by GJ Kelly
When they crested the rise the vague shape in the distance seemed a little clearer, the shimmering of the heat trapped in the sun-baked and rocky road diminished by virtue of their height above its effect combined with the gusts of wind whipping it away, dust-devils swirling across the track here and there. But still it was too far to identify. Eyes strained as the column marched on, quietly, cautiously, heads and eyes scanning the woodlands all around.
“It is large.” Elayeen said softly, her voice her own again, “Larger than a horse.”
“Moving?” Gawain asked.
“No, it’s just waiting there.”
Gawain flicked a glance over his shoulder. The Gorian men flanked the rear wagon, some of them resting their hands on its sides as a visible sign that it was under their protection; it was, after all, the wagon in which the women rode. Their faces were worried, but heads held high and resolute. They had travelled far, and suffered much, but had found friends in a new land and would not flinch. After all, with Raheen gone, there was nowhere else for them to go now, except north along the road to Jarn.
The wagons and the Gorians themselves were flanked by the mounted guard of Callodon, helmeted and uniformed, quiet, alert, and efficiently drilled, but more than likely untested in combat. Nevertheless, they had done well at the outpost when the Grimmand of Sethi had revealed itself; the number of Callodon crossbow bolts that had slammed into the creature before Allazar incinerated it was testament to their nerve as well as their marksmanship. The western flank was stronger than the eastern one, at Gawain’s request. Some unknown intuition had spoken silently of a threat from that direction.
But it was due north that the threat now waited. After keeping a slow but steadfast pace, they finally came to within half a mile of the thing, and Elayeen drew them to a halt, peering ahead intently with the eldengaze that had so discomfited Gawain earlier.
“It looks like a rider,” Gawain said.
“I have seen this shape before,” Elayeen said, “Though not as I do now.”
“What is it, miheth?”
She stood in her stirrups, her gaze fixed ahead, and then she sat back, and when she spoke, her voice was hard and distant as the Dragon’s Teeth. “It is a Graken, with a rider on its back.”
“Dwarfspit!” Gawain spat. “Captain, the body and the tail will remain here to protect the Gorians. The head will advance with the three of us.”
“Aye my lord,” Tyrane acknowledged, signalling his men, and with a glance across Elayeen at Allazar, Gawain advanced.
They rode in line abreast, Elayeen at the centre, Gawain to her right and Allazar on the left. Behind them, Tyrane in the centre flanked by the two hefty men of the vanguard, and then three more Callodon riders behind them. This was the ‘head’ of the column. Behind it, the remaining nineteen Callodonians sat saddle, weapons at the ready under the watchful eye of their sergeant.
At five hundred yards, the fading heat from the road and its gentle undulations no longer impairing their view, all saw the great winged beast simply standing in the middle of the Jarn road, blocking it completely, a smaller, darker figure upon its back. Halfway between them and the dark-made beast, they also saw the charred remains of the two scouts and their horses scattered about the road.
At three hundred yards, with the gruesome remains just ahead of them, Gawain called a halt.
“I have its range.” Elayeen said.
“Not yet.” Gawain announced.
“We have your back.” Tyrane announced grimly, eyeing the remains of the scouts he had deployed, and Gawain nodded.
The Graken, at some unspoken command from its rider, let out a shrill cry, and eased forward a few yards, and then stopped.
“It is trying to goad us forward,” Allazar suggested.
“We need no goading,” Gawain muttered darkly.
“The trees beyond it are broken,” Elayeen sighed, her voice almost sad. Then, in a harder tone, “The rider misjudged the arching of the boughs when he brought the beast to ground on the road. It is injured, and unless the branches overhead are cleared, it is trapped and grounded.”
“It will not be leaving here.” Gawain asserted, stringing an arrow.
The rider on the Graken’s back raised an arm, holding aloft what looked like a large lump of coal or burnt wood. And then a familiar shimmering appeared to float in the air twenty yards in front of them. Morloch.
“By the Teeth!” Tyrane gasped.
