The Mark of Nerath: A Dungeons & Dragons Novel

by Bill Slavicsek

  “Yes!” Vestapalk roared. “This one’s vision is true! The end of the age is coming, and the next age shall belong to chaos and elementals!”

  “Yes, my master,” the wyrmpriest stammered, not quite sure why kobolds and dragons should see the rise of elementals as a good thing but also not willing to contradict the green dragon.

  “And,” Vestapalk said with a gleam in its eyes, “it shall belong to Vestapalk!”

  The green dragon turned to the wyrmpriest. “We must find this emissary, this harbinger. It shall need Vestapalk’s help, and in turn it will help Vestapalk … transform.”

  “Yes, my master,” the wyrmpriest said, but he had long ago stopped trying to understand the green dragon. He only needed to serve Vestapalk, and hopefully live long enough to share in whatever rewards came the dragon’s way. The kobold climbed atop the green dragon, settling in at the space where the dragon’s neck connected to its body.

  Tiktag held on tight as Vestapalk vaulted into the air.

  They were following visions that Vestapalk believed came from the Elemental Eye. Tiktag wasn’t sure what the source of the visions was, but the message couldn’t be denied. The Herald walked the land.

  And Vestapalk was determined to find it.

  34 THE WITCHLIGHT FENS, DAY

  Magroth fell back at Sareth’s onslaught, barely calling forth a shield of arcane energy to protect him from the vicious attack. The spiked chain slashed against Magroth’s invisible shield, sending up sparks as the powerful lashing managed to drive the lich back against the cool stone of the chamber’s wall. The Mad Emperor smiled at the vampire lord, glancing quickly to see how Kalaban was faring. Dazed, certainly. Unconscious, more than likely. But he doubted that the knight-commander was more gravely injured than that.

  “Well done, Sareth,” Magroth said, a trace of laughter in his voice. “I take it that you’re a vampire? Maybe even a vampire lord? But do you think you can really stand against both me and my golem?”

  The stoneguard lumbered forth, each step shaking the ground as its foot slammed down. It balled its massive fists, preparing to hammer the vampire lord into a thick, red paste. It never got the chance.

  Sareth danced back with impressive speed and grace, putting distance between himself and the golem’s heavy fists. “This is my lair,” Sareth said, his hand darting out to toggle a switch hidden among the carvings on the wall. The chamber shook as great, unseen gears twisted beneath the chamber, and the floor the stone golem stood on fell away, taking the golem with it.

  “Well, that was unexpected,” Magroth said, peering into the pit. He saw that the golem had landed hard about twenty feet beneath the level of this chamber. It would take the golem a few moments to climb out of the pit. Moments that Sareth would not waste.

  The vampire lord locked his gaze onto Magroth’s own, staring deep into the lich’s eyes. “Your will is mine, lich,” Sareth said, applying his considerable strength of will to overwhelm Magroth’s own sense of self and purpose.

  With an extreme effort, Magroth averted his gaze and broke the vampire’s spell. “That may have worked on a lesser creature,” the Mad Emperor said, swinging his staff around and gathering his own power, “but never on Magroth, emperor of Nerath!”

  Lightning crackled from Magroth’s staff and danced across Sareth’s spiked chain and into the vampire lord’s body. Sareth screamed in pain and rage as he tossed the spiked chain away before the lightning could destroy him. He reached for the sword at his side, but Magroth was unrelenting in his attack. The lich uttered a word of power, and a stream of darkness exploded out of his staff and hammered into the vampire lord. The waves of darkness drove Sareth to the ground and slid him across the stone floor and into the chamber beyond.

  With his line of sight broken, Magroth ended the flow of darkness. He followed Sareth through the open portal and into the next chamber. This room was lit by two flaming braziers, one on each side of the chamber. Numerous wooden coffins were stacked across the chamber’s floor. These were probably the resting places for Sareth’s vampire spawn, though none of the vile creatures remained to have any use for them. Where had the vampire lord gotten to, Magroth wondered? “Are you hiding from me, Sareth?” Magroth asked. “That’s what I’d be doing if I were you.”

