Adversary Cycle 01 - The Keep

by F. Paul Wilson

  She started to turn and then stopped. The rats were brushing against her, but they didn't bite or claw her. They made contact and then ran. It was the hilt! Because she held the hilt, Rasalom lost control over the rats as soon as they touched her. Magda took heart and calmed herself.

  They can't bite me. They can't touch me for more than an instant.

  Her greatest horror had been that they might crawl up her legs. Now she knew they could not. She stood firm again.

  Rasalom must have sensed this. He scowled and made a motion with his hands.

  The corpses again began to move. They parted around him, then rejoined into a near-solid moving wall of dead flesh, scuffling, stumbling forward, crowding up to where she stood, stopping within inches of her. They gaped at her with slack, expressionless faces and glazed, empty eyes. No malevolence in their movements, no hatred, no real purpose. They were merely dead flesh.

  But they were so close!

  Had they been alive, their breath would have wafted against her face. As it was, a few of them smelled as if they had already begun to putrefy.

  She closed her eyes again, fighting the loathing that weakened her knees, hugging the hilt against her.

  . . . this far and no farther . . . this far and no farther . . . for Glaeken, for me, for what's left of Papa, for everyone . . . this far and no farther . . .

  Something heavy and cold slumped against her. She staggered back, crying out in surprise and disgust. The corpses nearest her had begun to go limp and fall against her. Another one slammed into her and she was rocked back again. She twisted to the side and let its slack bulk slip by her. Magda realized what Rasalom was doing—if he couldn't frighten her out of the keep, then he would push her out by hurling the physical bulk of his dead army against her.

  He was succeeding. There were only inches left to her.

  As more corpses pressed forward, Magda made a desperate move. She grasped the gold handle of the hilt firmly with both hands and swung it in a wide are, dragging it against the dead flesh of those closest to her.

  Bright flashes of light and sizzling noises erupted upon contact with the bodies; wisps of acrid, yellow white smoke stung her nostrils . . . and the corpses—they jerked spasmodically and fell away like marionettes with severed strings. She stepped forward, waving the hilt again, this time in a wider are, and again the flashes, the sizzle, the sudden limpness.

  Even Rasalom retreated a step.

  Magda allowed a small, grim smile to touch her lips. Now at least she had breathing room. She had a weapon and she was learning how to use it. She saw Rasalom's gaze shift to her left and looked to see what had caught his attention.

  Papa! He had regained consciousness and was on his feet, leaning against the wall of the gateway arch. It sickened Magda to see the thin trickle of blood running down the side of his face—blood from the blow she had struck.

  "You!" Rasalom said, pointing to Papa. "Take the talisman from her! She has joined our enemies!"

  Magda saw her father shake his head, and her heart leaped with new hope.

  "No!" Papa's voice was a feeble croak, yet it echoed off the stone walls around them. "I've been watching! If what she holds is truly the source of your power, you do not need me to reclaim it. Take it yourself!"

  Magda knew she had never been so proud of her father as at that moment when he stood up to the creature who had tried to plunder his soul. And had come so close to succeeding. She brushed away tears and smiled, taking strength from Papa and giving it back to him.

  "Ingrate!" Rasalom hissed, his face contorted with rage. "You've failed me! Very well, then—welcome back your illness! Revel in your pain!"

  Papa slumped to his knees with a stifled moan. He held his hands before him, watching them turn white and lock once again into the gnarled deformity that until yesterday had rendered them useless. His spine curved and he crumpled forward with a groan. Slowly, with agony seeping from every pore, his body curled in on itself. When it was over he lay whimpering in a twisted, tortured parody of the fetal position.

  Magda stepped toward him, shouting through her horror.

  "Papa!"

  She could almost feel his pain. Yet he suffered through it all with no plea for mercy. This seemed to incite Rasalom further. Amid a chorus of shrill squeaks, the rats started forward, a dun wave that sluiced around Papa, then swept over him, tearing at him with tiny razor teeth.

