Dark Echoes of Light

by Michael James Ploof

  A tear came to his eye, and in the presence of Arrianna, his most cherished of wives, he let it fall. She came to him and kissed him. He held her tight, thanking the gods that he had her in his life.

  Roakore met with Philo, Raene, a number of his generals, and two of his blessed sons. He didn’t know these two lads very well, for they were from one of the least favorite of his wives, but he knew stout dwarves when he saw them, and so he was proud to call them his sons. He often named lads from the same mother with like-sounding names, at least partially, and so, like their mother Marbella, Roakore had named them Denmar and Ardmar. They were big lads in their early twenties, and tall for dwarves. They had been born with the first of his children, shortly after it was decided that the Ro’Sar dwarves should take many wives so that they might raise the population of the clan. Raise the population they had, but out of Roakore’s one hundred sons, these two were among the strongest and smartest. The younger of the two, Ardmar, who had bright red hair and wild green eyes, reminded Roakore of one of his own brothers. And Denmar, with his thick black curls and chiseled facial features, looked more like his mother than Roakore’s line. The two were now hawk riders, and Roakore was taking a fond liking to them. They were quick to learn and did what they were told.

  Having his sons there at the meeting made the news he was about to give that much harder to put into words, and Roakore found himself busying his mind with frequent shots of rum.

  “I got somethin’ to say,” Roakore told the room full of bickering dwarves, who were arguing about the best way to take care of the pesky albino creatures.

  Everyone became quiet and looked to their king, waiting for him to speak. He faltered and tossed back the rest of his most recent drink.

  “Go on then, tell ‘em what ye got to say,” said his royal brain beside him, loud enough for the others to hear.

  Roakore scowled at Wurtzide.

  “Tell us what?” said Ardmar, his hands laced around a wide tankard.

  “We got…” Roakore began. He took a deep breath and sighed. “We gots to evac—”

  A loud explosion silenced him. Everyone froze to listen, and when another went off, this time shaking the castle, they all leapt to their feet and scrambled out to the balcony to see.

  Roakore pushed past everyone and looked to the other side of the large cavern that housed the city, and he cursed under his breath. Smoke was rising from the tunnels that they had blocked off, and urgent voices were calling out. Already the dwarven army was rushing to the location and quickly shuffling into formation in front of the smoking passageway. Meanwhile, thousands of dwarves, namely women and children and elderly who had been going about their daily routines to and fro between the shops and markets, ran screaming back to the safety of their abodes.

  Anger welled in Roakore, and his mind flashed back to the day that his mountain home had been invaded more than twenty years before. He watched, eyes wide, as hundreds of black scorpions scurried through the smoke and barreled into the front lines of his army. The blessed in the group sent the clawed beasts shooting through the air in the other direction, while others bombarded them with a volley of stones.

  “We got to get down there!” Roakore told them all, and he hurried for the door.

  Arrianna grabbed his arm. “What about the evacuation?”

  Roakore looked to his royal brain. “You’ve put a plan into place. Well, now be the time. Get ‘em out o’ here.”

  “Aye, me king,” said Wurtzide, and Arrianna, looking thankful, kissed Roakore and followed the older woman.

  “Come on, lads, it be about time ye fight beside yer father,” said Roakore.

  His sons grinned at each other, held up their weapons, and roared fiercely.

  By the time they reached the battlefield, the black scorpions were piled up twenty feet high at the mouth of the largest tunnel. Still, they kept coming. The mindless beasts swarmed out of the hole, blind to danger, and no doubt spurred by their masters—those sneaking albinos who hid behind their cannon fodder.

  Roakore had barely claimed his first kill, sinking his axe into the head of a scorpion, when the tunnel suddenly became silent. The nearby dwarf warriors waited with bated breath. A rumbling began deep in the tunnel, one that seemed not to be the result of an explosion, but rather a mammoth beast awakening from a long slumber. The sound came again, shaking the very stone at the dwarves’ feet.

