by B. V. Larson
“This one looks lively enough, sire,” said Gruum. “Just shows you what you can get if you ask nicely enough.”
Therian said nothing, but a quiet smile played upon his face.
“I’m surprised you would deal with the priesthood so off-handedly,” said Gruum.
“A quick, hard blow quiets a vicious beast sooner than platitudes.”
“But can’t they become powerful allies? Are they not masters of the same arts that you labor at?”
Therian laughed derisively, “they believe themselves masters, but in truth they are dabblers. They have forgotten so much over the past centuries of my father’s rule as to be amazed by any parlor trick I care to perform for them.”
Gruum didn’t respond to this, thinking Therian was perhaps taking the priests too lightly. He mentally shrugged. What was done was done.
A moment later Therian spoke again, “The speed of your attack surprised me.”
“Likewise did your parry,” returned Gruum.
“I find it hard to fault a man who obeys my commands with such blinding speed and an utter lack of hesitation.”
“Indeed, sire. It is, after all, a matter of trust.”
Although they didn’t look at one another, both men smiled.
They walked for nearly half an hour, winding their way down to the bottom of the Palace. Finally, Therian stopped in the middle of a long, dusty passage and fiddled with rough spots in the marble walls. A click sounded. The King beckoned and disappeared into the secret entrance.
With a sigh and a final glance about him at the world of light and humanity, Gruum followed his lord into the darkness.
-12-
Their path led deeper into the Earth than Gruum had ever been—far deeper than he ever cared to be. For seven levels there was still brick and mortar, ancient and crumbling though it may be. After the seventh level of forgotten depths they descended into caverns of dark basalt. Deeper still, the caverns became unclean and ran with steamy liquids. They crept through damp passages that hadn’t seen human traffic in an age, if ever.
“Sire,” said Gruum at last, “Are we descending to Hell itself this day?”
Therian paused and thought for a moment. “In a way, we are doing just that.”
Gruum asked no more questions. When they reached the twelfth level beneath the castle, Therian led the way down a passage that seemed to go nowhere.
He indicated a large crevice in the in the floor. The opening led down into utter darkness. “You will need to remove your scabbard from your back. It’s a tight squeeze.”
Gruum balked at this. “You want to go down a crack in the floor into nothingness! How will we get back up?”
“There is another way out, deeper still,” said Therian.
Gruum eyed Therian dubiously. “If your wish is to lead me off and slay me where my body will never be found, milord, this spot will do as well as any.”
Therian sighed. “Follow or not, as you will,” he said as he lowered the caged lizard on a cord into the crevice. The cord went down a great distance indeed, it seemed to Gruum. Finally, Therian tossed down the cord and slipped his legs into the blackness.
Gruum watched, scowling and fidgeting with his saber’s hilt, as the Earth swallowed the King.
Swearing an oath to the High Mother, Gruum knelt and unbuckled his sword from his back. Holding the scabbard in his teeth, he slid down into the unknown.
-13-
“Let yourself drop,” said Therian, an unfathomable distance below.
Save for his own labored breathing, his Master’s voice was the only thing Gruum could hear. He could see nothing, as the lamp they carried had gone out during the descent.
In case he was dropping to an ignoble death, Gruum loosed a battle cry and stopped clutching the stone walls. He dropped into an unknown space, roaring all the way down.
The fall went on for a long time, too long. It felt as if he were hanging in space, not falling at all… But he knew that he still fell.
In that terrible moment, Gruum knew that the fall would indeed go on forever, that Therian had led him to an abyss and urged him to drop into the maw of some vast underground behemoth. It made him sad and angry to end his life as a witless dupe, an idiot sacrifice to a dark god.
Then he splashed into a limpid puddle of noxious water and rolled down a gentle slope until he regained his footing. Feeling about himself in the dark, he found the comforting weight of his saber. He took it up in both hands and grasped the hilt.
“Can you light a lamp, sire?” he asked. His aching sides heaved.
“You cannot see?”
“Nothing, milord.”
