Frostborn: The False King by Jonathan Moeller Read Free Book Online Page A

letting the magic fill her.
    She fed that power through the mantle of the Keeper, the ancient power that the Keepers of Andomhaim had wielded since the founding of the realm. That was the secret of the Keepers’ might, the strength that had let them defy orcish warlocks and dark elven princes and the urdmordar and the Frostborn. No other magic could resist the power of the Keeper’s mantle, and when she fed the magic of the Well through it, was magic was amplified greatly. 
    She would need that power soon enough.
    The horsemen galloped towards the northern gate, falling into a wedge formation with the Swordbearers at the tip. Calliande looked at the ramparts, and she saw crossbowmen hastening into place, heard the roar of a decurion shouting orders. 
    The crossbowmen raised their weapons, and Calliande lifted the staff of the Keeper, calling upon her power. 
    A storm of quarrels fell towards the horsemen, but Calliande had already cast her warding spell. A flickering aura of white light surrounded the horsemen, deflecting the crossbow bolts. She did not stop them all. Two orcs fell dead from their saddles, and more were wounded, but her ward had absorbed the worst of the attack. 
    Then the Swordbearers thundered through the gate and into the courtyard. Screams and shouts and the clash of steel upon steel filled her ears. For a moment, the orcs and the remaining Swordbearers piled up near the gate as they urged their horses through, and Calliande cast a warding spell again, shielding them from the crossbow bolts. Yet there were fewer crossbowmen than she would have expected. Gavin’s and Constantine’s attack on the gatehouse had been more effective than she had hoped. 
    They burst through the gate and stormed into the courtyard. 
    The castra’s courtyard had become a battlefield, and the Carhaine men-at-arms had rallied in haste to try to hold the gate, but to no avail. The Swordbearers crashed through them, scattering their attempt to form a shield wall, and the Rhaluuskan orcs rushed into the gaps, hammering down the scattered men-at-arms. 
    For an instant, a wave of queasy guilt went through Calliande. The soulblades had been forged to defend men and orcs and halflings and other mortals from the powers of dark magic, not to be used against them in battle. Yet Tarrabus Carhaine had forsaken Andomhaim and the Dominus Christus to follow the dark shadow of Incariel. Calliande had done her utmost to avoid this war, had sacrificed her entire life and spent centuries waiting below the Tower of Vigilance to defend the realm from the Frostborn, and yet thanks to the treachery of Tarrabus Carhaine and Imaria Licinius, the Frostborn had returned. 
    The guilt hardened and evaporated into cold determination, even familiarity. 
    She was at home on a battlefield. 
    Since Calliande had been a girl, she had seen battle after battle, war without end. Sometimes she wondered if there was even such a thing as peace, or if peace was only an illusion and war was the true state of mortal man. Calliande had done her utmost to avoid this war…but now that if had come, she would not stop for anything less than victory. 
    The Magistri could draw upon the power of the Well, as could the Keeper, but the Keeper had access to other spells, elemental magic forbidden to other men and women of Andomhaim. She drew upon that power, casting a spell of earth magic and feeding it through the mantle of the Keeper. The power burst forth from her, and a ripple went through the hard-packed ground. It swerved around the loyalists, but the ground beneath the Carhaine men-at-arms rippled and buckled. The spell knocked them from their feet and for a moment, Calliande remembered Morigna, imagined the acerbic comment the black-eyed sorceress would have made at the sight. 
    The thought saddened Calliande, hardening her resolve, and she urged her horse forward as the line of Carhaine men-at-arms collapsed, retreating back towards the nearest