by Sean Rodden
Chadh stared at the black wall of Galledine. His face was blanched and blank, his right cheek pressed against Tielle’s shoulder blade. About the girl’s waist, the boy gripped his own wrists to the point of pain.
Behind the Gardens, away in the east, the sun was emerging from the horizon, a vague insipidness oozing into the black of dying night. An anemic dawn crept over the world, pallid and wan, exsan- guinating all hue and healthful shine from land, waters and sky, wrapping all in the grim grey gauze of the gravebound dead. And as this bleak unlight leaked over Galledine a deep dark incarnadine infested the trees, spreading like a liquid pox until the entire forest seemed drenched in blood. And this blood bloomed and brightened till it shone, shone, shone, a glaring red light in the ghost of night, blazing like the face of a failing sun.
The company halted, staring in a shared and shaken silence.
“What has happened?” breathed the Heir to the House of Eccuron at length. “Why does Galledine bleed so?”
“Some leaves produce red and purple pigments toward the end of summer in the sap of their structure, no?” Zalkan’s tone seemed to indicate that he was unsure of his own words. Nonetheless, he persisted, “These colours are influenced by the breakdown of sugars in the leaves beneath bright light as certain chemicals within are reduced. Autumn has come early this year, the days have been mostly sunny and the nights have been chill and cool, thus producing a brighter shade of red in the leaves.”
Tielle and Arumarron stared at their new companion, their mouths a little more than slightly agape.
Silvery mist sighed through the black silk of the Harbinger’s scarf. “Or maybe not.”
“This is nothing natural, Zalkan,” spoke the gigantic Heir, the darks stars in his eyes flaring, flaming. “This happened overnight. Oaks and maples do not change this swiftly, this intensely. And fir and pine should not change at all. No science explains this. Nothing does.”
“Galledine does,” Chadh said softly, so very softly, from behind his sister. “She explains herself readily enough, and we need only hear her. She warns us. She warns us so we can warn the rest of them. And she wants. Desperately, she wants.”
“What does Galledine want, brother?”
The boy’s arms tightened about Tielle’s waist. His voice was no more than the shadow of a whisper in the girl’s ear.
“She wants us to stop, Tee-tee…she wants us to stop.”
“They stopped here, kulg-Kor.”
The Ten Axes of the Fifth Army stood amidst the rank and reeking carnage of Muggor Rutzar. The air was thick there, viscous and cold, made sour with the caustic stenches of death and bile. Hundreds of dwar-Durka and dozens of enormous urthwurmur lay torn and twisted in stiffened death in the deep subterranean heart of the Ten Thousand Tunnels. Glossy white lichen clung to the walls like liquid lanterns, casting the great cavern in a ghostly glow, hovering over the broken dead as would lost and wayward souls. Dark blood and achromic splotches of acidic slime stained the stone as though splashed there by the bucketful or disgorged like vomit from the guts of sickened gods.
“They stopped or they were stopped, priest?”
“They stopped. Stopped and waited. Waited for the worms.”
The warriors of the Ten Axes moved among the carnage of the cavern, their eyes as sharp as the blades of their weapons. Slime-slickened torsos and detached limbs of Dwarks, foul chunks of slate-grey flesh chewed and spewed, an arsenal of abandoned weapons, heavy plate armour folded like vellum – all scattered haphazardly among the vast vermicular carcasses of urthwurmur. The great white worms had been hammered and hacked and hewn, butchered, slaughtered whilst in the process of purposely constricting themselves.
“This makes no mudfuckin’ sense, priest,” Jadun growled amidst the wreckage of wasted life. The Captain of the kulgord glowered about him, his hot black gaze scanning Muggor Rutzor’s rough walls and rounded ceiling, probing the yawning hollows of hundreds upon hundreds of wurm-bored holes which honeycombed the hard rock of the cavern.
Dandar gestured dismissively. “Sense isn’t made, kulg-Kor. It’s always there, right before the beholder, waiting on enlightenment, illumination.”
“Save it for your sermons, priest.”
“Well, I don’t actually preach, kulg-Kor. As an urthron I merely – ”
“Save that, too,”
“Wisdom saved is wisdom wasted, kulg-Kor.” Dandar smiled through the mess of his beard. “Usually.”
