Song Of Mornius

by Diane E Steinbach

  Felrina drew a deep breath, glancing at Mens in the front of the room. His glare jolted her to alertness, yet she refused to look away. The fear he instilled quickened swiftly to rage in her heart, enough defiance to endure what she now was forced to hear as the attendants behind her dismembered her friend.

  Camron! She shuddered as she pictured him with his crooked, contagious smile. He had been the moody younger brother, weaker in body than Terrek, but gifted with a brilliant mind and a passion to learn. She had always loved his honesty and his open and trusting heart.

  He had never uttered a sound while her three gray-robed assistants placed him unresisting before her, binding him naked on the stone. She recalled her horror at seeing him for the first time in over a year, the determined fire in his eyes while he stared at the ceiling, his jaw muscles tensing as she pressed her knife to his flesh.

  Now he’s gone, she thought, licking her lips with her dry tongue. And I must continue for the sake of our future. These trials give Erebos the strength to hasten his rebirth. This is what matters, nothing else. She swiped at her cheek. I mustn’t lose sight of that.

  Felrina grimaced at Mens as he approached, accepting Erebos’s ancient staff when he placed it in her grasp. As she turned to the altar, her three assistants hurried down the steps and out of her way. Then Felrina paused, allowing the First enough time to climb down from his low box and follow. With a nod, she lifted her staff and aimed its Blazenstone at Camron’s remains. “Great Erebos, accept this life!” she said.

  Flames blistered the oval chamber, whirling out from her stone as a second blaze rose from the altar itself—from her god, Erebos, hiding within its obsidian heart. As Camron’s bones withered, she heard laughter from the winged shadow rising over the burning slab, a long, mirthless cackle from the Slayer of Suns.

  Felrina sank to her knees, feeling the chamber around her creak and rock. The granite crackled beneath her, its sharp repetitive snaps hurting her ears.

  She cringed where she knelt, blinded by the inferno that charred the walls beyond the altar and rippled in streamers above her. Any moment and she would feel her eyes melting, her flesh dropping in tatters from her bones.

  A hush filled the chamber as the flames slowly died, the air tinged with the smell of sulfur. Felrina opened one eye. The elated priests were staring at her—stunned and holding their breath.

  “Erebos is pleased,” Felrina said, trembling as she stumbled to her feet. “Our offering was a potent one. The boy has fed Erebos well, and one day we’ll see him again in paradise!”

  “Praise to the spirit of the sacrifice!” As one, the acolytes exulted, lifting their bloodstone staves as they chanted. “Feast, great Warder, and save us!”

  “Now go!” Felrina whirled her staff above her, its flames drawing arcs of glowing crimson across the ceiling. “Go and worship our one true hope!”

  “Our hope!” Erebos’s minions echoed. With a rustle of heavy fabric, they filed out through the chamber’s front exit, their voices chanting soft and slow.

  “You selfish whore,” said Allastor Mens’s voice behind her. Then, wearily, Felrina turned.

  Her leader leaned toward her, his weight on his staff, as his glare flayed her bones. Camron’s blood splotched his chin and neck, with more of it streaked on his balding head.

  Ignoring him, she glanced again at the altar. In silence the two attendants with the buckets approached the back of the chamber, the containers they held thudding against their calves.

  “Felrina.” Mens, grabbing her elbow, pressed the warped heat of his body close. “You were talking to him! You knew that young man! You—”

  She threw off his touch. “Yes, he was frightened, so I comforted him. What is the harm in that, Mens? It wasn’t that kind of ceremony, anyway. We were to harvest blood, not pain.”

  “That boy affected you,” said Mens, “so his death should have been entrusted to me for the benefit of us all.” He shoved at her until she stepped back, his flaring nostrils a hairsbreadth from her own. “Instead you took from our god’s table!”

  “My pain this night,” she said, her voice quivering, “fed Erebos more than any hurts that boy might have felt!”

