Word spread, too, about the “Damman Thornwalker,” but most thought it just a rumor.
And in the Northwood, Southwood, and the hills around Weevin, Thornwalkers came together to fight for liberty. In the Updunes, the Claydunes, and the Eastwood, traps were laid and Ghûls slain. And in Bigfen, Littlefen, and the Cliffs to the west, Warrows smiled, for they had been fighting all along and knew the Ghûls were vulnerable, though the count of Ghûlen dead at Budgens surprised even them.
~
Back at Whitby’s barn, the council of lieutenants sat in session with Captain Patrel, Captain Danner, and damman Merrilee. Patrel spoke: “We are all agreed then: though we know not how to do it, we must take the fight now to the Ghûls: we must devastate their strongholt in the ruins of Brackenboro.”
Merrilee looked ’round the table and a chill sense of foreboding shivered up her spine.
4
Myrkenstone
Spittle ran down Modru’s hideous iron mask, and his eyes blazed with rage. With a back-handed sweep, his black-gauntleted fist crashed into the side of Laurelin’s face, and she was smashed to the floor. “Khakt!” Modru’s spitting cry brought the mute Rukh scuttling into the room. The Rukh’s glance darted thither and yon, and he scurried to the mirror and drew the black cloth over the glass. Then he ran to bob and grovel before Modru.
“Shuul!” hissed Modru, and the mute sprang out the door. The black-cloaked figure turned back to Laurelin. “Perhaps your manners will improve after a rest in your quarters,” he said, then sibilant laughter hissed forth.
The mute Rukh came scuttling back, and with him were two Lôkha.
“Shabba Dûl!” spat Modru, and the Lôkha jerked Laurelin to her feet and shoved her from the room.
Along the central hall they took her, till they came to a heavy, studded door. One Lôkh hauled forth a ring of keys and rattled one into the lock, while the other took up a brand and lighted it. The portal creaked open and musty air seeped forth. Through the door they led her, the guttering torch held high, and Laurelin saw that they were in a stairwell with steep steps twisting downward into blackness. Down they went, the Princess hugging leftward against the wall adrip with slime, for there was no bannister to the right. Down they went: one flight, two, more: she lost count of the steps. At last, they came to a landing with a rusted iron door, and even though the steps pitched on downward into the blackness below, the Lôkh with the keys stopped, clattering one into the padlock.
Venting oaths, he struggled to turn the key; then with a grating sound, at last the tumblers gave way. The Lôkh hammered on the lock and the shackle opened. He pried the hasp back and then, jerking, inched open the portal until they could squeeze through.
Beyond was a narrow tortuous passage canting down. Iron-grilled gates were spaced along this twisting way, but they yielded to the keys, and downward the Lôkha took Laurelin. At last they emerged in a foul chamber, littered with filth and splintered bones, the marrow tongued out. The twisting passage could be seen to continue on, exiting out the far end of the chamber. An iron-barred cell with filthy straw on the floor was to the left. And into this foul cage Laurelin was pushed.
Clang: slammed the door.
Clack: shut the lock.
And then the Lôkha turned and stamped away.
~
And they took the light with them.
~
Laurelin could hear their foul voices in slobbering speech and raucous laughter as they went back up the way they had come, and the clash of the iron-grilled gates slamming to behind them, and the rusty screech of the iron door as it was forced shut again. And then she was alone in the blackness.
Her good hand stretched out before her, Laurelin slowly stepped forward until she came up against the bars of the cell. Now she turned right and, occasionally touching the bars for guidance, once more stepped slowly until she came up against a wall, this one made of stone. Again she turned right and paced in the utter blackness, counting as she went.
Laurelin’s cell was fifteen paces wide and ten paces deep. Three walls were slimy stone, one wall iron bars. Rotted straw littered the floor. Along the back wall was a small stone pier that Laurelin sat upon as if it were a bench, her back to the wall, her feet drawn up. And for the first time since her capture, alone and in the pitch dark, she pressed her forehead against her drawn-up knees and quietly wept.
