by Jack Conner
The fall killed thousands.
More importantly, it broke the land and breached the Wall of Towers.
After more than three thousand years of the Wall’s protection, Larenthi was vulnerable.
Rolenya, or rather Rauglir, the spirit wearing her body, threw back her head and laughed.
And so Gilgaroth’s designs began to reveal themselves. But as Baleron watched the Tower’s fall, horror overcame him and reason was driven from his mind. Lunir bucked and thrashed under him. Frightened by the destruction, the glarum tried to wing away. Baleron wrestled control of it, turned it back. He could not take his eyes off the disaster. He had almost reached Celievsti when he saw it begin to fall apart. Now that great, shining tower, so powerful, so graceful ...
“Rolenya!” he cried. Tears stung his eyes.
Celievsti fell. The magnificent, lofty spire smote the earth and broke it, and a great cloud billowed up and obscured the sky.
His mind reeled madly. Rolenya! Shelir! Elethris! Felias! And countless others ...
He flew Lunir onward, meaning to set down and aid the survivors, if there were any, but a squad of serathin burst from a pall of smoke and surprised him. Arrows whistled by his head.
“Curse it!” he snarled.
They thought him an enemy on his glarum. More arrows chased him. He turned and fled. The serathin hounded him in a rage brought on by the tragedy, and it was some time before they desisted, and they likely turned back then only because they desired to return to the ruin of the White Tower and aid the living.
Sweating and breathless, Baleron flew back to the Havensrike host. The men had arrived at Hilduin, the Larenthin town, and its captains were busy procuring horses when he flew in. The elves of Hilduin, seeing him on his glarum, nearly shot him out of the sky, and would have, too, if it weren’t for his father, whose quick cry saved his life. Setting down in a courtyard, he breathlessly related news of the tragedy to Albrech, whose hard face grew harder and harder as he listened, and it seemed as if a great weight slowly settled onto his already weary shoulders.
“We must go to them,” Baleron finished. “The survivors need our help.”
Archmage Logran Belefard, the old, lean, silver-haired wizard, stood beside the king, and his brown eyes grew very sad at hearing the tale. He seemed to draw into himself as he heard it, but now he looked up.
“This is what he saw ...” Logran’s voice was low and strange.
“Who?” Albrech demanded.
“Elethris. I did not think it would be so soon ...”
“What do you mean?”
Logran shook his head. “There’s no time to explain. The prince is right. We must go to the site and see what aid we can give. Elethris said the Enemy would trample over Celievsti’s ruins. We must prevent that from happening.”
Albrech scowled. “Did you not hear me on the terrace? I renounced our alliance with the elves. I vowed never to aid them again. Do you now ask me to break a royal vow?”
Logran’s voice was very grave, his brown eyes very steady. “Yes. I do.”
Baleron held his breath.
Albrech stuck out his jaw. For a long moment, he said nothing, then: “We go at once.”
The king turned the army about. On their new horses, they covered ground swiftly, and they left the town far behind. Baleron astride Lunir flew on ahead. He reached the site in half an hour. This time he set Lunir down some distance from the ruin and walked the rest of the way afoot. Acrid smoke made him tear off a strip from his shirt and place it over his nose and mouth. The smoke stung his eyes, and his tears poured freely. Gazing up and around at the extent of the devastation, he wept. He remembered all the people he’d met in Celievsti and all the marvels of the tower, people and marvels that would never be seen again.
All around him he heard the rending of stone as portions of the rubble collapsed or shifted, and the wails of injured elves called to him. Threading his way through the horror, he sought to do what good he could.
All the while, the ruin awed him. Pieces of the tower, great white chunks, rose a hundred feet and more overhead. Much of it had been pulverized by the impact and been reduced to mere mountains of dust. The Larenth, dammed by debris, flooded and made the area wet and muddy. The land was broken and though waters flooded the plain their level was kept low by the new rifts in the earth that drank the river up. Bodies and dampened ash littered the once-green fields. Some had survived the tower’s collapse by escaping by swan and they milled about, tending to the wounded and trying to move portions of rubble in an effort to rescue those who might still be trapped. Some pieces of rubble were ten stories high and more, and they could not be moved, even with the power of the elves.
