A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  Kulith pointed with his sword, to urge them all to go forward, and a large, long column of buggers built up, much like the one he had made to take Fugoe Castle, and they all moved on through the broken gate, down the passage of hot stones and into the great courtyard that stood at the center of the Stone Pile. Immediately, they came under fire from several hundred archers, seemingly materialized off the walls and appeared on the balconies there, where they were now needed. Kulith took an arrow through his shoulder, and another slapped off his helm. There were steps and landings in the middle on each side of the court, that led up to the open doors of the second story, and they now rushed at the closest set of these, and began to fight with a group of trolls and ghouls standing side by side there in its defense, while more arrows rained down on them from above. They speared the living and the dead both with thring lances, and chopped them all up when they got close enough to do so.

  Another door gave way, and a rush of fresh rebels soon entered the courtyard from another low passage, and they began to fight for another set of stairs, this one only now lightly defended. The archers above began to be cut down by the buggers who had climbed the first set of stairs, with another vampire, bouncing around and fighting them there. Though the sun had now risen up and made all the thrings weaker, no direct sunlight had come down into the court of the bastion.

  They worked up the stairs inside the citadel, getting control of one four storey side block of it first, the one opposite Vous Vox’s sanctum, and they threw the defenders out the windows, and hung old sheets to show that it was taken. Archers now shot across at each other, from the windows on the opposite sides. Some of the defenders attempted to now give up, but in typical bugger fashion they were slaughtered, and the bodies thrown off the balcony rails to drop down into the court.

  Vous Vox used his power then, and he suddenly sent a stream of half a dozen globes of blackness to float down upon the attackers, and those that were touched by them fell, and withered in pain, as if they had been burned by frost or fire, and their skin and armor cracked and sloughed off. They groaned and rolled in agony, and some were instantly killed. Then the lich began to send down great sheets of lightning from the doorway of his tower, and it flashed, rolled and struck the buggers running below. It stung them, blinded them, and threw them around. It picked some up and bounced them off the walls.

  Some of the buggers had brought their lightning rods this far, and they now wedged them down into the flagstones where they began to absorb about half the bolts that came off the wizard’s balcony. Other goblins turned their bows up, and a shower of arrows forced the old monster back, and he slunk away into the darkness of the doorway.

  They broke up into several groups, the landings and stairs perhaps causing this to happen more than any sort of plan they had made, and the different commands pounded through the buildings, and up the stairs of the central citadel, killing almost everyone they saw, destroying the thrings as they met them and were able to.

  Kulith still had an arrowhead in his shoulder when he rounded a corner of the lich’s tower stair and met a thring there in blackened armor with a flail, the head of it all made of gold, in the shape of a stack of skulls. The Basher now lived up to his name, as he swung his weapon around and used the head of it to strike three trolls at the same time and knock them all off the stair, to fly out into the shaft, onto the bodies of all the others below, moving around, or laying still.

  Ovodag had just missed being struck by the swing of the golden flail head. He still had his sword bladed spear and he jammed it forward now into the monster’s gut, it grating through the black scale armor it wore. The creature turned about, and Ovodag was picked up and thrown off the stair by the haft of his weapon, as it moved with the body. It slipped out and followed him over the edge, and onto the bodies of all the others, twenty feet below.

  Kulith jumped forward and danced aside as the golden flail head came back and down, and crushed two marble steps, throwing up the shards. He swung with the Tuvier Blade and opened a burning gash along the Basher’s right arm, from the shoulder almost to the elbow, and then he was slapped aside. The flail went up, slower, but before it came down again two trolls took his place and went in with their lances and put them through the creature. Regardless, it continued its move, and brought the golden stack of skulls down and crushed one of the trolls with a deafening crash.

  Kulith went in again and now cut it across one of its legs, and it burned from the two wounds as it roared back at them, and then its burning leg gave out and it slipped and also fell off the side of the stair. It hit the other debris there in the shaft and was immediately surrounded by trolls and goblins that thrust and cut at it, their weapons rising and falling together like they were beating on a single drum.

  Above, they stepped over the great golden flail left on the stairs and struck the rest of the defenders they found down, and then they ascended to Vous Vox’s tower door. They forced it open with their weapons, and were soon going up along a narrower spiral of staircase, going around a broad central shaft of worked stone that they could not find a way into, with the stairs letting out onto landings on each level of the inner fortress. There was an armory, and another contained a factoria to make and equip the ghouls, and other sections of the great building were taken up by different chambers and compartments, modified or built to suit their purpose.

  There were a couple of Vous Vox’s black clad thring guards on each of the landings, and they moved to attack the rebel buggers as they went up and got close to them. They paused when going around the third and last stair, to the top floor, and waited there to be reinforced from below. When they were they went up again, and came out into a grand entrance hall with marble and paneling, done in an antique style. Tall passages went off to both sides, allowing for access to dark wood doors, to suites of rooms, or to other passages that lay beyond. The archway leading to the inner tower stair that descended down into the treasury, and to the balcony on the tower’s side that Vous Vox had just come off of also stood there open, but the fiend was not found there.

