Darkwell

by Douglas Niles

  As the captain pushed into the city, the buzzing and biting insects of the plague began to fall dead in droves. A circle of immunity, with the captain at its heart, broke the effect of the spell in an ever-growing ring around him. Within minutes, not a single of the conjured insects remained in the air.

  But the dead of the sea continued to advance. Even without the aid of dark magic, they far outnumbered the fighters of Corwell. Behind them, entering the town and spreading across the moors, came the horrible shapes of the sahuagin, merciless in their killing frenzy, savage in their pursuit of any human foe.

  The Ffolk fought bravely, and their captain led them well. The men of Koart’s and Dynnatt’s companies rallied with the men of the town, but even together the humans were pushed back, and the dead and their masters claimed the town.

  Hobarth cursed the cruel fates that had given him the incompetent aid of Pontswain, for he understood exactly what had happened as his insect plague died away. Somehow the Crown of the Isles was back in Corwell. His powerful enchantments would be useless.

  But that certainly did not mean the battle was lost. From his high vantage point, he watched the battle in the streets and saw the Ffolk driven from their town by the combined forces of the undead and the sahuagin. As the humans spilled onto the open moor, still more sahuagin emerged from the sea, seeking to cut them off from finding refuge in the castle.

  As the cleric’s gaze drifted across the waters of the firth, his jaw dropped in astonishment. What was that? For a moment, he thought he saw a mountain moving through the water … Slowly the shape of a great castle became visible in the mist.

  By all the dark gods, what could this mean? In another moment, the fleet of longships became clearly recognizable, gathered around the base of the floating fortress like ducklings around their mother. How was it possible that an edifice of stone and mortar, clearly a mass of tremendous weight, could move thus?

  The castle seemed to ride lightly upon the waters of the firth. For a moment, the cleric felt a flash of panic as he imagined he saw a rank of supernatural archers or fire-spitting war machines arrayed along the floating parapet. But as the edifice drew closer, he saw that, to the best of his knowledge, the fortress was abandoned.

  The cleric watched the fleet approach for several more minutes, counting more than two dozen ships, plus that mysterious fortress. Reinforcements for the Ffolk, to be sure, though he wondered why they would come from the men of the North.

  But still the servant of Bhaal did not worry. Certainly their crews numbered little more than a thousand men or so, and that, he knew, would be insufficient to turn the tide. Even as he watched, a rank of sahuagin warriors turned to face the fresh attack from the sea.

  The battle would still be won.

  “What have you done?” shouted the king, advancing toward the form of the Great Druid. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Robyn, sprawled in the mud beside the Darkwell, look at her teacher with dull and horrified understanding. “You have betrayed us!”

  “Betrayed?” Genna spoke in a flat tone, utterly devoid of feeling. “I serve my master faithfully.”

  Before Tristan’s dumbfounded eyes, the sturdy figure of the middleaged woman suddenly shifted, stretching and curving into the shape of a hulking bird. Its drooping head, bloodshot eyes gleaming, hung suspended from a crooked and malformed neck. A vulturelike beak snapped at him, and he stumbled back, almost too stunned to avoid the blow. Great black wings spread from the creature’s sides, flapping slowly in an ominous gesture. Then the body shifted and wavered once more, becoming a shape burned into Tristan’s memory at the homecoming feast. The king heard Robyn cry out in shock and pain as she, too, recognized the woman.

  “You!” he gasped, seeing the spill of red hair and the fiery gleam in her eyes.

  “It was you!” Robyn cried out beside him. Tristan couldn’t tell whether it was in pain or in anger.

  The young woman stared in shock at the metamorphosis of her teacher’s body. Any semblance to Genna Moonsinger had completely disappeared. Slowly Robyn began to comprehend the corruption that had taken the Great Druid, culminating in the destruction of her scroll. Helplessly she looked to the ashes, already disappearing in the dark water, and then back to the red-haired face on the body before her.

  That face twisted into the familiar sneer that had been the focus of Robyn’s thoughts for so long. Once again hot rage burned within her, but this time the heat of her anger blazed toward this woman rather than Tristan.

