A Hero Born

by Michael A. Stackpole

  As hideous as that seemed, I found the display yet more vulgar because of the incalculable wealth scattered over the room. Bharashadi bodies lounged on mountains of gold. Cascades of jewels lay splashed over them as if they were seeds carelessly spilled on rock by an idiot farmer. 1 knew all this had come from the cities and empires lost when Chaos o’erswept the world. I imagined they were the offerings made by fearful kin in an attempt to buy the good favor of the recipients when they returned to the world of the living.

  In a chair at my left hand 1 saw Roarke. He had similarly been stripped to nothing but a loincloth. His head hung forward on his chest, but 1 saw him breathe regularly, so I knew he was not yet dead.

  From him 1 looked up at the only other seat on the dais, and my heart caught in my throat. Monstrously enormous, the Bharasfiadi facing me sat in a throne carved from a single block of granite. I found the carvings decorating it as obscene as those in Castel Payne. At his left hand, fastened to the throne, I saw a scabbard containing a blade at least five feet in length and with a hilt long enough for him to wrap both of his massive hands around it with ease.

  At his feet, near the middle of the dais, lay the Staff of Emeterio.

  Most remarkable of all I saw that his left eye remained open and had been replaced with an opal of considerable size. Obviously dead, because he did not move and had two large holes in his chest, he stared at me with an artificial eye exactly like the real, one a Chaos Rider would have. Even though he remained inanimate, I felt a fearful thrill run through me as I looked at him.

  So tfiis is Kothvir. Staring at him I could not imagine how my father, having met the creature on more than one occasion, would have willingly sought him out again and again. If that sort of courage were required of heroes, I would gladly have returned to the Empire to live out my life in disgrace.

  Even as that thought passed through my mind, 1 knew it was not wholly true. My father’s encounters with this horror were motivated by something stronger than his personal fears. He saw Kothvir as the greatest living threat to the Empire and to his family. What he would have done by himself faded to insignificance in the face of preventing Kothvir from attacking the Empire.

  Vrasha descended the winding trail of steps leading down from the tunnel to the dais. 1 noted ominously that another set of steps ascended the other side of the cavern and ended at what I perceived to be another tunnel. Clearly this was just one in a chain of similar caverns in which thousands upon thousands of Bharashadi waited for the ritual Vrasha could now perform.

  In the dim light I saw the dozen drummers arrayed in three banks. Warriors all, I thought, because of their partially shaven heads, they hammered the drums in unison. They beat out a hypnotic rhythm with a martial quality that had my blood flowing hot. The music called for me to rise up and crush my enemies, something I had every intention of doing. I fought against my invisible fetters, but could not free myself, leaving me to snarl with frustration.

  As I struggled I noticed something that disturbed me for reasons I could not instantly figure out. The boots I wore were not mine. They were old and worn down at the heel. They had been cobbled together in a fashion thought smart twenty years ago. Yet for all that they fit perfectly. Gooseflesh rose on my arms and legs.

  I also took note of a peculiarity in the black velvet loincloth I wore. The ends of it were long enough to hang down to the floor in my seated position. I saw sewn on it the rank badges that had been affixed to the tunic I wore beneath my armor. Glancing over at Roarke I saw his rank badges had also been added his loincloth. Why would Chademons go to such lengths with prisoners?

  Vrasha’s advent on the dais gave me no time to puzzle out why an old pair of boots or loincloth decorations should bother me so. A large warrior trailed the sorcerer and remained one step down from the dais itself. He watched Vrasha very closely, but kept his hands away from the sword and dagger he wore. When he looked in my direction I saw contempt in his eyes.

  The sorcerer stood in the center of the dais and raised the sceptre. A cone of red light shot down from the heart of the web overhead, then expanded at the top to become a cylinder that surrounded the dais. The crosshatched red lines in it formed a semitransparent screen around us and 1 felt the itch of magick on my flesh. The warrior, having been excluded by its creation, stepped through it without harm and onto the dais itself.

