by Sean Rodden
And that’s worse.
But Rundul of Axar knelt at no altar, worshipped no god, indifferent or otherwise. He was a stalwart son of Mother Earth, and in him was the Maiden, the Mother’s consummately loyal daughter, she who knew no darkness, no evil, neither malice nor spite, but only purest love. It was ever to her that Rundul looked, to her that he turned. To her. To Maiden Earth. And in turning, in looking, he knew that the terrible pain he felt was her own. The part of her that dwelt within him had recoiled, and now thrashed in anguish, denuded and despoiled, laid bare before the merciless depredations of an unchecked corruption.
Urthvennim.
That deeper darker daughter of Mother Earth. The terrible power which thrilled and thrived on destruction for destruction’s sake. Which took sick pleasure in bringing and beholding every possible strain of pain. An impenitent agent of deception, of defilement, of the devastation of all things true and pure. This was the thing from which the Maiden flinched and fled. This horror, this unholy abomination. Because this was the thing that would utterly destroy her. If it could.
Instinctively, Rundul’s fist folded about the innocuous pebble that had been bestowed upon him by the Earthmaster. Soothing warmth bloomed against the Captain’s callused palm, surging up his arm, striking for his heart. He crushed his lips together tightly, lest a gasp of surprise, perhaps even of pleasure, escape them. A single imperceptible shudder took him as the stone’s fire reached his core, beckoned the Maiden within him back, recalling her to her duty, to her purpose, her power. The two aspects of Maiden Earth touched and melded at the crux of the Darad’s soul, and she rose, and all pretensions of pain, all allusions and illusions of agony abandoned him.
For the pain was a lie. And the lie in turn delivered pain. Lies and pain, pain and lies. The wicked wheel was ever spinning, whirling out of control, a serpent devouring itself, yet never sated, never content. Fangs forever sinking deeper, injecting more venom, burning black and ugly in the bloodstream of the spirit. This was the urthvennim’s poison. This was its power. Lies. All lies. And what toxin wrought of or on that world might vanquish love and light more swiftly and more surely that the vile venom of a lie?
“There’s no such thing as lying well, Fian,” Rundul growled, contrasting magmatic netherlights rippling upon his mien and mane. “There is only lying. And there’s nothing good about it. Nothing.”
Eldurion gazed upon his hulking friend for a moment, saw the hot wrath in those gleaming black eyes, then turned back to the lake of flame.
“Fair enough, Stone Lord,” he intoned smoothly. “Besides, whatever it was that shook you so now seems to be gone. And for that, at least, I am thankful.”
Me too, Fian. Rundul tightened his grip of the nugget. Me too.
The Eldest of the Fiannar raised his glorious golden blade, and with its tapered tip he pointed across the vast pool of magma.
“The Blood King is there, on the far shore, wherever that may be. I can sense his presence like a great festering wound within me, fell and foul – and Grimroth yearns to burn. Captain, we must make our way around this mire of fire, and quickly – the longer the Wraith is aware of us, the worse the welcome he might prepare.”
But Rundul shook his head. “Not on the other side of the mire, Fian. The Red Wraith is on an atoll near its centre. And he’s likely already fully prepared. He lingers there, watching, waiting.” He jerked his war-axe in the general direction. “It isn’t around that we must make our way, but across.”
Eldurion lowered his sword. “How?”
The Darad glowered at lake of liquefied rock. There was blood in that molten morass, much blood, so much blood, running through it in self-suspended rivers and streams like the circulatory system of an enormous elemental life form. The blood of hundreds, of thousands, of men and women, of Unmen and Urkroks and Graniants, of Fiannar and, yes, even of Daradur. The blood of all those who had fallen at the Seven Hills. Not the actual blood, no, not the corporeal fluid, but the essence of it. The… horror… of it. Of war and death and of senseless loss. The horror of it all.
And inextricably intertwined with the blood, woven about it and beneath it, above it and around it, was the outrage of urthvennim.
“Vile bitch,” the Captain of the Wandering Guard growled.
Eldurion arched one grizzled eyebrow. “Has some horrid woman betrayed your trust, friend Rundul?”