The shimmering form seemed almost to solidify, Morloch at first standing with his back to them, turning the illustrated pages of some huge tome. He stood as tall as Gawain, or so it seemed, and was dressed in black, a loose shroud perhaps, which shimmered when he moved. The head atop the vision was round, and loathsome. Completely bald, the skin stained and mottled with black blotches which seemed to crawl beneath the flesh, moving. The Morloch turned. Thin blackened lips, held in a perpetual sneer, eyes black with aquamire, no whites to them at all, no pupils. There was a festering wound on his right cheek, open and weeping, a legacy perhaps of his last encounter with Gawain, or perhaps a more recent injury received when the great wave struck the Teeth beyond which he lurked.
“You!” Morloch spat, unbridled hatred twisting his already grotesque features.
“I,” Gawain replied firmly, “Who else, filth?”
In his tower, far to the north, Morloch advanced upon the great black lens in which Gawain’s image was centred. To those watching Morloch’s apparition hovering above the road to Jarn, the dark wizard’s face appeared strangely distorted, and contorted with fury.
“You shall vex me no more, vermin of the Raheen! I shall unleash upon your stinking lands and putrid people such wrath as this world has never seen! You shall be the last, vermin, the last to die! Oh I shall not destroy you, Raheen, as I did your miserable mountain citadel, no, no, you I shall keep until the end! You shall be the last while all around are rent asunder and blasted in the black furnace of my vengeance and wrath!
“Know this, king of nothing, know this! All the horror and dread I shall unleash upon your festering world is the wages of your sins against me! Did you think I could be destroyed so easily! Did you think some feeble relic left by decrepit weaklings made dust before your reeking forebears were conceived would be enough! I am Morloch! And! I! Shall! End! You! All!”
And with that last blast of hatred, the hideous and distorted image of the face of Morloch faded, shimmered, and was gone.
Ahead, on the track, the rider upon the Graken lowered the dark objected which had seemed to serve as some kind of connection between Morloch’s lens and the road to Jarn, and the Graken began advancing again, slowly.
oOo
17. A Poor Substitute
Behind him, Gawain heard the men of Callodon let out long-held breath. They had not witnessed such an apparition before, and to them, it must have been terrifying. Gawain looked across at Allazar, and loudly, for the benefit of the Callodon riders, exclaimed:
“The black-eyed bastard always has to have the last word. Last time he spoke to us, I believe it was something like ‘aaagh!’”
Allazar smiled grimly. “In truth, he did not look well, Longsword.”
“Alas I saw nothing,” Elayeen said, her gaze fixed forward.
“Nothing?”
She shrugged apologetically. “I saw the rider yonder raise up a dark and glowing thing, and then heard Morloch’s voice ranting.”
“The ‘glowing thing’ was a Jardember,” Allazar explained as if reading aloud from a book, “An intricately carved piece of Ulmus-tree heartwood, dark runes burned into its carved facets and then infused with aquamire. Morloch’s powers must be weak indeed to require the use of such a tool to appear to us thus. He had no need of such devices in order to appear in the hall at Ferdan, nor upon the plains of Juria when first he appeared to Longsword.”
“He appeared in a vision as he did at Ferdan, miheth, in a shimmering cloud just in front and slightly above us.”
“Thank y
ou, G’wain. I saw it not. May I now shoot the rider advancing towards us? I do not like the darkness, and how it spoils the light of the woodlands around us.”
“I fear it may be a waste of an arrow, my lady.” Allazar said softly.
“Nevertheless.” Elayeen canted her bow at an angle and drew the shaft, paused a moment, and released the arrow with a slight gasp as the bow’s recoil jolted her broken fingers.
They watched as the shaft seemed to speed well wide of the intended mark, heading for the trees to the right of the shuffling Graken. But the wind from the east bent its path, swinging its track towards the west. A black disk appeared briefly before the Graken and its rider, and they saw an even briefer puff of smoke when the arrow struck it.
“Did I hit it?”
“No, miheth, the rider summoned a shield, the arrow was burned.”
“Dwarfspit. It was one you just repaired for me.”
“We three of Raheen will advance, Captain, you and your men should remain, watch our backs lest any surprises emerge from the trees.”
“Yes my lord.” Tyrane agreed, and the six of Callodon, sweat still visible on their brows from the sight of Morloch, formed a line across the road, crossbows at the ready, eyeing the slender form of the elfin queen astride her horse, and drawing strength from her calm resolve.
