The Spiders freed them. Baleron invited the Spiders to eat him while they could. “Look how tasty I am!” he cried, pinching the skin of his cheek. “Look at this flesh! So succulent!” They ignored him.
Grim-faced, Throgmar snatched the prince in a mighty talon and left the mountains for the black skies above. Baleron was glad to be rid of that gloomy place, but he shuddered at the thought of what terrors Throgmar had in mind for him. The Leviathan held him tight, but the prince’s armor protected him from the worst of it. Throgmar said little as he flew save occasionally to growl and curse Baleron under his breath.
The prince knew better than to plead for his life, though he realized he no longer wanted to die. Until now he hadn’t cared whether his quest for vengeance led to his death or not, but somewhere along the way, he wasn’t quite sure where, that had changed. Just the same, he feared what would happen should he live. The Wolf wasn’t done with him, and Baleron didn’t want to live long enough to further the Enemy’s designs more than he already had.
If he died in Oslog, would his soul be drawn to Gilgaroth—and, if so, would he be reunited with Rolenya’s soul in the eternal fires of Illistriv, the Second Hell?
He longed for it.
Rauglir—that terrible, wretched creature—had done one thing right: he’d shown the prince just how much he loved Rolenya, the real Rolenya.
Baleron thought of her as Worthrick Mountain loomed ahead. Throgmar’s great wings beat steadily, and his long bloated body rippled like that of an obese serpent through the air. His eyes glittered in hate. He said nothing as he landed on the snowy slope before the opening into the mountain, casting Baleron roughly upon the new-fallen snow that covered the melted slag made by the Worm’s fires hours before.
Gasping, the prince dragged himself to his feet, wobbling unsteadily. The igrith’s poisons still flowed in him.
“WE WILL PAY RESPECTS TO FELESTRATA,” said the dragon.
With an iron-hard fingernail, Throgmar flicked Baleron forward into the tunnel, and the prince flew through the air. He crashed against the cave wall and fell in a heap. He picked himself up, but more shakily this time.
“Bastard!”
Throgmar lowered his horned, whiskered, tusked and crested head—grayish hairs sprouting from around the crest and along his jaws and from his chin and below his nose, giving the illusion of a mustache and wispy beard. Smoke belched from his fanged maw and his twin nostrils.
“MURDERER,” he hissed.
He spat another column of flame at the prince. It smashed Baleron backwards and melted the snow that wind had blown inside, but it did no other harm save to knock Baleron around, and lay bruises on top of bruises and new scars on top of old.
Even more pained this time, the prince picked himself up, groaning.
“Do your worst,” he said, but his words sounded bolder than he felt. He felt as if he could topple over at any second. The exultation of revenge had left him, and he was weary and drained and full of supernatural venom.
Throgmar snorted flame. “I NEED NO INVITATION.”
He slithered forward and flicked the prince through the air again, and Baleron landed with a crunch in the middle of the large chamber where he’d slain Felestrata.
Coughing and aching, he rose to his feet yet again and turned to see the high-licking green flame still illuminating the cavern. Beside the fire stretched the long, sinewy form of the she-Worm. Her scales reflected the light strangely. It made Baleron think of sunlight on water, but this sun was green, and the water had scales. Red blood leaked from her mouth, and her body was utterly lifeless.
Black shadows danced on green walls.
“SHE COULD HAVE HAD LIFE EVERLASTING,” spoke Throgmar from behind him. “CAN YOU IMAGINE THE ENORMITY OF YOUR CRIME? CAN YOU IMAGINE STEALING ETERNITY?”
“I can—because I did,” snapped the prince, though inside he burned with shame. “Can you imagine spelling the doom of the world? Because that’s what you did!” Baleron lifted his visor and spat a bloody wad at the dragon’s clawed feet. “Darkspawn,” he cursed.
The Worm’s eyes blazed and fire wreathed his mouth.
“That’s right,” Baleron urged him. He put a hand on his visor, drawing attention to the fact that it was up, that his face was vulnerable. Though he was not certain, he believed that lifting the visor disabled the protection spell. “Go ahead. Burn me alive. It’s the only way this can end.”
Throgmar trembled in rage, but he wrestled himself under control and his fires died. He closed his mouth and it twisted into an evil smile.
“OH NO,” he said. “YOUR PUNISHMENT WILL BE MUCH MORE SEVERE THAN DEATH. I WILL HAVE YOU TORTURED FOR YEARS—FOR EONS.”
“You’ll have me tortured? You won’t do it yourself?”
“NO.”
“Why not?”
