by Robert Ryan
He did not wait where he was, but sprang forward. If he were to have a chance against Khamdar he must not fight him on the elùgroth’s own terms, elùgai against lòhrengai. He must bring his sword to bear, use his skill as a warrior. It was a small advantage, and it could not compensate for the disadvantage of fighting someone far more powerful, but it was all he had.
Khamdar struck again. The hail that lay on the ground between them seethed and rose into the air. It coalesced, and then like an arrow shot at Brand.
Brand had no answer to that. Not with lòhrengai, but he did not need to. He dived and rolled, coming up again many yards from where he had stood. Still, he felt the whoosh of air by his body as the ice-arrow sped past him. And then he heard screams from the elug camp behind as the sorcerous attack killed unintended victims.
But Khamdar did not care. His cloak billowed about him as he moved in closer himself, driving toward Brand even as Brand came toward him. That was off-putting, for it showed that the sorcerer feared neither staff nor blade.
From the left, Brand saw lights flicker. Kareste was in a battle of her own, but he dared not take his eyes of his enemy. That was death.
A ring of crimson fire sprang up around him. It began to swirl, but even as it did so Brand reached out with his thought. He joined his power to that of the elùgroth’s. The fire intensified, and the whirling increased. The air about Brand shimmered with heat, but the whirlwind of fire lifted up from the earth and soared away into the roiling sky.
Rain dripped down Brand’s face. His body was covered in sweat. He felt chilled to the bone, for this was a life and death struggle. But he took heart.
Somewhere behind him now the Halathrin battled the Lethrin, and that fight continued. So too did Kareste’s struggle. Light and fire sizzled from her direction, and he saw the crumpled forms of several elùgroths.
Brand and Khamdar closed. His Halathrin blade gleamed with lòhrengai. He cut and thrust, but Khamdar spun to the side, and like a whip his wych-wood staff came down. It struck brand on the face, and he reeled back.
Pain shot through him. Anger rose. In a fury he leaped forward. Aranloth’s staff was forgotten. He attacked with his blade, and he drove in, swinging, sweeping and stabbing in a mad rush. But for all the speed of his attack, it was not without skill. Every move was calculated. Every technique honed by years of practice and fighting experience.
But he did not break through the elùgroth’s defenses. The sorcerer was like a shadow, and no matter how fast Brand was, he could not get ahead of him. Yet still, Khamdar had an opportunity to attack himself. He dodged and leaped, his every thought bent on staying alive.
But, as Brand knew he must, he began to tire. And that was the moment that the sorcerer had waited for.
Khamdar struck with great speed. He had learned his lesson previously and did not speak or taunt. He raised his staff in his right hand, but it was from his left, held low, that fire spurted.
Like jagged lightning it hissed, sizzling and steaming through the air. Brand ducked, but not quick enough. A vicious blow caught him on the shoulder and sent him staggering back. His cloak burned, and smoke spiraled upward.
Some instinct long dormant within him rose to the surface. Before he could even think about it his mind reached out and pushed the fire away, but Khamdar was not done.
The sorcerer now sent flame from his staff as well, and Brand spun further back. He fell to the ground, and then rose again. A nimbus of silver light shone from within him, protecting him against the attack. Yet he was tired in both body and mind.
His protection faltered. He swayed on his feet, and the attack against him intensified. Suddenly, a figure was leaping from the side of his vision. He thought it was Harly, but it was not. It was the Halathrin with the scar who had warned him away from her.
The warrior sped across the muddied earth. Khamdar saw him, and hesitated. Then, he pointed the staff at him and sprayed him with fire. The warrior dove to the ground, but he was hit. He came up again, now between Brand and the sorcerer. He raced in, covered in flames, burning as he ran. Khamdar leaped back and now attacked with both streams of flame.
The warrior screamed. He fell to the ground, but even as he did so he hurled a small dagger.
Khamdar was swift yet again. The dagger burst into flame and shot off to the side to land in the mud, where it smoked and hissed.
