by Jack Conner
The priestesses returned, and Niara told Rieb, “Go to the wall. While I am away, you are the leader of our forces there.”
“I understand, Mother.” Rieb vanished.
Flanked by the other two, Niara rode toward the castle. In the distance, she could hear the Borchstogs bang their drums, preparing for another charge. The sound grated on her nerves. Worse were the screams of men the Borchstogs were torturing, the ever-present background noise to the siege. It sapped the will of soldiers and civilians alike. Niara passed ragged groups of townspeople and refugees, gathered in courtyards and on rooftops. They still prayed, their faces uplifted to the night, and the sight made her wince. What she had done she had done for them, but she was afraid she’d made a terrible mistake.
Just as she rounded a bend and came within sight of the castle, horns blared along the eastern arc of the wall.
“Vrulug’s attacking!” Hiatha said.
“Don’t worry about him for now,” Niara said. “We have a different enemy.”
“Who?” Hiatha asked. “What?”
That was a good question. Niara thought of Raugst, thought of the rage surrounding him.
“Inertia,” she said.
“Baroness!” a guard said, rushing in. “A glarum! He’s come in on a glarum!”
Fria had been entertaining Giorn’s men in the feasting hall, where Hanen and his hundred men lounged, drank and boasted of their adventures with doubtful degrees of veracity. Scullery maids and serving wenches laid out meat on silver platters, poured wine from silver jugs, and frequently received pinches on the backside for their efforts. It was quite a merry scene, and Fria found it good to hear laughter (and a few slapped faces) in the castle once more. Raugst and his men were too secretive, too mysterious.
Then guards rushed in, shouting, and she was compelled to follow them to a couch not far from a terrace window on the third floor, where some activity was going on. A glarum, thrashing, snapping and moribund, lay bristling with arrows on the flagstones, blood trickling off the terrace to fall in torrents below.
“He came in like a devil,” a soldier was saying, “and we all thought him one. Our men had riddled his mount before we got a look at him. I can’t imagine how he made it. Look at him! But he hung on, and I mean he hung on, and somehow he did it, but . . .”
Fria saw what he meant. A broken thing, Giorn lay on the couch. He was ragged and bloody, the fingers of one hand—his right hand, Fria noted with anguish—missing, his right leg (as she soon saw) bloody and shattered in a dozen places.
She stripped him of his rags and helped the nurses administer to him. He was pale and shaking. When she saw the ruin of his leg, she couldn’t understand how he’d maintained consciousness long enough to make it to the castle. He must have hung grimly on, both to life and to the glarum, until he had crashed on the terrace and given himself up to the mercy of the guards. He seemed unconscious, but from time to time he would jerk and twitch, and his eyes would roll.
“Fria, Fria,” he moaned, left hand clutching.
“I’m here,” she said, taking it.
“Fria, I need Fria, my good sister.” In his delirium he didn’t seem to realize she was right there. “Tell her her brother’s here. Tell her for me. Tell her her husband is a demon, her High Priestess a whore . . .”
Fria’s heart twisted, and she became gradually aware that she was squeezing his good hand rather tighter than she should. “What did you see? What happened? Was it Raugst that did this to you?”
“There is no Raugst!” he snapped, half sitting up. Then pain overcame him and he groaned and collapsed back onto the couch. “There is no Raugst,” he repeated, cold sweat drenching his forehead, his hands turning clammy. “Only a demon. Don’t give the thing a name. That gives it power, gives it reason, purpose. It’s a monster, through and through. A thing of hunger, devouring . . .” He went on like that while the nurses put a splint on his leg and bandaged his arm, and plied him with medicines to deaden him. At last he subsided, lapsing into unconsciousness once more.
The nurses glanced worriedly at Fria, who still held his hand. She patted his head and ran her hands through his lank, dark blond hair.
“Move him to the royal infirmary,” she said.
They brought a stretcher for him and men carried him to the west wing of the castle, where the royal hospital was situated. They gave him a bed, attendants saw to him, and through it all Fria held his hand.
