by Jack Conner
Lady Niara looked upon the shaggy, bloody mound of the beast, made a sign to ward off evil, then turned back to Giorn. “Shall my ladies and I take Rian now and prepare his body for entombment?”
Giorn shook his head. “Father will want to see him first.”
“Of course.”
“But have one of your priestesses seek me at the Castle later, and we’ll make arrangements.”
“As you wish.”
She let her eyes linger on his a moment, questioning. He held her gaze steadily but made no further move. Not here, he thought. Not now.
She bowed and withdrew. Giorn led on.
When they were some distance away, Raugst said, with some awe in his voice, “She was lovely.”
Giorn turned to regard him. Raugst wore a strange expression.
“Yes,” Giorn said. That was all. He hadn’t the heart to say anything further. The funeral bells echoed loudly in his ears.
The procession passed through the outer city and then through the gates of the inner wall, the original wall of Thiersgald, built long ago before the city had expanded to its present girth. Here the road was lined by colonnades and great palaces of veined white marble, and mansions of gold brick and red granite reared in the distance. The procession passed over the gurgling river, through a great courtyard dominated by a tiered fountain, then past the massive golden dome of the Library, where so much irreplaceable knowledge had been gathered over the years.
Father was waiting for them at the wide stairs that led up to Wesrain Castle. A tall, thin man, with a likewise thin mustache and beard, and black pouches under his pale blue eyes, he sometimes gave the impression of being lofty and aloof, but he was very low now, and his servants stood anxiously nearby as if ready to catch him should he fall.
Seeing his father’s grief saddened Giorn all over again, and as he met his father’s gaze they shared a heavy sorrow. They would miss Rian sorely.
Climbing down from his horse, Giorn embraced Lord Harin Wesrain, then stepped back as Meril did the same. Raugst stayed out of the way while the Baron bent over his fallen son and wept. Giorn gave his father some time, then, in a soft voice, said, “We would’ve lost Meril too were it not for our new companion, Raugst the woodsman.” He indicated Raugst, who bowed his head.
The Baron scrutinized the woodsman for some time, his eyes flinty. Raugst said nothing, which Giorn appreciated. At last the Baron sighed, kissed Rian’s forehead, and in dull tones he said, “Come. I have no appetite, but when I heard you were arriving I had dinner prepared. Let’s not waste it. We will eat, we will drink, we will toast Rian’s bravery, and the story shall be told.” He gestured to Raugst. “And you will be our guest of honor.”
The dinner that night was somber indeed, and the candles that stood in a row upon the ancient, darkly-stained dining table were black and dripping. Even the roast venison with the savory brown gravy and the cabbages and potatoes that Giorn normally loved tasted like ash in his mouth.
His sister Fria had taken Rian’s death badly, and she wept quietly and did not eat. She was a pretty young woman, with chestnut hair and a small straight nose, but she had one bad eye that rolled around in its socket, a condition that disturbed her few suitors greatly.
“By a hog,” she said through clenched teeth. Her small fists were white and trembling. “How could one so bright and fair be brought low by a hog?” The notion seemed to offend her on some deep level, and she did not bother wiping the tears that coursed down her face.
The Baron merely pushed his food around, and from time to time he would stare at first Meril, then Raugst, and seem to sigh. He was a man who spent his days officiating and had little time for pleasure. Thus he lived through his sons, who were wild and free. Rian had been the wildest and the freest, and his carefree spirit would obviously be missed keenly.
Raugst said little. He’d been given new clothes and his wounds had been cleaned and dressed, but he still seemed untamed, a creature of the forest. All these trappings of civilization must seem foreign to him.
It fell to Giorn to tell the tale of Rian’s death, and he did so with all the energy he could summon, which was not much. He embellished a few details, making Rian’s death sound less random and more truly heroic, as he thought only fitting. As he told it, Rian had weakened the boar enough, fighting it with his tiny dagger, no less, to allow Raugst to slay later. To wet his throat for the tale, Giorn drank one glass of wine after another. By the time he finished, Giorn’s head swam and the black-stemmed candles seemed like fireflies dancing about the heaving, shimmering hall. A hammer pounded his temples, and he welcomed it, as it pushed the grief aside.
Strangely, even though the dining hall swam, Raugst on his chair remained still and tall, dark and wild, and his eyes blazed with something Giorn could not place.
