The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy

by Jack Conner

  A ladder was thrown up near her, and Duke Welsly battled beside his men as Borchstogs scrambled over the wall. His blessed blade whistled and flashed, spraying black.

  Even Raugst, keeping up his pretense, unsheathed his sword and leapt into the fray, as did his generals around him. Blood flew, soaking Raugst from head to foot, and he laughed. He laughed! Taking the lives of his own side, and he laughed.

  “Use your jewel,” Niara told Hiatha. “Fight!”

  Hiatha chanted, and light glowed from her jewel, then suffused her whole body. She stretched out her hands and light blasted forth, incinerating Borchstogs to the fore. The effort quickly exhausted her, and the jewel was not overly powerful. Soon enough she wilted, and it was Niara’s turn to support her.

  Borchstogs brought up a battering ram, a stripped tree with its end sharpened to a dull point and charred by fire, and crashed it against the city gates. BOOM! The ram sounded even louder than Niara’s heart.

  The Duke ordered men to reinforce the gates, and they did, but it was not enough. All too soon, the gates exploded inward, and Borchstogs poured in through the splinters, howling for rape and slaughter. They were quickly overwhelming the walls, too.

  “Back!” Raugst shouted to the Duke. “Get your men to fall back!”

  Niara and Hiatha hustled down from the wall as Raugst, the generals, the Duke and their surrounding soldiers rushed to the courtyard and found their steeds. Breathless, Niara climbed astride hers. Hiatha slipped on behind. The soldiers blew their horns, signaling retreat. Villagers flocked to them, seeking protection. All around, buildings blazed, and smoke made Niara cough. She could barely see. Screams of pain and fear rose into the night.

  “The women . . .” Niara tried to dismount, but Hiatha stopped her with firm hands on her shoulders.

  “You can do nothing to help them, Mother.”

  Nevertheless, Niara was just about to shrug off the priestess’s hands when Raugst rode up to them. “We must flee,” he said. “Again.” Raising his voice for all to hear, he shouted, “To me! Men, to me! We must vacate the town! Follow me!”

  Gathering riders and villagers to him as he went, he rode through the streets of Hasitlan, and Niara and Hiatha were swept up in the tide. She passed a park, a school, a maze of twisting, cobbled streets lined with shops. Farther on she saw the docks. Many of the townspeople were setting out from them in boats, seeking refuge on the water. She doubted they would find it. She passed a statue of a great golden head, and far off she saw the castle, hulking and silent along the lake. Already flames were licking at it. She imagined Duke Madrast’s golden head melting, the gold sloughing off it, pooling on the mantle and the stone floor below. She imagined the gold melting, revealing the head in all its withered, ghastly glory, and then the fires from the rafters and curtains would catch it, and the tale of the golden head would end at last.

  The gathering poured through the northern gates and fled the town. Niara slowed her horse and looked back at the flaming city, the fires reflected off the lake a-swarm with boats, the forests around it blazing. Leaping fires rose high into the night, and sparks vied with stars for supremacy of the heavens. Tears coursed down Niara’s soot-stained cheeks, and she hung her head in shame.

  “To Thiersgald!” Raugst shouted. “Follow me to the city! The Road isn’t far.”

  Niara bunched her small hands into fists. She was shaking, but not with fear this time—with rage. “And will Thiersgald be next?” she demanded to the night, her eyes still entranced by the spectacle of the fiery town before her. “No,” she growled. “By the eyes of Illiana, I will not allow it!”

  Chapter 10

  In the blackness of the tunnels below Wegredon, Giorn stalked the Borchstogs at a discreet distance. They were creatures of the dark and required few lights. In their gathering of perhaps five thousand, only a few score bore torches, and Giorn wondered how many of these were for ceremonial purposes. The Borchstogs clomped forward, speaking in hushed whispers. Giorn could not hear their words, but he could understand their sentiments; their voices came in thrilled bursts of awe-inspired worship. Clearly they were deeply moved and honored to have just set eyes upon their Maker.

  Giorn, too, still felt the echoes of the Dark One’s power. He felt ill, nauseous and weak, and it was only slowly that his trembling subsided. I set eyes upon the Wolf. I set eyes upon the Wolf and lived. Perhaps there was hope yet that he would succeed. He would steal the Moonstone back from Vrulug, or destroy it if he could not, but either way he would do what he had come here to do.

