Worms' Ending: Book Eight (The Longsword Chronicles 8)

by GJ Kelly

  “May we know why you’re here, m’lord?” Dirs asked. “We have our orders as you know, and it might help us with our conscience were we to know the reason.”

  “Aye, my lord,” Cherris added, “Should the queen ask us why we yet live, while our allies are nought but scattered ashes upon the Hallencloister road.”

  Gawain nodded, and folded his arms. “There is much you need to know, and from the sound of the wizard’s hammering, we have time enough for the telling of it…”

  And so, to the accompaniment of Allazar’s assault upon the east gate of Hallencloister, Gawain introduced his companions, and told the two riders of the Toorsencreed, and of Urgenenn’s Tower beyond the Eastbinding, and the betrayal of the kindred by Viell of the Toorseneth.

  It was past noon by the time the highlights of the tale of Urgenenn’s Tower had been told, and from the expressions on the two Jurian faces before him, it was clear that the revelations about the ToorsenViell and their motives left Cherris and Dirs astonished and outraged.

  “Then the attacks upon our lands were in fact made by those who call themselves friend and ally?” Dirs gasped.

  “And the wizard Serat is one of them, my lord?” Cherris looked utterly disgusted.

  “You’ve seen the symbol which Allazar calls a tau. It’s there on the saddles, and was worn on the elves’ capes and boots. That’s the sign of the Toorseneth, is it not, Ven?”

  “It is, miThal.”

  “And the Thallanhall permits this, m’lord? How?”

  “As I explained, Dirs, most elves grow up in the forest simply accepting everything the way it is. Just as we ourselves grow up believing in our ways and customs, in our own lands.”

  “It was the wizard they were aiming at, my lord,” Cherris declared, shifting her damp cloak back over her shoulders, the circular patch of cut stitches over the left breast of her tunic clearly visible where the emblem of the Kindred Army had carefully been removed.

  “True,” Gawain admitted, “With him and his stick out of the way, I’d be an easier catch to land. But I’m not the main object of their concern. Elayeen is. Me they would doubtless use in the hope of drawing my queen out of Last Ridings.”

  “They did not seem too bothered about taking you alive, m’lord,” Dirs muttered, staring at the wizard labouring at the main gate.

  “Also true. They will probably know by now of our success against their eastern stronghold, and won’t want word of that spreading too far afield. Elayeen is their target, and my value clearly doesn’t change much be I alive or dead if or when I fall into their hands.”

  “And the Hallencloister, my lord? There’s been no one in or out of there since the army began assembling at Ferdan. Why won’t they answer?”

  Gawain shrugged. “According to Allazar, the gates have been sealed from the outside. We have no idea why. If there’s anyone in there, they’re either completely deaf, or sitting with their fingers in their ears singing ‘la la la, I can’t hear you.’”

  They watched while the distant robed figure, cloak shed from the heat of his efforts, paused to take a long drink from a water skin.

  “Well,” Gawain announced. “Now you both know the extent of the Toorseneth’s betrayal, and the depth of the peril in which Hellin in her grief has placed all Juria. We’ve heard reports of elves fortifying Doosen, Bardin and Ferdan, and a stronger contingent in Vardon?”

  “Aye, my lord, and as you saw here, elves are now more commonly accompanying our mid- and long-range riders.”

  “And the ninety-five, Cherris? What of the Kindred Rangers who serve in Juria?”

  “They’re moving further and further afield, my lord. It is as though they are being pushed further and further out and away from Castletown.”

  “Aye it’s true,” Dirs grimaced. “I heard it said, though it’s only a rumour, that those rangers still in our land are moving further north and south. They’ll always find a welcome by the hearth in homes of the good folk of Juria, m’lord, but there’s no comfort for ‘em in Castletown or Vardon, and I doubt they’d want to set foot in the likes of Bardin either. Not now.”

  “And still you have your orders, Riders of the Grey,” Gawain sighed.

  “Aye, we do, m’lord,” Dirs nodded, and stared down at his boots. “I was hoping we’d all forgotten about that.”

