Darkwell

by Douglas Niles

  Once again the giant form advanced. Tristan raised the sword high over his head, poised to parry another blow. A surge of hope flowed through him.

  Robyn threw her hands over her ears as the thunder crashed beside her once more. She pressed her face flat against the soft mud as if she could burrow away from her fright. Ever so gradually she drove back the paralysis of fear that gripped her. Finally she twisted around to face the sky, and then her head spun dizzily as she sat up again.

  Robyn’s vision focused, and she saw, not the god battling the king, but the three undead Sisters of Synnoria advancing toward Colleen, who still lay prostrate in the mud. The ghastly forms, whose rotted flesh and strawlike tendrils of hair mocked the beauty of their victim, were almost upon her.

  Robyn was unaware of the golden medallion, glowing with the pure light of divine power, as she started toward the three death knights. The nearest reached for Colleen’s hair, sprawled like golden straw in the mud, as Robyn approached. Unconsciously guided by some deep and potent instinct, her hand went to the medallion. She felt the warmth of the talisman flow through her body, carrying words to her mouth.

  “Go! I banish thee, in the name of Chauntea!”

  She held the medallion high before her, and the golden light spilled like the rays of the midsummer sun, shining over the ghastly, rotten faces of the undead. It struck their eyes as a potent lance of virtue, searing their dead nerves and forcing them back.

  The three dead knights raised their clawlike hands out before them, but they shrank away from the medallion and the woman who carried it. Robyn slowed to a walk, concentrating on the force of the medallion, using it to turn the undead from their intended victim. For each step she advanced, the death knights shrank back farther, until at last she reached Colleen’s side.

  Some distant part of Robyn’s mind watched in amazement as she called upon the power of a new god. She knew that she had performed an act sacred to clerics of the new gods, for no druid could exert such a power over death itself! Genna herself had told her this.

  Her mind balked at the implications as another thunderclap shook the clearing. She turned to see Tristan stagger beneath yet another blow from Bhaal’s fist. The giant threw back his head and bellowed his own pain, for this time his blow had cost him a deep gash in his finger.

  Robyn helped Colleen to her feet as the undead knights continued to back away from her. The young sister leaned weakly against her shoulder, trembling, and Robyn began to half-lead, half-carry her away from the black water.

  Chauntea blossomed to her full height and sang a song of hope and promise. Her plane, Elysium, the realm of ultimate good, resounded with the chorus, and power at last flowed freely from the goddess to her newest devotee. For Robyn had opened the floodgates of devotion with her use of the Rose-in-Sun medallion. Chauntea’s love flowed like a benign enchantment into the body of the young woman, once a druid but now forevermore a cleric.

  Chauntea felt the warmth of Robyn’s own love flowing back to her in return, for the woman sensed the kinship between the goddess Earthmother, patron of nature and the wilds, and the goddess Chauntea, patron of growth and agriculture.

  This goddess could not replace the druid spells that the great mother had given to Robyn. Those were gone forever. But in their place, she sent the divine blessing of clerical might: the power to turn away the dark forces of the walking dead, the power to cure grievous wounds, the power to bless her companions.

  And the powers of new spells, different from the nature of the spells Robyn had once cast but certainly no less powerful. Now Robyn, Cleric of Chauntea, stepped to the side of her king to face the power of ultimate darkness.

  “I banish thee, in the name of Chauntea!”

  Friar Nolan held his clerical talisman proudly before him, and the dead of the sea shrank back, covering their eyes with rotted, fleshless hands.

  “Forward, for Corwell!” Randolph, beside the cleric, called out a challenge, and a dozen men of the Ffolk rushed after him. His long sword cut the throat of a surprised sahuagin before the monster could react to the flight of its undead allies.

  Theirs was but a small island of victory in a vast sea of defeat. The bold friar’s spell could turn only a dozen or so undead at a time, enough to give Randolph and his men a chance for a brief, limited counterattack, but that was all.

  To all sides, across the moors, through the streets, and up the slopes of Corwell Knoll, the dead of the sea ranged freely, accompanied and prodded by their reptilian mistresses. The arrival of the northmen had provided brief moments of hope, but they, too, were being overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the foe.