  “Clog the hole!” Roakore yelled. “Clog the hole!”

  He ran to the front line and began to mentally lift the first chunk of debris he found, raising it and sending it sailing into the tunnel. Other blessed dwarves began to do the same, and soon, boulders and crushed scorpion carcasses collided into the mouth of the tunnel, blocking it up tight and thick.

  The dwarves waited, for the sound had stopped. The stone no longer vibrated; rather, it seemed to wait. Roakore put his hand to it, extending his senses through the stone. He ignored the vibrations made by the dwarves around him and focused on the tunnel. He mentally moved down it farther, and farther still. Something scurried back there, sending faint vibrations rippling through the stone. It was like listening to music; if you knew what instrument you were looking for, it was easy to ignore the others. Roakore wasn’t as good at it as his father had been, but he had been better than all his brothers.

  He felt something there beyond the pitter-patter of what he guessed to be the albinos and the skittle-scuttle of what he guessed to be more scorpions. What he felt beyond those things he did not understand, for it was something new, something not physical, but rather…

  “To me!” he cried. “Everyone to me!”

  The dwarves crowded him there before the mouth of the cave.

  “Sing, me lads!” said Roakore as the sound returned with force. The first of the mental vibrations began to shake the cavern, and no doubt the minds of each and every dwarf. “This be an enemy we can’t be beating with brawn. I need yer hearts. I need yer voices. Sing with me, lads! Sing the ‘War Song o’ Kly’Erndar’!”

  Roakore banged his axe handle on the ground quickly, violently, once, twice, three times…

  “Ohhh…” he began.

  Every dwarf sang loud and strong, filling the cavern with glorious harmony.

  “Through dragon fire and deathly pain, we march, we march.

  Through cold and wind and deadly rain, we march, we march.

  We march through fire and march through rain,

  We march to war and back again…

  We march!

  Through dragon fire and deathly pain, we fight, we fight.

  Through cold and wind and deadly rain, we fight, we fight.

  We fight through fire and we fight through rain.

  We fight our wars and go home again…

  We fight!”

  As was customary, the females broke off, singing over the males, “We march, we march, we fight, we fight,” over and over again as the verse ended and began anew. Those of the group with the deepest of voices created a harmony in the background, leaving the other men to continue the chant. Axe handles, hammers, and hatchets stomped and clanged, bringing the tempo to life. Metallic crashes like cymbals being smashed rang out, and Roakore, teary-eyed, looked to Raene, who was lifting and dropping a large pile of silver shavings from a nearby wagon, crashing them down on the sheet of thin metal when the beat called for it.

  “We fight, we fight!” Roakore sang with his dwarves, and he realized that he had forgotten the mental attack.

  Rather than search it out with his mind, he bellowed the words even louder and, bending, touched a hand to the stone. That great vibration had stopped. The pitter-patter of albino feet was receding. Apparently, the little freaks didn’t like the dwarves’ singing.

  “Through dragon fire and deathly pain, we fight, we fight!”

  Chapter 13

  Enemy at the Gates

  Two days after the meeting with King Gnawrok, as Whill was lying in bed unable to sleep, he felt a large presence beginning
to grow in the north. He let his spirit soar, gliding upon the winds of the ether, and investigated the growing power. When he saw the army of drekkon, he was not surprised. They came in droves, tens of thousands strong. They rode a wide assortment of strange beasts and even flew on creatures that resembled bats.

  Whill returned to his body and rose from bed calmly, as not to disturb Avriel. But she was already awake and staring at him in the dark.

  “What did you see?” she asked, worry etched on her face.

  Whill looked to his sleeping children and sighed. “The drekkon are marching south.”

  “How large is the army?”

  “Tens of thousands.”

  “You could destroy them, couldn’t you?” she asked carefully.

  He nodded. “I could, but…what would that make me?”

  “The defender of your people, as you have always been. You worry too much about power corrupting you. It never has. You did not start trouble with the drekkon. But if they insist on bringing trouble to our doors, then I expect you to defend us.”

