Dread Empire - Shadow Of All Night Falling Part 20

Afterwards, the wizard collapsed into a chair. The Old Man, in little better shape, prepared draughts of the brew nepanthe. The three refreshed themselves.

Revived, Varthlokkur asked, "Nepanthe, would you meet me back here in an hour?" In an oblique way, she realized, she was being asked to prepare herself for what had to be done. s.h.i.+vering, she nodded.

Varthlokkur told the Old Man, "I'll be walking the wall if you need me." He took Nepanthe's arm, walked her to the tower stairs. Behind them, the Old Man began preparing the room for her shame. She didn't look back.

In darkness Varthlokkur strolled Fangdred's wall, staring at the Dragon's Teeth. His young hair whipped in a hot southern wind. He saw neither stars nor mountains, nor did he notice the weather. He was lost in time.

In his past. He had fled back to Ilkazar, to his few warm memories of a woman who had died at the stake. She had been a fine woman, as loving as a mother could be... Each memory was a cherished, carefully tended heirloom. The anger, resentment, and cold determination which had guided him, silently and studiously, through his years with Royal, returned.

Royal had been another good person. He and the old woman: dust, dust; ashes, ashes. He hoped they had reached their peasants' heaven. Both deserved more than the cruelties life had offered them. There was no true justice for the living.

He stirred nervously in the hot wind, finally recognizing it as the Werewind of the Storm Kings. Had it become hot to melt the snow?

His thoughts turned to sorcery and dark eastern schools where he had learned the skills that had warped his soul. Evil schools, festers, cesspools of the knowledge of chaos iron-ruled by dread masters. Yo Hsi's wicked face returned to mind, only to be banished instantly by that of his twin brother, Nu Li Hsi. The Princes Thaumaturge of s.h.i.+nsan. They were lords of evil virtually wors.h.i.+pped as G.o.ds in their respectivedomains in s.h.i.+nsan, deifically secure in the heart of the Dread Empire. Dread Empire s.h.i.+nsan. It was as wicked as its reputation. The Tervola were emissaries of Darkness... Varthlokkur shuddered at his memories, vague as they were. But he couldn't forget completely, even though he had lost the specifics of what had happened there. The Old Man had asked him the price he had paid for his training. Nothing he tried could bring that back to mind. That frightened him. He was sure the cost had been grim. Of one thing he was absolutely convinced. He hadn't finished paying.

He thought of the future, so narrow now, and recoiled into the past again. The past had been bad, but contained no fear anymore. He lingered over his lonely days as Eldred the Wanderer and his early centuries at Fangdred, his studies, and the decades of research which had given him the matchless Power of the Winterstorm equations. And, finally, he thought of Nepanthe.

Nepanthe. His mind, sooner or later, always returned to her. Four centuries was a long love-and there were ages yet before them. There would be a pause, a wait for that man camped out there somewhere nearby, sleeping beneath that gibbous moon.... He had to win this battle! Nepanthe had finally surrendered. He couldn't let that victory be devoured by another defeat, couldn't let heart's desire elude him now.

He turned his back to the wind, returned the way he had come. It was almost time. Maybe she was waiting already. His heart stumbled. He glanced toward the Wind Tower. At last...

He had to hurry. Before anything else, to hedge his bets, he had to teach the Old Man to handle the Winterstorm.

EIGHTEEN: Like a Shadow of All Night Falling

Fear had dissipated VisiG.o.dred's intellect. Ragnarson had never seen the man so irritable and unstable, though he had once been present during a battle in VisiG.o.dred's interminable feud with Zindahjira. The wizard had remained cool and intelligent then, like a trained soldier maintaining calm in the chaos of battle. "What now, Black Face?" the wizard shouted at the crystal providing communication with Zindahjira. "No, I can't think of anything else! We've already used the best we've got."

Pale, shaking, the old n.o.bleman listened to his equally terrified confederate. Ragnarson, close enough to eavesdrop, heard Zindahjira whiningly repeat his demand that VisiG.o.dred think of something. That, too, was strange. Zindahjira was given to bl.u.s.ter and thunder, not this craven whimpering.

The mercenary was badly distressed himself, although he wasn't yet panicky. He had retained the presence of mind to tell Elana to get ready to sneak out.

"Bragi!" He turned to the whisper. Elana had come back. Their gear must be packed, their horses ready.

He slowly left the wizard...

The leopard's growl, as it moved to block his path, was murderous, the chatter of the sword-wielding monkey wrathful. He considered clearing his way by blade -till Tooth joined her mate.

