The War Of The Black Tower (Book 3) (3 page)

“And I you.”
He paused, cursing himself,
then
plowed forward. “
Rol
, I’ve . . . got something to tell you. At Gulrothrog,
after we escaped—well, that
was
you,
right, the night Salthrick came?
Or the thing pretending to
be him.”

“Yes. That was me.”

“Well, when I returned, when we
attacked it, we found . . . another Rolenya.
Someone
pretending to be you.
And she . . . he . . . it . . . well, we . . .” He
coughed. This was worse than he’d thought it would be.

“I know,” she said.

“
What
?”
He nearly
jumped away from her.

“In the Second Hell, in Illistriv,
just a few months ago, he . . . that is, Rauglir . . . he came to me, boasting.
He wanted to shame me, shame you—to hurt me. He’s the one who let it slip that
we weren’t truly brother and sister, and he told me how you . . . how you felt
about me . . .”

Heart in throat, Baleron waited.
“Well?” he said at last, his voice rasping.

“To tell you the truth,” she said
softly, not moving away from him, “I wasn’t as surprised as you might think.”

He tilted her chin up so that he could
look into what he could see of her eyes. “No?” he
asked,
his voice even more a rasp now than before.

“No.”

They didn’t say anything more about
it, though they looked at each other for a long, long time. He wanted to kiss
her then, but was afraid. After all he’d been
through,
somehow this still managed to terrify him. I amused him, and shamed him. So he
just held her, and she held him, and eventually they passed into sleep.

Upon waking, two fiery eyes loomed
over them.

He sat bolt upright, waking Rolenya,
and she gasped and shrank away.

No
,
Baleron thought.
No, it CAN’T be. Not
again
.

But it was. The Dark One had taken
the guise of the Great Wolf, but he was even larger now. His slavering jaws
dripped hissing saliva that smoldered against the stone floor. His eyes
burned,
pools of fire in the blackness. He growled deep, and
Baleron shook with fear. The Wolf’s musk-stench filled the pit.

“Gilgaroth,” Baleron said, awed.

“I
have come,”
declared the Wolf.

“Thank You . . . for Rolenya.”

“I
have come for her, not you.
Unless you have . . .
reconsidered.”

“What? You cannot . . . you cannot
do
this! You can’t give her to me and
then take her away,
again
. It’s not
right
!” He understood how foolish the
words were even as he spoke them, but he couldn’t help it.

Rolenya huddled against the far
wall, her eyes, angry but scared, transfixed by the Shadow’s. She did not seem
able to bring herself to speak.

“
WILL YOU SERVE ME?”
asked Gilgaroth.

Baleron understood now why
Gilgaroth had given Rolenya to him. He’d given Baleron something precious so
that it would hurt more when he took it away. It was the same in the arena, but
this was worse, as the gift he’d given was greater: time.

In a small, trembling voice,
Rolenya said, “Don’t give in, Bal.”

Baleron tried to meet the Wolf’s
gaze, but couldn’t.

“I am not your creature,” he said.

Enraged, the Great Wolf bounded
forwards, knocking the prince aside and leaping on Rolenya. She struggled, but
she could not fight such a being. The Wolf’s jaws crushed the life from her,
and her blood spattered the stone walls and scattered the lurking scorpions to
their holes.

Gilgaroth, ignoring the prince’s
shouts and fists, devoured Rolenya, right before Baleron’s horrified eyes.
Baleron beat at the Great Wolf’s sides so fiercely that he exhausted himself
and sank against the wall as far away as he could get, and, weeping bitterly,
turned his face away. He closed his hand over his ears to muffle the wet, meaty
sounds and awful growls of the Wolf.

Finally, a secret door slid away in
the pit wall with the sound of stone grating on stone, and the Dark One backed
into it, his red stare never leaving Baleron. Rolenya’s blood dripped from his
muzzle.

“I
can make her and destroy her a thousand times, Baleron. How many times can you
stand to watch?”

The door slammed shut, leaving
Baleron alone in the pit.

Gilgaroth was true to his threat, for the next night it
happened all over again—and the next.

