The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy (14 page)

“A sad day,” said a general.

“Grievous,” said another. Niara
thought both were Raugst’s.

“And
why
didn’t you wait for me?” she asked. “Hiatha and I were to scout
the lay of the land—”

“And so you did,” said Raugst,
sounding surprised. “We received the message from the scout you sent back.”

“I sent no—” Niara snapped her
mouth shut. She saw what had happened, what must have happened.
Oh, the clever, horrible demon.
She
would end him yet. She would end him, if it cost her her life. He had had his
own scout send the message, claiming it was from her, asserting that the way
was clear—which it most certainly was not. Now her own people would mistrust
her.
Clever. But it will not save him
.

The group lapsed into silence, save
for the soft thuds of their steeds’ hooves on the grass. A cool breeze
whispered over the undulating hills, and Niara shivered.

“What can we do?” Hiatha whispered
in Niara’s ear.

Niara saw little choice. Raugst had
orchestrated events well. Very well. He had rid himself of his closest enemies
and half the remaining army of Fiarth. Niara wondered if he had meant to kill
her, too. Those Borchstogs she and Hiatha had encountered had not appeared to
be trying to take the priestesses captive. And even though they had lived,
would anyone trust them now? After all, the soldiers had depended on her to
give an honest appraisal of the vale, and for all they knew she had
deliberately led them into a trap.

Suddenly, she felt very cold, very
small, and very alone. She wished Giorn were here now more than ever.

It took only two more hours to reach Hasitlan. By that time
the world had grown so dark it looked dipped in tar, and stars glittered on the
glassy lake. Raugst ordered his men to light torches, and they looked like
thousands of fireflies charging through the blackness, a great column of fire. It
must have intimidated the Hasitlans, who bristled with spears and arrows when
the army arrived at their encircling wall.

“It is Lord Raugst Wesrain. Let us
in!” Raugst called. “And ring the bells! Call every man to arms!”

The men on the walls, seeing the Silver
Stag, did as ordered. Bells tolled through the village, and townspeople rushed
to the walls with swords, pitchforks and machetes. Niara tried to keep herself
together, as well as Hiatha. The other priestess had been crying, but Niara was
able to stop her—not calm her, just stop her. There was no calming anyone.

Her heart thudding rapidly, Niara
mounted the wall with Hiatha to find Raugst talking quietly to Duke Welsly.

“I told you to be wary in those
mountains,” the duke said.

“Would that I had been more so,”
Raugst said. “I fear my impatience to save Ielgad cost many lives.”

“Ielgad’s already fallen,” Niara
said. “That’s the only explanation for the number of Borchstogs that attacked
us. They wouldn’t have had the numbers to ambush us and besiege Ielgad both, at
least not until the Eresine
Bridge is rebuilt.”

“True,” said Raugst, shooting her a
sideways look.

“Don’t worry,” Duke Welsly said. “Hasitlan
won’t be overrun. We’ve stood too long to fall now.”

Raugst clapped him on the shoulder.
“That’s the spirit! They won’t defeat us so easily.”

Duke Welsly bowed to Niara. “High
Mother, could I ask a boon of you?”

“What may I do for the lord of
Hasitlan?”

He knelt before her, holding up his
sword on his two open palms. “Could you bless this blade for me, High Mother? I
would be most honored.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she
thought she saw Raugst snicker, but when she looked at him, he was all
seriousness.

“Very well,” she told the Duke,
“though I warn you that I’m weakened after my exertions.” She laid her hands on
the blade, closed her eyes, and allowed that well of light within her to rise,
overspill its boundaries and pour out through her hands into the sword. Slowly
it flowed out, soaking into the steel, and at last she felt it radiate a
certain energy.

She opened her eyes. The blade did
not glow, not exactly, she was too weak for that, but it did emanate a feeling
of goodness, of wholesomeness. And it was now a thing of the world, not a kept
treasure in her breast. Duke Welsly now wielded a powerful weapon—especially
lethal to darkspawn. Like Borchstogs.

And Raugst.

If it should run him through . . .

Sensing it at the same time she
did, Raugst took a step back.

The Duke, who had been closing his
eyes and holding his breath, looked up and inhaled loudly. “Amazing,” he said. “I
can
feel
it . . .” He stood, somewhat
off balance, and marveled at his blade.

Sagging, Niara nearly fell, but Hiatha
gripped her shoulders.

“Lady, are you all right?” Duke
Welsly said.

She waved his attentions away. “I’m
fine. Just tired.”

