by Jack Conner
At last he said, “I don’t know.”
She nodded. Thunder rolled across the sky. In the distance, wolves howled.
“Rolenya,” he said quietly.
She looked at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She squeezed his arm, her eyes moist.
Wolves howled again, very close this time.
“Let’s push on,” he said. “We may not be able to escape them, but at least we can make them work for it.”
Together they fled, as the howls drew closer and closer behind them. The trees grew gnarled and thick, with disconcerting boles, and strange lichen and moss covered them. The roots of the trees stretched in eerie profusion, with sinister knobs and twists. The air grew thick, bitter, and Baleron felt the hairs raising on the nape of his neck.
“I don’t like this place,” Rolenya said.
“Neither do I.”
The wolves had drawn very close, however, and turning aside would only deliver Baleron and Rolenya to them all the quicker. The two pressed on, and the forest grew danker and more fetid with every step. At last strange black monoliths reared skyward, and human bones were heaped at their bases. Some of the bones looked fresh, and flies buzzed around them, undeterred by the thick, slow, warm rain. Baleron saw corpses nailed to trees, and he covered Rolenya’s eyes against the sights, leading her on with her hand gripped in his. When they were past, he uncovered her eyes. At last they came on the ruin of some ancient fortress, its crumbling towers stabbing high into the dark night. Rain glistened on the black towers, and the flashes of lightning made them seem to pulse.
The gates sagged open.
Baleron and Rolenya stared at the gates, then each other. Behind them, the wolves howled. They seemed just over the next rise.
Baleron entered. Rolenya followed, warily. Instantly, he felt the hairs stand up on the back of his arms, and the bitter taint he’d tasted earlier returned. Something was wrong with this place. Something foul was here.
“I think I’d rather take our chances with the wolves,” he said.
“Yes,” Rolenya said, staring about her at lichen-covered stones strewn with unidentifiable bones. “I think you’re right ...”
They turned back toward the gates.
The wolves hunched at the gateway, slavering and snapping at each other. As one, they took a step forward, and Baleron and Rolenya stumbled back. The wolves, perhaps a score of them, advanced, and again Baleron and Rolenya retreated. Baleron pulled his sword.
“A stairway,” Rolenya said, tugging on Baleron’s arm and pointing. A gaping blackness led downward. By the flashes of lightning, Baleron discerned an ancient, stained set of steps.
“They want us to go down,” he said.
“What choice have we?”
The wolves slunk forward, thunder crashed against the towers, and warm rain flung down. Baleron and Rolenya descended the stairs, a step at a time. The wolves followed, slowly, their claws clicking on the stone. Baleron knew the creatures had just been herding them here, though for what purpose he could not fathom. Finally the stairs terminated at a grand set of iron doors—ajar.
The darkness gathered even thicker and blacker on the other side, and the bitterness sat even heavier on Baleron’s tongue at being near it.
Brother and sister slipped through the doors. It’s warm, he thought, surprised. At first all he saw was darkness, but then the frequent strikes of lightning revealed a stone hall, ancient and ruined, with thick pillars supporting the ceiling. A slab squat and black and covered in stains, commanded the very center of the room ...
The doors crashed shut behind them. Blackness enveloped them.
Rolenya yelped, and he squeezed her hand. He wanted to tell her it would be all right, but he did not see how it could be. He struck his sword against the floor so that anyone nearby would hear.
“Treat with us fairly,” he called. “We will listen.”
The chamber echoed with the sound of stone grating on stone. Baleron heard what sounded like a panel buck and slide away. A terrible Presence, wreathed in a darkness so deep that Baleron could see it, could feel it, entered the chamber. A weight descended on his mind.
“No!” he heard himself say. Even staggering backward proved a great effort.
Rolenya screamed. He heard her shuffle back to brace herself against the doorway. Trying to overcome that weight in his mind, Baleron placed himself between her and It, holding his sword high.