Giorn was a good man. That she knew well. So what had he seen to enrage him so?
She thought she knew. She thought she knew full well. There could only be one thing to explain his words. With a heavy heart, she sat by his side and tried to tell herself everything would be all right. Besides, her small problems amounted to little with the city under siege, its people on the verge of being overrun.
Her handmaiden flew in, pale and worried.
“Mistress,” she gasped, “my lord Raugst is here!”
“How does he fare?”
“He looks like a wild animal, my lady. His eyes! My lady, his eyes!”
Raugst must not find Giorn. Fria swore the nurses and guards to silence. It would not buy Giorn much time, as several of the guards had been appointed by Raugst, but they would at least wait until they could get him alone, away from the ears of those he hadn’t appointed, before informing on Giorn. That would win her brother some time . . .
“I must go to him,” she said. Before his guards get him to themselves.
She found Raugst in the main hall, upending a flagon of wine. It gushed over his mouth and beard and he slammed it down with a groan. He turned to her, his dark eyes huge and murderous. She started. Trael had been right; his eyes were like brands, and they seared her.
“M-my lord,” she stammered. His clothes were hastily assembled, and blood seeped through them from many shallow slices. “Dear Omkar! What happened?”
He smiled cruelly and patted his sword. “Nothing but an honest difference of opinions, good wife. Now out of my way!” He swept past her. She scurried to keep up. Guards converged, but they saw the fury in his eyes and stayed back.
Suddenly Raugst paused. “What’s this?” He cocked an ear.
Sounds of Hanen and the hundred’s revelry drifted down the halls, echoing off column and fresco.
“A feast?” he asked. He surged forward, aiming toward the feasting hall. Fria tried to catch at his arm, but he shrugged her away. “Off me, woman! I’ve had enough of the gentle sex tonight.”
She forced herself to be strong. I’m a Wesrain. We were kings!
Raugst came to the squat archway leading into the hall and stopped, peering within. Hanen’s men, not paying him any attention, went right on guzzling and eating and having fun with the women, who were not immune to their attentions.
Slowly, Raugst smiled, but it was a smile totally devoid of humor. “So,” he said, “my brother-in-law brought friends. Well, that should prove an interesting tale. He brought friends, through a Borchstog siege, and nobody bothered to tell me how.” He fixed Fria with his gaze.
She jumped. “H-how do you mean?”
“Play no games with me, woman. There is a secret tunnel or I’ll be damned. And you never showed it to me, did you?”
“There is a t-tradition, my lord. Only members of the family know, not till there are ch-children. When you and I had b-babies, we w-would have told you—”
“Bah! No matter. I’ll find it sooner or later. But it’s good to know that my enemies still possess some secrets. That makes it all the more sporting.”
“Enemies, my lord?” Could Niara and Giorn have been right? “I’m no enemy . . .”
He wasn’t even listening. His eyes still on Hanen and the hundred, he said, “So . . . they are thirsty, eh? Well, I have a drink for them. Yes I do.”
He turned to one of his guards, the one named Kragt.
“Prepare my special recipe. Add my secret spice to their wine.”
Kragt grinned and ducked away.
/> With horror, the truth dawned on Fria. “No, my lord,” she said. “Don’t do this. You’re not evil! I know you’re not!” Her voice broke, and she realized she was crying. “Say you’re not. Say it!”
He threw her off, and when she struck the floor he glared down at her with open disdain. “Stay away from me, whore. And don’t look at me! I cannot stand your rolling eye. Ach!”
She sobbed and clamped a hand over her left eye. “Don’t turn away from me, my lord. I’ll wear a patch, I swear it.” She couldn’t bear his hate. Something shriveled, dying, inside her. She found it difficult to breathe.
“Take her away,” Raugst said to his guards. “Take her to her old rooms and do not let her out.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
They dragged her away. Raugst did not even look at her as she left. That hurt most of all.