  Allastor Mens’s upper lip curled, his reddish eyes flaring beneath his wild black brows. “What makes you think Erebos will spare you?” he demanded. “There’s always a price for treachery, Felrina. A price, do you hear me? And I guarantee you will—”

  She cut him off with a brusque gesture, diverting his attention to the attendants waiting beside the altar. “Are you finished? We have other work yet to do, Mens. Arawn’s spirit hungers now, and your army of dachs needs replenishment. Have you prepared the prisoners?”

  Mens nodded as she left him to join her helpers. When the grim-faced First hefted his torch and started down the granite rear passage that led from the chamber, Felrina followed, descending the stairs with Mens on her heels.

  She snarled silently as he darted to flank her. “The last batch you made was flawed, Felrina. Too many of them killed themselves before I could use them.” He grunted when the steps ended and then narrowed and resumed a few paces later. “This time, I want warriors with no conscience at all and no self-awareness. Give me dachs who’ll brave both fire and sunlight for me and every—”

  “I’m familiar with your needs, Mens,” she interjected, slowing her pace when the stairway forked before her. Crouching beneath the mountain’s dense rock, she veered left, the glow from the First’s torch barely visible ahead. “Perhaps they’ll be met this time. Who can say? Erebos’s ability to work through Arawn’s magic increases daily. It isn’t just me, you know, who decides the outcome.”

  She abandoned the steps and padded along the sloping volcanic rock, then hurried up more stairs to enter the place she considered her workroom. The Attendant First’s fiery brand illuminated her sunken tarn below where she stood, and the sight of its black, greasy surface steadied her. Once more she summoned fire from Erebos’s staff. As she started down the stony shelves surrounding the pool, her attendants passed her by, the two clerics stopping to kneel at the pond’s flat edge and flick blood from their buckets across the water.

  Felrina moved into position by the female attendant, a girl with a dirty-blond braid down her back. “Hearken and make ready, great Arawn!” Felrina cried. “For we now bring life in exchange for your service, and a heart in trade for your power. Grant us the potency of your magic! Let the old and the new merge as one!”

  She motioned, and the two attendants emptied their buckets. Camron’s organs vanished beneath the water. Gulping, she watched his head bob toward the pool’s oily center, his blank face staring upward as it sank.

  Groans of fear rose from the nude men and women hidden in the shadows against the wall. They were the prisoners from Tierdon, the ones deemed sturdy enough to survive her staff. At her command, Mens’s clerics drove them forward into the pool, harrying them up to their necks in the slimy water.

  “Stay in the shallows close to the edge,” one of the acolytes warned while Felrina watched, “or you’ll be yanked under for sure, the flesh ripped from your bones.”

  Felrina nodded. He saw what happened last summer, she thought as she raised her staff high. That woman . . . She remembered the captive—the feeble thrashing of the prisoner as Arawn’s spirit, hungry for life, had devoured her legs. Then Mens, with a vicious grin, had used his staff to prod the woman back into the ghost’s merciless grasp after she had struggled so hard to break free.

  Clearing her throat, Felrina lifted her gaze to the cavern’s vaulted ceiling. “Hail, great Arawn,” she intoned, “master and mage, slaver of giants and the wielder of the power which preserves you. Hear me, Lord!” She spread her arms. “Erebos has promised to create a New Earth for us. A world fit for humans alone with you as our king. But death must come first, so grant us the power to destroy and rebuild, great one! Help Erebos transform this flesh we offer, and construct from these hearts mighty warriors, combatants who w
ould rather die than fail. With this, the water that holds your magic, help us, Lord!”

  She tapped the stalactite above the immersed prisoners with her staff, and the Blazenstone crackled with heat, its lurid energy blasting in all directions. It was Erebos’s power she held, eager, unfettered, and raw.

  Felrina closed her eyes. Gripping her staff, she envisioned the dachs Mens had described to her, for she was the guide Erebos needed, that Arawn’s knowledge of magic would then help him form from the captives’ living tissue. As Erebos’s power struck the pool, he awakened the dead wizard’s awareness, Arawn’s spirit bound to the water by his final spell. When the great mage absorbed the blood that was offered, his thoughts, fully roused, focused on manipulating Erebos’s power, answering the demands of the staff that animated his soul.