“Here, sit.” Hiatha directed her to
sit on the crenellated wall, where Niara took deep breaths and meditated. She
tried to tap that well of light again, but it was empty now, or nearly so,
drained by blessing the sword. It would renew in time, but not soon enough to
aid them in the coming fight.

And it was a
finite
thing, her well of light, she felt. A finite energy. Renewable,
if it was not entirely spent. But if she should ever have need to expend it
all, every
drop
of it, it would not
replenish itself. She would be permanently weak. Permanently mortal. She had
lived for a hundred and fifty years, and the prospect terrified her. She did
not know if she were truly immortal, in the way a full-blooded elf would be,
but at the least she expected to live many hundreds of years, perhaps thousands.

“Look!” one of the generals said. “They’re
coming.”

The darkness on the horizon moved, a
wide column of shadow that swept over the already dark hills. Here and there
Niara caught a helm or piece of armor glisten under the light of moon and stars
like the armor of cockroaches.

“Illiana protect us,” she
whispered, looking up at the nearly full moon above. It looked far away and not
of much help. Weak, like her.

Shakily, she stood, and Hiatha
supported her.

Horns sounded along the wall, the
soldiers alerting each other of the enemy’s approach. A gust of wind blew in
from the north, carrying with it a hint of rain. Niara shivered. She was cold,
and drained, and hunger gnawed at her belly. She was in no condition to fight.

The Borchstogs came on.

Raugst ordered his archers to fire.
They sent volley after volley at the Borchstog host, but the Borchstogs rolled forward,
a sea of death. The arrows bounced off their shields and helms. Several carried
standards, Niara saw as they came within the lights of the village—severed
human heads and torsos on sharpened poles. Grisly relics of their recent
conquests, no doubt. Lord Welsly’s standard of a golden head on a dark blue
background was bad enough, but
real
heads,
real
bodies . . . The bile
rose in the back of her throat.

“The Omkar have mercy,” Raugst
said, and Niara didn’t have to wonder which Omkar he was referring to.

War came upon Hasitlan quickly. The
Borchstogs braved Raugst’s arrows and threw up ladders; some were simply hewn
trees from the nearby forests. The Borchstogs swarmed the walls like ants, preceded
by the smell of rotting meat. All around her Niara saw men give battle to the
demons. Swords clanged and axes thunked. She heard the sounds of a thousand
butchers hacking into a thousand sides of beef, punctuated by the scrape of
armor and gasps of pain. Roars and curses followed. Red blood and black washed
the parapet.

A ladder was thrown up near her,
and Duke Welsly battled beside his men as Borchstogs scrambled over the wall. His
blessed blade whistled and flashed, spraying black.

Even Raugst, keeping up his
pretense, unsheathed his sword and leapt into the fray, as did his generals
around him. Blood flew, soaking Raugst from head to foot, and he laughed. He
laughed! Taking the lives of his own side, and he laughed.

“Use your jewel,” Niara told
Hiatha. “Fight!”

Hiatha chanted, and light glowed
from her jewel, then suffused her whole body. She stretched out her hands and light
blasted forth, incinerating Borchstogs to the fore. The effort quickly
exhausted her, and the jewel was not overly powerful. Soon enough she wilted,
and it was Niara’s turn to support her.

Borchstogs brought up a battering
ram, a stripped tree with its end sharpened to a dull point and charred by
fire, and crashed it against the city gates. BOOM! The ram sounded even louder
than Niara’s heart.

The Duke ordered men to reinforce
the gates, and they did, but it was not enough. All too soon, the gates
exploded inward, and Borchstogs poured in through the splinters, howling for
rape and slaughter. They were quickly overwhelming the walls, too.

“Back!” Raugst shouted to the Duke.
“Get your men to fall back!”

Niara and Hiatha hustled down from
the wall as Raugst, the generals, the Duke and their surrounding soldiers
rushed to the courtyard and found their steeds. Breathless, Niara climbed
astride hers. Hiatha slipped on behind. The soldiers blew their horns,
signaling retreat. Villagers flocked to them, seeking protection. All around,
buildings blazed, and smoke made Niara cough. She could barely see. Screams of
pain and fear rose into the night.

“The women . . .” Niara tried to
dismount, but Hiatha stopped her with firm hands on her shoulders.

“You can do nothing to help them,
Mother.”

Nevertheless, Niara was just about
to shrug off the priestess’s hands when Raugst rode up to them. “We must flee,”
he said. “Again.” Raising his voice for all to hear, he shouted, “To me! Men,
to me! We must vacate the town! Follow me!”