  The lines paralleling the ground stood only a foot apart, and, as Vrasha gestured, they slowly expanded like clay on a potter’s wheel. Each of them pulled a piece of the cylinder’s vertical lines along with it, as if it were a wheel drawing spokes from the hub. They spread out until, foot by foot, they mirrored the web above, and every corpse in the cavern had been touched by the red light.

  Pointing the Fistfire Sceptre straight at the ceiling, Vrasha wordlessly summoned one slender shaft of red light. It came from the center of the net and attached itself like a strand of spidersilk to the head of the sceptre. The sorcerer then slowly spun and touched the sceptre to Kothvir’s brow.

  The long-dead Bharashadi warlord twitched violently. Seconds later all of the other bodies in the room jerked, as if imitating their leader, but being distant from the core of the magic, their motion seemed subdued. Vrasha looked about the Necroleum, his needle-mouthed smile betraying his sense of triumph.

  “The eye, Vrasha,” hissed the other Bharashadi.

  “I have not forgotten, Rindik!” Vrasha’s eyes narrowed as he snapped at the warrior. “Recall, brother, it was you who doubted it would be returned, even though the Chronicles of Farscry said it would.”

  The Bharashadi sorcerer turned to Roarke and me, then gestured toward the web. “Through the magick inherent in what I am doing, you will understand all that transpires here.”

  Vrasha made it sound as if his granting me the boon of being able to understand the Bfiarasfiadi tongue was a favor, but I knew it wasn’t. He wanted me to understand because he wanted me to be frightened and to despair at what 1 was part of. 1 let my nostrils flare with disgust and watched him wordlessly.

  Holding the sceptre in his left hand, he walked over to Roarke and tipped my friend’s head back. Vrasha peered mercilessly down at him, then lowered his right hand to Roarke’s face, letting his fingers rest against my friend’s temple. He raised his thumb and held it poised like a scorpion’s tail. I saw a black claw extend itself.

  “No!”

  With a wet tfiwock, Vrasha’s right thumb scooped the eye from its socket in one razor-sharp motion. Roarke screamed in pain and twisted his head away. Blood flowed down his cheek and onto his chest as the Chademon brandished the golden orb triumphantly. I felt nauseous, and even the Bfiarasfiadi warrior turned away.

  Leaving the sceptre to float in the air, Vrasha pried the opal from Kothvir’s face and stuffed the eye Fialchar had stolen from him back into his head. 1 saw a flash of red as Vrasha used magick to root the eye firmly back in its proper place. The sorcerer then turned, stepped forward, and caught Roarke’s chin in his left hand. His talons left small cuts as the Bfiarasfiadi jerked Roarke’s head around to face forward. With deliberate care, he pried Roarke’s left eye open and snapped the opal into place.

  Roarke again snarled in pain. A blue light flashed over the socket, and Vrasha leaped back, then smiled as Roarke fought impotently against the magicks holding him in his chair. Roarke looked over at me and winked with his jeweled eye, but 1 took no comfort in his ability to manage that kindness.

  For me the world had begun to waver and change in a manner that half made me wonder if I were not trapped in another nightmare. Throughout the Necroleum I spied Bfiarasfiadi warriors, and 1 knew where and how they had died. lust looking at one would let me see him in his glory and as he was cut down. I would have put this down to a link like the one that had allowed the others to know what their horses were named when they received them the night before, but the Chaos magick net uniting all the undead Chademons did not touch me.

  Vrasha again raised the sceptre and another red line
shot down to it. As he touched the sceptre to Kothvir’s chest several things happened. Again the corpse jerked as if a cart had rolled over it. Seconds later the corpse host surrounding us did the same thing. Then the red light traced an outline around the two holes in his chest. 1 saw a bloody light burning deeper in the wounds, then it reached the outside, and the flesh pulled together seamlessly.

  All around us this same thing happened to the other Bfiarasfiadi dead. The red light burned away the arrows that remained stuck in some bodies, dropping flaming bits of wood to the floor below. The red light fitted together shattered skulls as if they were puzzles. Bare bones became wrapped in scarlet flesh that solidified and made them whole. Detached limbs inched across the terraces to close the gaps with their bodies. Once reunited, the bloody light welded them together again.

