Son of Thunder

by Murray Leeder

  He was quickly a mass of fur and vast wings. Sharp claws spouted from his hands and feet, his ears grew huge and cupped like a bat’s, and his teeth lengthened into glistening white fangs. Most terrifying of all was that he was still Keirkrad. Something indescribable in his movement—the way he held his shoulders and his head—and those watery blue eyes were the same, but now set in a bat’s leering face.

  The Thunderbeast party fanned out and drew weapons. I am a werebeast of sorts, too, Vell realized for the first time.

  Keirkrad advanced in slow steps, his wings dragging on the ground. His eyes locked on the axe in Thluna’s hands.

  “How is this?” he asked. “The axe reclaimed? Sungar’s folly undone?”

  “There is much to be explained, Keirkrad,” said Thluna. “We Thunderbeasts have been misled and manipulated. Let us explain.”

  “There is no reasoning with a werebeast,” Kellin warned.

  Keirkrad let out a throaty chuckle. “For once, the southland whore and I agree. You are weak creatures, all. I have borne witness to the fickleness of your kind all my long life.” He scanned the assembled Uthgardt. “The child chief, the traitor druid of Silvanus, an orc infiltrator, and warriors of no particular distinction. You disappoint even so minor and weak a god as Uthgar. Only one among you is worthy of the transformation, of Malar’s blessing, and that is purely for the power that resides in you. A repository, the treant called you. Just what is a reservoir, if not a power waiting to be tapped?”

  A new kind of anger awakened in Vell.

  “You wanted to groom me as your champion to challenge Sungar’s chiefdom!” he shouted. “And when I wouldn’t, you slandered me instead, told me that I was not worthy of Uthgar’s blessing. You openly schemed against the chief to whom you swore fealty—what behavior is this for a shaman? What actions are these for a favored son of Uthgar? I did not betray Uthgar—you did.”

  The composure drained from Keirkrad’s batface, and Vell counted that as a victory. He went on. “And now you would make me a monster? Perhaps I am a monster already.” Lanaal’s lessons in transformation, which he had resisted, suddenly struck home. When he shed his human form, he largely kept his own mind and volition.

  Vell’s transformation into a brown-scaled behemoth was more shocking than the first incident. In Sungar’s Camp, it had happened so quickly amid such confusion and in the dark of night—it had seemed like a strange dream. Now, in the daylight amid a tranquil setting, it bore a new reality. Vell was gone, or what the warriors knew as Vell, and in his place stood a creature of legend, a creature the Thunderbeasts had been taught to revere. No glimpse of the bones of the beast hovering above Morgur’s Mound could have prepared them for the flesh and blood behemoth before them.

  Vell stood as tall as the treetops. He felt a strange rush of embarrassment as he looked down on the disbelieving faces of his friends and allies as they rushed to keep clear.

  Hissing, snarling, Keirkrad sprang from the ground into the air. His physical weakness was erased by his bat-form, and he landed on Vell’s vast face, clamping on with his claws and wrapping his huge wings over Vell’s eyes. Vell charged, partly to keep Keirkrad away from the others, and partly to disturb Keirkrad’s grip, the ground trembling as he did so. He blindly strode into the River Delimbiyr. A massive splash drenched the river’s banks, and Vell waded into the middle of the river.

  Vell felt the shocking coldness of the water rush up his massive limbs, reaching his brain with the intensity of a thunder strike. He dunked his head into the water, dousing Keirkrad. All around them, currents and eddies swirled, formed by the sudden intrusion of Vell’s bulk. The werebat clung, squeezing more and more tightly on Vell’s face; but he could not maintain his grip, and drifted away in the rapids.

  Vell watched Keirkrad’s huge wings vainly struggling against the water, their fine bones and leathery covering inadequate against the Delimbiyr’s onrush. Then the water swirled around him, forming a whirlpool and a wall that protected him, and Keirkrad magically lifted above the Delimbiyr’s surface. Beating his wings steadily to dry himself and stay aloft, he looked toward Vell with a perverse grin as he faced the lizard in the middle of the river.