  What had they done to it? It was the Last Gift, the very salvation of Man, and they had taken it and turned it into some blackened, loathsome thing . . .

  Giorn had never considered himself particularly religious, and at times, especially in the beginning of his affair with Niara, he had thought himself practically sacrilegious, but even he couldn’t help but think what an utter blasphemy corrupting the Moonstone had been. And now that it was corrupt, what did Vrulug intend to do with it?

  The Borchstogs led the way into a broad passage, then passed through a high, elaborately carved archway. Giorn waited for them all to go through and was about to follow when he noticed the demonic faces carved into the archway.

  They seemed to be studying him.

  It’s all in my head, he thought. Surely the eyes weren’t really focused on him, measuring him, weighing his intentions. Besides, there was nothing for it. If he lingered he’d lose the light. Even then the meager illumination of the torches was vanishing around a wide bend in the avenue. All else was darkness.

  He cringed as he passed under the archway, and he more than suspected that some of the demonic faces set in it observed him with some dark intelligence all their own. Rounding the bend, he could no longer see the archway, but its oily, malignant presence lingered in his mind. Where before the hall had been rough and obviously carved from the living mountain, now the hall took on smooth, more orderly lines. Soon cross-passages and rooms became apparent. Up he went, and niches filled with ancient Borchstog remains lined the walls. Sealed doorways led to crypts. He realized that he had reached the lower catacombs of Wegredon.

  No sign of the Borchstogs. All lay eerily still and quiet. Inset torches gave off red, lurid glows at irregular intervals.

  A ragged figure in fine Oslogon armor lunged at him.

  Startled, he dodged aside, sword flashing. He felt his blade connect, but the thing came on. He smashed his lantern against its head, embedding its face with glass. It did not even pause. It shot forward, and the faint light illuminated its ghastly, withered face, twinkling here and there with shattered glass. It was a Borchstog—a dead one.

  Its grasping claws reached for his throat. With a growl, he swung his sword and took off the figure’s head at the neck. No blood spurted. Its headless body stumbled toward him still, its gnarled hands grasping, grasping, but only for a moment. Without its head, it toppled to the ground.

  Another dead one rushed at Giorn’s back. This one let its sword lead the way. Cobwebs trailed from the blade to the skeletal hands.

  Giorn parried the first thrust. His opponent struck again, bringing its blade down at Giorn’s head. Giorn blocked, his arm nearly buckling from the impact. The blow nearly drove him to his knees. Breathless, he shoved the Borchstog away and leapt back. The thing followed, sword flashing. Its eyes were partially dissolved, almost liquid in their sockets, but still it saw. Its tar-black skin stretched taught over brittle bones. Withered lips peeled back from long sharp teeth.

  Even as he fell back, Giorn noticed more forms slipping from their niches along the walls. He heard the clink of their armor and the slither and rasp of their wasted flesh on ancient stone. The archway, he thought. They must have been roused by the archway.

  He found a gap in his enemy’s defenses. He hacked off the Borchstog’s sword hand. Still it came for him. Others closed in from all sides. Giorn decapitated this one with an economic swing, then grabbed one of the inset torches and
ran.

  The undead guardians of the Borchstog fortress pounded after. Ragged and skeletal, they should not have been able to move with such relentless speed, but they did. With jerky, loping gaits, they raced after him. Most were mere bones. Only on some did wasted flesh still cling. Yet Giorn fancied he saw some faint inner fire flare from the back of their deep dark eye sockets.

  The clink of their armor and the grinding and creaking of their ancient bones echoed down the halls. His heart pounded so loudly in his ears that he barely heard it.

  He passed a flaming brazier and overturned it in his path. Sparks flashed. Flaming coals scattered. The dead ones drew back, but only for a moment, and like an undead tide parted by a rock they divided and went round.

  Giorn darted ahead, down the wide, high main hall of the catacombs. Countless shadowy doorways yawned on all sides, offering false refuge. From some he detected movement. At last he rounded a wide turn to behold a doorway flooded with red light.

