Tuck paused, a third arrow set to string, the buccan listening, hearing only his own ragged breathing as he tried to determine if any foe behind the door above had detected the encounter . . . ching . . . the scimitar struck far below—and as if that were a signal, Tuck began the ascent once more. And he painfully hobbled up the remaining steps and to the landing and past the other dead Hlôk to come at last to the iron-banded door of Modru’s chamber.
Tuck pressed his ear to the portal, but could hear nought; the panel was too massive. Cautiously, the Warrow pushed at the door, and then shoved harder; but it did not budge, for it was barred on the inside. I’ve got to get in there, thought Tuck, and see if this is where Modru has brought the Lady Laurelin.
Hobbling past the dead Hlôk, Tuck painfully clambered upon a stone bench. Removing his quiver, he leaned out of the narrow window slit and peered along the outside tower wall. There! A short distance to the side and up was another, larger slit—and the eye-wrenching black radiance poured out through the opening. Tuck examined the stone: it was covered with ice and hoarfrost, yet projections outjutted from the wall—just as they had on the angles of the ramparts beringing the fortress—and the buccan believed that he could reach the wide slit. Tuck glanced below but quickly jerked his eyes away, for the plumb drop down the sheer tower wall was frightening; and he could only hope that he wouldn’t fall, as he prepared to squeeze through the narrow slit and out upon the vertical height of the tower.
Tuck still had a short hank of Elven rope hanging from his belt, and he tied one end ’round his waist and the other end to his bow and quiver, and lowered the weapons out the window. Then he levered his body up and squeezed through the slit. Then, taking a deep breath, and keeping his eyes upon the wall before him, Tuck grasped a frost-rimed stone and swung out upon the face of the sheer drop, his boots finding purchase on the icy juts, his left foot bearing weight in spite of the pain. And the broken-footed Warrow clung to the frozen stones on the side of the tower and began edging over and up toward the wide slit, his bow and quiver depending from a rope ’round his waist and swinging pendulously; and as he clambered across the sheer face, a great brass gong began dinning, the brazen sound pulsing throughout the holt: Doon! . . . Doon! . . . Doom! And a deepening pall of darkness descended upon the Iron Tower.
~
Laurelin yanked and twisted and pulled back in vain as Modru dragged her up the long well of steps and past two Lôkken guards and into the chamber atop the tower, for the Evil One’s grip was like iron, and his wrenching strength was overwhelming.
Boom! The iron-bound door slammed to behind her.
Clang! The great bar fell into place.
And despite her struggles, Modru rent her cloak from her and hauled her past the ebon blot of the Myrkenstone and to a great, dark, lithic altar. And he heaved her upon the raised slab and roughly locked her wrists and ankles into iron cuffs embedded in the stone.
The slab was canted, and Laurelin’s head was lower than her feet, and by arching her neck and tilting her face back, she could see the Myrkenstone looming nearby upon its pedestal. And her long, flaxen hair lay in a channel that ran down from her shoulders to the edge of the stone. And Modru took up an iron knife and began hacking off her tresses, hissing, “We can’t have these locks of yours soaking up the blood, for all of it will be needed: to slake my Master’s thirst—upon His advent unto Mithgar—and invest Him with His full powers here in the Middle Plane; and to quench the Myrkenstone, closing the way behind, sealing forever the fate of all!”
Laurelin gasped, and again Modru’s sissing laughter hissed forth as he sawed the blade through her hair. “Ahh. At last you know your purpose, Princess. Recall! Once you pledged that you would never serve me—I remind you of your foolish words now that it is time for the throne of Mithgar to be mine. Never serve me . . . tchaa! It is your royal blood that my Master will quaff, your blood that will quench the ’Stone. I would have used the Dolh’s—Vanidor’s—but he was of Adonar; and here, the blood of one born to Mithgar is needed. Faugh! Any fool’s would have done as well as yours, so long as he was of this world, but it pleases me to use the blood of a royal damosel.”
Tears brimmed in Laurelin’s eyes as Modru stepped back to survey his handiwork. “Sss. Excellent. My Lord Gyphon will be pleased, for though your hair is cropped, still you are . . . unblemished. Yes, pleased, for it has been long since He has sipped the blood of one so fair . . . and He thirsts.