All was chaos and despair.
Baleron lent his aid where he could, keeping an eye open for Rolenya or Shelir, but he saw no sign of either. One elf told him that he had seen Rolenya flying away on a swan, spattered with blood as though wounded, but no one knew where she had gone.
Just what had Gilgaroth done? he asked himself. Why had the Tower fallen? How had Gilgaroth done it?
After long, hard hours of tending to the wounded and finding survivors buried in the ruins, Baleron slept for a bit in a tent with elves. He listened to their songs of mourning and wept anew. Soon he was roused by the sounds of his father arriving at the head of the Havensrike host, and he went to them. The men overcame their shock and gave succor to the elves. King Grothgar said not one more word against them, and they were grateful for his help.
But as the day dawned Baleron saw a wave of dark clouds rolling in from the south, blotting out the fading stars, and he felt an ill pang of foreboding. He had just finished helping unearth a trapped she-elf and was presently unoccupied, so he ran in the direction of the clouds, and what he saw nearly stopped his heart.
An enemy host under cover of thunderclouds plowed north from Oksilith toward the ruin. They were too far away and the night was still too thick for him to see many details. The dust and ash that they kicked up largely obscured them, and the darkness of the clouds hid the rest. He heard the rumble of thunder and tasted the sharp tang of a storm on the air. Lightning flashed, and by its light he saw endless rows of Borchstogs and hints of some other fell things, and then the glimpse was gone.
Others saw the advancing host, too.
“Dear Brunril,” whispered a nearby elf.
“Our doom draws nigh,” another said. “Brunril has forsaken us.”
“Flee!” shouted another.
Many began to panic and run.
Through the frightened masses Albrech strode boldly, shouting for order. “Hold!” he shouted. “Hold! We must brace for attack! Fear not! Havensrike will aid you!”
Baleron joined him and shouted for order at his father’s right hand. Others were drawn to them, and at last calm was established. The elves had no leader, and so they deferred to King Grothgar. With their aid, the Havensrike army braced for attack—an attack that would not be long in coming. Baleron helped as men and elves under his father’s direction erected walls made from earth and debris and set their defenses. When it was finished, he stood by his father and Logran on a makeshift barricade.
All too soon, the enemy host drew near, and now he could see them clearly by the light of the rising sun.
He swore. A vast host of Borchstogs marched toward Celievsti, and behind them marched a sea of other fell creatures, including great serpents seemingly made of fire, and others made of shadow. But at their head, the thing that truly made him tremble, was a towering giant, perhaps a hundred or more feet high, made entirely of smoke and flame. The ground quaked as he walked, and his flames rose and fell as the wind caressed him. The only part of him that was not made of flame were his eyes, and they were twin black holes looking inward to the depths of his own black soul.
“Grudremorq,” Baleron whispered, studying the giant through a spyglass.
Albrech took the spyglass and peered through it. He seemed to shudder and lowered the instr
ument. His face was a mask of hate and fear—and perplexity.
“The god of the mountain?” he asked with a scowl.
“It can be no other,” Baleron told him.
Logran, who did not need the spyglass, said, “The Omkarog must have taken a new form. But what does it mean?”
No one had an answer for that. But in his mind’s eye, Baleron saw Oksil exploding, saw a great, swirling black cloud obliterating the earth, obliterating the stars, swallowing everything, and in its center there flamed an ember, an ember that grew, and grew, till it became a raging inferno, an inferno with twin black holes for eyes ...
Punishing Ungier had not been Gilgaroth’s sole reason for ordering Oksil’s eruption.
All around them and behind them, the defenders whispered fearfully among themselves. Baleron recognized the fatalistic gleam in their eyes. They knew they were going to die. He had come to know that look well.
“Stand your ground!” Albrech shouted. “We must safeguard the wounded and the ruin of the tower until reinforcements arrive.”