The Halathrin warrior did not live to see his attack fail. But Brand was still alive, kept that way by one he had thought was not his friend.
Brand used the brief moment of respite wisely. He reached out with his thought, conscious this time of what he was doing, and drew the rain about him as a protective shield.
Khamdar drew himself up. Slowly he walked toward Brand, and fire spurted from hand and staff. The new attack knocked Brand backward again, but somehow, he kept his footing.
Brand struggled to move forward to meet his enemy, but Khamdar laughed.
“You are outmatched, fool.”
Brand made no answer, and he took another step forward.
Khamdar shook his head. “You are dead, but you know it not. Watch then! Learn what true power is, for I am greater than you, and my skill, honed long ages before you first drew breath, is beyond the reach of your thought.”
The sorcerer drew himself up. Tall he stood, and terrible. Blackness was about him, and it was not the gloom of the storm that raged all around them. It was a blackness of spirit. Brand felt as though he looked over the edge into a bottomless pit. And thither, into the great dark, he knew he must fall.
“Burn,” Khamdar said. “I foretold that you would perish in flame and anguish, and thus it comes to pass. Burn!”
And Brand felt the full force of his enemy’s will. It was a crushing power, greater than his own, steeped in malice that itself struck him as a blow over and beyond the sorcery.
The protection that Brand had drawn about himself was stripped away. Water sprayed up and outward. He stood there, so tired it was all he could do to stay on his feet. Some last instinct flickered to life and a silver-white nimbus surrounded him. He knew that he could not last long, that this protection would also be taken from him.
“Burn!” the elùgroth screamed.
Scarlet flame swept through the air. It sent Brand spinning. Somehow, he again stayed on his feet. Somehow, the nimbus survived, but it flickered fitfully, nearly gone as was Brand’s will to live. There was only so much a person could endure, and he knew he had gone past his limits.
“Burn!” Khamdar said again. His voice was quieter this time, but the will behind it even stronger. The elùgroth waxed in power as he saw his enemy succumb.
Brand felt the nimbus of power about him die. With a final flicker it went out, but then, beyond his comprehension, Kareste was before him, protecting him. Somehow she had survived, abandoned or won her own battle, and she was come to his aid.
But that hope was short lived. She was as exhausted as he. With a negligent flick of his wych-wood staff Khamdar sent a stream of flame at her that knocked her down to the muddied earth. But he did not follow up on that attack. He looked again at Brand.
“I will kill her when I am done with you.”
Slowly, the elùgroth walked toward him. As though from a great distance Brand heard fighting behind him. The Halathrin still engaged the lethrin. There could be no help from them.
Brand was outmatched, outfought, and he knew it. Too young was he in his power, too unskilled. He had no choice but to wait for death, because the power to fight was no longer his.
By some immense force of will he stayed on his feet, unwilling to die on the ground, a beaten and defeated thing. Khamdar was not right: he was dead but he did know it.
And yet, one last gamble came to his mind. He had not the power to contend with one of the great elùgroths, yet had he not survived thus far by deflecting his enemy’s attacks, rather than opposing them force to force? Might not he have one last hope? His instincts had not yet surrendered, and nor wo
uld he.
He drew forth from an inner pocket the diamond Gilhain had given him. At the same moment, Khamdar spoke again, and his voice was a command.
“Burn!”
The single word, louder than thunder, cracked the air.
Khamdar levelled his staff. Wicked flame ran along its length, and Brand saw the light of that same sorcerous flame in his enemy’s eyes.
The flame leaped. Intense, murderous, bent on his destruction.
Brand welcomed it. He opened his mind, drew it in with his thought. He became one with its roiling fury, but he did not fight it. He did not resist it. He felt its heat, and relished it. He felt its hunger, and knew insatiable desire. He felt its rage, and knew madness. It enveloped him, became his body, and a pillar of wicked flame rose as a towering inferno about him.
And then two other elùgroths staggered toward Khamdar and joined their power to that of their master. The flame intensified. Dimly, Brand heard the roar of flames, the lustful cries of elugs and a single heartbroken scream from Kareste.
