“Oathbreaker,” Raugst snarled, furious. “Bastard!” How could Vrulug be attacking? They had a deal!
Darkness gathered about him, but he thrust his torch forward and drove it back, one foot at a time. The stench of the sewer nauseated him, but he had anger to distract him. He thought of Vrulug, and rage filled him.
The face of Niara rose up in front of his mind’s eye, then, and everything else faded away. How could she be dead? It seemed impossible. What made it even worse was the surety that she could have healed herself had she not given him her grace. She had, though, and now she was gone—and slain by one who loved her! It was a cruel jest of uncaring gods. Raugst had thought, foolishly, that now that he was beyond the sway of Gilgaroth, the goodly gods would smile on him and his endeavors. But no. The world was just as loathsome and unkind as ever. He was half-tempted to abandon his quest, simply to crouch down in these tunnels and await the fall of Thiersgald.
Knowing that Niara would have wished otherwise, he pressed on. He walked beside the foul currents of the sewer, where the underground escape route connected and intertwined for a ways. He held a rag to his nose and mouth, though it did little good.
Why does Vrulug attack? The wolf-lord was violating their arrangement. Raugst had become king; Felgrad should be safe. Perhaps when Raugst met with him and showed the wolf-lord his signet ring, Vrulug would relent. That was our bargain, curse him.
A dark figure emerged from a cross-tunnel, and another behind it—inhuman things, tall and furred and monstrous. Raugst’s torch caught their gleaming, slaver-coated fangs and turned their eyes to glittering red orbs.
They advanced on him.
He held his torch in closer, giving them a look at his face. “Molest me and suffer,” he warned, a hand straying to the hilt of his light-blessed sword.
“My lord,” one growled. “We did not expect you.”
“Good. I don’t like to have my itinerary known.” He strode forward, his lieutenants falling in beside him.
“No sign of Giorn or his men,” said one.
“There won’t be.”
“Pardon, my lord?”
“I’ve dealt with him to my satisfaction.”
They fell silent. He had positioned them and others down here to prevent Giorn from reaching Castle Wesrain by the secret route, and now that Giorn was not a threat they were doubtlessly wondering what their new orders would be. He could obviously not order them to return to the castle—although, he reflected, it would be amusing to see Giorn’s face if he did.
“You lot’ll stay here,” he said. “I have other enemies that might try and attack.”
“We shall, my lord.”
“Leave me.”
They withdrew, merging with the darkness of the sewers with eerie ease.
Raugst moved on. He had informed Giorn of the creatures in these tunnels, though Giorn had already guessed at their presence, and he did not doubt that the baron would send a raiding party to deal with them in time. Raugst would never know. He never planned to return to Thiersgald. He had worked and schemed to become King of Felgrad, and he had done it, but with Niara’s death civilization held little meaning for him, and little interest. He would return to the wild, there to live out his days as a creature of the woods. Whether he would keep his man-shape or resume his wolf-form he did not know, but he looked forward to the solitude and splendor of the forest.
At times during his trek through the darkness he would come across other of his lieutenants, but when they realized who he was they merely bowed and became one with the shadows once more. Finally he emerged from the tunnels and passed through the waterfall, which washed away the stench of the tunnels, though it did douse his royal finery.
He came ashore and made his way through the woods until they ended. Before him stretched the gently rolling hills that led to the South Gates, and between him and the Gates lay Vrulug’s army—vast, dark, crushing. Borchstogs swarmed the walls, and Raugst saw several breaches where gaurocks had struck. He sighed. Many buildings would be razed, and many men would die. He could not stop that. But perhaps, just perhaps, he could prevent the total obliteration of Thiersgald and the rest of Felgrad.
Rain fell on his head and shoulders, pattering against his face, but he barely felt it. He strode through the blackened wastes left in Vrulug’s wake, where tens of thousands of Borchstogs and other fell things had passed, trampling and tearing the earth. All was mud. He came upon some sentries Vrulug had left to guard his rear. Riding murmeksa, the large, tusked hog-like creatures favored by the Borchstog cavalry, the soldiers surrounded him, lances bristling.
“It is I,” he said in Oslogon, “Raugst, high servant of Vrulug.” He hoped they could not feel the presence of the light-blessed sword. He had raided Saria’s apartment and taken several tokens of hers, and he hoped the darkness they radiated would mask the sword.
It seemed to work. The Borchstog captain lowered his lance and the others followed. “Lord Raugst,” he said, bowing his head. “I’m Captain Grastrig. Welcome to the Age of Grandeur.” He smiled, and his teeth had chunks of human flesh in them. “Master Vrulug said you might seek an audience.”
“I do. Will you give me escort?”
Grastrig ordered one of his soldiers to ride behind another, freeing up a steed for Raugst. With him in the center, the band rode toward the outer wall of the city. Raugst saw that the defenders were in retreat and that fires spread throughout Outer Thiersgald. As he drew nearer, the smell of smoke made him cough. The rain dampened it, but not enough.
