ago by Queen Lysara’s father, who wished to make a throne out of the sacred tree. There were many who protested such a thing. The old ones often prayed to the faces upon the trees; they believed that–when the faces wept blood–the Old Gods were listening to them and would grant whatever it was they asked for. 

Not that Malathax cared for the misguided religion of the Old Gods of the Woods and the Rivers, and the Children who were once considered to be their emissaries until they vanished from the world entirely. Weirwood Trees were just trees with some manner of magic about them. Their sap, for instance, could be used for divination spells and its branches strong and flexible and unnaturally resilient. 

However, no natural magic could compare to the power that was granted to him by the Changing God, whose domain included the very essence of magic itself. And, quite honestly, Malathax had not once found any real proof that the Old Gods were even real. He’d seen the magics of the Children, of course, and the strange powers of the Giants, but their talents could hardly be attributed to their imagined gods. 

No… there were only four true gods–the Pestilent God, the Wrathful God, the Seductive God, and the Changing God. 

All others were either false gods or did not exist at all. 

And so… where did the Icewalker–that creature of the end of all things–fit into all of this? 

Malathax did not know. No one did. It frightened him to his very bones. And yet, no one, not even his own peers, seemed to understand the horrific nature of that entity that now called itself the Lion of Night–or was recently referred to by his Queen as the Night’s King. They did not see what he saw, felt what he felt. They did not understand the darkness that would swallow this world–perhaps even the whole universe. It was the bane of all things that existed–not just the living. 

No, Malathax shook his head. They understood, but all they saw was a weapon to be wielded; they did not see the endless void behind the frost. 

So, as usual, he was gonna have to do everything by himself, including–it seemed–saving this whole world from a threat that only he saw. 

He uttered ancient words of power. The utterance of the spell brought pain, but it was a good pain; it meant the eyes of the Changing God were fixed upon him and that he was blessed all the more for it. The spell was to summon an avatar of the Changing God, a sliver of its vastly greater self, for guidance. It wouldn’t truly manifest in the physical sense, but Malathax would hear its voice and it would hear his, in turn. This was because he had absolutely no idea what to do and how to do it. The Changing God was a deity of knowledge and wisdom; who better to turn to? 

His hands shuddered from the pain, but Malathax endured. Blood trickled from his nose, ears, eyes, and mouth, but his faith was strong. He waited. Minutes turned to hours. Good thing the queen did not need his aid today. Suddenly, a presence tore its way into his mind–an entity of great and terrible magnitude. He nearly fell off the stump. But Malathax held firm. A dark thing spoke, its voice reverberating. “Honored servant of the Architect of Fate; you called and I, Keireth the Mutator, have answered. What wisdom do you wish to attain?”

Malathax remained on the stump with his eyes shut, his breath slow and measured, blood cooling on his cheeks. He sat rigid, a distant ache in his bones. The wind slipped through the clearing like a question, unspoken yet demanding. The faint glow of runes along his staff pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Keireth’s voice hung in the air, a whisper threaded with broken glass.

He drew in a breath. The throbbing in his temples swelled, threatening to drown him. He steadied himself against the stump’s ridged bark. His lungs felt constricted, the air thick from the invocation. A soft moan tried to escape his throat, but he pressed his lips tight. Blood stained his sleeves where he had wiped at his eyes. He raised his head and spoke in a voice strained yet resolute.

“I seek your wisdom, Keireth the Mutator,” he said. His words emerged between shallow breaths. “There is a creature. The Lion of Night. Some call it the Icewalker. It threatens all that is, and I must know how to stand against it.”

A hush followed. Only the wind in the hollow answered. Then, like talons scraping across distant stone, Keireth’s voice returned. Its tone held a keening edge.

Show me.

A flicker passed through Malathax’s eyes. His lips parted, and he glanced at the runes along his staff. They still glowed but offered no comfort. The presence within him swelled, unsettling as a serpent coiled around his soul. Keireth demanded entry to his memories, and he answered by relaxing the grip of his mind, pulling the veil back. No words. Only the silent gesture of acceptance.

There was a slow unveiling, like an ancient door yawning wide in the night. Images of the Lion of Night slithered through Malathax’s thoughts, each recollection sharpened by dread. He tried to hold still, though his hands shook where they rested on his knees. The specter in his mind—Keireth—prodded the edges of those visions. Malathax watched flashes of distant battlefields, the weeping survivors, the jagged horizon cracked with ice. He showed the pale creature standing alone on a rise of winter stone. He revealed the bleak sun overhead, as if the world had grown tired of warmth.

A hiss rose in his head, then a twisted hush. Keireth’s presence swirled deeper. Darkness spilled from memory to memory like an endless current. The voice that followed sounded raw, almost wounded.

“This is no mortal beast. Show me more.”

Malathax clenched his jaw. There was more, and he let it surge forward. A bleak fortress in some northland, walls of black ice. Legions of silent watchers beneath a harvest moon. The Lion of Night, crowned in frost, eyes gleaming with unearthly light. Voices chanting words older than the realms of men, older than the realms of gods. Malathax’s lungs burned. His heart hammered. The intangible presence roared in his skull.