~
Laurelin awakened to hear the distant screech of protesting iron and the clang of gates being opened, and the glow of a flaming torch grew as someone came down the twisting passage. It was her Lôkh jailor. The torchlight was painful to Laurelin’s eyes, and she shadowed her face with an out-held hand, blinking back watery tears. The Lôkh set two buckets upon the floor just outside her cell door, then turned and went back the way he had come, slamming the gates behind, shutting the iron door.
Bright afterimages slashing through her eyes, Laurelin fumbled her way to the cage bars, reaching through until she found a bucket. It contained water, and she drank thirstily using the cup found in the bucket bottom; and though the water tasted of sulphur, to her it was sweet. Still on her knees in the sour straw, she groped about and found the other wooden pail. She reached in and discovered a coarse hunk of stale bread. Cradling the chunk in her broken arm, once more she groped into the bucket and snatched her arm back with a hiss of air sucked in through clenched teeth, for something wet with small claws had scuttled across her hand.
Laurelin sat on the stone pier and ate the coarse bread, listening to a far-off drip of water tinking slowly, the sound echoing through the pitch blackness.
~
The Princess did not know how long she had slept nor what had awakened her. She sat upon the stone pier and listened intently to the dark. Something had changed, yet she knew not what, but her heart raced and fear coursed through her veins. She pressed back against the stone wall behind her and held her breath, trying to sense whatever it was she could not see. And gradually she became convinced that in the blackness a huge creature stood pressed up against her cage and reached long arms through the bars trying to grasp her. She drew up her legs and feet and made herself as small as possible, trying to avoid the clutch, and she thought of the splintered bones littering the floor outside the cell. Her throat was dry and she was athirst, but she did not drink, for the water bucket stood where also stood terror.
~
When next she heard the jailor coming, Laurelin waited until the nearing light faintly illumed the corridor, showing it empty, and she ran to the bars and stood. Again the torchlight was painful, but she squinted and turned her face aside. The moment the Lôkh set the buckets down, Laurelin snatched the cup from bucket bottom and drank greedily: two cups, three, four: she forced the water down while the Lôkh sneered at her, snorting, “Schtuga!” Laurelin snatched up the bread and two turnips from the other pail, leaving the meat behind, cradling the food with her splinted arm as she dipped up another cup of water and went back to the stone pier. The Lôkh took up the first two wooden pails, leaving the latest behind, and, laughing harshly, he stalked away up the twisting passage.
And Laurelin sat with her back pressed against the stone and her feet drawn up, a full cup of water beside her as she ate the turnips and bread. And she thought, Now, monster of the dark, if you are truly there, my food and drink are here with me and not sitting at your feet.
~
Over the next few “days,” Laurelin lived along the back wall of the cell, spending much of her time on the stone pier, but frequently pacing to one corner or the other for exercise and other needs. And whenever the jailor came, she would step to the bars as soon as the light coming down the twisting passage showed the corridor clear, to force down water and to snatch her food ere the Lôkh’s torch was gone again.
On many occasions Laurelin sensed the sinister presence before her cell, and then she would stay upon the pier. But at other times the corridor seemed empty, and then would she pace the back wall.
Althoug
h she had no certain way of telling time, she believed that the Lôkh visited but once each “day,” bringing food and water. She kept count of these “days” by using her thumbnail to scribe a notch in the wood of her splint where a stub stuck out beyond her bandage.
She had marked five such notches when she heard the sounds of the doors rattling open and saw the glow of a torch reflecting down the passage. But it had not yet been a “day” since the jailor had last come to her cage. Yet the light came onward, and from her position next to the bars, Laurelin saw two Lôkha enter the corridor.
With a clack of keys, one Lôkh unlocked her cell, and she was shoved out. Blinking from the light, once more Laurelin trod through the twisting passage and along the stairwell, this time going upward instead of down.
Up the steps they went, and now Laurelin counted: eight flights they climbed before coming to the door at the top. The Princess was trembling when they reached the central hall, for she had been weakened by her captivity.
Yet the Lôkha turned and led her through an adjacent door and they climbed more stairs, finally coming to a large, empty, stone floor, and more steps spiraled upward into darkness, twisting up inside Modru’s Iron Tower. Ascending the dark stairwell, one Lôkh before and the other after, Laurelin once again clung to the wall beside her, for here, too, there was no bannister to keep her from falling.
