The town had been built as a border fortress, and its houses were constructed mostly of stone as a result, so that they would not burn readily. After three hundred years of neglect, many houses and buildings had lost roofs and floors, and some walls had fallen, but many still stood, making the streets a maze, with some routes blocked by rubble, others still open, and all divided by crumbling buildings.
Garth, armed with the Sword of Bheleu, did not bother to find his way through this labyrinth; instead, he dismounted and marched in a straight line, Koros trailing behind. Whenever he found his way blocked by a standing wall or a pile of debris, he blasted it apart with the Sword of Bheleu-only open pits were sufficient to turn him aside. When he came across those, he would pause and send a wave of flame down into them, to incinerate any Aghadites who might be lurking therein.
The use of the sword's power, he found, came very easily, almost without any thought or effort at all; the god's long restraint had not affected the increase in power that accompanied the establishment of the Fourteenth Age. Garth discovered quickly that all that vast resource was at his command, ready and eager to be applied.
When he had held the sword before, the Age of Bheleu had been just beginning. The god's power had been erratic, sometimes manifesting itself unbidden, other times appearing only after great mental effort. That was no longer the case. Now, Garth had almost infinite energy literally at his fingertips.
He had been cutting a swath through the ruins for an hour or so, enjoying the exhilaration of battering down the empty houses until he had almost forgotten what he was looking for, when a red-clad figure appeared, perched precariously atop a wall off to his right.
Garth did not notice the human's presence at first; he was basking in the delight of shattering a foot-thick stone pillar with a single blow of his sword and therefore did not see whether the man had arrived magically or had simply climbed up the other side of the wall.
"Ho, Garth!" the human called.
Startled, Garth lowered the Sword of Bheleu and turned toward the source of the voice.
"You'll never find us that way!" the Aghadite said.
With a growl, Garth swung the sword about, pointing it toward the human. After an hour of practicing with the sword's power, he had no intention of wasting time in unnecessary pursuit. He had learned better.
"We've got a surprise for you in town," the man began; then the sword spat flame toward him, blazing across the intervening distance in an instant. Immediately, red mist gathered about him, but Garth listened with satisfaction to the Aghadite's screams as the sword's fire reached him first. The spell would deliver a burned corpse.
It did exactly that; Haggat stared in dismay at the smoldering remains. He had been using up transporting crystals far faster than he liked, and to little effect. He had lost another good agent. He had not expected the overman to react so quickly.
At least, however, Garth was still searching Skelleth and was not on his way to Dыsarra. The cult would have time to devise an effective strategy.
That assumed, of course, that any strategy could be effective against the Sword of Bheleu. Haggat was not sure that was the case. He began to wonder whether the cult might have done better to have forgotten permanently about its vengeance against Garth.
It was too late now, though.
Perhaps the overman would think that he had succeeded in killing all his wife's assassins, as in fact he had, and would abandon his retaliation,
Somehow, though, Haggat doubted that, in light of both Garth's oath to destroy the cult's temple and what awaited him in Skelleth's marketplace. The high priest wondered if committing another atrocity might have been a mistake.
He looked down at the blackened, crumbling heap in the pentagram and hoped very much that Garth would be satisfied by the three cultists he had killed.
Garth was satisfied, but only for a very brief moment, as he thought of the transporting spell dumping a flaming ruin before Aghadites expecting a living man.
That very thought, however, gave him pause. If he had killed the man, who had completed the spell? Somebody had, apparently, because the red smoke had gathered, thickened, and then vanished, taking the burning Aghadite with it. By the time he disappeared, the man was almost certainly already dead.
Had the human set up the spell in advance so that he would not need to complete it, but only to set it in motion? Garth wished he knew more of the exact mechanism involved.
And whether the man had worked the spell himself or not, could Garth be sure that there were not still more Aghadites lurking in Skelleth? He had, as far as he knew, encountered only the three he had slain, but that did not mean that there were no others.
