by K. J. Hargan
"The ultimate triumph," Arnwylf said with hushed terror, "wiping away all that ever was, and all that ever will be."
"We must not let this happen," Iounelle whispered.
"How long do we have until Ravensdred attempts his delivery?" Derragen asked Yulenth.
"Two days at the latest," Yulenth said. The ensuing silence bore the weight of the shock. "Of course none of that matters if the garonds do not send their entire army up the Syrenf River."
"You think they may spread out?" Arnwylf asked. "Land at different locations?"
"It depends on the Dark One's plans." Yulenth answered. "Does he feel he still needs to move with stealth? My own feeling is that, at this point, his overconfidence may be his greatest weakness. And so, he will probably have Ravensdred charge all his garonds up the river to deliver the Sun And Moon swords, thinking we cannot stop, what he assumes, will be the inevitable success of the garond army."
"What can we do to stop him?" Halldora quietly asked.
"I have a plan," Yulenth said with grim determination. Then Yulenth talked long, and with great detail, explaining the tasks and sacrifices each would have to make to stop the Lord of All Evil Magic. When he was done, the Archer looked up.
"All is lost then," the Archer said with emotion. "For I no longer have any of the Arrows of Yenolah. I lost the last one yesterday, on the shores of the New Sea."
The group stared at the fire in hopelessness.
"Then we must make another arrow," Yulenth said, spreading his hands in a futile gesture of resignation..
"From what?" Arnwylf asked in despair. "And how?"
"There is a chance," the Archer quietly said, "but I did not want to say it, to give false hope. But... Let me investigate."
"We must find a way," Yulenth said. "Or else lay down in our graves right now."
The humans and the elf agreed with their grim silence.
"Halldora," Yulenth said. "You must return to the human encampment at once, tonight. The human nations are so fractured, they are about to begin fighting amongst themselves any moment. They need a strong leader, and the Northern Kingdom of Man desperately needs their Queen. I must return to the citadel tonight to report to the Dark One. I can give you the safety of my company almost the whole way."
"We should take Caerlund's body," Halldora said.
"Of course, of course," Yulenth responded. "But let us leave at once. It will be dawn soon. You all understand your tasks?" Yulenth looked at each of his compatriots with meaning. Yulenth took their silence for agreement. "Good. Then may the Great Parent be with each of you. For there will be no pity in this world, or the next, if we fail."
Yulenth and Halldora readied their horses, and tied Caerlund's body to a third horse. Then, without any further words of parting, they rode off into the waiting night.
The elf turned to the Archer.
"So, I must go west to Reia and bring the reians to the fight, whether they will or not," the elf said with a sigh, knowing she could accomplish her task, although it would be difficult.
"And I must go east to find Yulenth's device in Rogar Li," the Archer solemnly said, knowing what danger waited for him.
The elf took the Archer's hand and gently led him to one of the rebuilt houses of Bittel.
At the door way, the elf stopped and looked deeply into the Archer's eyes.
"I would have you spend this, possibly the only night we will ever have, with me," she said.
The Archer took her hand and led her inside. He closed the door of the small home.
Derragen pulled Iounelle close and kissed her ear. The elf moaned. The elvish ear is sensitive for more than just hearing, the Archer smiled to himself. Derragen moved his head down, kissing from her ear to her neck.
The elf suddenly pulled away.
"Awaruaine," Iounelle said with great seriousness.
The Archer shook his head, not understanding.
"I dreamt I was at a wedding last night," the elf explained with a sorrowful smile. "I recognized the color green representing my family as one of those to be wedded. The other color was black."
"The color of the house of Pelych," Derragen added with a smile, and then touched his finger to his chest. "My house."
"My people honored my wedding in their dreams," the elf sadly smiled to herself.
"And Awaruaine?" The Archer asked.
"A secret name," the elf answered, "given to me by the Priests of Lanis when I was born, known only by my parents and myself, and to be told to my betrothed on my wedding night."
"Awaruaine," the Archer said as he passionately kissed the elf.
