Gifts of Vorallon: 02 - City of Thunder

by Thomas Cardin

  The mounted soldiers assembled without incident as she snuffed out the petty jealousies among them, and their desire to compete with one another for position and power, like a group of dogs arguing over a bone. Their overpowering desire, under Scythe’s influence, was her protection. She gave them no choice in the matter, and she backed up that emotion with a similar but lesser desire to obey their Captain.

  Scythe gripped the reigns tight, her nails biting into her palms. The pain to her hands assuaging a minute amount of the guilt she felt for robbing all of these men of their free will. They could still think, they could still act, but emotionally they were hers. Their thinking and actions could only follow the coerced path of their emotions. She had yet to meet the person whose conscious control of their thoughts could be detached from their emotions. Even the Queen’s insanity was a controllable device, though it did give Ivrane an aspect of freedom. As she became increasingly dangerous in her madness, Queen Ivrane would have to be dealt with.

  Scythe cursed herself for cowardice. She cursed herself for thrilling to the Queen’s slaps and abuse. Like the pain in her palms, their punishments filled a need. Punishment she earned for what she did to everyone around her. Her death would be the ultimate price. Condemnation served her overriding self-loathing, completing the circle.

  Knowledge and the focus of attention that magic required were her only releases from her cycle of fear and compulsion. To be mounted and riding out of Blackdrake for the first time since she walked through its threshold several years ago was a triumph of her desire for knowledge over her fears. She forced a smile beneath her cowl.

  Marek led the column of soldiers, with Captain Andrigar riding close behind. The soldiers rode four abreast along the north road with her gray-cloaked form securely ensconced in the middle of their ranks. Except for Andrigar, they would all throw down their lives, in Scythe’s defense.

  The Devourer crouched among the shadows of the tall woods bordering the northern outskirts of Blackdrake. He halted when the presence of many living sparks heading toward him along the broad road verged upon his senses. Taking care not to break too many branches or disturb much of the thick undergrowth beside the road, he stooped and entered the woods. Naked and hungry, he hid, quieting his desire to feed until the body of the cavalcade had drawn abreast of him. None detected him, not even the sensitive noses of the horses.

  His full lips pulled back in a wide grin as his cleanly muscled legs gathered beneath him.

  Doom followed the loud snapping of branches as the trees and bushes close along the western edge of the road burst apart. Scythe turned in the saddle to see the naked giant already in the midst of the soldiers behind her. He grasped and swatted at stunned men and horses. She projected calm and love toward the giant. You love me. I am your dearest desire. The men before you are your friends. You care for them. You are loyal to them.

  She gasped and flinched away as the giant threw a dead and disintegrating horse toward her and her mount with a roar. He was unaffected. The emotions did not reflect back, as they did with Andrigar, they were absorbed. She could feel him feed upon her gift directly, sucking in her will as he absorbed the flesh of the men and horses through the skin of his enormous, clean-fingered hands.

  Scythe turned and fled toward the head of the column, her horse in complete agreement with her desire. When the press of panicked men before her threatened to slow her course, she forced them and their horses aside with another thought. This was not what she had planned; this was death, close by and pressing. She would gain no knowledge here, only the consummation of all her fear.

  In the grip of dark panic, her quick mind understood why the giant was invisible to her far sight spell; his gift absorbed the magic, permitting nothing of his image to return to her lens. There was no fighting this creature with magic of any kind, only the weapons of her defenders could hope to stall him. She pulled her horse to a halt, and reversed her will upon the men who surrounded her defensively. Kill the giant! Glory in his death. Fulfill your greatest desire by bringing me his head!

  With a cry, the scattering men around Andrigar halted their wide-eyed mounts and raised their weapons to charge the giant. Only a quick grab of the reigns of Marek’s mount stopped his friend from joining the charge.

  Andrigar watched the howling men throw themselves upon the giant, swords striking savagely. No longer were they his men to command, but he lent their fury his own yell of encouragement. For a moment, their ferocity alone seemed enough to slay any creature, but their blades were futile. The smooth skin of the giant man remained unscathed. Even the bodily impact of their horses upon his knees and thighs failed to drive him so much as a step backward.

  The giant took his time, relishing in his killing, clutching one man after another and turning them to clumping showers of dust. Armor and weapons fell in a dreadful rhythm of rattle and clank to the roadway. The giant grew even taller as he killed dozens of men and their horses that waded futilely into his legs. His huge face grinning in foul satisfaction.

  “Release me!” Marek cried, drawing Andrigar’s attention once more back to his friend who continued driving spurs into the bloodied flanks of his horse.

  Marek’s chestnut courser reared and screamed, threatening to throw the scout. Andrigar wheeled his massive destrier, Palla, in front of Marek’s mount to block his path, and let loose his reigns. With his hands free, he drew his heavy sword and clouted his raving friend on the head with the pommel, stunning Marek senseless in the saddle.

  Andrigar turned and sought out the sorceress, his sword raised in his hands. He would enact the Queen’s vengeance now, before she could throw all these helpless men into the path of the unstoppable giant. Scythe sat frozen on her horse, hood thrown back by the haste of her departure, abject terror on her face. She has no hold over the giant!

