by Jack Conner
He gazed up at the slender white spires framed against the black night sky, saw the ornate dome glowing with light, and he had a grave foreboding. Not this. Anything but this.
Muttering praises to Vrulug and Gilgaroth, Grastrig led him through the gates, past and the courtyards with its gazebo and high elm trees, then up the wide stairs, flanked by lacy white columns, and inside. Raugst hesitated before he crossed the threshold, too briefly for his escorts to notice, then marshaled his resolve and stepped across.
It was worse than he’d feared. The high white halls of the temple were now the settings for debauchery and carnage. Red blood ran across white marble, and the delicate bodies of priestesses in their white robes sprawled along the floor. These were the young priestesses, the acolytes. The more experienced ones would have had ridden off to war. Raugst’s escorts led him through the dining halls, and he saw Borchstogs holding priestesses down on the tables, taking turns with them. Other priestesses were being tied to the columns and mutilated. Their screams drove shards of ice through Raugst.
This is all my fault. He had told Niara of his plans, of his arrangement with Vrulug, that Vrulug would not attack. Raugst had emptied Outer Thiersgald as a precaution, certainly, but mainly he had done it to keep up appearances. Niara had believed in him and had not forced her priestesses to evacuate with the others. I promised her I could save them, and now they’re dead, or worse.
Grinding his teeth, he stepped over and around the graceful bodies, some of which still twitched. Some of the priestesses had apparently slain themselves rather than be taken, but most had not had such easy deaths.
The temple, a place of light and beauty and grace, had been profaned. Blood spattered the walls, congealed in pools upon the floor, slim white bodies lying in them, some still moving. The Borchstogs’ grunts echoed down the halls, accompanied by squeals of pain.
Grastrig ushered Raugst through the Hall of Beginning. Here it was hot and steamy. Like Hell. The Borchstogs had discovered the furnaces below the Pool. Likely they were down there even then, in the sweltering, smoking heat, driving their slaves to stoke the fires. The Pool was not just steaming but boiling. The very air burned Raugst’s lungs. As he watched through wisps of vapor, a group of Borchstogs dragged a writhing priestess toward the water, which churned like a witch’s cauldron, running red with the girls that had gone before. The priestess was blond and green-eyed, young and fair. Naked, crying, she was dragged to the bubbling Pool, obviously having already been raped; Raugst could see the bruising. As he watched, helpless, the Borchstogs, laughing, hurled her into the boiling water, where several other bodies were already bobbing, red as apples. She screamed and thrashed, then fell silent.
Raugst looked away, and Grastrig led him to a winding stairway. Raugst realized he was being led to the Inner Sanctum. Dread built in him. The Inner Sanctum was the touchstone to the gods, to Illiana of whose grace and beauty an entire religion had been founded upon. That room had been the place of Raugst’s birth, in a way. Now he supposed it would be the place of his death.
The stairs ended and they came to the threshold of that room of Light. Again Raugst hesitated, then, trembling, stepped over. The smell of death rose about him.
Before him towered Vrulug—tall, batwinged, wolf-headed, encased in ebon armor, spattered with blood and stinking of death, standing over the altar of Illiana, where he held down a naked priestess. A gaggle of his black-robed priests surrounded him. Raugst had always hated Vrulug’s priests, with their slick white skin and skeletal visages. Now the priests chanted ominously, cowled heads bowed in prayer.
Raugst wanted to intervene, but there was nothing he could do. The white slab of veined marble glimmered in the light of the two braziers. Raugst knew Niara would from time to time place candles or incense or flowers on the altar, but that was it. Never anything like this.
Vrulug produced a ceremonial knife and slit the girl’s throat. Her blood spattered the white altar, and her body jerked and twitched for a while, then subsided, her blood running in rivers down the sides of the slab. Raugst felt sick. The priests ended their chant.
“There,” said Vrulug in Oslogon. “Now this is an altar to Gilgaroth. Roschk Gilgaroth!”
“Roschk Gilgaroth!”
