THE GHOSTLY FIGURES halted before Ulrem, who stood clutching Vasara’s sword in one hand and his bleeding side with the other.

He wondered if he should kneel before these grim figures, but knew he would not. He kept no gods, and feared them not, for they were distant and unknowable. But these figures were not. On their steeds, they towered over him, each easily twice the size of a man. Yet, they shifted, as did the lights within them, and suddenly he found they were no larger than he was himself.

The foremost rider slid down from his mount. He wore a winged circlet upon his death’s head, the certain mark of a king. His armor was resplendent, a finely tooled cuirass graven with three crows on the breast. He wore beneath that a coat of mail that gleamed like dawnlight, and upon each scale was a rune that crackled with its own energy. A heavy bow was slung over his back, and a sword hung at his hip. The pommel, Ulrem noted, was the familiar half-circle he might have found in any western kingdom. The sword of a warrior.

Not so strange after all, he thought. He raised his chin, glaring at the figures. Those who waited upon their mounts, glowing with weird inner light, couched lance and shouldered sword, watching in silence.

The king of the riders spoke with a voice like thunder, with the force of law and prophecy: “Imaahis, my brother! You awaken to walk the mortal lands!”

Ulrem clutched his head with both hands. His skull threatened to split open at that thunderous word. IMAAHIS. The name surged through him like a blast of lightning. The ring grew hot, beyond painful as something vast awoke within it. He staggered, and only scarcely kept his feet. The skull-faced rider and his legion watched with dead, glittering eyes.

“Have you forgotten your name again, Imaahis?”

Ulrem groaned. He knew that name: who had not heard the stories of the Conquering Flame? But spoken by this grim specter, it was more than a name. It was a summons, a goading challenge plunged like a knife into Ulrem’s very soul.

Imaahis! The God-King! The skies once thundered to hear my name! Scorching light drove up from the ring, wracking his spine, trying to possess him. I will walk again! Give it to me!

“I…” Ulrem gasped, vision swimming. His eyes felt as if they would burst. He pushed back against that force, curling his hands into fists until his nails drew blood from his palms and his very bones ached. “I am not Imaahis.” Saying the name threatened to drive him from his own mind.

The skeletal king watched him with a hand upon the hilt of his sword. “Will you ride with us as you once did, Imaahis?”

“Stop!” Ulrem roared, wracked with agony. “I am Ulrem! I am the Slayer!” A ripple of laughter passed amongst the spectral ranks. Furious, he snarled, “I am not Imaahis!”

“Are you not? You bear Imaahis’ ring, Inheritor. I remember when you forged it and bound yourself to the cycle. And I grieve for you every night, brother. For all of you: the High Table was made less for your absence.” There was a note of mourning as the skeletal king looked at the corpses on the ground. Little of what he said made sense to Ulrem, but he heard also scorn, and that made his gray eyes narrow. “And for what? These fleeting embers? But I rehash an old argument, Imaahis! Return to the skies with me! Ride wild and free once again! Rally back the days of the golden sun!”

Ulrem groaned. The wave of pain was passing, the echo of the ring settling back down. It smoldered, angry at the rider’s barbs. He glared up at the tall king, and at his spectral host. They shimmered with the strangeness of the northern lights. And no, not just men. He saw among them women armored for war, their hair tied up, or shaved, or braided in tight rows. And he saw others, too: the slender-boned faces of Eridesh with their knifing ears and eagle eyes; and the blocky, squat forms of troichish warriors, holding lances bedecked with witch-fire pennants. Behind them towered giants upon mammoths, and the scaled faces of dragonspawn, of whom Ulrem had only ever heard tell in ancient song.

“Who are you?” he said, taking it all in, mazed by this bewitching sight.

The king answered for one and all: “We are the pale riders, brother! The wild hunt! I am Aerthil, King of the Northern Lights, Master of the Hunt!”

Ulrem grit his teeth against a resurgent wave of fury from the ring. “I have no brothers,” he snarled.

Aerthil King regarded him coolly. “Not yet,” he said. “But in time. You always remember, eventually.”

“What do you want?”

The skeletal king laughed, and it had the sound of old graves within it. “You have forgotten much, Imaahis. You speak with the tongue of an animal.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Very well. Then I will call you by the title you won by rights: Lion-Lord. Come, ride with us.”

“Where?”

“To hunt the queen of the night! My beloved moon awaits me, as she always does. Perhaps with your fearsome might, I may catch her yet.”

