by Jack Conner
After that Giorn went faster. His wounds had mainly healed by then, except for the one dealt by Vrulug, and even it was better, the inflammation ebbing, black lines fading. With renewed purpose, he made swift progress through the foothills of the Aragst and then over the alternately rocky and swampy wastes between the foothills of the Black Wall and the foothills of the highlands of Feslan. Once in Feslan he’d found the men he had left under Hanen’s leadership. Hanen had sent most of the refugees north, across the Eresine, but he himself had refused to leave without Giorn. He and a hundred men had stayed to wait for their lord’s return. Giorn had instructed Hanen to send a spy every few days within sight of a certain blasted stump, and there Giorn waited. After several days, Hanen’s man arrived. Greatly surprised to see Giorn still alive, as the men had just about given him up for dead, they led him back to the stretch of treetops where the mobile band was hiding that particular day. A great celebration took place, or as great as could be had with their resources.
Giorn did not ask Hanen to give back his command, but Hanen did so gladly, and so it was that Giorn led the hundred-odd Fiarthans down into the great gorge, across the Eresine River and up the other side. At last, they were in Fiarth once more.
Vrulug had arrived before him. Southern Fiarth was a blackened wasteland, and Giorn did not come across one single township still standing, but he passed many altars to Gilgaroth, black monoliths with rotting mounds of bodies at their bases, and beheld whole forests of posts with the ragged ruins of men and women tied to them. He wished he had time to bury them, even burn them, but he did not.
All the while his wound pained him, the claw-swipe dealt by Vrulug. It had faded and scabbed over, but it remained a livid red scar across his belly, and it never ceased aching, though the pain diminished over time. He drank to dull the pain, and when he realized his cure had become a bane he let the pain come on.
Grimly he continued, at last coming upon a high, grassy plateau littered with the blackened, crumbling remains of an ancient city. Swarms of refugees had gathered here, and they were overjoyed to see that one of the Wesrains still lived. From them Giorn obtained horses for his men.
“You shouldn’t venture further north,” Duke Alreth advised him. Alreth had assumed command of the disparate rabble living in the ruins. “The Borchstogs’re thick there. On all sides, really. We’re trapped here. Cut off.”
Giorn nodded. “I won’t be going far.” He looked around him. The sun was sinking, turning the world into shades of red and black. Still, he thought he recognized the ruins, with their alien architecture, many of the buildings fashioned of huge stone blocks, black as tar. All was tumbled now and overgrown by grass, or weathered by the winds, but still, a memory stuck in his mind. “My father took me here when I was young . . .”
“You recognize it, then.”
“Grasvic. Vrulug’s capital when he ruled in these parts.”
Alreth sighed. “So it is. Now it gives shelter to a hive of human refugees. I’ve looked for the sewers, but I cannot find them.”
“Why the sewers?”
“Orin Feldred held meetings there, down in the foulness, conspiring against those who dwelt above. A morbid thought, I know, to find them, and yet . . .”
“I understand. You know, you and your people had best not stay here long. Vrulug will retake this place, if only out of sentimental value.”
Alreth frowned. “Strange to think of such as he having sentimental thoughts, but you might be right.”
Giorn let his men rest that night, and they drank and carried on with the refugees long into the wee hours. Their bonfires leapt high amidst the ruins, driving back the shadows, and their laughter warmed some place deep inside him. Yet he could not make himself take part. The ruins called to him. Seduced by ancient whispers, he allowed himself to be beckoned into the shadows. Guided by the light of the moon, he wandered the overgrown streets, at times finding great black columns, fallen and broken long ago, that must have lined the road. Some looked to have been topped with grisly sculptures. At last he came upon a great open area and stopped, feeling the echoes of a lost age. Drinking it in, he lit a pipe and sat on a heap of stone.
Here must be the great square in the middle of the city where Vrulug tortured Orin Feldred for weeks before a loyal follower slew him out of mercy, then slew himself. How that must have enraged Vrulug! Giorn grinned faintly, imagining it.