Up they went, past narrow window-slits looking out into the Dimmendark, up flight after flight, Laurelin’s breath coming in harsh gasps. And just as she would have collapsed, the Lôkha stopped to rest, for they, also, were winded. Laurelin slumped to the landing and leaned her head against the cold wall and panted.
Sooner than she was ready, the Lôkha got to their feet and snarled at her, and once more the tortuous ascent began. Four more flights they took her, at last to come to an iron-bound door with a brazen knocker that the lead Lôkh let rise and fall once.
After a moment, the door was opened by a Rukh, this one made mute also. Laurelin was led into the great chamber atop the Iron Tower. Round it was and nearly sixty feet in diameter, and full of dark shadows. Yet along the walls dimly could be seen scroll-cluttered tables littered with prisms, alembics and astrolabes, charts and geometrical figures cast in metal, vials of chemicals, and other strange devices and books of lore.
Here, too, were instruments of torture: a brazier with hot irons, shackles, a rack, and other hideous implements.
But the thing that drew Laurelin’s eye stood on a massive pedestal in the center of the room; yet her gaze was baffled by what she saw atop the platform: it looked like a great irregular blot; not so much black it was, but rather it seemed to be an absence of light that held her gaze. It had the shape and size of a ponderous irregular stone: huge, seven feet long, four high, four wide. And it sat massy and jagged, like a great dark gape sucking light into its bottomless black maw.
The Lôkha led Laurelin around this thing and to a chain affixed to an iron post, and cuffed her good hand in the iron bracelet. And as they stomped out, Laurelin tore her gaze from the black blotch and looked elsewhere and gasped, for there, wrists shackled to the wall, head slumped forward, was an Elf!
“Lord Gildor!” Laurelin cried.
Slowly the Elf lifted his head and looked at her; his face was badly battered. Long he gazed then said at last, “Nay, lady, I am Vanidor, Gildor’s twin.”
Sibilant laughter hissed forth from the dark shadows. “So, it is Lord Vanidor, is it?”
Laurelin spun about to see dark Modru step out of the blackness.
“Lord Vanidor, fifth in line to the Lian Crown,” said the Evil One. “Perhaps, my dear, he should take your place, for although you stand next to the throne of the High King, he bears the blood of the Dolh.” Then Modru paused and spread his hands. “But alas, the noble blood of a royal damosel suits my needs even moreso than that of a high Lian, for you are of Mithgar and he is not.”
“Royal damosel?” Vanidor looked again at Laurelin.
“Yes!” Modru’s voice gloated as he grasped the Princess by her matted hair and twisted her face into the torchlight. “Here is the prize you seek, fool!”
Sunken-cheeked and hollow-eyed, the left side of her face purple with bruise, covered with sour rot from the cell, her clothes and the bandage of her splinted arm unspeakably filthy, Laurelin was displayed to Vanidor, and it was long ere the Elf spoke, and then it was but to say, “I am sorry, my Lady.”
“Faugh: Sorry?” hissed Modru, but then his eyes flashed triumph through the iron-snouted visor. “Yes, I see. Sorry. But more than you know. You would have rescued this maiden—if you could have found her, and recognized her, and if you had not been captured. But she would not have been an easy prize to snatch, even had you managed to elude the guards in the courtyard, for she has been keeping company with one of my . . . aides. And he would not have spared those who came to steal his . . . Pretty. Oh, worry not, my dear, for he has been instructed to be . . . gentle.”
Modru spun and faced Vanidor, and his voice lashed out harshly: “How many of you came on this fool’s errand?”
Vanidor said nought.
“Surely more than three,” spat Modru.
“Ask them,” said the Elf.
“You know they are dead, fool Vanidor,” hissed Modru, “and so I now ask you. And you will tell me also how you breached my walls.”
Again, Vanidor did not speak.
Modru signed to the mute Rukh: “Vhuul!” The Rukh scuttled out the door and away, while Modru walked to the massive pedestal and gloated at the ponderous black maw. “I’ll give you but a moment to reflect upon your reticence, oaf, and then if you will not give me the answers I seek, I will extract them from you.”
