Grindhelm's Key Read online

  GRINDHELM’S KEY

  Book Four of The Brackenford Cycle

  Nick Moseley

  Also by Nick Moseley

  Location, Location, Damnation

  Deceased Estate (novella)

  Hangman’s Pond

  The Ghost’s Story (novella)

  Spectre’s Rest

  Killing Lazarus (novella)

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Copyright Information

  About The Author

  One

  Well, this is a nice way to spend a Friday evening, Trev Irwin thought as he sailed through the air and landed on his back in a snowdrift.

  The snow softened the impact a little, but the air was still knocked out of him and he struggled to get up. Beneath him he felt the ground tremble.

  ‘If that happens again, try not to land on me,’ said a voice. It emanated from the pocket of Trev’s black trenchcoat, which he’d thought was pretty cool when he bought it. Now it seemed determined to weigh him down and tangle his limbs. He was in danger of becoming a very stylish corpse.

  ‘No promises,’ Trev gasped in reply.

  He finally managed to get to one knee, breath steaming in the frigid night air. In front of him was a stretch of woodland, the bare trees topped with snow. To either side lay blank white fields, with the twinkling lights of the town of Brackenford visible in the distance.

  The ground trembled again. Snow fell from the trees in clumps.

  ‘Shit,’ said Trev, looking down at his right hand. There was a bit of muddy snow between his gloved fingers, but nothing else. ‘I dropped it!’

  ‘Better find it then,’ said the voice from his pocket.

  Trev rummaged about in the snow with numb hands. His woollen gloves were wet and doing nothing to protect him from the cold. He ignored the burning sensation in his fingertips and carried on digging into the snowdrift. If he didn’t find his vapour weapon quickly, cold hands were going to be the very least of his concerns.

  The ground shook. Trev looked up from his search and saw that the earth in front of the trees was shifting and cracking. The disturbance spread out from the wooded area, moving towards him.

  ‘Here it comes,’ said the pocket-voice. ‘I think you’ve pissed it off.’

  Run run run run run, said Trev’s Inner Coward. It was good advice, but he wasn’t going to get far running through the deep snow and he’d be leaving behind his only means of defending himself. As stupid as it seemed, taking a stand was probably his best chance of survival.

  Assuming he could find the weapon he’d dropped.

  He threw himself back into the search, groping through the snow with both hands. They were so numb now Trev wasn’t sure he’d be able to grip the thing even if he did find it. Where the bloody hell was it? His fingers scrabbled across a variety of hidden objects: tree roots, stones, clumps of frozen grass. But no ancient weapons.

  ‘Er, Trev…’ said the pocket-voice.

  He looked up again. The disturbance in the earth was almost on top of him.

  ‘Oh bollocks,’ he said.

  With a grinding roar the ground bulged upwards into a mound, shedding snow and leaf-litter as it grew. The last time this had happened Trev had been standing on top of it, which had led to his unscheduled flight. On that occasion the earth had sunk down again but that wasn’t what was happening now. The eruption of soil and rock continued to swell until it was above Trev’s head.

  He stepped backwards. The snow dragged at his legs, reminding him that trying to run was pointless. The rising mound of earth began to change shape, flattening, lengthening and extending strange protrusions. Twigs and clods of frozen soil rained down on Trev while he gritted his teeth and kicked at the snow in a last desperate attempt to find his weapon.

  A massive shadow blotted out the moonlight. Trev looked up. Above him towered a huge creature made of earth, rock and vegetation. He gaped at it. The thing was a quadruped, maybe thirty feet tall, and its massive head sprouted a pair of sweeping, viciously-pointed antlers. Eyes like pools of black oil stared down at the cringing human below.

  ‘Huh,’ said the pocket-voice. ‘So that’s what an earth elemental looks like. A giant stag. Pretty cool, eh?’

  Trev didn’t reply. “Cool” wasn’t the expression that was uppermost in his mind when he looked at the creature. “Menacing”, yes, or possibly “intimidating”. Or maybe “arse-clenchingly terrifying”. But definitely not “cool”.

  The stag opened its mouth and bellowed.

  The sound was like nothing Trev had ever heard. It seemed to come from deep within the earth, as if Satan had gathered every foghorn in the world down there and then set all them off together. Trev clapped his hands over his ears. He felt the ground vibrate and his teeth rattle. The sound rose in an eye-watering crescendo before dying away.

  There was a pause. The elemental turned its gaze back to Trev. He took his hands from his ears, which were ringing like a group of hyperactive campanologists, and stared back.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  The stag dipped its head and swung one of its antlers at him. Trev had been expecting an attack – the creature’s thunderous bellow had, after all, hardly sounded like a friendly greeting – and threw himself aside. He landed on his front in the snow. A gust of freezing air struck him as the antler passed by.

  ‘Looks like you can manage this without my help,’ said the pocket-voice. ‘If anyone needs me, I’ll be somewhere far, far away.’

  Trev felt his passenger scramble free of his pocket. ‘Thanks for the support,’ he coughed, spitting out a mouthful of snow.