His scar throbbed, as if the lingering echoes of Vrulug’s presence roused it. When his bowl was smoked, he stood to go, then paused, staring down at the heap of stone he’d sat on. It was weathered and overgrown, and part of it merged with a mound of earth. Even so, he could see ghastly, twisted limbs and a screaming face. What sort of monster was this? Intrigued, he kicked some of the earth away, revealing a plaque in Oslogon. Moonlight just barely illuminated the words Ol um-Nustrig.
Could it be . . . ?
The twisted limbs were limbs twisted in agony, the ghastly flesh was no flesh at all but muscles and tendons, and the screaming face was not the screech of a demon but the mortal cry of a man. Ol um-Nustrig. The Skinless Man. What the Borchstogs called Orin Feldred.
For a long time, Giorn stared at that horrid statue of his ancestor, lit only by the light of the pale moon, and then he turned to go.
Someday, he vowed, he would return. He would melt that statue down and use it for Vrulug’s tomb.
The next day, he took his men and rode on. The sun rose and set, then rose again. At last his band mounted a certain hill and came upon the fair city of Thiersgald spread out before them, glittering like a sea of stars.
Another sea, a darker one, was just then drawing up to its walls. Giorn cursed when he saw the legions of Borchstogs marching forward, ladders over their broad shoulders. Thiersgald—home to a quarter of a million—was under assault. And these legions were just the beginning; Giorn had seen the Eresine Bridge. The Borchstogs had half-finished rebuilding it.
The men swore and cursed, and some had wept.
“How can we hope to fight them?” Hanen had said.
The two leaders were far from the rest of the men, having climbed a knoll to speak privately, and Giorn didn’t rebuke him for his despair. “There is a way,” he said quietly. “An old escape tunnel for the Baron.”
“I didn’t know your father was so fearful.”
Giorn half-smiled. “Oh, he was, more than you know, but twas not he who built it. A baron did it long ago. Actually it began as a secret tunnel to his mistress, a widowed duchess who’d left her manor to the running of her sons and moved to Thiersgald to be close to him.”
“But he was married, I suppose.”
“Indeed. And so the tunnel. But over time it was enlarged, expanded . . . My father showed it to me, and I made use of it more than once.” He wanted to smile at the recollections of sneaking about under the city on errands young men understand—and old men too—but he could not. He could smile at nothing, not while Thiersgald lay besieged.
“Can you reach the spot where the tunnel comes out?”
Giorn squinted at the creek that ran through a grate in the city walls and trickled over a short waterfall some distance from the city. “There’s limestone caves near those falls,” he said. “They connect to the tunnels. We should be able to reach them.”
Hanen looked doubtful. “They’re awfully close to the Borchstog camp . . .”
“We’ll wait until the battle.”
When it came, and Vrulug led his host against the city, Giorn at some pains convinced his men to leave their horses on the rolling hills and travel afoot toward the falls, which they did, as the sound of battle raged along the walls. Giorn’s heart beat like a drum in his chest, and he wondered if he did the right thing. Perhaps he should lead his men in a suicidal charge, driving into the rear of Vrulug’s host. After all, if he made his way into the city, how more could he help Thiersgald? By leading a frontal attack out from the gates? It seemed that striking from the rear would kill more of the enemy. Yet he
could not convince himself that those were his only options.
Besides, he alone of all the men of the Crescent knew where the Moonstone was. He could not die before he made the information known to others.
He entered the limestone tunnels, struck a torch, and plowed on through the darkness. Muttering curses at having to leave their mounts and at letting their swords grow cold while battle raged above, his men followed at his heels. For hours they traveled through the darkness. The limestone caves gave way to more orderly, square-hewn passages, and unlit torches in brackets lined the walls.
“We’re under the city now,” Giorn said. “It shouldn’t be long.”
The going went much faster in the straight, clear passageways built by generations of Wesrains, and in another hour Giorn led his men under the castle itself.