  Finally the ruby light crawled up Kothvir’s chest and joined the first slender line. The red line went from the thickness of a piece of straw to that of my thumb, starting at Kothvir’s brow and working its way up to the ceiling web. As if a worm were crawling through the line and plumping it, the energy spread throughout the network. When it touched the hanging Bharashadi the ropes holding them burned away, but the bodies did not fall.

  Vrasha clutched the Fistfire Sceptre to his chest in both hands and rested his chin on the black pearl. He closed his eyes, and muscles on his forearms tightened as his fists contracted. The net glowed a bit more brightly, then its illumination rose and dimmed as the sorcerer spoke.

  “It has been done as you instructed, oh Kinruquel. As was bargained when we, the Bharashadi, traveled through your realm to reach this world, we have kept this place sacred. In this, the Necroleum, we have enshrined our dead with the plunder of this world. We have tended to them and mended their wounds. We have made them whole once again. They are ready to receive your favor.”

  I felt the earth rumble beneath my feet. The Bharashadi warrior held his hands out at his sides to balance himself. Roarke scowled, and my mouth went dry. 1 had never heard Kinruquel’s name recited in any heroic tale or as the name of a deity in any Imperial pantheon, but if invoking him could make the ground shake, I needed little more proof of his power.

  Vrasha touched the sceptre’s heel to the ground. “Come now, Kinruquel. Return to these your children, my brethren, that which was so cruelly stolen from them. This, in accordance with the covenant the Bharashadi struck with you, I demand!”

  Again the ground moved, though this time the motion felt neither as strong nor as violent as before. The vibration thrummed through the air, and I saw the red lines of power begin to blur. They vibrated like lute strings strummed by a bard, deepening the tenor of the sound I heard. As the noise grew in intensity I clamped my jaw shut because it had begun to make my teeth rattle.

  Up from the ground 1 noticed a newer, darker color seep into the power web Vrasha had created. The lines thickened again, as if a black, ashy mud was oozing up to coat them. This new power did not smother or supplant the magick Vrasha had cast, but it combined with it. In the cracks and beneath layers of the crust, I could see the scarlet fire still burning.

  The crepitant power climbed up the cylinder, but did not spread out to any of the discs linking the dead Bharasfiadi with the dais. I wondered if something had gone wrong, but Vrasha showed no sign of being disturbed. Instead, he watched enraptured as slowly, inexorably, the power of Kinruquel despoiled his beautiful web.

  It occurred to me at that point, that Vrasha’s sense of beauty and mine might not coexist in any sphere of reality.

  When the black power reached the top of the cone, it shot straight down the thick line to Kothvir. I saw the head snap back as if struck by the ray’s increased physical weight. After it hit him, the power began to spread out through the rest of the network, it proceeded at different paces for each circle, so the black power would reach each of the Bharasfiadi at roughly the same time. As it did so, the nature of the sound it produced changed and became more organized and steady.

  The sound focused down into a hammering thud that quickly split into a point-and-counterpoint rhythm. They remained paired, one a half second before the other, and gradually slowed. I knew the sound, but could not easily place it. By the time I recognized it as a heartbeat, other things I saw as more important made that discovery insignificant.

  Kothvir moved.

  At first 1 thought it was a trick of the dying light, but his chest began to swell and contract. His breathing came so shallow at first that I refused to believe I had seen it. As his lungs grew used to breathing again, I began to hear him breathe. My ears confirmed what my eyes had told me: Kothvir had returned to the living.

  His hands convulsed, and his claws extended. 1 winced as I saw them, and Roarke squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. Muscles tightened on the creature’s thighs, and his toes curled in. His shoulders dipped right and left as he loosened his back. His thick chest muscles heaved as he dragged his hands into his lap, then his arms flexed and bent at the elbow. .

  The power line withered as, finally, Kothvir brought his head up. His shaggy mane had been shaved away from the sides of his head in the manner of warriors. Red highlights played off the sharp angularity of his cheekbones and the strong line of his jaw. His nostrils flared with each breath, and his mouth remained open just enough to let some light flash from his teeth.