At these words, Laurelin’s heart plummeted, and she looked into Vanidor’s green eyes, and her own grey ones brimmed with tears. But Vanidor said nothing.
“Perhaps I should persuade you to speak by dealing with the Princess while you watch,” Modru’s cold voice suggested. “But, no, I need her unblemished.”
The door opened and in scuttled the Rukh, and stooping through the portal behind came a great cave Troll. Twelve feet tall, he was, with glaring red eyes and tusks that protruded through his lips. Greenish was his skin, and scaled, like armor plate. Black leather breeks he wore, and nothing else. Into the room he shambled, stooping over, his massive arms hanging down. Steering wide of the blot on the pedestal, he came before Modru, his brutish face leering at Laurelin.
Her heart thudded heavily, and she had barely the will to stare back without blenching.
“Dolh schluu gogger!” commanded Modru in the foul Slûk tongue. And the Ogru turned and grasped one of Vanidor’s arms while the Rukh unlocked the wrist shackles. Then the Elf was hauled to the rack and his feet and wrists were locked again. The great Ogru-Troll sat hunkered beside the rack, one arm hugging his knees in anticipation, a massive hand upon the turn-wheel, a dull-witted leer upon his face.
At a sign from Modru, the Ogru slowly turned the wheel: Clack: Clack: Clack: Clack: The wooden rachet clattered as the wrist cuffs pulled upward. Clack: Clack: Clack: Now all of the slack was gone from the ropes and Vanidor’s arms and legs were pulled straight. Here the Troll stopped, his mouth gaping wide, his thick tongue running over his yellow teeth.
“How many came with you?” hissed Modru.
Vanidor said nought.
Clack!
“I ask you again, fool: were there more than three of you?” Modru faced Laurelin, and she said nothing, her lips pressed in a grim line.
Clack!
“Tell me this, oaf: what were the names of your slain companions?” Modru faced Vanidor, the Elf’s body taut.
“Tell him, Lord Vanidor!” cried Laurelin, in anguish. “It cannot hurt, for they are dead!”
“Duorn and Varion,” said Vanidor, speaking at last.
“Ahh, the dolt does have a tongue,” hissed Modru. “Duorn and Varion, eh: And what of other companions: did they, too, have names?”
Again Vanidor clamped his lips shut.
The Troll grinned in glee.
Clack!
“You might as well speak, fool,” sissed Modru, “for your silence will not stay my Master’s return.”
“Your Master?” Vanidor’s question jerked out through clenched teeth. Sweat beaded upon the Elf’s brow and trickled down his face.
“Gyphon!” Modru’s voice lashed out in exultation.
“Gyphon?” gasped Vanidor. “But He is beyond the Spheres.”
“At the moment, yes,” crowed Modru, “but on the Darkest Day the Myrkenstone will open the way.
“But we dally, fool. Name me names.”
Silence.
Clack!
A groan escaped Vanidor’s lips and Laurelin wept silently.
“Myrkenstone?” Vanidor’s breath shuddered in and out.
Modru gloated at him and paused as if debating whether to share a secret. “Why not: You’ll not tell this tale to others.” The Evil One strode to the blotch on the pedestal. “Here, fool, is the great Myrkenstone. Sent on its way by my Master four millenia agone. Long was its journey, but it came at last, five years past. Did not my Master say unto Adon: ‘Even now I have set into motion events you cannot stop’: did He not say so?”
Modru strode back to Vanidor. “Your companions, dolt, their names.”
The Elf bit his lip till blood came, but spoke not.
Clack!
Vanidor was in agony: his shoulders separated from their sockets, his hips and spine pulled near their limits. His ribs stood stark upon his heaving chest.
“Why, my Lord Vanidor,” sneered Modru, “you look puzzled by my tale of the Myrkenstone. Whence came this thing, you ask: From the sky, fool: What you simpletons name the Dragon Star, that was Gyphon’s sending: a great flaming comet whose only purpose was to bear the Myrkenstone to me, to plunge to Mithgar in dark blazing glory, the ’Stone plummeting to fall at my retreat in the Barrens. Why think you I dwelled there lo these many years: Out of fear: Nay: Say instead out of anticipation.
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