“Something like that.” Rundul worked the pebble between his thumb and his palm like a Rothic worrystone. “There is the Maiden; there’s Lady Fury; and then there is the urthvennim, whose most ancient name is k’urth Deen dur Hamma – the Hag of Lies.”
“Sounds like a rather dysfunctional family.”
The Darad grunted again. “Don’t get me started...”
“I would not dream of it, Captain.” The Fian gestured vaguely toward the lake. “I suppose this is your Hag of Lies, this earthblight I have heard so much about?”
Rundul felt the small stone sizzling in his fist.
“It is that and more, Fian. The magma holds urthvennim and blood magic, both. They twine about each other like human lovers – unconstrained debauchery, depravity. They spawn the Illincarnadine. Even standing so near to it sears my soul.”
“Well, if your soul is seared then mine is on fire. Time is a fleet thing, my friend, and we cannot know how much of it the Ath might purchase for us. If I am to engage the Blood King, we must cross to his island, and soon.” Eldurion’s gaze was as flat and as sharp as a blade. “You must give answer to this abomination.”
The Darad scowled, nodded. Each to his burden. Wisps of smoke seeped between the fast fingers of his fist. He took a single step nearer to the edge of the spumescent pool. Then another. Then a third, and halted.
The Eldest lowered his sword, moved back. Laved in the gaudy glow of lavalight, the aged Fian’s face seemed a gaping wound, worn and torn, weeping blood.
Rundul grinded his teeth. He glared at the magma that seethed at his feet. His heart was like a hammer striking the anvil of his breastbone, drubbing, drubbing, working his soul into a weapon of thousandfolded steely resolve. And he recalled then the words that the First Made of the Firstmade had spoken to him at the eaves of Ravenwood not so long before –
The urthvennim may be negated only through the spirit and strength of Maiden Earth, Captain. And Maiden Earth resides in this rock.
Rundul unclenched his fist, peered down upon the pebble is his palm. One last wight of white smoke floated off into the torrid hal-flight, leaving the little stone to lay dull and dormant upon the hard skin of the Darad’s hand. All too ordinary, utterly unremarkable. Impotent.
You need only cast it into the pool of the urthvennim, the Earthmaster had instructed, and Maiden Earth will see the evil destroyed.
The Captain of the Wandering Guard glanced from the pebble to the pool and back again. And then again. Thoughts crashed in his mind like boulders down mountainsides. Landslides of possibilities, probabilities; impracticalities, futilities; the plausible and the impossible. But Maiden Earth was immaculate – inviolate and inviolable. She was truth. Pure truth, unadorned and unadulterated. And neither she nor the uldwan Dor would ever lead Rundul astray.
You need only cast it into the pool of the urthvennim.
However, even the purest truth had no power unless it was believed, wholeheartedly and without reservation. There could be no apprehension, neither misgiving nor uncertainty. No shadow of doubt could be considered so much as remotely reasonable. And every truth needed at least one zealous believer, someone to carve it in stone and shout it to the world, or to write it down and share in silence with the curious few who would know, lest it be forgotten and lost to ignorance forever.
You need only cast it into the pool.
Rundul did not doubt. Rundul believed. Avidly, ardently. Passionately. In his Earthmaster. In Maiden Earth.
Cast it into the pool.
And he believed in himself.
Cast it.
So he
did.
A dance of light and shadow. Of scintillating brilliance and billowing darkness. A performance of the basest and most primal of passions. Specifically selected sequences of motion, fluid and elegant, choreographed to kill as many of the enemy as easily and as economically as possible. Lethal efficiency become an elevated art form. Mercurial movements, a dream of water and flame, smoke in the night, all set to the score of stylistic slaughter. The quiet shriek of a spearhead thrusting through armour; the sough of a slashing sword; murmurs of death. Yes, mere murmurs – for those that are dead do not cry out as they die again.
Prince Yllufarr was a blur of black and gold. Sibryddir sang. Canneas crooned. And Blade after unsouled Blade swooned before the fatal flourish of those steely refrains, their crimson forms pierced and torn, falling into dust upon the stone span of the bridge or tumbling in strange empty-eyed silence to the river of fire so very far below. Not that the undead warriors lacked skill and agility, nor did they want for strength or cunning. They were simply outclassed, outmatched, and in the limited space of the tunnel’s mouth their numbers counted for nothing.