As they urgently undressed each other, Iounelle could hear the wolves outside milling about.
"Iounelle," Derragen said. Then, he paused and smiled. "Awaruaine," he said, "I love you."
Iounelle pulled at Derragen's muscular, scarred arms, pulled him to the makeshift bed.
As they joined together, Iounelle seemed to hear the night sky and stars moving in joyful arcs, as though she could hear the movement of the heavens for the first time. The trees happily whispered to each other of love, softly shuffling leaves and branches in muttered songs of love and passion. It seemed unreal, as though she were somehow submerged in a dream while awake.
Iounelle felt her spirit move up into the night sky and expand, illuminated with streams of starlight, patterns of celestial movement, a great spreading, glowing, immortal design stretching across all that is, and all that could be, from star to star, as far as light could reach, throwing sparks off the moving loom of the foundations of the most essential elements, tying all the living together in one magnificent shimmering tapestry of love and life woven with eternal mystery.
Derragen felt so filled with love, his whole body felt warm and alive, as if he had been asleep his entire life. He felt as though fire began to move up and down his body, crying for every nerve in his body to awake and etch this moment in burning, undying letters on his soul, every passing heartbeat with Iounelle, in her arms, the most important instant he could ever realize in his whole life, every fiber of his being roaring out to remember this with all the passion the embers of his very core could ever consume.
They both could feel the slow shifting of the earth as it turned, an immense, slow, intoxicating vertigo.
Iounelle felt so filled with love and joy, she couldn't help herself and she began to softly weep. Derragen stopped.
"Are you all right?" He gently whispered.
"Yes," she said, "more than I have ever been in my life."
As they increased in intensity, Derragen could hear the wolves outside shifting about with more purpose. And, as they reached the conclusion, many wolves outside the little house burst into long, playful howls.
Cheeky beasts, the Archer thought to himself.
Then the Archer and the elf fell happily asleep in each other's arms.
In the early morning, when it was still dark, Iounelle awoke with a start. For a moment, she thought she was still back in Lanis Rhyl Landemiriam and the garond attack had all been a bad dream. She realized she felt this way because she felt happy for the first time in several years.
A wolf scratched at the door. Iounelle could hear the wolf speaking.
"Light Child?" The wolf repeated.
Iounelle opened the door. At the threshold, a mother wolf guarded the infant that had bonded itself to Iounelle.
"We are leaving," the wolf said, and then turned to go, without any further explanation.
Iounelle picked up the baby. All of the wolves of Bittel, with their human Brothers, silently loped out of the hidden village, covered by the gloom of the early morning.
The elf, cradling the infant, closed the door, and snuggled back into bed with the Archer.
As the sun rose, the Archer and the elf awoke. The Archer looked down at the baby, and thought to make a joke but then let the notion pass, wanting to keep unspoiled the tender feelings he was enjoying.
"Good morning," Derragen smiled to Iounell
e as they prolonged the moment by remaining in bed.
"Good morning," Iounelle said with a sleepy smile. They kissed.
"We have much to do," the elf frowned , "and not much time to do it."
The Archer and the elf rose and quickly dressed.
As they left the small house, the Archer was surprised to see Bittel completely empty, but for two horses left for their use. The morning was brisk and bright, a day filled with possibilities.
The Archer pulled the elf close.
"Two days," Derragen said. "I will see you again in two days on the Plains of Syrenf, on the field of battle. Find me."
"I will," the elf said.
"Find me," the Archer repeated, "for if all is lost, my dearest wish is to die near you."
The elf was overcome and could not speak.
Their parting kiss was long and passionate. They held their embrace as if they both wished to press the very soul of the other into their bodies. Then they parted.
The Archer rode hard to the east. And, the elf, nestling her human infant, rode hard to the west.
Chapter Eleven
Beneath the Depths
Fayollis, the man who had been shouting at Stralain and Stomikother in a vain attempt to join with Deifol Hroth awoke to find dirty claws holding him upright. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he discovered that he, and the fifty or more men who were with him, were in a cavern deep beneath the earth. And, every human stood trapped between two, tall, monstrous creatures that stood stock still.
