by Martin Frowd
The Druid saw that he did not have to voice the alternative. Zarna’s face was an open book as defiance warred with fear and self-preservation, while Zoran’s was a picture of mixed fury at his woman’s presumption and fear for her survival if she pressed the matter too far. The Druid, celibate like all his Order, who comprised only men, could not truly empathise with such emotion, but intellectually he knew that the hunters of the People formed strong bonds with their women. As inferior as the Order taught the feminine gender were, these bonds of care and passion seemed still to be powerful ones.
“The sun has reached its peak, Chief Zovyth,” the Druid addressed Zoran’s father the clan chief again, returning to the formula prescribed by the Law after the interruption. “Let the Law be observed, and sacrifice carried out, lest the Dark King be displeased.” The Druid had the satisfaction of seeing both Chief Zovyth and his son Zoran quail before that addition to the normal ritual words.
The Druid watched as the newly blooded chief hunter clambered to his feet and reclaimed his stone, noting how the hunter carefully avoided looking at his woman who had shamed him before both his father and the Druid. Zoran raised his throwing arm and drew it back, and his ritual words rang through the area.
“As chief hunter, I cast my stone against Zarynn, son of Zaryth, declared heretic and traitor to the People. As the Dark King is my witness, I follow the Law!”
Zoran’s arm drew further back, and then snapped forward, hurling the stone at the boy, where he stood chained and helpless.
Hatred burned in the boy’s his eyes as he gazed at Zoran – as he watched Zoran’s throwing arm draw back, then whip forward.
The stone exploded into thousands of tiny fragments, halfway between its thrower and his chained victim, to fall harmlessly to the rocky ground.
The Druid’s mystically attuned senses flared as the boy’s Gift erupted, uncontrolled, into destructive violence. Instinctively, his first action was to invoke invisible protections for himself against the hostile power now unleashed, with a single throat-twisting word in the eldritch tongue used by his Order and the demons that served their Dark King. Seconds later, safe behind his protections, he turned his attention back to the sacrifice.
“Slay the heretic!” Zoran snarled, his face flushing an ugly colour, shamed before the hunters he had so recently been appointed to lead by the strange powers of the boy they sought to sacrifice. Snatching a stone from another man, he pitched it at the chained boy. In mid-flight, the stone exploded as the previous one had done, showering tiny fragments over the execution ground. Cursing, Zoran glared at the other hunters, among them three more sons of Chief Zovyth, the Druid recalled. The Druid watched silently as every man in sight, save himself and the chief, raised stones and threw, all as one.
◆◆◆
Pain blazed through the back of the boy’s head as his surging Power took its toll on him, and he slumped the half-inch that his chains would permit. Pain burned like white-hot needles behind his eyes and in his ears, clouding his vision and robbing his hearing entirely as the hunters, obeying Chief Hunter Zoran’s exhortations, flung all their stones as one, and he closed his eyes and waited for death to claim him.
When, after some moments, he felt no impact of stones against his body, no shattered bones and smashed limbs, he forced himself to open his eyes, the headache still blazing through his skull, to see the stones all strewn across the rocky ground, somehow deflected to strike the barren floor of the place of execution instead.
Standing across from him, facing the hunters who were even now fanning out in response, was a newcomer. The boy could not tell at first if the new arrival was man or woman, for it wore long robes with a deep hood, such as those of the Druids, but black as midnight rather than the deep brown of the Druid here. Among the People of the Bear, only a Druid might wear robes – at least openly – but the boy knew from the teachings of his parents that among other Tribes in far-off lands both men and women might wear robes in the service of the Light.
“-the intruder!” the boy heard the end of Chief Hunter Zoran’s angry exclamation as his hearing returned fully. The young chief hunter gesticulated wildly, pointing toward the black-robed newcomer, and several other hunters ran forward, clutching large rocks – the only weapons allowed in the sacred place of execution. Before the first hunter could strike with his rock, the black-robed figure extended its right arm, pointing with fingers gloved in night-black leather, and spoke a single word in a deep, rasping voice.