“No,” Ulrem said flatly. A tarnished fragment of memory grasped from far beyond the shores of his mind knew that to accept the fiend’s offer would be to enslave himself to Aerthil’s will. Numberless years had the skull-faced king raced across the sky, cloaked in his witch-fire, chasing his betrothed. And ever would he chase her, until the end of time. Those whom he convinced to join never left his host, unless… The truth of it evaded him.

“Come now, brother mine! We saved you tonight, though were you any other man, I would have ridden you down for breaking the old law. Can you not repay one kindness in turn? Ride with me as we once did, before the Starless Age. Long has my heart desired to hear your laughter wild and free!”

A bargain, echoed the ring. And Ulrem knew from whom that sullen thought had drifted. Brooding Imaahis, who had forged the very ring on his finger, whose soul was welded to the ring. The echo was quiet now, guarded and banked. He knew these things like a man suddenly recalled the memory of a drunken murder, stumbling into the truth unprepared and shocked. He gasped with the strength of the revelation.

“I must be away from here,” Ulrem said slowly. “I will make you a wager.”

The leering skull sank towards him. The fire that illumined it shifted from green to pink to yellow, and his eyes glittered devilishly. “A wager?”

Ulrem was thinking on his feet. There was so much he did not know. Long had he wandered searching, seeking to learn the truth of the ring he bore. Even the wise men who sat like kings in their pampered schools had known little more than he had, and in all his travels he had gained no more than shreds of remote memory shrouded in song and legend. Now he listened to the echoes within him. Echoes out of time. He heard them like the notes of some careful melody, like tapping feet in a deadly dance. This was a path trodden many times before, in many places. Whether Aerthil King knew it or not, Ulrem did not care. He listened, and said what he was told to say.

“Give me your strongest rider, and I will wrestle him,” said Ulrem. He thought about Kalric, and the Alron warriors. The king’s avarice would not fade at the sight of twelve more dead men. Already, Kalric had fields of them to feed his vanity. There would never be an end to it. Ulrem was sick of these lands. He desired to be far from the Alron traitors. Of Orla, he thought not at all, for that was easiest. Squaring his jaw, he said, “And then you will deliver me from here.”

“And if you lose, Imaahis?” Aerthil King said, lurid fire rising in the dark sockets of his fleshless face. Ulrem ignored the jibe, though it crashed like a thunderbolt behind his eyes. Anger stirred within him, eager to wipe the insolence from the lord of the hunt, but he quelled it. Barely.

“Then I will ride with you.”

“Ha!” the skeletal king shouted. “A fine wager! Would that we had more time. I met another of our brothers, and he offered me a wager, too. You know me too well.”

“Another? An Inheritor?” Ulrem said, seizing on the question. “Who?”

The skull leaned forward. “Hejmdir the Silver-Eyed. He wears the skin of an Imidian inquisitor, hunting hellspawn and shadows. I will speak no more of him, for he had the better of me, the little devil! Already we have lost much of the night. My betrothed awaits, does she not?” Behind him, the legion of phantoms shook their weapons and roared approval. “Very well, brother mine. I accept your wager! You shall ride beside me at the head of my column.” Suddenly, the king unslung the bow from his back. He held it out to Ulrem. “I have carried this for years beyond number. I return it now, to you.”

Unbidden, Ulrem’s fingers reached out to touch the thing. It was formed of a single spar of wood so dark it swallowed the light. It had a panther’s sleek grace to it, a deadly promise formed into a simple curve, capped by shining silver. Sparks crackled, leaping between the beautifully carven wood and his fingertips. He snatched his hand back, suddenly suspicious.

“After.”

At that, Aerthil laughed. “Send forth Iormon the Mountain!” he called, raising a gauntleted hand.

The ranks parted, allowing a massive figure to emerge. A giant, surely, riding atop a mammoth speckled in starlight. Like the others, he was skeletal, and glowed with an inner light. Even so, Ulrem could see the strength in the shape and weight of his bones. Slowly, he climbed down from his mount, and bowed before his king.

“We dare not tarry long, Iormon,” Aerthil said. As the giant lumbered forward, Ulrem could feel the impatience in the Master of the Hunt even from a distance, and yet there was an eagerness and excitement that rode throughout all the ranks. They leaned in to watch, even as their king’s pale face turned to stare at the moon.

“I was old when the mountains were young,” the giant rumbled at Ulrem. “Long has it been since I looked upon you, Imaahis, Lion-Lord!”