  Magda forgot her loathing and rushed to his side, batting at the rats with the hilt, swatting them away with her free hand. But for every few she swept away, more sets of tiny jaws darted in to redden themselves on Papa's flesh. She cried, she sobbed, she called out to God in every language she knew.

  The only answer came from Rasalom, a taunting whisper behind her. "Throw the hilt through the gate and you will save him! Remove that thing from these walls and he lives!"

  Magda forced herself to ignore him, but deep within she sensed that Rasalom had won. She could not let this horror go on—Papa was being eaten alive by vermin! And she seemed helpless to save him. She had lost. She would have to surrender.

  But not yet. The rats were not biting her, only Papa.

  She sprawled across her father, covering his body with her own, pressing the hilt between them.

  "He will die!" the hated voice whispered. "He will die and there will be no one to blame but you! Your fault! All your—"

  Rasalom's words suddenly broke off as his voice climbed to a screech—a sound full of rage, fear, and disbelief.

  "YOU!”

  Magda lifted her head and saw Glaeken—weak, pale, caked with dried blood, leaning against the keep's gate a few feet away. There was no one in the world she wanted more to see right now.

  "I knew you would come."

  But the way he looked, it seemed a miracle he had made it across the causeway. He could never stand up to Rasalom in his present condition.

  And yet he was here. The sword blade was in one hand, the other he held out to her. No words were necessary. She knew what he had come for and knew what she must do. She lifted herself away from Papa and placed the hilt in Glaeken's hand.

  Somewhere behind her, Rasalom was screaming, "Nooooo!”

  Glaeken smiled weakly at her, then in a single motion, smooth and swift, he stood the blade point down and poised the top of the hilt over the butt spike. As it slid home with a solid rasping click and a flash of light brighter than the sun at summer solstice, intolerably bright, spread in a ball from Glaeken and his sword to be caught and amplified by the images of the hilt inlaid throughout the keep.

  The light struck Magda like a blast from a furnace, good and clean, dry and warm. Shadows disappeared as everything within sight was etched in blinding white light. The fog melted away as though it had never existed. The rats fled squealing in all directions. The light scythed through the standing corpses, toppling them like stalks of dry wheat. Even Rasalom reeled away with both arms covering his face.

  The true master of the keep had returned.

  The light faded slowly, drawing back into the sword, and a moment passed before Magda could see again. When she could, there stood Glaeken, his clothes still ripped and bloodied, but the man within renewed. All fatigue, all weakness, all injury had been wiped away. He was a man made whole again, radiating awesome power and implacable resolve. And his eyes were so fierce, so terrible in their determination that she was glad he was a friend and not a foe. This was the man who led the forces of Light against Chaos ages ago . . . the man she loved.

  Glaeken held the reassembled sword out before him, its runes swirling and cascading over the blade. His blue eyes shining, he turned to Magda and saluted her with it.

  "Thank you, my Lady," he said softly. "I knew you had courage—I never dreamed how much."

  Magda glowed in his praise. My Lady . . . he called me his Lady.

  Glaeken gestured to Papa. "Take him through the gate. I'll stand guard until you're safe on the causeway."

  Magda's knees wobbled as she
stood up. A quick glance around showed a jumble of fallen corpses. Rasalom had disappeared. "Where—?"

  "I'll find him," Glaeken said. "But first I must see you where I know you'll be safe."

  Magda bent and grabbed Papa under the arms and dragged his pitifully light form the few feet that took them across the threshold and onto the causeway. His breathing was shallow. He was bleeding from a thousand tiny wounds. She began dabbing at them with her skirt.

  "Good-bye, Magda."

  It was Glaeken's voice and it held a terrible note of finality. She looked up to see him staring at her with a look of infinite sadness on his face.

  "Good-bye? Where are you going?"

