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

by GJ Kelly

  They could have marched on the Toorseneth while Toorsen yet lived and there in Ostinath destroyed the creed, crushed it utterly before it had time to grow roots and thrive like suckerweed on the trunk of a mighty tree. They could have allied themselves with the mystic Sisterhood of Issilene in Minyorn and put an end to Morloch’s doomsday weapon before it had a chance to flourish and corrupt all elves in the great forest. Well, almost all of them.

  But they had done nothing. Their unimpeachable source had spoken, and with the unfathomable stupidity and dogmatic obstinacy of all zealots and pious believers everywhere, accepted as immutable fact the nightmares of a dying old man and done nothing except await their fate. Of course it had come to pass. They had allowed it to, those few who’d known it was coming, the Sardors of Hallencloister.

  Now here he sat, King of ashes, while Allazar, Sardor of a scorched ruin, pretended to sleep but lay grinding his teeth and furiously holding back tears of a rage would shatter all the walls of Juria were it let slip for but a moment.

  Toorsen Grey-elf, dead for centuries, yet wreaking havoc upon the lands from beyond the grave, the strings of his ghost gently tugged this way and that from beyond the Dragon’s Teeth. Morloch, scorching earth he could not conquer, spiting himself to spite the southlands.

  Gawain should have seen it earlier, when the collapse of Urgenenn’s Tower took with it most of the cliff upon which it had stood for centuries. The writings on the black and glassy stone of the tower, the madness of a wizard of the D’ith corrupted and working hand in glove with those of Toorsen’s creed, and as Corax had inferred, leaving a last spiteful sting in the tail of his demise. Corax had been quite correct, for indeed had the D’ith wizards sent to destroy Urgenenn brought down the tower with their mystic power, they themselves would have died when the ground beneath their feet fell into the sea. And that was why they’d left it standing.

  They’d acted in good faith, of course, those who’d left the tower intact. They’d believed Urgenenn unique, a wizard corrupted and taking his own perverted path to create his own horrors and loose them upon an unsuspecting world. The D’ith had not known of Urgenenn’s alliance with the Toorseneth.

  They’d acted in good faith, too, the Sardors of old, keeping Benithet’s prophetic dreams to themselves, believing there was no hope of altering a future foreseen by their unimpeachable vaticinator. But they had been wrong, Gawain knew it with the same resolute conviction that had seen Sardors prepare for the ending of the world. They kept to themselves Benithet’s warning never to trust the Viell, and so those not privy to the Book of Sardor had trusted them, and so the Orbs of Arristanas had been made.

  Gawain should have seen it earlier. Much, much earlier. On the road to Jarn, with Eldengaze rising and a Graken-rider bearing a Jardember on the road before them, Morloch’s visage spitting bile:

  Know this, king of nothing, know this! All the horror and dread I shall unleash upon your festering world is the wages of your sins against me! Did you think I could be destroyed so easily! Did you think some feeble relic left by decrepit weaklings made dust before your reeking forebears were conceived would be enough! I am Morloch! And! I! Shall! End! You! All!

  No. The loosing of the great wave against the Teeth when the circles of Raheen were unleashed had not been enough. Morloch had planned well. Gawain should have seen it, but there were so many worms back then, all vying for his attention.

  Morloch had appeared over Tarn when the Orbquest had left Hellin’s Hall in company with Jerryn. There, hovering over Tarn Square, Morloch had spoken, and Elayeen had told Gawain what the dark lord had said. Gawain should have known. They all should have known. Morloch had given them enough clues.

  Did you think yourself safe? Where are your wizards? Where is your King of Nothing? While he feasts on Jurian sweetmeats and avails himself of many comforts, what have you, Queen of Nothing?

  You are nothing! No victory was yours! Where are your wizards? Where is your King of Ashes? Where is your prophecy! Where are your defences? I shall grind you and your bitch-queen and all your molehill mountains into dust! And I shall! Have! Vengeance!

  Where are your wizards, Morloch had asked, twice. They had thought the foul creature was referring to the lack of wizards in Tarn, or in Threlland, and perhaps in a way he was. Now of course Gawain understood. Like the Sardors of Hallencloister, he should have seen, but now, as it was for the Sardors and the Hallencloister, it was too late.

  oOo

  17. Three Lights

  “Those are the vineyards,” Gawain nodded towards the distant plantations from the cover of a small stand of trees. “We’re two days southwest of the walls of Castletown.”