  Sareth exploded out of the shadows behind Magroth and slightly to his right. “You are certainly not me, lackey of Orcus!” Sareth screamed as he buried his sword into Magroth’s back, not far from the dagger that still protruded from the wound that had killed the emperor so many centuries ago.

  Magroth twirled away from Sareth, feeling the vampire lord’s sword slide out of his body as easily as it had plunged in. As he whirled to the side, Magroth extended the fingers of his right hand and unleashed a spell at Sareth. Fire shot from his outstretched fingers, scorching the vampire lord and eliciting a howl of pain that brought a smile to Magroth’s gaunt face.

  Then, while the vampire lord was reeling, Magroth brought down his staff, gripped firmly in his left hand, and shouted the words of power that carried his next spell into existence. A clap of thunder erupted in the enclosed chamber as a wave of force slammed into Sareth and drove him into the stone wall. The vampire lord, dazed and disoriented by the twin attacks, slid down the wall and collapsed into a heap on the ground.

  “Are we finished with this dance?” Magroth asked, madness sparkling in his milk-white eyes.

  “Not yet,” Sareth snarled. He launched himself at Magroth, who instinctively brought his staff up to protect himself.

  No attack came, however. Instead, Magroth watched as a strange mist flowed around him and disappeared behind him.

  Magroth turned, watching to see where the mist flowed. “Vampire trick,” he muttered. “Why can’t vampires play fair?”

  The mist seeped into a crack in the far wall of the chamber, disappearing behind the thick stone wall. Magroth marched over to the wall, looking for anything that might serve as a switch or lever.

  “You won’t get away from me that easily, Sareth,” Magroth said. The emperor knew that it was still daylight, so the vampire lord was not going to be able to get very far outside the ancient underground complex. He imagined that Sareth could flee to a remote location, but it was more likely that the vampire lord’s personal coffin was just behind this wall.

  Magroth found an indentation hidden among the decorative carvings near the top of the wall. He pressed the stone there, and the wall slowly retracted to reveal a small space beyond it. Inside the small space, a stone sarcophagus rested as it had for untold ages. “It probably isn’t even yours,” Magroth muttered as he strode to stand over the sarcophagus. “Just another thing you borrowed from those who were here before you.”

  Not nearly as physically strong as either Kalaban or the golem, it took Magroth no small amount of effort to slide the stone lid open. As he had suspected, the tiefling vampire was lying inside. Sareth had entered some kind of trancelike state, and Magroth could see the burns and cuts on the vampire lord’s face already beginning to heal.

  “Nice try,” Magroth sneered, raising his staff over his head. He brought the butt of the staff down hard, piercing Sareth’s chest and pinning him into the sarcophagus. The vampire lord’s eyes snapped open, full of pain and outrage. “Guess who?” Magroth said, and then he unleashed more lightning through his staff and into Sareth’s now-writhing form. The magic continued to flow, exhausting Magroth with the effort, but he didn’t let up until Sareth was a charred husk.

  “I could have simply decapitated him,” Kalaban said, appearing next to the emperor and apparently none the worse for his injuries.

  “I can do things myself,” Magroth said.

  The Mad Emperor stared into the stone coffin and examined the Orcus medallion. It bound those that wore it to Orcus’s service, or at least it was supposed to. Sareth had overcome that particular hurdle. Magroth coveted the power that the medallion promised, however. The power of a vampire lord. He wanted to add that arsenal to his
already considerable power as a lich and a master wizard.

  He reached into the sarcophagus and snatched the Orcus medallion from around Sareth’s lightning-scorched neck.

  Suddenly Magroth was hunched over in grueling pain, screaming as he had never screamed before. It felt as though his blood was boiling inside his veins, as though every fiber of his being was on fire.

  He waved off Kalaban’s awkward effort to aid him and gritted his teeth against the intense pain. No, he decided, this medallion will not get the better of me. As the burning began to subside, Magroth placed the medallion around his neck, letting it fall to his chest to rest beside the Necropolis Stone he also wore.

  “Master?” Kalaban asked, worry evident in his gaze.

  Magroth, still too frazzled by the experience to form coherent words, dismissed the knight-commander with a wave of his hand. Kalaban stepped out of the small room and Magroth was about to follow when an idea came to him. He pulled a small, rectangular metal box from one of the many pockets within his robes and examined it with a practiced eye. The box was intact.

