The Dark Lord

by Jack Heckel

  “The legends are all true,” Drake drawled, and, pointing a thumb at himself, boasted, “Particularly this one.” Valdara rolled her eyes at him.

  “Can I ask a question?” said Luke.

  “Wait a bit, kid,” said Drake. “Let me tell everyone about the route. First, we go through the Forest of the Lost.”

  “Isn’t that the mazelike wood with paths haunted by fairies and spiders?” asked Sam, who was taking notes on the back page of his spell book.

  “That’s right, the leaves in the forest are so thick on the branches that even light can’t penetrate down to its paths. They say monstrous mushroom men lurk in the forest too, but I can’t say we ever saw any,” Drake said, then casually pointed up into the sky and added, “The upside is that the canopy is so thick that it should protect us from the rain if these storms don’t let up.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to imagine how hard it would be to make it through the Forest of the Lost. “Sounds pretty sketchy, but I’m sure we can get through the forest and make it to the Dark Queen’s fortress.” I had to say it twice because the winds were beginning to howl rather loudly again.

  “Whoa, kid,” Drake said when he finally understood what I was saying. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

  “That’s just the first couple weeks of the journey,” explained Valdara, speaking more loudly to account for the crashes of thunder. “After the Forest of the Lost, we have to venture through the Swamp of Mire, a foreboding dark fen inhabited by poisonous frog people and giant crocodilians.”

  “Wait, I’ve heard of those,” said Sam, jotting quickly in his book. “Don’t they keep giant killer freshwater eels as pets?”

  “And lumbering bog beasts!” interjected Ariella. She nearly jumped with excitement. Her long dark hair was whipped back in the wind. “I’ve heard that rare flowers grow on their backs. There’s one potion recipe that I’ve been dying to try out if we can find enough of them.”

  “I still have a question,” said Luke.

  “After we are done figuring this out, kid,” said Drake, who was nearly shouting to be heard over the storm. “The real issue in the mire is the quicksand and the mosquitos. Both of them will eat you alive.”

  Valdara, who was clutching her cloak close around her, glanced doubtfully at the dwarfs. “The water can be pretty deep as well. You wade through most of the mire.”

  Drake nodded. “It’s a foot killer to be sure. We want to make sure we have extra shoes and socks.”

  I felt flushed. We’d have to get through this swamp after the forest. Maybe we could build a raft? I hoped the winds would die down soon as I was having trouble concentrating on what everyone was saying with all the dust whipping through the air.

  “And climbing gear,” said Valdara. “We’ll need climbing gear for the Cliffs of Madness.”

  I didn’t want to know, but still I found myself asking, “The Cliffs of Madness?”

  Drake rolled his eyes. “Yes, Avery. Everyone knows that the Cliffs of Madness mark the end of the Swamps of Mire.”

  Rook muttered. “Avery’s not from around here.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry about that, kid,” said Drake.

  “Hold on.” I was determined to retake control of this conversation. “So, with the forest and the mire and the cliffs, how long will this journey take?” I asked, and stumbled a bit as a particularly violent gust nearly lifted me off my feet.

  Valdara answered in a full throated shout as the winds seemed to be screaming around us. “It depends on whether the disease hawks, blood vultures, or vile harpies attack us on the ascent. One to two months, generally, assuming you can find a ledge and there’s nothing lurking in the Caves of Corpses . . .”

  “Which there always is!” barked Drake.

  She nodded at this assessment and continued. “But that’ll be nothing compared to the time it takes to cross the Eerie Wasteland, not to mention the Magma Pits of the Ragelords.”

  “I’m actually pretty excited about this journey,” said Sam. “I’ve always wanted to see the Glacier of the Gods and make my way through the Impassable Passages of the Minotaur King . . .”

  “Not meaning ta be a stickler there, Sam,” interrupted Seamus, “but I hear he calls it the Labyrinthine Labyrinths now. It came out in a royal bull.”

  They both chuckled.

  “Can I ask my question now?” said Luke.

