Dragondoom: A Novel of Mithgar

by Dennis L McKiernan

  And once more they found no Kammerling; and the shadows writhed obscenely and shouted silent oaths as time fled irretrievably into the past.

  At the head of the next flight was a door, locked, not a trapdoor this time, but one that stood upright; and it was carved with strange symbols, for the most part unknown to either Elyn or Thork, though some could be recognized to represent stars, and the Sun partially eclipsed by the Moon, and one of the great hairy stars—harbingers of doom—its long tail streaming out behind.

  Thork carefully examined the lock, and then began to probe at its mechanism with a hooked metal spike slipped out from a pocket in his belt. Long he labored, yet at last the latch clicked.

  Easing the door open, they peered into the final chamber within the tower, a room at the very peak of the ebon turret. Portions of the chamber were lit by luminescent globes dangling from chains, from which the gyring shadows seemed to shrink, to withdraw; yet elsewhere ebon pools and blots of darkness clotted, blocking all vision, including Thork’s. Elyn’s soul recoiled at the thought of entering this sinister room, yet to find the Kammerling she had little choice. “Let’s go,” she murmured to Thork, and stepped across the threshold.

  Now the silent twisting blackness seemed to be shouting curses at them, and laughing madly and mouthing unheard threats, and screaming a noiseless alarm through the night; and its dark coils reached outward and clutched at them, as if trying to smother, to strangle the two, to bind them and hold them as would a spider’s web. Yet inward pressed Elyn and Thork, and they found that they were within Andrak’s living quarters.

  They discovered a bed and chairs and tables, and a desk against the wall. And carefully, they searched them all, working their way slowly around the room. There were astrolabes, and strange circular devices engraved with stars and moons and suns, and they all rotated on separate but finely geared tracks. And there were more books with strange sinister writing. There were crystals of all types, some hung on chains, and stone tiles carven with runes, and arcane cards marked with pictures of pentacles and cups, wands and swords, and other such, some with drawings of creatures and towers and skeletons and fools, warriors and Kings and Ladies, and succubi and incubi and daemons. And on one table they found twelve bleached skulls, ranging in size from very large to small. “Aie!” wailed Thork, pointing at the largest skull in the collection. “This is most wicked, for surely that be the head of an Utrun, a Stone Giant. Andrak has slain an Earthmaster. And look! There also be the skull of a Waeran as well. Foul. Foul. . . .”

  Elyn’s eyes scanned the remaining skulls. “And these others?’

  ‘Ůkh, Khōl, Man, Ogru,” answered Thork, “these I recognize. And I deem these two to be Châk and Elf, but as to the remainder, I cannot say.”

  Repelled, Thork turned away and began searching the drawers of a bureau, unable to bear the sight of what he perceived to be a foulness done to Utrun and Waeran; even the sight of the Châk cranium did not bring such loathing against Andrak as did the largest and the smallest of the twelve skulls. Yet Elyn lingered a moment, staring in revulsion at the horrid collection.

  And the silent shrieking shadows gibbered noiselessly.

  Suddenly Elyn found that she was listening, intently, not to the soundless tittering screaming shadows but to something outside the tower. “Hearken, Thork!” she sissed, and he ceased his rummaging. In the quiet that followed they both heard the faint cries of the warders atop the walls . . . or within the courtyard . . . and the harsh clatter of gears. “Andrak! He returns! Let us fly from here!”

  Swiftly they strode from the chamber, Thork pausing to twist a knob that would latch the lock, closing the door behind with a click.

  And outside, cloven hooves hammered up the road twisting ’round the dark companion spire.

  Down the staircase along the wall they ran, down and through the clutching murk and across the library, past the books and tomes and scrolls and pamphlets and to the next open stairwell, Thork leading, Elyn following.

  And a chariot boomed inward across the drawbridge.

  Down into the smithy fled the twain, past the tables, past the forge, past the anvils, past the red throne and to the steps opposite. Down these they started, yet suddenly Thork stopped. “I have it!” he cried, and dashed back up the stone stair.