“Ah, I’ve forgotten. You don’t possess the eye of the dead. You have acted more bravely than I realized, Gruum.”
“Thank you, Lord. The light?”
Therian spoke alien words. A wan, greenish light loomed in the chamber. Gruum fixed his hungry eyes on the source, and saw it was the blade of Succor itself. He shuddered in the face of more sorcery.
“Would not a lamp have served just as well?” Gruum asked.
“Not where we journey.”
Gruum examined their surroundings. The crack in the ceiling was a dozen feet above their heads. It tore a hole up through the roof of what seemed to be a temple, not unlike the one far above in the castle. The crevice split through a grand fresco depicting a black dragon in the act of devouring the Moon and the stars. Directly below the crack lay the puddle he had fallen into. The puddle seemed more like a blasted crater now that he could see it clearly.
“Where are we, milord? And what befell this place?” asked Gruum.
“We are in the fallen temple of Anduin. Great tragedies played here beneath the land long ago.”
“I don’t see the altar.”
Therian indicated the crack in the ceiling and the crater in the center of the room. “The ancient priests delved too deeply into their art, I can only assume. The altar was consumed long ago.”
“And what do you think cut through the ceiling? A bolt from above?”
Therian indicated the crater and the opening above it. “I believe it was torn by the claws of whatever they summoned. It apparently consumed the altar—and quite possibly the cabal that invoked it—then sought freedom by clawing its way up through crust of the earth.”
Gruum shuddered at the thought of such a creature loosed upon the kingdom. Where had it gone to? Then he had a thought, and he looked at Therian in sudden understanding. “We’ve come here to perform a ritual.”
Therian took up the caged lizard and placed it where the altar had been blasted to fragments so very long ago.
“The cantrip is a dangerously powerful one, and I’ve never attempted to open a way for anyone besides myself,” Therian told him. “Are you ready?”
Gruum took up a flagon of wine from his side. He drank deeply of it. Unable to speak, he nodded to Therian, wiping his bearded mouth with his sleeve.
-14-
Before the rituals had reached their grisly end, Gruum was left wishing that he had brought enough wine to numb his senses. The geyser lizard hissed and thrashed so desperately that he was moved to feel for the tiny, cold life that leaked out upon the floor of the temple.
“You have no need of a true altar, lord?”
Therian shook his head. “Sorcery comes not from the altar, but from the place that surrounds it, and from the skill of the sorcerer that invokes it.”
Therian worked for a time in silence except for the occasional scrabbling of the lizard. Then distantly, from far above them, came a tiny tumbling sound. A loose rock rattled down the crack above their heads and splashed down into the pool Gruum had landed in.
Therian and Gruum looked overhead, craning their necks.
“Someone comes, Lord,” said Gruum in a whisper. Quietly, he reached over his shoulder and grasped the hilt of his saber.
“‘Tis possible,” said Therian thoughtfully. He wiped sweat from his face with the back of his wrist. His han
ds dripped gore.
“What man might have followed us?”
“These catacombs are home to many things other than men,” said Therian, smiling at Gruum’s alarmed expression. “In any case, I must hasten. Keep a sharp eye out.”
Therian set to work in earnest, working his spell. For a tense time, Gruum eyed the ceiling and the darkest corners of the ruined temple with suspicion until his neck ached and his sides ran with cool sweat.
Finally, Therian straightened, breathing hard and flushed from his work. “There, it is prepared.”
Gruum nodded, he knew what was coming next, and he squinched his eyes in anticipation. He winced as Therian began to speak. Would the words of a true dragon be so painful to the ears and so grating upon the nerves? Probably, he thought, they would be infinitely worse.
A thunderclap sounded in the chamber. Gruum was bowled over by the force of it. He came back up in a crouch, blade drawn.
A swirling vortex shimmered and twisted there upon the floor. As Gruum watched, open-mouthed, the vortex loomed up like flame to lick the ceiling where the crack yawned overhead. Many colors chased one another over its surface, blue, silver, crimson and honey-gold.