Modru turned and took up a stone basin and set it upon a stand at the edge of the altar where it would catch the blood flowing down the channel. And beside the basin he set an iron chalice. Then the Evil One brought forth a tray covered with black velvet, and he sat it down on the altar slab and unfolded the cloth, revealing an ebon knife crudely shaped of the same hideous matter as the Myrkenstone. Lastly, Modru laid open a great tome on the slab and then consulted a chart.
And there came to the great turret the knell of a massive gong: Doon! . . . Doon! . . . Doom! And through the window slits an utter darkness could be seen descending upon the world.
Modru turned to Laurelin and hissed, “It is time, for the Sun Death has come.”
And the Evil One removed his black gauntlets, and his great clawlike hands took up the ’Stone knife and held it on high; and he began chanting, reading from the tome: the guttural, obscene words of power rolling forth—vile, malignant, evil.
~
Still the gong tolled, and Merrilee’s heart hammered in dread to hear the ominous Doom! Yet she and Burt, Dill, Teddy, and Arch each led hand in hand a small group of Sun-Death-blinded warriors: five Warrows guiding eighteen Men. And they veered between wide-spread groups of unseeing maggot-folk and struck for the tower.
At last they came to the great spire and made their way to a door. Whispered instructions were passed, and Men were cautioned to hold their places—to move not—and to be silent, for Spawn were near. And then, arrows nocked to bows, the chary Warrows slowly opened the door to an empty but lighted room..
Torchlight streamed out, and the startled Men could see once more. Har! cried Rûcks to see the light streaming across the courtyard. Swiftly, sword in hand, Men rushed in after the Wee Ones and slammed the door behind.
Before them lay an empty hall.
“Quick now,” commanded Galen, his voice low but urgent, “we must hurry. Spawn may be in these corridors, and surely those without come after. Let us to the top, for if the Wee Ones are right, the black heart of the Dimmendark lies in this pinnacle, and it must be destroyed.”
Swiftly, up the stairs they went, and no Spaunen did they see. One flight . . . two flights . . . and another, and they came to the open stone floor above which reared the tower; and they began the ascent up the long, spiral staircase twisting upward inside the walls, King Galen in the fore with Steel-heart in his grip, and Men and Warrows coming after.
Landing after landing they crossed, each with a window slit looking upon the Sun-Death blackness outside, as upward they pressed. Now they neared the top, and they could see a door at the head of the stairs. Another landing they came to, and a dead Hlôk lay in a pool of his own blood, a shortened arrow through his heart.
As they hastened up the last flight of steps, Warrows looked questioningly at one another, for they knew the Hlôk below had been slain by a bolt from the bow of a Wee One: yet who could it be?
They came to the last landing, and lo! another arrow-pierced Hlôk lay slain before the iron-bound door—this bolt, too, from buccan bow.
With her heart pounding in hope, Merrilee knelt down to examine the quarrel, but ere she could do so . . .
The shrill scream of a Woman rang through the door, and a desperate anguished cry of words, their meaning muffled and lost.
Yet Galen recognized the voice. “Laurelin!” he shouted, and hurled himself at the door, to no avail. Wildly his eyes cast about. “The bench! The stone bench!” he cried, leaping for the massive seat below the window slit. “We’ll use it as a ram to batte
r down the door!”
And as Vanadurin sprang to help him, Ssss-thunk! a black-shafted arrow chunked into the door. Merrilee and the buccen scrambled to the edge of the landing. There, below, clattering up through the torch-lit shadows, swarmed a band of maggot-folk. Shssh! . . . Shssh! More black-shafted arrows hissed upward, to be answered in kind by deadly Warrow bolts flying downward.
And behind, as the Men heaved up the heavy stone slab to whelm the door, another piercing cry rang forth from Modru’s chamber.
~
Doon! . . . Doon! . . . Doom! Still the toll of the gong knelled out as Tuck slowly hoisted himself up and across, his fingers clutching at the frost-rimed stone, his feet pressing into crevices. His teeth were gritted against the pain, and his eyes were locked upon the sheer wall before him to keep from looking down from the dizzying height to the courtyard far below.
A great darkness blotted the land, yet Tuck’s jewel-hued eyes saw by a different light than those of other Folk—a light seen only by the Wee Ones. And up through this blackness he crawled, edging toward a wide window slit out of which poured an ebon radiance.
At last he came to the opening, and guttural, obscene mouthings hissed forth from the window and fell upon his ears, and he shuddered in revulsion to hear such malediction voiced. Yet into this slot he would climb; and he hauled up his dangling bow and quiver and slid them onto the wide sill before him, and then hefted himself up after, clambering into the eye-wrenching blackness.