  “I am no longer human, perhaps,” Keirkrad taunted. “But a cleric I am still.” He spat out a prayer, and when Vell tried to urge his vast body to action, he could not move. A vicious torpidity seized his limbs and held him captive in the middle of the river, where the chill still assaulted his senses. He urged his animal body to action, but it would not answer. He was still as a statue, and the cold numbed his senses. He could barely feel his legs beneath him.

  How could I have been so stupid? Vell asked himself. He had no way of knowing how long he could maintain his beast form, especially while paralyzed.

  When he lapsed back to his human shape, he would be at Keirkrad’s mercy.

  A loud roar filled the air. A burst of sound caught Keirkrad and blasted him out of the air with such force that he landed beyond the south bank, clapping his clawed hands to his ears. From the corner of his eye, Vell saw Kellin standing on the river bank, Thanar alongside her. He could only guess that they were trying to dissolve the magic that held him.

  Keirkrad unfurled his wings and flew across the river, bound for the druid and the sorceress. Thunderbeast hammers and arrows assailed him, but they bounced off as if he were solid metal. When he swooped down to harry Kellin and Thanar, Rask Urgek planted a blow solidly in his face with the Tree Ghosts’ club, sending Keirkrad reeling, but leaving him aloft. His nose was smashed, and blood dripped down his face. He let out a high-pitched chirp of pain.

  Thluna ran at Keirkrad with the greataxe, but Keirkrad ably dodged, and it slashed through empty air next to him. Too heavy for Thluna to wield properly, the axe went astray, and its head embedded deep in the ground. Keirkrad let out a twisted laugh as he swooped.

  “Leave it to a true man to handle such weapons,” the werebat taunted. “It is beyond a mere boy such as you.”

  Rask swung the club at him again, but missed. Keirkrad beat his wings furiously, lifting himself till he was just above the half-orc’s head. He lowered a clawed foot, several of its toes missing, to Rask’s face with his sharp nails and raked his throat. Before Rask could react, Keirkrad murmured a dark spell. A ravenous maw sprouted from the underside of his foot, a ring of teeth that snapped and sank hungrily onto Rask’s chin.

  The half-orc screamed with pain. He dropped the club, and his hands grabbed at the werebat’s foot, but the fangs only sank deeper. Snarling in pleasure, Keirkrad beat his wings and began to lift Rask off the ground.

  Thluna pulled at the shaft of the battle-axe, freeing it from the earth. He took another swing at Keirkrad, more quickly than the shaman had expected. Keirkrad released Rask, letting the half-orc tumble to the ground. The werebat dodged wildly, but Thluna’s swing clipped one of his broad leathery wings, ripping it halfway through. Keirkrad flapped his great wings uncertainly. He hissed as he looked down on his enemies, yet he gained control of his flight. Blood ran from his smashed nose and dribbled onto the grass below.

  Kellin and Thanar’s magic unbound Vell from his paralysis in the Delimbiyr, and he struggled to move his chilled legs. With slow, steady steps, he lumbered to the shore, his vast brown lizard eyes locked on Keirkrad’s hovering form. But he was so weak, his energy drained from him, that he felt his behemoth form shuddering and realized it would soon leave him. Soon, he would be Vell again and subject to Keirkrad’s scheme. What would happen if Keirkrad succeeded in infecting them all with lycanthropy? Would all Vell’s power vanish, or would it be shaped in some hideous new way? What would remain of himself?

  In his moments of contemplation and weakness, Vell felt the transformation stirring. He rallied the last of his energy into a charge at Keirkrad. The others dodged to safety as the drenched behemoth thundered across the field. Keirkrad prepared to fly out of reach, but his damaged wing slowed him, and he could not rise high enough before the juggernaut col
lided with him at full speed. Vell knocked Keirkrad from the air with a swing of his mighty neck.

  The world around Vell faded and shifted as he focused on the object of his rage. Brown eyes locked on the two bloodshot eyes that had such little humanity left in them. Even when Keirkrad was at his very worst, he was at least human. Now the elements of his humanity had been sacrificed for this sick taint.

  Is this what I will become? thought Vell as he continued his assault. He was no longer conscious of his own body, human or behemoth; that awareness floated away on a sea of desperate fury. All of the anger he had held in check against the Shepherds, and against those of his own tribe who had shunned him for a lifetime, he unleashed on Keirkrad. He sated his need for vengeance against all those who had made him this amalgam of man and beast. He cried, weeping tears of rage for all the blows he had absorbed in his life. His tears dripped onto Keirkrad’s snarling face below him.