  Screams filled the chamber. The tarn ignited as the old magic connected with the new, the prisoners shrieking when the flames swept over them, their bodies writhing as their flesh melted like heated wax.

  With Camron’s name on her lips, Felrina struck the inferno with her staff, and the black water erupted, spouting upward from beneath the fire.

  She recoiled, stepping clear of the currents within the pool, the flailing liquid battering the stricken captives against the basin’s stony rim and the mountain above it, the force of it crushing their bones.

  When at last the magic abated, the water sloshing back and forth, Felrina dropped her robe and slipped naked into the shallows, her toes finding the steps beneath the water. Descending to her waist, she glanced around her at the scattered bodies. Two were dead, with gory pouches of brain and bone swaying above their necks—and already Arawn consumed them, their torsos jerking as his spirit in the water tore them apart. She scanned the remaining prisoners, all floating spread-eagled, their broken bodies pliable now, like clay ready to mold.

  Reaching with her staff, Felrina touched one chest after another with the Blazenstone. Again she formed images in her mind, this time of the shattered limbs mending into the shapes she wanted, the skin of the arms widening into wings, the thickening fingers growing talons, and the backs elongating into tails with poisonous spines. She clenched her staff, visualizing the skulls of her creatures growing heavy, their jaws reinforced and bristling with fangs, the skin of their heads and bodies hardening into scales.

  “So many with wings,” Allastor Mens said from beside the pool, and yet his voice sounded far away. She nodded while she finished her work, adding mottled patterns of gray and green on the skin of her creations, with ebony-colored wings and crimson on the barbs along their tails.

  Felrina, pressing her staff to the final dach’s widening chest, peered up at Mens. “Erebos and Arawn do all the work, while I just picture what I want from them. If not for my imagination, Mens, I’d be just like you, and someone else would carry my staff.”

  He grimaced, his dark eyes flaring while his mind rejected her words. “No, Felrina. You’ve never dared to handle a bloodstone because you’re afraid. You don’t want your teeth to fall out or your precious body to rot. So instead you carry that.” He motioned to her staff. “And because somebody has to, I approve, but it does make you a coward among us, while every day the rest of us, Erebos’s true followers, deteriorate.”

  Felrina frowned, taken aback by Mens’s resentment, the utter contempt in his voice. She waded out of the pool’s oily water and onto the stone ledge, standing with pinkish rivulets streaming down her legs. She raised her staff, sensing Arawn’s mind sink again into the pool’s dark depths, while, in the blood-red Blazenstone, Erebos’s power crackled and burned, reacting to Mens’s anger.

  With the warder’s strength, she struck the black-robe’s groping fingers when he came too close, his yellowed teeth bared as though he meant to bite her. “Don’t touch me, Mens! How many times must I tell you?”

  He continued to stare, quivering as he stooped to the rocky floor and lifted her discarded robe. “Wear it!” he said in a hoarse whisper. He flung the garment at her chest. “Have mercy, Felrina.”

  She smiled and let the robe fall, laughing when his hungry eyes widened to devour her body. “Why should I cover up for you?” she asked. “Why not just blind yourself, Mens? Erebos would like that, too, I’m sure. You’ve said yourself how much he loves pain, and how it’s all for the sake of our future.”

  He gaped at her, his thin lips fumbling for words.

  Felrina glared back. “You promised me that if I joined this order, I’d never have to use the old magic. You swore to me I would never have to torture anyone, either. Now if you have a problem with that, you go talk to your mirror. I have better things to do. Begone!”

  She trembled with the power of the two great forces that had joined within her. I am their instrument, she realized. I give birth to their magic, and nothing else matters. Not Kideren, where I was born, or Terrek, whom I love.

  A low howl began in Mens’s throat. He whirled and bolted up the steps, fleeing from her presence so she would not hear him scream. Still, she did, and smiling at the sound, she bent to retrieve her robe.

  Chapter 18

  TERREK WHEELED FROM the golden caress of dawn on Tierdon’s ruined walls. As his surveillance shifted to Avalar, he recalled the painting Roth had shown him depicting the giant with his younger brother. The portrait had captured a hint of tenderness in her expression that went beyond friendship. Yet here she stood, having survived what had abducted or destroyed everyone else, including Camron. What does that tell me? he wondered.