  “There’s five horses yonder whose saddles will remain empty to remind you, not that you’d need such a reminder. But there’s no need for a decision here and now. Wait until we’ve breached the Hallencloister. It may be that once I set foot inside that place, you’ll have no need to ponder your dilemma. For all we know there’s a hundred whitebeards, sticks at the ready, waiting to burn my head off the moment I poke it through that door.”

  oOo

  11. Where Light and Fire Were Forged

  Cherris and Dirs were standing alone some way off, deep in discussion and doubtless attempting to find an honourable resolution to the crisis facing them, when the booming from the east gate suddenly diminished, and became more the sound of crackling lightning than pealing thunder.

  Gawain, Ognorm and Venderrian turned to gaze in wonder at the wizard’s efforts, seeing again the great mesh of jagged fire flickering in and out of existence each time the White Staff struck at the portal. It seemed to renew Allazar’s strength, and he struck faster, again and again, and then finally the mystic seal flashed briefly, and was gone, and the sound of the Dymendin staff striking the massive oak door seemed positively puny and pitiful.

  Allazar struck it again, the dull thud suddenly depressing after the deep booming of mystic energies echoing from within. He turned, and shooed the group of three further back from where they’d been standing on the cobbles some fifteen yards behind him.

  “Better humour him,” Gawain sighed, arms folded, and they walked further back, watching while the wizard picked up a half-empty water skin from on top of his discarded cloak where it lay on the cobbles a few feet from the door, drank, and then stepped forward again.

  “What’s ‘e doing now, melord?” Ognorm whispered, bringing an immediate smile to Gawain’s face.

  “He’s posing, Oggy, that’s what he’s doing,” Gawain replied, rather loudly, making the dwarf start and earning not a flicker of a glance from the wizard.

  Allazar propped the staff against his left shoulder, spat on his hands, and rubbed them together. Cherris and Dirs arrived, and Gawain, noticing their hands were empty and their manner far from aggressive, nodded at them to join his group. Together, the five former comrades of the Kindred Army watched while the wizard strode to the portal, placed the staff here and there as if measuring, turned, and then paced out seven yards from the centre of the portal before coming to a halt on the cobbled road. Then, rather dramatically, he turned, and presented his staff.

  “Eyem D’ith!” Allazar cried, the second word long and drawn out, and charged with a mystic edge which demanded attention from all ears that heard it. “Dar me enthra!” And again, the final word was drawn out.

  They waited, suspecting the futility of so doing but still as yet unsure whether to ready weapons, just in case the portal opened to reveal an army of Blue Guards poised to attack. No answer came from within. No sounds at all, not even birdsong. Allazar’s head bowed a little, perhaps in disappointment, they couldn’t tell from where they stood. But then he straightened, braced with feet apart, and screamed:

  “Tireandanam!”

  And he loosed the great tree of lightning all of them had seen before at Far-gor, immense, dazzling streamers, arcing and sparking on the ironwork studs, bolts and braces in the mighty door. Its noise seemed to them the inevitable consequence of the great peals of thunder hammered from the now-broken seal, and they winced at the intensity of the sight and the sound of it.

  Then the lightning winked out, and silence fell. Steam and smoke rose at the portal, ironwork glowing a dull cherry red, the oak seared and charred in places, and suddenly a great creaking and cracking like the prying open of a
coffin’s lid rent the air. Puffs of dust exploded at the seams around the portal’s edge, and Allazar started, and then ran for his life towards the south as first the great portal tilted a little, and then slowly but with gathering speed, began to fall outward towards them from the walls of the Hallencloister.

  “Ooh bugger me!” Ognorm gasped, and as one they turned and sprinted away from the vast drawbridge of a door as it fell, winches and chains within the walls screaming in protest at this sudden, uncontrolled abuse.

  The sound of the door slamming to an abrupt halt on the cobbled perimeter road was a physical force which blew the five runners off their feet and sent them sprawling to lay enveloped in a billowing cloud of dust and ashes. Horses squealed in dismay and started, prancing this way and that, unsure whether to race away and leave their riders stranded where so much noise had disturbed their calm for so long. Chains rattled and gears clanked long after the concussion had rumbled out beyond the dying band of Flagellweed and east across the plains towards Nordshear on the coast.