Suddenly a pair of flaming eyes appeared in the darkness before him. Huge eyes. Wolvish eyes. They blazed with fire, illuminating the chamber with flickering light. They loomed several feet above and before him, and they appraised him harshly. If they belonged to a wolf, it was of monstrous size. Ten feet high at the shoulder, at least. Its presence was overpowering. Baleron could taste the evil on the air, as well as the carrion stench of death from its mouth and the musk off its fur. A chill froze his soul. It was without a doubt the being that had set fire to the Temple.
The wolf’s fiery eyes narrowed. When It opened its mouth, a red light glowed at the back of Its throat as if hell-fires burned from within.
And they did. For surely this being was bound to Illistriv, the Second Hell.
The terror spoke: “Fear Me.”
Baleron obeyed. The Beast’s words seemed to come from far away, as if they had to travel through the very fires of the inferno before issuing from his mouth, emerging harsh and blackened.
“For I have come to lay your Doom upon you.”
Baleron could find no voice to speak. His throat seized up. His tongue froze to the roof of his mouth. His sword fell from his suddenly numb fingers and clattered to the floor. A great will strove with his. He fought it. It wanted him to kneel, but he would not. At last, with much effort, he threw it off.
“Begone!” His voice sounded hesitant and shaky even to him.
The Wolf growled at his defiance, and Baleron felt a tremor course through him.
Staring up at the thing, he knew a primal dread. Using all his strength, he turned his eyes away from those of the Other and caught Rolenya’s glance, as he could see her clearly now in the blazing fire that issued from the creature’s eyes and throat. She looked pale and frightened, and she’d pressed her back against the doors, but she was erect and resolved. Absurdly, he felt proud that she was his sister.
Still standing between the Wolf and his sister, Baleron turned back to it. All that they had been through, he realized, all the death and horror, from the sacking of Ichil and Haben’s torment, to the burning of the Naslym bridges and the massacre of the wedding party, had been leading up to this one moment.
The flaming eyes fixed on him. “You are foolish to try to protect Rolenya. You cannot protect her ... not from Me. Yet it is not your deaths I desire now, but your lives instead. I now claim them as Mine.”
It sprang forward and with a swipe of its head knocked Baleron to the ground. Rolenya pushed herself off from the door and lunged at the Wolf. It batted its head and flung her hard against the wall. She slumped to the floor, moaned, and did not get up.
Baleron tried to rise. The Wolf shoved a paw down on his chest and ground him into the filthy floor. The beast’s musk and sulfurous mouth-odor bathed his face.
The Wolf’s fangs, backlit by the fires burning in the back of his throat, dripped poison onto the stone. The drops hissed when they struck. A drop fell from the Wolf’s mouth and narrowly missed Baleron’s cheek. He smelled scorched stone as the drop struck the floor.
“No,” moaned Rolenya.
The beast turned its baleful gaze on her.
“Just what is it you want from us?” Baleron asked.
The Wolf looked down at him. Smoke curled from between the Wolf’s terrible fangs, and it seemed for a moment that there was a note of longing, of sadness, in those horrible, flaming eyes. And when the Great Wolf spoke, the echo of those feelings was plain to hear. What it said was simple, but it was imbued with meaning:
“Freedom.
”
And, with that, the note of lament and weakness was gone, replaced by cruelty, by malice. Dark thoughts danced in its flaming eyes.
“Go back to hell,” Baleron said.
The Wolf stuck his snout into the prince’s face, wet black nose quivering, steaming. Slowly those great jaws opened and Baleron stared up into the fiery pits of the Second Hell. At the back of the wolf’s throat he saw bright light, red flames. Maddened screams sounded in his ears ...
Shuddering, he wrenched his gaze away.
The Wolf closed his jaws.
Shakily, Rolenya said, “Don’t hurt him.”
A black chuckle echoed against the wet stone walls. “Sweet child!” The Beast studied her, and Baleron did not like the way the creature’s eyes lingered on every angelic plane and angle of her face and on the rise and fall of her breasts.
Rolenya tried to match the Wolf’s stare but could not, averting her gaze to the floor, where the Beast’s fires illuminated rotting bones and ancient filth.
Baleron heaved the paw off of him, rolled clear and staggered to his feet.
