Gareth walked over to the magus—a man not many years older than himself. Placing his hand upon the man’s pulse, Gareth felt it weak and faltering. He dragged the man to the side, away from the circle, and summoned one of the healers recruited from Dunkarga. The healer looked at the young man, looked at the sorcerers, and said coldly that she doubted she could do much for him, but she would try. Gareth was not surprised to hear later that the young man was dead.
Hour after hour passed. Gareth could see no sign that the spell was working, and fear seized him. Dagnarus would be furious. He had staked everything upon this plan succeeding. Gareth was nearing the point of panic when finally he saw what he had been waiting to see.
He cautioned himself against hope, tamped down the sudden elation. Telling himself his eyes were tired and playing tricks, he looked away and looked back. The result was the same. The sorcerers walking the circle could now see the magic beginning to work, as well. Their voices strengthened. Their bodies, slumping with fatigue, straightened. The pace of their walking increased. Round and round they traversed the circle and within that circle the darkness of the Void—darker far than the darkest part of the darkest night—began to form.
Once Gareth had been able to see by the lambent light of stars and moon the full circle of sorcerers. Now he could see only those on the side nearest him. The others entered darkness as they circled around, emerged again on the other side. It was as though a thick pillar of jet had formed in their midst.
The spell was working.
It was now an hour before dawn. The sky to the east turned pale blue, though beneath the trees all was black. The river flowed swift and dark. There was no doubt in Gareth’s mind. The sorcerers encircled a portion of the Void, a dark hole cut into the dawn.
Heavy, crashing footfalls broke the silence. Gareth looked over his shoulder to see Dagnarus, his hair tousled, clad only in his shirt and breeches, stockings and boots, stomping through the forest. He was in a very bad temper, his face grim and glowering. Valura walked behind him, her own footfalls unheard on the rotting leaves.
Thrilled with his achievement, Gareth was in far too good a mood himself to let his prince’s ill humor bother him. Dagnarus would cheer up shortly. When he saw the miracle they were about to perform, he would cheer up immensely.
“Good morning, Your Highness,” said Gareth. “Did you sleep well?”
“No, I did not, damn your eyes!” Dagnarus retorted. “And never a drop to drink this morning, either. Silwyth, that clown, has allowed bears to run off with the wine! I shall have him hanged. What is this you are doing—some child’s game?”
He glowered at the circling wizards.
“Indeed, no, Your Highness,” said Gareth. “This is the spell. It has worked. Your wizards have summoned the Void and brought it here for you to command.”
“By the gods!” Dagnarus stared, awed, his thirst and the pain assuaged, both forgotten. “You have done it!”
“Say rather, they have done it, Your Highness,” Gareth said with quiet pride in his people. “I took no part, per your orders.”
“What happens now?” Dagnarus demanded.
“Now it is your turn, Your Highness. Now we need your magic, the power that the Void has granted you.”
“You shall have it and welcome!” Dagnarus’s eyes gleamed and this time it was not the wine that illuminated them. “Instruct me. Tell me what to do. Will it be dangerous?” he asked, offhand, more for information than out of fear.
“Not to you, Your Highness,” Gareth said, his voice low. “Invoke the power. Become the Lord of the Void.”
Dagnarus placed his hand upon the pendant he wore on his breast. The black armor erupted from his skin. Like drops of oil, the armor flowed glistening over his limbs. The black bestial helm covered his head, mailed gloves sheathed his hands.
The chanting of the sorcerers increased in pitch and in intensity. Another fell from the circle; no one paid her any attention. They kicked her limp and bloody body to one side that it might not impede their spell-casting.
“Your Highness, the Void is yours to command!” Gareth shouted above the chanting voices.
Dagnarus walked toward the wheeling circle of sorcerers. As he drew near, their leader gave a great shout and brought them all to a halt with a loud clapping of his hands. They stood quite still, pale and trembling with fatigue and the concentration required to hold the spell in place.