Again he worried about his sword, and he found his hand resting on its pommel. It had become more than a mere weapon to him, he realized. Niara had poured her Light and Grace into it. Raugst liked to think that she had poured some of herself into it, as well—that, in a way, she was here with him.
Grastrig led him through the blasted gateway with its ruined towers and then through the chaotic streets of the city. Houses burned all around, and screams rose into the night from every quarter. Raugst had ordered the outer city emptied, but apparently many had stayed—to loot, to prevent looting, or out of simple human stubbornness. Raugst frowned to see the devastation around him. Despite himself, he had come to view Thiersgald as his home, or at least his responsibility. The Borchstogs showed him through the broad main avenues lined with trees, from which bodies hung, twisting in the hot winds. Others dangled from lampposts or were nailed to doors. Still more Thiersgaldians lived, though not happily, and their screams made sweat stand out on Raugst’s forehead.
He wondered where Vrulug would have made his headquarters. Perhaps the University. There were some fine buildings there, if any still stood. Perhaps Ferin Island, the small isle in the center of the river, where an ancient castle stood, now a museum. Or perhaps it would suit Vrulug’s grisly moods to make his lair in a graveyard, or a school, or ...
Grastrig brought Raugst toward the Temple of Illiana. As the white towers neared, Raugst grew cold despite the heat of the fires. No, he thought. Surely even Vrulug wouldn’t—
But of course he would.
Raugst hoped they might be swinging around the structure to a destination on the other side, but the Borchstogs began to slow, and finally Grastrig drew rein before the temple gates.
“This is it,” he said.
Raugst’s legs almost did not support his weight as he dismounted. He found it difficult to catch his breath.
He gazed up at the slender white spires framed against the black night sky, saw the ornate dome glowing with light, and he had a grave foreboding. Not this. Anything but this.
Muttering praises to Vrulug and Gilgaroth, Grastrig led him through the gates, past the courtyards with its gazebo and high elm trees, then up the wide stairs, flanked by lacy white columns, and inside. Raugst hesitated before he crossed the threshold, too briefly for his escorts to notice, then marshaled his resolve and stepped across.
It was worse than he’d feared. The high white halls of the temple were now the settings for debauchery and carnage. Red blood ran across white marble, and the delicate bodies of priestesses in their white robes sprawled along the floor. These were the young priestesses, the acolytes. The more experienced ones would have had ridden off to war. Raugst’s escorts led him through the dining halls, and he saw Borchstogs holding priestesses down on the tables, taking turns with them. Other priestesses were being tied to the columns and mutilated. Their screams drove shards of ice through Raugst.
This is all my fault. He had told Niara of his plans, of his arrangement with Vrulug, that Vrulug would not attack. Raugst had emptied Outer Thiersgald as a precaution, certainly, but mainly he had done it to keep up appearances. Niara had believed in him and had not forced her priestesses to evacuate with the others. I promised her I could save them, and now they’re dead, or worse.
Grinding his teeth, he stepped over and around the graceful bodies, some of which still twitched. Some of the priestesses had apparently slain themselves rather than be taken, but most had not had such easy deaths.
The temple, a place of light and beauty and grace, had been profaned. Blood spattered the walls, congealed in pools upon the floor, slim white bodies lying in them, some still moving. The Borchstogs’ grunts echoed down the halls, accompanied by squeals of pain.
Grastrig ushered Raugst through the Hall of Beginning. Here it was hot and steamy. Like Hell. The Borchstogs had discovered the furnaces below the Pool. Likely they were down there even then, in the sweltering, smoking heat, driving their slaves to stoke the fires. The Pool was not just steaming but boiling. The very air burned Raugst’s lungs. As he watched through wisps of vapor, a group of Borchstogs dragged a writhing priestess toward the water, which churned like a witch’s cauldron, running red with the girls that had gone before. The priestess was blond and green-eyed, young and fair. Naked, crying, she was dragged to the bubbling Pool, obviously having already been raped; Raugst could see the bruising. As he watched, helpless, the Borchstogs, laughing, hurled her into the boiling water, where several other bodies were already bobbing, red as apples. She screamed and thrashed, then fell silent.
Raugst looked away, and Grastrig led him to a winding stairway. Raugst realized he was being led to the Inner Sanctum. Dread built in him. The Inner Sanctum was the touchstone to the gods, to Illiana of whose grace and beauty an entire religion had been founded upon. That room had been the place of Raugst’s birth, in a way. Now he supposed it would be the place of his death.
The stairs ended and they came to the threshold of that room of Light. Again Raugst hesitated, then, trembling, stepped over. The smell of death rose about him.
Before him towered Vrulug—tall, batwinged, wolf-headed, encased in ebon armor, spattered with blood and stinking of death, standing over the altar of Illiana, where he held down a naked priestess. A gaggle of his black-robed priests surrounded him. Raugst had always hated Vrulug’s priests, with their slick white skin and skeletal visages. Now the priests chanted ominously, cowled heads bowed in prayer.
Raugst wanted to intervene, but there was nothing he could do. The white slab of veined marble glimmered in the light of the two braziers. Raugst knew Niara would from time to time place candles or incense or flowers on the altar, but that was it. Never anything like this.
