Summoning a gleaming sphere of light in his left palm, he continued on. As he neared the door it flew open with such force that it split from top to bottom and hung shattered on its hinges.
“Come, old man,” a sibilant whisper beckoned. “Old man. Old man. Old, old man.”
Skin prickling with revulsion, he obeyed.
The antechamber was as it should be, but the plain stone stairway beyond was gone. Instead, a terrible black chasm yawned before him, devoid of bridge or pathway. Summoning a second light in his right hand, he spread his arms and launched himself into the fathomless darkness, plummeting like an osprey.
He could not tell how long he fell; it seemed like a very long time. There was no wind, no feeling of passage, only the knowledge that he was descending until at last, in the way of dreams, he came to a gentle landing on uneven stone. In front of him, an archway led into the familiar brick-paved corridor of the Orëska’s deepest vault.
The low passage branched out into a warren of corridors and storage chambers. He’d made his solitary way here countless times, passing this corner, turning at the next to make certain that the Place, the unmarked, unremarkable span of mortared wall and all that lay behind it, was as it should be.
But this sojourn, he knew, was not to be a solitary one. The Voice was ahead of him and louder now, shouting to him from the Place.
“Come, old man! Come, Guardian!” The bellowed challenge echoed coldly through the damp stone corridors. “Come and view the first fruits of your sacred vigil!”
Rounding the final corner, he found himself face-to-face with the dyrmagnos, Tikárie Megraesh. Bright eyes, moist and alive, looked out from the desiccated black face. The hands that he himself—then a young wizard new to his robes—had cut off had found their way back to their owners arms, visible below the sleeves of the hideous creature’s festival robe.
“Pass, O most noble Guardian!” Tikárie bade him, stepping aside with a slight bow. “The Beautiful One awaits. Pass and join the feast.” The voice of the dyrmagnos, like his eyes, had retained a terrible humanity.
Passing his ancient enemy, he found the passage blocked by a huge pile of naked corpses. Creatures in colorful rags crawled and scuttled over the dead and he could hear the greedy sounds of their feeding.
Some were human, and among these he recognized many long-vanquished foes, returned now to haunt his dreams.
Others were twisted, monstrous creatures of revolting form beneath their robes.
And all were feasting on the dead. Swarming across the limp bodies, they hunched like jackals over their victims, tearing chunks of flesh out with teeth and talons, crunching through bone.
A tall figure emerged from the shadows, its dark cloak revealing nothing of its form.
“Join the feast,” it commanded in a voice like wind groaning down the chimney of an abandoned house. Stretching an impossibly long arm into the heap, it tugged a body loose and cast it at his feet.
It was Seregil.
Half of his face had been cruelly gnawed. Both hands were gone and the skin had been flayed from his chest.
A moan rose in Nysander’s throat as grief paralyzed him.
“Devour him,” the specter invited, reaching again into the pile.
Micum was next, chest torn open, both strong arms gone at the shoulder.
Then Alec, robbed of hands and eyes. Blood streaked his face like tears, and matted his soft yellow hair.
Others followed, faster and faster. Friends, lords, servants, strangers, thrown about like cord wood until he was ringed in with an ever heightening wall of bodies. Another moment and he would be immured in a tower of dead flesh.
Battling grief and horror, he summoned the twin lights he still carried to increased brilliance and hurled them before him, charging over the maimed bodies of his companions. The obscene specter swelled in his vision and was gone, taking the awful pile of corpses with it.
Before him stood the possessor of the Voice, and Nysander’s grief crystallized into stony terror. The huge figure was shrouded in shadow except where light fell across one perfect, golden-skinned shoulder.
He stared at it, trying to see his foe in spite of his mounting dread. He could feel the cold power of its eyes upon him; it burned his flesh numb like the water of a winter stream.
Then it raised its hand in greeting and the shining skin of shoulder and arm and hand split like rotten cloth, hanging in dulled shreds from the putrid flesh swelling beneath it.
“Welcome, O Guardian,” it said. “You have been most faithful.”
Lurching out of the shadows, the thing smashed a fist through the smooth stone wall as if it were a paper screen, reaching into the cavity beyond—
Nysander leapt up from his chair, panting and drenched with sweat. The fire was nearly dead and the room was full of shadows.
“O Illior!” he groaned, pressing a hand over his eyes. “Must I be the one who sees the end of it?”
To Be Continued.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lynn Flewelling grew up in Presque Isle, Maine. Since receiving a degree in English from the University of Maine in 1981, she has studied veterinary medicine at Oregon State, classical Greek at Georgetown University, and worked as a personnel generalist, landlord, teacher, necropsy technician, advertising copywriter, and freelance journalist, more or less in that order. She currently lives in western New York.
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