When clear of Tyrane and his men, Allazar asked quietly: “We three of Raheen, Longsword?”
Gawain shrugged. “I and my lady are the crowns of Raheen, and you are the First and Keeper of The Stick. There’s a fourth, but he’s busy in the north.”
“A fourth?”
“Martan of Tellek. I believe he swore a kind of oath of fealty to me, out on the farak gorin.”
“Ah.”
“There are strange shapes on the road before us.” Elayeen announced softly, her head tilting this way and that, trying to identify them.
“Oh. Alas, miheth, these are the remains of the scouts sent two hours in advance of us.”
“Oh.” Elayeen sighed sadly. “There are dark-made marks along the road before us too, and some of the boughs above us are broken.”
“They had no chance.” Allazar sighed, “This Graken rider from the west must have laid the guardstones at Morloch’s orders, recently, and waited nearby for their alarm. Morloch would have known, the moment the great wave struck the Teeth, he would have known Longsword had survived Salaman Goth and would most likely be passing this way sooner or later. The rider simply rained destruction upon the scouts from above the trees, thinking perhaps one of them was Longsword. Then he landed his beast, perhaps to check upon the identity of his victims before using the Jardember, to notify Morloch.”
“Yes thank you for your thoughts, Allazar, but we are riding head on into what looks like a twin of Salaman Goth who, if you remember, very nearly destroyed us both and would’ve done but for my lady. It’d be comforting to know what range and power that creature has.”
Again, as if reading from a book, Allazar announced: “The Graken is mostly harmless, Longsword, though it has a nasty bite. It feeds on the wing, swooping down to take small animals like sheep, goats, pigs, and in the absence of anything else, people, simply biting the middle from them as it continues on its way. It is employed by the dark enemy as a means of rapid travel, more than as a weapon.”
“I meant the creature on the beast’s back.”
“Ah. Well, we shall soon discover the limits of its power. I see no Dymendin staff in its hands, do you, my lady?”
“No.”
They closed to a hundred yards, and then slowed to a halt. The rider on the back of the Graken shuffling slowly towards them did indeed appear very similar to Salaman Goth, seated upon a high-backed chair of a saddle, wearing a winged iron mask identical to Goth’s. As the distance between them closed, Gwyn and the horses became more and more nervous, and in spite of their riders’ wishes or intent, backed away, eyes wide and white-rimmed with fear.
“Hai, Gwyn,” Gawain tried to calm her, but to no avail. With each yard the Graken gained, Gwyn and the horses backed away, keeping the distance between them almost a constant. Gawain remembered how at the Keep of Raheen, Gwyn had seemed paralysed with fear when Salaman Goth had arrived.
“We should proceed on foot.” Gawain announced. “Whether it’s the Graken or the rider, even Gwyn cannot bear to go closer.”
To the complete astonishment of all those watching, the three of Raheen backed away from the advancing Graken, dismounted, and led their horses to the relative safety of the rough ground at the edge of the road. No sooner had they set foot back on the track, than the Graken let out a piercing shriek.
“Do you have a plan, Longsword?” Allazar asked quietly at Elayeen’s left.
“Actually I was hoping you did.”
“Ah.”
“I trust this is not mere bravado on our part, Gawain.”
Even Allazar flinched at the pitch and timbre of Elayeen’s voice when she spoke. She stood at an angle to the axis of the road, the bow hanging loose in her left hand, facing the lumbering monster wheezing and snorting its laboured way towards them, her features set in the blank and chilling expression of the eldengaze. To the wizard and Gawain, it was as though a statue crafted in ancient times had spoken from beyond the void.
“Do you see it well enough to stick an arrow in the Graken’s head?” Gawain asked.
Elayeen simply raised the bow, nocked an arrow, and drew the full length of the shaft. The rider on the back of the beast some sixty yards from them in turn lifted what looked like a slender stick some three feet in length, holding it horizontally before him.
“That is no Dymendin staff.” Allazar said, frowning, as if trying to identify the device the dark wizard was holding.
Elayeen loosed the string and gasped once again at the pain of the bow-shock jolting through her fingers. The arrow sped true, but this close they could see that the black smoke-like shield the rider produced from his wand-like stick was no simple disk as Salaman Goth had used, but a great bubble, which also encapsulated the Graken’s head. The shaft struck the shield, flared briefly, and its ash fell harmlessly on to the cobbles.