Vrulug produced a ceremonial knife and slit the girl’s throat. Her blood spattered the white altar, and her body jerked and twitched for a while, then subsided, her blood running in rivers down the sides of the slab. Raugst felt sick. The priests ended their chant.
“There,” said Vrulug in Oslogon. “Now this is an altar to Gilgaroth. Roschk Gilgaroth!”
“Roschk Gilgaroth!”
The veins in the white marble slab of the altar began to turn black. The veins spread, joined up with others, tributaries leading into rivers, and soon the whole altar was crisscrossed in malignant black lines, which then seeped outward. It would not be long before the whole thing turned black. Raugst felt the altar emanate a chill, a darkness, and it seemed that the block of stone hummed and the air rippled around it, the ripples spreading, changing all they touched. This was now a fell place, a place of the Dark One. Raugst could taste it on his tongue, a rancid, bitter oiliness. And here, where he and Niara had made love for the first time! It was obscene. His hands turned into fists at his sides. He tried to relax them. Appear natural, he told himself.
Grastrig had been silent, awaiting the end of the ritual. Now he cleared his throat, drawing Lord Vrulug’s attention.
“My lord, you have a visitor.”
The wolf-lord’s eyes burned bright when they saw Raugst. He gestured for Raugst to step forward, saying “Come.”
Raugst obeyed. The slender bodies of priestesses lay strewn about the room. A pile of their body parts had been heaped at the base of the white altar of Illiana, and black candles had been lit and mounted on it. The bitter taint that filled the air grew stronger and raised the hackles on the back of Raugst’s neck. Mother’s milk, he told himself. I used to live for the feel of Gilgaroth’s presence. He threaded his way around the blood-soaked bodies and through the chanting priests, who parted before him. He hoped and prayed that his former master did not feel the presence of the sword.
“You may leave us, Captain,” the wolf-lord told the Borchstog leader, and Grastrig left, taking his crew with him. It smelled better when they were gone, but not much. “You as well,” Vrulug told his priests, and the pale-skinned things departed wordlessly. Raugst breathed easier.
Vrulug led Raugst away from the profaned altar to the moon-washed terrace, where Raugst had lopped off Giorn’s fingers weeks ago. Raugst wondered if the bloodstains were still here.
“Look!” Vrulug said, sweeping a heavy arm at the panorama of the burning city. Flaming towers stabbed high into the black sky. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” He flung one arm around Raugst’s shoulder and clapped him on the back. Raugst started, but Vrulug didn’t seem to notice. “For thousands of years I’ve longed to see Thiersgald burn, and now it does. It burns for me.” He breathed. “Soon, from its ashes, Ulastrog will rise once more, and I will rule here as I did of old.”
Scowling, Raugst looked sideways at him. “We had a deal.”
“Did we?”
“Yes.”
Vrulug drew back and appraised him seriously. “You’ve become King?”
Raugst fingered his kingly clothes and cape, and raised his royal signet ring to the light. “Yes,” he said. “I am King.”
Vrulug—great, grim, bloody Vrulug, stinking of death and sex—laughed. The sound made Raugst grind his teeth. “Hail Lord Raugst! Hail the king of ashes!”
Raugst did not blink. “I ask you to honor our bargain and withdraw your forces.”
“Why should I? I have my full host with me now, and the aid of the Moonstone.” His chest swelled. Indeed, now that Raugst was aware of it, he could feel a power radiating from Vrulug that had not been there before. “I can prevail without your help.”
Raugst flexed his fingers. “My lord—my friend—please reconsider. With my authority, I can do what you can not. I can wield Felgrad as a weapon against the Crescent, a weapon that can blunt their swords and make them easy pickings for you. Without my help, you may be able to break them, but they will break you, as well, and when you occupy the charred remains of their cities you will be spread thin, thin enough for the North to unseat you.”
“You do not realize the power that is at work, Raugst. My Father has unleashed His full might against His foes, and His spider spins his web of Doom. And the army massing at Krogbur …”
“Yes, and they will get the credit! But work with me, my friend. Honor our deal, and the glory shall be yours. You will not regret it.” He said this with great enthusiasm, hoping Vrulug would see the sense in it. Raugst did not expect him to, but he had arranged with Giorn to remain as king should Vrulug agree.
Vrulug frowned, mulling on it. The shadows of the tower grew darker, colder. The bodies of the priestesses began to stink. The black candles flickered on the altar. The bitter taint of Gilgaroth grew. The back of Raugst’s mind itched.
He cast a glance over the city. The flames rose high into the night, spreading unchecked throughout the outer city despite the thin mist. He heard distant screams. Lightning licked all around, descending from the clouds like the legs of some monstrous insect. Thunder cracked and roared.
In the distance hosts of Borchstogs neared the inner wall of the city, surely under the direction of Vrulug’s generals. It would not be long before the defenders there fell. Unless ...
Trying not to show his loathing, his fear, Raugst turned back to Vrulug. The wolf-lord eyed him intensely.