Ulrem drove Vasara’s sword into the sodden earth, and fell into a fighter’s crouch. The giant laughed at him and lunged.

It was as if the weight of a mountain crashed down upon him. Ulrem gasped under the sheer force of it, and by raw willpower and naked grit kept his feet. He drove all his thew upward, trying to hold the colossal force back, one man against a typhoon—and felt himself collapsing. The giant’s hands, far larger than his own, wrapped around his wrists, crushing his forearms. Slowly, they were driven back to his shoulders. The king climbed back up upon his night-black steed, watching cruelly as Ulrem was forced back, seething and grinding his teeth. He felt the fire of his ring rising, a furnace blast of power fighting to free itself. He denied it. Not yet. Despite his pain and exhaustion, never had he seen a giant before. Never before had he set his own mettle to such awesome strength.

He pivoted suddenly, straining to turn his opponent’s strength to his advantage, and though Iormon toppled forward, he did not release Ulrem. The man was ripped around suddenly through the air and slammed down into the mud. The wind was crushed out of him. The giant loomed, huge hands reaching for his throat. Desperate, Ulrem drove upwards with a sandaled foot, kicking at Iormon’s chest.

The giant sneered into Ulrem’s face and said, “Your hand slew the last of my sons in the southern sands. Do you remember? This is how it felt, killer!”

“You’re fucking mad!” Ulrem could feel Iormon being prised away slowly. He ignored the sharp stones that dug into his back as he thrust, and the searing pain in his side where blood flowed freely. He ignored the exhaustion, pushing beyond it. But the flesh was flagging.

“Why do you hide from me, Imaahis?” Iormon growled. His grip slipped, though it felt as if he might tear Ulrem’s arm off at the shoulder. The giant let go and backed off a step, giving Ulrem space to roll to his feet. The man was gasping now, drenched with sweat. He knew he could not defeat Iormon as he was. Even well rested, he was outmatched. It was all he could do to hold the creature back from crushing him.

“Come on then!” Ulrem raged. Iormon leaped forward again.

This time Ulrem seized the ring’s power. White-gold fire surged through him, burning away the doubt, the exhaustion, excoriating the pain. He roared, and the thunder of it rolled across the moor. Iormon laughed to hear it, and the legion of the damned cheered as Ulrem caught the giant by the wrist this time, forcing the brute’s arm back. Iormon got a hand on his back and tried to crush him, but Ulrem’s other arm found the giant’s leg.

It was as thick as his chest was broad, but his fingers dug into the meat and found purchase. Iormon howled, but Ulrem didn’t hear it. He heard only the drums of war that pounded in his ears, the lightning in his blood, and Aerthil King’s menacing, cold laughter: the sound of unalloyed vindication.

This is what he wanted, came the echo. Some trick is at play—ever was Aerthil a laughing liar! Beware! But Ulrem hardly heard it. Straining with every fiber of his being, until he felt he would sheer himself in two, he hauled Iormon up and over and slammed the giant onto his back.

Fired now, little more than a channel for the raging torrent of fury and power, Ulrem leaped upon Iormon’s chest. The giant raised his fists to bat Ulrem aside. He caught one of these with both hands, and forced it back, slowly, locking the giant’s shoulder to the ground. Iormon’s other fist rose as if to strike, and then hammered the earth instead.

“Enough!” The skeletal king cried. “The Mountain is bested! Imaahis is victorious!” The legion roared in answer.

Yet it wasn’t enough. The enemy lay before him, conquered and mastered. The kill was his. The fire rose ever higher, threatening to consume him. The kill called, sucked his breath away, strangled out all other thoughts. He raised his fist for what would surely be a killing blow. Golden eyes looked out from within him: a proud, regal face that was echoed by all the kings of men. They commanded him to slay his enemy. Long had the giants feasted on the tribes of men. Those eyes remembered, even if Ulrem did not, and they felt no mercy for this revenant of the old blood.

Ulrem shook with the force of holding it back. Never before had he tasted so much of the ring’s power at once. Starlight ran through his veins. Indomitable might was his, should he strike his foe down. He felt the promise of the lightning, the glittering of golden blood and a crown upon his head in whose shadow lay the whole world.

Take it, echoed the master of the ring. We will walk as the Conquering Flame, and light the world!

“Well, Imaahis, you show your fangs at last!” Ulrem heard the skeletal king say. The voice was distant, goading. “But will you hide in the flesh of a man, or seize your godhood?”