“Did I hit it?” she asked, her voice her own once again.
“No,” Gawain muttered, “This wizard’s shield is larger than one we encountered at the Keep.”
“A rod of Asteran!” Allazar announced triumphantly, as though he had solved all the great mysteries of life.
“Is that good?” Gawain asked, a rising sense of great disquiet beginning to balloon in his stomach. “Or does that mean we run for our lives?”
“It is a poor substitute for Dymendin wood, Longsword. Poor indeed.”
“Elayeen, can you manage another shot?”
“Isst.”
“Then draw your bow and shoot, aim at the Graken’s head or neck.”
Gawain tightened his bow string about his own arrow and made ready to throw. Elayeen raised her bow, paused, and fired, and as soon as the rider conjured his black smoke shield, Gawain hurled his arrow.
Elayeen’s shaft flared into ash, and as before, the shield disappeared. Allowing Gawain’s arrow to slam into the Graken’s neck, just behind its jaw. It shrieked in pain and shock, and shook its scaly head and neck as a dog might shake itself of water, trying to rid itself of the source of its pain.
“Did I hit it?” Elayeen gasped.
“No miheth, but I did. You cleverly shot the window out for me.”
“That dark wizard has never seen a Raheen arrow-thrower before, Longsword!”
“I’d hoped as much. Nor had Salaman Goth, it’s probably why his own shield didn’t encompass his beast’s head at the Keep.”
The dark wizard raised his rod high above his head, and streamers of black lightning crackled towards them from each end, falling harmlessly short. But then a black ball seemed to form and solidify around each end, as though the iron-masked wizard were lifting a dumb-bell.
“Back.” Gawain said instinctively, and the
three retreated several more yards down the road.
Suddenly, the dark wizard jerked his arm as if throwing his stick at them. The two dark balls detached from the rod, flying towards them, again falling short upon the stony track some fifteen yards away. They struck the road with a mighty report and blast, and Gawain barely managed to twist himself to his left and put his body between the blasts and Elayeen. He felt the splinters of shattered stones and gravel pepper his back and sting like needles up the back of his legs, painful but harmless. But that debris would not be so harmless had it struck eyes, especially a pair as beautiful and unnervingly wide as the hazel-green elfin ones now staring at and through his own.
Allazar simply held his staff vertically before him, and a shimmering in the air halted the spiteful shards of rock which would otherwise have peppered his face.
“Are you hurt, E?” Gawain whispered.
“Nai.” Came the cold reply of eldengaze.
“I think it is now my turn.” Allazar said, and Gawain tore his eyes away from his lady to stare at the wizard who, incredibly, was smiling.
It was a cruel smile though, the smile of a vengeful warrior about to rid the world of an evil, the smile Gawain himself must have worn a hundred times or more during his long year smiting the Ramoths and firing their towers. The kind of smile Gawain had worn when he had plunged the Sword of Justice into the dark lens in the cavern beneath the Dragon’s Teeth.
Gawain, his eyes fixed on Allazar, drew his lady further back along the road while the wizard advanced, keeping himself between her and the Graken and whatever might occur next.
Allazar grasped the staff two-handed, as though it were a pitchfork and he would stab the Graken and its rider with the prongs. The Graken still gave out shrill cries of pain, but continued to advance, closing the distance between them and Allazar, and the rider lifted his stick high to conjure more black spheres with his stick.
Suddenly, without warning or chanting or any other sign, a great streamer of white lightning ripped from the end of the staff, blasting into the road, gouging a huge furrow in the stones and sending rock shards and earth flying. The wizard seemed to struggle with the staff, his face contorted into the twisted rictus of battle, heaving up on the pearl-white Dymendin trunk as though some great weight sat upon its end. The furrow of searing destruction zigzagged along the road, tearing rock and earth asunder, before finally it lifted clear of the ground and smashed into and through the wailing Graken and up into the rider on its back, blasting them apart amid a great flurry of streamers which branched from the main course. For the briefest of moments, to Gawain’s dazzled eyes, it looked as though Allazar were lifting a huge tree of lightning by the roots.