  “It is the second evening of November,” Allazar declared. “What grapes there may have been this year will have been harvested, there will be little activity there now and none to concern us.”

  “I see no lights, miThal,” Venderrian confirmed.

  “Last time we came this way, melord, there was just the village over to the west we avoided. An’ a lot less patrols about the place, too.” Ognorm sniffed.

  “Aye. We’ll need to be careful. The town of Vardon lies over the hills to the northeast, and there’ll doubtless be traffic from Castletown moving to and fro along the Vardon road.”

  “New moon tomorrow,” the wizard announced, his voice utterly bereft of emotion, as it had been for the past eighteen days of their journey north. “Its light will not trouble us for at least a week, and not even then if the night is overcast.”

  Gawain nodded. “When Jerryn was Defender of Castletown before Far-gor he strengthened the northern defences. In places, he said, the south wall was weakened to provide material to bolster the north. Are you certain you will be able to scale the south wall with us, Allazar? Last time you made a stealthy entrance to this place it was when we assailed the Ramoth tower outside Willam’s Hall, and it was under Cloak of Quintinenn and by the front door.”

  “You need have no fear for me. I shall not hinder you, you may be certain of that.”

  Gawain glanced across at the wizard, what he could see of him. They had been travelling by night for the past two days and all were wearing darkcloths. Allazar had needed no reminders concerning the binding of his staff in darkcloth either, and Gawain had been impressed by the speed with which the wizard faded into darkness along with the rest of them. Allazar had an advantage though, and had used it just as he had during the hunt for the Kraal in the forest outside Jarn; he simply summoned mystic power to blacken his grubby robes, cloak, and boots.

  “It’s a high wall,” Gawain declared softly.

  “And I shall not fall from it, Longsword,” the wizard replied, his tone remaining flat though his eyes narrowed in irritation. The rest of his face was hidden by a black scarf, but Gawain could imagine the scowl.

  Gawain nodded, and stifled a sigh. There would have been no stopping him in the aftermath of Raheen. In fact, there had been no stopping him in the aftermath of Raheen. Allazar’s rage at the destruction of the Hallencloister would likewise take much time to fade. Eighteen days was nowhere near enough to restore the wizard to his usual good humour.

  “Well then, we need to move slightly west of north. Keep good watch, Ven, we’ve done well to avoid attention this far, let’s try to keep it up.”

  “MiThal.”

  And thus they moved out from the trees where they’d camped and slept throughout the day, and into the vineyard and its seemingly endless rows of vines. Those rows though were neither endless nor unbroken, avenues running roughly north to south through them at intervals giving ready access to wagons and vinedressers, and also to the small group of black-clad interlopers making their way in near silence towards Juria’s capitol.

  Allazar had been quite correct, too; the harvest made, vines were all the colours of autumn and resting after their long summer. Gawain and his small band of brigands saw no sign of the Flagellweed said to have been sown hereabouts by Graken-riders of the Toorsencreed, but that ma
ttered not. What mattered was that they were able to pass through the vast expanse of vines that produced the famed Jurian brandy unseen, for there were none there to see them when they rested in the daytime.

  From the vineyards to the castletown their way was made with great caution, and they relied almost entirely on Venderrian’s Sight and what little starlight there was to avoid detection. They passed well to the east of a village and its great wine presses, and slept fretfully in the daytime taking what cover they could. But the villages here were well ordered and well spread, the business of producing the low wines and famed brandy dispersed against a single catastrophe laying waste to the entire production, and with folk busy at their labours Gawain was confident they had passed unnoticed.

  Finally, on the night of the fourth, they knelt in the gloom and spied the lights of dwellings, wineries, and distilleries without the walls of Juria Castletown.

  “Yonder is the inn,” Gawain whispered, pointing. “And there is the paddock behind it. It’s busy too, by the looks.”

  “Horses for the wagons,” Allazar announced, “From other villages down the vines.”