The horrible things looked as though they were human once, except their features were stretched and decaying. Their heads were elongated and squared. Their teeth long and yellowed. Their arms and legs gangly and sinewy. They stood several heads taller than any living human in the darkened depths. The monster's eyes were all empty, black pits of voided sorrow.
The creatures resembled the ghaunts some spoke of in terrified whispers, humans that had been transformed by the Dark Lord's arcane arts.
"You desire to serve me?" A deep, honey sweet voice echoed throughout the black shadows of the cathedral of stone.
"If that is you, Deifol Hroth," Fayollis said with agitation, trying to sound brave, "we wish to be among those who will prevail-"
"Hush!" The voice of piercing evil commanded. "Learn obedience and the surrender of your souls."
"I- I don't-" Fayollis stuttered in fear.
Beneath the layers of dense chalk of the Syrenf Plains, the cavern was carved by the centuries from rippling water that flowed through banded brown stone, with ebony stalactites that hung down like spears dripping inky blood.
The smell in the cavern was moldy and wet. The sound of water dripping echoed all throughout the blinding darkness. The cavern was cold, cold as a graveyard on a midwinter's day.
The ghaunts all stepped back from the living humans and pressed their vile decaying bodies against the walls of the cavern as though they were trying to avoid some impending catastrophe from overhead.
The men with Fayollis pressed together, muttering with fear. Fayollis could hear some begin to weep. Fayollis looked back into the cavern to get a better sense of the hundreds, if not thousands of ghaunts that waited like corpses buried standing up on their feet. The cavern, with the ghaunts completely still, resembled a burial catacomb.
Fayollis could see a shimmer of energy pulsing from the back of the cave, from out of the black. It looked as if ghostly water was moving forward in a ceiling to floor wave. He could feel every hair on his body stand on edge from the approaching, pulsing power. His skin and bones began to vibrate. He clenched his teeth in anticipation and fear, but his teeth clattered anyway from the intensity of the energy. He heard screaming from the men in the back as the wave of energy hit them.
Looking to the back, Fayollis could see men being bodily lifted and stretched, their flesh browning and putrefying. Fayollis fell to his knees and curled into a ball as the men all around him screamed in terror and pain. From his fetal position, Fayollis could see the feet of the men all about him, levitating off the cavern floor, violently shaking.
Then, the energy dissipated. Fayollis looked up. He was unchanged, but all around him stood dead-eyed ghaunts, faces now corpse-like, bodies stretched. He was the only human left in the cavern.
As he heard the rattle of large, iron spears being passed to the new recruits Fayollis begin to cry in fear.
A failing prayer was only half uttered, as the monstrous beings that were once human jammed their spears into the untransformed man. Fayollis' screams echoed through the dismal, black cavern as he was butchered by the ghaunts.
Yulenth reigned his horse to a halt for only a moment. The early morning sun was cold and harsh. Yulenth and his horse both breathed clouds of vapor in the chilly air.
"Farewell, Halldora, Queen of Man," Yulenth sadly said. "I wish you the best with your task."
"Fare you well, Yulenth of Glafemen," Halldora returned. "May the gods smile upon your designs, and win us the day."
"I fear where I am now to go, no god would smile," Yulenth said with worried grin. Then, the gray haired man spurred his horse on, and he rode into the abominable mists that covered the citadel of Deifol Hroth.
Yulenth rode his skittish horse down a path he knew to be safe from the grotesque, transformed garonds lurking in the miasma.
But as luck would have it, a garond, hunched over and squat like a crab, with fifty wiggling insect legs protruding from all over its body, sat waiting, broken free from its chains. Yulenth pulled on the reins, and his horse kicked its front legs high in fear. The magic-twisted garond grabbed the horse with both its massive claws. Yulenth leapt from the horse's back as the disgusting, mutated garond burrowed its grinding maw into the bloody flesh of the horse.