"Billy's h.e.l.l on rats," said VisiG.o.dred. "Weren't deserting the s.h.i.+p, were you? Only fair that you go down with it. It's yours."

Turran heaved the trap open, seized the bundle beneath. From outside the cottage, his brothers called him to hurry. Their horses pranced nervously, sensing their masters' dread. Marco, contrary to his wont, remained stone silent. Turran hefted the Horn, ran-and tripped as he rushed through the door. His burdenfell, bounced, came unwrapped...

The four Storm Kings stared with open mouths, stunned at a block of wood which had been carved and stained to resemble the Windmjirnerhorn...

Haroun bin Yousif was lost in darkness, with h.e.l.l on his trail. Zindahjira, having failed to find salvation in VisiG.o.dred, bellowed and shrieked behind him, blaming him, cursing him with a fearful wrath. And he had made the mistake of thinking he remembered the way out of the sorcerer's cavern maze. But the cave mouth he could not find-and the vengeful Zindahjira, denied any other outlet for his fear, was drawing ever nearer...

The man was tired. To the roots of his hair and the marrow of his bones, he was tired. He had pushed himself beyond all reasonable endurance. Even his fingernails hurt, or so he would have claimed if asked.

A hot wind helped not at all, stealing the moisture of his body as it did.

He shed his battered pack, knelt, leaned on his unstrung bow, stared up the shadowed mountain before him, haloed by the moon behind it. This was it. The last one. El Kabar. Were they waiting up there, knowing he was trying to steal a march by not stopping for the night? Had Bragi and Haroun, almost certainly at work somewhere with magicians (what other explanation for his improbable survival?), as he had planned, managed to s.h.i.+eld him from Varthlokkur's eyes? Too late to wonder. His road ran but one direction and he had to accept the destiny waiting at its end. Though it was short now, it had been a long and harrowing road. Itaskia seemed as many centuries as miles behind. He had spent ages with weariness, hunger, and the miseries of rain, snow, and frostbite as his traveling companions, while constantly running at the stirrup of Death. Ravenkrak and the woman he had wed there seemed as remote as the dawn of time.

He was no longer a heavy man. The Dragon's Teeth, hunger, and emotional upheaval, all had gnawed at his flesh like ghouls. Skin hung in folds beneath his chin, about his waist, where fat had all too rapidly vanished... He shook off the siren call to sleep, ran a hand through his grimy hair, did a few fast jumping jacks to get his blood moving, then knelt and went through his pack, selecting things he might need. The pack he hid among boulders, then strung his bow, set an arrow to its string, made certain his knife and sword were loose in their scabbards. He started the last long league.

He was still an angry man. Months had rattled slowly by, lonely, dry, skeletons of days, since Varthlokkur had taken his wife, yet neither his anger nor his determination had waned. One more hour, he thought, or maybe two, and there would be a reckoning. Curse words and Varthlokkur's name died at his lips in the wind. He was a stubborn man.

The wind made him nervous and thirsty; nervous because it was unnatural, thirsty because he was sweating profusely. He eyed the stream foaming near the path, water from snow melting in the warmth.

Dared he drink? No. Since meeting the a.s.sa.s.sin he had allowed himself no relaxation. Here at the enemy's gate he couldn't permit himself even this small lapse. Briefly, he wondered if Varthlokkur were toying with him, if he had been allowed to escape a.s.sa.s.sin and bird to meet a grimmer fate later. Maybe he would be permitted a glimpse of his goal before being cut down. Sorcerers were notorious for their subtle cruelties.

His mood grew darker with time. Once again his weariness, abetted by fear, tempted him to sleep before the final plunge. He fought free, wanting immediate death or victory. He searched the darkness for a hint of trap, then cursed softly as a rock cut through his ragged boot and scored his heel. He felt little pain, but did sense the moist stickiness of oozing blood.El Kabar loomed as naked as a newborn babe, as silent as death. It revealed traces of silver as the moon eased from behind it. The wind murmured "doom!" while chasing through knifish rocks, carrying with it scents of land long buried by snow. Urged to ever-increasing caution, he picked a shadow upslope, dashed into it, knelt to catch his breath and wish for thicker air. This was nothing a man should breathe.

He hoped there would be no prolonged fighting.

His hair fell across his eyes. Bad, if that happened at a critical moment. He tied it back with a strip torn from his ragged coat, stroked his spotty beard, wished he had time to shave. Nepanthe wouldn't be impressed by his appearance.

The roundness and brownness of his face had remained unchanged by hards.h.i.+p, though it had become a bit more leathery. He seemed a s.h.a.g-encircled henna moon arising as he peeped over a boulder. Bow ready, he ran to another shadow.