  From the corner of his vision, he watched the giant examine Tierdon, observing how her emotions vied for dominance on her face, her lip and chin quivering between winces of regret. As he stepped closer, she detected his approach and turned, her blue eyes glittering. If she’s an enemy, I’ll know it now. I’ll wring the truth from her if I have to while Oburne’s still asleep!

  “You mistrust me,” Avalar said.

  He stopped in the giant’s shadow. Tilting back his head, he met her gaze. He was surprised at the sheen of tears on her cheeks, her sorrow more profound than he had thought. “The bodachs have a stench,” he told her quietly. “They smell of corruption, if that’s even possible. So why do I smell that on you?”

  “I am not your enemy,” she said. “I tried to wash. Jahn Oburne heated water on the fire for me last night—”

  “You attacked our healer,” he interjected. “You cannot undo that, Giant.”

  “Yes, I did. I would have killed him if not for you.”

  “Your presence threatens the one person who gives us a chance.” Terrek rested his hand on the pommel of his sword. “Giant, perhaps it is your youth that makes you impulsive, which isn’t your fault, I know. But you’re a danger to Gaelin, so I must ask you to go.”

  “Go?” Avalar peered above him at the sparkling trees, the morning sun illuminating her features through her clouding breath. She was old magic personified, yet it was plain to him how vulnerable she was. “Where shall I go? All my trainers are dead.”

  Terrek studied her armored frame, from the bloodstained mail protecting her lower torso to the intimidating sword at her hip. He scowled, remembering her cries during the night, how her dreams had roused them all. “Go home. You heard what Oburne said. It’s dangerous for you here. Return to Hothra and to safety.”

  She staggered, her face suddenly pale. “I must go away? But I was weary. I would never have lost control if I had not—”

  “I ask this for several reasons, not just for that,” Terrek cut in. “This area isn’t safe and you’d be a target. Plus, my healer shouldn’t have to worry about being attacked when he uses his staff. Avalar, please respect my wishes.”

  She sagged to her knees. “Sails! I cannot!” she said. “My windrunner boat is naught but splinters in the surf. Even if I had strength enough to journey there . . .” Her voice trailed off as she clutched the mail at her waist, fresh blood oozing between her fingers.

  Tears blurred her eyes. “Forgive me,” she said. “I though
t it better your healer not know. If he had tried to succor me . . .”

  Terrek hurried to support her injured side and to unfasten her heavy breastplate. Then, with all his strength, he helped her down, easing her onto her back beside a drift at the base of two entwined trees. He shrugged off his cloak, folded it, and tucked it under her head. “Avalar. Who did this to you? Was it the mage you fought on the steps?”

  She clenched her fists when, with a grimace, he removed her belt and then heaved her mail up as high as he could to expose her wound.

  “The first one failed to damage me . . .” She coughed. “Yet I was unprepared for how wrong his magic felt. After I slew him, another mage took his place to strike at me—the one who felled the city. Now, should I go . . .”

  Terrek silenced her with a gesture. “You can stay on one condition. You must promise me you will never again attack my healer. Can you swear?”

  She snatched a breath. “I shall not harm him. We spoke together last night and much has changed.”

  “Good,” Terrek said. “I believe you. And now I require your trust. If you stay, you must follow my orders even if you don’t agree with them. Can you do that?” He waited until she bobbed her head. “Very well, then I command you to let Gaelin help you.”

  “No!” Her eyes stared up. “You cannot ask that of me! I am the old magic, Leader Terrek!”

  “Giant, listen to me! Holram had the staff made for occasions like this. You must accept him now, for I do not believe you have a choice.”

  “Yes, I do,” Avalar said. “Leave me alone and I will mend. For two days I have endured this pain. Give me shelter and food . . . I vow to you I shall mend!”

  Terrek gripped her fingers, feeling them quiver as she fell back. This is more than fright. She loathes the new magic. If I send for Gaelin—

  He winced, picturing the sorely wounded giant bolting away from him through the trees. “Avalar.”