The veins in the white marble slab of the altar began to turn black. The veins spread, joined up with others, tributaries leading into rivers, and soon the whole altar was crisscrossed in malignant black lines, which then seeped outward. It would not be long before the whole thing turned black. Raugst felt the altar emanate a chill, a darkness, and it seemed that the block of stone hummed and the air rippled around it, the ripples spreading, changing all they touched. This was now a fell place, a place of the Dark One. Raugst could taste it on his tongue, a rancid, bitter oiliness. And here, where he and Niara had made love for the first time! It was obscene. His hands turned into fists at his sides. He tried to relax them. Appear natural, he told himself.
Grastrig had been silent, awaiting the end of the ritual. Now he cleared his throat, drawing Lord Vrulug’s attention.
“My lord, you have a visitor.”
The wolf-lord’s eyes burned bright when they saw Raugst. He gestured for Raugst to step forward, saying “Come.”
Raugst obeyed. The slender bodies of priestesses lay strewn about the room. A pile of their body parts had been heaped at the base of the white altar of Illiana, and black candles had been lit and mounted on it. The bitter taint that filled the air grew stronger and raised the hackles on the back of Raugst’s neck. Mother’s milk, he told himself. I used to live for the feel of Gilgaroth’s presence. He threaded his way around the blood-soaked bodies and through the chanting priests, who parted before him. He hoped and prayed that his former master did not feel the presence of the sword.
“You may leave us, Captain,” the wolf-lord told the Borchstog leader, and Grastrig left, taking his crew with him. It smelled better when they were gone, but not much. “You as well,” Vrulug told his priests, and the pale-skinned things departed wordlessly. Raugst breathed easier.
Vrulug led Raugst away from the profaned altar to the moon-washed terrace, where Raugst had lopped off Giorn’s fingers weeks ago. Raugst wondered if the bloodstains were still here.
“Look!” Vrulug said, sweeping a heavy arm at the panorama of the burning city. Flaming towers stabbed high into the black sky. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” He flung one arm around Raugst’s shoulder and clapped him on the back. Raugst started, but Vrulug didn’t seem to notice. “For thousands of years I’ve longed to see Thiersgald burn, and now it does. It burns for me.” He breathed. “Soon, from its ashes, Ulastrog will rise once more, and I will rule here as I did of old.”
Scowling, Raugst looked sideways at him. “We had a deal.”
“Did we?”
“Yes.”
Vrulug drew back and appraised him seriously. “You’ve become King?”
Raugst fingered his kingly clothes and cape, and raised his royal signet ring to the light. “Yes,” he said. “I am King.”
Vrulug—great, grim, bloody Vrulug, stinking of death and sex—laughed. The sound made Raugst grind his teeth. “Hail Lord Raugst! Hail the king of ashes!”
Raugst did not blink. “I ask you to honor our bargain and withdraw your forces.”
“Why should I? I have my full host with me now, and the aid of the Moonstone.” His chest swelled. Indeed, now that Raugst was aware of it, he could feel a power radiating from Vrulug that had not been there before. “I can prevail without your help.”
Raugst flexed his fingers. “My lord—my friend—please reconsider. With my authority, I can do what you can not. I can wield Felgrad as a weapon against the Crescent, a weapon that can blunt their swords and make them easy pickings for you. Without my help, you may be able to break them, but they will break you, as well, and when you occupy the charred remains of their cities you will be spread thin, thin enough for the North to unseat you. Work with me, my friend. Honor our deal. You
will not regret it.” He said this with great enthusiasm, hoping Vrulug would see the sense in it. Raugst did not expect him to, but he had arranged with Giorn to remain as king should Vrulug agree.
Vrulug frowned, mulling on it. The shadows of the tower grew darker, colder. The bodies of the priestesses began to stink. The black candles flickered on the altar. The bitter taint of Gilgaroth grew. The back of Raugst’s mind itched.
He cast a glance over the city. The flames rose high into the night, spreading unchecked throughout the outer city despite the thin mist. He heard distant screams. Lightning licked all around, descending from the clouds like the legs of some monstrous insect. Thunder cracked and roared.
In the distance hosts of Borchstogs neared the inner wall of the city, surely under the direction of Vrulug’s generals. It would not be long before the defenders there fell. Unless . . .
Trying not to show his loathing, his fear, Raugst turned back to Vrulug. The wolf-lord eyed him intensely.
“Well?” Raugst demanded. “What of it? Will you honor our bargain?”