  With a groan, the large slab of stone that served as the door began to slide shut. The rectangle of red light diminished to a sliver. Then half a sliver.

  Giorn swore. He would be shut in with the dead ones. He lowered his head and ran full-out, pumping his legs as fast as they would go. The sound of the dead things increased behind him.

  Slamming his shoulder against the slab, he ground it open just enough for him to slip through, but once there the pair of Borchstogs that had been closing the door from the other side fell on him. Fortunately they’d been pressing their shoulders against the stone and hadn’t drawn their weapons, and he hacked halfway through the nearest one’s head, splitting its skull to its jawbone, then ripped his blade free, spraying blood and brains. By this time the second one had drawn a dagger and thrust at Giorn’s throat.

  Giorn’s left hand knocked away the Borchstog’s wrist, deflecting the blow. Before it could draw back for another strike, Giorn stabbed his blade into the creature’s belly, angling his sword under its ribs and ripping up through its heart. Hot black blood trickled over his hand, and the stench of split intestines filled the hall. The Borchstog slumped to the floor, its guts glistening in the dark.

  Not wasting a moment, Giorn pressed his shoulder against the granite slab and shoved it closed just as the dead ones reached it, then slammed the bolt home with a satisfying thud. The dead ones clawed on the other side, mewling in wordless hunger and hate. Giorn breathed deeply and wiped the sweat from his brow.

  Time to leave.

  But he hesitated.

  He knelt beside the nearer Borchstog corpse and tugged at its darkly-fashioned armor. It took some minutes of fumbling in the dimly-lit corridor even as the dead ones continued to scratch at the stone door for him to don the Borchstog uniform and armor, but at last it was done. He doubted he would pass a close inspection, but if he kept well away from the fortress’s inhabitants and stuck to the shadows he should be fine.

  As for the bodies of the Borchstogs, he waited for the scratching on the door to subside, then opened it briefly and shoved the Borchstog corpses in.

  Disguised, he departed the catacombs and stalked through one hall after another until he came to an archway leading out into a main chamber of the fortress. He recoiled at the sight.

  It was hot within. Stifling. Torches and great braziers lit the large chamber, and by their lurid, flickering light, Giorn saw a glimpse of hell. Borchstogs in the hundreds amused themselves, the sound of their revelry filling his ears: their laughing, hooting, shouting and groaning. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was the sounds of their victims.

  Against the stone walls scores of prisoners had been chained. Man and Elf and more, they thrashed against their restraints, but to no avail. Borchstogs, drinking ale or wine, laughed at them and tormented them, flaying strips of skin from them, sticking needles into their nerve clusters, burning them with brands. The demons threw knives and hatchets that clattered off the stone near the struggling prisoners when they did not strike flesh. Other Borchstogs raped their victims in plain view of all, holding them down on the floor, or the feasting tables, or in pools of congealing blood. Frail white figures writhed against heaving dark bodies. The cavernous room echoed with the screaming, and at hearing it, seeing it, red spots danced in Giorn’s vision.

  “Dear Illiana, no . . .”

  Living shadows darted from column to column and corridor to corridor on mysterious errands of their own. Some partook of the torture. Giorn saw one such haunt steal up on a prisoner and enter into him. The man screamed. His body began to change, mutate. Tendrils sprouted from his face. His chest bulged . . .

  Giorn looked away.

  Other Borchstogs sat at long tables on which were laid the bodies of humans and others, the demons using crude cutlery to carve into the bodies. They laughed and made obscene jests. Most of the bodies were cooked. Some were not. One still moved.

  Giorn, shaking, started to take a step forward, raising his sword. Nearby Borchstogs glanced at him idly.

  His blood ran cold. Instantly he lowered his sword and returned to the shadows. The Borchstogs glanced away.

  The Stone, he thought. I must get the Stone.

  He edged along the wall of the room, keeping to the shadows. Nobody paid attention to him. Still trembling, he found a hall that led to a stairway and mounted it. He wound down one hallway and then another, always climbing up. Vrulug would keep his chambers in one of the central towers. Wegredon was large, larger than Giorn had supposed, and he wandered its mazes for what seemed like hours. At one point a group of armored Borchstogs marched past, and Giorn shrank into an alcove behind a many-limbed statue of Mogra, the Shadow-Weaver. Fresh sacrifices were heaped on the altar before her shrine, and their stench nauseated him. Their mound partially hid him, and when the Borchstogs passed he resumed his hunt.