  “Calm down, kid,” Drake sighed. We all huddled together in a circle to hear each other better. “Valdara, have you heard whether the bridge over the Chasm of Calamity is still standing?”

  “I think so,” Valdara answered. “We just have to hope that the guardians will let us pass.”

  This was completely out of control. I had visions of long treks through forest and mires and up cliffs and along winding hallways and labyrinths, of being frozen on glaciers and having my eyebrows singed off by the heat from magma flows. “Please stop,” I pleaded, half to the party and half to the incessant winds. “I just want to know how long it will take to reach the Dark Queen.”

  “Six months to a year?” suggested Valdara with a slight shrug.

  “Give or take,” agreed Drake.

  “Six months!” shouted Rook before I could.

  “To a year . . .” Drake reminded him.

  I paced and Rook paced with me. “What are we goin’ to do,” he muttered.

  “Maybe if I could find a way to reunite the battle-axes . . .” I suggested.

  Justice Cleaver made a sound like it was clearing its throat, which seemed odd as it had no throat. I pulled it from my belt and held it to my ear so I could hear what it was saying. “Maybe you should ask someone that is the world’s greatest expert on magical battle-axes?”

  “I don’t have access to anyone like that,” I snapped.

  Justice Cleaver sighed. “Really? Okay. Fine.” It almost sounded like it was sulking.

  That’s when we heard Sam scream, “Hooded Riders!”

  He pointed out across the wind-whipped waste. From each point of the compass, both cardinal and ordinal, came a gaunt black-cloaked rider on a nightmare stead. Despite the sandstorm swirling around them, they galloped on, heedless of the growing cataclysm.

  “What do we do?” Sam shouted.

  Valdara, Drake, and I looked between ourselves. I could see that they had as many ideas as I did—none.

  “I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about them,” said Luke with wide eyes.

  We all turned to look at him. I screamed, “These aren’t hooded riders, Luke. They are Hooded Riders. They are the real deal.”

  “Yes, I know,” he roared, and he really had to roar to be heard now because the sound from the winds and the thunder and blowing dust was deafening, “But so is my question.” He pointed to the sky. “What’s that flashing?”

  I looked up and gasped. It was there, a thing of magical legend: a dimensional tornado, a towering column of pitch-black reality filled with red, blue, and purple lightning that reached up as far as the eye could see. The energy within it was incomprehensible. It had been growing above our heads as we talked, unnoticed by everyone but Luke, and it was descending out of the sky toward us at an incredible rate of speed. I wanted to run, but all I could do was stare in awe and wish Eldrin were here to see it.

  “This is worth a paper all by itself,” I said to myself, even as I tried to recall any spell or bit of Mysterium magic that would have any effect on it. I had nothing.

  In the next moment, it was on us. It centered on me and Justice Cleaver. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the battle-axe. My reflection was smiling back at me and winking.

  “Don’t forget that I tried to help you,” said Justice Cleaver.

  I started to shout that he had done no such thing, or had done so in such a passive-aggressive way as to make no difference, but we were torn from the ground and swept into a sky full of multicolored lightning before I could get the words out. Below us the Hooded Riders had reached the mound. They stared up
impotently as the storm carried us away.

  Chapter 29

  THE DARK LORD RETURNS

  I spun uncontrollably through the raging storm, clinging to Justice Cleaver with both hands. I thought I could see other bodies whirling in the vortex. There was a streak of red that could have been Valdara’s hair, and I kept hearing snippets of cursing that certainly belonged to Drake or Rook or Seamus . . . or all three.

  Most of my time falling through space was spent praying to anyone who might be listening to let us live. I wasn’t only worried about physical dangers like one or more of us being impaled on a tree or smashed into a mountain or any of the other mundane ends that could befall someone in such a storm, falling hundreds of feet to your doom being the most likely, I was worried that reality itself might have given way and that we were being flung through subspace, possibly lost in the uncharted infinity beyond imagination. Overly dramatic? Perhaps, but that’s what was passing through my mind.