“What reinforcements?” Baleron asked.
Albrech did not answer.
The enemy host rolled on, and on, and on. When Baleron saw its true size, he felt a chill. “We must go,” he told the king. “We can do no good here.”
Albrech glared at him. “Cowardice!”
Thankfully, Logran stepped in. “No,” he said. “He speaks the truth. Look at them! We wouldn’t even slow them down, my lord. We are all that remains after two holocausts, and they are infinite legions, better prepared and armed. Clearly this was a carefully executed plan. Gilgaroth destroyed our armies, then breached the Wall of Towers and had an army ready to invade the breach. There is not time for reinforcements to arrive. We must go. Perhaps we can at least save the wounded and give some warning to Queen Vilana.”
For a long moment, Albrech was silent. He lifted his head, haughty and defiant. Then his gaze settled on the approaching host, and he seemed to sag, just a bit, and some of the fire left his eyes. “Very well. We fall back.”
While the king gave orders to build sleds to transport the injured, Baleron stared at the advancing horde, entranced by the spectacle. I should’ve thrown myself into the gorge that night, after all. Why did Rolenya stop me?
Soon the sleds were completed and tied to horses, and the wounded were placed upon them. With all due speed, Albrech led the survivors north, fleeing the advancing horde. On his winged black steed, Baleron flew above them. He searched all about, hunting for some sign of Rolenya, but there was no trace.
Chapter 4
In the highest of the peaks to the west of the Oksil Waste, Lord Ungier brooded deep in dark caverns upon his throne of living rock. Often he had come here over the ages for a private retreat, a place to be alone and away from the stress of Gulrothrog, for whose loss he now grieved. After thousands of years, these hollow caverns were his only domain. How I have fallen ...
His sons and daughters stood close at hand, or hung like bats from the ceiling. Others had taken to the night skies. They searched for victims to bring back to him, who needed fresh blood, scouring the wastes for scattered survivors of the ruin of Oksil.
He was in exile, he had no doubt of that. Yet Gilgaroth had not killed him. That in itself was encouraging. Unless, of course, the Lord of Illistriv was saving him for torture.
An hour after darkfall, two of Ungier’s sons, Qrost and Vrugretheg, returned from their nightly hunt, breaking into his dark musings. They bore between them a half-conscious elf. Clearly they’d had their sport with him before bringing him in, but they had not drained him. They knew their sire liked to be the first to sink his fangs into new prey.
The Vampire King rose from his throne and stepped down.
Off in the shadows against the walls lurked several trolls, waiting for his commands. They were simpler creatures and would never defy him; in the event his sons rose against him, he would use the trolls to whip them back into line. The trolls worshipped him as a god—which, of course, he was, though he had been born after the Making of the World, born of flesh, and was not as powerful as his father or grandsire, the mighty Lorg-jilaad, now utterly in exile himself.
Nonetheless, Ungier was still very strong. His children, vampires all, were substantially weaker and he did not fear them. He feared only Gilgaroth, Mogra, Elethris and King Felias.
He looked the current elf over, scraping his claws along the man’s skin, raking his cheek, rending his flesh. The elf cried out. His eyes fluttered.
“You did well, children. Was he alone?” Ungier said.
They paused, and he shot them a sharp look, glancing from one to the other.
“Was he alone?”
“Yes,” said Qrost the elder. “Of course he was, Father. We would not deprive you of a capture. Surely you do not think we would be that foolish.”
“I think, my sons, that I shall shortly discover the truth of the matter.”
He laid his clawed hands upon the elf’s skull and drew out the soldier’s memory. The elf screamed and sweated but remained less than fully conscious. Ungier delved deep into his mind, searching, searching ... there.
With a snarl, Ungier placed a hand to the pommel of his sword. His fingers curled around the hilt.
“You ungrateful swine,” he seethed, drawing his blade to the clear ring of steel. “Traitors! There are gaps in his memory.”