  The goblins and trolls shouted and went off to the sides, down the hallways, kicking open doors, looking around at the glass and brass chandeliers, the paintings, and the twenty foot high ceilings. Kulith knew that it was not time yet to start looting, or to think that the battle was done. There was a stench of decay over everything, and the sword in his hand began to glow and light up again, and murmur as he held it. It drove him now onward, but he did not go in that rein unwillingly. He had come to destroy the greater thring who ruled here, and finally take his place.

  Some buggers stuck to him, and they came out into a great room, as richly appointed as any other apartment Kulith had seen a ghoul use. A row of caskets, made of polished wood with brass and silver fittings sat against one wall on short pedestals, and a dozen chairs and couches were scattered around, with tables, furniture and small stacks of pretty white and blue jars set along a wall, he thought used for the feeding of blood to the vampires and gobbets of meat to the others.

  Some of the inhabitants of the caskets began to now rise out of the caskets, as they were commanded or was their wont. They were a collection of dolls, some beautiful in silks and jewels, and some merely lovely, clothed as maids or other servants. The dead advanced on them, some looking around for weapons first to pick up and use. They were quickly dealt with, and their pieces soon lay across the furniture and the carpets on the floor. Some of the buggers began to look around now, to sniff and touch, but Kulith went on, past two great rows of books and folios in cases, past racks of scrolls and stacked sheep skins which all smelled of thrings and magic, and through another door.

  He came into a great chamber, this one almost bare but for tables set at the sides and cases with many compartments and drawers in them. There was a very elaborate cage in one corner, with polished black bars that looked to be made of crystal or glass, hanging by a chain from the ceiling. It had what looked like a big colorful bird inside of it, a
ll seemingly made of rippling silk and jewels. It moved as they came in, and he was instantly wary of it unusualness and place there, in the otherwise open space.

  Vous Vox stood in front of it, across the middle of the room on a symbol of some kind. He sometimes was said to wear a mask, but he had not chosen to today. His white face was turned up in places like it had been stitched to the bones underneath, and perhaps it had. When it moved, gray white folds of tight skin formed, making lines like walls around his nose and mouth. His eyes were black, with a little yellow fire at the center of each, his sparse hair was silver and white, and his teeth were mostly replaced by ones made of polished gold.

  The bird in the corner made a noise like a chime, and its shape changed, as it ruffled out the silk that it seemed to be formed of, its beak and head turning into the face of a woman, of a fairy he thought. He didn’t have a name for it, but a moment later he did know, the word sliding across his tongue from somewhere. It was a Lannan, one of the unseen folk, now seen by all of them there, hung up in a glassy black cage.

  It made a bird call like a series of bells, the last note being both low in tone and very loud. The room seemed to separate on the last heavy note, with a blur filling up the place where it broken apart, and then it snapped back together as the note ended. Vous Vox raised his hand and the black palm of it sparked and threw a bolt of lightning across the room at Kulith and the others.

  Kulith threw the regular sword he had carried in his left hand forward, and it intercepted the bolt, flashed red, and created a shower of sparks. The lightning was deflected by it and danced wildly around for a moment, cutting across the tables, the ceiling, the floor and the cabinets, blackening them or catching them on fire.

  “Your slaves have come to free you!” Kulith shouted at him, after he had blinked once to try and clear the image of the flash from his eyes. He held up the Tuvier Blade, in the hope that it could stop a second white bolt. It burst into fire, the golden light making the shadows in the room dance about, causing the Lannan in its cage to sing out again, breaking the room in half along a different line and plane. This shifted them all, making them stumble a step, or fall to the floor.

  Vous Vox hissed and flicked out his hand, and three of the black globes of night formed beyond it, and they moved forward, out toward the group from across the room in a line, like three marching soldiers. All the buggers jumped to the sides, or crawled if they were now on the floor. One of them was caught and made a last scream as he began to burst and melt. Kulith darted around the blackness and brought the golden sword up to strike the ghoul down, who had in one swift movement brought out a large dagger with a black handle and a well polished blade.

  The Tuvier Blade made an angry noise as it struck the long gray dagger, and it was held back by it from the white skin by mere inches. Kulith moved it back and went in to skewer the thring, only to see one of the goblins dart at the lich from the side and put one of the shortened, metal tipped piles right through his chest.

  Vous Vox staggered, stopped and looked down at the metal tipped shaft, as the goblin let go of it and the weight caused Vous to stumble back, and to blink. Kulith brought the sword around and down now, and brained him with the tip of the blade, which rang as it went through his skull and split off pieces of it, and smashed the petrified gray matter it had held inside.

  There was a snap of energy, and the white, misty form of the spirit that had dwelt for so long inside the decrepit, undead body since the time of the Mancans began to rise up, staring at him with what he thought was a look of final defiance and hatred before the Lannan sang again like a bell. The floor split apart and now they all fell down. When Kulith regained his feet, the misty spirit he had seen was gone, and the lich’s body lay still and unmoving on the mark and the stones underneath it.