“BECAUSE I WOULD KILL YOU. YOU WOULD ANGER ME, AS YOU JUST DID, AND I WOULD ROAST YOU TO A CINDER. SO ... I WILL TAKE YOU TO HIM. MY FATHER. GILGAROTH.”
“No!”
“YES. HE WILL TEND TO YOUR TORTURE. IT IS WHERE HIS GREATEST TALENTS LIE. BESIDES, HE WILL WANT USE OF YOU EVENTUALLY, AS PART OF HIS PLAN, SO WHY NOT GIFT YOU TO HIM NOW AND HAVE HIS GRATITUDE? I WILL COME, FROM TIME TO TIME, AND OVERSEE YOUR PAIN, TO AID IN YOUR PUNISHMENT. MY ONLY HOPE IS THAT MY SIRE FINDS A WAY TO EXTEND YOUR LIFE SO THAT I MAY ENJOY YOUR TORMENT FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS TO COME. I HOPE YOU KEEP YOUR SANITY LONGER THAN THEY USUALLY DO. THEY GO MAD SO QUICKLY, IN MY FATHER’S CARE. I HOPE THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN TO YOU. IT WOULD BE FAR LESS SATISFYING.”
Baleron heard the finality in the dragon’s raspy voice and knew there was no way to talk his way out of this. In despair, he turned his back on Throgmar, not wanting the Betrayer to see his face, and it was then that the body of Felestrata did a strange thing.
Her great flickering form shifted, became wavy and indistinct, and suddenly was no more; in its place was the comparatively tiny body of a young woman—a human woman—unclad and lying in the same position as the dragon’s body had. The woman, like the dragon, was quite dead. Blood leaked from her mouth.
Throgmar sucked in a breath. “WHAT IS THIS?” He strode forwards, nearly crushing the prince in his haste to investigate.
Baleron dodged and made his own way forward. “What could it be?” he asked, half to himself. “A shapeshifter?”
As the details of the woman became clearer, shock rippled through him and he shook his head in confusion and incomprehension, blinking his eyes as though the image might change yet again.
It was Rolenya. The dead dragon had become a dead Rolenya.
Rolenya!
He rushed to her, knelt beside her, cradled her dark head on his lap. Her beautiful face, framed by black hair, looked unnaturally serene. Stroking her hair, tears welled up in him, and he wept bitterly.
“How can it be?” he asked.
Throgmar shrugged off his own confusion, or seemed to. He prodded the body gently, studying it.
“Get away from her, you monster!”
The dragon merely shot him a glance, then returned his attention to Rolenya/Felestrata.
“A TRICK,” he said. “BUT WHY?”
Baleron didn’t have an answer for him.
The Worm snorted and seemed to put the matter out of his mind. His manner suggested he felt that what could not be understood must not be dwelt upon.
He reached out a claw and snapped Baleron’s visor back down. His head lunged forwards and clamped down on the prince, seizing Baleron in his malodorous mouth. Baleron tried to fight him, but the dragon’s jaws were too strong.
Throgmar left the body, and the mystery surrounding it, and quit the chamber for the night outside. Snow slashed the air and piled up around his feet. He leapt into the air, leaving Worthrick Mountain and the rest of the range behind. He ascended the skies, rising above the clouds so that no snow touched them.
Then he began breathing fire.
Baleron, pinned by the dragon’s huge sharp teeth, could not move, could not wriggle free or even reach the Fanged Blade for assistance. Throgmar blew fire across him, and he screamed. The heat was terrible and scalding, yet the armor wouldn’t let it kill him or even disfigure him. He cried out in anguish, over and over, and if Throgmar heard the sounds he delighted in them as he bore his catch ever closer to Krogbur.
* * *
They reached the tower on the second day.
Throgmar passed through the scaly moat of his circling kindred and landed on the highest terrace, right below the layer of dark clouds that blotted out the heavens. He opened his mouth and deposited a reeling Baleron on the cold hard surface of the platform.
Woozy and only semi-conscious, Baleron tried to rise but could not find the strength. He was only vaguely aware that the fires had stopped. For the past two days his whole world had been fire.
Dragons wheeled about the Black Tower in their lethal screen, watching the two on the platform. Other Worms lounged on the thousands of terraces that sprouted from Krogbur, while more hung from the beams and ramparts, a dragon metropolis. How many had been brought over from Illistriv? And of the true dragons present, Baleron wondered how many were the Leviathan’s sons and daughters. Throgmar had claimed to be in Gilgaroth’s original brood of three; did that mean he’d sired a third of all that had come after? But did that math work out, if he had mated with one of the other Three? Or had their been a second batch bred to mate with? Still dizzy, Baleron could not hold the thought.