Squinting against the ebon radiance, through the turret wall he crawled, pushing his bow and arrows before him; and he came out upon a raised stone catwalk that encircled the round room below. Yet Tuck saw little of the chamber, for his eyes were trapped—held by a great, dark blot resting upon a pedestal in the center of the room. And although Tuck did not know it, this was the very piece, the very fragment, of the Dragon Star that had cloven the immense burning gash as it slashed over the Boskydells and beyond the Northwood, beyond Rian, even beyond Gron. It had smashed to Mithgar in the barren wastes where was exiled Modru, just as Gyphon had planned four millenia agone. This was the Comet Spawn, the Myrkenstone, the vile eater of light, the source of the ebon radiance that spread throughout the Dimmendark. And it trapped Tuck’s eyes and seemed to draw the vision out of them, steadily replacing sight with darkness. And the Warrow could not tear his dimming gaze away from the hideous, eye-wrenching hole, for its vile power held him locked.
Yet other powers, other energies, were at work within the chamber, too, as guttural, obscene rune-words rolled forth from the mouth of the Evil One to shock through the room.
And the very air began to gather, to ripple, as if it were become a dark liquid into which the words fell as would ebon stones fall into black waters. And through the undulation, a dim figure began to appear, as if a distant dark portal had opened and an indistinct shape had stepped toward the room, drawing nearer with every hideous word uttered.
Closer it came, and closer; and with each syllable, each step, the form took on substance, and it glowed with a dark halo—as did the Myrkenstone. And now the figure could be seen more clearly, as if through a fluctuant glass: a Man, some would say; an Elf, would claim others; yet He was neither. Instead, it was He who once held Adon’s trust, who once stood next to the High One’s throne, who once wielded power exceeded only by The One, who once fell from grace and was forgiven, who fell again . . . beyond the Spheres: it was Gyphon. And as He issued forth from the Great Abyss, the undulant air rippled less and less, for He came unto Mithgar; and finally His image took on a sharp definition and He could be seen clearly at last. And He was exquisitely beautiful, for He was the Great Evil.
It was Gyphon’s darkly luminant form that pulled Tuck’s eye from the Myrkenstone; and the buccan gasped, his spirit whelmed by the comeliness of the figure he saw; and he could but barely keep his eyes upon such fairness. The Warrow glanced away, and his heart lurched in horror, for there beyond the Myrkenstone was Laurelin, shackled upon an altar; and above her loomed evil Modru, chanting, foul words issuing forth from the hideous iron mask, his arms raised upon high, the vile ’Stone knife clutched in his left hand. And a stone basin and an iron chalice rested upon a stand at the end of a blood-channel in the altar. He’s going to kill her! Tuck’s mind screamed.
His hands trembling in haste, the buccan untied his bow from the Elven rope, and his eyes sought an arrow. And there before him, resting in his quiver, was the red quarrel from Othran’s Crypt: an arrow no longer a dull ruddy color, but instead now flaring scarlet in the black light streaming from the Myrkenstone: an arrow made of a strange light metal and borne by the buccan on an epic journey from Challerain Keep to the Weiunwood and thence to Arden Vale, through Drimmen-deeve and the Larkenwald beyond, down the Argon and back to Gûnarring Gap, and thence up the Grimwall and through Grûwen Pass into Gron, and finally across Claw Moor and under the walls of the fortress and up to this very room atop the Iron Tower. And Tuck’s hands, as if guided by another’s will, snatched up the crimson bolt and set it to bow string.
But even as Tuck nocked the arrow, the ripples in the air vanished entirely, and now Gyphon—the Great Evil—stood at last upon Mithgar, corporeal but powerless until the quaffing of sacrificial blood and the quenching of the Myrkenstone. The fate of the world teetered upon the brink of doom.
And Tuck stood and drew the red shaft to the full.
And Laurelin screamed, “No!”
For at the same moment Gyphon stepped forth into Mithgar, the Princess saw the Warrow rise up out of the shadows upon the catwalk; and by his clawed face and silveron armor gleaming through his torn jacket she knew him to be Tuck, and she saw that he aimed at Modru.
“No!” she cried again, with all the force she could muster. “Slay Gyphon! Slay the Great Evil!”
The Great Evil? And then Tuck knew. And his aim shifted to the fair luminant figure. Yet how can such beauty be evil? And even should I kill Gyphon, Modru will murder Laurelin ere I can set another arrow to bow.