“Well?” Raugst demanded. “What of it? Will you honor our bargain?”
At last Vrulug sighed. “Sadly, I must decline. I am more powerful than you know. Thiersgald falls tonight.”
“Oathbreaker! We had a deal.”
Vrulug chuckled, but his eyes held no mirth. “You’re determined to play this part till the end, aren’t you? I admire that.”
Raugst shivered. “What do you mean?” Even as he spoke, his hand strayed to the hilt of his light-blessed sword.
Vrulug was faster. One of his hands lashed out and struck Raugst full across the face. Raugst flew backward, through the Inner Sanctum, and crashed into a wall. Pain flared across his back. He slid down the wall and came to rest next to the mutilated body of a priestess.
He groaned. Tasted blood on his tongue. Sitting up gingerly, he felt needles of fire rush through him.
Vrulug stepped forward, over a white-robed body. “You think I didn’t know?” the wolf-lord raged. Outside, thunder crashed and rocked the tower. “You think I wouldn’t find out?”
He opened his mouth. Fire licked at the back of his throat and gushed out, a great, frothing tide of flame. Raugst just barely rolled away in time. Even so, the heat singed the hairs on the back of his neck and set his royal finery afire.
In the distance, priestesses screamed as Borchstogs raped them, and the city burned all around.
* * *
At that moment, the Borchstog host reached the inner wall of Thiersgald.
“Archers!” Giorn called.
Arrows thrummed all along the wall, and Borchstogs fell twitching to the ground, but the black tide rolled forward, inexorable, their columns threading through the buildings of the city like the tendrils of some undersea abomination. Smoke and fire rose up all around them. In the forefront of their legions strode their standard-bearers, tall, black figures carrying aloft sharpened poles with the remains of men and women impaled upon them; some still moved, slicked with rain. Fat, gore-coated snakes coiled around the fly-specked bodies.
“Stand your ground!” Giorn shouted.
He unsheathed his sword as the first wave of Borchstogs scaled their ladders. One of the red-eyed demons climbed directly before him, stinking of death. Giorn’s sword glanced off the demon’s helm, which was in the shape of a rotting human head. The Borchstog laughed, heaved itself off the ladder and sprang at him.
Frantically, Giorn beat it back, and their swords clashed and rang. Giorn’s left arm was not as nimble as his right, but his training paid off. At last he stuck his blade through the demon’s eye-slit and into its brain. Black blood spurted, and the demon sagged backward.
More poured up behind it. All along the wall, as far as Giorn could see, the Borchstogs poured like a wave of death, and men battled them desperately. The priestesses led by Hiatha stood by, unable to draw on their powers. Some took up swords and aided the men, but their otherworldly arts were useless.
A Borchstog lunged at Giorn. He parried its first thrust, feeling the skittering of the blades course up his arm. He balled his ruined right hand and smashed it across the Borchstog’s face. Two of the recently mended fingers cracked, and the Borchstog fell away. One of his men stabbed it through the belly.
Giorn allowed himself a moment to look over his shoulder, to stare out over the inner city. He saw the golden dome of the Library, the mansions rearing in the distance, the fires of gathered townspeople—they would be on their knees praying, some hoping for peace, but most trying to make their own peace with their makers—then turned back. The Borchstogs swarmed toward him.
Giorn said a silent prayer and stepped forward.
* * *
Raugst, rolling, evading Vrulug’s stamping foot, grabbed his sword and wrenched it free of its scabbard. Still on the floor, he rolled sideways, slashing at Vrulug’s leg. Connected.
The wolf-lord leapt back, bat-wings pumping. “What do you wield?” Black blood trickled from his ankle. The armor there had shattered.
Raugst levered himself to his feet. Crouching, he brandished the sword before him. A drop of foul-smelling black blood dripped off the tip.
“A gift of the Light,” he said. Thank you, Niara.
Vrulug opened his mouth. Another wave of fire gushed out, enveloping two of the bodies that littered the floor. Raugst lunged aside, rolled, quenching the flames that had caught in his clothes. The stench of burning human flesh filled the room. Smoke drifted through the air, hiding and then revealing Vrulug.
“Tell me, how was I betrayed?” Raugst said.
The tall, monstrous shape of Vrulug appeared from the smoke, which wreathed about him, embracing him like a lover. In answer to the question, Vrulug drew his lips back from his teeth in what might have been a smile, or a grimace. An arm gestured at the darkness to his right, and from out of the shadows emerged another shadow, thin, wispy, phantasmal, gliding, but not part of the smoke.
Raugst stared. “A ghost ...”
The black spirit glided forward, whispering sibilantly, and he fancied just for a moment that it said, “Raugst, my love”. He thought he saw it take on a vaguely womanish form.
“Saria,” he said, understanding.
Sssss, she said, or was that the wind blowing in from the terrace? The shadow glided closer. Ssssss ...
Raugst slashed his sword toward it, and it drew no nearer. “You’re stronger than I gave you credit for,” he told her, “if you had enough control over your spirit to return to Vrulug.”