That corpse had gone somewhere, he was certain of that.
Had he killed all those directly involved in his wife's death, the desecration of her corpse, and the murder of the guard at the gate? Others might still be hidden. For that matter, he could not be sure that these three had actually killed Kyrith at all.
He had every intention of returning to Ur-Dormulk and killing the monster, then proceeding from there to Dыsarra to fulfill his vow to destroy the headquarters of Aghad's cult, but he wanted to be certain first that he had dealt with the sect's outpost in Skelleth and with those who had actually taken part in Kyrith's murder.
He tried to think, to marshal what information he had, in hopes of finding some clue that would tell him what he wanted to know. His thoughts seemed vague and elusive. He wondered if he had been hasty in killing the last of the trio so quickly, rather than taking him alive and interrogating him.
The man's last words had been about a surprise of some kind-"in town," he had said.
That, Garth was sure, meant in the inhabited portion of Skelleth; most likely, he thought, he would find whatever it was right in the marketplace. Perhaps that would provide the clue he needed to lead him to more Aghadites.
He was vaguely aware that the surprise might be unpleasant, but that seemed unimportant. With only the prospect of more enemies to kill in his mind, he turned and headed toward the square. He told-himself that he had no time to pick his way through the winding streets and marched straight ahead, continuing to cut through every obstacle with the Sword of Bheleu.
It took a severe conscious effort to restrain himself when he reached the first of the occupied houses, but he managed it; from that point on, he found his way through the streets, forcing down the bloodlust, forcing himself to be calm. Koros followed him placidly, undisturbed by the sword's fiery displays of power and seemingly indifferent to the route it followed.
Garth was still a few short blocks from the market, his anger faded to insignificance under the steady pressure of his will, when he heard the wailing begin.
It was an eerie sound, a wavering, high-pitched note that went on and on interminably. It sounded like a human voice, but not quite natural, somehow; it grated on his nerves and made him feel uneasy, despite the aura of invincibility the sword bestowed upon him.
If it was a human voice, Garth told himself, then whoever was wailing had to be in a state of indescribable emotional upset. He had heard men scream and bellow and whimper, but he had never heard a wailing like this. It was not a scream or an ordinary cry; it had no words, no rhythm, no break in the constant stream of sound.
Unsettled, he hurried forward, Koros following at his heels.
He entered the marketplace from the northwest, waving for Koros to stay back out of the way, and found himself at the rear of a silent crowd. The wailing came from somewhere on the far side, near the door of Saram's house.
He glanced back, to be sure that Koros was staying behind; it was standing in the mouth of the street and glancing about as if the sound made it uneasy, too. Reassured that the warbeast would cause no trouble, Garth peered over the heads of the gathered humans.
Something dark was hanging in the open doorway of the Baron's house; shadows and distance hid the details, but Garth felt a sick certainty that this was the Aghadite su
rprise. The crowd faced toward the thing in the doorway, but had left an empty semicircle around it, and the wailing seemed to emanate, not from the house, but from somewhere in that semicircle.
Determined to find out what was happening, Garth marched forward and began shoving his way through the crowd; people parted readily when they saw him and almost seemed to be hurrying him onward. He crossed the square as quickly as if it were empty and emerged at last into the little cleared area.
He found there that the wailing was coming from Frima, who knelt facing the door of her home, her head thrown back, her arms limp at her sides, her eyes shut and her mouth open, pouring forth her grief.
Garth would not have guessed that such a sound could come from a lone woman, particularly one as small as Frima; he stared at her in helpless astonishment for several seconds before thinking to look up at the cause of her despair.
The ghastly thing that hung suspended in the doorway by its outstretched arms was all that remained of Saram, Baron of Skelleth. His wrists had been nailed to the doorframe with heavy metal spikes. His eyes were gone, leaving bloody sockets, and more blood spilled from his open, tongueless mouth. The front of his embroidered robe had been cut away and strips had been peeled from his chest, forming four red runes that spelled out AGHAD.