Yulenth hurried away, knowing the hungry monster would concentrate on his poor horse, and might attract other freed, deformed garonds.
Following a memorized path through the blinding, white mist, Yulenth came to a stone arch entrance leading into the citadel. The opening in the black wall should have had a normal garond guard as a sentinel. Yulenth looked around for a moment to see if the guard was nearby. Yulenth didn't want to be clubbed by a surprised guard.
With no sentinel in attendance, Yulenth cautiously entered the fortress of the Lord of All Evil Magic.
The stone corridor inside the citadel was dark and quiet. Yulenth pulled out his hand torch and lit it with flint and steel. It wouldn't burn long, he needed to quickly find a larger torch.
As Yulenth carefully stepped down the corridor, he saw a garond club lying on the stone flagstones.
At the next intersection, one path led down to the forbidden room with the creature, Lah'ugh'gloth.
Perhaps the vile demon had eaten another garond sentry, Yulenth thought. Yulenth wanted to have another look at the creature anyway, so he crept down the flights of gray stone steps leading down to the chamber of the thing that had no solid form.
At the last intersection that led to the door with the mystic sigils and runes carved into the thick oak, Yulenth heard a door open from the other direction off to the right.
Lord Desprege emerged from the dark with a grin that unnerved Yulenth. He had seen that look before, on Lord Stavolebe's face after he had made the final step into the total blackness of evil. Behind Desprege, Yulenth could see through the open door, steps carved out of living stone leading even further down into the earth. A noxious smell floated up out of the opened door.
"Yulenth!" Desprege cried. "I have just seen the most amazing thing."
"Is our Dark Master behind you?"
"Yes," Desprege answered. "He'll be up from the cavern in a moment, once he's finished with his new ghaunts."
Yulenth had one more experiment to try. Now had to be the time. He might never get another chance.
"There he is," Yulenth lied, pointing back at the empty door.
Lord Desprege turned to look, and Yulenth hit the short, fat, bald man as hard as he could on the back of h
is head. Desprege crumpled to the flagstones, unconscious.
Yulenth held very still. He centered and squared his thoughts. He allowed his mind to only imagine a small circle of white and nothing else.
Yulenth heard the sound of feet ascending the stone steps. He knew it was Deifol Hroth, but fought to keep his mind completely blank.
With his vision unfocused, and his eyes staring straight ahead, Yulenth could see the Evil One stop at the doorway. He seemed puzzled. Then, the Dark Lord of All Evil Magic held out his hands like a blind man, feeling along the stone wall as he entered the corridor.
Just before Deifol Hroth's foot touched Lord Desprege's prone body, Yulenth leapt forward and let go of his blank mental state. Deifol Hroth actually jerked back as though startled by Yulenth's sudden appearance.
"My lord," Yulenth said.
Deifol Hroth blinked as though his vision had just returned.
"Lord Desprege seems to have fallen and hurt himself," Yulenth lied as he bent down to try to rouse Desprege.
"How long have you been here?" Deifol Hroth asked in a slow and dangerous voice.
"I just arrived, lord," Yulenth carefully said, shaking Desprege, who began to revive.
"Where have you been?" The Lord of Lightning hissed as though he was seeing exactly where Yulenth had been and with whom.
"I was gathering more information for you, lord," Yulenth smiled, as he helped Desprege to his unsteady feet.
"I now know all I need to know," Deifol Hroth said with a flat, deadly voice. The Lord of Lightning quickly smiled, then let the smile drop. "Come with me."
The Dark One led Yulenth and Desprege to the oak door with the arcane symbols, barring the chamber to the unspeakable horror of Lah'ugh'gloth.
Deifol Hroth raised his hand and the door unlocked by itself and swung open.
"Enter," Deifol Hroth commanded.
Desprege stupidly marched right into the darkened room. Yulenth hesitated.
"My lord," Yulenth began. But, Deifol Hroth grabbed Yulenth by his tunic, and threw him into the room a though he weighed no more than a child.