“No,” Vrulug said, stepping forward. “It was I who had the power. When I Turned her long ago, I gave her some of my blood. I bound her to me. When she died she returned to the source of her power. She told me what you had done.” He shook his head sadly, grimly. Smoke stirred around it. More poured from his wolf-like nostrils. “She saved me once from a friend that betrayed me—Orin Feldred, the Skinless Man. He was like a brother to me. Now you. We have known one another for ages. How could you have betrayed me, my friend?”
Raugst stared at the wolf-lord and sensed genuine anguish there. Raugst too felt a pang of regret at what might have been. He had loved and worshipped Vrulug, had been proud to be the wolf-lord’s right hand. It had been his place, and he had been content. And, in truth, he missed it. But there was no getting it back now. The past was lost to him forever.
“I am sorry,” he said, meaning it. “I would never have wished ill upon you. Not before. But now ...”
He sprang. His sword leapt, cutting into Vrulug’s left arm, but not severing it.
Vrulug screamed at the touch of the light-blessed sword. His blood hissed and boiled on Raugst’s blade. Raugst thrust at Vrulug’s middle, hoping the sword could pierce the wolf-lord’s armor.
Vrulug dashed Raugst aside. Raugst cracked against a white marble wall, felt a rib snap.
He did not hesitate. He rebounded immediately, driving at Vrulug, not giving him time to summon his fire.
But Vrulug was not unarmed, and in an instant he unsheathed his own sword. It was long and sharp and dull of color, unadorned. It was simply an instrument of death, a cleaver without ornamentation. He parried Raugst’s thrust with one hand and slashed at Raugst’s head with the other.
Raugst dodged, trying to get close enough to deliver a mortal blow. He struck again and again, beating against Vrulug’s blade. Priestesses screamed below. Smoke drifted through the chamber, forming unnatural shapes. Sometimes it hid Vrulug from view, then Raugst would smell fire and spring aside before the wolf-lord could roast him. All around, thunder crashed, and the tower shook violently.
The presence of Gilgaroth thickened, seeping outward from the now-black altar, and a heaviness settled on Raugst’s mind. His limbs grew heavy, his thoughts dull. Blackness gripped him.
He forced himself to conjure the face of Niara, and, slowly, the darkness burned away.
Sparks flared from the swords as they clanged against each other, the dark sword and the light, and strange illuminations bathed the room.
Saria, shrieking, wrapped ghostly talons about Raugst’s neck, and he felt the breath choke in his lungs. He struggled to wrestle her away, but he could not dislodge her.
Seeing Raugst’s weakness, Vrulug leapt forward, plunging his blade into Raugst’s side. Raugst screamed. The blade burned like fire. He threw himself aside, feeling blood trickle down his flesh. Still the wound burned, as though the blade had left a residue of acid.
Saria’s shade continued to try to throttle him, but now that he had a moment of respite from Vrulug he slashed his blade through her incorporeal form, and she flew back, seeming to diminish.
“Enough!” Vrulug roared.
He sucked in a deep breath, his chest swelled, and Raugst could feel the puissance in him throb. He was using the Moonstone, summoning its powers. Everything else in the world seemed to vanish. There was only Vrulug, drinking up all the light, all the life, crackling, shimmering. The wolf-lord swelled, gathered his strength—
He loosed his breath, but it was not the same fiery red breath as before. The wave that gushed forth between his terrible fangs now was black. The dark tide surged toward Raugst.
Trembling, Raugst raised his blade. Niara, help me.
The black wave struck it.
BOOM!
The impact flung Raugst back and turned the world into all shades of color. He heard bells and saw suns born and die. He heard his nearly-forgotten mother call his nearly-forgotten human name, and he smelled flowers and saw Niara’s face.
The noise and pain receded, and he saw Vrulug slumped against the far wall near the bloody altar, atop a pile of corpses and body parts, breathing heavily. Smoke wreathed up from his wolvish maw.
Raugst heard footsteps coming up the stairs—Vrulug’s priests coming to check on their master. Raugst must hurry.
Breathing heavily, he heaved himself up. He put one foot in front of the other and dragged himself toward Vrulug. His sword scraped along the floor. It seemed very heavy. With great effort, he stepped over a body, lifting one foot, then the other. His sword left a trail of blood in its wake, grating loudly along the marble floor.
The wolf-lord, barely conscious, watched him approach with heavily-lidded eyes. Saria circled him. Raugst could hear her hissing sobs in his ears.
Closer and closer he drew to Vrulug. Time seemed to slow, and hours passed, and years dragged into centuries, and still he could feel the echoes of that explosion. Smoke trailed up from his light-blessed sword.
Then he was standing over Vrulug. Saria shrieked and wrapped her ghostly talons around Raugst’s throat. You will not touch him!
Unable to breathe, he lifted his sword. His arms almost buckled under its weight.
“No,” said Vrulug. His eyes opened. “No ...” He was too weak to summon his fires.