At last Vrulug sighed. “Sadly, I must decline. I am more powerful than you know. Thiersgald falls tonight.”
“Oathbreaker! We had a deal.”
Vrulug chuckled, but his eyes held no mirth. “You’re determined to play this part till the end, aren’t you? I admire that.”
Raugst shivered. “What do you mean?” Even as he spoke, his hand strayed to the hilt of his light-blessed sword.
Vrulug was faster. One of his hands lashed out and struck Raugst full across the face. Raugst flew backward, through the Inner Sanctum, and crashed into a wall. Pain flared across his back. He slid down the wall and came to rest next to the mutilated body of a priestess.
He groaned. Tasted blood on his tongue. Sitting up gingerly, he felt needles of fire rush through him.
Vrulug stepped forward, over a white-robed body. “You think I didn’t know?” the wolf-lord raged. Outside, thunder crashed and rocked the tower. “You think I wouldn’t find out?”
He opened his mouth. Fire licked at the back of his throat and gushed out, a great, frothing tide of flame. Raugst just barely rolled away in time. Even so, the heat singed the hairs on the back of his neck and set his royal finery afire.
In the distance, priestesses screamed as Borchstogs raped them, and the city burned all around.
At that moment, the Borchstog host reached the inner wall of Thiersgald.
“Archers!” Giorn called.
Arrows thrummed all along the wall, and Borchstogs fell twitching to the ground, but the black tide rolled forward, inexorable, their columns threading through the buildings of the city like the tendrils of some undersea abomination. Smoke and fire rose up all around them. In the forefront of their legions strode their standard-bearers, tall, black figures carrying aloft sharpened poles with the remains of men and women impaled upon them; some still moved, slicked with rain. Fat, gore-coated snakes coiled around the fly-specked bodies.
“Stand your ground!” Giorn shouted.
He unsheathed his sword as the first wave of Borchstogs scaled their ladders. One of the red-eyed demons climbed directly before him, stinking of death. Giorn’s sword glanced off the demon’s helm, which was in the shape of a rotting human head. The Borchstog laughed, heaved itself off the ladder and sprang at him.
Frantically, Giorn beat it back, and their swords clashed and rang. Giorn’s left arm was not as nimble as his right, but his training paid off. At last he stuck his blade through the demon’s eye-slit and into its brain. Black blood spurted, and the demon sagged backward.
More poured up behind it. All along the wall, as far as Giorn could see, the Borchstogs poured like a wave of death, and men battled them desperately. The priestesses led by Hiatha stood by, unable to draw on their powers. Some took up swords and aided the men, but their otherworldly arts were useless.
A Borchstog lunged at Giorn. He parried its first thrust, feeling the skittering of the blades course up his arm. He balled his ruined right hand and smashed it across the Borchstog’s face. Two of the recently mended fingers cracked, and the Borchstog fell away. One of his men stabbed it through the belly.
Giorn allowed himself a moment to look over his shoulder, to stare out over the inner city. He saw the golden dome of the Library, the mansions rearing in the distance, the fires of gathered townspeople—they would be on their knees praying, some hoping for peace, but most trying to make their own peace with their makers—then turned back. The Borchstogs swarmed toward him.
Giorn said a silent prayer and stepped forward.
Raugst, rolling, evading Vrulug’s stamping foot, grabbed his sword and wrenched it free of its scabbard. Still on the floor, he rolled sideways, slashing at Vrulug’s leg. Connected.
The wolf-lord leapt back, bat-wings pumping. “What do you wield?” Black blood trickled from his ankle. The armor there had shattered.
Raugst levered himself to his feet. Crouching, he brandished the sword before him. A drop of foul-smelling black blood dripped off the tip.
“A gift of the Light,” he said. Thank you, Niara.
Vrulug opened his mouth. Another wave of fire gushed out, enveloping two of the bodies that littered the floor. Raugst lunged aside, rolled, quenching the flames that had caught in his clothes. The stench of burning human flesh filled the room. Smoke drifted through the air, hiding and then revealing Vrulug.
“Tell me, how was I betrayed?” Raugst said.