  "To finish a war that should have been over ages ago." His voice faltered. "I wish . . ."

  Dread gripped her. "You're coming back to me, aren't you?"

  Glaeken turned and walked toward the courtyard.

  "Glaeken?"

  He disappeared into the maw of the tower. Her cry was half wail, half sob.

  "Glaeken!”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Darkness within the tower . . . more than mere shadow, it was the blackness that only Rasalom could spawn. It engulfed Glaeken, but he was not entirely helpless against it. His rune sword began to glow with a pale blue light as soon as he stepped through the tower entrance. The images of the hilt laid into the walls responded immediately to the presence of the original and lit with white-and-yellow fire that pulsated slowly, dimly, as if to the rhythm of a massive and faraway heart.

  The sound of Magda's voice followed Glaeken within and he stood at the foot of the tower stairs trying to shut out the pain he heard as she called his name, knowing that if he listened he would weaken. He had to cut her off, just as he had to sever all other ties to the world outside the keep.

  Only he and Rasalom now. Their millennia of conflict would end here today. He would see to that.

  He let the power of the glowing sword surge through him. So good to hold it again—like being reunited with a lost part of his body. But even the power of the sword could not reach the growing knot of despair tangled deep within him.

  He was not going to win today. Even if he succeeded in killing Rasalom, the victory would cost him everything . . . for victory would eliminate the purpose of his continued existence. He would no longer be of use to the Power he served.

  If could defeat Rasalom . . .

  He pushed all that behind him. This was no way to enter battle. He had to set his mind to victory—that was the only way to win.

  And he must win.

  He looked around. He sensed Rasalom somewhere above. Why? There was no escape that way.

  Glaeken ran up the steps to the second-level landing and stood, alert, wary, his senses bristling. He could still sense Rasalom far above him, yet the dark air here was thick with danger. The replicas of the hilts pulsed dully from the walls, cruciform beacons in a black fog. A short distance to his right he saw the dim outline of the steps to the third level. Nothing moved.

  He started for the next set of steps, then stopped. Suddenly, there was movement all around him. As he watched, a crowd of dark shapes rose from the floor and the shadowed corners. Glaeken swiveled left and right, quickly counting a dozen German corpses.

  So . . . Rasalom wasn't alone when he retreated.

  As the corpses lurched toward him, Glaeken positioned himself with the next flight of stairs to his rear and prepared to meet them. They didn't frighten him—he knew the scope and limits of Rasalom's powers and was familiar with all his tricks. Those animated lumps of dead flesh could not hurt him.

  But they did puzzle him. What did Rasalom hope to gain by this grisly diversion?

  With no conscious effort on his part, Glaeken's body set itself for battle—legs spread, the right slightly rearward of the left, sword held ready before him in a two-handed grip—as the corpses closed in. He did not have to do battle with them; he knew he could stroll through their ranks and make them fall away to all sides by merely touching them. But that was not enough. His warrior instinct demanded that he strike out at them. And Glaeken willingly gave in to that demand. He ached to slash at anything connected with Rasalom. These dead Germans would feed the fire he would need for his final confrontation with their master.

  The corpses had gained momentum and were now a closing semicircle of dim forms rushing toward him, arms outstretched, hands set into claws. As the first came within reach, Glaeken began to swing the sword in short, slicing arcs, severing an arm to his right, lopping off a head to his left. A white flash ran along the length of the blade each time it made contact, a hiss and sizzle as it seared its way effortlessly through the dead flesh, and a rising curl of oily yellow smoke from the wound as each cadaver went limp and sank to the floor.

  Glaeken spun and swung and spun again, his mouth twisting at the nightmarish quality of the scene around him. It was not the pale voids of the oncoming faces, gray in the muted light, that disconcerted him, or the stench of them. It was the silence. No commands from officers, no cries of pain or rage, no shouts of bloodlust. Only shuffling feet, the sound of his own breathing, and the sizzle of the sword as it did its work.