  What must have been another hour went by before he stumbled upon the entrance to one of the towers. The door was guarded by two Borchstogs. This must be it.

  He moved toward the guards brusquely, lowering his head so that they could not see his face through the eye-slit in his helm, and grunted in what he hoped was an appropriately Borchstog-like manner.

  One of the guards lay a hand on his breastplate, shoved him back. It grunted something at him in Oslogon: Where do you think you’re going? he thought it said.

  He had jerked his hunting knife out when the Borchstog had touched him, its movement helping conceal his removal of the weapon. Before it completed its question, he’d plunged his blade into its throat. It fell back, gurgling, black blood trickling around the metal. Giorn yanked his knife free even as the second Borchstog leapt at him. This one tackled Giorn bodily, bearing him to the ground.

  Giorn drove his blade at the Borchstog’s face. The Borchstog grabbed his knife hand with its left, balled its right fist and smashed it across Giorn’s jaw. The world blurred.

  With his left hand, Giorn clawed at its face, ripping off its helmet. He gouged his thumb into its deep-set eye. It grunted and jerked away, but kept a grip on his knife hand. He wished he could pull his sword, but it was too long, the quarters too close.

  He punched the Borchstog in the jaw with his left hand. Blood trickled down its chin, but it barely seemed to feel the blow. Meanwhile its heavier body was grinding him down, crushing the breath from him. It drew its arm back to deliver another blow. If it landed, he would be out.

  He grabbed the Borchstog by the breastplate. Yanked it close. Wrapped his jaws about its broad nose and bit down with all his strength. Rancid blood squirted his mouth.

  The guard released its hold on his knife hand and tried to jerk backward, but he kept his grip on its breastplate and plunged his blade into its throat. Blood sprayed him. Disgusted, he shoved the creature off of him and rose to his feet. The Borchstog thrashed, then stilled on the floor beside its comrade. Gasping, Giorn stared down at them, wishing he had time to dispose of the bodies, but at any moment a party of Borchstogs might swing by.

  Spitting out
the foul taste of black blood, he passed through the door and wound up another long stairway, mounting what must be the central tower of Wegredon. At last, out of breath, he came to the head of the stairs. There was no door, just a low black archway inset with Oslogon runes. Vrulug’s lair. Giorn mistrusted that archway, just as he had the last, but he had no choice and so he stepped through.

  The hall wound about, meeting many others. Vrulug’s lair proved to be a veritable honeycomb of passages. Several times Giorn passed windows overlooking the courtyards and spires of Wegredon; some of the towers had flying buttresses from one to another, and they were splendid structures, if nightmarish. One tower opened like a black flower at the top, and another fanned into a protrusion of slender spires, all catching the light of the stars. Still another tower contained what looked like roosts for the glarums, the huge crow-like birds flown by the glarumri.

  Giorn made his way through the tunnels, finally coming upon a large laboratory area—a dark, loathsome room, cluttered with strange relics: glass jars occupied by awful fetuses, some still alive, tendrils whipping, human mouths gaping and sucking at the glass; obscure herbs and elixirs; staffs with monstrous heads, some obviously sentient; a great bat-like thing with a long, tooth-filled snout. This last spoke intelligently, and Giorn was obliged to kill it lest it betray his presence.

  More. Human heads hung on plaques from the wall. A living brain hovered in a fluid-filled jar, pins sticking out of it. This horrified Giorn, who put the brain out of its misery with a stroke of his sword. What had its owner done to so displease Vrulug that he had punished it in this fashion? For a moment he wondered if the brain of his ancestor Lord Orin Feldred might have been persevered by Vrulug’s arts . . . But no. When he turned the jar over, he saw a name inscribed on the bottom. The letters were in Oslogon, but the name was Fiarthan: Adlan Osfryd. The name meant nothing to him.

  Giorn found more weird creatures in jars, odd apparatuses, surgical instruments, rows of arcane books. A human corpse was chained to a wall.