  I had this vain hope that Justice Cleaver would protect me—somehow. Even though it was unclear how a battle-axe could be of any help in these circumstances. All I knew was that it was the only solid thing around me so I kept holding on. Unfortunately, holding Justice Cleaver also meant listening to Justice Cleaver.

  “Don’t worry,” he said reassuringly. “You are holding the most powerful battle-axe in the known universe. You are invincible. Now, if you were holding a more mundane magical weapon, like a mystic sword, I wouldn’t like your chances. There are so many magical swords. The good ones that glow when orcs are about, and the black menacing ones that moan and eat souls, and then there are the disreputable ones that loaf about, stuck in stones or at the bottom of lakes. Have you ever seen a knight in full armor wade into a lake to try and get a sword? Technically, neither have I, but the mental image is ridiculous enough to put a sane person off swords altogether.”

  Aldric had certainly not been exaggerating about Justice Cleaver’s lack of an inner monologue. It never shut up. It carried on and on as we spun around and around. Now, I complain, because at this point you are sort of expecting me to and I feel like I need to live down to expectations, but the truth was, after a time, it became comforting to hear its voice. I closed my eyes and hung on as Justice Cleaver explained about the proper care and storage of a battle-axe of his pedigree, and I continued to hang on as he recounted the sloppiness with which Aldric had kept his treasure chamber, and I almost let go as it began to detail all of its best qualities.

  Then, Justice Cleaver fell silent. My heart beat two or three times and I opened my eyes, just to make sure we were still whirling about in the storm. We were.

  “Got you!” Justice Cleaver said with an overhearty laugh. “I needed you to open your eyes so you could see how I gleam when all this multicolored lightning flashes off of my blades. This moment should be captured for posterity. I’m thinking a painting would be the right way to go. Any thoughts?”

  “I’m just hoping we survive,” I yelled over the winds.

  “I certainly will. I’m an unbreakable artifact tied to the very fabric of this world. I’m not as sure about you—you are a bit squishy. This is my advice: when we land, try not to land on your head, and when you’re lying there gasping in pain, don’t sit up too quickly. Oh, and if you need to throw up, don’t do it on me.”

  “Thanks,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster given the way my head, and all the rest of me, was spinning.

  “Don’t mention it. I am the greatest giver of advice in this or any other world,” he confessed grandly. I would later learn that Justice Cleaver did understand sarcasm; he just never thought it applied to him.

  As abruptly as we were taken from the semi-lich mound, we landed. To my surprise, we didn’t slam into the earth or plummet to the ground. In fact, we landed rather gently. I actually touched down on my feet, but was so woozy from spinning that I fell to my knees. Apart from the nausea brought on by all the spinning, I was fine. I heard Rook curse and Seamus grumble nearby. Luke moaned.

  “We’re alive!” said Sam.

  “How fun!” Ariella squealed as only an elf can squeal, and began to dance around. “Did anyone else see the pegacorn flying around up there?”

  “I saw nothing,” said Drake. “I think I need to start drinking more.”

  “Hardly,” replied Valdara as her horse landed on its feet, apparently unflustered, next to her. Without blinking at this incredible occurrence she reached out and grabbed its reins.

  The winds whirled about for a time, swirling dust and debris around and obscuring what lay beyond their margins. Soon enough the whirlwind began to die down, or at least to draw back up into the sky. As it rose, remnants from our journey—sand, the odd rock and bush, a bicycle with a basket—began falling to the ground.

  I looked about at our surroundings. We were in a vast courtyard of hewn black rock. Overhead, the dark clouds still clashed and crashed in flashes of lightning. The storm obscured whatever sun there might have been, if it was even day. In the dim and indifferent light, I could make out black walls rising up to ragged heights. The battlements were pocked here and there by doors and barred windows that looked out like dead eyes. A great iron gate was at our back and another before us.

  There was a beat or two of utter silence and then a mighty clanking boom and a groan, and the iron gate we were facing swung open. A mass of blood orcs, fiend trolls, and beastlings marched out in a ragged formation. At the front of the group was a woman in a black robe holding a crooked staff. She was tall and had a drawn face. She might have been pretty were it not for the green tinge of her skin and her haughty expression. She struck her staff on the ground and the army fell out around her in ranks three-deep and surrounded us. We closed in around Valdara’s horse and drew our weapons.