Every night Gilgaroth created a new
body for Rolenya and every night he destroyed it after Baleron’s refusal to aid
him. Sometimes he would give them time together first, sometimes not. The
prince watched his beloved die time and again, sometimes horribly and slowly.
He began to go mad, talking to himself when no one was there, pulling at his
hair, which (he knew from the fistfuls) had begun to show even more streaks of
silver. Killing himself would be pointless; Gilgaroth would only make him a new
body. His only defense was to lose himself in his own mind.

He could not obey the Shadow, could
not help destroy the world. If he and Rolenya had to suffer for it,
then
suffer they would. Eventually the war would reach a
point where his contributions would matter little and the Dark One would kill
him or forget him. Either way, this had to end sometime. He only had to hold on
till then, no matter the cost to Rolenya. She agreed, as she said many times
when they were put together. “If all I have to do to save the world is be
tortured and die, I’ll do it,” she said. Over and over she urged him to be strong
for both of them, to resist the Enemy’s demands.

As
Olfrig
had alluded to, a huge army of Borchstogs and corrupted Giants and Men and
others had gathered at the base of the tower, beyond the reach of the Inferno.
Baleron overheard his guards and torturers discussing it.
Ghrozm
was openly boastful. The forces had been massing for months and their ranks
were still not swelled fully yet. When the army was all gathered, Gilgaroth
would send them and the dragons north to break the sieges at Clevaris and Glorifel,
then to sweep across the whole Crescent, destroying what bastions of the Light
remained, and they were few. Baleron knew he had only to wait until then, to
that unimaginable day, the day when all hope died, when his usefulness to the
Lord of the Tower would surely be at an end.

One day, Borchstogs led him out
from the pit and down corridors he’d never been down before, and suddenly he
smelled fresh air.

Outside!

Excitement coursed through him at
first—he’d lived to see the world beyond Krogbur one more time—but then he grew
uneasy.
What now?
He steeled himself
to face whatever new horrors awaited him, and Rolenya.

His captors led him to an outside
terrace, where a red Worm waited. Much smaller and leaner than Throgmar, it was
more serpentine, and it hissed at the prince, lashing its tri-pronged tail.
Nonetheless, it allowed the Borchstogs to strap him into a saddle, while two of
their number strapped in behind him.

On a nearby terrace he saw Rolenya
likewise being lashed onto the back of a similar dragon. Former brother and
sister looked at each other sadly. Neither knew what was about to happen, but
it could not be pleasant.

The wind roared and, despite
everything, Baleron enjoyed it as it swept through his hair and over his skin.
He hadn’t seen the outside world in months, and he blinked at its brightness,
even if the sky was covered with storm clouds and all was dim and stark. A
tongue of lightning lanced the ground to the left, and he recoiled at its
brightness, having to mash his eyes shut. The thunder nearly knocked him off
his feet.

When he could see again, he
marveled at the vision before him, at the mountains in the distance, the
smoking volcanoes, the river of fire off to his right . . . It was so big that
it took his breath away. He’d become accustomed to tight environs.

As always, hundreds of dragons
circled the tower in
neverending
loops, screening
Krogbur from unwanted guests. Baleron thought of that day when he’d tracked
Throgmar here. Then he had supposed the moat-Worms had sensed Rondthril and
allowed him to breach their ring, but now he knew the truth, as he’d half-suspected
at the time: the Wolf had let him in. Gilgaroth had, as was his way, been
playing with Baleron.

Baleron’s mount tilted and he
received an unwelcome glimpse over the side of the terrace. His stomach
lurched. It was a
long
way down.
Krogbur reached to the very clouds and higher still, and the terrace they
perched on was well above the Black
Tower’s equator. Small
wisps of clouds drifted below. Below
that
raged the terrible Inferno of
Illistriv.
Souls,
millions of them, flashing like silverfish, darted through the leaping flames
pursued by nightmarish terrors, the Warders.

On the ground beyond the fire
spread a restless darkness: the army. They soldiers were too far away to look
like even ants; all Baleron could see was the formations and a myriad of tiny
pinpricks that must be their bonfires. Still, he was struck by the size of the
gathering: it was
immense
, stretching
off towards the horizon. No might that the Crescent Union could summon could
stand against it.