  He opened his golden eyes, then blinked away the droplet of Roarke’s blood. He stared forward at me and Roarke, but seemed to look right through us. He turned his head toward his left, and, when he saw Vrasha, his jaw began to work slowly as if he were speaking. He stopped, then tried again in a dry, harsh croak.

  “You have done this?”

  Vrasha nodded solemnly and raised the sceptre in his right hand. “As it was ordained to be done.”

  “You are?” Kothvir peered hard at him, ignorant of the other Bfiarasfiadi warriors slowly stirring.

  “Vrasha, Father.”

  “Vrasha.” Kothvir’s eyes closed, and he sniffed the air. “You were the puling runt suckling born of a witch. I took your mother because it pleased me to displease her. I wanted to drown you at birth.”

  As much as I hated Vrasha Packkiller, my heart ached for him. 1 could never imagine speaking to a son of mine like that, nor did I think I would have lived through hearing those words spoken to me by my father. I looked at Vrasha to catch any outward reaction to Kothvir’s comment, but he managed to hide his pain.

  The Bharashadi sorcerer brought his head up. “1 believed you had spared me for greatness.”

  “1 spared you because your mother would have found it more convenient for you to be dead.” Kothvir glanced over at the other Bharashadi standing on the dais. “You are?”

  “The caretaker for your throne, Father. I am Rindik.”

  Kothvir smiled. “So you slew your eldest half brother to take my place.”

  “Actually, my lord, my mother poisoned your primary wife and her brood before you were a fortnight dead. I have, since that time, been very careful and have defended our realm against Tsvortu incursions.”

  “And you sanctioned Vrasha here in his attempt to resurrect us?” Kothvir’s eyes narrowed.

  Rindik did not even flinch. “I encouraged him. The timing was not what I might have desired, but the outcome was.”

  “Yes, the outcome.” Kothvir turned back toward Roarke and me. “It has been a very long time since I have seen you. Even while I sat here, wrapped in death, 1 did not forget you. What you stole from me caused enough pain that I could not release it even after death. You killed not only me, but my dream of uniting Chaos and destroying the Empire. That is a crime for which you and all your kin should pay.”

  Roarke bared his teeth. “If that’s a crime, recidivism would be a virtue.” He struggled against the magickal bonds holding him in place. “Let your pet release me, and 1 will do it again.”

  Kothvir stood unsteadily, then pressed his left hand to the side of his chest where his wounds had been. “Even after this
time I feel the pain. It is cold now, but it nests there to remind me. The years have changed you, but it makes no difference. I will finish now what I started years ago.”

  With his left hand he reached back for the sword attached to his throne. “I made this vindictxvara in the heart of a volcano, beneath a full moon, and quenched it in the river that runs through the most desolate parts of Chaos. There has never been a blade like this before. At its mere touch, you will burst into flame.”

  Roarke laughed all the more loudly. “Death has slowed you down. Not even a fair fight? Go ahead, slaughter me, your reputation will not benefit by it.”

  Kothvir turned on him, the blade yet undrawn. “Why do you prattle on so, wizard? I remember your knife—a splinter to the tree driven into me that day. This blade will kill you well enough, but now I use it on the one it was forged to slay.”

  With a hissing ring, Kothvir drew the vindictxvara and thrust it toward the roof. Red light ran like blood over the razor-edged steel. My jaw dropped open in complete surprise because there, staring back at me from amid the black tracery decorating the silvered blade, I saw my own face.

  29

  J ¥ow could that blade be meant for me? At the time

  f f he had created the weapon I was nothing more than an infant. He had no way of knowing what 1 would look like when I reached adulthood. He could not have anticipated my trip to Chaos. It was impossible that he could have manufactured that vindictxvara intending to use it on me.

  Yet even as part of me wanted to take refuge in the thought that the time Kothvir had spent in the Necroleum had rotted his brain, scenes from the nightmare and many others boiled back up into my brain. I had seen this Chademon before, I had opposed him, and I had defeated him. Never before by force of arms, but by tactically outsmarting him. I had known forever that to directly engage him would mean my death. Even throwing that spear at him in our last battle had brought me far closer to him than I had ever been before.