Footsteps.
Baleron craned his neck around to see the Dark One himself, Gilgaroth son of Lorg-jilaad, the Great Wolf, the Shadow, the Devourer, Sultan of Oslog, Breaker of the World ... he strode down the long black stairs Baleron had seen before, his footsteps resounding loudly but hollowly, and Baleron could feel each footfall in his bones.
Gilgaroth stopped at the base of the stairs, surveying Throgmar and his catch. Then, black capes swirling, eyes blazing from the living shadow that hid his features, he marched onto the terrace and thumped his sorcerous staff.
“SIRE,” Throgmar said, his head dipping in a tiny bow, though Baleron could see his distaste.
“Son,” replied the Dark Lord. “You bear a gift.”
“YES—AND NO. THIS HUMAN ... MURDERED FELESTRATA. DO NOT PRETEND TO BE INNOCENT IN THIS; YOU LOVE TO SEE MY PAIN TOO MUCH FOR ME TO BELIEVE OTHERWISE, AND THERE WAS SOMETHING ... STRANGE ... ABOUT THE BODY. IT BORE YOUR STAMP.” He paused, collecting his thoughts. “BUT IN THE END IT WAS THIS MAN THAT SLEW HER. I WANT HIM ... PUNISHED. YOU OWE ME, FATHER. BROTHER. I FIRED GLORIFEL AND DESTROYED THE CASTLE, WEAKENING THE CITY’S LEADERSHIP EVEN AS YOUR AGENTS OPENED THE GATE. UNGIER WAS ATTACKING EVEN AS I LEFT.”
“No!” gasped Baleron, but they ignored him.
“NOW I ASK YOU FOR SOMETHING,” Throgmar continued. “I HAVE NEVER ASKED ANYTHING OF YOU BEFORE, BUT I ASK THIS: MAKE BALERON IMMORTAL AND TORTURE HIM FOREVER. IF YOU DO, I WILL BE YOUR TOOL.”
Gilgaroth inclined his head. “If it pleases your vanity to have me do you this favor, then consider it granted. I have been torturing Baleron here for years, and I will not stop now. I will not make him immortal, however. That is not of my design. Go, son, return to your hole. Await my bidding. It will not be long in coming.”
“FAREWELL FOR NOW, PRINCE,” Throgmar told Baleron. “I WILL BE BACK TO VISIT YOU.”
Baleron tore off his helm. “I enjoyed killing her! I’d do it again if I could, but this time I’d do it slower!” He laughed sadistically, wildly.
Throgmar scowled, but he did not take the bait, though smoke steamed from his scaly nostrils.
“YOU ARE PATHETIC.”
“You’re an overgrown grass snake!”
Throgmar bellowed angrily. His face ticced in rage.
“Enough!” snapped Gilgaroth. “You two are infants, and now I will have to separate you. Throgmar, go!”
The Worm sneered, turned his back on them both, and took wing. He flew through the moat and away.
“Good riddance,” Baleron spat after him.
He turned his gaze to the black, towering figure of Gilgaroth. Rain lashed the terrace and ran in rivulets down the Omkaroggen’s spiked helm and bladed armor, what Baleron could see of it through the swirling darkness that shrouded him. His eyes glowed with hellfire, the only part of his true self that was visible.
He and Baleron regarded each other, and thunder rumbled across the tower. Lightning flickered down, and its harsh light reflected off the Dark One’s wet and shiny carapace. Baleron shuddered, and it wasn’t due to the gusts of freezing wind. Inside his helmet he was hot and panting from his days of fire, and the metallic sound of the raindrops plinking off his armor filled his ears.
“Ah, Baleron,” said Gilgaroth, breaking the silence. “It has been too long since we’ve last met.”
“Not long enough,” Baleron said, thinking: So it WAS him in the Aragst!
Suddenly, Baleron made his decision. Without another word, he rolled toward the edge of the terrace, meaning to fling himself off it and spin away down into the abyss ...
Gilgaroth reached out a clawed hand and, although he didn’t touch Baleron, Baleron stopped, long rain-filled inches from the edge.
Worse, he began to be drawn towards the Dark One, who held out his hand toward him. Baleron screamed. Gilgaroth loomed darkly, huge and mountainous. He must be twenty-five feet tall or more.
Pulled by some unseen force, Baleron was jerked from the floor and dangled in the air, the Beast’s armored hand about his throat, or what would fit of it. Baleron struggled futilely, his own hands wrapping about Gilgaroth’s gauntlet and trying to pry the armored forefinger and thumb from around his neck, but it was impossible.