  “You know that I will always defend you and the children.”

  Avriel shook her head. “By us, I mean the people—elf, human, dwarf. This is who you are, Whill, and to deny it is to deny yourself.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Whill. “I have killed hundreds of thousands. I see their faces when I close my eyes. I see their life force dissipate into the endless nothing. I see…I see death everywhere I look.”

  “That which we fear becomes stronger. Do not fear this new power. For it cannot take control of you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because nothing can. Your heart is pure. Remember that.”

  Whill was thankful for her words and her belief in him. It gave him a strength that no relic, energy crystal, or blade of legend ever could.

  He left Avriel and the sleeping children and told the generals to prepare for the coming horde. He then contacted Zerafin through a speaking stone, telling him that the drekkon army would be upon Rhuniston in less than two days. During the building of the walls surrounding the city, Whill had infused the stones with powerful wards of protection against enemy magic. Other wards would protect from arrows, launched stones, and other projectiles. But the wards were linked to him, and if taxed too much, they would leach his power, forcing him in turn to call upon the dark power of Eldarian and the mantle.

  Zerafin joined Whill the next day on the hill overlooking the city to the south and the northern pass west of Lake Ellarin. Whill had suggested meeting the drekkon west of the lake in order to keep the armies from getting too close to Rhuniston, but Zerafin thought it better to remain near so that they might watch the coast. Whill had assured him that he had seen no drekkon armada, still, Zerafin wanted to be prepared.

  “Will you be sending the children back to Agora?” Zerafin asked.

  “No. I believe that they are safe in Rhuniston for the time being.”

  “Even if the drekkon are bent on war?”

  Whill nodded. “They will not reach the city.”

  “No, they will not.” Zerafin looked north, his brow bent in thought. “Can you imagine a world in which we might be able to live in peace with such creatures?”

  “I can, as long as they lived far, far away,” said Whill.

  They laughed together. It was a much-needed laugh.

  That night, the drekkon arrived shortly before the witching hour—much earlier than Whill had predicted. They came by the thousands from the north; a thick, dark river snaking through the valley, which was just beginning to gather its morning mist. The fog swirled around the drekkon and their beasts of burden, which were strange hybrid creatures, no doubt creations of Eadon. The dark elf lord had spent more than five hundred years in Drindellia practicing his dark arts, and Drindellia was vast.

  Whill often wondered what else was out there.

  Zerafin turned to the army of elves and humans, who were five thousand strong, and he spread his arms wide.

  “My brothers. My sisters. We stand upon elven soil, where our ancestors once stood. We look upon the skies that our ancestors mapped. This is the elven homeland! And I have not spent the last five hundred years fighting to get my people home just to be deterred from my prize by a new breed of draggard! This land was once shared by humans, elves, dwarves, and even dragons. And it shall be shared again. But not by Eadon’s dark creations, no matter how intelligent they might be!

  “I will fight as I have always fought, and I will not rest until my people are free of these demons. Let those who have forgotten the might of the elves of the sun now remember!”

  The armies cheered their fearless leader as he pointed at the growing mass spilling down from a distant hill. The longer they watched the endless river of drekkon advance, the quieter they became.

  Whill watched them all closely. He could smell their fear. Skeletal faces flashed in his mind, and for a fleeting moment, he saw each of them lying on the ground, dead. In that moment he knew the way that they would die and when. He closed his eyes hard, banishing the knowledge from his mind. He didn’t want to know such things. He couldn’t, for surely it would drive him mad.

  He felt the power responding to his fear. It beckoned him to tap into it, to give it life, to let it feed. He felt its hunger, hunger as relentless as time and as uncaring as black space.

  The drekkon army stopped at the base of the long hill and fell into tight formations. Whill, Zerafin, and their five thousand warriors stood their ground, waiting for the drekkon to make the first move. No rider would be sent out, no messenger, for the time for talking had passed. King Gnawrok had made himself clear, and now it was Whill and Zerafin’s turn.

