Frostborn: The Undying Wizard Read Online Free

sitting at their roots, moss hanging from their branches like long gray beards. The stench of rotting vegetation was everywhere, and Calliande wondered why anyone would live in such a place. Still, she supposed food would be abundant, with the fish and the lizards and the birds. And the marshes would make for a defensible home. A large army would have trouble moving through this terrain, and a small, determined force could inflict hell upon any invaders…
    She blinked. How did she know that with such certainty? Had she led armies in the past?
    The memory hovered just out of reach, cloaked by the mists choking her mind, and she almost cursed in frustrated fury.
    “Do you smell that?” said Kharlacht, his voice cutting into her dark thoughts.
    “Aye,” said Ridmark, and Calliande caught it as well, a worse scent underlying the odor of rotting vegetation and stagnant water.
    Rotting flesh. 
    Even in the thirty-two days since she had awakened, Calliande had smelled it too many times not to recognize it. 
    “It’s coming from there,” said Ridmark, pointing at the trees.
    They kept walking. The trees thinned, and a fortress rose from the earth.
    Or the ruins of a fortress, anyway. Once it had been a massive round tower of stone ringed by an earthwork wall. Now the tower’s roof had collapsed, and the marsh had flooded the courtyard, reeds and grass growing within. Dozens of small mounds encircled the wall, covered in grass and small trees.
    And many of the mounds looked disturbed.
    “Burial mounds,” said Kharlacht.
    “Aye,” said Ridmark. “Like the ones outside of Dun Licinia.”
    “Some chieftain or petty orcish king made his stronghold here,” said Kharlacht, pointing at the ruined fortress, “and buried his chief warriors and their slaves around him.”
    Something shivered against Calliande’s magical senses.
    “Ridmark,” she said. “There was powerful dark magic here. Recently.”
    “Today?” said Ridmark.
    “Within a few hours,” she said.
    “And an undead creature, brought from its grave through necromancy,” said Ridmark, “would terrify a swamp drake. It would terrify any animal. They would know it was unnatural, and their instincts would tell them to flee.” 
    “Like the corpses Qazarl raised outside of Dun Licinia,” said Caius.
    Gavin shuddered. “Or the undead that Agrimnalazur raised against us.”
    “And the sort of creatures that Shadowbearer would use to hunt Calliande,” said Ridmark. “It seemed Rjalfur warned us true. We…”
    Dark magic blazed against Calliande’s senses.
    “Ridmark!” she said. “They’re coming. They’re…”
    But they had no need of her warning. 
    Dozens of dark forms burst from the fortress’s ruined gate. They were skeletal orcs, ragged tusks jutting from their jaws, moldering flesh still clinging to their bones. Ghostly blue fire danced up their limbs and flickered inside their eyes. The undead orcs held rusted weapons in their skeletal fists, swords and axes and maces, and some still wore armor and carried shields.
    “Calliande!” shouted Ridmark, but she had already begun the spell.
    When Shadowbearer’s undead kobolds had attacked at the ford of the River Moradel, she had struck back at them using her magic, blasting away the necromancy Shadowbearer had bound to their corpses. She had destroyed dozens of them, yet the effort had nearly exhausted her strength. If not for Ridmark’s intervention, she would have been killed.
    Yet it had taught her a valuable lesson. 
    She had bound her magic to his staff, giving it the power to harm undead creatures. And in doing so, she realized that enspelling the weapons of others was far, far easier than striking down the undead through raw force. 
    She needed to save her strength to face whoever had raised the undead.
    Calliande finished her spell and thrust out her hands. White light flared around her fingers, and the same white light glimmered around Ridmark’s staff. The head of Caius’s