Grief and rage mingled with a feeling of helplessness before such savagery; Garth felt a need to do something, anything, to react to this new abomination, to help the woman who knelt, keening, before him. Fighting down a boiling wave of anger, he suppressed the urge to send forth white-hot flame to destroy everything before him. That would do no good, he told himself; it would only leave Frima still more bereft.
"You," he called, pointing at the nearest man who looked strong enough to be of use, "get him down from there!"
The man hesitated; Garth growled and lifted the Sword of Bheleu. "Help him," Garth ordered, pointing to two more villagers. "You women, prepare a place for him to lie." He spotted Sarim's housekeeper in the crowd and called to her, "Find something to dress him in!"
The villagers did not move quickly enough to please him; he struggled against the urge to blast them all. Frima's keening bit through him, adding to his irritation, until he could not tolerate it further. He reached down, grabbed her shoulder roughly, and dragged her to her feet.
She refused to stand on her own; he supported her with one hang as he barked at her, "Listen to me, woman!"
Her wailing died away as the overman shook her; her head fell forward and her eyes opened, but then fixed on her husband's mutilated corpse. She did not speak and would not meet Garth's gaze.
"Listen to me!" Garth insisted. "Your husband is dead; there is nothing that anyone can do about that. It does no good to bewail his death like this. You do yourself only harm by kneeling here and screaming."
Frima hung limply in his grasp, and a sympathetic murmur ran through the crowd. The villagers were all watching intently every second of the drama taking place in their midst.
"Stand on your feet, woman! Do not let the scum who did this see how much they have hurt you!"
Frima met Garth's eyes for an instant, then turned her gaze back to the doorway. The man Garth had chosen was trying to pry out a spike, using a knife someone had handed him. He was making a mess of the wooden frame, but carefully avoiding any contact between the blade and Saram's dead flesh.
The Dыsarran swallowed and twisted her dangling feet about so that she could stand. Garth loosened his grip, and she did not collapse.
"The cult of Aghad has killed your husband and vilely abused his body; stand strong now so that they will not have harmed his dignity as well," Garth muttered in Frima's ear.
She nodded.
"You are the Baroness of Skelleth," Garth reminded her quietly. "You must behave accordingly."
Frima nodded again, then demanded hoarsely, "Where are they?"
Startled, Garth asked, "What?"
"Where are the filth who murdered him?"
"I don't know," Garth admitted. "I killed one of them just a few moments ago, when he came to boast to me of this latest crime, but there must have been others. I have sworn to destroy them all when I find them, and the temples and shrines of their foul god with them."
"I'm coming with you," Frima said.
"There is no need," Garth told her. "Saram's death will be avenged. I swore to destroy the cult for what it did to Kyrith, and this new butchery strengthens my resolve beyond what I can express in words. I will make them all pay for this."
"I am coming with you," Frima insisted. "They killed my man."
Garth thought it best to shift the grounds for argument. "You still live, my lady, and are still the Baroness of Skelleth. You have other concerns."
"They don't matter. Are there any Aghadites in Skelleth, or will you be going to Dыsarra?"
The first spike came free, and the men struggling with it hurried to catch Saram's body as it fell. While two held the corpse, a third began working on the other spike.
"I don't know where they are," Garth replied, "but I will find them."
"We will find them."
Garth could not think of any good way to deal with this. He turned from the intense, fixed stare that Frima was giving him and watched as the workers freed Saram's other wrist.
They stood for a moment holding their lord's body, uncertain what to do next.
"Take him inside," Garth said. "The housekeeper will find a place for him."
Two of the men earned the corpse out of sight while the third closed the doors.
Reluctant to meet Frima's gaze again, Garth looked about and realized that the market was still crowded with onlookers. A surge of irrational anger at their gawking boiled up within him.