  The human and elven archers waited for the command, each with a glowing arrow nocked to their bowstrings and hard eyes fixed on the enemy army. The drekkon had archers as well, along with war machines pulled by lumbering beasts.

  The minutes stretched out long and silent, and some of the human soldiers began to shift nervously. There was little wind this night. Only a few clouds hung in the sky. The moon was nearly full and cast silver beams upon the battleground. In the moonlight, the matte scales of the drekkon changed not at all. They reflected no light, but ever seemed to be bathed in shadow.

  As one, the drekkon suddenly charged, their stomping feet shaking the ground and thundering across the battlefield. Whill raised a staying hand to the army of humans and elves, and seeing this, Zerafin did as well. The drekkon army was two hundred yards away and closing the distance fast, yet, Whill waited. He had mentally searched this field and the ground beneath it, and he had found a crack in the bedrock deep below the earth. When the drekkon army had spread across that fault line, Whill touched the ground at his feet and sent a pulse of power down into the bedrock. The quake that followed left everyone trying desperately to keep their feet, and Whill poured more into it.

  The ground between the drekkon and Whill split horizontally, sending screaming beasts falling to their death in the cavern below. The opening widened to fifty feet, and the drekkon advance was brought to an abrupt halt as the creatures being pushed over the side by the crowd desperately tried to claw their way out.

  The humans and elves cheered. But their cheers soon died down as the drekkon began to leap across the expanse. Zerafin met the first as it came soaring across the fissure, and his sword flared to life as he swung, cleaving the drekkon in half before he could land. More drekkon leapt into the air, a hundred in all, but they were quickly put down by the elven and human volley of glowing arrows.

  As the bodies fell burning and broken into the void, an angry voice rose up above the tumult. The voice spoke in a foreign language that sounded to have elven roots, but it was a harshly spoken language that reminded Whill more of the draggard’s unintelligible growls.

  As the drekkon’s last word rang out, a volley of glowing spells erupted from the drekkon army. They sailed over the expanse, toward the human and elf armies, but Whill was ready.
He extended his hand and released a powerful shockwave that sent the many spells whirling and spinning back toward the drekkon army.

  “Another volley!” Whill bellowed, and a moment later, arrows whizzed over his head by the hundreds.

  He floated into the sky and began to glow. He had opened himself up to the power of the gods; the power that he had gained from Kellallea and Eldarian. It flowed through him like blood, no longer threatening to tear him apart.

  He was in control.

  The drekkon shot arrows and spells at him. They sent winged beasts to tear him from the sky. But Whill deflected every spell that came near and blew the winged beasts back with a wicked wind.

  “Gnawrok!” Whill called as he crossed the wide cavern. “I give you this one last chance to turn back your army!”

  The crowd of thousands stared up at him with a mix of terror and reverie. He found Gnawrok among them, and the tall drekkon stepped forward. Whill landed among the drekkon, and a few among them attacked. He made quick work of his attackers and squared on Gnawrok.

  “You cannot defeat me, for I am the slayer of Eadon.”

  The drekkon seemed surprised by this, and one among them turned to Gnawrok, looking crestfallen. “What does this human say?” he asked his king. “You are the one who slew Eadon. Or so you say.”

  Gnawrok glanced around nervously and regarded Whill with withering disdain.

  “The human lies.”

  “If you defeated the great and powerful Eadon, then surely I should be no match for you,” said Whill.

  Gnawrok ground his teeth. He looked to his robed magic wielders, but they waited like the others.

  “What will it be?” said Whill.

  Gnawrok was furious, but he was no coward, and it seemed that he would rather die than admit his lie, one that had helped him rise to become king.

  “I will not die here today,” said Gnawrok, grinning wickedly at Whill. “The sages have seen my death. It will not be you who takes my life, but time, for it is known to all that I will not die until I am very old. But you…you will die today!”