He felt terribly foolish by the time he reached the thousand feet of stairs. All his caution had gone for nothing. There he paused to hyper-ventilate in hopes that he would make the top prepared to fight. In vain. He was still compelled to make frequent stops.

The south wind rose and moaned softly, then died. Its masters had forgotten it hours before, and the Werewind couldn't sustain itself for long. As it faded Mocker first sighted Fangdred, though crenellated ramparts and the turret of the Wind Tower were all he saw. Neither defender nor banner stood limned above the battlements.

Silence. The castle seemed crouched, waiting, a sphinx about to spring.

Of their own accord, it seemed, his feet resumed moving, carrying him toward his fate. Soon he slung his bow, drew his sword. He felt more comfortable with that old friend in hand.

Surely Varthlokkur must be aware of his approach...

His thoughts turned to Nepanthe, to her face, her dark eyes, the way she quivered when he held her.

And his anger grew. What cruelties, what indignities had she been forced to endure here?

Collapse seemed inevitable-then he topped the stairs. Sheer willpower took him into the blackness at the foot of the castle wall. There he dropped to his knees, panting, leaning one shoulder against cold stone.

Weariness ground his spirit, again tried to tempt him into sleep. He fought it. The fire in his lungs slowly died. He glanced up, southward, across moonlit mountains rolling away like mighty waves... Aptly named, he thought. Fangs hungry for the blood of man. But enough. He was ready. He swatted the string of spittle dangling from his lower lip, reached inside his coat.

Precious as pearl was the brandy flask he brought forth, a treasure he had h.o.a.rded since fleeing Itaskia.

He spat, teased himself with thought of its fiery taste... Enough! Now. He downed it in a single lengthy draught. A long burning shaft drove toward his stomach. He coughed, gasped, rose.

His heart hammered, his veins burned. He remembered holding a frightened thrush as a child, remembered the light, warm flutter of its heartbeat against his lingers. He had tossed the bird high to its freedom... What a strange thing to remember at an enemy's gate. He crept forward, sword probing the darkness, found the gate open! Trap! cracked across his consciousness. How like the open-doored device that had taken the thrush. At least he knew, he thought, what he was walking into. Gripping his weapon so tightly that his hand hurt, he stepped through...And nothing happened. He looked around in bafflement. He had expected anything but this. Varthlokkur himself waiting, a blast of fire, a demon, anything. But he had encountered absolutely nothing. Fangdred lay silent, to all appearances deserted. Evil thought. What if the wizard had moved on, taking Nepanthe with him, laughing behind his hand? A possibility, it seemed, but first he must explore.

He found light, and people, almost immediately, but again, anything but what he expected. The lights he spied first. They led him to Fangdred's common hall, where... where he found a baffling tableau. Servants stood as if frozen (whatever had happened, it had occurred recently, because the fires still burned high in the fireplaces), not reacting even when, once he found the nerve, he clapped his hands, pinched, and prodded. He felt no heartbeat when he tested a pulse. He heard no breathing even when only inches from a face. Yet, surely, they weren't dead. Their warmth remained, and their color. Fearful strange.

He carefully backed from the hall, blade ready, expecting a momentary return of life and a resounding alarm. But they did nothing, nor did the several living statues he encountered thereafter. The sorcery completely blanketed the castle.

He had almost convinced himself that this was Ragnarson's and bin Yousifs work when he heard soft laughter down a dark corridor. His imagination invested it with depthless evil. Moving closer, he heard a voice talking to itself in a liquid, unfamiliar tongue. He had seen many lands and learned many languages, and was disturbed by this unknown. But he shrugged it off after a moment. The speaker wasn't Varthlokkur, whom he had met once, briefly, on the day the wizard had hired him. He went on, searching.

Chance brought him to the tower stair. He went up with little thought to his line of retreat. (Throughout his approach to Fangdred he had uncharacteristically ignored his avenues of withdrawal, perhaps because subconsciously he knew he'd get no chance to run.) A tall tower it was, taller than it had seemed from outside the castle. But finally he came to a landing.

Wan light, in changing pastel shades, slipped round the edges of a door standing slightly ajar. There was a quality, a smell about the place, which evoked memories of the Storm Kings' sorcery chamber beneath Ravenkrak. Here, he sensed immediately, he would find his wizard. Ear to stone, he listened, heard little.

Wait! Was that labored breathing?

How should he enter? In a burst, hoping for surprise? Suppose the door was b.o.o.by-trapped? Yet if he went in carefully the wizard might have time to defend himself. He decided on full speed and prayed that the wizard felt secure in his own den.