“Your life is mine,” said Gilgaroth. “So is your death.”
He flung Baleron down to the floor, where Baleron gasped for breath, groaning: in the fall he’d sprained something in his leg.
Glaring up at the towering figure, he said, “Tell me something. Why did Felestrata change into Rolenya?”
For a moment, the Dark One stayed silent, and Baleron was on the point of believing his question ignored when Gilgaroth said, “Revenge is a sword with no handle; you cannot wield it without getting cut yourself.”
He flicked his wrist, and a gaggle of Borchstogs emerged from the interior of the tower and surrounded Baleron, their eyes greedy, their hands clenching and unclenching.
“Bastard!” Baleron shouted at the Dark One.
Rain hissed off Gilgaroth’s armor. “I have a promise to keep.”
He wheeled about and marched once more up the stairs. The Borchstogs seized Baleron roughly and carried him away into darkness.
* * *
They bore him deep into the fetid bowels of the tower, stripped him of everything, even Shelir’s charm, and flung him into a dark pit, where they left him. He missed Rondthril immediately, as without it he felt even more naked than he was. He explored the walls of the pit with his fingertips—smooth and sturdy, unlike those at Gulrothrog.
And he was not alone.
Scorpions and other creatures crept out of their holes and bit and stung him, and no matter how many he stomped and crushed, more seemed to find him. It was dank and dark here in this hole, the walls slimy, and the only noises his labored breathing and the scuttling of his attackers. Sometimes he screamed when something with particularly strong venom found him, and his screams seemed to echo forever.
Throgmar had done this to him. How he hated that Worm. Someday ...
Of course, it was as much his fault as the dragon’s, really. He’d been so consumed by the need for revenge that he hadn’t cared about his own fate. So here he was, and he deserved it. He’d killed Felestrata. He had wielded the sword and been bloodied, just as Gilgaroth had said.
Very well, he decided. He’d face it like a man.
He stayed in the pit for several days. There was plenty of moisture on the walls for him to lick, and for sustenance he had but to grab a handful of bugs and vermin. So much for royal dignity.
The first day, he raged up at his captors and beat at the walls, and his voice grew hoarse from yelling. But after he made his resolution to face his punishment head on, a strange sort of apathy overcame him. He endured the stings and bites stoically, hardly registering them.
Perhaps seeing this, the Borchstogs hauled him up from the dank well on the third day and chained him up in one of the torture chambers, his feet bound to the floor and his hands to the ceiling so that he hung suspended in between like an animal carcass about to be flayed.
The largest Borchstog, over seven feet tall, black as tar, red eyes alight, neared Baleron, studying him, breathing in the prince’s stench, staring him in the eyes, and letting the prince do the same for him.
“Roschk ul Ravast,” breathed the Borchstog.
“Roschk ul Ravast!” said the others.
Baleron waited. He’d been tortured before. Grimly, he wondered how Oslogon techniques of the Art would differ from Oksilon practices.
The only sound in the chamber came from the breathing of its occupants. In the hot, stifling air, even the Borchstogs sweated, their black flesh glistening.
“I am Ghrozm,” said the leader in Havensril, wanting to make sure he was understood. He was so close Baleron could feel (and smell) the Borchstog’s breath on his face.
“I’m Baleron,” the prince said, smiling, his voice light. “Well met.”
Ghrozm ignored the flippancy. This was important to him. He wanted to be heard. “I am priest,” he said. “Sacred calling is Art. Yes. When hear ul Ravast come Krogbur, we hold ... “ He struggled. “Competition! Yes. Hold competition. Who has honor to bring Art Most Sacred, ul Undracost, to Great Savior.” His chest swelled proudly. “It ... is I. I, Ghrozm. Twenty-two did I kill. Some knew I a hundred, two hundred, year. But with own hands did slay them I. Aye, bathed in their blood did Ghrozm. Wrapped their entrails about me like covered in serpents.” He smiled hideously. “All for this. All ... for ... you.” Then, lowly, worshipfully, red eyes gleaming, he said, “Roschk ul Ravast!”
Fear knotted in Baleron’s stomach. Gone was his nonchalance. The Borchstogs of Gulrothrog had never seemed to regard torture with such ... reverence. With dread he watched as Ghrozm gestured at an underling, who wheeled over a tray laden with instruments of ul Undracost. Sharp and smooth, or jagged, or blunt, and more, many more, with such diversity it stunned Baleron, and he knew not what many instruments were for, but all flamed in the light of the brazier.
