“He comes for me,” said Andelusia. “I cannot be rid of him.”
“That is no man. What is it?”
“He calls them Sarcophages.” She shivered. “This one is Mogru; he is the worst. Even if the warlock’s other works are false, Mogru is real.”
From the darkness behind him, Saul and Ghurk emerged. Saul carried a grey man’s spear, and Ghurk a torch twenty breaths from dying. One look from Andelusia, and both men froze.
“Ghurk, stay here.” Rellen brandished his sword. “Come Saul. Bring your spear. I see a head that needs splitting.”
“No.” Andelusia clapped her palm against his chest. “Stay back. Only I can kill him.”
“You saved us.” He brushed her hand away. “Time we return the favor.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but he swept past her. The atrophy of the endless days of lying in his prison pit fell away, his heart roaring beneath his ratty grey shirt. With Saul trailing him, he shoved his way into the panicked mob, thundering. “Get out of here! Get out of the way!”
The swim across the cavern took an eon in his mind. As he pressed forward, a thousand men rushed against him, maniacally afraid of Mogru. Some tried to hide in the shadows while others toppled to their doom as they fled across the narrow black bridge. At last, after slogging through many hundred men, he staggered and slowed. The sea of Thillrians parted, and he stood face to mask with Mogru. The undying spectacle of metal and bone stared him down, and Rellen’s sword quivered like a twig in his grasp.
“What are you?” he growled, but the monster gave no answer.
Mogru marched within ten paces, crunching the neck of a hapless Thillrian underfoot on his way. The horror’s heels scraped against the stone, a trail of rotting tendons dangling from the monster’s severed forearm. Now, Rellen, he willed himself to feel no fear. Every moment you wait, it draws nearer to Ande.
Feinting left, he darted to the fiend’s armless side and slashed as he went by. He did no damage, earning naught but a few sparks against Mogru’s black armor. He waited for Mogru’s answer, a stroke that whistled past his ear, before attacking again. Finding all the fury he had left in the Undergrave’s bottom, he hacked his way inside Mogru’s defense, narrowly dodging a dozen deaths, rattling the horror’s armor with some twenty strokes of his own. When he retreated, he did so with a smile, for his was sword lodged in what he supposed was his enemy’s throat.
He waited for the creature to collapse. Fall, he bid the beast. Fall, will you! With a grunt, Mogru speared his sword into the cavern floor, leaving his great blade buried like a spade in a freshly dug grave. Tearing the sword from his neck, the horror slung the Thillrian weapon aside and tore his own out of the rock. Gaping, Rellen backed away.
“Ande!” he shouted. “How do I kill it?”
“Run!” He heard her scream. She sounds so far away.
Mogru, his bones creaking and popping beneath his mail, came at him faster than before. He ducked and rolled and retrieved his fallen blade, but when he stood he had no time to counter. Mogru was tireless, beating upon his sword without effort, whittling it down to a bladeless nub before driving him to the brink of the chasm beside the bridge.
Then came Saul.
No master with any weapon besides a staff, in this hour the Elrain warrior’s aim was true. He delivered his spear like lightning through the darkness, hurling it from some fifteen paces away. The spear struck Mogru’s hip, lodging deep in the horror’s loathsome flesh, distracting him from hurling Rellen to his death.
Crippled, Rellen panted. My only chance is now. His sword shattered, he searched the grounds near the bridge for a weapon, any weapon. At first he saw only stones and pools of underworld sludge, but then he glimpsed an ash-handled digging tool, a pick surely dropped by a fleeing Thillrian. He loped to the tool, gripped it like a great hammer, and sped back to Mogru, who was busy tearing the spear loose from his flank.
Perhaps no other could have struck so hard. His weeks and months spent hammering on rigid stone now returned their reward, for Rellen drove the pick so gravely into the back of Mogru’s head that the fiend’s mask fell off and clattered to the floor. He let loose of the pick, leaving it buried in the back of Mogru’s brain. Fall, he cursed the monster as he staggered away. You must. You have to. If not from that, then what?
Mogru faced him. The horror’s unmasked visage was more than he was prepared to see. Mogru’s face was mummified, his brow and jaw thick with sinew and pallid flesh. His hair, rank as rotting seaweed, trailed from his scalp and chin in long white lashes. Worse were his empty sockets, the black hollows like twin abysses in which no light had ever shined.
Gasping for breath, Rellen backed away. Mogru tore the pick out and hurled it away. The horror advanced on him, and after cornering him against a column, the monster swatted him in the ribs with the flat of his blade, knocking him to the floor, where he hunched and sputtered.
In the inky darkness surrounding him, Rellen sensed many hundreds of men watching. He kicked Mogru’s shins, but the horror yanked him up by his collar and threw him down again. He felt the last of his breath leave his body, and he heard stones thrown by the Thillrians plinking against Mogru’s armor. Death is coming, he knew. Let it be quick.