  He pushed himself up with his hands, looked up, and rolled to the side as the other antler came rushing out of the dark towards him. His elbow cracked on something hard under the snow. He swore and pushed away from it, feeling it slide across the frozen earth. It’s probably a stone, he thought, but just in case…

  Trev grabbed at the hidden object. It wasn’t a stone. It was a dagger, the handle worn smooth with age and hard use. Trev clutched it in his numb fist and lurched to his feet again. Grinning, he brandished the weapon at the looming elemental. Given the relative sizes of the weapon and Trev’s opponent it would’ve seemed a futile gesture at the best of times; but given also that the dagger had no blade, it looked downright ludicrous.

  So ludicrous, in fact, that the giant creature stopped swishing its antlers and stared down at Trev in bemusement.

  ‘Right,’ Trev shouted up at it. ‘Are you going to behave yourself, or what?’

  The elemental cocked its head to one side, moonlight glinting off the points of its antlers, which appeared to be formed of
solid quartz. For a second Trev thought the creature was actually considering his question, then it bellowed again and stepped towards him.

  ‘Thought not,’ said Trev.

  He stood his ground and frowned in concentration. With a flash of crackling blue energy, a glowing spectral blade flared into life from the dagger’s handle. Trev dropped into a crouch as the elemental dipped its head and swung its antlers at him once more. At the last moment he rolled to the side, coming up onto his feet again in time to lash out with the dagger. The blue blade sliced through the bottom part of the antler as it went past, taking off two of the points. They disintegrated back into earth and chunks of stone before even hitting the ground.

  The giant stag reared back, shocked that the tiny creature below had somehow damaged it. Trev flipped the dagger from one hand to the other and raised an eyebrow. All his fear and doubt had disappeared, suppressed by the vapour weapon’s influence. Not only that, the phantom blade was giving him a mental upload of a lifetime’s worth of fighting skills. This was useful, as Trev made his living selling houses and knew as much about knife-fighting as he did about quantum mechanics.

  And he couldn’t even spell “quantum mechanics”.

  The elemental’s moment of shock was short-lived, and it struck out with one of its front legs. Trev was already moving, sliding aside and taking a chunk out of the beast’s hoof. The elemental staggered as it put the damaged foot back down, but more rock and earth flowed up into the limb to repair it.

  Trev dodged between the creature’s legs, landing several quick blows with the dagger as he went. The stag swivelled its head and turned on the spot, trying to keep track of him. Trev kept moving. He reasoned that if the thing didn’t know where he was, it would be difficult to attack him. As a strategy, it had a couple of minor flaws. Firstly, he was reliant on the vapour weapon, and as that ran off his finite reserves of psychic energy, it was going to fail him sooner or later. The second problem was his physical endurance, which was likely to fail him before the vapour weapon did. His day job mostly involved sitting at a desk talking about freeholds, south-facing gardens and damp-proof courses, which hadn’t really prepared him for fighting mythical creatures in the snow.

  These issues meant that Trev was living on a small amount of borrowed time, which was going to get even smaller if the elemental worked out that it could just sit on him while he was underneath it. He avoided a flailing hoof and risked a look at the tree-line.

  ‘Any time you’re ready, mate!’ he shouted.

  ‘The trees!’ The voice floated back to him out of the darkness. ‘It has to be in the trees!’

  ‘Arse-cabbage,’ Trev growled, realising he’d forgotten that part of the plan. Although calling it a “plan” was probably doing it too much credit; Trev lamented that, once again, he’d failed to run for the hills as soon as people started using phrases like “you won’t have any problems” or “this should be straightforward enough”. He suspected that those were the sort of words that had sent countless people to an early grave.

  He weaved his way between the stag’s back legs and made a break for the trees. He didn’t dare shut off his vapour weapon because without its calming influence he’d probably have had a panic attack, so there was no chance of getting a sneaky head start on the huge creature. Instead he had to run as if illuminated by a blue spotlight. Another ear-splitting bellow from behind him confirmed that he hadn’t been difficult to spot.

  The ground trembled as the elemental set off after him. Trev swore and shunted some of his psychic energy into his legs, giving himself a bit of extra speed. He reached the trees just in time and ducked between the trunks, shutting off the vapour weapon to conceal his position. Immediately a wave of fear swept over him and he began to shake. He hid behind a tree and peered around it, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

  The elemental had stopped at the tree-line. It was large enough to smash its way between the trees if it wanted to, but it obviously didn’t. It simply stood there, staring into the darkness.

  ‘It won’t damage the trees if it can avoid it,’ said a soft voice nearby.

  Trev jumped and banged his head against the tree. ‘Thanks for that, you twat,’ he hissed.

  Staring at him from behind a tree was a burly man with short blond hair and a ruddy complexion. Under normal circumstances he’d have been all but invisible in the darkness, but he was faintly illuminated by a soft white glow emanating from the base of the tree. Trev could see that the man’s bare hands were pressed against the trunk, and it almost looked as if his fingertips had sunk into the bark. But that was just a trick of the light, surely?