  And then the form shifted again, growing larger, looming over them and losing all semblance of humanity. The image of the redheaded woman vanished entirely, masked by a visage of black scales and red, gleaming eyes. It became a thing reptilian in nature, gigantic in stature. It became an enemy the king had slain once before.

  “Kazgoroth!” The Sword of Cymrych Hugh sang a killing song in his hands … or was that the bard? He heard Tavish’s ballad again, and his heart filled with hope, but it was a hope powered by an all-consuming rage.

  “This time you will die!” he cried, advancing grimly toward the Beast. Its great tail lashed around the massive body, a heavy limb that could crush a human frame in an instant.

  Tristan turned toward the tail, anticipating the source of the Beast’s attack. His blade slashed out, and Kazgoroth reared backward, splashing into the water of the well and screaming its pain in an earthshaking bellow. The monster crouched now, hunching back. Good. It had learned to fear the sword! As the combatants paused momentarily, Tristan heard the fury of the fight behind him.

  In the field, the blink dogs and Canthus still snapped at the displacer beast. Shantu bounded this way and that to avoid the sharp fangs of its attackers. Two of the blink dogs lay dead, paying the supreme price for their bravery, but the others, led by the huge moorhound, pursued the attack with increased savagery.

  The blink dogs tore skin from the beast’s flanks with each attack. One sank his teeth into a horned tentacle, and though the monster lashed the dog back and forth like a fish on a line, the tenacious canine held its grip. At that moment, one of the remaining dogs grabbed the other tentacle.

  Canthus attacked savagely, like a creature born to kill. Often the great moorhound was confused by the monster’s apparent location, but when the blink dogs managed to hold the creature at bay, the hound made a shrewd guess and lunged in, clamping his jaws over a place that seemed to be in midair.

  Sharp fangs sank through skin, and Canthus felt the blood pounding through the monster’s neck. And now the moorhound’s jaws began to close more tightly.

  Shantu twisted and writhed in the grip of the dogs. The monster slashed with its rear claws, disemboweling one blink dog. Its sharp front claws sank into the moorhound’s flanks, raking the skin and the ribs underneath it. Still Canthus retained his grip, gradually closing off the air to the monster’s brain. He felt something snap, then felt the spurt of warm blood as his jaws closed tighter. Slowly the struggles of the displacer beast lessened in intensity, and finally the creature lay still.

  Tristan turned his full attention back to Kazgoroth as the Beast lumbered out of the well, lowering its head to charge. Robyn rolled away from the water, still on the muddy ground. She looked up at the creature, pleading with her eyes, seeking some sign of the existence of the druid she had revered, but there was nothing.

  The Beast lashed out toward Tristan with one bony claw, and again the sword snicked forward. Kazgoroth reared up to its full height, pulling away from the deadly blade. Then its red eyes fell upon Robyn, still staring upward in shock and horror.

  “Run!” Tristan cried a warning and leaped at the monster as it reached for Robyn with its foreclaws. The young druid finally stood, her back against one of the statues, and now she held her staff up before her. “Run!” he shouted again, lunging toward the beast to attack with his sword.

  “Die!” she said quietly and threw the staff on the ground at Kazgoroth’s feet.

  The sudden explosion of crackling flam
e threw Tristan violently backward, knocking him to the ground. Robyn stumbled to his side and lifted him up. He saw that she was sobbing.

  The flames exploded from the ground, a wall of fire such as the goddess granted to her faithful. But this spell came not from the power of the Earthmother, for that power was no more. It came instead from the plain ashwood staff. The shaft consumed itself in calling forth the heat from the bowels of the earth, the cleansing tongue of earthfire.

  Kazgoroth felt the fire and shrieked, the explosion of sound carrying the agonies of a thousand planes of hell. The explosion of flames engulfed the creature to the top of its head, feeding on the Beast’s flesh and bone. It was a flame of purity and light, and it blossomed in stark contrast to the darkness of the vale. For a long time, it held its shape, blazing against the sky, and when it faded, Kazgoroth the Beast was gone.