In the dimly-lit space between the horror and the hundreds of Thillrians, he saw Andelusia emerge.
“Mogru,” she called the horror’s name. Her gaze was as tranquil as a cloudless twilight sky. Her olive raiment whipped about her waist, obeying a wind no one else in the cavern could feel. “You come for me, Mogru. I am what you desire.”
Mogru’s shadow lifted from him and fell onto her. No! he wanted to scream, but managed only a sputter and a groan.
“It would be easier to let you kill me,” Andelusia walked within twenty paces of the horror. “You are my father’s dagger, the coffin he sends to keep me. I deserve you. If the Ur are any worse than you, I will not want to live beyond now anyway.”
For once, Mogru stood still.
“What sad life did you live to serve so wicked a master,” she mocked. “Is your only purpose to stand and wait and kill? What will you do after I am dead? You will have nothing. No one will be left to kill.”
The cavern fell into a horrified hush. Do something, Ande. Rellen sat up. You cannot just let him kill you.
Mogru hoisted his blade and marched on Andelusia, moving to clip her fair head from the rest of her body. She trembled before him, and then she let his stroke come down. The Thillrians collectively shuddered, Saul stood wide-eyed and speechless, and even Ghurk let out a howl.
No, Rellen knew. She would never. She did not. She is not dead. Look!
Andelusia’s end was not as it appeared. Mogru’s stroke fell upon her, but instead of striking her flesh it swept harmlessly through her. Her body was shadow, no more destroyable than smoke. As Mogru tried to pry his blade from the stone in which he had driven it, she stepped aside and retook earthly form.
“Enough of you,” Rellen heard her say. “You should have killed me when you had the chance.”
She said no more. She balled her fingers into fists, rolled her eyes back into her head, and summoned what Rellen imagined was the deadliest of the magicks the warlock had taught her. Her skin became black as ash, her hands and feet and hair writhing like smoke. In the shadow state she took, she curled and spun around Mogru like a tongue made of fire. Beautiful, Rellen thought, for even as she whirled he was reminded of dancing with her. Once. Long ago. In a forest. All alone.
Mogru swung his blade, each stroke strong enough to split the hide of a mountain, but none sufficient. Andelusia was molten magic; no object of the earth could touch her. Rellen glimpsed the method in her mesmerizing dance. Wait for it, he thought. An even darker magic comes.
After a hundred futile flails Mogru lowered his sword, and just as he did Andelusia became flesh behind him. She fanned her fingers, conjuring a wisp of black flame that made every man in the Undergrave crumble to the ground. Fuming death the flame
was, roiling up her wrist and upper arm. It made no smoke, only heat greater than any furnace. She should be burning. Rellen imagined he was the only man left watching. But she lives.
She struck the back of Mogru’s head. With one lash of her boiling black fingers, the horror’s skull melted. The flame devoured his head, his shoulders, his ribs, and his armor. His burning bones smoked and charred the cavern floor. His sword clattered to the cavern floor, caught fire, and melted. His lower half remained only a moment longer, for as the dark flame consumed him, his legs crackled and fell apart like burning paper, his ashes spreading in a pool at Andelusia’s feet.
Andelusia staggered backward. Rellen stood, but the heat from Mogru’s destruction drove him back down again. The black flame burned and burned, its reek filling the cavern. A puddle of ebon magma, it pocked a hole in the Undergrave, a wound foaming with Mogru’s remains. How deep a chasm the fire would carve, Rellen could but wonder. The other side of the world, he thought as he lay delirious on the ground.
We all might burn before it stops.
Not the Old Ande
Atop an island of pale rocks lording over an ocean of twisted, thorn-barked trees, Rellen stood. The Undergrave lay behind him, forever, I hope. He regarded his hands, smothered in dust, and his forearms, deathly pale from too many days in the dark. He dragged his fingers down his face and through his beard, and eased himself onto a mound of broken rock and bonelike gravel. Never should have come to Thillria, he mused. What do you think, mother and father? Not quite Graehelm, is it?
After a while of brooding, he clambered back to his feet. He trod past Saul and Andelusia, who sat pale and panting in a gravel pile of their own. Alone, he walked the hilltop from end to end, wending his way between mounds of shattered slate and piles of Undergrave rock. He had hoped to see the sun in its full glory, but the skies were dimmed by thick Thillrian clouds, the world just as grey as he had left it. Hungry, he thought. So damned hungry. Tired of warm water and poorly-leavened bread. Tired of rocks and caves. Tired of clouds, of the cold, of warlocks and grey men.
And tired of this damnable anklet.