“By the Nine Devils, man! What have you wrought?” cried Gruum.
“I have opened a Dragon’s Maw.”
Hot gusts of wind blasted out from the vortex. Their hair whipped into their eyes with stinging force.
Then a new sound came to Gruum’s ears, an odd, feral, human sound, like that of a mad man in the grip of a raging fit. Gruum tore his eyes from the vortex to look back toward the source of the sound.
Lin’s red robes fluttered wide like the wings of a giant bat from the southern jungles. His dagger was held high, and the light of fanatical hatred shone in his drug-yellowed eyes. Loose lips slavered a slurry of blood and spittle.
“Blasphemy!” Lin screeched.
Gruum dodged the man’s crazed charge, setting out a boot to catch his attacker’s ankle as he passed. Lin went flying. Gruum slashed with his saber as Lin fell. He laid open the man’s robes and drew a deep line across his back.
Unfazed, Lin bounced back up and flung himself at them again. This time Therian stepped forward. With a smooth, effortless stroke of Seeker, he decapitated the priest.
Therian lifted the head by the hair and looked into the dead eyes.
“A shame to be forced to slay such a brave man,” said Gruum.
“This one’s bravery came from narcotic smoke and stealth,” Therian snorted. “Sober and standing under the gaze of a Dragon, his heart would stop dead.”
Gruum eyed the vortex, and wondered if his own heart would soon be put to just such a test.
Therian put a hand on Gruum’s shoulder and gestured toward the dark passages from which Lin had apparently come. A party of figures bearing torches approached.
Gruum lifted his sword and assumed a stance. He counted heads swiftly. “Nine, sire. But—what is that thing on the leash?”
“A walking serpent,” said Therian. “I had thought my father had slain them all. It is used to hunt in the depths as a lord may use hounds in the forests.”
Gruum again became aware of the vortex. While he had been distracted by Lin’s attack, the blasting winds from the vortex had been slowed, grown softer. Now they paused completely for a time, as might a slumbering man between breaths. Soon however, the passage of wind began again. But this time, it drew back the breath it had exhaled before.
Therian glanced at the vortex. “Soon, we will be gone from this place, but the time is not yet right.”
The nine priests approached them, fanning out. Two had crossbows, into which they loaded bolts.
“We do not have long, sire. They have crossbows.”
“I assume, priests,” Therian shouted across the chamber, addressing the advancing party. “That you have come in hunt of the madman Lin, and are motivated to arm yourselves by a natural concern for my safety.”
One of the priests stepped forward. He wore a grand turban-like headdress of rattling reptilian hides. Beneath the headdress a flowing cowl obscured his face. His robe hung to the stones at his feet and was a vibrant vermilion with a metallic sheen. “We, the Dragon Priests of Hyborea, beseech thee, our monarch. Please come away from this ancient place of honor and worship. Commit no more sacrilege in this holy place, lest you awaken powers undreamt of and release them upon our ailing country.”
All the while High Priest spoke, the others advanced so that they formed a half-circle less than a hundred steps away. They still advanced, but at a slow, wary pace.
Therian lifted Lin’s head up and mounted it upon the tip of Seeker. He held it high, as a victorious knight might hold aloft a rival’s head upon the steel-shod tip of his lance.
“Lin died swiftly, as will any who seek to give their rightful ruler commands.”
Therian spoke three unnatural syllables. Lin’s head burst into flames. The hair curled and stank. The face melted and ran like bubbling wax. Soon, the charred skull could be seen through the flickering tongues of fire.
At this, the priests halted their advance.
The High Priest stepped forward and spread his arms overhead. The vortex’s winds caused his vermilion robe to luff and flutter like a ship’s sails. He spoke painful words, and cut a glowing rune in the air. A frosty blast of air and needle-like ice particles struck Therian and Gruum. The flaming skull Therian still held aloft was extinguished.
“Another sorcerer,” moaned Gruum. He eyed the chamber around him, looking for a likely route of escape. None readily presented themselves.