“I don’t want to alarm Meril,” he said, and now he did smile, thinking of the reunion he was about to experience. He told himself that Meril must have forgiven him by now, that all would be well between them. He pictured his brother’s happy face on seeing him, and Fria’s, and lastly, but most deeply, he pictured Niara, beautiful Niara, and let out a breath. “I’d best not lead a hundred armed men up into his castle in the dead of night during a pitched battle. You wait here with the men, and I’ll let Meril know you’re coming.”
“Of course, sir,” said Hanen.
Giorn clapped him on the back. “Soon we’ll be feasting and wenching, have no fear.”
That put a glint in Hanen’s eyes, and the men smiled and jested with each other. They had come during wartime, but they were alive and victory might yet be won. Giorn was a Wesrain, after all, descendants of Lord Feldred himself.
Feeling optimistic, Giorn emerged from the secret tunnels into the lower catacombs of the castle, then up into the castle proper. All was deserted, or nearly so, and he did not have to wonder why. Surely everyone had rushed to join the fighting along the wall.
Even now there were a handful of guards in the castle, and he sought them out, presently finding a pair and making his way toward them.
Swords drawn, they watched him approach. These were not men he recognized. Meril had likely appointed some new lads what with the war and all.
He laughed at himself. “I must be a wild sight,” he said, touching his beard and fingering his torn clothes. “But don’t you recognize me? It’s Giorn Wesrain.”
They stared at him, speechless, then glanced at each other. One stepped forward.
“We don’t know you, but that doesn’t matter. Her Highness, the Baroness Wesrain, is here. She’ll know you, if you are who you claim.”
“The Baroness? Really? So Meril married, after all! Ha! I thought he’d enjoy his new position a bit longer. Well, good for him. Perhaps he was more mature than I thought.” Or perhaps she’d only bed him if he wed her first, Giorn added wryly to himself. “Well, no matter. If she’ll recognize me, it must be someone I know. Who could it be?” He was beginning to picture the girls at court, guessing who Meril had been smitten with, but the looks on the faces of the guards stopped him. “What is it?”
“He doesn’t know,” said one.
“No,” said the other.
“Know what?”
“She’ll have to be the one to tell you. Come.”
Giorn followed them up the stairs and to the thickest, if not the highest, tower of the castle. The Tower of the Baron. He marveled at the burgundy tapestries, running his hands along the couches and thick stone walls. Home! He’d dreamed of it for so long. It would be good to see Meril again, to put the angry words of their last encounter behind them. The guards led him into the chambers of the Baron, the chambers that his father had always occupied. So, he thought, realizing it then for the first time, Father didn’t survive. It did not surprise him, of course. Still, the realization of it deflated some of the happiness at his homecoming.
Strangely, it was Fria that waited for him in a drawing room. A handmaiden had been brushing her long chestnut hair and Fria had been gazing through the large windows out at the battle below, whispering, “I hope he’ll be all right.”
The handmaiden responded, “I’m sure he will be, my lady.”
Then the two women heard the noise behind them and spun to see Giorn and the guards.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Fria said. “Just because my husband appointed you doesn’t mean you don’t have to knock—wait . . .” She studied Giorn, narrowing her one good eye, the other staring inward so that she would have been cross-eyed if it had been a willing counterpart to the first—looked him up and down, from his shredded boots, to his rags for clothes, to his tangled beard and newly-scarred face.
“By the Omkar,” she whispered. She shot to her feet and ran to him. “Giorn!”
She flung herself against his chest, almost knocking him over, and sobbed into his rags. Laughing, feeling tears come into his own eyes, he held her in his arms. She was warm and clean and smelled of flowers. “Dear Fria, it’s so good to see you! But tell me, what do you here? This is Father’s room . . .”
She sniffed wetly, not seeming to hear him. “Oh, Giorn, Giorn, Giorn, it’s so good . . .” Still clutching him tightly, she drew back and stared up into his eyes. “Oh, you look ten years older, and all those scars! But you’re the best thing I’ve ever seen. Oh, Gi! You can’t imagine what hell we’ve been through!” She blinked, and water spilled down her cheeks. “But maybe you can. Look at you! Oh, Gi, what have they done to you?”