  And through the gate hammered the Hèlsteeds, the iron-rimmed wheels slamming across the cobbles of the bailey.

  “Wait, Thork,” cried Elyn, “you step beyond the protection of the amulet.” But the Dwarf was gone, not heeding her words; or mayhap her warning was lost in the labyrinth of shadows, the murk smothering the sound. Bewildered, Elyn ran after—the Wolfmage’s voice echoing in her mind: “. . . one will die without the other. . . .”—and she came back into the smithy; yet without Thork to guide her through the darkness she became disoriented and lost in the shadows—“. . . without the other. . . .” But suddenly she stepped to the edge of the gloom and dimly, by the rudden light of the glowing forge coals, she could see Thork across the room. He was at the table where lay the broken tools, and he reached out and took hold of the old rusted forge hammer with the cracked helve and the broken peen, and laughed, for what the eyes saw was not what the hands felt: the glamour cast upon the maul made it appear rusted, damaged, old, broken, yet his hands knew that this was the Rage Hammer, smooth, unbroken, with a marvelous balance and the touch and heft of starsilver. And Thork turned to go, and Elyn started to call out to him, yet suddenly, neither could move.

  For Andrak had stepped into the room.

  And he hissed arcane words. Words that burned into the mind and paralyzed. And his eyes glared into those of Thork. And pinned him in place as would a serpent’s gaze ensnare a rabbit.

  Elyn wanted to scream, Run, Thork, run! but she found she could not, for though she was not the direct target of Andrak’s spell, still the very reflection of his power within the chamber rendered her virtually immobile: she could but barely move. Seeking aid, slowly, agonizingly, her left hand went to her throat, and clutched the silveron nugget. But even the touch of that puissant token did not break Andrak’s hold on her.

  The Mage pushed back his hood, and Elyn did not know whether she looked upon a Man or an Elf. Dusky were his features, and narrow, his nose hooked, as a vulture. His slanted eyes seemed all black, and no pupil could be discerned. Casting aside the Hèlsteed whip that he bore in his left, he stalked toward Thork, one long grasping hand outstretched, claw-like, and an ebon substance coated his sharpened talons. And Elyn knew that it portended death to be scratched by the Mage’s black claws.

  “So,” hissed Andrak, “it was you I sensed coming to steal that which I hold. Fool! Yet I give you this, Dubh: you have gotten farther than any other would-be hero who has sought after the accursed Kammerling: nine have tried, you are the tenth; all have failed; the last two, storm-slain by my hand.”

  And suddenly Elyn knew that Andrak believed that Thork was alone; the Mage did not know that she stood in the shadows. And she knew that if she were but free, she could cut down the Magus with her saber . . . yet she did not know whether she could reach him ere he slew Thork. What was wanted was a weapon in hand that could strike from afar: The Hèlsteed whip! Where did it skitter when he cast it down? She could not see it in the shadows. What else? . . .—My sling! Fighting the stunning paralysis, with great effort, inch by struggling inch, Elyn managed to move her arm, to get her fingers to her waist, to slip her sling from her belt, to take it in throwing hand. But she knew that there was no way that she would have the control to untie the small bullet bag from her girt and undo the drawstring and withdraw a lead ball and load it. Yet even could she do all that, still she had not the wherewithal to sling a shot at the Mage, for she was like unto one who had been benumbed, nigh immobile. And so she stood there, left hand at her throat gripping the token of power, right hand at her waist holding her sling at her side.

  And all the while Elyn had struggled to gain hold of her sling, Andrak’s voice had hissed th
rough the shadows: “You are the tenth fool to come calling since that arrogant, preening Drake, Black Kalgalath, first bore the hammer unto me. Ten fools in twelve hundred years—three this year alone. Yet you are the only one to reach this spire, to breach my walls, to gain the tower, to step into this room, a trespassing for which you will pay a price beyond your worst nightmares.”

  And beads of sweat stood out upon Thork’s brow as he struggled to move, yet not a muscle twitched, for he was the direct target of Andrak’s sorcery, and it was too powerful.