  Andrigar had begun to guide his horse to her with a press of his knee, Marek’s mount in tow, when his dazed friend slipped from the saddle. Abandoning his plan of vengeance, he turned his mount back to Marek’s side and dropped down to lift and throw the man over Palla’s withers while the stolid warhorse remained motionless and compliant in the face of the advancing danger.

  He cursed the sorceress to the deepest realm of Nefryt as he mounted once more and fled northward with Marek unconscious before him. The giant would doubtless perform his task for him, ridding the world of this poisonous woman. He consigned all of Blackdrake to the same fate as he drove his warhorse onward.

  Scythe watched the Captain flee. She would not stop him, though she easily could have taken control of his horse out from under him. She turned back toward the slaughtering giant with the beginnings of an idea; it relied on the giant man having a reasoning brain beneath his wild mop of brown hair. She raised her hood once more, hiding her face from the impending act of fear she contemplated.

  Without uttering a word, she pulled back the surviving men, less than half their original force, to stand in pleased satisfaction by her side.

  “Why do you kill?” she called toward the giant man, who now stood half a man height taller than when he had first appeared. Her plan solidified further. “You feed, do you not?”

  “Yes, I feed to become a god!” the giant man bellowed toward the sky, then took a huge stride forward, arms outstretched low to catch any mounted man who tried to ride past him.

  “I can help you feed, I will let no more run away from you,” Scythe called. “These men are my gift to you. If you will let me serve you, I shall make all the people of Zuxra sate your hunger gladly.”

  She pushed a great love into all the men surrounding her. Here is your dearest friend. Drink of his ale and dance with his women. Celebrate your victories in his embrace! Likewise, she forced a similar desire into all of their horses.

  The soldiers cried in joy at seeing the giant before them and sheathed their weapons or cast them to the ground, while their mounts pranced forward, carrying their ecstatic riders toward their doom.

  “I am the Dev
ourer,” the giant boomed out into the surrounding forest. “You will be first among my worshipers, woman!”

  “I am your servant, Master,” said the sorceress as she watched the Devourer open his arms wide to the soldiers and horses coming gladly into his embrace. Beneath her hood, Scythe wept for the lost, but also in relief for her miserable life. This act condemned her to the worst of all fates. Men and horses crumbled to bones and dust, their lives ending in an excruciating moment of screaming pain that even her gift could not quiet in their throats.

  Captain Andrigar reigned Palla in at the top of a rise in the road and looked far behind him. The small, robed figure of Scythe bowed low in the saddle before the Devourer whose name came echoing to him on the wind. Of his two hundred men, not a soul remained, only a litter of weapons, armor, and glistening white bones.

  He would take Marek as far from this place as possible. After he dropped below the crest of the hill, putting the scene behind him, Andrigar paused long enough to strap his friend’s limp hands together with his own baldric, and tied him securely across his horse’s broad withers before spurring his mount northward.

  Scythe urged her mount around the towering perfection of the Devourer’s body with her gift, the reigns in her hands long forgotten. Up close, his presence stung her skin, dancing along her senses like insects with needle-sharp feet. She kept to a slow, quiet pace, but increased the distance that separated them.

  “Follow me Master,” Scythe said as he stood tall, watching her hungrily. “I will lead you to the throne of your empire.”

  “What are you called, woman?” he asked in a smooth, well-modulated voice for all that it came from such an enormous throat.

  “Call me Scythe, Master,” she replied from deep within the shadow of her gray cowl. “I will reap for you the harvest which is your due.” She grimaced at repeating the exact same words she had spoken to Queen Ivrane when she first stood before her several years ago, a sad, miserable girl with a dreadful gift to command the hearts of men.

  The Devourer’s bare feet slapped upon the hard packed dirt of the road behind her, the sound of deathblows. She winced with each step toward Blackdrake Castle. Everyone who lived within was doomed so that she could live. Her nails dug deeper into her palms.

  “Aid me to ascend, Scythe, and you will rule all of Vorallon when I go to the stars to devour the gods who hide behind them,” said the Devourer, his voice full of wistful longing.

  “Thank you, Master. Nothing would please me more,” Scythe said, struggling to keep her shoulders from drooping so that he would not see her fear.

  -within the halls of Vlaske K’Brak

  The dwarves lining the passage saluted with fists to their chests, and bowed to Lorace as he passed.

  He faltered in his steps as a gentle, but unyielding, force began drawing on his awareness. Without willing it, his eyelids drooped low over his vacant gaze, and his sight flew outward.

  “Lorace? What is it?” Tornin asked from his side, one hand flicking to the hilt of his black sword.

  Lorace raised a hand to forestall his protector. Vorallon’s familiar touch was guiding his vision. The pulsing energy matched what he had felt at the Voradin tree and during the Ritual of the Forge. The spirit of the world manipulated his gift. Vorallon wished to show him something.

  He relaxed into his tranquility, and let his awareness blur across the landscape, free to the will of Vorallon—beyond Halversome and across the Vestral Sea to an enormous construction of black stone. This is Blackdrake Castle! He thought, and knew it to be true.