Gathering riders and villagers to
him as he went, he rode through the streets of Hasitlan, and Niara and Hiatha
were swept up in the tide. She passed a park, a school, a maze of twisting,
cobbled streets lined with shops. Farther on she saw the docks. Many of the
townspeople were setting out from them in boats, seeking refuge on the water. She
doubted they would find it. She passed a statue of a great golden head, and far
off she saw the castle, hulking and silent along the lake. Already flames were
licking at it. She imagined Duke Madrast’s golden head melting, the gold
sloughing off it, pooling on the mantle and the stone floor below. She imagined
the gold melting, revealing the head in all its withered, ghastly glory, and
then the fires from the rafters and curtains would catch it, and the tale of
the golden head would end at last.

The gathering poured through the
northern gates and fled the town. Niara slowed her horse and looked back at the
flaming city, the fires reflected off the lake a-swarm with boats, the forests
around it blazing. Leaping fires rose high into the night, and sparks vied with
stars for supremacy of the heavens. Tears coursed down Niara’s soot-stained
cheeks, and she hung her head in shame.

“To Thiersgald!” Raugst shouted. “Follow
me to the city! The Road isn’t far.”

Niara bunched her small hands into
fists. She was shaking, but not with fear this time—with rage. “And will
Thiersgald be next?” she demanded to the night, her eyes still entranced by the
spectacle of the fiery town before her. “No,” she growled. “By the eyes of
Illiana, I will not allow it!”

Chapter
10

In the blackness of the tunnels below Wegredon, Giorn
stalked the Borchstogs at a discreet distance. They were creatures of the dark
and required few lights. In their gathering of perhaps five thousand, only a
few score bore torches, and Giorn wondered how many of these were for
ceremonial purposes. The Borchstogs clomped forward, speaking in hushed
whispers. Giorn could not hear their words, but he could understand their
sentiments; their voices came in thrilled bursts of awe-inspired worship. Clearly
they were deeply moved and honored to have just set eyes upon their Maker.

Giorn, too, still felt the echoes
of the Dark One’s power. He felt ill, nauseous and weak, and it was only slowly
that his trembling subsided.
I set eyes
upon the Wolf
.
I set eyes upon the
Wolf and lived.
Perhaps there was hope yet that he would succeed. He would
steal the Moonstone back from Vrulug, or destroy it if he could not, but either
way he would do what he had come here to do.

What had they
done
to it? It was the Last Gift, the very salvation of Man, and
they had taken it and turned it into some blackened, loathsome thing . . .

Giorn had never considered himself
particularly religious, and at times, especially in the beginning of his affair
with Niara, he had thought himself practically sacrilegious, but even he
couldn’t help but think what an utter blasphemy corrupting the Moonstone had
been. And now that it
was
corrupt,
what did Vrulug intend to do with it?

The Borchstogs led the way into a
broad passage, then passed through a high, elaborately carved archway. Giorn
waited for them all to go through and was about to follow when he noticed the
demonic faces carved into the archway.

They seemed to be studying him.

It’s
all in my head
, he thought. Surely the eyes weren’t really focused on him,
measuring him, weighing his intentions. Besides, there was nothing for it. If
he lingered he’d lose the light. Even then the meager illumination of the
torches was vanishing around a wide bend in the avenue. All else was darkness.

He cringed as he passed under the
archway, and he more than suspected that some of the demonic faces set in it
observed him with some dark intelligence all their own. Rounding the bend, he
could no longer see the archway, but its oily, malignant presence lingered in
his mind. Where before the hall had been rough and obviously carved from the
living mountain, now the hall took on smooth, more orderly lines. Soon
cross-passages and rooms became apparent. Up he went, and niches filled with
ancient Borchstog remains lined the walls. Sealed doorways led to crypts. He
realized that he had reached the lower catacombs of Wegredon.

No sign of the Borchstogs. All lay
eerily still and quiet. Inset torches gave off red, lurid glows at irregular
intervals.

A ragged figure in fine Oslogon
armor lunged at him.

Startled, he dodged aside, sword
flashing. He felt his blade connect, but the thing came on. He smashed his
lantern against its head, embedding its face with glass. It did not even pause.
It shot forward, and the faint light illuminated its ghastly, withered face,
twinkling here and there with shattered glass. It was a Borchstog—a dead one.

Its grasping claws reached for his
throat. With a growl, he swung his sword and took off the figure’s head at the
neck. No blood spurted. Its headless body stumbled toward him still, its gnarled
hands grasping, grasping, but only for a moment. Without its head, it toppled
to the ground.

Another dead one rushed at Giorn’s
back. This one let its sword lead the way. Cobwebs trailed from the blade to
the skeletal hands.