  Behind Tristan, the cadence of Tavish’s song reached a new crescendo. The bard struck chords of triumph and joy, with a martial beat that matched the pounding of the king’s own heart.

  “Mother!” Colleen’s cry jerked Tristan’s attention from the Darkwell. He saw the sister knight standing over the corpse of the last of the deathbirds, but her gaze was directed out over the field, to the shattered wood beyond the well.

  “What is that?” cried Robyn, shocked and horrified at the apparition that emerged from those woods. It was quickly followed by two more.

  “By the goddess, no!” Colleen shrieked her heartbreak in a cry that pierced straight to Tristan’s heart, for now he understood. The three creatures had once been Sisters of Synnoria. That much was obvious from the scant wisps of blond hair that still clung to their torn and rotting scalps, and from their petite bodies. But now they shuffled forward with the mindless gait of the walking dead.

  These were no zombies, however, no mere animated corpses that stumbled stupidly in obedience to a master’s command. These were undead creatures of purpose. Their eyes glowed a charcoal red, hellishly fixed upon the sister knight who had once been sister or daughter in blood. But now Colleen was merely a potential victim, and the death knights advanced to the kill.

  And at the same time, in the center of the Darkwell, the true horror began.

  “To the shore!” Grunnarch’s cry echoed throughout the fleet, and the longships veered sharply away from the battle at Corwell Town. In moments, they slid onto the sandy shore below Caer Corwell itself. The northmen leaped from their boats into the shallow water, then hurriedly pulled their longships high onto the shore.

  The men of Norland surged along the gravelly beach, following the Red King toward the battle. Grunnarch had landed them some distance away from the fight to prevent the sahuagin from attacking his ships in the water, where the fish-men would have a decided advantage.

  Now the northmen formed into a long line of hardened warriors, their axes raised high, spears thrust forward, helms gleaming even under the overcast skies. A roaring challenge rose from their throats as they thundered across the field.

  Near Grunnarch, the slender and beardless Koll raised his voice in what he hoped was a fearful yell. This was a battle he would not run away from, he resolved. Nearby, but still unnoticed, the smooth-skinned warrior who had quietly joined the Red King’s crew also advanced with the charge.

  A lumbering mass of bloated ogres met the first rush of the northmen’s assault. Their heavy clubs rose and fell, but they could withstand neither the ferocity nor the numbers of the determined attackers. As the ogres fell under the rush, a solid rank of sahuagin, more than a thousand strong and supported by a great marching mass of undead, turned to meet the charge.

  The clash of metal against metal grew to a thunderous din, and the war cries of the northmen mingled with the hisses and shrieks of the sahuagin. Beside them, the Ffolk surged forward to join the fray, but the numbers of the living dead were simply too great. Gradually the armies of evil began to spread around the flanks of their human foes. Fighting bravely, among ever-growing piles of dead, Grunnarch and Randolph and the warriors who stood with them slowly fell back.

  Bhaal seethed and twisted below the surface of the Darkwell. He felt the death of Shantu, a cruel lance that pricked his pride. He knew the agony of Kazgoroth as the Beast died in consummate pain, consumed by the earth power it had sought so long to destroy.

  Nevertheless, these setbacks only served to anger the murderous god, and in his rage, he became even more terrible. His body coalesced around him into a physical tool, though his soul remained encased in the protection of the well. Bhaal erupted upward, spilling the foul black water from his body as he rose higher and still higher into the air, feeling for the first time the air of the Forgotten Realms upon the flesh of his body.

  First came the head, with its long, manelike shag of hair. The face, marked by a grimace of supernatural hatred, came next, followed by the monstrous torso with its muscular arms and legs. The god loomed higher and higher, towering over the humans and the firbolg, the broken druid arches, and eventually over the blackened trees themselves. As Bhaal exploded out of the water, towering above the combatants around the well, he strode to the shore and emerged from the water with the ease of a child splashing through a wading pool.