Raugst brought his blade down with all his strength. Vrulug’s armor shattered. Blood shot out. Raugst chopped down again, and again, widening the wound. Then he thrust his hand inside, hearing Vrulug’s moans, and rooted around in the warm, sloshy guts of his friend until he found what he sought. His breath caught in his throat. The thing was hard and rough, and covered in fluid, and so hot that it nearly burnt his fingers. Nevertheless, he yanked it from the steaming wound—it did not come easily—and held the glistening, gore-coated Moonstone up to the light. It was the Last Gift of Man, or once had been, but now it was grotesque and corrupt, and Raugst felt filthier just holding it.
Vrulug, still alive, grabbed it from his hands. “Thief!” His voice was watery, his lungs filling with blood.
The black-robed priests spilled into the room. The High Priest’s amber eyes widened, then narrowed. “Stand away from the Master!” he shouted, air whistling strangely in his nose-less face. The red light of the braziers flickered on his maggot-white visage. His sharp teeth were slicked with slaver.
Suddenly, pain filled Raugst. Gasping, he stared downward. Vrulug’s sword stuck out from his belly, and Raugst’s blood coursed down the blade to flow over Vrulug’s clawed hand. While the priests had distracted him, Vrulug had run him through.
Blood bubbled on Raugst’s lips as he tried to form words to curse the wolf-lord with. Saria, laughing, throttled Raugst with greater ferocity. He could not draw breath. The world dimmed and faded. All except for Vrulug’s eyes. They blazed with hate and fury. Raugst gasped again as the wolf-lord twisted the blade, shoving it up under Raugst’s ribs.
“Die,” Vrulug growled, pushing the blade deeper, seeking Raugst’s heart, a sneer on his wolvish lips. “Die, my friend, and burn in the fires of the Second Hell.”
* * *
A sword glanced off Giorn’s helm. His head rang. He stabbed forward, feeling hot black blood gush over his hand. The Borchstog fell away. Three more replaced it.
A sword whistled out, slashed at his face. He dodged back. The blade sliced his cheek.
His bad leg gave out. He fell. The floor smacked his back, driving the breath from him.
Borchstogs swarmed toward him. He tried to rise but slipped in the blood of a soldier. The Borchstogs converged. He saw their blades lift, hover over him. They flashed by the light of the lightning and the fires, sharp as needles.
“Farewell, King of Men,” said one. It had seen his crown.
Giorn closed his eyes. Niara, I am coming.
* * *
Fire suffused Raugst as Vrulug’s blade dug inside him, seeking his death.
With his left hand, Raugst reached out and gripped the blade in his naked flesh. Blood, red blood, trickled over his fingers. Vrulug shoved deeper, harder, seeking Raugst’s heart, but Raugst clamped his hand tight and the blade stilled.
The pain was great. He wavered, and the world grew dim, and the darkness from the altar seeped into him. He grew cold, and the world receded, and he saw a great black shape looming over him and knew it was the One, come to claim his soul at last ...
Somehow he gathered the strength to lift his own blade overhead. He gripped its hilt in his right hand and summoned all his might for one final blow.
Vrulug’s priests, momentarily stunned, moved forward to help their lord.
Vrulug shoved harder, forcing his blade up under Raugst’s ribcage—Raugst could feel the grate of metal on bone—shoving toward the heart ... closer ... Raugst seized Vrulug’s sword tighter, slicing flesh and tendon. He only needed another moment ...
Vrulug’s face turned fearful, even as Raugst’s blood puddled on the floor. In his other hand, the wolf-lord raised the Moonstone. It glistened with viscera, but it was so hot that it burned through its coating, smoke rising from it.
It was Vrulug’s last hope. Once more it seemed to swell, and the world around it receded. Darkness emanated from it. Its energies were building for one more burst ...
Raugst bunched his muscles, readying for the final blow. Saria still wrapped her ghostly talons about his neck, choking the breath from his lungs. Stars flashed before his eyes.
“Kill him!” said the High Priest.
Vrulug’s priests closed on Raugst, daggers glimmering.
Raugst wasted no time, said no final words. This was it, what Niara had kissed him for, this one moment. Staring Vrulug in the eyes, using all his strength, he slashed down, ignoring Saria, ignoring the priests that even then stabbed into him—he slashed down and struck the Moonstone with all his might.
The Moonstone ... cracked. The sword shattered, bursting brightly, showering all around with white fragments. The priests screamed and fell back.
Raugst, pierced in half a dozen places by their blades, grinned fiercely down at Vrulug. “Farewell, my friend,” he said.
Vrulug growled hatefully, his eyes savage.
The Moonstone exploded.
Black light and white suffused everything. It turned the world to fire and pain, and Raugst howled in agony, feeling his flesh blister and peel away as if torn from his bones by a powerful hurricane, and then the world turned to white, and he knew no more.
* * *
All the Borchstogs near the temple felt a tremor, saw a flash of many lights from the tower, and heard a strange roar. They glanced up at the graceful white spire to see purple, green, and red light glowing, then fading, from the topmost chamber. Smoke sifted through the chamber’s windows. As one, a wave of dizziness and confusion swept the Borchstogs, and they knew, without being told, that Vrulug was dead.