Giorn parried the first thrust. His
opponent struck again, bringing its blade down at Giorn’s head. Giorn blocked,
his arm nearly buckling from the impact. The blow nearly drove him to his
knees. Breathless, he shoved the Borchstog away and leapt back. The thing
followed, sword flashing. Its eyes were partially dissolved, almost liquid in
their sockets, but still it saw. Its tar-black skin stretched taught over brittle
bones. Withered lips peeled back from long sharp teeth.

Even as he fell back, Giorn noticed
more forms slipping from their niches along the walls. He heard the clink of
their armor and the slither and rasp of their wasted flesh on ancient stone.
The archway
, he thought. They must have
been roused by the archway.

He found a gap in his enemy’s
defenses. He hacked off the Borchstog’s sword hand. Still it came for him. Others
closed in from all sides. Giorn decapitated this one with an economic swing,
then grabbed one of the inset torches and ran.

The undead guardians of the
Borchstog fortress pounded after. Ragged and skeletal, they should not have
been able to move with such relentless speed, but they did. With jerky, loping
gaits, they raced after him. Most were mere bones. Only on some did wasted
flesh still cling. Yet Giorn fancied he saw some faint inner fire flare from
the back of their deep dark eye sockets.

The clink of their armor and the
grinding and creaking of their ancient bones echoed down the halls. His heart
pounded so loudly in his ears that he barely heard it.

He passed a flaming brazier and
overturned it in his path. Sparks
flashed. Flaming coals scattered. The dead ones drew back, but only for a
moment, and like an undead tide parted by a rock they divided and went round.

Giorn darted ahead, down the wide,
high main hall of the catacombs. Countless shadowy doorways yawned on all
sides, offering false refuge. From some he detected movement. At last he
rounded a wide turn to behold a doorway flooded with red light.

With a groan, the large slab of
stone that served as the door began to slide shut. The rectangle of red light
diminished to a sliver. Then half a sliver.

Giorn swore. He would be shut in
with the dead ones. He lowered his head and ran full-out, pumping his legs as
fast as they would go. The sound of the dead things increased behind him.

Slamming his shoulder against the
slab, he ground it open just enough for him to slip through, but once there the
pair of Borchstogs that had been closing the door from the other side fell on
him. Fortunately they’d been pressing their shoulders against the stone and
hadn’t drawn their weapons, and he hacked halfway through the nearest one’s
head, splitting its skull to its jawbone, then ripped his blade free, spraying
blood and brains. By this time the second one had drawn a dagger and thrust at
Giorn’s throat.

Giorn’s left hand knocked away the
Borchstog’s wrist, deflecting the blow. Before it could draw back for another strike,
Giorn stabbed his blade into the creature’s belly, angling his sword under its
ribs and ripping up through its heart. Hot black blood trickled over his hand,
and the stench of split intestines filled the hall. The Borchstog slumped to
the floor, its guts glistening in the dark.

Not wasting a moment, Giorn pressed
his shoulder against the granite slab and shoved it closed just as the dead
ones reached it, then slammed the bolt home with a satisfying thud. The dead
ones clawed on the other side, mewling in wordless hunger and hate. Giorn
breathed deeply and wiped the sweat from his brow.

Time
to leave
.

But he hesitated.

He knelt beside the nearer
Borchstog corpse and tugged at its darkly-fashioned armor. It took some minutes
of fumbling in the dimly-lit corridor even as the dead ones continued to
scratch at the stone door for him to don the Borchstog uniform and armor, but
at last it was done. He doubted he would pass a close inspection, but if he
kept well away from the fortress’s inhabitants and stuck to the shadows he
should be fine.

As for the bodies of the
Borchstogs, he waited for the scratching on the door to subside, then opened it
briefly and shoved the Borchstog corpses in.

Disguised, he departed the
catacombs and stalked through one hall after another until he came to an
archway leading out into a main chamber of the fortress. He recoiled at the
sight.

It was hot within. Stifling. Torches
and great braziers lit the large chamber, and by their lurid, flickering light,
Giorn saw a glimpse of hell. Borchstogs in the hundreds amused themselves, the
sound of their revelry filling his ears: their laughing, hooting, shouting and
groaning. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was the sounds of their
victims.

Against the stone walls scores of
prisoners had been chained. Man and Elf and more, they thrashed against their
restraints, but to no avail. Borchstogs, drinking ale or wine, laughed at them
and tormented them, flaying strips of skin from them, sticking needles into
their nerve clusters, burning them with brands. The demons threw knives and
hatchets that clattered off the stone near the struggling prisoners when they
did not strike flesh. Other Borchstogs raped their victims in plain view of
all, holding them down on the floor, or the feasting tables, or in pools of
congealing blood. Frail white figures writhed against heaving dark bodies. The
cavernous room echoed with the screaming, and at hearing it,
seeing
it, red spots danced in Giorn’s
vision.