The door swung easily inward. He burst through following mighty figure-eight sword strokes, his gaze sweeping the chamber. There were no defenses.

A young man's face, red and damp, rose from furs piled-high beneath a large mirror. His questioning expression quickly changed to one of horror. Pleasure lightninged through Mocker. Though Varthlokkur had changed, he still recognized the man. He altered the direction of his charge, raising his sword fora punis.h.i.+ng overhand stroke.

A second face rose from the furs. Dread swept across it.

And the fight deserted Mocker. "Nepanthe!" he screamed. He became a stunned, limp thing moving on impetus alone, his sword arm wilting, his unsteady steps betraying the sudden return of his weariness. He no longer saw, did not want to see, the shame so obvious before him. Wearing the horns already...Nepanthe and Varthlokkur both babbled explanations, she pleadingly, he in a voice of infuriatingly calm reason. Mocker dropped into a chair, shut them both out. Mad thoughts, and questions... Had he come so far, through so" much, for such a bleak reward? He heard, again from afar, the earlier evil laughter.

Taunting him? Truly, Varthlokkur had played wickedly. The clincher, now, would have to be an auto-da-fe, death by his own hand, to make the mockery complete.

His hatred flared. Varthlokkur's centuries of madness must end tonight! He leapt from the chair, refreshed by his hatred. He wheeled on the couple as they gathered their clothing. He moved in slowly, the tip of his sword drifting toward Varthlokkur's chest. This should be slow, agonizing, the deserved thrust through the bowels, but he would make it the heart. Not out of consideration, though. Gut wounds, tended by a life-magician of the Old Man's skill, might heal...

The evil laughter came from the doorway as he thrust, as he stared into Varthlokkur's wide, unfearing eyes. The wizard's face was filled with another emotion entirely. Sadness, perhaps?

It was a bad thrust, disturbed as it was by that laughter, but Mocker knew it would be fatal in the long run. Varthlokkur would take a little while dying, that was all-if the Old Man could be kept away.

Nepanthe screamed.

Mocker turned to see what new factor had to be considered.

An old man, surely the fabled Old Man of the Mountain, stood just within the door. He seemed stricken.

Behind him stood someone else, clad all in black and cowled so deeply that his face remained invisible.

"Yo Hsi," Varthlokkur gasped. "You're a bit earlier than we expected."

The dark one jerked slightly, as if startled.

Mocker was startled. That name-like an ill wind, long ago, he had heard it come whispering down from the borderland mountains above Matayanga, wrapped in tales of horror and evil. It was the name of one of the Princes Thaumaturge, one of the two dread lords of s.h.i.+nsan.

So this was why Varthlokkur had been unconcerned with his own approach. A small fish indeed was he beside this grim destroyer. Could Bragi and Haroun have possibly hired?... But no. Yo Hsi mastered half an empire. He would be no man's hireling. There must be a depth to recent events that he had never suspected. He glanced at Varthlokkur's complex magical construct. Was that elegant device fated to play a part in this drama?

"The curse of the Golmune pollutes even its b.a.s.t.a.r.d blood," said Yo Hsi. His laughter filled the room.

The Golmune had been the ruling family of llkazar.

"What?" Varthlokkur demanded. He was weakening.

Mocker examined faces quickly. Nepanthe's eyes still sought his own, pleadingly. Varthlokkur stared at Yo Hsi, obviously more distressed by the easterner's presence than by his own approaching death.

The Old Man stood still as stone, expression agonized. But his stillness wasn't the uncanny frozennness of the servants below. His eyes remained in motion. To him Yo Hsi was an enigma, an unfathomable blackhole in the fabric of the situation. His would be the direction to strike. Mocker was but a man with a sword.

"Vilis slew his father, Valis, by poison, for the crown, as ever it had been with the Imperial succession.

Vilis took a mistress. On her he fathered a son she called Ethrian, after the philosopher. A time came when Imperial political pressures made disavowal of the son necessary. The mistress had become a liability in other affairs. Conveniently, a witchcraft charge was tendered by an intimate of the King."

"No!" Varthlokkur gasped. And yet, from his expression, Mocker saw that he wasn't surprised. There was nothing sudden about the guilt in the wizard's face.

"The woman was burned. Her possessions reverted to the Crown. The son disappeared. Years later he reappeared, to waste llkazar, to destroy his father in the family tradition. I was pleased." Yo Hsi laughed that evil laughter.

"Later, there came another Ethrian, born of a serving woman but with the Imperial blood, who was spirited off in revenge by a castle fool, under my protection. In time the child became a wanderer, a thief, an actor."