His body snapped upright, as if seized by a sudden force. Blood dripped from the corners of his mouth, and he quivered on the stump. The runes across his staff flared brilliant white, then guttered to a tired glimmer. Keireth plucked at new images now, rummaging through half-forgotten recollections. Malathax saw fragments of his own life. The day he swore fealty to the Queen. The night he discovered the hidden library beneath the palace. Shelves upon shelves of forbidden texts. He tasted again the dust of old parchment and recalled how his fingers turned black from the archaic ink that coughed secrets of a god who changed all things.

Then the memory shifted back to the Lion of Night, the doom that lurked behind the veil. There came a cry, shrill and piercing, in his mind. Malathax’s limbs jerked. He caught himself to keep from tumbling off the stump. A swirl of heat rushed to his cheeks, and his breath broke in ragged gasps.

Keireth spoke again: The Dark at the End of Everything… The Beast of Judgment… The Enemy of All Things… The Great Emptiness… The words came in broken shards, each phrase whispered and then howled, as though some monstrous chorus performed them in the chambers of Malathax’s mind.

Malathax’s lips parted in a silent question. Before he could shape a syllable, Keireth wailed, and the sound rang through the clearing in a hollow, dreadful chord. The staff’s runes stuttered, and for the briefest moment, the entire stump seemed to glow with a sickly light. Malathax’s vision blurred. A taste of copper rose at the back of his throat.

Then the presence vanished. One instant it was roiling within him, the next it was gone. No slow ebbing, no gentle retreat. Keireth had severed the connection as though terrified to remain. The hush that followed felt louder than the wail, unbroken by wind or breath. Malathax sagged. His eyes fluttered open, and he found himself gazing at the white stump’s polished rim. The air smelled of blood and burned incense. He pressed trembling fingers to his brow, leaving crimson smudges on his pale skin.

He turned and lifted his eyes to the sky. Clouds drifted across a sun weakened by the hour. Far beyond those clouds, a visage took form. Dim at first, then growing clearer, as if the heavens themselves parted. A shape with no certain boundaries. Colors that shifted, swirling in and out of focus. An impossible face with multiple eyes that blinked in uneven harmony. Whatever it was soared beyond the mortal plane. Malathax’s breathing faltered.

He rocked forward on the stump, sweat shining along his jaw. His staff lay abandoned in the grass, the runes throbbing faintly once again. He raised an unsteady hand, as though compelled to greet the vision. His shoulders quaked, and tears slid along his cheeks, carving paths through the drying blood. His lips twitched. A quiet sound worked its way from his throat, neither laughter nor sob.

He stared at that shape in the sky, and in the swirling arc of its form, he discerned something of Tzeentch—the Changing God, the Architect of Fate, the one to whom he had offered devotion and whose sliver had come in answer. Malathax parted his lips, and his breath caught again. His eyes shone with the reflection of that cosmic countenance.

His voice emerged in a broken whisper. “I know now what I must do.”

Yet for a moment, he did not move. The clouds continued their steady migration overhead. A crow circled beyond the ruined orchard, its caw echoing. Malathax swallowed, rose from the stump, and steadied himself. His body swayed, and he took a moment to plant his feet firmly on the ground. He stared at his hand, turning it this way and that, as though searching for wounds that lay deeper than flesh. Then his gaze shifted back to that receding visage above the world. The shape seemed to watch him, though no single pair of eyes fell on him alone. He lowered his hand. A slow breath left his lips.

He stepped away from the stump, rustling the yellowed grass. The staff glowed again, ready to be claimed, and he crouched to retrieve it. Its polished runes cast a faint luminescence across his fingers. He draped a cloth around its haft, then touched the wood as one might touch an old friend’s shoulder. The staff quivered. Malathax closed his eyes for a moment.

He knew the next step. He carried no illusions that the path ahead would be easy. There were none to guide him. Malathax strode away from the stump, careful not to disturb the remnants of his blood that stained the ground. A faint breeze stirred the tall grass, and faint whispers seemed to linger in the corner of his mind. He moved past the scattered branches that lay like bones along the orchard floor, remnants of the old Weirwood that once stood here. Hints of that tree’s power still clung to the soil, and the runes on his staff pulsed whenever he drew near these fragments.

On the outskirts of the orchard, he paused. He raised his head and gazed at the towering outline of the castle beyond the fields. Guards stood watch atop the battlements, dark silhouettes against the midday sun. It was the seat of his queen, the place whereupon he’d watched her grow from a little girl to the powerful woman she was now. Malathax tightened his grip on the staff. He hoped that she would forgive him for what he needed to do. When they inevitably found each other, once more, in the realm of the dead, Malathax hoped beyond all hope that she would forgive him. 

Because it was her blood that would bring about the salvation of the world. 

He stepped through the field toward the castle. Dust rose around his boots, and the dried grass crackled underfoot. Something in the air carried the warmth of early autumn, but the memory of that chilling presence in his mind would not let him forget winter’s threat. He exhaled, glancing once more at the sky. The visage that had loomed beyond the clouds seemed gone, or hidden, or perhaps it had never been.