Desperate, the Borchstogs inside the temple quit raping and slaughtering and stormed the tower. They ascended to that topmost chamber, what had once been the Inner Sanctum to Illiana, to find that all was blackened and smoking.
A score of pale-skinned corpses, or their blackened husks, lay upon the floor. To the side, propped against the blood-stained altar, clung the smoking remains of Lord Vrulug the wolf-lord, master of Wegredon, favorite of Gilgaroth, he who would have destroyed the peoples of the North. Steam rose from his skeletal jaws, imitating life, and, as the Borchstogs watched, one of his arms fell to the floor and broke. All that remained of him was a blackened skeleton.
Shards of some unidentifiable artifact littered the floor. Borchstogs looked at them but did not touch them.
A final smoldering body drew their gaze. This skeletal figure was of a man, and he had been blown across the room by the force of the explosion. In his right hand he gripped a sword, or the shattered remains of one. All that existed now was the hilt and the fragment of a blade that jutted up. The Borchstogs saw strange lights gleam on the sword, and they refused to go near it.
They were also intimidated by the man himself. For, though he was clearly dead, he wore the most ghastly grin upon his blackened face.
* * *
White light flashed. The Borchstogs fell back, screaming.
Giorn opened his eyes to see Hiatha standing over him. “The Light,” she gasped. “It’s returned.” She stared at her hands in amazement.
She helped him stand, and just in time. A Borchstog rushed them. Giorn knocked its blade aside and prepared for a thrust. No need. Hiatha raised a hand. Light flashed from it, and the Borchstog burned away.
Giorn stared around him. All the other priestesses were stepping forward and aiding the soldiers, not with swords but with their powers. Light gushed from their hands and fingers, and Borchstogs fell away, howling.
As well, some calamity seemed to have been sensed by all the Borchstogs at once. Many screamed and beat their chests and slashed themselves, and the human defenders looked on in surprise. Not Giorn. Giorn had not expected this, but he had hoped for it, prayed for it. Vrulug was dead.
“It’s a miracle,” Hiatha whispered.
“No,” Giorn said, half in gratitude, half in disgust. “It’s not the work of the light at all. It’s the work of a demon.”
“What ... ?”
“Never mind.” He gestured to the Borchstogs, whose advance was now in disarray. “See to them.”
Hiatha led her priestesses against the enemy, and the creatures screamed and gave back. The priestesses stood arrayed on the inner wall at regular intervals, and when Hiatha gave the signal they blasted into the Borchstogs simultaneously, like the very wrath of Illiana herself. Streams of white light poured from their hands and from their blessed artifacts, lancing into the Borchstogs and roasting them where they stood.
Giorn rejoined the fray, stabbing furiously, spraying Borchstog blood with every stroke. All around him, priestesses called on the light, and the Borchstogs died in agony. Soon they began falling back from the wall, crying to each other to retreat.
Giorn encouraged them by leading a host of riders out from the gates of the inner wall. He brought his riders against the scurrying Borchstogs, lopping off their heads and grinding them into the mud. He laughed as he rode one down, splitting its skull to the nose. All around him, the outer city burned, and he rode through it in a red haze of fury, along with his riders, skewering the Borchstogs where they hid and smashing them when they tried to form into defensive positions.
They fell back, gravitating toward the Temple of Illiana. There before its gates they massed, and Giorn stared at the smoking tower and felt a great darkness there. The air seemed to hum, and there was a bitter taint on his tongue. The hackles on the back of his neck stood on end, and his riders muttered fearfully. Even Hiatha paled, her eyes fixed on the Inner Sanctum.
“Roschk Gilgaroth!” the Borchstogs cried. “A Uchas Saria!”
Seeming to gather strength from the darkness, the Borchstogs rushed Giorn’s forces. At the head of his men, Giorn drove like a fist into their ranks, and beside him Hiatha and her sisters smote the creatures with bursts of light. The Borchstogs pulled men from their saddles, hurled spears at priestesses, and for a moment it looked as if the demons might rally, might prevail. The dark energy in the air intensified, and Giorn could feel a heaviness descend upon him and knew it came from the Inner Sanctum. Something powerful was there.
Blood spattered him, and a rider beside him listed over and fell from his saddle, gripping the spear that stuck from his chest.
“Ra!” Giorn said, spurring his horse. “To me!”
His men surged forward, a great wedge plowing into the Borchstog masses, dividing them and trampling them. If there had been more of them, if so many of the demons had not gone off to loot and rape and torture, they might have won out. But Giorn’s men were many, and mounted. As well, the priestesses of Illiana blasted light from their fingers and burned the Borchstogs to cinders where they stood. At last Giorn broke through, and the Borchstogs scattered.
His men laughed. Captains urged him to rout the demons, to pursue them, and he assigned General Levenril to see it done.
“But where will you go?” the general asked.
Giorn pointed to what had been the very essence of Light and Grace on earth. Now the tower’s top smoldered, sending black gouts of smoke across the stars. At least Vrulug’s cloud was beginning to disperse.