Dagnarus reached past them, reached beyond them, thrust his hand into the darkness. He shuddered and cried out in pain, as if he had plunged his hand into icy water, except that this darkness was far colder than any ice, colder than the final cold that grips the living and can never be warmed. Valura made a sound, a gasp, a hiss of alarm, and took a step toward him.
Not thinking what he was doing, only concerned that she might disrupt the spell, Gareth reached out and grabbed hold of the Vrykyl’s black armor. A jolt like lightning numbed his arm to the shoulder. She rounded on him, fury in her contorted features, if there was none in the cold, dead eyes.
“Do not interfere!” Gareth told her, holding on to her, though his arm tingled painfully. “If you thwart him in this, he will denounce you, cast you from his side. He’s only looking for an excuse. He already loathes you, as you well know.”
Gareth could bear the pain no longer. Releasing his grip, he began to massage his aching arm. Valura looked back to Dagnarus, but she made no move now to stop him. Her head lowered. Had Gareth believed it possible, he could have sworn she wept. She had died for love of Dagnarus, died to protect him. She had doomed herself to the life of the damned to be with him, and she, too, had often seen the look of revulsion on his face when she returned to him after a kill, with blood on her lips and her hands.
She could not give him up. She could not leave him, as he could not give her up. The Dagger of the Vrykyl bound them together, made each a party to the other’s thoughts and perhaps, with Dagnarus, there lingered some faint and desolate hope that one day he would look into those dead eyes, which now held nothing but darkness, and once more see himself.
Gareth’s heart was wrung with pity for her, even as he recoiled from her. He could not take time to comfort her, had there been any comfort he could offer. They had to cast the spell now, or there would be no casting. The prince’s arm and hand were no longer visible. His limb had been swallowed by the darkness. The Void was his.
“Command it, Your Highness!” Gareth urged. “Use the magic as you will! Quickly!”
Dagnarus raised his arm, and the pillar of opaque darkness rose with it.
“The river!” he shouted in a voice terrible to hear, a voice that brought the sleeping soldiers to their feet, their hands grappling for weapons, thinking they were under attack. “I command you to swallow the river!”
The darkness vanished. The sorcerers were left staring at each other until their strength gave way and they sank to the ground, panting and gasping, or simply collapsed. Some lay quite still. Dagnarus stood on the shore, watching, with Gareth at his side. Valura kept to the shadows behind him, avoiding the first rays of the morning light that gilded the ripples of the swift-flowing river.
Nothing happened, and again fear and doubt shriveled Gareth’s stomach, though he knew with cold logic that the spell had worked perfectly and that they had only to wait. Still, the relief he felt when he saw the ripples on the river start to alter, to swirl around a central point in the middle of the swift-flowing water was indescribable. He leaned back against the bole of a tree and watched his handiwork with pride.
As Dagnarus had commanded, the Void swallowed the River Hammerclaw, as if a plug had been yanked from the bunghole at the bottom of a cask of wine. The river water began to swirl downward, falling faster and faster into an enormous maw of blackness that grew wider and wider until it stretched from bank to bank. The river water swirled into the vortex, slid over the lip of the enormous hole, a maelstrom eerie in its silence. All sound of the water’s cascade was absorbed by the b
lackness. The sun rose, but its light could not penetrate the darkness. No rainbows danced across this dread waterfall.
Beyond the Void, the riverbed was laid bare as the water dried up, its rock-strewn floor glistened in the morning light. Fish flopped about on the wet rocks, gasping and dying. The riverbed would be slippery and treacherous to walk. Here and there stood pools of water and large patches of oozing, clinging mud. But the army did not have far to travel. In the light, Gareth could see the walls of the castle dead ahead, walls where no guard stood, for they trusted the river to guard their backs. Walls easily breached by Dagnarus’s army, who would enter by way of the aqueducts that carried fresh water from the river into the castle.
Vinnengael, kept alive by her waterfalls, would die by them.
“You must hurry, Your Highness,” Gareth cried. “The spell will last only from sun’s rising to sun’s setting! Then the water will return!”
“That is all the time we need,” Dagnarus said. “Shakur launched his assault on the north wall with the dawn. While my brother’s forces grapple with the enemy before them, we will slip in behind and seize them by the throat.”