  Finally, when all was silent, Gawain pushed himself up onto his feet, and gaped at the spectacle behind them.

  The portal was wide open, an empty courtyard visible within beyond which he could see white-stone columns forming the first of the cloisters Allazar had described, and the base of the East Tower set into the side of the quadrangle facing them. The door itself now lay flat on the road, its upper surface eight feet above the cobbles on which it rested, smoking chains lying in heaps to either side.

  “By the Teeth…” he mumbled. “By the vakin Teeth…”

  Allazar picked himself up, and being some yards to the left of the open gate, could see nothing except the fact of the immense door on the cobbles and its piles of smoking chains. He ran, this time towards the door, staff poised, coming to a halt in the centre of the gate and facing the cloisters within.

  “Eyem D’ith!” he screamed again, and raised his staff.

  Silence, but for the faint echo of his call.

  “Eyem D’ith…” he called again, his voice fading, shoulders slumping as he blinked, wide-eyed, and stood rooted to the spot atop the platform of a door which had always been open for as long as he could remember.

  Gawain cast a hurried glance around, noting the disposition of the horses and Gwyn, and then with a nod to his companions, he moved slowly forward. The five of them crossed the cobbles cautiously, quietly, eyes scanning this way and that, but a glance at Ven was telling; a shake of the ranger’s head told all of them that no lights had been revealed to his Sight.

  “Eyem D’ith,” Allazar said softly, as Gawain reached out to put his hand on the wizard’s shoulder.

  “Yes, you are, Allazar,” Gawain announced gently. “And if it rains again you’ll be a wet one. Your cloak and water skin rest now beneath the many tons of an oak door thicker than your arms held wide.”

  The wizard’s eyebrows arched a little, and then he blinked, and nodded sadly.

  “I believe Ognorm’s word, bugger, would be appropriate at this juncture,” Gawain squeezed Allazar’s shoulder. “Both for your cloak, and for this place. Ven sees nothing within.”

  The wizard nodded. “They would not have allowed the gate to fall, were they present and able to defend it. The wheels were unlocked, Gawain, the chains loose, bolts and bars drawn from within. The gate was locked from without. None now dwell here, where wizards have dwelled since before the birth of elder days.”

  “Then come, wizard, let’s see if the whitebeard bastards left a note to say where they’ve gone, and if or when they’ll be back. Who knows, we might even find you a new cloak hanging from a convenient peg.”

  Allazar nodded, and drew in a breath, straightening his shoulders and casting off his disbelief and disturbing melancholy. Gawain drew the sword, momentarily enjoying its quiet humming in his hand, and wondered how a place which had so tormented the wizard as a boy could now evoke such sorrow with its emptiness.

  For his part, he was relieved not to have come under mystic attack, and angry to have been cheated of his quarry. He’d come here for answers, which silence and empty courtyards would not provide. Around him, steel was drawn, and when he judged that all were ready, he moved forward, Allazar beside him.

  At the threshold they paused, lest an enemy be laying in wait to either side of the entrance, but of course there was nothing. Only the great stone ramp in which were set the immense hinges of the drawbridge, and down which they walked, quietly, and almost in some cases, reverently. When they’d gone a few yards in, Gawain stopped, and surveyed the scene.

  Nothing. Before them, perhaps twenty yards away, the long line of airy cloistered corridors above which on the columns rested apartments and below which lay the classrooms.

  “There was my home for many years,” Allazar pointed towards the southern end of the cloister. “The dormitories above, the classrooms below. All appearing now as it did then on the day of my arrival, though the air then was filled with sounds, and wizards about their business all around.”

  “Could they be in hiding, Serre wizard?” Cherris whispered.

  “Hiding from us?” Allazar blinked, astonished. “No. Not even had it been Morloch himself hammering upon the gate would they have hidden and granted entry unopposed.”

  “Oh thrukken kek an’ trouser-bricks melord, look yonder behind us in the alcove!”

  As one they swivelled and stared into the gloom of the gate-house alcove carved into the wall at the right of the portal. Therein lay the great winch mechanisms used to raise and lower the immense gate on its chains. Just beyond the threshold, in the shadows, lay a twisted shape, dark green and brown, of a kind which three of the six had seen before.