The realization shook Baleron.
This army, coupled with these hell-Worms, is
the doom of the Alliance
.
And when the Alliance
fell, so would all of Roshliel.

He glanced to Rolenya. She, too,
had caught a glimpse of the hordes, and was staring at them with a tight, pale
face. Nervously, she looked up from them and shared a grim glance with Baleron.

The dragons bearing prince and
princess took off. Flying in tandem, they spiraled down around the thick trunk
of Krogbur, taking their time.
Overhead, the black stem of
the tower rose to the charcoal roof above, ringed by lightning.
Thunder
shook the heavens.

They passed terraces where powerful
Worms lazed on
mounds, some of
treasure,
some were of bones and
rotting bodies with flies buzzing around them. More blood—spattered Worms hung like bats from
jutting beams and ramparts.

On other terraces stood groups of
Borchstogs and other demons, come to get a glimpse of Baleron. When they saw
him they pumped their fists in the air and chanted,
“Roschk ul Ravast!
Roschk ul Ravast!”
Some
dropped to their knees and slit their arms with knives, flinging their blood in
his direction.

The Worms angled out, away from the tower, and
just in time, too—any lower and they would have flown through the very flames
of Illistriv. Sparks
leapt up from the Inferno and the dragons flew through the fiery sprites that
swayed and swarmed with the searing currents. Baleron hunkered low, feeling
scalding pains on his thigh and back.

Peering over his shoulder into the
fires, he saw at close range a white-hot soul pursued by a long, serpentine
dragon-shape, something like the creature in the Labyrinth of Melregor below
Gulrothrog—part wolf, part spider, part Worm. He wondered if perhaps the
fleeing soul was that of Salthrick. He would be in there somewhere, having died
in unholy lands.

The dragons leveled out, gliding
just twenty feet or so over the heads of the teeming Borchstogs whose camps
sprawled across the plain. The creatures hooted and cheered. Baleron saw a
group that had been torturing an Elvish captive stop their games and gaze
upward, blood dripping from their mouths.

Some pointed back toward the tower,
and a great clamor rose up. Baleron felt a thrill of dread. Reluctantly, he
turned.

Saw.

Cold fingers touched his spine.

For—emerging from the very flames
of the Second Hell—was none other than the Breaker of the World.

 
In a form Baleron had never seen him take
before, Gilgaroth—it could be no other, such was his awful might and splendor—exploded
from the fires that wreathed the Black
Tower and shot directly
toward Baleron and Rolenya. Rolenya gave a startled cry.

Gilgaroth came as a great black
dragon, long and sinewy, with a
wolvish
head, horned
and whiskered, trailing smoke from his terrible maw. His tail cracked like a
whip, making Baleron’s eardrums vibrate. Having no wings, Gilgaroth seemed to
swim rather than fly through the skies, moving through the air like an eel. His
eyes blazed Hell-fire, and he radiated an awesome power, darkness embracing
him.

Wonder overcame the Borchstogs, who
knelt or cheered.

For his part, Baleron was startled.
He had heard that
Lorg-jilaad
was called the Great
Dragon but had not known Gilgaroth could assume the same form—and such an awful
one. He wondered if it could have been this form that he’d seen that day in the
Black Temple—as he had come to think of the
dark place where he had lost his hand. He remembered the flaming eyes and fire-lit
maw of Gilgaroth seemingly suspended, bodiless, in the center of that great empty
space. Yet perhaps the darkness had concealed the sinewy shape of the dragon
and Gilgaroth had not been
discorporated
after all.
Or perhaps he had been in some sort of cocoon stage,
growing
this new form.

In any event, Gilgaroth drew
abreast them, flame licking his lips and smoke trailing behind him like a
second tail. Baleron could feel his heat and smell his smoking breath.

Gilgaroth wasted no time on
greetings. “
Baleron
,” he said,
“I tire of games. Today
We
end this.”

Baleron tried to say something, but
his mouth was too dry. He felt his hands tremble as they gripped the red Worm’s
reins.