Dijin Amora was not impressed.
The Blood Mage watched with the aristocratic indifference of the long dead as the Sun Lord effortlessly slaughtered the Blades it sent against him. The abominable creature remained aloof and unaffected, alternately examining its elegant fingers and picking infinitesimal specks of netherdust from its glossy red kimino. It sighed loudly and often, and even made several attempts at ostentatious oscitation – though when one has not breathed in three thousand years, one’s yawns may appear more like unseemly orgasmic facial contortions than anything related to the cooling of the brain. And, worthy of note, the occasional and inexplicable pelvic thrust does nothing to discourage such an indelicate allegory.
Undeath is a most unique and inimitable madness.
I was considered beautiful once, the Master General remembered. Yes, Dijin the Fine, they called me. Men and women, both, as I recall. Not surprising, that. What qualities, I wonder, made so many think so? Was it my comely face? These pretty eyes? This sweet smile? The creature peeled its fleshy lips back, gold-capped canines gleaming gaudily in the guttering halflight. It then frowned and placed one slim soft palm upon its sunken bosom. Or was it my warm and generous heart?
Across the bridge, the gold-black shadow danced, and several more Blades met their second and final deaths upon the lethal point of Nightsong and the keen edge of Coldwhisper. How many of the undead warriors had fallen now? Dozens? Scores? Half a hundred? The Blood Mage could have been neither less disaffected nor more disinterested. Why should he have been? Generals lose soldiers in battle. Old men quarreling, young men dying, that sort of thing. None of it mattered. It never had, and it never would.
The Blood Mage sighed, yawned ecstatically, and waved the remainder of the Blades forward. Some raced across the span, others proceeded in fast formation, still others stepped upward and strode through the red air. But all went to their doom.
Dijin Amora polished the head of his sceptre with the cuff of one lavish sleeve.
Or perhaps it was my considerable capacity for compassion.
The little stone struck the surface of the magma and sank without a sound. And in the anxious string of moments that followed… nothing happened. Nothing whatsoever. The boiling pool continued to bubble and hiss through great crimson cracks in its dark crust as though naught was amiss. The scorching heat of the place neither increased nor lessened. All remained as it had been, unaltered and undisturbed. But then came a sound like a groan, and something moved in the depths, and the molten rock parted at the place where the pebble had disappeared. A black gap formed, an apparent void in the magma, roughly circular in shape and perhaps half a dozen feet in diameter. A hollow of nihility, it seemed, so dark that it shone, reflecting the reddish light of the encircling unguent as would a sheet of polished onyx.
“So that’s what it does,” Rundul muttered into his beard. He peered at his empty palm, then lowered his arm. “I should’ve guessed.”
Behind him and to his left, Eldurion enquired, “What has happened, Stone Lord?”
“The Maiden Earth present in that pebble negated the power of the urthvennim, as Brulwar said it would, rapidly cooling the magma, turning the liquid rock to solid stone. Obsidian, to be precise.”
“That sounds simple enough,” allowed the aged Fian. “It therefore stands to reason that if we had enough stones, we could fashion a walkway of sorts.”
“Maybe.”
“So how many stones did you bring?”
Rundul’s countenance clouded. “Just the one.”
“Just the one? Teller’s Tongue, Captain! Why would you only bring – ”
“One was all the Earthmaster gave me, Fian. I assume he had his reasons, the most likely being that we’d need wagonloads of stones to counter the amount of urthvennim found here. But it isn’t the rock that contests the earthblight so capably, it’s the power of the Maiden residing within.” He looked upon the keen edges of his war-axe, and there was a shadow akin to sorrow in the creases about his eyes. “We must find other… sources.”
“But we are beneath the Bloodshards.”
The Darad grunted. “Yes, we are, Fian – where the Maiden does not go, and the Mother has long turned away.”
“Then where might we find these other sources?”
“Here.” And with the weight of a thousand anvils in his warrior heart, Rundul tossed his war-axe into the red roil. “Or so I hope.”