“Something evil is here,” Giorn said. “I must see to it.”
He dismounted and made his way inside. A group of soldiers came with him. He steeled himself against the horrors he would see, but even so he was not prepared. White, slender bodies ravaged, mutilated, used ... Blood dripped from the walls, and ran in congealing rivers across the white marble floors. Several Borchstogs had remained to amuse themselves with the priestesses who had survived, and Giorn gladly led his men against them, making their deaths as painful as he could. Die they did, but as they perished they cried, “Roschk Gilgaroth! A Uchas Saria!”
Giorn puzzled on it as he mounted the stairs of the central tower. Drenched in blood and sweat, breathing in labored gasps, his sword arm tired and his dulled blade dragging on the steps, he hobbled up the tower alone, his soldiers safeguarding the rest of the temple, and at last came upon the Inner Sanctum. Here the darkness he had felt was very powerful, and growing, as if some dark Thing had shoved a toe into the doorway of Fiarth and was trying to widen the gap, to drag the rest of It through. All the love and tenderness in Giorn was ground down, made bitter, and he wanted only to fall to the floor and wait for death.
He forced himself through the archway and beheld the small white room and the butchered corpses. There was Vrulug, it had to be, and there Raugst’s blackened remains. But what seized Giorn’s attention was the altar, black and awful, and giving off a chill, as well as a sulfurous stench.
The heaviness in his mind grew. He found himself lifting his sword, swinging it around, meaning to slice at his own neck. He dropped it, and it clattered to the floor beside a smoking body. Breathless, knowing he did not have much time before Gilgaroth’s presence grew strong enough to destroy him, he hobbled over to Raugst’s corpse. The bastard gripped the shards of Niara’s light-blessed sword in his hands, and the remains of the blade still glimmered with strange lights. Giorn ripped it free. Turned to the altar.
“Now for you.”
He stumbled toward it. Darkness filled his mind. The chill sapped his strength. If not for the opposite power the sword emanated, he had no doubt he would have collapsed or even slain himself on the altar, right beside the body of a priestess that lay slumped before it. It must be her blood that stained it.
Gritting his teeth, Giorn crossed to the slab, dragging his bad leg behind him.
A wispy figure rose directly before him.
Die, he heard in his head. Strangely, he recognized the voice, or perhaps its author, though the voice was made by no human lips. It was Saria’s, the temptress of legend, the woman who had seduced him and stolen the Moonstone. That was why the Borchstogs had chanted her name. As the highest servant of Oslog nearby, and the guardian of this altar, she commanded them now.
“You failed,” Giorn said. “Your troops are scattered, your cause lost.”
You look so like him, you know. So like Orin. I did not see it before. Orin reborn ...
“You seduced and betrayed us both, I suppose, that’s the only similarity. Only I will have my vengeance.”
She flew at him, wrapping her ghostly hands about his throat. Their coldness shocked him, and he could not draw breath, despite the fact that Saria’s talons were phantasmal. She still had power.
Just like Aunt Yfrin, he thought. And just like her, her power must come from the altar. Destroy the altar, destroy Saria.
Wheezing for breath, Giorn stepped over a body and approached the block of stone, which seemed to throb with horrid energies. He felt a Presence reach out from it, toward him ... but the doorway was not wide enough yet. It was getting wider, moment by moment.
Giorn raised the sword, admiring the whitish lights that danced in the shards. He gripped its hilt in both hands, using his right hand and arm to give his blow strength, and pointed the shards downward.
No! Saria cried.
A deeper voice, wordless but mighty, growled in Giorn’s head, and his legs turned to jelly. He nearly wavered, and for a moment his weapon angled toward his breast, but he turned it aside and drove the sword down into the black altar.
He saw light, felt a blow, and heat, and was flung back. The world grew gray and dim.
He blinked. The world snapped back into focus. His soldiers stormed up the stairs, their footsteps echoing on the marble walls. They must have been drawn by the noise. Giorn picked himself up and stared about him. No sign of Saria. And the altar ... it was not white anymore, nor black. It was grayish and cracked. The sword hilt jutted up from the slab, and the remains of the blade no longer glimmered.
His soldiers reached him just in time to catch him as he fell.
The tower shook. They heard a great roar, and Giorn felt a darkness swell up from the room, a great Presence with nothing to anchor It now. It rose up, drifted through the gaps in the ceiling, became one with the smoke still rising upward. A shadowy, shapeless form emerged, writhing and furious. The moonlight shone down on it, and the Presence made a sound of wordless hate. Giorn and the soldiers clapped their hands over their ears. Giorn felt needles crawl through his skull. Then the shape wheeled away toward the south, and the winds dispersed it.
Giorn breathed easier.
The moonlight shone down into the profaned sanctum, and Giorn stared up at the white orb and ground his teeth.
“Come,” he said.
He rejoined his troops and led them against the surviving Borchstogs. The fighting was close and bloody, but he and his men drove them from the city and sent them fleeing into the hills.