And, occasionally, though Giorn couldn’t be sure, he thought he saw Fria even in her grief steal sidelong glances at the woodsman.
For a time, Raugst did not seem to notice these glances, if glances they were, but at last he turned and stared her full in the eyes for several long moments. Apparently caught, for this time she had been undeniably looking at him, Fria turned her face away and did not look up again until the dinner was over.
Grateful, Giorn bid his family good night and staggered from the room. He wanted to climb his tower, find his bed and sink into a dreamless sleep, but he had one thing to do first.
He quit the castle through the rear and shivered suddenly, shocked by the cold night breeze. Blinking, he marched over to the stables, where the priestess waited beside her white horse. It was better here, out of the wind, and she smelled of rose and honeysuckle. Giorn approached her, feeling, as her fingers press into his hand, how warm she was, almost hot.“I came,” she said.
He glanced cautiously around, seeing no one, not even the stable hands. The place smelled of hay and horse dung, and the beasts themselves were stamping and snorting in their stalls. Still, there was no place he’d rather be.
“We’re alone,” Niara assured him.
“Your women can have Rian tomorrow,” he said. “Let him stay with his family for one more night.”
“Yes. Of course.” She moved in closer to him. Now their bodies were almost touching. “I’m so sorry.”
He squeezed her hand tighter. With her he felt no pain. He breathed deep. “It’s been too long.” He placed a hand on the small of her back, felt her gasp.
“Yes.” She tilted her face up, her lips parting.
He bent down . . .
A noise.
Giorn whirled. A stable-boy was darting in from the cold, huddling his shoulders and rubbing his palms over a lantern hanging from the wall. He must have come to check on the horses. He hadn’t seemed to notice Giorn and Niara.
Giorn stepped back. Niara looked away. Her fingers slipped from his.
“I’ll send some sisters around tomorrow,” she said.
“Yes.” His voice was choked.
With fluid grace, she swung astride her mare. Then, looming over him like the moon, she smiled, and her smile was like the sun. It ignited something inside him, something that roared and blazed. Something dangerous.
She spurred her mount and darted out into the night, the wind whipping her white robe, and then the darkness swallowed her.
He watched the spot where she’d vanished, and that roaring thing in him begin to ebb. It was a perilous fire she had ignited in him. A high priestess of Illiana could not engage in pleasures of the flesh, not in pious Felgrad, and the man that so tainted her would be slain, and not slowly. Nobility was no shield.
Giorn checked on the stable boy, spreading hay for Giorn’s stallion.
“’night, m’lord,” said the boy, glancing at him. Giorn studied that glance tensely. It seemed idle enough.
“Good night,” he returned.
He turned about and left the warmth of the stables for the cold outside. The castle reared up black and forbidding before him, and he imagined Raugst, the wi
ld man, staring out at him through a window, and he thought of Fria, grief-racked but with eyes wide and adoring, and suddenly Giorn shivered again, but this time not with the cold.
A rider lit out from Thiersgald that night and traveled swiftly south, over the Eresine Bridge, through Feslan, finally leaving Felgrad altogether and coming after many days upon the endless peaks of the Aragst Mountains. There the rider brought his message to Lord Vrulug in the wolf-lord’s great fortress of Wegredon.
Vrulug took several slaves and journeyed through secret passageways, coming deep into the mountain, where the walls dripped with moisture and thick black columns held up lofty ceilings. Here was Vrulug’s private temple to the Great One, Gilgaroth, Lord of the South.
Vrulug forced the slaves onto the high black slab that served as Gilgaroth’s altar and slew them, one by one. They could not resist, such was his power, and he watched as their souls like wisps of smoke left their bodies and were drawn up into the mouth of the huge wolf-like statue that loomed over the altar. The massive stone wolf head swallowed the shades, one by one, and fire suddenly blazed from its eyes, and true smoke curled up from between its fangs.
The fiery eyes fixed on Vrulug, and the wolf-lord swallowed, bowing.
“It has begun, my Lord.”
END OF EXCERPT
You can find the rest of Part One of The War of the Moonstone here . . .
. . . in the US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GZX6OLU
. . . in the UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00GZX6OLU
You can find the concluding volume, Part Two, here . . .
. . . in the US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IIXU54C
. . . in the UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IIXU54C