“Dear Illiana, no . . .”

Living shadows darted from column
to column and corridor to corridor on mysterious errands of their own. Some
partook of the torture. Giorn saw one such haunt steal up on a prisoner and
enter into him. The man screamed. His body began to change, mutate. Tendrils
sprouted from his face. His chest bulged . . .

Giorn looked away.

Other Borchstogs sat at long tables
on which were laid the bodies of humans and others, the demons using crude
cutlery to carve into the bodies. They laughed and made obscene jests. Most of
the bodies were cooked. Some were not. One still moved.

Giorn, shaking, started to take a
step forward, raising his sword. Nearby Borchstogs glanced at him idly.

His blood ran cold. Instantly he
lowered his sword and returned to the shadows. The Borchstogs glanced away.

The
Stone
, he thought.
I must get the
Stone.

He edged along the wall of the
room, keeping to the shadows. Nobody paid attention to him. Still trembling, he
found a hall that led to a stairway and mounted it. He wound down one hallway
and then another, always climbing up. Vrulug would keep his chambers in one of
the central towers. Wegredon was large, larger than Giorn had supposed, and he
wandered its mazes for what seemed like hours. At one point a group of armored
Borchstogs marched past, and Giorn shrank into an alcove behind a many-limbed
statue of Mogra, the Shadow-Weaver. Fresh sacrifices were heaped on the altar
before her shrine, and their stench nauseated him. Their mound partially hid
him, and when the Borchstogs passed he resumed his hunt.

What must have been another hour
went by before he stumbled upon the entrance to one of the towers. The door was
guarded by two Borchstogs.
This must be
it.

He moved toward the guards
brusquely, lowering his head so that they could not see his face through the
eye-slit in his helm, and grunted in what he hoped was an appropriately
Borchstog-like manner.

One of the guards lay a hand on his
breastplate, shoved him back. It grunted something at him in Oslogon:
Where do you think you’re going
? he
thought it said.

He had jerked his hunting knife out
when the Borchstog had touched him, its movement helping conceal his removal of
the weapon. Before it completed its question, he’d plunged his blade into its
throat. It fell back, gurgling, black blood trickling around the metal. Giorn
yanked his knife free even as the second Borchstog leapt at him. This one
tackled Giorn bodily, bearing him to the ground.

Giorn drove his blade at the
Borchstog’s face. The Borchstog grabbed his knife hand with its left, balled
its right fist and smashed it across Giorn’s jaw. The world blurred.

With his left hand, Giorn clawed at
its face, ripping off its helmet. He gouged his thumb into its deep-set eye. It
grunted and jerked away, but kept a grip on his knife hand. He wished he could
pull his sword, but it was too long, the quarters too close.

He punched the Borchstog in the jaw
with his left hand. Blood trickled down its chin, but it barely seemed to feel
the blow. Meanwhile its heavier body was grinding him down, crushing the breath
from him. It drew its arm back to deliver another blow. If it landed, he would
be out.

He grabbed the Borchstog by the
breastplate. Yanked it close. Wrapped his jaws about its broad nose and bit
down with all his strength. Rancid blood squirted his mouth.

The guard released its hold on his
knife hand and tried to jerk backward, but he kept his grip on its breastplate
and plunged his blade into its throat. Blood sprayed him. Disgusted, he shoved
the creature off of him and rose to his feet. The Borchstog thrashed, then
stilled on the floor beside its comrade. Gasping, Giorn stared down at them,
wishing he had time to dispose of the bodies, but at any moment a party of
Borchstogs might swing by.

Spitting out the foul taste of
black blood, he passed through the door and wound up another long stairway,
mounting what must be the central tower
of Wegredon. At last, out
of breath, he came to the head of the stairs. There was no door, just a low
black archway inset with Oslogon runes.
Vrulug’s
lair
. Giorn mistrusted that archway, just as he had the last, but he had no
choice and so he stepped through.

The hall wound about, meeting many
others. Vrulug’s lair proved to be a veritable honeycomb of passages. Several
times Giorn passed windows overlooking the courtyards and spires of Wegredon;
some of the towers had flying buttresses from one to another, and they were
splendid structures, if nightmarish. One tower opened like a black flower at
the top, and another fanned into a protrusion of slender spires, all catching
the light of the stars. Still another tower contained what looked like roosts
for the glarums, the huge crow-like birds flown by the glarumri.