Again Tuck’s aim fell upon Modru, but the Evil One had spun around to see the Warrow, and the ’Stone knife now threatened Laurelin’s throat, though the obscene chanting went on.
“Gyphon!” Laurelin’s scream was rent from her very soul. “Slay Gyphon!”
In that moment, Boom! . . . Boom! . . . Boom! the iron-bound door shuddered from the impact of a ram, and splinters flew as the heavy planking cracked under the whelming blows, but the great bar staying the door held fast.
Once more the buccan’s aim swung to Gyphon, but he could not bring himself to shoot, for if he did, Laurelin would die; and again he sighted upon Modru . . . yet Tuck realized that Modru was but a servant of the Great Evil, and to slay the serf and yet let this Master live would be the sheerest folly. And, too, it then would be the Master who would murder the Princess, perhaps to complete the ritual ere Tuck could set another arrow to bow.
Boom! . . . Boom! . . . Boom!
And as the Warrow’s aim wavered, two memories stirred deep within his mind:
From Othran’s Tomb:
~
Loose not the Red Quarrel
Ere appointed dark time.
~
And Rael’s Rede:
~
‘Neither of two Evils must thy strike claim;
Instead smite the Darkness between the same.’
~
Suddenly the cryptic meaning of both of these riddles became clear to the Warrow, resolving his dilemma. And as the booming ram whelmed the door, and planks split and the bar cracked, Tuck swiftly aimed at the Myrkenstone, yet the ebon blot again wrenched at his Utruni eyes, and his remaining sight was gone: he could not see.
The voice of Old Barlo rang in his mind: ‘The arrow as strays might well’er been throwed away.’
And Modru’s chanting stopped!
And Tuck knew he had to shoot now!
Adon, guide my aim, fervently prayed ’Stone-blinded Tuck. Red Quarrel, red arrow, fly true. And he loosed the s
haft.
Like a scarlet streak, the Red Quarrel hissed crimson across the room to strike the Myrkenstone square in the center, the strange metal arrow piercing deeply into the ebon blot. And a blinding detonation shattered forth, dashing Tuck violently back against the window sill, and blasting the batter-whelmed door into splinters and flying bolts of wood, hurling Galen and the others down upon the stair landing, their stone-bench ram smashing into shards as it fell ponderously to the deck and slid heavily down the steps. And a savagely intense glare flashed up to flood the room with a blazing incandescence so bright, so violent, that scrolls began to smolder and alembics filled with arcane liquids shattered.
For the Myrkenstone flared, radiance blasting forth, as if it yielded up the very sunlight it had stolen. And the ravening fulgor raged, blinding luminance blaring forth, great radiant beams blasting from the chamber.
And on the landing amid the wrack of the iron-bound door, Galen and Merrilee and the Men and Warrows struggled up and shielded their eyes with upflung arms and staggered toward the room; but they could not come into the glare, for it was too bright; and the wild light exploding through the door raged out like a furious gale ripping at weapons and armor and clothing and folk alike.
And blazing candescence lit up the interior of the tower, and stabbing beams shot through the window slits; and where the savage light touched, inside and out, Spawn were destroyed. Thus did some Rûpt perish upon the fortress walls, and so too died all the Spaunen upon the stairwell within the Iron Tower.
And in the fury-filled chamber atop the spire, raging light blasted forth from the Myrkenstone. And in this roaring fulmination, Tuck staggered to his feet, the unbearable brightness lancing into his ’Stone-blind eyes, and the buccan could see once more! Yet this ’Stone-light, too, ripped at Tuck’s vision, hammering it toward oblivion. Still, the buccan’s scathed sight saw Modru raise up from the altar where he had been flung over Laurelin; and the Evil One stood and turned, and held his claw-like hands out before him as if warding off an attack; and hoarse screams rang forth as he staggered back in horror against the stone slab, for the flesh on his taloned fingers was rent away by the savage light, and the very bones of his grotesque hands and wrists shone forth only to crumble into dust; and his piercing screams chopped into silence as the flesh was rent from his throat; and his chest and lungs were blasted away, his ribs collapsing into ruin; and his desperate eyes dissolved, leaving empty sockets behind, which then disintegrated, too, as the remainder of his body pitched backward onto the altar, destroyed ere he struck. And the hideous iron mask, now empty, fell to the floor with a hollow Blang!
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