  They dripped from human eyes.

  When his senses cleared, Vell found his bare hands locked around Keirkrad’s neck, the werebat underneath him, pinned and struggling on the ground. Pulling back in shock, he released his grip just in time for the axe to swing down and slice through Keirkrad’s throat. Thluna’s blow separated the werebat’s head from its body and sent it rolling away.

  Vell weakly pulled himself to his feet, wiping streaks of tears from his cheeks. Beneath him sprawled the open-winged remnants of the man who had been their shaman for longer than any Thunderbeast could remember. Vell stared down on the spectacle of ruin, appalled. The ugly bat face rolled to a stop and lay facedown in the dirt.

  Thanar rushed over to heal Rask’s wound. Much to the half-orc’s relief, the druid discovered that he had not been infected with lycanthropy.

  “I loved him,” Vell reflected. “Our shaman. All my childhood I was told to love him, and so I did.”

  “That’s true of us all,” said Thluna. He propped up the axe and cleaned the blade of Keirkrad’s blood. “But it was not our shaman of old we just killed.”

  “Is that truly so?” Vell asked. “I wonder.”

  Kellin stood near Vell and placed a sympathetic hand on his arm. She felt a tremble as her flesh touched his.

  “It’s sad that Keirkrad had to die,” she said. “But it’s for the best.”

  “There is no doubt of that,” said Thanar. “He is the reason I could not make my home in Grunwald. If our tribe is to survive, his type must be consigned to the past.” He turned to face Thluna. “And so, chief of the Thunderbeasts, what honor is appropriate for our fallen shaman?”

  Thluna thought for a moment. “Keirkrad was our comrade, and his memory will carry much weight among our brethren. When our fellow, Grallah, fell in the deep wood, we could not pause to honor his body. We have scarcely more time now …” He looked at the Delimbiyr River. “Burial or fire would be a greater honor, but …”

  Thanar smiled. “A decision worthy of a chief. Worthy of my chief.”

  “This all may have been a test,” said Rask. A fresh scar, a circle of teeth marks as if from a lamprey’s bite, now adorned his chin. “Even the Tree Ghosts knew of Keirkrad and the destiny Uthgar supposedly planned for him—the reason his life was preserved for so long. As a test for us. And we’ve won.” The notion let a contemplative mood settle over the assembled Thunderbeasts. They felt uplifted by the idea that Uthgar had godly plans of such foresight. It might even have redeemed Keirkrad, by justifying his betrayal.

  Vell spoke simply but profoundly. “Perhaps, in a way he never imagined, Keirkrad fulfilled his destiny at last.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Sungar smiled though his flesh was raw and his cheeks were flecked with blood. Another afternoon of torture had ripped away all of his strength, but he smiled and laughed through it nevertheless. A trace of light filtered through the tiny window at the top of his cell, casting patterns across the walls, and somewhere nearby a bird chirped merrily, lightening Sungar’s spirits.

  “It will not be much longer now,” he said.

  “Can you be certain?” asked Hurd through the wall.

  “You said it yourself,” Sungar said. “The first time we spoke. Change is coming to Llorkh. And you wanted to live long enough to see it.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I am.” Sungar said. “The old chief has shown me so.”

  “This place can have strange effects,” Hurd cautioned. “We cannot always trust our senses.”

  “Simply believe, Hurd,” said Sungar. “Even false belief will give you the strength you need when the time comes.”

  “I want to kill him,” said Hurd. “I mean Klev, though I would surely gut Geildarr if given the chance. But Klev, who’s brought such pain down on us. I’d love to see him pay. I wouldn’t even care about seeing him suffer. That’d be playing his game. The quick death he denied us … that would be fulfillment enough.”

  “Let your anger brew,” Sungar advised. “All the rage you’ve kept in check for all these years … now is the time for it.”

  The Thunderbeasts made camp in a field of brown grass, south of Loudwater. On Rask’s advice, they chose to avoid the towns and major roads as much as they could, for the area crawled with Zhentarim, and they did not want Llorkh to have any forewarning of their approach. Kellin tossed and turned in her bedroll then rose, the full moon dappling her dark skin in tones of silver. Vell was keeping watch, silently staring into the distance.