  Grunnarch stood in the forefront of his warriors, his great battle-axe rising and falling with machinelike regularity, slashing the head from a sahuagin or slicing the legs from a zombie. All around him sprawled the grisly remains of his victims. Grunnarch, in turn, was also surrounded by the bodies of many of his own men. And body for body, he knew the battle could have but one outcome.

  Near him fought young Koll, the flush of berserker rage upon him. His own sword was long since smashed to pieces on the heavy shield of a sahuagin war chief, but he had seized the monster and broken its neck with his bare hands. Then he had grabbed the creature’s trident, which he now used to lay about himself with fanatical savagery.

  Wading through ankle-deep gore, surrounded by a thundering cacophony of sound, the chaos of a life-and-death struggle, Koll became a true warrior of the North. He felt newly born as the berserker frenzy carried him to heights of ferocity he could never have imagined. His mind whirled with a thousand new sensations, and he knew that he was one of those rare men of the North truly born to fight.

  But even such a frenzy could not, alone, carry the day against such a numerous foe. Koll’s trident pierced the chests of two zombies at once, pressing them backward and then pinning the struggling corpses to the ground. With a roar more leonine than human, he seized an axe from a fallen warrior and began hacking with that.

  In a matter of moments, he was down, tripped by the long haft of a sahuagin spear. Another fish-man leaped forward to slice his throat with its sharp teeth, but before the horrible jaws could close, the monster fell dead, slain by a single sword thrust.

  Koll looked up, the frenzy falling from his eyes, to see a smooth-cheeked young warrior standing over him. The fighter wielded his sword with smooth skill, cutting another fish-man down and sending a zombie stumbling backward with a dangling leg. His rescuer was short but solid.

  The warrior reached a hand down toward Koll, lifting him to his feet, and as he rose, the woolen hood fell from the head of his rescuer.

  “Gwen!”

  Her brown eyes smiled back at him, though her mouth remained fixed in a grimace of intensity. She thrust again, wielding her blade with deft precision. Koll quickly stood at her back, and together they fought against the onslaught of undead and reptiles.

  “Women do not belong in battle!” she quoted, slaying another sahuagin.

  “Perhaps I was wrong.” He lopped the legs from a bloated undead ogre.

  “Northmen women, perhaps!” She gasped and slashed. “But I am a daughter of the Ffolk!”

  “A fact I will never again forget,” he conceded, and then the clash of battle drowned out their voices.

  The thunderous smash of god’s fist against man’s artifact again wracked the clearing, but this time Tristan stumbled to one knee. His lungs strained for air as the fight steadily sapped his strength. Once again his blow had made a deep cut into the flesh of Bhaal’s giant hand but once again he watched the flesh close over the wound. In seconds, there was no sign the god had even suffered injury.

  Tavish’s song echoed across the field, and the king silently praised the courageous bard for regaining control after the first horrifying emergence of the god. The music flowed like fresh blood into his heart and through his limbs, but still the oppressive weight of the battle threatened to doom him.

  Robyn suddenly appeared
at his side, holding her scimitar awkwardly. She hacked at the god’s great foot, bravely ignoring the looming crunch of Bhaal’s blow. Only Tristan’s lightning grab pulled her out from beneath the crushing fist.

  “Go back!” he gasped. “This is my fight!”

  “No! I have to—” Once again the god struck, this time kicking savagely at the woman. Tristan pushed her aside, absorbing the brunt of the blow against his ribs. He staggered to the side and landed with a low grunt.

  “Now, go!” he groaned, springing to his feet as Bhaal lumbered forward. “You don’t stand a chance against him! Without my sword, I wouldn’t either!”

  Robyn saw the Sword of Cymrych Hugh seem to lift the king through an acrobatic leap to strike a deep gash in the god’s shin. She sprang backward, biting back her frustration as she realized that Tristan spoke the truth. But what could she do?

  Tristan faced another attack, barely managing to dodge aside. His evasion cost him his balance, and once again he sprawled facedown in the mud. How long can I hold out? he wondered, forcing himself back to his feet.