Several Daradun warriors chortled quietly. Others were wiser.
Jadun was too distracted to take umbrage.
“Why would the Drone want his army to wait for the worms? That’s just unbelievably stupid, even for him.” The Captain gestured irritably toward the tremendous triangular aperture at the opposite end of the Ten Thousand Tunnels, where the main passage continued down at a visible angle into the lightless nadirs of the netherearth. “The path there would’ve been completely clear, right? At least for some time. Why stir this nest of worms?”
Dandar frowned, shook his shaggy head. “The Drone is many things, kulg-Kor. Stupid isn’t one of them. He did this for a reason.”
“Whatever it was, it was a reason hewn of sandstone.”
“Even sandstone has its uses.”
“Mud, then.”
“Mud, too.”
Jadun glowered, his ebony eyes verily aglow in the pale darkness of Muggor Rutzar.
“Urth ru Glir! You do like to argue, priest.”
“No, I don’t.”
The Captain growled.
Dandar stepped back, shrugged his shoulders, a casual heaving of twin mountains.
“I’m an urthron,” he explained without explaining. “And arguing takes two. At least.”
“Tell that to the First Axe,” the kulg-Kor grunted as he nudged a Dwarkash corpse aside with one heavy steel sabaton. “Azugar can spend hours arguing with himself.”
“Yes, well, the Golden One has always been something of an… exception.”
Jadun grunted. His gaze followed a gory trail across the stone floor of the cavern. He raised one massive arm, pointed.
“The dwar-Durka went that way, priest. The blood trail is obvious.”
Dandar glared down the passage opposite, then peered at several openings of worm tunnels. His glare tightened, twisted to a frown. The urthron then moved among the dead of Muggor Rutzar, stopping here, kneeling there, sniffing a puddle of indeterminable filth, inspecting one pool of blood, then another, then poking at a string of entrails, examining peculiarly corroded weaponry and crushed armour. Seeing the scene, reading the rock. At length, he placed a palm upon the coarse face of the nearest wall, puissance pulsing forth from him, probing, penetrating. And the stone spoke to him. Told him things. Horrible things.
The urthron of the Fifth Army dropped his hand.
“This is what happened here, kulg-Kor.”
Jadun waited, glowering in silence, one hand gripping his axe-haft, the other tugging at a braid in his beard.
“The dwar-Durka got here and waited for the worms. When the urthwurmur came, the Dwarks did not resist. Instead, they allowed themselves to be taken. A few hundred of them, anyway. Taken and… swallowed. For these Dwarks were imbued with the urthvennim. And this foul power poisoned the worms, wrought their ruin from within them. Some Dwarks remained in the bellies of the beasts, but most were puked out, dead or as good as dead. But the damage was done. Driven mad with poison and pain, the urthwurmur turned on themselves, coiling, constricting, killing each other. The dwar-Durka set upon them then, hurried the worms’ dooms along, slew them all. Every last one.”
“But why? Why wait on the worms at all?” The Captain gestured to the main passage with his war-axe. “The dwar-Durka continued down that way afterward…didn’t they?”
“Some did. The largest party. But there remain six distinct spoors.”
“Six?”
Dandar indicated specific worm tunnels with the head of his hammer. “There. There and there. Th
ere. And there.” A wave of the weapon. “And the main passage there.”
“Still makes no sense, priest.”
“Actually, it makes perfect sense, kulg-Kor. The Drone wanted the worm tunnels clear. Completely clear.”
“But why?”
“So the majority of his army could travel those tunnels without being accosted – or worse, having their way blocked.”
“So the Drone wanted to use the tunnels.”
Dandar nodded. “That is the only explanation.”
The Captain of the Ten Axes tugged again at his beard. Growled, grumbled, cursed. Tugged some more. Looked again at each opening the urthron had specified.
“The tunnels they chose, where do they lead?”
“Upward. Upward and north.”
“To what end?”
“The five tunnels eventually converge into one again, leading to the bones of the Brass River.”
“But there’s nothing up there, priest. Nothing. Nothing of any significance, anyway. Certainly not of any strategic importance.”