He gave a great shout. The trumpets sounded, drums beat. The soldiers formed into the order of battle and, with a cheer for Dagnarus, his troops surged down into the riverbed and marched on Vinnengael.
The Battle of Vinnengael
In the small cell that was the Portal of the Gods, Helmos fought his own lonely battle, fought to gain the attention of the gods, fought to make them understand his need for help in order to save his city and its people. No soldier on the wall, battling fiercely with sword and knife to drive back the enemy, who time and again managed to gain the battlements, fought harder than his King. His foes were not beating on him with cold steel or hacking at him with battle-axes. He could have wished they were. His foes were more insidious, attacking him from within, destroying hope and confidence and thus they were more punishing by far.
The gods had turned from him, ignored him, refused to answer him. He blamed himself. His faith was not perfect, as had been his father’s. Helmos’s nature was a more questioning nature. He had questioned the gods’ ways more than once, questioned where his father had accepted. Even now, Helmos knew rebellion and resentment in his heart, when he should have known nothing but submission and humility.
Questioning is not wrong, he thought. The gods’ ways are not always clear to man. How are we to understand unless we ask right out: Why?
Why kill my mother in her youth? Why did you take her from us when we most needed her? Why create Dominion Lords and put into the world their dark opposites? Why not force the other races to obey their own gods-sworn oaths? Why tempt a willful child to fall to evil? Why permit that child to grow to manhood and grant him the power to become a thing of evil? Why bring so many unwanted children into the world and deny my wife and me a child of our own? Why harden the hearts of our allies so that they do not come to our aid? Why bring death and misery to a city of beauty and light? Why do you seem to abandon us at our time of greatest need?
His heart repeated the questions as his lips prayed for help. He prayed as sincerely as he could, but his prayers were whispers, never loud enough to be heard, apparently, for he did not believe anyone was listening to them. The questions of his heart, wrung from him, wet with his heart’s blood, clanged and clambered like enormous iron bells, ringing throughout the heavens.
He prayed to the gods, not kneeling, but standing before them, shouting, pleading to be heard. He prayed until his throat was raw and his voice hoarse and he was parched with thirst, but he had vowed that he would endure the same hardships as his troops. No water should ease him, no food nourish him until the battle was ended and his city saved.
At length, weary with a weariness that was more of the heart and spirit than it was of the body, Helmos sat down upon the bed, the same bed where his father had often rested.
Exhausted, he slept, though he did not mean to.
He was a little child again, barely able to walk, his hand clutching the skirts of a gown in front of him. He could not see, from his low vantage point, who wore the gown, but he knew it was an adult of enormous size and proportion. He toddled as fast as he was able, hanging on to the skirt to keep from falling, and he could hear his own small voice prattling, “Why? Why? Why? I want, I want, I want. Why? Why? Why? I want, I want, I want. Why? Why? Why?”
A gentle voice sounded above him, far above him. “You will see when your eyes close. You will hear when you are deaf. You will understand when you are past understanding. Take hope from this: the four can never be one but, in time, the one may be four.”
They held out to him a bright and shiny bauble. He released the hem of the gown to seize it…
Helmos clutched the Sovereign Stone in his hand.
“I am on my own. You speak in riddles. You do not care. You have probably never cared. If I had been blessed with children, I would have taken them into my arms and answered their questions, every one. I would have cherished them and loved them if I had been father to a thousand!”
“You are loved,” said the gentle voice, “and our children number as the stars.”
Tears crept from his clenched shut eyes, bitter tears that stung his throat and choked him with their bile. He became aware, eventually, of a tapping at the door, a tapping that had been going on for some time, for he seemed to have heard it throughout his dream.
He woke suddenly, alarmed.
The need must be dire for someone to disturb him in the Portal of the Gods. He rose stiffly to his feet and walked to the small door, unlatched it, opened it.