"Go home, you people!" he called. "There is nothing more to see!"
He was answered with muffled voices and shuffling feet, but the villagers seemed reluctant to depart.
"Go away, I said!" he bellowed, raising the Sword of Bheleu in one hand. The blade glowed white, crackling with chained energy, and the crowd melted away rapidly before the implied threat. In a moment the square was empty of all save the overman, the new widow, and the warbeast that waited at the northwest corner.
Garth glanced about again, trying to decide what to do with Frima; he did not think it would be wise to send her home, into the house where her husband's mangled corpse waited. He was unsure how humans dealt with the deaths of those they loved.
"Are there any rites you must perform?" he asked.
"No," she replied. "We don't bother with fancy funerals in Dыsarra. When the other cults kill someone, the body usually isn't found; we grieve, but hold no ceremonies. The people of Skelleth can attend to the ceremonies. We have to go avenge him." She looked about the square and noticed Koros, waiting patiently, at ease now that the keening had stopped. Without hesitation, she slipped from under Garth's hand and began walking unsteadily across the marketplace toward the warbeast.
Garth followed. He could easily have stopped her, but was not sure how she would react.
Halfway across the square, she stumbled; he lunged forward and caught her before she fell. They stood for a moment while she regained her balance.
"Garth," someone called, in a hideous dry croak.
The voice was instantly recognizable. Garth turned, astonished, and saw the Forgotten King standing in the doorway of the King's Inn, the Book of Silence tucked under one arm.
"There are no worshippers of Aghad in Skelleth," the old man said. "Their transporting spells are not affected by distance; they have been striking directly from their temple in Dыsarra."
Garth stood dumbfounded by this unexpected speech. He knew that the Forgotten King never volunteered information without a reason.
"Then we have to go to Dыsarra," Frima said calmly.
The Forgotten King nodded, moving his head very slightly beneath the concealing hood of his robe.
"Why are you telling us this?" Garth asked.
"So that you will
not waste time."
"Will you swear it to be true, by The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken, at the cost of all oaths I have made to you if you lie?" Garth could think of nothing more binding; he knew that the old man would not be eager to give up the vows Garth had sworn. He was startled by his own cleverness in coming up with such a promise so readily; his thoughts had not been very clear of late.
"I swear it," the King replied.
Garth looked at the shadows that hid the old man's eyes, and at the firm line of his mouth, set in dry, wrinkled skin above the thin white beard that trailed from his chin. He glanced at Frima, who was obviously waiting for him to accompany her in pursuit of revenge, and at Koros, still standing patiently, and finally at the Sword of Bheleu, which dangled from his right hand, its tip almost dragging in the dust of the market, the red gem in its pommel flickering faintly. He still did not know why the Forgotten King should volunteer such information. Perhaps, he thought, the old man was eager to get the sword back, lest it gain too strong a hold upon Garth; he would want the overman to go about his errand as quickly as possible, so that the sword's return would not be delayed. That would be in Garth's own interest as well.
"Very well," he said at last. "Then I will go to Dыsarra and I will destroy the cult of Aghad there. I swore I would and I will honor that oath. But I go alone."
"No!" Frima cried. "I'm coming with you!"
"I do not want to endanger you, Frima, and the journey will be very dangerous. You must stay in Skelleth." His major concern was that the Sword of Bheleu might usurp control of him and cause him to kill any traveling companions, but he did not care to explain that. It would be too much like admitting weakness to say that he feared he would be unable to control his own body.
"I have to avenge Saram! There's nothing I want in Skelleth. Besides, you'll need a guide; you don't know your way around Dыsarra as I do. I grew up there."
"No," Garth began, but before he could continue, Frima interrupted.
"Besides, do you think I'm safe here? You heard what the old man said; the Aghadites can strike anywhere, and they've just heard you say that you don't want me hurt. I'm a target now. If you don't take me with you, I'll follow you on my own."
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