  “Good. Very good. We’ll leave our horses there and move to the wall on foot. The best way in is up the angle between that bastion and buttress and the main curtain wall. The mortar is so poor there it’s almost as simple as climbing a staircase.”

  “We’re leavin’ the ‘orses in the pub’s paddock?” Ognorm whispered, stunned.

  “Aye. Hidden in plain sight where none will pay them any heed. Sunrise, Allazar?”

  “In ten hours. Should we not wait a little longer? There are still three hours to midnight.”

  “No. That is a working village yonder, and those are working people who dwell there. It’s dark, and cold, and they’ll be glad of a warm fire and a warm bed before tomorrow’s labours begin again. If all goes well, we’ll be long gone before they wake. Ven?”

  “A single watchman walks the length of the entire wall. Other lights I see, but they are mostly sleeping, I think. Few are moving inside the buildings.”

  “At the wall, I shall go first. You’re sure you can climb it without banging the stick into the stones, Allazar?”

  “I am sure.”

  “If we are discovered there will likely be bloodshed, and I don’t want our friends harmed.”

  “There will likely be bloodshed anyway,” Allazar declared, strapping the black-wound staff over his shoulder.

  “Alive, Allazar! Vakin Serat is to be taken alive!”

  “I know,” the wizard replied, deadpan.

  Gawain studied the figure beside him, but it was fruitless. It was dark, and so were they all, clad as they were like brigands upon a night’s foul business.

  “Come then,” he whispered. “Horses to the paddock, then us to the right of the stables, and on into the shadows ‘twixt wall and buttress.”

  Bold as brass, Gawain led Gwyn out from the cover of the shrubs where they’d lurked and across the muddy track towards the paddock, the rest following. Look like you own the place, and folk will think you do, Hass had once told him, striding down a corridor at the Downland Barracks. The ground underfoot was soft, recent rains leaving a well-worn path sticky and with puddles here and there; these they avoided to prevent the sound of splashing heralding their progress to any yet awake and alert in the stables or at the inn.

  Gawain remembered the place, and the time he had stayed there before another night-time incursion, two years before, intent upon destroying a Ramoth tower. A pleasant enough hostelry, and with the wineries and distilleries busy after the grape harvest a popular one too; there were perhaps eighteen other horses in the paddock, and a few more besides within the stables. A word or two to Gwyn, and she led the way in, silently watched by all the other interested equine guests in the muddy expanse enclosed by wooden railings.

  With a reassuring nod from Venderrian and satisfied that their progress thus far was unobserved, Gawain led the way around the stables and sheds, and paused at the corner to gaze out across the rutted road and beyond to the south wall of Castletown. No-one out and about, though someone scratching out a tune on a fiddle from a corner of the public bar at the inn proved that not all the working folk of this working village were abed so early this night.

  He waited, catching sight of the sole night’s watchman ambling along the walkway atop the wall, the fellow bored and making his way slowly towards the southwest corner some three hundred yards or more away to Gawain’s left. Only when the guard had moved well beyond the point where he might look down and back towards the inn did Gawain stride silently forward, making his way directly for the deep dark shadow where the great stone buttress propped the wall and formed at its top a bastion from which arrows might be loosed or other missiles launched in any direction.

  There, in soggy ground and darkness which smelled of stale urine, Gawain waited until the others had melted across the road and joined him. A glance at Venderrian, a reassuring gesture from the elf ranger, and Gawain rubbed his hands together for warmth and to give chilly fingers life, and began the climb.

  It was, for him at least, as easy as it had been back when chanting shaven-headed idiots occupied a wood-built tower in the courtyard without Willam’s Keep. Crumbling mortar, ancient and weed-blown, weathered and wind-lashed, gave footholds and handholds aplenty in the great stone blocks and flint cobbles forming the hard but wizened face of the outer wall. When he reached the top, he paused, peeping over the edge to confirm that the lonely guardsman was still trudging his solitary course westward, and then heaved himself up and over the parapet onto the top of the wall.

  A low and castellated perimeter wall was set atop the bastion, and there Gawain tied off a rope and lowered the end down the angle between buttress and curtain wall. Allazar came up next, eschewing the rope until, nearing the top and doubting his strength to heave himself silently over the edge, he grasped it, and allowed Gawain to haul him the remaining few feet to safety.