“Shuch.”
At the sound of the unfamiliar word, the hunter at whom the fingers had pointed gasped suddenly, dropping his rock and clutching at his throat with first one hand, then both, as if struggling with some unseen foe. As the chained boy, and the other onlookers, watched, the hunter’s eyes rolled up in his head and he crashed backward to the rocky ground to lie still.
Chief Hunter Zoran sprang to the fallen man’s side, crouching over him. He shook his head angrily, fury filling his voice.
“He killed Zanavan! Take him!”
“Stop.” the voice was the Druid’s, its tone that of one born and trained to command. The hunters paused as if frozen in mid-step, all eyes now on the Druid, his own brown-clad arms raised before him in a warding gesture.
“You cannot prevail here, Chief Hunter,” the Druid said furiously. “Only I am equipped to do battle with one such as this.”
The black-robed figure laughed and spoke again. This time the boy understood the words, in the language of the People, although the man’s voice rasped as if his throat had suffered some great injury. His speech was strangely accented and syllables were oddly emphasised. Surely no man of the Tribes spoke thus.
“You? Do battle with me? No master are you, to face me as an equal!”
The Druid took one step forward, arms raised in an intricate gesture, but his black-clad foe made a simple cutting gesture with his right hand and the Druid stopped in his tracks, his arms falling to his sides.
“Do you know me, Druid?” the black-clad man sneered.
“I know your kind, necromancer,” the Druid snarled, “and that kind are unwelcome here! You profane the sanctity of this ground! Leave this place and never return!”
“Master necromancer, if you please. I did work long and hard for that rank. And yes, leave I shall – when I have what I came for.”
As the boy watched, a chained and helpless spectator, the necromancer’s black-gloved right hand came up to point directly at him, and the hooded man uttered another strange-sounding word.
“NeGraatak.”
The chains shattered. The boy stumbled forward and crashed to the ground, iron manacles still biting cruelly into his wrists but no longer attached to chains, as the men and women of the clan watched. Seconds later, with a grinding screech of tormented metal, the execution tree itself burst asunder, raining jagged fragments of ancient blackened metal down upon the ground.
“The boy is mine to take, and take him I will,” the black-robed necromancer proclaimed in his strange, harsh accent. “His Gift called to me across the Sea of Desolation and the lands of your Tribes, and I will not leave this land without him.”
The boy gaped, his sudden release from his chains momentarily forgotten. He had guessed that the necromancer was of another Tribe, but never in his wildest dreams had he thought that he would meet a man not of the Tribes, a man from beyond the great West Sea entirely! He tried to struggle to his feet as he heard the Druid’s reply.
◆◆◆
“For heresy and murder, the boy’s life is forfeit to the Dark King,” the Druid snarled. Whatever happened, he told himself, he must not show fear before the hunters of this clan – he must seem to remain in control. Yet he knew he was no match for a master necromancer, if the other man unleashed his full powers, and cursed the ill fate that had sent him, a Druid Wanderer, rather than a Druid Master, to this place at this time. Silently, he commended his soul to the Dark God he served, even as he spoke aloud to the interloper. “You
may not take him. If you do, may the wrath of the Almighty fall upon you!”
“There are other Gods in Hell than Kelnaaros alone,” the necromancer said with a shrug. “Your Order are not the only ones to serve the Darkness, Druid! I claim the boy’s life, and his Gift also. Surrender him to me, and you and yours may yet live. Refuse, and I will flay the skin from your bones, boil the blood in your veins, and stop every man’s beating heart in its chest. All the men of this clan shall die, just as easily as did that young fool.” The necromancer casually indicated the fallen hunter, Zanavan, with a black-gloved hand. “Well, Druid, your choice? What is it to be?”
