BONUS MATERIAL
Included below as a bonus is the first part of The Demon King of Bergher, a short story set in the Harbinger of Doom universe and featuring Lord Torbin Malvegil.
THE DEMON KING OF BERGHER
BY
GLENN G. THATER
“Dor Malvegil is impenetrable.”
That's what they say. It's what they've said about the Dor for generations. And it's true, or close enough. Our walls have never been breached by an enemy force, though more than a few have tried and each has sorely regretted it. Few Dors in the entire kingdom can boast the same.
You might think we'd grow complacent — most noble Houses would, if their castles were as hard to approach as ours, but we Malvegils never have. We've never let our guards down. Honor and vigilance, always, are our words, and we keep them close and true. Always have; always will.
Yet that thing got in.
Despite all our safeguards, it infiltrated my citadel, my home. Far worse, it found its way by stealth or magic, or who knows how, into the very chambers where my family sleeps. Had I not been there to witness it, I never would have believed it possible. Dear gods, what would have happened had I been away, or even off at some late night council or lounging in the den with Gravemare and McDuff over a game of Mages and Monsters gone long? What if Landolyn had had to face that thing alone? I dare not contemplate it. I cannot bear the imagining, the horror. I cannot even ponder it.
It was no easy feat, however the thing managed to get in. We quickly ascertained that it didn't come up the cliffside stairs. The stair guards (men I trust) reported seeing no sign of the intruder. It was the same at the hoists. The operators of those ponderous contraptions keep a close watch for stowaways as the teams of oxen pull the ropes that haul the carriages up and down the cliffside. In the old days, thieves hitched rides on the undersides of the carriages, out of easy view of the hoist men. No longer — we watch for that, vigilantly. These days, to ride the hoists — heck, to enter the keep at all — you need to be known or properly escorted, and have legitimate business in the citadel. We're not running a tourist attraction hereabouts and have no tolerance for vagrants and lookeyloos.
So the stairs were out; the hoists were out. That left only one path of entry, however improbable it seemed. It must have climbed up the four hundred feet of sheer, slick, unforgiving stone of the crag to reach the rocky summit upon which old Dor Malvegil was built. Four hundred feet — and nearly straight up! No man has ever scaled that cliff —— not one in three centuries of Malvegil rule. Yet that thing did. There is no other explanation.
Even so, reaching the summit still left it outside the walls and no threat to us at all. Both the outer and inner portcullises were down and secured for the night — barriers insurmountable to soldier or sneak thief alike, so into the citadel it also gained entry by no normal means. It must have scaled the curtainwall as easily as it climbed the crag, somehow escaping the notice of my guardsmen — both those who patrol the walls and those who stand the watch atop the towers.
Across the courtyard it must have loped, all the while unseen and unheard, right to the doorstep of the keep. How it got inside the redoubt also remains a mystery — another climb up the walls and in through an open window, perhaps, but who knows? It couldn't have passed the main gate without notice. It couldn't have. And yet it got in with nary a sound and no call to alarm. Nothing to warn us of its coming. Nothing.
Its presence still unmarked by any, through the lower halls and up the stairs it went, as if it knew the way as well as I. Stout oak and ironbound, double-locked and barred, the doors to my private chambers proved no more a barrier to the thing than did the cold stone of the crag. Even here, it got in.
In my slumber, I heard not a sound, not a creak of a floorboard, not a rustle of the drapery, not a squeak of a door hinge — though I am the lightest of sleepers. My senses — that of a warrior, born and honed of olden times —— have ever served me well in the cities, in the wild, and on countless campaigns. But to my shame, that night they failed me.
At first, I thought that the eerie voice that whispered to me in the night was naught but a figment from a dream. It mumbled something unintelligible, over and again. I struggled to make out the words, the voice deep and reverberant, but I only understood the first two: “Wake up,” it said, “wake up.” Even in my sleep, the sound of its voice made me cringe, though why, I cannot say. If its words had been audible, I would have leaped out of bed in an instant, ready to fight, ready to defend my House, but they weren't, they were just in my head, the same as those of any dream, so they caused me little alarm.
But then I smelled something odd, something out of place. Something unnatural. Would that I could say that it was some horrid, barrow stench of death, some vile putrescence of the pit that could boil a good man's blood and send his soul screaming to the heavens. But no, the pungent odor was not foul or fetid. It was pleasant, even appealing. No, such feeble words don't do it justice. That smell called to me like a perfume of the gods. Like the sweet scent of Freya or Frigg, if you can believe it. It enticed me to draw near, to take it in, luring me forward, beckoning me forth to savor it, to worship it — dear gods — even to consume it. To consume it! What madness could invoke such a bizarre reaction in any goodly man? Especially one such as I —— a knight born and bred, the patriarch of House Malvegil, Lord of the Eastern Marches, and loyal vassal to good King Tenzivel of Lomion. From what vile sorcery did that unnatural smell spring? And sorcery it was, I tell you — it had to be. No natural scent could afflict me so. Not me.
I prayed that the strange odor was naught but the product of a dream or an upset stomach — in fact, I believed it was so, until my beloved Landolyn's hand gripped my forearm like a vise, and she spoke my name, “Torbin,”” but once, her voice atremble. That was enough to wake me and gird me into action, for I knew then that we were not alone. Danger was at hand, and I must face it, and crush it, as ever I had in times past.
With my nostrils full of the heady smell, I sprang from my bed, reaching for my sword, and caught a fleeting glance of my lady as I did so, her beauty still a wonder to my eyes even after all these years. In that moment, I saw a terror on her face unlike any that I had seen before. And I saw her hands pressed together in precise fashion, her fingers aligned and curved just so, forming a protective ward in the shape of an arch — a rune from the olden magic passed down through her family line from bygone times.
But my attention jerked to the foot of the bed, for there the source of both the sounds and the scent lurked in all its graven horror — a mere sword thrust away from my true love. That alone set my blood to boiling.
The thing appeared in the shape of a man, but I knew at once that it was no man that fronted me. Nor did elven blood fill its veins. It was neither troll, nor lugron, and its height precluded dwarf, gnome, or other smallfolk. And it was no spirit that haunted me, no figment — its flesh was as solid as yours or mine. Its likeness would have been unknown to most any man in the kingdom, for no living citizen of Lomion had ever seen its like or at least had not lived to tell the tale. But I knew what it was. I knew it at once for I've always listened closely to the whispered stories of the old folk; I know those grim tales — every one. This was a thing born of the old world; an ancient legend come to life, its time long past before the very birth of mankind.
***
Author’s Note
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