  ‘Sorry,’ the man said. He had an unmistakable south Wales accent. ‘You’re doing a good job so far, but you’ve got to lure it into the wood or this thing’s not going to work.’

  ‘It can’t fit into the wood, Cled,’ Trev said. ‘Haven’t you seen the size of the bloody thing?’

  ‘Just show yourself,’ said Cled. ‘It’ll soon come in after you.’

  Trev gave him a doubtful look and considered his options, which didn’t take long. He could do as Cled asked, and probably get killed by the elemental. Or he could make a run for it, and probably get killed by the elemental. Or he could stay cowering behind a tree, and probably get nagged to death by Cled.

  Yeah, life was good.

  ‘I could be in the pub right now, I hope you realise that,’ he said.

  Trev grimaced and stepped out from behind the tree. The vapour weapon whooshed into life and his fear subsided. He pointed at the elemental.

  ‘Oi you,’ he said. ‘Come in here and let’s settle this, you big earthy tosser.’

  The elemental didn’t respond, other than to cock its huge head very slightly to one side.

  ‘Well, that was excruciating,’ remarked the pocket-voice, which was now emanating from the shadows at the base of a nearby tree. ‘I think even the giant, unfeeling monster is embarrassed for you.’

  ‘What happened to being somewhere far, far away?’ asked Trev.

  ‘I underestimated the depth of the snow and overestimated the length of my legs.’

  Trev smiled. ‘In that case you’d better hope I don’t get killed, because it’ll be a bloody long walk back to Brackenford otherwise.’

  ‘Noted,’ said the pocket-voice, with a sigh. ‘I’m cheering for you, chief.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Trev. He was still watching the elemental, which showed no sign of coming after him. ‘Why’s it just standing there?’

  ‘Try damaging one of the trees,’ the pocket-voice said.

  Trev frowned, but reached up and sliced a few twigs off the nearest tree. The elemental made a deep rumbling sound and stamped one of its front hooves in annoyance. Emboldened, Trev sliced off the end of a branch. The giant stag’s agitation increased. Then when Trev peeled off a long strip of bark from the trunk, something unexpected happened.

  The beast began to shrink.

  ‘It’s getting smaller,’ Trev said, showcasing his formidable powers of observation. The stag was sinking back into the ground, its antlers retracting as it dwindled away. In just a few seconds there was a much smaller shape standing where the massive creature had been. No longer impeded by its size, it stepped forwards into the trees. Trev held up his weapon, trying to get a look at his new adversary. As it closed in on him, he realised what it was.

  ‘It’s a horse,’ he said, puzzled.

  ‘Weird,’ said the pocket-voice. ‘Horses aren’t scary. They’re just cows with delusions of grandeur.’

  The elemental stopped and stared at Trev down a narrow corridor in the trees. It lowered its head. A horn of milky-white crystal emerged from the thing’s forehead. It was maybe two feet long and serrated along its edges.

  ‘Oh right, a unicorn,’ said the pocket-voice.

  A second horn appeared alongside the first.

  ‘OK, it’s a bicorn,’ said the pocket-voice. ‘Or should that be a two-nicorn?’

  A third horn app
eared, a few inches below the other two.

  ‘A tricorn?’ said the pocket-voice. ‘That seems like overkill, if I’m honest.’

  The elemental tossed its head at Trev. Its front hooves scraped at the frozen earth.

  ‘Er,’ said Trev.

  The creature charged him.

  Two

  The tricorn was fast. It was on Trev in a blur of crunching hooves and glittering crystal before he had time to think. Fortunately the vapour weapon was augmenting his reflexes and he was able to dodge aside as the angry beast thundered past.

  ‘Olé!’ called the pocket-voice.

  The tricorn turned back for another run. Trev expected the creature to struggle with its footing on the frozen ground but instead of skidding and sliding, it swung gracefully around as if it were following a set of rails.

  It’s an earth elemental, you pillock, Trev thought. It’s not likely to trip over its own feet, is it?

  The same couldn’t be said for Trev himself. Faced with the sure-footedness of his opponent, he suddenly felt as if the ground beneath him was as slick as a skating rink. Mud, snow and dead leaves were a treacherous combination underfoot. In an atypical piece of forward planning Trev had worn his one pair of hiking boots, but the soles were so clogged up with chunks of the countryside he wasn’t getting much grip from them. He was further inconvenienced by his feet, which were almost as numb as his hands.

  He scrabbled for firm footing as the elemental charged him. There was nothing subtle about its attack; it simply ploughed straight at Trev with its head down. The deadly horns gleamed in the light from the vapour weapon, their points lined up with Trev’s chest. If he slipped, or mistimed his dodge, he’d be very neatly – and very fatally – skewered.

  Trev leaned slightly to his left before throwing himself to his right. The galloping tricorn was fooled by the feint, but only just. It thundered past Trev in a rush of frigid air. He carried too much momentum from the dodge to stay on his feet, so he turned the move into a shoulder roll. The hard ground jarred him but he managed to end up in a crouch with the vapour weapon held in front of him. His breath puffed out in a cloud.