◆◆◆
The black-robed outsider’s face twisted into a mirthless smile beneath his long hood as he noted some of the primitives attempting to outflank him, their hands clenched into fists, as if bare fists could penetrate his protective wards! But then, how little the barbarians know of the true power of the Gifts they spurn. A spectral shield, an earthbone ward, and I have nothing to fear from the fools. But the Druid was beginning to move his hands in an intricate working. The Druids, now, they are another matter. Wrapped in superstition and needless ritual, drawing on what power their Dark God and His demons choose to give them rather than taking power from the Infinite for themselves, but their Gifts are still dangerous.
“NeOrth,” the necromancer spoke aloud, almost casually flicking two fingers in the direction of the Druid, who flinched and rapidly shaped new gestures, invoking a ward of protection. The necromancer smirked under his hood. He had not expected a petty spell of fracturing to work against such an opponent, but at least it forced the Druid back onto the defensive and prevented him from calling upon any harmful magics he might possess.
“One last chance, Druid,” he taunted his brown-robed enemy, the harsh accent of his homeland shaping his words strangely in the primitives’ language. “Call off your fools, surrender your claim upon this boy, and you may yet live to see a new sunrise.”
◆◆◆
“Now!” snapped Chief Hunter Zoran, and the men of his clique sprang forward as one, fists clenched, knuckles white with strain.
“No!” the Druid objected, but too late.
“Rallan’te’NeOrthim,” the necromancer spoke, the syllables of power falling easily, almost casually, from his lips. The Druid flinched, recognising the magic, knowing its effect, but too slow to counter it. All around the necromancer, men screamed as bones audibly snapped, tearing through the skin, erupting through arms and legs, spraying gouts of blood across the stony execution ground.
Chief Hunter Zoran, safely behind the circle of his men who had attempted to lay hands on the outsider, glared furiously at the Druid. “Do something! Stop him!” Chief Zovyth stumbled backward, his face slack with horror.
“Zybyll, Prince of Demons, protect your humble servant,” prayed the Druid aloud. “Smite this interloper with your terrible wrath that none may gainsay! Let the fires of Hell take his soul!”
The black-robed necromancer’s harsh laughter filled the air, drowning out the whimpers and screams of pain from the men crippled by his spell, as he made his way out of the circle of fallen, writhing bodies to head straight for the Druid, who flinched again as the necromancer approached.
“My soul is pledged elsewhere, Druid,” he sneered in his strange foreign accent. “No demon may claim it. Not even the Prince of Demons himself. Will he protect your soul from my Gift, I wonder?”
“Leave this place! Go from here at once and never return!” the Druid demanded, growing ever more frantic, as the necromancer came ever closer. Inside, he trembled, yet he managed by force of will to project outwardly only anger and not fear in the face of the necromancer’s advance.
“Had you power enough to compel one such as I, you would have done so long since,” the necromancer sneered as he closed in. “The boy, Druid. Surrender him and we shall depart this place. No more of your minions need die this day. Perhaps, if your Hellish patron chooses to grant you enough power, you may even heal those already fallen,” he chuckled. “The boy, Druid. Now.”
◆◆◆
“Where do you take him?” The necromancer turned his head as one of the primitives’ women plucked up the courage to ask the question, although she trembled as she stared at him.
“Quiet, woman!” hissed the primitive who seemed to be the leader among the hunters, the young man whose arrogance had spurred his fellows on in their foolhardy attack. He took a step toward the young woman, clenching a fist, but she paid him no heed, staring still at the necromancer.
Attractive enough, in a primitive way, the necromancer evaluated the woman silently. No painted and perfumed courtesan, certainly, but not hideous to the eye. Braver than most of the savages, too. A fire in this one.
“Far across the sea I shall take him,” he replied aloud. “To my own city, far from these lands. Never again shall your people see him.”
“So far – “, the woman only managed to start her sentence before the angry young hunter beside her backhanded her across the mouth, sending her sprawling across the stony ground. She struggled to her feet, eyes blazing defiantly, and turned to face the necromancer again. “So far, to the Place of Sacrifice of your own God? So far from home and kin, still only to slay him? He has but eight summers! Please, I beg you, stranger – “, her sentence cut off as the furious hunter stalked across the execution ground to her and knocked her down again. As the woman sprawled, the hunter drew back a leather-booted foot and kicked her in the ribs.