Lovingly, Ghrozm selected what looked like a set of scissors.
Baleron felt himself trying to twist away. No, he told himself. I will face this like a man. I dug this hole, and in it I will lie, and likely die.
Ghrozm touched the cold metal of the scissors to Baleron’s abdomen. Baleron shivered.
Seeing this, Ghrozm smiled. “Yes,” he breathed. “Yessss.” There was a tremor in his voice now, so moved was he by what he was about to do.
His scissors pinched a small fold of Baleron’s skin between their shining legs. Ghrozm said, “I keep this sacred flesh for rest of days. Preserve it. Worship it. Pass it on to Firstborn.”
He sliced. Baleron screamed.
* * *
They tortured him. Savagely. The pain was incredible. He’d known this was coming, but it was still a shock. The Borchstogs lashed him with whips and burnt him with red-hot pokers. His flesh hissed and smoked, and parts of it grew black. Red welts rose all over him.
He steeled himself against the pain. He tried to accept it as part of his due.
He screamed under the Borchstogs’ ministrations and pulled at his chains, but it did no good.
Ghrozm, Baleron’s blood dripping from his glistening black body, laughed, and wept, and laughed again.
They kept Baleron in the torture chamber for days, applying him to various instruments and machines—stretching him, bending him, suffocating him. Sometimes they would peel a thin slice of flesh from him. They insulted his body in a thousand ways. They were masters at their craft, Artists without peer.
He still fought them, but increasingly this was just a physical response he couldn’t help. He was building walls between himself and the reality that surrounded him, that penetrated him, and his mind drifted further and further away.
He dreamt of Shelir, and Sophia, but mainly he dreamt of Rolenya. All shame had been driven out of him. After all he’d endured and was still enduring, he would take his pleasure where he could and not feel troubled about it.
When he wasn’t dreaming of people he knew, and people he’d lost, he thought of Havensrike and Larenthi and the rest of the Crescent Union. Had Gilgaroth attacked any of the other states yet? Had he crushed Glorifel, or was he still striving to destroy its leadership first? What had become of Ungier’s attack? Had Larenthi fallen? How fared Baleron’s father? Queen Vilana?
And so, with every day that passed, he retreated further and further behind his inner walls and fortifications, as though his mind were its own castle, and in a way it was. But was he the mad king, cowering and raging on his throne? Was this the beginning of insanity?
Perhaps madness could protect him. If nothing else, it would make his torment less satisfying.
So he faked insanity. When the Borchstogs branded him, he laughed in their faces. When they stuck long, thin needles into his nerve clusters and twisted them, he screamed, but in between his screams he sang bawdy ballads Salthrick had taught him. When they forced him to drink toxins that would twist his mind and give him nightmares and hallucinations, he carried on conversations with people that were not there.
Ghrozm had seen every trick a prisoner could play on him, though, and he wasn’t fooled. Or, if he was, he went about his business regardless. With every day that passed, he seemed to swell, to grow ever more proud, as though he were an artist who knew without doubt that he was working on his masterpiece. The other Borchstogs moved about him with awe.
Sometimes they would throw Baleron into a pit and leave him there for days or weeks, and seem to forget him, only to haul him up and go at him again even more viciously than before. They used barbed whips and pliers and a hundred other things. The pain was excruciating, jerking Baleron back to reality gasping. Yet he always floated back to his dreamworld afterward and it got so that, as the weeks, possibly months, went on, the pain brought him back to the real world less and less.
He didn’t know when it was daytime or nighttime anymore, or if it even mattered in this place.
Eventually Rolenya came to visit him. She stayed for a long while in his pit, just staring sadly at him, saying nothing—at least, the first time. After that, he talked with her for hours. He came to expect her regular appearances. She came often, and so did others—Shelir and Rilurn and Elethris and a dozen more, and though he resisted at first he eventually began talking back to each of them. Was he truly going mad, or was this just another trick?
He didn’t care. At least it was company.
This routine went on for some time, he wasn’t sure how long, but at last the Borchstogs hauled him up from his pit one day and threw him on the floor. It was cold, and he was shivering and naked.
They tossed some rough clothes at him and Ghrozm said (in Oslogon, as he’d learned that Baleron spoke it), “Put them on. Master wants to see you, and you’d better be presentable.”
* * *
Carefully, Baleron slid the clothes on—pain flared as the rasping fabric scraped over his raw wounds—and the Borchstogs ushered him out of the torture chamber and down various passageways and up several flights of stairs.