“That would depend on the strategy, kulg-Kor. And we don’t know what the Drone intends.” He scowled. “Which is some cause for concern.”
“What lies past the Brass River?”
“A few miles of solid stone. Then the surface. The world beyond and above.”
Tug, tug, tug. A little harder each time.
“Tell me, priest – if the Drone found a way through the stone, where in the world above would his Mother-forsaken army of dwar-Durka emerge?”
Midway through another indifferent shrug, Dandar’s eyes bloomed in the sallow evernight of Muggor Rutzor like the foul flowers of oil spills spreading across moon-silvered waters. Sense isn’t made, came the cold and silent echoes of his so glibly given wisdom, it’s always there, right before the beholder…
And it was there. Right there.
There are moments in time, specific instants when comprehension comes with such profound clarity that all the world seems to still. And in that stillness, in that silence between breaths and heartbeats, the mind knows only the thrilling enlightenment of a mystery unraveled, the illuminating brilliance of a riddle resolved – or the deep blackness of most terrible understanding. Where one faces and gives a face to the stark cruelty of fate, and perceives, truly perceives, the utter futility, meaninglessness, the senseless nihility of…of everything.
When one becomes aware. So excruciatingly aware.
If the Drone found a way through the stone, where in the world above would his Mother-forsaken army of dwar-Durka emerge?
And the urthron heard himself whisper as though from a great and insurmountable distance in both time and space –
“The Hard Hills.”
7
EMBERS
“I am so very weary of the darkness.
Even the light is tainted.
There is no truth.
And I have forgotten how to rage against the lies.”
Kor ben Dor, The Book of the Bloodspawn
Steam and flame.
She sat on a stone, staring with dry white eyes into the rufescent remains of the dying campfire. The heat of the blaze had burned all dampness from her gaze, had chased the chill of northern night from her flesh, but had not warmed the deep, cold, wretched places within her. No warmth could reach there, could touch there. Not this night.
Go.
The thick sweet smoke of smouldering render dung played at her nostrils like wafts of unsolicited compassion, unwanted and unappreciated, waved away intermittently by a dismissive hand. A dancing chiaroscuro cast by the glow of stubborn embers tamed the tigress tattooed upon her face, stealing its stripes, leaving only smooth grey skin painted bleak with several shades of sorrow.
Go.
Ev lin Dar sat alone. She had sent the other Black Shields away, even as the Prince had sent her away. Even as he had refused her. Refused her camaraderie, her friendship, her very presence; accepting only her deference, her bounden loyalty. The rejection of her essential humanity in favour of the blind obedience of the soldier. Shiny black armour and a sharp sword of strange blue steel, an automaton, a paltry piece on the gameboard of war – that was all that she was to him, all that she meant, nothing more, and possibly less. A soldier. A ’Spawn. A fiercely, unquestioningly, mindlessly loyal Black –
“Shield.”
The voice was soft, so very soft, the brush of silk on sauna-soothed skin. Nevertheless, she started, her hand instinctively flashing for her sword. Flashing, but falling short, interrupted in its intent by another hand, a swifter hand, one with a grip of godlike strength.
“I only prevent you because you would regret the deed later.” The velutinous voice was but inches from Ev lin Dar’s ear, the breath surprisingly cool upon her cheek and smelling of mint and siamrach leaves. “Or perhaps not. Nevertheless, my natural arrogance demands that I at least hope for such remorse.”
Ev lin Dar could not help but gasp.
The hand of steel released the Black Shield’s wrist, and then he stepped around the rocks ringing the failing fire. Her eyes followed him as he moved, widened white orbs riveted, unblinking. The ghost of his whisper, of his breath, haunted her senses like memories of young desire, of first love, innocent yet intense. Her entire body tingled.
The Prince of the Bloodspawn seated himself upon a large flat slab of greywether across the campfire from Ev lin Dar. He had eschewed armour, weapons, cloak, and was clad only in a black kilt, belt and boots, his upper body bared and beautiful, his wingless hair hanging loose and free in shining sheets of midnight. The power within him was dimmed, a lantern dampened to the subtlest of glimmers, making him seem simply another unsleeping ’Spawn suffering the night by firelight. He rested one thick forearm on a knee, reached for the rusted tongs to place another ample patty of render dung on the guttering blaze; even the minutest of his motions was accompanied by a breathtaking ripple of muscle beneath impossibly taut skin.
