The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy (45 page)

“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.
Work
with me, my
friend. Honor our deal. 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.