From the doorway of the feasting hall, Raugst smiled as the new jugs of wine were brought round, and smiled further as Giorn’s men began to drink from them. Yes, this would do nicely. He actually began to laugh as the hundred-odd soldiers started to choke and gasp and clutch at their throats. His laugh was a full-on bellow by the time they fell from their chairs and writhed on the floor, foam beading their lips.
Then, sighing contentedly, he walked out into the feasting hall, stepping over and around the dead and dying, and surveyed his conquered foes.
“Stand not in my way,” he said. “For mine is the path of the Wolf.”
He passed a dead man, fluid trickling from his mouth, eyes staring, jaw agape. He passed another, his fingers locked around his throat. He stepped over a corpse that had begun to turn blue. He passed another and another, and slowly, ever so slowly, his mirth left him.
He stared about him, at the glossy eyes, the lolling tongues. These were not men anymore. They were meat.
It should have pleased him. But somehow it did not. He stood there in the center of the room, gazing about him at the dead, and it seemed as if they whirled about him, a wheeling vision of mortality. The ground rocked beneath him.
He touched a dead face with his toe, prodded it. It lolled lifelessly. Just minutes before it had been laughing and drinking. Now it was a waxen mask, a caricature of a man.
He had done that. He, Raugst, without lifting a finger, had slain this man. He had slain all of them. It is what he lived for, the exercise of his power. This was a glorious mission, a most beautiful assignment gifted to him by the great lord Vrulug, the wise and generous. This was the grandest assignment Raugst had ever been given, the grandest assignment possible—to bring down the Crescent!—and here he was, at the height of his success, and he could not enjoy it.
What had that witch done to him?
More. Not only did he not enjoy it, but the longer he stood there, surrounded by his victims, the more their dead eyes seemed to stare at him accusingly. What was happening?
They gazed at him, wide-eyed, glassy, dead, bony fingers stretched toward him, pointing, pointing at the murderer who had done this to them.
“No!” he said. He pressed his hands against his ears, as though hearing their accusations in his head. “No! Don’t you . . . don’t you look at me like that!”
His me, hovering at the edges of the room to keep out the servants, glanced at him nervously, then to each other.
“My lord?” one ventured, stepping forward—Kragt.
Raugst waved him off. “Come no closer. I . . . I need air.”
Kragt nodded, uncertain. “As you say, my lord.”
“Go. Release Fria. She can do no harm, not anymore.”
“Of course, my lord. What shall be done about the bodies? Should we leave them to rot? The Gates will be opened soon in any event. It’s not as if we fear discovery . . .”
Something strange coiled inside Raugst. “No. Put them on carts. We’ll deliver them to the ‘stogs. Release Fria first. Then . . . see to the bodies. Let us use the tunnels, if we can find them.” But inside he knew he was only saying this because it was what Kragt needed to hear. He needed to hear that his lord and master had not . . . gone soft . . .
Is that what had happened? Had that witch turned him soft? If I cannot kill, I cannot serve the One.
Raugst lifted a goblet from a table, still half full of red wine, and sniffed at it, smelling the bare hint of bitter tang that was the poison. For a moment he considered quaffing it. He could die with honor. He would not abandon his path, abandon his Master.
But . . . was the Great One his master? Surely he was his own man, a free agent upon the earth. He could say and do anything he desired.
Blasphemy! Gilgaroth was the One. Everything bent in service to the One. Even Vrulug, wise and mighty Vrulug, served the One. He was the core of all existence. There was only one higher, and that was the great and terrible Lorg-jilaad, exiled and lost in the gulfs of the void before the Breaking of the World. But here all bent to Gilgaroth. He was the burning center of the universe.
And yet, if that were so, why then did these men not serve Him? If He was the core, then He should be their core, as well.
Could there be . . . two cores? More? It was unthinkable! Yet it fit the facts. And Raugst was a creature of intellect, as well as brawn. Under the weight of such thoughts, he sank to the floor, sweaty and breathless. He was other now, he realized. He stood outside the circle of his Master.
No.