Mocker's gaze locked with Varthlokkur's. Not possible, he thought. Yet, if the wizard had suspected even a little, some of his strange reluctances would be answered.

"Tonight the father again dies by the hand of the son."

"Why?" The Old Man spoke for the first time.

"The curse of Sebil el Selib. And even now the woman carries in her womb the son that will be the death of this one." Laughter.

Nepanthe whimpered, looked to her husband, nodded slightly. She might indeed. She thought that she had conceived that wedding night on the Candareen.

"Not that," snapped the Old Man, his normal testiness returning. "Why are you here? Why have you, for centuries, fed false divinations to my friend?"

"You know that, do you?" Yo Hsi didn't seem pleased.

"Yes. An answer, if you please. You've offered nothing but nonsense and laughter since appearing." He didn't believe this encounter to be part of the Director's plan. The scripts had never thrust him into such deadly peril.

"A game? An old contest. A war, a struggle." Yo Hsi gestured sweepingly. For a moment the Old Man was puzzled. Then he identified the wrongness. The Prince Thaumaturge, called the Demon Prince in his home domain, was missing a hand. "My brother and I have been using the West as a board on which to play for mastery of s.h.i.+nsan," said Yo Hsi. "Warfareandthaumaturgicdispute have proven pointless on our home grounds. We're too evenly matched. Yet one of us must be master. An empire divided against itself can't grow. The way to s.h.i.+ft the balance of power may exist somewhere out here, where there're so many unknowns and unpredictables. Here one of us migh: find the knowledge or weapon to seize the day. So here we do battle, each to grab first or to deny the other.

"Varthlokkur was once my agent, once my most important tool, for which I made him powerful. MyTervola trained him well. He began his service elegantly, by shattering the single power capable of keeping Nu Li Hsi and myself from using the West-the wizards of Ilkazar. And he demolished the Empire itself, a state with such iron control that nothing could be accomplished here while it endured. But he stopped with that. He ceased returning knowledge to me. Eventually, he hid himself here. I sent divinations meant to get him back in harness, but Nu Li Hsi interfered, subtly twisting them to his own ends. Varthlokkur continued to do nothing. In time 1 became angry. My Tervola have advised me to come west myself, to punish him for not fulfilling the contract he made with me. I have come, though, too late. Centuries too late. I see that Varthlokkur had forgotten that contract till just now."

"I cheated you," Varthlokkur gasped. "As you would've cheated me. I made that bargain knowing Nu Li Hsi would cleanse from my mind anything that didn't suit him. And now I've cheated you again," he declared, his words scarcely audible. "You destroyed my soul in s.h.i.+nsan. Your machinations have robbed me of love, cursed me with the hatred of an unknown son, and killed me. But I've done the impossible. I've repaid my debt to Ilkazar. I've defied Yo Hsi, and won. Nu Li Hsi has won, and thus I fulfill one promise made in s.h.i.+nsan, to the lesser of a pair of evils." He laughed weakly. "His Tervola taught me too, Yo Hsi."

"You're wrong," the easterner replied, but with little of his earlier cert.i.tude. "I win. I've found my victory.

In this old man lies knowledge forgotten by all but himself and the Star Rider. Knowledge the like of which you can't even imagine. From him I will milk the weapons of a new, invincible a.r.s.enal." To the Old Man, "I've found you out. I know what you are. From now on you have a new master."

With a croaking chuckle, Varthlokkur died. His face seemed beatific. In his own mind, at least, he had redeemed himself.

Still stunned by the revelation of his paternity, Mocker stared down at that man younger than he, whose head lay cradled in Nepanthe's naked lap. Her eyes still pleaded forgiveness. His anger and hatred surged up again, but now they were directed elsewhere. In a fluid, lightning motion he threw himself at Yo Hsi. For an instant he saw startled, cadaverous features within the sorcerer's cowl- then something seized him, hurled him aside, turned him round, round, round. Colors whirled, mixed. He struck confusedly. A scream was his reward. He laughed insanely, was joined by Yo Hsi in his laughter.

Sense returned and, in horror, he stared down at the tiny line of redness where his blade had penetrated Nepanthe's chest inward of her left breast. And still she prayed with her eyes. And Yo Hsi kept on laughing. The madness returned. He flung himself at the easterner again.

Followed a clown's dance, futile as tilting at windmills. Nothing could reach the sorcerer. But the madness wouldn't set him free. Finally, apparently forgetting his earlier oracle (now, with Nepanthe's imminent demise, in doubt), Yo Hsi drew a bronze dagger, plunged it into Mocker's chest.

He fell slowly, his sanity returning, his eyes turning accusingly toward Nepanthe. So long, so far, for this.