The great weapon fell flat upon the surface of the magma. The axe did not immediately submerge, but remained buoyant and afloat, its broad blades like steel wings outstretched against an inverted scarlet sky. But then one killing edge dipped precariously, slipping away and down, and the storied war-axe of Rundul of Axar swiftly sank from sight. Another netherworldly groan emanated from the depths of the pool, louder this time and more agonized, and a second mass of obsidian formed where the axe had disappeared. Solid and shining, this formation was significantly larger than the first, its flat face roughly rhombic in shape.
As suspected, expected.
The Stone Lord closed his eyes, sighed. Something rumbled in the hollow of his bosom. His hands flexed at his thighs, huge and empty.
“I suppose that was your only axe as well,” the Eldest of the Fiannar muttered.
Rundul did not reply. He peered upon the mere of molten stone, the muscles of his face rigid beneath the waves of his heavy beard. Memories tugged at his consciousness, memories with meaning. The voice of the Mighty One, of Drogul the kirun-tar, Lord of Doomfall. And that of black Brulwar, Earthmaster and uldwan Dor. Words that signified more than brotherly reassurance. Advice beyond motivation, surpassing simple inspiration and encouragement –
The answer lies in your own self only, my brother. Specific direction and guidance. You will not fail. Clandestine tuition. The power is within you.
Instructions.
Rundul closed his eyes. He understood now. Yes, he understood. All too well.
“Would some of Maiden Earth’s strength reside in the suit of inrinil that you wear beneath your leathers?”
“It would, Fian,” responded the Darad through clenched teeth, “but not nearly enough.” His hands balled into fists. “However, there is one other source.”
The answer lies in your own self only, my brother.
Eldurion swiveled his glittering gaze toward his companion. Comprehension was swift in coming, almost immediate, but it came cold and cruel, a shard of ice into the skull. Of their own accord, the aged Fian’s lips clamped themselves together, tight and thin and bloodless. But despite the chill set of his countenance there was uncharacteristic warmth, even compassion, in the timbre his voice.
“You would do this, good Rundul?”
The answer lies in your own self only.
The Darad opened his eyes, made an amused sound, perhaps even smiled.
“Without hesitation, Fian. As I told your
worthy Lord Alvarion, there is no burden that I wouldn’t gladly bear for a friend.”
Eldurion stared for a moment. He then lowered his head, his long grey hair hanging limp and low, veiling his aspect as would a shroud for the dead. The forbidding veteran felt a sudden aridity constrict his throat, and a telltale heat pricked the corners of his eyes.
“This I know, my dear friend.” He stepped near, and placed one hand upon the Darad’s broad shoulder. “When we are done here I will speak of your valour, should I be able to do so, and should there be someone to hear me. Your tale shall not go untold.”
In your own self only.
“Not untold, friend Eldurion, but certainly overshadowed by the tale of what you will do here this day.” The Darad reached up and placed his hand upon the Fian’s own. “Your glory will outshine mine – and I couldn’t be happier for it.”
Eldurion raised his head. His eyes were bright but dry. And his voice when he spoke was clear and steady. “Stone and steel, brave Rundul of Axar.”
The power is within you.
“Stone and steel, my friend,” answered the Stone Lord. “Always.”
Within you.
And with neither a glance back nor another word, the Captain of the Wandering Guard waded into the boiling lake of magma.
Shadows danced and clouds of darkness swirled. Golden lightning exploded in the storm where the sword and spear of the Sun Lord whirled, and death came twirling down to claim its own. Impaled upon Sibryddir’s shining shaft the hapless carcass of a Dead Sword flailed – then Coldwhisper hissed and hewed it in half, and the curse of undeath finally failed. As the shadows ended their fatal reel, and away the clouds of darkness careened, Prince Yllufarr lowered his lethal steel, and a ghastly light in his pale eyes gleamed.
The Blood Mage gasped a single ragged breath – for even the dead fear the god of death. But then the creature bowed gracefully, graciously, its arms pantomiming with inflated pomp and flourish. It soon straightened, voluptuous lips pared back once more, elongated fangs flashing luridly in the half-dark of the chasm.