All of his life, everything he had ever known, was contained in the One. All his life he had lived in the hot protective shadow of Gilgaroth. The Great One’s warmth, love, His marvelous Plan: it was Raugst’s entire world. To be outside of it . . .
“Oh, Master,” he whispered. “Don’t abandon me.”
A new horror occurred to him. For now, if he truly were shut out of the Great One’s circle, that meant that Illistriv was denied him, too. The afterlife of his people, gone, its black gates shut to his presence forever, save as fuel for the Inferno.
“No,” he moaned. Tears welled in his eyes.
How could it have come to this? His whole world, his whole life, shattered, in ruins, all he had worked for, hollow . . .
Fria entered. She gasped, overcome at the sight of the dead men, and he could feel her fear, her horror, could smell it on the air. Then, seeming to gather herself, she came to him, slowly, and wrapped her arms about his thick neck.
“Oh, Raugst,” she breathed, “what have you done, my love? What have you done?”
He did not answer. At that moment he was imagining how he must look to Kragt and the others: a kneeling, crying, brooding thing hung with a weeping woman. He must look broken. Disloyal . . .
He rose to his feet, shrugging Fria off.
“Off me,” he growled, genuinely sorry to say the words. He thought fast. He could sense Kragt’s confusion and fear, could sense his lieutenants wondering if Raugst required a visit in the dark.
“I was not weeping for them,” he said, gesturing to the bodies all around. “I was weeping because my task is almost over. This is the greatest task ever given to me, the greatest I can imagine, and I have loved every moment of it. And now it will end. My agents will open the Gates, and Vrulug’s legions will pour in. Thiersgald will burn. Yes, Fria, it will burn.”
“You monster!” She beat at his feet with her tiny fists. “You monster! Giorn and Niara were right . . .”
“I’m no monster. I am a servant of the One. He is the center. Soon He will be your center, as well.”
“Never! Never, never . . .” She could hardly speak through her sobs.
“Either that, or you shall die, or become a plaything of the Borchstogs, and they are ungentle with their toys.”
She stared up at him with eyes that were just seeing him for the first time. The look in them hurt, but he must play this out—at least, until he could think of a way past it.
“How could I have ever loved you?” Even her roving eye took that moment to obey her, and both glared at him. No, not glared, not exactly—she hadn’t the will to glare. She loved him too much for
that. She was just looking up at him with immense disappointment, and a sense of terrible loss and betrayal. “Was it a lie?” she said. “Was it all a lie?”
He leaned down, took her hand, and hauled her to her feet. He could at least show her that much tenderness. She jerked away, as though his touch scalded her.
“Answer me!” she said.
He stepped forward, letting his shadow fall over her. Trembling, she cowered before him, her vehemence faded in an instant.
“I am lord here,” he said. “Not you.”
“I am the true Wesrain . . .”
“I am Baron. My agents run this castle and the army. It is me Fiarth follows. Not you. So keep silent, continue to amuse me, and I’ll let you live. You will be my personal slave.”
Trembling, she turned away, unable even to look on him. That shamed him, but with his men watching he could not show it.
“As my slave,” he said, “you will watch Thiersgald fall. And it will have no defense. My agents will open the gates of the city shortly, and Vrulug will devour it. Not even your priestesses will be able to resist. The Master took the Moonstone, turned it, and now Lord Vrulug spreads his poison from it outwards, tainting the light in the whole region. It will not aid you. Your priestesses and sorcerers are helpless. You are as babes against the Wolf.” He lifted his head and said, “Roschk Gilgaroth!”
Kragt and the others, overcome, lifted their heads, as well: “Roschk Gilgaroth!”
Raugst breathed easier.
Kragt approached. “Master, I just had word. Lord Giorn lives. That one—” he indicated Fria “—was seeing to him in the hospital wing.”
Raugst tried to hide his dismay. He had wanted to kill Giorn, but that had passed. Now he was uncertain. Giorn had a right to his rage, of that there could be no doubt. Yet it looked as though Raugst would be called upon to slay the last male Wesrain; he could not spare him, not in front of Kragt and the others.