“Hope, Shield, is the last of all possessions.”
Fire flared about the fresh fuel, waking whips of light to lash the night, driving the encroaching darkness back, aside, away. The resurgent scent of the thick smoke was pungent, smelling more of spice or incense than of burning black shit. Warmth rose with a roar, like a nation called to war.
“For when hope is lost, nothing remains.”
The firelight oiled the Halflord’s skin, lacquering his hard form and faceted features a reddish gold. The raven’s talons cradling his face seemed mere shadows, mercurial adumbrations, a ghostly memory of grasping claws phasing in and out of existence. His eyes glowed behind a curtain of hanging hair, a pair of soft white pearls peering past a blind of silken strings. Looking, seeing. Watching her.
Ev lin Dar shuddered for a sudden rush of warmth.
Oh, yes…steam and flame, indeed.
The Prince of the Bloodspawn set the tongs aside, nodded toward the beautiful warrior opposite him, gestured gently with his hand.
“Ask.”
Ev lin Dar’s brows arched. “Prince Kor?”
“You were attempting to voice a question when I…dismissed you. I was distracted and impatient. I am no longer so. Ask.”
“I…ahh…”
“Ask.”
Ev lin Dar lowered her gaze, peered into the renascent flames of the fire. The presence of her Prince pressed against her like the body of a lover, intimate and rhythmic, pushing the air from her lungs and past her parted lips, a soft and susurrant sigh of satisfaction – and of more than a little trepidation.
“I was simply going to ask after your well-being, Prince Kor ben Dor,” she said quietly, not raising her eyes. “Nothing more.”
“My well-being.”
“Yes, Prince Kor.”
The Halflord half-smiled. “Hmm. And what has caused this concern, Shield?”
Ev lin Dar’s palms slid over the freshly healed crescent-shaped wounds on her thighs. Memories of her nails biting into her skin scraped at the back of her
brain. Consciously, she folded her long fingers together.
“I have sensed a change in you, Prince Kor,” she replied. “You have been…other than yourself of late.”
The Halflord cocked his head slightly. “Other.”
The Black Shield nodded. “Different.”
“Different.”
Ev lin Dar looked up.
Kor ben Dor angled his face to the night sky, closed his eyes, inhaled deeply. Smoke enfolded him within pale ephemeral wings, and he shone, and for a number of heartbeats the night about him brightened. Then the smoke slid aside, and he straightened, stretching gloriously as he cracked a nagging ache from between his shoulder blades. The movement sent a anatomical army of muscles marching in waves through his arms, his chest, his abdomen – and also drew his kilt significantly higher above his parted knees.
Just as the fire flared once more.
Ev lin Dar’s eyes grew impossibly large for the… expedience. Or the experience. Likely both. Her heart stuttered, fluttered within her. Remarkably, nigh upon miraculously, she managed to defy the urge to gasp aloud.
The Halflord appeared oblivious. He relaxed, lowered his face, looked upon the Black Shield. His ivory eyes glowed intently, intensely, behind their dangling drapes of gleaming hair. He leaned forward, and the felonious fabric fell fortuitously back into place.
“Tell me what you saw, Shield.”
Ev lin Dar froze, save the shocked flopping of her lower jaw. She felt the pale grey of her skin flush toward black.
“Ah…ahh…Prin…whaa…?”
The Halflord heaved a sigh.
“What you saw, Shield,” he repeated, a stone of impatience honing an edge to his voice. “What you saw in me that was…other…that was different.”
Oh. Ev lin Dar exhaled. Her lungs shuddered. That. Her very bones rattled with relief. Yes, that. Of course.
“I saw sadness, Prince Kor ben Dor.”
“Sadness.”
“More than sadness, Prince Kor. Grief.”
“And what reason might I have to grieve, Shield?”
“I cannot know, Prince Kor.” Yes, I can. It is because you remember. Because you remember everything – that is why. “But that is what I saw. Glimpses only, but it was there.”