“What exactly will you demand of us?” he said.
The Wolf regarded him silently for some time. At last it said, “LOOK INTO MY EYES.”
Baleron tried to resist. The great will strove with his and this time he was helpless to win out. Sweating, straining, fighting it with every fiber of his soul, he lifted his gaze and stared directly into those horrible, flaming eyes. Then the Wolf opened its mouth again and Baleron’s gaze was drawn, against his will, to the inferno at the back of its throat. Baleron beheld Illistriv, the Second Hell, what must be it, in all its awful grandeur. He saw a bright, red-white light, and in it shapes ... writhing, twisting things, dark things, reaching out to ensnare him, calling to him ... and souls, bright blue-white souls, ghostly and wraith-like, swirling, running ... being pursued. Fell things chased them. He heard screams. He felt the heat as flames scorched him. He felt drawn in, inexorably drawn in ...
A shadow greater than the others reared up before him, and he felt a terrible coldness seep out from it. The shadow leapt out at him from the flames, out from the Second Hell, and ... into him.
It seemed as if a weight lodged itself in his soul, a cloud upon his mind. He gasped in pain and fell to his knees, then collapsed altogether. Beads of sweat popped out on his face and scalp. He could not summon the strength to stand. The world spun about him.
Then Rolenya was there, kneeling over him, stroking his head.
“Your Doom is laid,” the Wolf said.
“No!” cried Rolenya. “What did you do?”
The Wolf withdrew.
“What do you plan to do with us?” called Baleron.
But the Wolf gave no answer. The glow of the Beast’s eyes and red maw faded into the darkness, stone squealed on stone, and it was gone.
Chapter 6
For a long time, Baleron lay on the floor where he’d fallen. Rolenya put his head in her lap, and she stroked his hair and sang to him, low and soft, and somehow he felt lighter, clearer, as he often did when she sang. There was power in it, somehow. Grace. Which was of course impossible. She was famous throughout Havensrike for her voice, yet even it could not banish the sickness he felt, the fear. His hands trembled, and sweat beaded his face and slicked his hair. He felt hot and feverish.
“What was it?” he said. “You don’t think ...”
“I ... surely not.” But there was doubt in her eyes. “I couldn’t be ...”
Both knew Gilgaroth was said to be able to take different forms, and one of his most feared shapes was that of the Great Wolf. Still, it seemed unlikely that the so-called Breaker of the World would venture so far from Ghrastigor. Surely.
“What did it do to me?” Baleron said.
“I don’t know. Some curse, I think.”
He laughed bitterly. “Then the joke’s on him. I was cursed long ago. I slew my brother, damned your friends. My own birth drove Mother mad!”
She kissed his brow. “Everything will be all right.”
“You sing better than you lie.”
She stroked his hair. “It will.” She said it with such sincerity that he almost believed her. She was so sweet, so gentle, and he loved her now more than ever. How could he have let this happen to her?
The doors banged open, and the vampire Asguilar stood framed in the doorway. Lightning lit him from behind, making him seem no more than a shadow with narrow yellow eyes.
“On your feet,” he said. “You go to my father.”
Borchstogs bound Baleron and Rolenya, bore them up out of the black chamber and into the rain, which was warm and thick and tasted of vinegar. A company of Borchstogs stood in the courtyard of the ruined fortress. Their standard-bearer bore the carcass of an old man on a sharpened pole, the pole running up through him and exiting his mouth. A fat black snake coiled about the body.
“Dear gods,” Rolenya said. Then, visibly marshalling her strength, she turned her attention to Asguilar: “Who is your father?”
“Surely you have heard the legends of Ungier.”
Rolenya and Baleron shared a look. She paled.
“So it’s true, then,” she said.
“Yes.”
“But why?” Baleron said. “How can any of this benefit you, or Ungier?”
“You will have to take that up with him.”