Baleron wondered what new development was under way. It seemed Gilgaroth never did anything without several different reasons. Baleron’s torture and confinement were not just for the benefit of the Betrayer. They served some other purpose, surely, but Baleron couldn’t guess what.
The coming interview could, then, be the real reason he was here.
He limped, because Ghrozm, ul Undracosg, had flayed a ribbon of flesh from the tender sole of his right foot. Ghrozm now whipped him and cursed him for hobbling.
Ghrozm led him deep, deep into the dark bowels of Krogbur. Ultimately they shoved him through an archway beyond which yawned a vast and terrible gulf of unholy blackness. The very air made Baleron’s skin crawl, and he felt bowed down by a great, cold, loathsome weight.
It was, he saw, a massive vertical shaft. The Borchstogs paused when they reached it and uttered words of praise and awe. For his part, Baleron cursed.
The shaft was simply enormous. Downwards it dropped into an unfathomable abyss and upwards doubtlessly to the very top of the tower—not that he could see very far in this dark place. The only illumination came from the Borchstogs’ torches. Nevertheless he could determine that this was a huge, black hollow space, surely in the very heart of Krogbur, what must be its absolute core.
A staircase wrapped the far-flung walls and wound in a spiral along them, and Baleron could only assume the stairs continued beyond the ball of fiery illumination, as he couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. He wondered, though he shuddered to think on it, what could be in the middle of that vast space; somehow it seemed ... full.
Ghrozm forced him up the stairs, which seemed broad enough for an army to march along, and up, and it seemed they ascended the shaft for days. Time twisted and bent in this place. The Borchstogs never stopped, though occasionally they had to drag Baleron along, he was so tired; he’d noticed that the Borchstogs never tired here, in this bastion of evil. Their energy never flagged—indeed the reverse.
As the group rose, winding up and up along the walls, a cold dread began building in Baleron’s heart, an unreasoning panic that filled him like blood fills a vein. This great open shaft was a place of power, he could sense it—great and terrible power. He trembled beneath it and his limbs seemed to lose their strength. But deep in his breast, there was a stirring, a swelling, as that cold sliver inside him, his Doom, feasted on the black energies here like a leech. Gilgaroth is close. For some reason the thought terrified him as never before. Gilgaroth was ... different here.
At last the steps ended and they stood on a rounded platform, a terrace jutting out into the darkness, a lip overhanging the abyss. Baleron strained his eyes peering out into the blackness beyond, but he could see nothing.
The torches hissed and sparked, casting flickering red-orange light on the stone of the platform. They didn’t reveal what lay in the center of that terrible well. They hissed and crackled, and smoke teased at his nose. The hot air suffocated him.
Without warning, twin portals of flame opened in the darkness before and above Baleron. Startled, he gasped. Recoiled.
The portals hovered in the darkness beyond the platform, and Baleron realized he was looking into two great eyes, each one blazing with fire, with a black iris at its center.
Something massive hovered out in all that blackness, something they had come to see.
The Borchstogs gasped and dropped to their knees.
“Gilgaroth,” they whispered. Then, louder: “Roschk ul Kunraggoq!” Hail the All-Father! “Roschk Gilgaroth!”
Baleron stumbled backwards, but a strange force compelled him not to run. Those flaming eyes seemed to bind him.
“Children,” spoke the Presence. When it talked, a terrible mouth opened below the eyes. Inner fires lit its gleaming-sharp teeth from below. There was something of the Wolf in it, but it was not the Great Wolf. No, Baleron knew. Gilgaroth was now ... other. Somehow, this tower, its energies, that power stolen from Celievsti, had strengthened him, and he’d forged a new shape, if he wore a shape at all. For all Baleron knew, he could very well be staring at Gilgaroth’s naked spirit.
Either way, he was so awed that it was only with great effort that he stood his ground. This well ... this shaft ... the center of Krogbur ... where its energies are the strongest ... It gives him power. It’s like a temple he built ... to himself.
“Brave,” said the Shadow, regarding the prince’s upright figure. Baleron shuddered under the fiery gaze, but he stared Gilgaroth firmly in the eye. “Foolish,” added the Dark One.
Something entered Baleron’s mind. It was Gilgaroth, he knew, bright and terrible. His whole world became the pain of that intrusion, burning, all-consuming.
Fight it! he urged himself, and slowly, very slowly, the pain began to subside.
“Mortals,” said Gilgaroth, almost wearily. “You have but a few years on this earth, yet you throw them away so casually. And what happens to you afterwards? You don’t even know. Without Grace, you’re just a thing, a piece of clay. Mud. There is no magic in your blood.”