  His awareness penetrated through the glassy obsidian stone of the great edifice. Deep within, in the heart of the stone, all was dead blackness flecked with dim motes of emerald green. Downward his vision flowed, until it halted above the head of a figure walking through the black halls, a woman hooded and cloaked in gray, voluminous robes.

  She walked down the center of a wide hall that seemed dimensionless in the darkness, while behind her stomped a huge presence, only visible as shadow when it blocked the points of light emitted from sconces lining the walls. He heard the sound of ponderous, hollow slaps from what must be titanic feet striking the floor as the woman led the shadow along the hall.

  She paused before enormous black doors while a pair of men wearing the black armor of Zuxra opened them wide without so much as a word passing between them and the cloaked woman. He immediately recognized the cavernous room beyond the doors: the final battleground of Elena and the great dragon Kamunki. Huge melted pits pocked the rippled floor. The cloaked woman and the following shadow strode without pause toward a throne standing on the far side of the chamber.

  “Scythe!” cried a thin woman upon the throne in a voice dripping with hatred and fear. “Remove that creature at once! What has become of Andrigar?”

  “The Devourer is Master here now, Ivrane,” said the gray cloaked woman. “Andrigar has fled.”

  This was Queen Ivrane, mad ruler of the Zuxrans. She sat upon her throne deep in Blackdrake Castle and screamed incoherently. Scythe must be the gray-cloaked woman and the shadow that followed her was undoubtedly the same creature he had seen leaving a murdered town—the Devourer, she named him.

  The Queen rose from the throne and charged at Scythe, hands raised, her fingers hooked like the talons of a beast.

  “Your madness has won out, Ivrane, you are free of me at last,” Scythe said, calmly spreading her arms wide to the onrushing Ivrane. The Queen’s grimacing face was red in breathless fury as she charged along the path of carpets.

  The shadowy giant stepped past the cloaked woman to intercept the berserk Queen, lifting her far up off the floor. Ivrane lived for only a moment, her piercing shriek of pain echoing through the vast room for far longer.

  Lorace wailed as the mad Queen’s flesh crumbled to dust. At his heartfelt cry, a whirlwind spun the dust in a mad twirl. The Devourer snatched his shadowy arm back from the whirlwind, scattering the woman’s wet bones across half the room.

  “Thus will I destroy you!” boomed the deep voice of the Devourer, aimed directly at the point of Lorace’s awareness.

  Vorallon released him, allowing him to break away, back to the passage in Vlaske K’Brak. A sudden blast of wind staggered those standing around him while his mind reeled out of balance. He caught himself and released his unwitting hold on the air of the hall.

  “He could see me,” Lorace gasped, clasping Tornin’s arm until the disorientation passed.

  “Who could see you, Lorace?” Oen asked, further bracing him with his strong hands.

  “He calls himself the Devourer,” Lorace said, regaining his composure. “Vorallon guided my sight to show him to me. I do not know what he is. I could not see him clearly, but he is huge. It is him that Vorallon sets me against. He destroyed the Queen of Zuxra, deep within Blackdrake Castle, in the very chamber where Elena and Kamunki fell.”

  “The chain’s destiny becomes your own,” Prince Wralka said with a sagely nod before turning once more to lead them through the halls of Vlaske K’Brak.

  Chapter 3

  THE STRONGEST LINK

  Twenty-Seventh day of the Moon of the Thief

  -in Blackdrake Castle

  The Devourer glared about the great throne room, seeking any further sign of the hated presence. The despised wind was gone, but it was a while longer before he could thrill to the exquisite stone beneath his feet. The stone welcomed him, like a returning friend. The pits called to him of blood and long forgotten memory.

  The vast chamber comforted, but did nothing to soothe his hunger. Sparks of living essence filled the castle, calling to his senses, tantalizing him with their proximity.

  “Scythe, I must feed. Bring everyone to me, I will accept no delay,” the Devourer rumbled as he strode about the throne room, examining the stone of the walls and floor. “Have everything removed from this chamber, even the lights along the walls—it must be down to the bare stone.”

  “At once, Master. Shall I begin by
emptying the slave pens for you?” She suggested with a deep bow, keeping her distance from his aura. “If it should please you, devour the guardsmen last for they will facilitate in gathering the populace of Zuxra to you.”

  “Very well,” the Devourer said, bending down to examine the cloaked woman. “You are a wielder of magic. I can smell it about you. Once you have set the guardsmen to their task, I want you to seek out the Stranger, the bringer of the accursed wind who dared to intrude upon my presence. Seek him out and destroy him utterly with any means at your disposal.”

  Scythe raised her chin and squared her shoulders beneath her cloak. “He shall not live out the day, Master.”

  The Devourer nodded his great head in satisfaction and made a gesture with one hand toward the massive doors, dismissing the sorceress. He leered, a familiar expression, at the haste she showed in departing from his hungering spirit.

  -within the halls of Vlaske K’Brak

  Prince Wralka halted them before a chamber with several guards and a stout, red-bearded dwarf bearing a steel mallet.

  “This is the main sending chamber,” the Prince announced before turning toward the dwarf with the mallet. “Sound the assembly, Krunda, it is time.”