  “No, no-no, this cannot be…” Allazar whispered, stunned.

  Gawain gripped the sword tighter and began walking slowly towards the alcove, pointing the blade before him and waiting to feel a tingling in his forearms that might presage some dark wizardry of the Viell’s making. Nothing. And no sound, save for the slight scrape of his boots on the well-worn stone beneath them, the creak of Ven’s bow as it was half drawn, and Ognorm’s tense breathing behind.

  “Thruk,” Ognorm whispered again when they were four feet from the opening in the wall.

  “I count three,” Gawain said, surprised at the calm in his own voice.

  “Me too, melord. There’s one o’ them ‘spitsucking shadow-things in this place!”

  “This cannot be!” Allazar hissed from behind them. “Not here, not here where Aemon’s Light and Fire were forged!”

  “It’s true, Allazar,” Gawain announced. “There are three mould-bodies within the alcove. Unless the D’ith found a way to recreate the horror of Calhaneth within their own walls, a shadow-creature stalked and took the life of those men, or wizards, whatever they once were.”

  “We have at least four hours until sunset,” Allazar declared, “Though with this overcast it will be twilight earlier than that. Four hours is not enough time to explore the entirety of the Hallencloister, Longsword.”

  “Then take us to the fountain at the centre, it’s the one place a shadow-creature might have feared exposure to daylight and a wizard’s fire.”

  “And if we find nothing there, m’lord?”

  “Then, Dirs, we’ll have time to breach the Sardor’s tower, and see what message might await us there pinned to his door before he fled this place, or before mould was made of him. Allazar, tell me there is no insane and winding path here to the centre as there was at Calhaneth.”

  “The main roads are so arranged, Longsword, but there are many narrower alleys and passages through the cloisters leading directly to the next, the quicker to answer a summons in any direction.”

  “Lead the way, then, wizard, and keep your wits about you. Light the darker paths where a shadow might lurk. Stay together, all of you, and keep good watch. Ven?”

  “Nothing light or dark have I seen, miThal.”

  “Thank you. Come, Allazar, lead on. I don’t wan
t to be stuck in the middle of unfamiliar terrain and these nested cloisters when darkness falls.”

  The mention of such a dread possibility spurred the wizard instantly, and he turned, and strode purposefully towards the cloistered way northwest of the gaping gate and towards the foot of the East Tower. Their footsteps echoed, boots on white- and blue-stone paving, all attempt at caution and stealth abandoned as urgency drove them on. Allazar moved swiftly and with ease, his robes damp and flowing as he passed along familiar passageways, glancing this way and that and occasionally shining a brilliant cone of Aemon’s Light into the gloom around them.

  Through to the second immense quadrangle, pausing only briefly to glance around the broad avenue that separated it from its outer neighbour, the tower now looming high behind them. It was while striding down an alleyway through that second quadrangle that Allazar shone a light through a window, and stopped dead in his tracks, gasping in horror. The others tensed and stared all around them, and Gawain eased forward to peer into the gloom just before the wizard’s light winked out.

  It had been a commissary or dining hall, and huddled together in groups or scattered on the floor alone were dozens of mould-corpses, many of them quite small.

  “Dwarfspit…” Gawain managed, and hurried on to catch up with the wizard whose staff seemed to shine a little brighter than its normal lustrous pearl white.

  Behind him, he heard the muttered curses of his companions as they too glanced in through the window and beheld the dreadful sight within.

  On they went, across the second broad avenue towards the third quadrangle.

  “The cloisters of the D’ith Reen,” Allazar announced, almost to himself, his voice hard.

  Here the columns and pillars were all of blue-stone, pale and lustrous, highly-polished. As they continued on their way towards the centre, glimpses through windows revealed classrooms filled with broken desks, overturned benches, ripped books, strangely shaped glassware and unknown devices of metal, jars of coloured fluids and powders whose purpose defied imagination, almost all of them smashed and shattered; a strange world once peopled by robed wizards eager to learn the mysteries and lore of the craft they had been born to. Empty now, save for the ruins of the relics they had once used in the furtherance of their studies.