  “How do you feel, Vell?” she asked softly, so as not to disturb the sleeping warriors around them.

  “Fine,” he said. He turned to her. “As angry as I am at the Shepherds, there is something reassuring in knowing exactly where I stand. I thought Uthgar cursed me with this—he did not.”

  “But you transformed again,” Kellin said. “How do you feel about that? I realize Uthgardt are unaccustomed to speaking of feelings, but—”

  “I kept more of my own mind this time,” said Vell. “That is good.”

  Kellin nodded.

  “What troubled me is how comfortable I felt in that form.” Vell forced a smile. “In a body so foreign, so unlike my own, so huge and scaly—I felt like myself.”

  Kellin embraced him. This took him by surprise. The gesture meant more to him than any words of reassurance. In the moonlight, he closed his arms around her as well, and for a long time they stood in a shared embrace, their heads resting on each other’s shoulders. He felt warm and welcome in her arms, and his heart beat fast. For the first time in a long while, he was moved by something other than anger. He was of age to select a wife from among the Thunderbeast women, but the warriors of greater repute and importance took precedence. Before Runemeet, he had always hovered on the margins of his tribe, and not only because of his eye color—though that served as a reminder of his differences.

  She whispered into his ear, “I would not wish your predicament on anyone. The Shepherds were wrong to do this to you, and you are brave to have borne it this far. You are the bravest man I’ve known.” He began to speak, but she shushed him. “When this is over, if you do not want to return to your tribe, there will be a place for you with me.”

  “Will we be lovers?” Vell asked. He surprised himself with the question, and he began to recant. “I mean …”

  “No,” said Kellin. “It’s an important question. I don’t know yet. We’ll see how this turns out. Unless you think Lanaal …”

  “No,” Vell said. “Not Lanaal.”

  “You and she have so much in common,” Kellin said.

  “And so little in common.” Vell moved a tentative hand to stroke the black curls that hung down over her shoulders.

  “You don’t have to accept my offer,” Kellin said, resting her head on his shoulder. “This is your choice. Maybe you’ll decide that your place is with your people.”

  “Up until now,” Vell answered, “I had no way to even contemplate leaving. But you had never met me, Kellin. Before Runemeet, before Morgur’s Mound, Vell the Brown was an ordinary man
, unremarkable in most ways. Take the behemoth from me, and I fear that’s what I’ll be again.”

  “Don’t think that way,” said Kellin. “Look where it’s led you. You’ve traveled far outside the world you knew, met creatures you never could have expected—elves, korreds, treants, and a half-orc, not to mention a sorceress. You’ve shared harsh words with your own ancestors. These experiences cannot be erased, nor the experience of carrying all this weight. You will emerge a stronger person, and that’s how you will stay.”

  Vell said, “Another thing I’ll have to thank the Shepherds for.” He let out a soft chuckle that let Kellin know it was just a bitter joke.

  Together in the night, with barbarian warriors sleeping all around them, they clutched each other tightly, nothing more needing to be said.

  Rask used the tip of his sword to trace a map of Llorkh in the dust at his feet, digging a furrow around it to represent the ditch. He drove the sword’s tip deep into the ground at the city’s center, to represent Geildarr’s manor and the seat of government for Llorkh: the Lord’s Keep. The party hid among the foothills of the Graypeaks, keeping a distant watch on the Dawn Pass Trail to the north, where the occasional caravan crawled to or from Llorkh. They crouched in the tall grass that swayed in the wind as larks chirped their autumn songs.

  “Much of Llorkh is unpopulated,” Rask explained. “Or so it was. I should remind you that I have not been there in many years. The population dwindled after the mines closed, so the town has many untended, uninhabited buildings. Geildarr fortified the walls and built a great ditch around Llorkh.

  “We face one major problem,” Rask went on. “Llorkh is a Zhentarim stronghold. It is no place to live, though many do live there, poor souls. In truth, it is a fortress for the protection of caravans, and nothing else. Geildarr’s Lord’s Men number in the hundreds, and with so many caravans passing through the city, the number of soldiers within the walls is usually high. And there are but eight of us.”