Baleron wanted to cry out that he had a soul, a purpose, but he could not find the strength to speak. Those flaming eyes absorbed him, and it seemed he drifted, floating on their seas of time and power. All else receded, even the pain. He felt warm now. Safe. Gilgaroth was his entire world.
“Of course,” the Dark One went on, “this was my doing. I cannot fault you for it. Your race fell only because I tempted you away from the Light, and you were cast out of Grace-dom.” He considered. “But you may yet receive the benefits of the Dark. You are my creatures ... or you once were. Many, like those of your kingdom, are struggling to find their way back to the Light—and failing. Of course. You are NOT of the Light. You can never be. You are tainted by what has come before. The very name of the royal house of Havensrike is a corruption of the Oslogon word ‘grochgar’. A grochgar is a stout tree that grows in the west of my land. That is where your rightful place is, Baleron. Turn away from the Light. It is not your true nature. Face the Dark. Embrace it. It is your only route to fulfillment, your only chance to be whole.
“If you serve me, you will be something more than you are. You shall have gifts, and you will live on after your flesh is destroyed. There will always be a home for you in Illistriv—what your kind in your ignorance calls the Second Hell. But there is more than flames and torture there: there is beauty and pleasure, and life everlasting.” He let that sink in. “What say you?”
The prince stared, stunned. Suddenly the Dark One released him from the spell, withdrew from his mind, and Baleron staggered. It was as if he’d just woken up, and it took him a moment to orient himself. He blinked his eyes, and shivered. He was very cold all of a sudden.
He stared up at the roaring eyes of Gilgaroth, the Black Acid of the World.
The Dark One waited.
Baleron said simply, “No.” The word sounded small and pitiful in this place. And yet he knew it held power.
“No,” he repeated.
“Think of what you refuse.”
Baleron gritted his teeth bitterly. “Are you blind? I hate you. I hate this place! I know how you made it. I heard what Throgmar said. You stole the energies you raised it with. This ... tower ... it’s built on the bones of my friends. Elethris, Shelir, Lord Felias ... Rolenya ...”
“Yes, sweet Rolenya ...”
“You ate her soul, you abomination!” Baleron’s eyes filled with tears. His voice thickened. “You horrible, evil THING!”
The Shadow’s eyes flickered. In ruminating tones, Gilgaroth said, “I’d planned for the White Tower’s destruction for years, young one. Years and years. I’d prepared myself to absorb its power. You see, the world’s energies are exhausted, its greatest reservoirs empty. Therefore to raise Krogbur without weakening myself or draining Oslog of its power, I needed to absorb a great amount of energy. Celievsti was perfect, and its fall provided a breach of Larenthi’s defenses.” His mouth twisted. “Thank you, prince, for your part in that. Without you, this tower would not have come into being.”
Baleron shook his head. “No ...”
“Yes. Of course, I did have to tap Oslog somewhat to complete it, for I wanted it to be grander than that tower of Elethris’s—who, after all, was a mere elf and not an Omkar. Oslog soaks up the power I radiate; it will renew in time. By then Krogbur will be the black heart of the world.”
“No ...”
“YES. It was YOU who manipulated the armies of Elves and Men, Baleron. It was YOU who brought Rauglir out of Gulrothrog and into their ranks without examination, and then to Celievsti. It was YOU who ushered Rauglir into Glorifel. It was you that allowed Throgmar into your homeland, and it is you that will still be its undoing.”
“No ...” Baleron shook his head desperately. He felt as though he were underwater. Everything was surreal and distorted, and moving strangely.
“Yes. The world will fall to me, and when it is mine I will bridge the gulf to Kunrieth and free Lorg-jilaad from the Void—and I will owe it all to your Doom, which is still most thoroughly upon you. You ARE Ul Ravast, whether you wish it or no. You are my Deliverer. My Champion.”
“You bastard,” Baleron said.
Gilgaroth’s flaming eyes simmered. “Why aren’t you kneeling, mortal? ON YOUR KNEES!”
A cloud overcame Baleron’s mind, and he was only dimly aware of sinking to one knee.
“What do you want of me?” he shouted.
“I can make you obey me, but only within the borders of Oslog. Beyond them you are your own agent. I need you to be mine.”
Through still-gritted teeth, Baleron spat, “Then make me a werewolf, put a demon into my body. It’s the only way you’ll ever control me in the outer world.”
“No. I need you whole, at least in spirit, so that you can pass their examinations, for they will not be fooled twice. But there is another way.” Again, the Shadow paused. “What if I told you to chop off your left hand?”