The soldiers left. Fria dragged Giorn to a couch, sat him down, and promptly ordered for food and hot tea to be brought to him, and for a bath to be drawn for his cleaning.
“I don’t have time for all that,” he said. “There’s a war on, and I . . . but where’s Meril, and why . . . ?”
For a long time she said nothing, and it wasn’t until tea had been served and he was drinking—tea! for the first time in months; it tasted divine—that she began to speak. And when she did, the taste of the tea vanished, and so did all his enjoyment.
Father was dead. That he had guessed. But Meril was dead, too—sly, young, vigorous Meril. A suicide, Fria said—and with such disdain that it tore at Giorn’s heart. Fria hated Meril now, that was plain, despised his weakness. Giorn thought he knew better.
Grief welled up inside him, and anger. Because of Raugst—and the poison in Meril’s drink could only have come from Raugst, he was sure—Giorn would never be able to make things right between him and his brother. Their last words would always be in anger.
It got worse. Now Raugst—Raugst—was Baron. Giorn choked on his tea at that.
Then, looking terribly guilty and ashamed of herself, Fria told him that Niara had come to her only earlier that day and told her terrible lies about Raugst, and she had flung the High Priestess into the dungeon, meaning to execute her on the morrow.
“I wouldn’t have gone through with it,” she said, crying wretchedly. “Please forgive me! I wouldn’t, I swear! But she was saying such terrible things . . . ” She pressed her face against his chest. “I wouldn’t have, Gi, I wouldn’t. Say you forgive me.”
“I . . . I . . .” He swallowed with difficulty. Part of him wanted to strangle Fria. He shrugged it off and patted her narrow back. “I forgive you, Fri. Now tell me, is she well? The guards didn’t . . . treat her harshly, did they?”
“What? Oh, no, of course not! In fact, Raugst, bless him, went around my back and freed her, the poor dear. How she must hate me. And her like a mother to me!” She looked at him strangely. “And she was more than that to you, I know. No, don’t look at me like that. I know.” She smiled, and tears dripped off her chin. “I’m not sure you deserve her, in all honesty.”
“Gods,” he said. “It must have been the worst kept secret in the Crescent. Good thing I’m no spy.”
Almost smiling, she said, “Only Meril and I knew.” She squeezed his hands. Her eyes turned sad. “She’s on the wall now, with Raugst. Even now they’re both fighting for the city. Both are in grave
danger.”
He rose to his feet. “I must get to the wall. No—wait!” He rushed to the terrace door, flung it open. A strong breeze blew in. The braziers flickered.
“What is it?” Fria asked.
He pointed. “The battle, it’s over, and look.” He indicated the highest tower of the Temple of Illiana, white and graceful, its uppermost windows glowing with orange-white light. “Look at the Inner Sanctum. It’s all ablaze. Niara’s returned, and she’s praying to Illiana even now. I must go to her.”
“I’ll have a horse brought for you.”
“While I’m away, see to my men. Captain Hanen and a hundred soldiers wait in the secret ways under the castle.”
“I’ll see to them gladly.”
With his heart beating with ever-increasing fervor, he mounted the horse Fria’s retainers brought for him and galloped through the streets, hell-bent for the temple. He passed through the Inner Wall and into the outer city, where he saw throngs of refugees packing the streets and choking the allies. Some were so thin he could see their bones. This war must end soon, or many would die of simple starvation.
Reaching the temple, he flung open the heavy doors. All was empty. Still.
He wasted no time but found the stairwell leading up the Inner Sanctum. He mounted it with ragged breath, sweat streaming down his face, all the while imagining Niara in his arms. He had loved her for years, and for the last few months he had thought it unlikely he would ever see her again. Yet he could speak of his fears to no one, not even his closest confidants, not even Hanen, his most trusted lieutenant—not even to an equal like the Baron of Hielsly. It was a truth that he could share only with the one the truth regarded, and so it was a bittersweet pang in his heart, but the bitterness only made the sweetness all the sweeter.