  “I am the High Witch of the Fortress of the Dark Queen, interlopers. Despite your unusual means of transport, your intrusion will not go unpunished! I will take great joy in dragging you before the queen herself. You may surrender of your own accord, or you will be slaughtered where you stand.”

  She gave a terrible high-pitched shriek of laughter. All around us the army echoed her. If you’ve never heard a mixture of orcs, trolls, and beastlings laugh, you are fortunate. It was horrible.

  I was all for surrendering, but Justice Cleaver chose this moment to shout, “Raise a hand against us and it will be the last thing you do, witch scum!”

  “Oh,” she said, staring straight at me. “You dare to challenge me?” She took a step forward and lifted her staff to the sky. A ball of black energy began to swirl at its tip. “Now, fools, feel the full power of—”

  With a terrible crash and a crunch of timber, a house plummeted out of the sky and landed on her.

  There was a beat of silence before a disappointed Justice Cleaver said, “I had hoped to do the slaying myself. Well, the important thing is that we are one for one . . .”

  While he explained that the next logical move was for us to single-handedly destroy the army, I did the only actually logic thing and looked up. Everyone else—dwarfs, humans, elves, orcs, trolls, and beastlings—were doing the same thing. There were some flashes of colored lightning high up in sky, but lower down there were dozens of enormous dark shapes falling through the void toward us.

  Valdara shouted, “Run!” Then she leapt atop her horse and galloped toward the open gate, slashing a path through the creatures with her sword.

  Not that the High Witch’s army was in much of a mood to stand before her. In fact, they seemed to take Valdara’s shout as a kind of order and began scattering in all directions. The company followed through the chaos and confusion of her wake toward the distant gate.

  We were halfway to the opening when things started to land, or should I say crash violently, around us. A windmill shattered among a group of blood orcs to our right, instantly crushing a dozen or more and then pummeling the rest with its still-spinning sails. A herd of cattle, like gigantic fleshy missiles, began exploding amid a ran
k of trolls to our left, sending them howling toward the shelter of the walls. Nor were we safe, but found ourselves dodging hay bales, three or four wagons, a stand-up piano, and innumerable spinning blades and farm implements. I saw a squad of dead beastlings that had been peppered with hundreds of roofing nails.

  There were many other things dropping around us, but I tried my best not to look. I kept my eyes focused on Valdara’s back, and now and then up at the sky. But nothing I could do would silence the screams of terror and agony from all around.

  By some miracle and no small amount of luck, we made it to the gate. But blocking our way was a double line of orcs that had not broken in panic. They were under the command of an enormous hobgoblin, and from the way the orcs kept glancing nervously at him, I knew there was nothing that could fall from the sky that was as frightening to them as he was. There was no time to consider our options, we charged at them.

  The hobgoblin gave a terrible smile, showing row upon row of sharpened teeth. He raised a wickedly curved sword. “Regiment! Attack . . .” he began to shout, when there was a whistling noise and a black mass came hurtling out of the sky and took his head off with a metallic clang.

  “An anvil! Did you guys see that?” Sam asked.

  “We know, kid,” said Drake in a sickened growl that matched my own feelings.

  The orcs had seen it also and needed no further encouragement to dive through the gate into the shelter of the fortress. We followed on their heels, cutting them down as we came. In our pursuit we passed out of the courtyard and found ourselves in an arched chamber of such a scale that its only possible purpose could have been the mustering of armies. A forest of mighty pillars soared into the gloom of the high vaulted ceiling above. The few orcs that remained from the gate guard that had not been slain in our assault went screaming and shouting down side passages and were gone.

  Seamus and Rook immediately went to work turning the great wheels that were used to close and open the vast iron gates. In no time they banged shut with an echoing clang, sealing the army out and us in. We were, momentarily, alone.