  Bhaal’s eyes glowed, hot coals sparking with the flames of hell itself. His fists, mountainous clubs of rocklike flesh, reached forth, eager to squeeze mortal bodies to death. His voice was the cry of primal evil, a thunderous bellow that resounded across the Realms, smashing trees, scattering birds, and sending shivers of fear down the spines of all who heard.

  And then Bhaal moved to attack.

  obyn recoiled instinctively, the sight of the god striking her like an explosion, driving her to her knees. She stared dumbstruck, frozen by a primeval, nameless terror. The ground shook, and she fell onto her face, helplessly quivering.

  Colleen, next to the well, looked away from the undead creatures that had once been her family. She stared at the god rising above her, and then she, too, collapsed, lying senseless in the dark mud.

  Yak bellowed plaintively, a cry of deep, primitive panic, then turned and lumbered off toward the woods, fleeing as rapidly as his trunklike legs could carry him. The blink dogs also ran, one by one blinking out of sight as they streaked toward the relative safety of the woods.

  Even Canthus cringed, but the courageous moorhound would not desert his master. Instead, he crept forward, leaving the torn body of the displacer beast, and slinked toward Tristan’s side.

  Brigit and Maura had been advancing toward the well when the might of Bhaal exploded into reality. Brigit dropped her sword and stood staring in shock and fear. Maura, with a soft moan of despair, turned and fled toward the woods.

  The pace of Tavish’s ballad wavered as the bard struck her first discordant note. Then the song faded away entirely as Tavish stared, awestruck and disbelieving, at the abomination that reared before them.

  Only Tristan moved of his own will, backing slowly away from the well but holding his sword upraised before him like a shield. He stared at the god, feeling a deep and slow-burning rage, but he filtered his anger through a haze of calm detachment. This was the enemy. This was the goal they had expended so much to reach. Now he glared at the monstrous apparition, understanding the risks of attacking it but needing desperately to see this thing slain.

  The power of the Sword of Cymrych Hugh surrounded him like an aura. The dark god seemed to recognize this power, for the giant’s steps took it straight toward the king. Tristan knew that his atonement, and perhaps his death, was at hand.

  The High King stared upward. He saw two horns protruding from the vast forehead, each longer than himself. With strange detachment, he looked full into the hate-wrenched face, distorted and leering. The giant form lumbered closer, splashing itself dry, and still the young king awaited it. Now Tristan felt ready for the fight to begin!

  “Hey, Yaz! Get a look at this guy! I’ve never—Yaz? Where are you? Hey, come on back here! We’ve got more battling to do!” Newt buzze
d above Shantu’s body, calling to his friend, but the sprite, like so many others, had been overcome by terror at the dark god’s appearance. Newt shrugged and buzzed toward the well, wondering what all the fuss was about. Sure, this fellow was big, but wasn’t there a proverb about that, or something?

  “You!” The voice of the god was a rumble like the deepest torment of a dying earth, shaking the ground and causing the very flesh to shiver. Tristan, sensing that the god spoke directly to him, paused as Bhaal advanced.

  The god rose higher from the well, black water hissing around his waist and massive thighs. His legs, with more girth than the most monstrous tree, carried him in long, powerful strides toward the shore of the pond.

  Toward Tristan Kendrick.

  The Sword of Cymrych Hugh glowed with a silvery light, shining with a brilliance clearly visible even in the daylight. Unlike during the battles with the deathbirds and the owlbear, the sword did not compel the king to attack.

  Instead, it floated easily in his hand ready to respond to Tristan’s own will.

  Tristan looked up at the body of his foe, towering fully five times his own height. His highest blow could strike no farther than the giant’s thigh, but the sword of his ancestor seemed to raise the young king’s own stature, reinforcing his arm and his will. Yet how could human will match the might of this awesome and terrible god?

  The giant form suddenly lunged, striking with a fist the size of a haystack. Instinctively Tristan raised his blade, knowing he would be crushed beneath that terrible blow should it strike him.

  The god’s fist met the Sword of Cymrych Hugh with a sound like a thunderclap. The king reeled back from the force of the blow, dazed by the blast of sound, but he still stood! And Bhaal, too, staggered back, shaking his massive head in shock and confusion.