  The small metal box was Magroth’s phylactery, the magical receptacle that held his life force. All liches created such receptacles and used them to ensure that they could never be destroyed completely. At least not as long as the phylactery existed. All liches also kept the existence of their receptacles secret, so as not to reveal any weakness to their enemies. Not even Kalaban knew about Magroth’s receptacle or what it meant to the emperor.

  Magroth placed the small metal box, which measured six-inches on a side, into the pile of ash and bone that was once the vampire lord Sareth.

  “Do me a favor, Sareth,” Magroth managed to whisper as he slid the stone lid closed. “Keep that safe until I return.”

  35 FALLCREST, THE NENTIR INN, NIGHT

  Falon was running. He was running through darkness. He couldn’t see where he was running to or what he was running from, but he knew that it was close behind him. He was alone, having somehow lost the old dwarf Darrum who had been charged with protecting him. With keeping him safe. But Falon couldn’t count on Darrum. He couldn’t count on Erathis. He couldn’t count on anyone. He just had to keep running, to stay ahead of whatever things were chasing him.

  He ran, until he felt like his legs would cramp and his chest would burn and he wouldn’t be able to run anymore, and then he ran on. Whatever was chasing him was closer now, nearly on him. He had lost the sword Arante somewhere in the darkness, and he was defenseless against whatever horror was about to catch up with him. He could hear water dripping from undead limbs. He could hear the sound of crossbow bolts whizzing past him in the darkness. And he could hear the screams in the distance, the screams of his mother, of Gamun, and of all the folk of Nenlast and the valley beyond. Somehow, the screaming was his fault. The screaming and the pain.

  Falon saw a light in the distance. The dim glow revealed a tall, thin man in fine robes waiting up ahead for Falon to reach him. Falon slowed as he approached the man, whose wisps of white hair hung from his head in long, straight strands. Falon stood before the taller man, noticing for the first time that the light was coming from the man’s ornate wooden staff. He also noticed that the man was dead. It didn’t seem to impede the man very much, however, for as Falon watched, he rolled up the sleeve of his left arm to reveal a mark at his wrist. It was the same mark that Falon had been born with, a crown-shaped stain with three star-shaped stains arranged above it.

  The mark of Nerath.

  The dead man pointed at Falon.

  “Soon,” he said. “We will meet soon, my descendent. And then you will die.”

  Falon sat up in his bed, drenched in sweat, his heart racing. It was only a dream, he realized, a nightmare. But it had seemed so real. He shook his head, trying to clear it of the terrible image of the dead man with his birthmark. Of the terrible sound of his light-hearted but threatening words.

  The young cleric got out of bed and stumbled toward the window. He needed some air. He and Darrum had reached the town of Fallcrest without further incident. Hammerfast’s Boon had dropped them at the dock at the Upper Quays, and from there they had made their way to the Nentir Inn and secured a pair of rooms for the night. He opened the window and breathed in the cool night air. He was starting to feel better when the mark on his left wrist began to throb and burn. He looked down to examine the mark, to see if it looked as red as it suddenly felt, when he noticed the figure standing in the courtyard below his window.

  He was a tall man, but not as tall as the man in his dream. He was also thin, but not as rail thin as the man he had imagined. He had wild, dark hair, and he was dressed in tight leather armor and a long leather jacket. He stared up at Falon with strange, crimson eyes.

  Undead eyes.

  Falon grabbed Arante from beside his bed and rushed out into the hall. He didn’t bother with his boots or his armor. He wore only a simple tunic and a pair of pants, the same clothes he had worn under his armor when they had arrived at the inn. He bounded down the stairs to the inn’s ground floor and stormed outside, the sword of Nerath gripped firmly in his hands.

  The creature stood before him, arms at its sides and its weapon still in its sheath. It tilted its head in a quizzical manner, but Falon never hesitated. He whispered words of prayer to Erathis and the blade of his sword glowed with divine energy. Then he swung the weapon at the creature, meaning to make short work of it. He had had enough of undead monsters trying to kill him. The blade sliced right for the creature’s neck.