The Borchstog captain, whose name was Qubracrod, took possession of prince and princess, and shortly they were off. The steeds of Qubracrod’s dark band were not horses or wolves or quorig but gaurocks, the huge serpents, long and thick and armored. The gaurocks slithered across the earth, forked tongues tasting the air. Each could bear fifty Borchstogs, and the band possessed ten of them. No Borchstog walked. Time, it seemed, was of the essence. Perhaps they feared being caught in the open. Yet what could they fear?
All the while Baleron wondered at their destination. Would they truly meet the fabled Ungier, so-called lord and father of all vampires? If so, how did that help further Gilgaroth’s designs?
The first night, Qubracrod cut the prince and princess loose of their bonds so that they could eat and perform their necessary functions, yet Baleron quickly realized escape was impossible. The Borchstogs carefully chained their prisoners each to a separate serpent and kept brother and sister apart as much as possible. The gaurocks stank and so did the Borchstogs. The company reeked and after a few days so did prince and princess, if with less nonchalance. Baleron noted that these Borchstogs spoke a subtly different language than those he was accustomed to. Some dialect of Oslogon, perhaps. In any event, the Borchstogs drove themselves mercilessly, even braving the day, though dark clouds shaded them constantly. Rain often beat down and Baleron began to think of the frequent strikes of lightning as the lash of Gilgaroth urging his thralls on—if they were indeed his and not Ungier’s. Though surely one meant the other, for all things of Oslog bent in service to the Lord of the South.
The band crossed over mountains and passes and into deep valleys. They skirted the territories of Crescent outposts yet showed little real fear of them. They passed along the southern border of Havensrike, then Felgrad, then Larenthi.
Wolves ran with the convoy, ranging far and wide—werewolves and lurum-cruvalen both, Baleron decided, if indeed the two were different. They served as scouts and guards. Also, rithlags flittered overhead from time to time and landed briefly to confer quietly with Qubracrod. Baleron greeted each vampiric arrival with a shudder. He was glad when they left and uneasy when they returned.
Once a rithlag set down and passed a strange object to Qubracrod: a smooth black ball, perhaps blown from volcanic glass. After a few whispered words in the Borchstog’s ear, the vampire returned to the air.
Every night Baleron cursed himself for the tragedy that had befallen the wedding caravan. So many innocents slain, and for what? To capture one man and one woman? Was it so simple? And if so that meant that their deaths could be attributed to him (for he could not blame Role
nya), that their blood was on his hands even more than it already was. He had been their captain, and he had failed them. What was more, he was the reason Gilgaroth had been roused to strike in the first place, and it was because of him that the route through the mountains had been approved.
At last the convoy neared the notorious Oksil Gap. Before descending from the mountains into the Gap, also known as Oksilith or the Oksil Waste, the Borchstogs drew their gaurocks to a halt and made a bonfire upon which they charred the carcasses of deer their wolves and archers had brought down during the day. They were unclean creatures, the Borchstogs, and they did not shy away from raw meat; Baleron saw that several chunks were missing from the deer even before the animals were thrown on the flames. The host drew around the leaping bonfire for warmth, food and the swapping of lies.
The gaurocks ringed the camp and all throughout lay the wolves. Baleron and Rolenya were not too far apart this night, though they could not stray from their appointed gaurocks, and werewolves in wolf form lay between them, ever on the alert.
He watched her for a while, and she returned his gaze solemnly. Her face was wan and besmirched with grime. Her eyes shone darkly and forlornly, and dirt and filth tangled her hair. Little of her dress remained, though the Borchstogs had taken no liberties with her; either they had not had time or she had been forbidden to them.
They watched each other for a while, brother and sister, communicating wordlessly. At last she said, “Don’t despair, Bal.”
“Don’t you either.”
“It was just a curse, what that thing did to you. And with any luck it can be lifted.”
A thrill of hope ran through him. “Do you think so?”
“Yes,” she said, without seeming to think. “Perhaps the Elves can do it, if no one else.”
He forced a smile. “Excellent. It’s a plan, then. All we need to do is escape, steal a gaurock and ride it to Larenthi.”
She returned his smile, but it was just as forced. “Yes.” Her voice almost cracked. “It’s a plan, then.” A single tear ran down from her eye.