The tall, monstrous shape of Vrulug appeared from the smoke, which wreathed about him, embracing him like a lover. In answer to the question, Vrulug drew his lips back from his teeth in what might have been a smile, or a grimace. An arm gestured at the darkness to his right, and from out of the shadows emerged another shadow, thin, wispy, phantasmal, gliding, but not part of the smoke.
Raugst stared. “A ghost . . .”
The black spirit glided forward, whispering sibilantly, and he fancied just for a moment that it said, “Raugst, my love”. He thought he saw it take on a vaguely womanish form.
“Saria,” he said, understanding.
Sssss, she said, or was that the wind blowing in from the terrace? The shadow glided closer. Ssssss . . .
Raugst slashed his sword toward it, and it drew no nearer. “You’re stronger than I gave you credit for,” he told her, “if you had enough control over your spirit to return to Vrulug.”
“No,” Vrulug said, stepping forward. “It was I who had the power. When I Turned her long ago, I gave her some of my blood. I bound her to me. When she died she returned to the source of her power. She told me what you had done.” He shook his head sadly, grimly. Smoke stirred around it. More poured from his wolf-like nostrils. “She saved me once from a friend that betrayed me—Orin Feldred, the Skinless Man. He was like a brother to me. Now you. We have known one another for ages. How could you have betrayed me, my friend?”
Raugst stared at the wolf-lord and sensed genuine anguish there. Raugst too felt a pang of regret at what might have been. He had loved and worshipped Vrulug, had been proud to be the wolf-lord’s right hand. It had been his place, and he had been content. And, in truth, he missed it. But there was no getting it back now. The past was lost to him forever.
“I am sorry,” he said, meaning it. “I would never have wished ill upon you. Not before. But now . . .”
He sprang. His sword leapt, cutting into Vrulug’s left arm, but not severing it.
Vrulug screamed at the touch of the light-blessed sword. His blood hissed and boiled on Raugst’s blade. Raugst thrust at Vrulug’s middle, hoping the sword could pierce the wolf-lord’s armor.
Vrulug dashed Raugst aside. Raugst cracked against a white marble wall, felt a rib snap.
He did not hesitate. He rebounded immediately, driving at Vrulug, not giving him time to summon his fire.
But Vrulug was not unarmed, and in an instant he unsheathed his own sword. It was long and sharp and dull of color, unadorned. It was simply an instru
ment of death, a cleaver without ornamentation. He parried Raugst’s thrust with one hand and slashed at Raugst’s head with the other.
Raugst dodged, trying to get close enough to deliver a mortal blow. He struck again and again, beating against Vrulug’s blade. Priestesses screamed below. Smoke drifted through the chamber, forming unnatural shapes. Sometimes it hid Vrulug from view, then Raugst would smell fire and spring aside before the wolf-lord could roast him. All around, thunder crashed, and the tower shook violently.
The presence of Gilgaroth thickened, seeping outward from the now-black altar, and a heaviness settled on Raugst’s mind. His limbs grew heavy, his thoughts dull. Blackness gripped him.
He forced himself to conjure the face of Niara, and, slowly, the darkness burned away.
Sparks flared from the swords as they clanged against each other, the dark sword and the light, and strange illuminations bathed the room.
Saria, shrieking, wrapped ghostly talons about Raugst’s neck, and he felt the breath choke in his lungs. He struggled to wrestle her away, but he could not dislodge her.
Seeing Raugst’s weakness, Vrulug leapt forward, plunging his blade into Raugst’s side. Raugst screamed. The blade burned like fire. He threw himself aside, feeling blood trickle down his flesh. Still the wound burned, as though the blade had left a residue of acid.
Saria’s shade continued to try to throttle him, but now that he had a moment of respite from Vrulug he slashed his blade through her incorporeal form, and she flew back, seeming to diminish.
“Enough!” Vrulug roared.
He sucked in a deep breath, his chest swelled, and Raugst could feel the puissance in him throb. He was using the Moonstone, summoning its powers. Everything else in the world seemed to vanish. There was only Vrulug, drinking up all the light, all the life, crackling, shimmering. The wolf-lord swelled, gathered his strength—
He loosed his breath, but it was not the same fiery red breath as before. The wave that gushed forth between his terrible fangs now was black. The dark tide surged toward Raugst.