Gruum noticed then that the wind from the vortex was building up again. But this time, it was sucking in air, rather than blasting it out. A long moaning sound grew in intensity as the sucking breach inhaled.
Therian examined the charred, frozen skull of the late Lin. He nodded appreciatively, and then addressed the High Priest. “I’m glad, believe it or not, that the priesthood hasn’t forgotten all of their arts. They were so long forbidden by my father. I will give you this, High Priest: I will rescind all laws against the practice of sorcery in our lands. I will encourage it among the priesthood, and even fund research from my own coffers.”
The High Priest seemed surprised. The others looked from one to another, for the first time confused and uncertain.
“My Lord, your offer is generous, and for some reason I believe it to be genuine. I ask only one addition to your terms: that none save the ordained Dragon Priests be allowed to delve into the ancient arts.”
Therian stepped forward. “I will not add this restriction.”
“Then, sire, we are sadly at an impasse.”
Therian nodded. “I would know, then, the name of the brother sorcerer with whom I am about to do battle.”
This statement made the other priests shuffle and glance at one another. They gripped their weapons with tense hands.
“I am Vosh, of the twelfth circle.”
“Vosh?” asked Therian, and Gruum looked up to see a concerned expression upon his lord’s face. He could not recall having seen such an expression ever before.
Therian spoke sidelong to Gruum. “Prepare to flee. I do not believe I can defeat him.”
Gruum’s mouth sagged.
To Vosh, Therian shouted: “The same Vosh who served my great-great-great-grandfather during the Barbarian Purges?”
“The same.”
“Then—that would make you six.... No, seven centuries old?”
Slowly, Vosh removed the headdress and allowed his flowing cowl to fall away. Thusly, he revealed not a face, but a bare, fleshless skull. Two green embers burned in the depths of the empty eye-sockets.
“Yes, boy-king,” said the lich, its jawbone working as it impossibly formed the words. Its voice rose in volume and now boomed from the walls like that of a giant. “For those who learn the truest depths of our art, there is no death, just slumberings and awakenings. You are well-educated, Therian, and skilled—and bold. It shames m
e to slay you, but even I have a master whose wishes must be obeyed.”
During the conversation, the vortex winds had risen up to steady howl. Gruum glanced at the hungry swirling mass of magic. It now looked to him more like a mouth than anything else. How powerful would the winds become? Therian backed a step or two toward the vortex. Gruum reluctantly followed his example. He fervently hoped that his death would be a clean one, if it were to come this day.
Across the chamber, the priests were having second thoughts as well. Having learned the true nature of the creature they had escorted to this wretched place, two of the priests turned and bolted for the dark passages that led up to the distant world of light and sanity.
Vosh stepped to one of the men who bore a crossbow. He indicated the fleeing men with his rippled, white hand of fleshless bone. “Slay that one.”
The crossbowman did as he was bid. Trembling, he shot his weapon. The bolt flew true, and pierced the back of one of the deserters, who flopped and wailed upon the ancient flagstones, turning dust to mud with his lifeblood.
Vosh’s skull nodded in approval. The lich then crooked the bones of his long-dead hand. The crossbowman staggered close to the creature, drawn against his will.
“You are a brave one,” said Vosh. “Brave, obedient and skilled. It shames me, but I have need of your bright, young soul.”
The crossbowman fell to his knees and crawled up to the lich, who did place the network of bones that had once been a fleshy palm upon the man’s head. The screams were immediate, and continuous. Soon, they became pathetic, hoarse bellowings. The man chewed his tongue loose and spat it out, but still the raving screams went on, and still, though blood ran from his mouth, ears and eyes, he could not pull his head from the caressing touch of the lich.
Therian and Gruum watched the proceedings with the dread that all mortal creatures feel when faced with the walking dead.
“What are we to do, Lord?” asked Gruum. “Should you not act?”
“Wait.”
“Lord, if the lich should touch me, I beg of thee to wield your blades and relieve my shoulders of the weight of my head.”