Since his first day of imprisonment, he had worn a rusted iron anklet. The grey men had strung the hundred-man chain through it, all the better to drag me by. It clattered against his skin whenever he walked, and bruised him wherever it rubbed.
And now the time has come to take it off.
He pilfered a fist-sized stone from a rock mound and sank to his bottom on the hilltop. Many dozen times, he hammered at the anklet’s rusted pin. Each blow stung like a sword’s nip, but he persisted. Come off, confounded thing. Done with you. I will never ask another favor of the world if you will just…come…off!
He hammered the anklet another twenty times. He pried at the pin, but it never moved. He smacked his heel against the earth again and again, and earned himself only pain.
“Having trouble?” Saul stood over him.
“Aye. Stupid shackle is married to me.”
Saul knelt beside him. “We brought plenty of tools. Ghurk will hammer it off for you.”
“Just leave it,” he snorted. “A souvenir. Without it, no one back home will believe us.”
Tossing his rock away, Rellen looked his old friend over. Months in the darkness had been cruel to Saul. Look at him. Gaunt as a ghost. Beard pale and stringy. Bags of coal under his eyes. I told him not to come, but damn the fool.
“Mum, you say?” he snorted. “Quiet is the tongue that hates Thillria as much as I do? Maybe you like it here? Maybe you want to stay?”
“Nay.” Saul’s mood was as somber as the sky. “There’s a problem. It’s the warlock, Rell. Ande’s worried. She thinks he’ll come here looking for something.”
“And what are we supposed to do about it?”
“She has it in her head to wait for him.”
“Why?”
“She wants to set a trap.” Saul nodded toward the Undergrave. “In there.”
He could not believe what he was hearing. The very idea of descending back below the earth made his head hurt. “You jest. Not funny.”
Saul shook his head. “No jest. She wants to confront him when he comes. She says she means to do it no matter what you or I say. I tried to talk her out of it, but she won’t listen. You know her. She’s as stubborn as ever.”
“Nonsense,” he blurted. “We saw what the warlock can do. We cannot stop him alone.”
“Not alone,” said Saul. “She sent Ghurk after the Thillrians. They should only be a few hours ahead of us. We have weapons to arm several score of them. If they’re willing, they can stand guard with us.”
Saul’s words were poison to his ears, a dagger slipped into his homesick heart. He sat in silence for many moments, glaring at the sky and shaking his head.
“You don’t like this plan,” said Saul.
“A trap, she says. Does she think he will walk right up to us, naked and ready to die? He can wear any face he likes. We might not even know who to kill.”
“I have no answers,” Saul conceded. “I only know that to leave stinks of spinelessness. More is at stake than our little lives. Ande will stay. I mean to stay with her.”
Perfect. She wants to be brave. Her puppy does, too.
“The way I see it, we have no choice,” said Saul. “We have weapons. We have food enough for a few weeks. When the warlock comes we will be ready for him. We’ll make life as miserable for him as he did for us.”
He gazed across the hilltop at Andelusia, who stood alone before the Undergrave’s mouth. Dark and brave and beautiful, he thought. Her coal-colored hair and ragged green raiment danced in the wind, flailing like smoke from her slender body. Gone was the spry, cheerful girl he remembered. All grown up. Worked over by the world, and stronger than ever.
“Look at her,” he mumbled. “She wants to fight him. She is braver than me.”
“Braver than all of us,” admitted Saul.
“Well…” he sighed, “sounds like madness, but if she believes this is the way, I will trust her. I will stay. Crows take my heart and spear it on a pig-pole, I will stay.”
“You mean that?” Saul narrowed his eyes.
“Why not? Here we are in this damnable country, dragged like dirt to the middle of nowhere. I want the warlock buried. I wager you do too.”
“Revenge…” Saul sounded disappointed in himself. “Yes.”
Rising from his rump, he shambled back to the Undergrave’s maw. The entrance to the underworld looked hungry. Fifty men wide and toothed with pale stalactites, it smiled at him, wanting to devour him. With a shudder he went straight to Andelusia.
“Rellen.” Her gaze was lost in the sky. “I know what you are thinking. We are free. But we have to go back.”
“So Saul tells me.”
“Then you have decided?”
He stood beside her and held her hand. Her fingers were cold, her grip looser than he hoped. She pushed the hair from her brow and looked upon him, her stare sharper than the autumn breeze.
“Even if you have not, I have,” she told him. “I thought long upon it, and I am as certain as I can be. I know he will come, just not when or how. I will wait for him for a day, a fortnight, a century if I must.”
“You know what this means,” he said.
“No. What?”
“I will stay with you.”
“Good.” She squeezed his hand. “Now there is no sense in standing around. We might as well find a good place to hide. We must gather food, water, torches, and weapons. When he comes, I will fall like night upon him. You will see.”
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