  “Dubh,” sneered Andrak, “little did you know that my sentinel shadows shrieked warning the moment you intruded into my sanctum, my room atop this tower; but even so, still you somehow managed to escape being bound by my warding murk. Though I do not detect it, you must have some token of power about you, else you would even now be clutched in coils of blackness within my quarters. Heed! I would have that token so that in the future I may know how to ward against it, or one like it. Where is it hidden, Dubh? Where? . . .

  “Pah! You cannot answer, and it is of no importance, for I will find it when I have slain you.”

  The dark Mage stepped the last step unto the transfixed Dwarf, Andrak’s voice once again a malevolent whisper. And there in the coils of twisting murk his hissing words fell like drops of death from a viper’s mouth: “Know this, Dubh, the manner of your death: When I touch you, you will break out in great dark pustules, and you will bloat, and turn black, and split open as would a days-old dead beast in a relentless Sun, and puss will spill from you as a malodorous flowing stream. Yet you will not be dead—though you will wish it were so—but alive instead, watching your own body swell and split and gush. Long will you scream in unremitting agony, to no avail, for you will indeed die in the end, not swiftly, mind you, but gradually, and in wracking pain in the days to come, amid the stench and spoil and corruption of your own body, a corruption that I will visit upon you. And slowly you will decay, a living rot, your shrieks becoming whines, becoming moans, becoming whispers, becoming a wordless bubbling as your lips decompose, as your lungs become a liquid putrescence, as your eyes dissolve, as your body becomes a cankerous liquescent running. In the end you will be nought but slime and bone. And when it is done, I will add another Dubh skull to my collection.”

  With these words hissing in his ears, Thork managed to do what none had e’er done before; what effort it cost him cannot be measured—veins stood out upon his forehead, his face turned dark, his muscles strained, sweat runnelled down into his eyes. Yet even though the Mage’s will was bent upon him, Thork managed to move—slowly, jerkily—raising up his arm, attempting to bring the Kammerling into play.

  Andrak’s eyes widened in startlement at this inconceivable motion, and then he focused all of his energy upon this fool before him and reached out with his black talons.

  And at the very instant Andrak turned the whole of his sorcerous power upon Thork, suddenly Elyn was free. And she broke the thong on the silveron nugget and set it into the sling and whipped her arm ’round and out, loosing the silver bullet.

  Like an argent streak, the starsilver amulet sissed across the room with deadly accuracy to strike Andrak in the temple, the token crashing through the side of his skull and into his brain.

  And it burst into argent werefire!

  Andrak grabbed his head and screamed hoarsely, his shrieks of agony echoing throughout the tower. Blinding silver light burst forth from his skull and through his fingers, as if a savage inferno, a raging fulgence, furiously burned within. And Andrak’s howls shrilled upward, and he clutched his head and spun and whirled and jerked spastically, jittering in a horrid dance of death, the argent luminance blasting outward, driving the whining shadows back, a thin wailing wringing forth from the churning blackness as if in pain, silver light from the spectral flames piercing the darkness through, destroying the twisting, gibbering, coiling murk, burning it, argent wildfire racing through the shrieking shadows, leaving nought behind.

  And Andrak thrashed and jerked and screamed, his feet drumming the floor in a tattoo of doom. While all about, the shadows blazed, silver burning black, and shrieked a thin shrilling death cry.

  And of a sudden, still clutching his skull, the Mage fell to his knees, his screams weakening, fading to a keening wail, to a whine, to a whisper.

  And the spectral light went out.

  And Andrak fell dead.

  And Thork was freed from the Wizard’s spell.

  And now Elyn remembered the exact words of the Wolfmage: “. . . if you are the one, then it is written that this nugget will protect you in horror’s domain; yet there will come a time when you will sling it from you . . . but that is as it should be, for the token, too, has a destiny to fulfill; it is so ordained.” And indeed the token of power had fulfilled its destiny: Andrak was slain. The tittering twisting shadows within the tower were destroyed.

  And Thork and Elyn were alive, and Thork held the true Kammerling.

  But they were trapped within a black fortress teeming with enemy, their silveron amulet gone.