All the while he drew in the force that pummeled him, drew it in and guided it into the hard diamond. On it went, relentlessly. The elùgroths showed no mercy. They burned, fueling their elùgai with hatred, spending themselves utterly in their lust for destruction.
But when their strength faltered, when their power one by one drew to an end, Brand was still there. And in his hand the diamond shimmered with trapped power. It was no longer hard in his grip, but soft like clay. He could shape it with his fingers, and he sensed that what had gone into it must come out. It was caught there like a beast in a cage, but there was no substance on earth that could long hold such power trapped.
The last remnant of flame about his body flickered and died. He stood before the elùgroths, unharmed and implacable. His will to live was greater in the end than their will to kill.
Brand stepped toward them. Somewhere behind him lay his sword and staff on the scorched earth. High he held the diamond, and the elùgroths, even Khamdar, were shocked and fearful. They shrank from him.
He heard Kareste gasp in shock, but he did not look at her. His mind was fixed on his enemies, on the enemies of all mankind.
“Thus I cast your curse back into your teeth, Khamdar. Burn. Burn and perish, for there is no place for such as you in the world. Burn and pass from Alithoras, and as you die, think of the many that you killed. Think of them, and feel their vengeance.”
Brand released the sorcery caught in the diamond. It leaped out, and like chain-lightning sprang from elùgroth to elùgroth. But the force did not spurt out slowly as it had been gathered in. The release was sudden, and the swift outlet of such power cracked the air more loudly than the thunder of any storm.
The earth trembled. The Cardurleth seemed to sway, and the elùgroths screamed.
Up into the heavens the wailing rose. The lesser elùgroths fell to the ground. Khamdar stayed upright, and he staggered toward Brand, one hand reaching out in supplication or attack. But then he too stumbled and fell.
Brand did not relent. The last of the force stored in the diamond shot outward. The clothes of the elùgroths burned, and their flesh with it. The muscles of their limbs withered away in smoke. Fat flared and dripped like sputtering candles. Their eyes sizzled and smoked leaving blackened holes, and their faces shriveled, revealing the white bone beneath.
The elùgroths died. And their wych-wood staffs turned to a fine ash. All about them the hail still fell, yet where the elùgroths burned the heat was so great that the ice melted. Water ran with blood, and burning streaks of fat hissed and bubbled.
Brand stood there. There had been shock and despair on Khamdar’s face before it melted away. And though Brand had seen men die before, had killed many himself, yet still what he had seen would haunt his dreams as long as he lived. But he did not feel sorry for the elùgroths. Justice could be as cruel as any crime, but that did not make it wrong.
The elug host moaned. Brand looked around. He did not know when it had happened, but he had fallen to his knees. Nearby were dead Halathrin, and dead Lethrin also. But still some of the immortals were left alive. Harly was one of them, and she held his gaze a moment. Her eyes were wide and there were emotions in them that surpassed his comprehension. Too much had happened, and he was too weak to stand, let alone think.
But hammering at his vision was something else that finally seeped through to his consciousness. The elug host was fleeing. In a mad rush they ran, abandoning the siege. Their leaders had died in fire and anguish, and the storm raged at them like a living thing. Bereft of the malicious will that had infused them, fear drove them instead.
Brand looked to Cardoroth. From the city came an army. Real, or a phantom of his exhaustion, he did not know, but he could not keep his eyes on it. He fell to the ground and rolled onto his side. From his hand ash scattered, all that was left of the precious diamond.
Dimly, he saw Kareste and Harly run toward him. They reached him and held his hands. He did not at first understand the worried looks on their faces, and then he felt the pain in his chest. He looked down, and saw the hilt of a dagger sticking out from his flesh. An elùgroth dagger, marked on blade and hilt with the drùgluck sign.
Khamdar had killed him, and he had not even seen or felt the dagger thrown by his enemy. But life was sweet. Kareste and Harly were alive. Cardoroth still stood.