The Most Revered High Magus stood without, the only one who dared to interrupt the King at his prayers. One look at the man’s pallid and haggard face and Helmos knew that his prayers would go unanswered.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty—”
“Yes, what is it, High Magus?” Helmos asked, calm with despair.
“The river…the river has vanished!” The man’s white hair seemed to stand on end with horror.
“Vanished?” Helmos stared. “Make sense! What do you mean ‘vanished’?”
“Just that!” Reinholt said, licking dry lips. “Some dread magic, undoubtedly the magic of the Void, has sucked the river dry. Drained it! Water no longer flows into the city. Fires are breaking out all over. Those siege towers at which we laughed…” He wrung his hands. “No one is laughing now. The pumps spew forth a demonic substance—black fire. It rains down on us like jelly and bursts into flame upon impact! People turn to living torches, houses are burning all over the city, and now we have no water with which to douse them.”
Helmos could not comprehend. His mind stumbled along, clutching at the words of the High Magus, asking, “Why? Why? Why?”
“And there is worse, Your Majesty. A river of darkness flows in place of the River Hammerclaw. A vast army marches down the empty riverbed, an army led by your brother, Prince Dagnarus. There is nothing to stop him from entering Vinnengael.”
Reinholt drew in a deep breath, sought to calm himself. “Your Majesty. You must take the Sovereign Stone and flee the city, while there is yet time. No matter if Vinnengael falls, it will never truly fall so long as the Sovereign Stone escapes.”
“I will not leave.”
“Your Majesty—”
“The Sovereign Stone is our only chance for salvation. If not ours, then those who come after. It must remain in the Portal of the Gods.” Helmos closed his hand over the stone with such force that the sharp edges pierced his flesh. He felt the sting, felt the blood, warm and sticky, and was careful not to open his hand, not to let the High Magus see. Then Helmos thought of his wife, of Anna trapped in the palace, of Dagnarus’s troops invading the palace…
“The Queen!” he said, his heart misgiving him. “I must go to her.”
“Rest easy, Your Majesty,” said the High Magus. “I have already dispatched war magi to protect her. If I may say so, she is safer away from you t
han she would be in your presence. Dagnarus’s quarrel is with you, Helmos. Once again, I urge you to take the Sovereign Stone and flee to safety. Not only for yourself, but for the sake of us all!”
“And be branded a coward.” Helmos was angry. “The King who ran from his kingdom at the first sign of trouble! My people would lose all respect for me. Our allies would rejoice in our weakness and move in to snap up what pieces are left over when my brother has finished carving us. If I could ever return and claim my throne, how could I expect the meanest beggar in the street to show me respect? No, High Magus,” he concluded with decision. “What you ask is impossible.”
The High Magus sighed deeply. “I understand, Your Majesty. And what you say is true. It is a dreadful dilemma and one that you alone can resolve. We will support you in your decision, of course.”
“I will do what my father would want me to do,” Helmos said simply. “I will remain here in the Portal of the Gods, where he received the Sovereign Stone. I will remain here, and keep faith with the gods.”
“May the gods hear your prayers, Your Majesty,” the High Magus said, and, backing out of the doorway, he softly and gently shut the door behind him.
Helmos sat upon the bed. He wiped the blood from his hand upon the pillow, which was wet from his tears.
The first words Dagnarus said on entering the palace, the first command he gave was: “Find my brother. Find Helmos and bring him and the Sovereign Stone to me.”
“I will go, Your Highness,” Gareth offered. This was one order he was glad to obey. He hoped desperately to be the one to find Helmos and to help him escape, to hide him, to somehow save him from Dagnarus’s wrath.
Dagnarus cast Gareth a suspicious glance. The prince knew that Gareth held Helmos in high regard. But Dagnarus also knew that Gareth was the only one of his forces, besides Silwyth, who knew his way around the maze of palace corridors. The prince could not go himself, not yet. He was busy with the thousand responsibilities of a commander, dividing his forces, sending some to search and some to secure the palace. Already fighting could be heard in the lower hallways, where the guard had been keeping watch to prevent the enemy from coming in the front. He would have to make certain that the palace was his first, before he set out to resolve personal matters.
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