“You’re mad!”
A clammy feeling twisted its way up through Baleron’s gut, like a serpent shoving its way through his innards, then seized his mind and body with a sudden icy grip. He tried to fight it, but it was too strong. His body twitched and trembled, and his jaw chattered; every muscle stood out and he was full of a terrible vibrating tension as he fought to resist and was denied. Sweat beaded his brow. This was the worst torture yet: being a spectator in his own body.
He watched helplessly as his right hand reached out, trembling, and wrenched a sword loose from a Borchstog scabbard. Its owner did not protest.
Baleron raised the sword high, and it reflected the torchlight on its tarnished metal surface. It was heavy. He tried to fight the pull, but he could not stop the force that controlled him.
He could not even yell as the blade descended.
For a moment, everything happened very slowly, and he noticed every hair and pore on his left hand, every bead of sweat. Borchstogs had pulled the nails out of his thumb, middle finger and ring finger. His knuckles were raw and bloody from punching his captors; he occasionally, though rarely, got the opportunity to strike out, and he always took it, though it never did much good except to provide momentary satisfaction. Many more cuts and bruises decorated the hand, which was muscular and well shaped. He had always liked it.
It was outstretched before him, right under the descending blade.
He hacked it off at the wrist. Blood spurted from the stump.
Pain arced through him. The Shadow withdrew from his mind.
Baleron watched in horror as his severed hand smacked the stone floor of the platform. Blood leaked from it. A finger twitched.
Screaming, Baleron fell backwards into the arms of two Borchstogs. A third, without being told, plunged his torch against the prince’s bleeding stump, cauterizing the wound. Baleron’s vision wavered, and the world blurred.
“Why?” he gasped. He clutched his stump tightly beneath his right armpit, stemming the flow of blood that still leaked out from the charred mass. Emotion contorted his face as tears ran uninhibited down his sweaty, soot-smeared cheeks. “Why me? All of it—why? What did I ever do to deserve you?”
The Shadow regarded him. “You were born.”
Baleron wavered, and darkness overcame him.
* * *
With the prince passed out, Ghrozm stooped and retrieved the still-twitching left hand from the platform. He lifted the bloody thing up for his Master’s inspection.
“What shall be done with it, my Lord?”
“Hold it high.”
Ghrozm complied, trembling.
Gilgaroth closed his blazing eyes and turned inward, looking within himself to Illistriv. The First resided within his father, the distant Lorg-jilaad drifting through the Nether far away.
Gilgaroth had formed Illistriv during Omkarcharoth, the War of Light and Dark. Later he’d used its energies to forge his form of flesh when he birthed himself into the mortal plane, thus Illistriv was bound to his corporeal form, even if it in truth existed on a different level of being entirely. The gateway to the Second Hell was his very maw, and because the Second Hell and he were so thusly fused its flames blazed from his throat and lit his eyes.
It is said, and it is true, that Gilgaroth existed always in two places at once, if not more, looking both inwards and outwards with his terrible eyes of flame. For always in addition to commanding the forces of Oslog he lorded over Illistriv, too, sitting on his ethereal throne, overseeing the torments of his prisoners and the pleasures of his faithful servants.
Rauglir, newly arrived in Illistriv after having the body he possessed rendered unusable by the Archmage Logran Belefard, was enjoying himself in a mock-corporeal form, chasing maidens through a garden in his favored shape, the wolf. He chose the shape not just because it suited him but also to honor his Lord, who was the Father of Wolves, among other things.
Rauglir looked up when he felt his Master’s presence, and ceased his pursuit of the half-naked maidens—to kill or otherwise, it was unclear.
“My Lord,” he said in his usual half-growl.
“It is time for your next labor.”
Though frustrated by the brevity of his leisure time, Rauglir merely bowed. “Of course.”
“I give you leave of Illistriv.” One could not leave without Gilgaroth’s permission.
Rauglir discorporated and followed the Dark One’s inner self to the Gates of Hell, where he slipped through those terrible jaws, between the wicked fangs and Beyond—into the world of the living.
In wraith form, Rauglir flew about Gilgaroth’s head, circling, waiting for his Master’s bidding. It was not long in coming. The Dark One directed him towards the severed hand of Baleron and aided him in slipping inside the small fleshy morsel.
“I told him I needed his spirit whole,” mused the Lord of Oslog. “And so it shall be. But it will have a rider.”
In his huge black temple, the Dark One opened his terrible maw and laughed. Flames from his throat scorched the walls.