He felt the hands of the two girls grip tight his own as oblivion claimed him. Just as it did, though all was dim and shadowy about him, he felt other hands upon him, gentle, firm, skilled. And then there was only darkness.
28. Filled with Power
Not for the first time, Gilhain marveled at the men who defended Cardoroth. They fought against all odds, and without any real hope.
The enemy swarmed the walls. They came without stint, hatred in their battle-cries and madness in their eyes. That madness was born of the elùgroths, of that the king was sure, but however it came to be, it was only its presence that mattered. For the elugs fought with a fury that he had never seen before.
The elugs did not give up. Death swept them aside by the hundreds, but they no longer feared it. They fought as creatures possessed, and when one fell another took its place. So it went, and it seemed without end.
Blood ran over the stone floor of the rampart. Bodies lay there, dead and maimed. Others were maimed but not dead. The living fought for their lives, trampling all that lay beneath.
In contrast to the fury of the enemy, the defenders fought with grim quietude. There was, almost, a sense of peace among them. Perhaps it was really so, for Gilhain still had a lingering sense of tranquility from Aranloth’s white light. But be that as it may, with or without Aranloth, the men fought to save and preserve while the elugs fought to destroy. That was in some ways a small difference, and in others enormous. It was, Gilhain knew, a bigger difference than any of the other things that separated them. The men did what they must do, live or die, and hatred did not drive them.
Afar in the city all was silent. The people had gathered in the streets. They watched, but did not talk. The Durlin stood around the king, drawing closer to him for the final confrontation that must come soon, for this could not continue. They guarded him until the end.
Aurellin was there, as she always was. The storm broke, and wind and hail lashed the battlement. It was hard to see, yet still Gilhain sensed that the very air seemed to shiver, to draw back and away from the violence of the storm.
The air shimmered, yet something appeared that was not air or rain or hail. It had the form of a man, though many times larger.
And it was no man, but a devil raised by the elùgroths. Black wings sprouted from its muscular back. Horns, twisted and curved, grew from its massive skull, towering above its head like a crown of evil.
With a below as loud as thunder it stepped forth, and the Cardurleth trembled at the weight of its tread. The soldiers scattered. The creature paid them no heed, but came for Gilhain, its eyes burning with the light o
f hatred.
The Durlin stood before it. But before them stood Aranloth. And he was not as he usually appeared, an old man of uncertain humor and old regrets. He revealed now his full power, showed the might that was in him. For dark as the devil was, wrapped in shadow and evil, the lòhren blazed with an inner light. He would contend with this thing, and even as its shadow fell over him, the devil paused.
Aranloth had no weapon, but the massive beast, a thing of rippling shadow and muscle, drew forth a mighty sword that smoked and flickered with wicked light. The blade was bent, tooth edged and longer than the span of a tall man.
Aranloth cocked his head, but made no move to flee or to attack.
“Stay!” the lòhren commanded. Even as he spoke he held up his hand, palm out.
The beast hesitated, and the shadow and wicked light ebbed and flared uncertainly along the blade of its sword.
Aranloth spoke again, but it seemed that he did not address the devil, but rather those elùgroths who had summoned or made it.
“The moment is upon you,” he said. “Choose now, and choose swiftly, if it is not already too late. Pull back, Khamdar. Take your host and go.”
Khamdar answered through the beast; through twisted mouth and cruel fang his voice rang out.
“Those are empty words, old man. Your hope is dead. I will kill you, and the glory will be mine. The honor and the praise of he that I serve will raise me unto godhood. Verily, I would not retreat now though the spirits of all those that I have vanquished joined together to kill me. Let them come, for they are dead and I am on the brink of ultimate power!”
“So be it,” Aranloth said softly.
The lòhren bowed his head. The beast took a step forward. Aranloth did not move.
Hail beat around the two figures. Lightning flickered and hissed nearby. A sulphurous smell filled the air.
The devil lifted high its sword. Fire darted in its eyes and shadows writhed about it. Its great arm bulged with muscles, and it gripped the black hilt with a taloned hand.