In fear for their lives, the two vampires dropped the elf to the floor. Leaping back, they unsheathed their weapons.
“Father, no!” Qrost shouted.
“You erased memories from his mind. He was not alone, was he?”
Vrugretheg, the younger, dropped his sword and sank to his knees, overcome by fear and shame. Clasping his hands before him, he said, “Father, no! I mean, yes, we ... we did feed and tried to hide it, but ... but Father, we were hungry. So hungry! Ever since we left Gulrothrog, we’ve been denied. So hungry have we been we’ve even had to drink from each other. Please, spare us, my lord and father, for we meant no treachery, no deceit.”
“And yet you deceive!” Ungier snarled. He leapt.
With a roar, he swung his blade, felt it connect. Vrugretheg’s head flew through the air and struck the floor, rolling, while the decapitated body, spurting black blood, toppled to the ground. He kicked the body toward the shadows where the trolls stirred. “Eat it!” he told them. “That one deserves no higher.”
The largest troll scooped up the body and bit it in two, squirting blood and crushing bone.
Ungier’s elder son, Qrost, watched with horror, yet with a certain smugness and disdain.
“He always was a weak one,” Qrost said. “I will not bow down. I will not apologize.”
Ungier smiled. “And that is why I like you, my son. But that is also why you must suffer more greatly than he. Such insolence as yours cannot be tolerated.” He stepped forwards and his son shrank back, but the Vampire King merely neared Vrugretheg’s severed head and kicked it into the shadows. There a smaller troll picked it up and popped the morsel into its mouth like a man would eat a peanut, crushing the head with a loud wet crunch. Qrost winced.
Ungier said, “You will be taken into the pits and tortured until such time as I allow you to die.”
“No!” cried Qrost. Fear and anger furrowed his face. He turned the enchanted sword on himself. “I will not be tortured. Not in this life. Not by you. I will return to Ghrastigor. My spirit will serve Lord Gilgaroth and in a different form I will make it my mission to avenge myself on you. Throughout eternity I will—“
Ungier made a tiny motion with his hand and a dozen of his sons and daughters, hanging by their clawed feet from the ceiling, released their holds and flew down in a leathery, screeching cloud. They seized Qrost and wrenched his sword away to the refrain of his curses.
“No,” Ungier chided him when he was subdued and seething, “you will spend eternity in my torture pits. If I ever let you die, I will trap your soul and feed it to my Master and
He will cast you not into the gardens of Illistriv but into its Inferno, and your spirit will spend eternity writhing in pain in the black hell of His belly until it is utterly consumed. Perhaps if you’re fortunate He will in time appoint you to be one of His Warders, one of the demons that keep the kindling souls in line. But that is a reward granted only his most faithful servants, and I will ask Him not to be so kind to you.” To his other children, he hissed, “Take him away.”
Qrost yelled curses at him as his siblings bore him away through the halls. Eventually the sounds faded, and the Vampire King shook his head in amused dismay. He reflected that in the dull days to come, until he was restored to glory, if he ever was, much relief could be found overseeing the torture pits, especially when that one was the object of punishment.
Another of his sons descended from one of the entrances. “Sire, a visitor!”
“Who? Who could call on me here?”
Gladness filled the face of the young rithlag; clearly he enjoyed being the one to bring good news. “It is your betrothed, Lady Rolenya! She flew in upon a great swan.”
“Rolenya? But that’s impossible!”
The one who had brought the news stared at him, obviously hoping that all was well. “What shall I do, my lord?”
Mastering himself, dampening a sudden swell of emotion, Ungier said, “Show her in, of course.”
The son disappeared and the Vampire King ascended to his throne. He wanted to be seen in control. What did it mean that she would come to him? He could think of only one thing, and it sickened him.
Shortly the beautiful woman-child was ushered in, and he was astounded at her exquisiteness. Her thin white dress was covered in dried blood, which he could smell very well, even detecting the race that the bloods belonged to. All elvish, and two of great power. She wore the bloods proudly, as though they were badges of honor, and they were.