“Zarna!” a tortured shriek split the air. All those who could yet stand turned to regard the source of the shriek; the boy over whose fate they fought, on his feet now but uncertain of his footing, staggering, swaying slowly from side to side. “Don’t you hurt her!” the boy screamed at the furious hunter who stood over the sprawled woman, booted foot drawn back for another kick.
The air around the boy seemed to ripple, in the fashion of the heat hazes common in the necromancer’s desert homeland. Druid and necromancer alike took an involuntary pace back, each one murmuring words of power and protection, as the boy staggered forward.
Standing over the woman, the hunter burst into shimmering deep grey flames.
Screams erupted among the women of the primitives, and cries of shock among the men, wounded and whole alike, as the hunter staggered forward and back, a living torch of shadowy fires. His own screams drowned out all others as his hair, skin and garments blazed, yet radiated no heat. No stench of roasting man-flesh filled the air as the afflicted man collapsed to the ground and lay still, but his body was blackened and smouldering, nearly matching the night-black stone upon which he now lay.
The boy’s eyes rolled up into his head and he crashed to the ground.
More of the primitives – men and women both – rushed forward, but the black-robed necromancer was swifter than all, reaching the boy’s side.
“Rallan’te’orthim’te’graa,” the necromancer intoned swiftly, before bending down to examine his fallen quarry. As the primitives rushed forward, the black rock of the place of execution shook and split in places, forming a wide ring around them. Long jagged white bones erupted skyward from the ring-chasm, rising higher than the height of a man, encircling the hunters, their women and even the brown-robed Druid in a bony fence.
The necromancer straightened up and rose to his feet, carrying the boy limp in his black-clad arms. The women within the bone prison clustered around the burned and twisted wreck that had once been the chief hunter or tried to tend to the many other men who still lay crippled within the ring. The few hunters who remained whole grasped at the huge bones, trying in vain to bend or break them, to breach their prison. A few tried in vain to contort themselves to squeeze between the gaps, but found them gaps too narrow, and the bones too rigid, to allow them passage. A few tried to climb them, but quickly found the sides too slick and slid back down to the ground. Only the Druid’s attention remained on the necromancer.
“Divine Kelnaaros shal
l smite you down!” the Druid thundered at the necromancer from beneath his hood. “You profane the sacrifice to the Great God and by the hand of the Great God shall you die! In His name, I curse you! Let pain and death be your fate!”
“Sacrifices,” snorted the necromancer. “Dogmatic fools, to waste such a Gift as this. But you shall not have this one for your stoning, Druid. By the time the rallan’te’orthim’te’graa fails, we shall be long gone.”
The necromancer turned toward the young woman crouched over the charred ruin of the immolated hunter.
“You. The boy’s name, what is it?”
“P-p-please,” the woman choked out through her tears, fumbling to form a proper reply. “I beg you, stranger, please, spare his life, he is but a child – “
“His life?” the necromancer sneered. “A Gift such as his, and you think I would waste it in death? I am no Druid! This shall not come to pass. No slaying awaits this one. I take him to meet his destiny, to learn to master his Gift. Now, name him,” he demanded.
“Zarynn,” the young woman gasped. “Zarynn, son of Zaryth the hunter and Sheynsa the –”, she broke off in tears again, unable to complete her sentence.
“Zarynn,” the necromancer enunciated carefully. “Come then, Zarynn,” he said to the unconscious boy lying limp in his arms, even as he turned and began walking away from the helpless primitives penned up within the prison of bone. The air carried his parting words to them as he departed.
“You belong to the Black Skull now.”
TWO: THE WATCHER
Zarynn woke to warmth and motion. The world seemed to rise and fall around him. Pain lanced through his head and all his muscles ached as he slowly opened his eyes. As he woke fully, memories came flooding back to him, and he shuddered as he once again saw in his mind’s eye the murder of his parents at their yurt, his own taking to the place of execution, and the havoc that occurred there when the stranger intervened.