  As if in answer, Bhaal suddenly reached down and seized the statue of a druid. He twisted his mighty hands, and the white stone cracked into several pieces. Raising his hand he hurled the head at Tristan.

  Only the king’s instant reaction saved him as he flicked the sword upward and deflected the missile. Next the god threw the torso, and this time the weight of the stone smashed him backward to sprawl on the ground.

  Bhaal loomed over him, bringing a great foot forward to crush the life from his helpless victim, but suddenly a figure appeared beside Tristan. Her golden hair flashed with a brilliance like her silver blade as Brigit stepped in to slice at the swinging foot.

  The god bellowed his rage as Tristan squirmed out of the way. Bhaal swung his huge hand toward the sister knight before Brigit recovered her guard. The crushing force of the blow knocked the warrior a dozen paces and left Brigit lying twisted and motionless in the thick mud on the shore of the Darkwell.

  Tristan scrambled to his feet once more as Bhaal picked up another statue, and then a third, breaking them into pieces and hurling the fragments at the desperately twisting king. Tristan darted to the left, rolled to the right, leaped and ducked to avoid each missile. Somehow he succeeded, though the chunks of stone shattered against the ground or cut deep furrows in the sod all around him. He felt the earth itself shake under each impact.

  Snarling, Canthus leaped at the giant feet of the god, but his fangs could do nothing to harm, or even distract, the monstrous opponent. Still he savaged the skin and ripped the flesh of the godly foe. Bhaal kicked at the dog and he sprang away. Then, as the giant turned his attention back to Tristan, the moorhound sprang once again and sank his fangs into Bhaal’s flesh.

  Tristan began to stagger with fatigue, the strain of his desperate evasion tactics threatening to drag him down. “By the legacy of Cymrych Hugh, give me strength!” The king whispered a desperate invocation, and sudden vitality flowed again through his veins. The sword glowed like a beacon before him, but the physical form of the god towered above him, above them all.

  Bhaal again smashed a statue, but this time he hurled the pieces over the king and into the clearing beyond. Robyn dodged one that seemed directed at her, but another fragment of stone smashed into Tavish’s chest, crushing the lute with a discordant twang. The bard flew backward, sprawling on the ground and gasping for breath.

  Sobbing, Tavish sat up and looked at the shattered ruin of her instrument. Suddenly she pressed one hand to her face and realized that the spectacles had again fallen from her nose. The bard scrambled to her knees and desperately sought the crystal glasses on the muddy ground. Not knowing how else to help, Robyn joined her.

  Bhaal smashed yet another statue, throwing the pieces at Tristan this time, but the king parried each with the blade, which moved more quickly than the eye could follow. He fought on pure instinct now, trusting the sword to parry blows that came too fast for his own reactions.

  He saw an opening as the god bent to crush the last statue. Suddenly Tristan leaped forward and swung the Sword of Cymrych Hugh in a great slashing arc. He had never delivered a more powerful blow. His sword seemed to sing through the air with the speed of its flight, and the keen blade bit deep into the god’s leg.

  Bhaal roared in pain and rage, sinking to one knee as the wounded leg collapsed beneath him. Even as Tristan pulled back to strike another blow, however, the wound closed and the god again reared to his full height.

  Robyn finally located the wire frames amid the trampled mud of the field. “Here … your spectacles!” Quickly she handed them to Tavish.

  Frantically the bard wiped the mud from the glasses and perched them on her nose. One lens, the one that had been cracked, was gone entirely, smashed by the force of the god’s blow. But the other one, smeared as it was, allowed her to see Bhaal in all his festering horror. She saw a body as raw as an open sore, surrounded in the black stuff of death. Only at the center of the body could she see a glow of vitality.

  There, as Bhaal twisted away, she saw a curious thing. The pulsating might of the god’s life force came to him through a long, silvery cord attached to the middle of his back! Tavish saw that the cord twisted its way down toward the Darkwell, winding its way across the surface of the water to touch a point near the middle of the well.

  Surprised, she removed the glasses and saw simply the form of a giant beside the pond. Only when she placed the lens over her eye did she see the true vile nature of his body, and the cord that connected it to its soul, or life essence, or whatever source from which it drew its fiendish vitality.