  Kulith had expected a dialogue with the creature, perhaps a last desperate plea from it to be spared. What he would have done in such a situation, had it occurred, was much the same as what had happened anyway. He was driven to destroy the lich as a part of the deal he had made with the vision he had seen on the Long Bone, and he had needed to do it to make the bugger’s hold on the Stones more durable and complete. His only regret was that Sterina had not been here to be destroyed at the same time. Would she know how it had been done? What would she do now?

  “It’s over,” Kulith said anyway, and reached out and clasp the hand of the goblin that had just helped him by skewering the monster. It was a fitting end in that the blow had been made with the weapon they had specificly created for just this purpose. He turned back to the others, thinking about what to do now.

  “Take the defending buggers prisoner, if they will surrender over to you now,” he said. “Destroy all the thrings you find, sparing not a one of them. We will carry them out and lay them on the ram with our own dead, and burn them.” He looked around for someone he knew, and saw that no one else was there with him that was notable, or had much power over the others.

  “You may take a few things from here,” he said to them, “but do not touch the books, or any of the things in this room.”

  They began backing out of the chamber, to look around through the rest of the apartments. Kulith picked up Vous Vox’s dagger and sniffed it for magical taint, and then finding none, placed it down into his own belt. He walked forward over the body, which had began to hiss and let off the smell of brimstone, as if it was beginning to burn now all on its own, and he looked into the cage in the corner of the room.

  He approached the Lannan, hanging there in the crystal and glass prison and looked closely, but respectfully upon the creature. He noticed that it did not really seem to be inside a cage, but by some trick of the glass only appeared to be there, as if the surfaces acted as a mirror and reflected its form, which seemed to be elsewhere, from somewhere that was close by. He tapped the cage with the tip of the Tuvier Blade, and the Lannan let out a high whistling note, at the end of which as portion of the room seemed to slide away from the rest, and then slowly snap back into place.

  It was a magic beyond him, or anyone else he had ever heard of. He thought he might go through all of Vous Vox’s books and study the magic arts for years, and still not understand just what was taking place right now. It was a sober, well reasoned approached, and he considered what the others would make of it when they also saw it. Then he wondered if that was wise, as his rise and fight might have been powered by the magic he wielded through an enchanted sword, but it was at its most basic roots a struggle for normalcy, in a world that was unjustly controlled by deadly, horrifying oddness and magic.

  The creature, just as it was wondrous to behold, was also a great danger that connected them strongly to a world far beyond, stronger, and stranger than their own. He had never forgotten the silver and green woman that Sarik had conjured in the black rock. The way that the Lannan resided in the cage, both as a part and as not a part of the world was so similar that it made his shiver.

  He stepped back a little, and then raised the Tuvier Blade up in both his hands. It had worked before, and he had not thought at that time that the being in the rock had been destroyed; only cut off, having lost its window. The Lannan made several notes like a line of bells on a plow harness, then flapped its wings and displayed to him the trick again, where its avian form altered to show a slender elf in jewels and robes. The way she looked at him, with her great dark eyes, made him feel like he was doing the right thing.

  He brought the sword back, then forward in an arc so that the tip cut through the base of the chain at the top of the glass cage. It separated with a snap, and the entire prism of styled and polished black glass broke free to fall and shatter upon the floor. He stepped back, his armor having protected him, and he kicked the broken pieces from his boots. He heard a last noise, like a sigh, and the chamber seemed to become more right and proper, its dimensions fixing and settling to match everything else.

  He set a strong guard on the hoist and stairs that went down the shaft in the middle of the t
ower to what Kulith knew was the main depository for the dead penny. With the withering of the rest of the defense, the opening of the front gate, and the carrying out of the dead, the undead, the wounded, and movement of prisoners they had taken in the sack, he sent for Little Toad, Kabi, and gathered all of his White Knife warriors together who had survived. He also sent for Long Ridge, because he had shown great faith in Kulith, and he would be able to appreciate and enjoy the wonder of the discovery of the treasure, unlike many of the other buggers, who were mostly a dull, tedious lot. Long Ridge also had the advantage of being an outsider to whatever division that now done, as his faction of braves had fought as paid mercenaries, and not as a party receiving a fractional share of the total reward.

  When Kabi arrived she was shocked by what had happened to the place she had once called a home, but it had been a very guarded, depressing kind of habit, where as a little sow she had constantly been in danger of being eaten by the ghouls, or drained of her blood by one of the more unruly vampires. She was seeing the dark temple of her childhood gods after all of them had been thrown down, their fanes defiled, and their statues broken.

  “This is impressive,” Little Toad commented, as they came through the blackened passage between the first and second gate, which had been opened up from the inside and cleared out for use. Going past them were dozens of body carts they had found idle inside, now finally taking bodies away for their final destruction.