  “Well done,” Gawain whispered, for the wizard’s commendable silence during the ascent.

  With nothing more than a curt nod, Allazar moved away to crouch in the shadows, while Venderrian made the climb. This too passed uneventfully, and entirely without the aid of the rope. At the top, the elf paused, cast his Sighted gaze about and nodded to Gawain before taking his place beside the wizard.

  Ognorm, last of all climbed up as though abseiling in reverse, choosing to heave himself up the rope and walk the wall. Gawain assisted, hauling on the rope, fearful lest the crumbling mortar of the merlon about which he’d tied that rope give way under Ognorm’s weight and jerking advance, and thus send the dwarf plummeting to his doom with part of the wall for a headstone.

  When Ognorm was up and the rope once more coiled over Gawain’s shoulder, they moved, silently, crouched in spite of the heavy overcast which meant no backlight and thus no silhouettes above the ramparts. At the town side of the wall near the buttress was a simple stone stairway running at a steep angle clear to the ground, and this they took as rapidly as they dared, casting frequent gazes over the tops of buildings towards the Keep, and the courtyard in which the stone dwelling and Embassy had been built for Serat and his Toorsengard.

  Snoring brought them to a sudden halt. Set into the wall beneath the steps was a great arched workshop, a smithy judging from the odour of iron and burnt coals, and within it a blacksmith or apprentice was sleeping, loudly. Down the steps they crept to ground level, and in the shadows near the smithy paused again.

  For Gawain, Juria’s lack of watchfulness was perhaps more shocking now than it had been the first time he’d breached their defences. Then, there was little threat from brigands, and only the Ramoth curse for guardsmen to consider, and those shave-headed servants of Morloch had not only breached the defences by simply walking in through the gates, but built their tower in plain sight of the Keep. Now, the threat of Morloch and his minions was well-known, survivors of Far-gor well acquainted with the enemy and the threat
still posed by dark forces. They should have been much better prepared, much better guarded.

  But then Gawain recognised the irony of his surprise. There was of course no lofty Ramoth tower of wood in the courtyard outside the Keep, there was instead Elvendere’s Embassy, stone-built, and an enemy of Morloch’s making dwelling there, too, and also in plain sight of the Keep.

  He nodded to himself then, his bearings taken, recalling his last visits to this place, and wordlessly, he set off again, leading the way through narrow alleyways and the passages between buildings which seemed to him entirely unchanged since last he sneaked along them in the dark, almost two years before. From time to time Venderrian hissed a warning and they paused, waiting while someone drew curtains at windows or walked hurriedly along some other alley about their business, but then at the cluck of a tongue for an ‘all-clear’ they moved on again.

  It was at once thrilling and deeply worrying. Here they were, sneaking like thieves in the night through a friendly town filled with allies, unseen, uninvited, unexpected, and entirely unchallenged. Thrilling, for the danger of becoming prisoners of the Toorseneth’s agents, worrying, that they should be able to penetrate deep into the very heart of Juria’s capitol and no-one aware of their presence.

  They paused again behind a butcher’s shop, listening to sounds coming from within; heavy blows, the butcher working late upon a carcass, a pig or a cow perhaps, his work brutal as flesh and bone succumbed to cleaver, hatchet, and saw. Gawain suddenly found himself wondering if he now paused in the very same alley where his friend Jerryn once had stood rooted to the spot, the Jurian watching while his first and unrequited love played hop-skip on the boardwalk… But a cluck from Venderrian’s tongue and they were moving again.

  Half an hour later and they were in the shadows of an alley which opened into the courtyard on the northern side of the Keep. It loomed above them, lights from within illuminating slits of loop-hole light-wells and the larger windows higher up. There was no grand entrance with sweeping stone steps rising to iron-braced portals here. Here, facing north, there was a small door at the top of a short flight of steps below which the gaol for public offenders reposed, iron gratings making for a poor ceiling in the cells below. No guardsmen on watch here either, which Gawain found to his surprise intensely irritating. Perhaps, he thought, there were no malefactors languishing in the cells, or perhaps the watch was set on the other side of that small and cheerless north door.