  “Come here!” she called to Robyn. “Can you see that?”

  Tavish handed Robyn the spectacles, and she looked toward the giant figure. She saw past the king, past the form of the god, following with her eyes the silver cord leading to his root in the well. Quickly she moved closer to get a better view, stifling her revulsion, for she looked directly into the dark soul of Bhaal.

  There in the middle of the well it floated, a pulsating bulb of dark evil. It glowed a hellish crimson, like liquid coal, as it slowly throbbed beneath the surface of the water. It looked much like a human heart, but huge and unmistakably perverted.

  Gasping with strain, she at last turned away from the horrible beating of the great organ. The sight of the thing was an affront to her eyes, its image sending waves of disgust through her.

  But at last, she thought, she may have discovered a way to harm the beast-god.

  Grunnarch’s arms grew numb with the strain of raising and lowering his axe. His valiant band of warriors had formed a great circle, their backs against the rocky knoll of Caer Corwell. Beside him fought the Ffolk in a similar circle, but from all sides pressed the tireless assault of their inhuman foes.

  Finally Grunnarch’s mighty strength failed, for just a moment. His axe became wedged in the skull of a great ogre zombie, and before he could pull it free, clawed hands scratched at his legs. Moist, rotten flesh fell from arms that seized his waist.

  Undead hands ripped the axe from his hands and pulled his feet out from under him. A half-dozen zombies dragged the Red King from the circle of his men, and though the warriors of the north made a valiant rush to reclaim their king, the ranks of the enemy closed behind him, and Grunnarch the Red disappeared among the festering bodies of the dead of the sea.

  Once again the powerful sword bit into the god’s flesh, only to have the wound close behind it scarcely after the weapon was withdrawn. The thunderous explosion of sound had become almost routine as Tristan desperately strove to somehow defeat this thing.

  “There’s got to be a way!” gasped the king, whirling away and narrowly avoiding a crushing fist.

  “There is! Bite him!” Newt popped into view beside the king and darted forward to sink his tiny sharp teeth into the god’s calf. “Yuck!” The faerie dragon spat disgustedly, ignoring Bhaal’s sudden swat, then popped out of sight once again
.

  “Tristan! We’ve found the secret! The glasses showed us the key!” Robyn once again appeared beside Tristan before the awesome giant. Breathlessly she described the vision that she and Tavish had seen through the glasses.

  “We’ll never harm the body out here, because its true soul is in the well! That’s the key!”

  Bhaal pulled a huge tree trunk from the earth, ripping it free as a man might pluck a stalk of wheat. He swung the timber at the humans who stood before him. Once again Tristan raised his sword. The blade met the trunk solidly, and thunder smote their ears. The tree shattered to splinters, yet Tristan and the sword still stood.

  “What can we do about it?” asked the king quickly.

  “See if you can get to the shore. The god seems to try to keep us away from the well. Can you get past it?” Robyn once again slashed with her scimitar, ineffective as an attack but serving to attract the god’s attention.

  “I’ll give it a try. Any plan is better than nothing!” Tristan darted to one side and tried to race past the towering form of the god, but Bhaal quickly stepped into his path, forcing the king back with a series of heavy blows, striving desperately to drive the man back from the Darkwell.

  Robyn hacked at the god’s heel with the scimitar, narrowly missing being kicked as Bhaal twisted toward her while still holding Tristan at bay. As she stumbled backward, her hand fell upon the ivory horn she had tucked into her belt—the horn of the unicorn, Kamerynn.

  An idea born of desperation formed in her mind, and she dropped the scimitar and pulled out the horn. “I’m going to try something! Run to the well—now!”

  Tristan didn’t stop to question Robyn, though he wondered at her boldness as she dropped the silver weapon. He sprinted past the god’s foot in a desperate race toward the Darkwell.

  Bhaal spun on his other foot and lurched after the king, ignoring Robyn for a moment. She hefted the horn of Kamerynn high above her head like a javelin. Then she leaped to the side of Bhaal’s foot as the god crouched to spring after Tristan. Putting all the force she could summon behind it and calling on the might of her newfound goddess to aid her blow, she drove the horn down toward the huge foot.