  CHAPTER 37

  Flight

  Early Winter, 3E1602

  [The Present]

  In the silence that followed Andrak’s death, Elyn and Thork looked at one another across the chamber, a chamber lighted by a low ruddy glow from the forge coals, a chamber filled with shadows, but none of them sinister, coiling, twisting, none of them tittering, mumbling, chanting. And a great smile crossed Thork’s face; Elyn’s too. They were glad, for each had survived. Yet the celebration was fleeting, for reality came crashing down upon both of them: they heard a ghastly, hollow voice calling up from the door below—“Gulgok! Gulgok!”—yet the Slûk tongue was used, and so they did not know what was said.

  “Thork, we’ve got to get out of here.” Urgency filled Elyn’s voice as she stepped to one of the shuttered windows, while he slipped the Kammerling into the warhammer loop at his belt. “Andrak’s death screams will have alerted this entire fortress, and we no longer have the protection of the starsilver stone.” Swiftly, she worked loose the fastenings, swinging the wooden window cover aside. Chill wind groaned and swirled inward through the opening, and the darkness raced above; the night sky was now overcast with a solid bank of fleeing clouds. They looked out into the bailey, and saw the ranks of the wayguard still arrayed, the gate still open, the portcullis still raised; and below, at the foot of the tower, the Hèlsteeds stood in harness, the chariot ready, Rutch attendants holding the reins. For although Elyn and Thork knew it not, the Master had not given the order to put the ’Steeds away, to draw the bridge and close the gates and drop the portcullis, and the Spawn remembered times when Andrak had left again, and might do so once more this night as well, though it was perilously close to dawn, and the assembled Foul Folk eyed the scudding sky nervously.

  As to the screams: often such sounds emanated from the ebon tower, though never before had such a silvery light shone so, flickering out through all of the arrow loops on the lower floor, as if something bright and deadly had burned there and on the levels above, a piercing light that cause the Rutchen crowd to quail with fear.

  “Two possibilities, Prince Thork,” said Elyn, stepping back from the window. “We can pass through the iron door, make our way to the attic, where we left the ropes; then it’s out the western window and rappel down the side of this spire. Or, I can put on Andrak’s cloak and attempt to fool them long enough for us to escape by chariot out through the open gate we see before us.”

  “Gulgok!” Again the hollow, dead voice called up.

  “Without the amulet, both ways are full of risk,” came Thork’s quick assessment, “the iron door most especially, for those below are nigh onto discovering what has been done, and in moments we will have to make our way through hundreds of Andrak’s minions, and they will be searching for us. And we cannot simply hide, for they will search all, now that Andrak is dead. And, as you have pointed out, should we gain the attic and escape by rope, still we
have some seven or eight hundred feet to climb down at night ere reaching the bottom; and there is likely to be a welcoming committee awaiting us. Kruk! Had I only reasoned out the Kammerling’s hiding place earlier—”

  “Gulgok! Gulgok!” The ghastly voice was louder, as if the caller had stepped into the tower.

  “Can you drive a chariot?” asked Thork.

  “By Hèl, Thork, I am a Warrior Maiden trained: I can drive anything! And that chariot is our way to freedom!”

  “Then, Warrior Maiden, chariot it is,” grinned Thork.

  “Gulgok! Gulgok!” The flat, dead voice sounded even closer, and now they heard footsteps on the spiral stairs.

  Putting a finger to his lips, cautioning Elyn to silence, Thork took up his axe and stepped into the shadows to one side of the stairwell coming upward, motioning Elyn with her saber to stand opposite.

  And they waited, the wind outside the window moaning softly, the footsteps drawing nearer, Elyn gripping her saber and listening to her own racing heart.

  “Gulgok!” A head appeared above the opening, and mounting up came one of the corpse-foe, and Elyn’s heart sank, for lore had it that they could only be slain by—

  Shlak! Thork’s axe sheared through the Guul’s neck, and the creature’s head went flying, bouncing from the wall and into the chamber as the decapitated corpse tumbled backward down the stairs, black blood spewing.