  Then it was swinging through the space where the creature had been, hitting nothing but the night air.

  The creature had jumped back, easily avoiding the touch of the holy blade. Falon swung the weapon three more times in quick succession, advancing on the creature by a step or two with each attack. The blade missed each time, however. The leather-clad creature effortlessly ducked, dodged, and sidestepped each of Falon’s attacks. Then the creature leaped back, increasing the distance between him and Falon.

  Before Falon could decide whether to call on the power of Erathis or rush forward with blade in hand, the creature did an unexpected thing. It removed its strangely curved sword from the sheath at its waist and dropped it to the ground. Then, its gaze still locked on Falon’s own, it dropped to its knees and spread its arms wide.

  “What in the name of the Seventeen Anvils is going on out here?” Darrum demanded as he moved to stand beside Falon. The dwarf had his twin hammers in hand and seemed ready for a fight, but he was behaving in a much more controlled manner than Falon had seen him employ thus far in their time together. “Do you have any idea what time it is, boy?”

  On Falon’s other side, a tall woman in scale armor ran up to the group. She looked from the creature to Falon and back again, her greatsword at the ready.

  “I am Erak,” the creature said, clearly addressing Falon with its words. “I am a knight of the Raven Queen, returned to this world on a quest for the Lady of Fate and Death. I refuse to raise my weapon against the rightful heir of Nerath, but instead offer the heir my friendship and protection.”

  “How do you call this much attention to yourself,” Darrum asked, speaking low so that only Falon could hear him.

  “It’s a gift, really,” Falon replied, totally unsure about how to deal with the creature that called itself Erak.

  36 AWAY

  Tempest sat with her back against a cold, stone wall, listening intently to the darkness all around her. When the halfling that wasn’t a halfling carried her through the portal that Albanon had opened, Tempest wasn’t sure what to expect. They appeared within a circle much like the one they had just departed from, and by the slowly fading glow of the inscribed runes she was able to catch a glimpse of the worked stone around them. She saw a great statue of a noble minotaur, towering above them toward the impenetrable blackness above. She also noted a number of passages leading off this wide hall, and then the glow faded and the entire area was draped in total darkness.


  The halfling-thing dragged her out of the circle until they reached a wall. Then it propped her against the hard stone and turned away. “Stay there,” the halfling-thing said. Tempest decided to listen to it, at least for the time being.

  Now she sat by herself, surrounded by darkness. She could hear the labored breathing of the halfling-thing. It was nearby, scouting the area, she assumed. She tried to figure out what the halfling really was. It was obvious to her that the poor woman had been possessed by something, but whether that something was a spirit, a demon, or something else entirely, Tempest had no way of telling. Her training as a warlock, if you could call it training, didn’t include the more scholarly pursuits that she was sure Albanon had been taught during his apprenticeship to a wizard.

  She knew that the halfling-thing was remarkably strong. Much stronger than she was, in fact, and probably stronger than Roghar. She imagined that the dragonborn paladin was extremely upset right about now. He had a habit of being overly protective of her, for some reason. She hoped that Roghar was working with Albanon to figure out how to help her and not beating the poor eladrin senseless for sending her away.

  The halfling-thing was also hurt, though not so much that it seemed bothered by all the open, pulsating wounds. That told her something. She believed that whatever was in control of the halfling was wearing the halfling like a second skin. What frightened Tempest was that soon the thing inside would need a new skin to contain it, because it sounded like the halfling’s condition was growing worse by the minute. She didn’t want that thing to take over her body. She wouldn’t allow that to happen. If she had a choice in the matter, that is.

  Tempest tried to remember what the halfling-thing had said to Albanon. It was clear that it was trying to follow someone, another wizard, she guessed, who had taken something from Moorin’s tower. It wanted Albanon to send it after the wizard, who had apparently used the magic circle before they had arrived at Kalton Manor. She didn’t think that this is where the fleeing wizard traveled to, however. Albanon wouldn’t have known where to send the halfling-thing in any event. So he sent it here, where it would be out of the way. Who knew that it would have taken her with it? Well, actually, Tempest had suspected that was going to happen, but she had a bit more experience with lying monsters than Albanon had.