  This was not battle, this was cutting meat. He was only adding to the carnage the Germans had wrought upon one another hours earlier. Still they pressed toward him, undaunted, undauntable, the ones behind pushing against those closest to Glaeken, ever tightening the ring.

  With half of the cadavers piled at his feet, Glaeken took a step backward to give himself more room to swing. His heel caught on one of the fallen bodies and he began to stagger back, off balance. In that instant he sensed movement above and behind him. Startled, he glanced up to see two cadavers come hurtling down off the steps leading to the next level. There was no time to dodge. Their combined weight struck him with numbing force and bore him to the floor. Before he could throw them off, the remaining cadavers were upon him, piling on one another and pinning Glaeken under half a ton of dead flesh.

  He remained calm, although he could barely breathe under the weight. The little air that did reach him reeked with a mixture of burnt flesh, dried blood, and excrement from those cadavers with gut wounds. Gagging, grunting, he marshaled all his strength and forced his body upward through the suffocating pile.

  As he raised himself to his hands and knees, he felt the stone blocks of the floor beneath him begin to vibrate. He did not know what it meant or what was causing it—Glaeken knew only that he had to get away from here. With a final convulsive heave, he threw off the remaining bodies and leaped to the steps.

  Behind him came a loud grinding and scraping of stone upon stone. From the safety of the steps he turned and saw the section of the floor where he had been pinned disappear. It shattered and fell away, taking many of the cadavers with it. A muffled crash arose as the tumbling stone and flesh struck the first-floor landing directly below.

  Shaken, Glaeken leaned against the wall to catch his breath and clear the stench of the cadavers from his nostrils. Rasalom had a reason for trying to hinder his progress—he never acted without a purpose—but what?

  As Glaeken turned to make his way up to the third level, movement on the floor caught his eye. At the edge of the hole a severed arm from one of the corpses had begun dragging itself toward him, clawing its way along the floor with its fingers. Shaking his head in bafflement, Glaeken continued up the steps, his thoughts racing through what he knew of Rasalom, trying to guess what was going on in that twisted mind.

  Halfway up, he felt a trickle of falling dust brush against his face. Without looking up, he slammed himself flat against the wall just in time to avoid a stone block falling from above. It landed with a shattering crash on the spot he had occupied an instant before.

  An upward glance showed that the stone had dislodged itself from the inner edge of the stairwell. Rasalom's doing again. Did Rasalom still harbor hopes of maiming or disabling him? He must know that he was only forestalling the inevitable confrontation.

 
But the outcome of that confrontation . . . that was anything but inevitable. In the powers each of them had been allotted, Rasalom had always had the upper hand. Chief among his powers were command over light and darkness, and the power to make animals and inanimate objects obey his will. Above all, Rasalom was invulnerable to trauma of any kind, from any weapon—save Glaeken's rune sword.

  Glaeken was not so well armed. Although he never aged or sickened and had been imbued with a fierce vitality and supernal strength, he could succumb to catastrophic injury. He had come close to succumbing in the gorge. Never in all his millennia had he felt death's chill breath so close on the nape of his neck. He had managed to outrun it, but only with Magda's help.

  The scales were nearly balanced now. The hilt and blade were reunited—the sword was intact in Glaeken's hands. Rasalom had his superior powers but was hemmed in by the walls of the keep; he could not retreat and plan to meet Glaeken another day. It had to be now. Now!

  Glaeken approached the third level cautiously and found it deserted—nothing moving, nothing hiding in the dark. As he walked across the landing to the next flight of stairs, he felt the tower tremble. The landing shook, then cracked, then fell away, almost beneath his feet, leaving him pressed against a wall with his heels resting precariously on a tiny ledge. Peering over the toes of his boots, he saw the crumbling stone block of the floor crash down to the landing below in a choking cloud of dust.

  Too close, he thought, allowing himself to breathe again. And yet, not close enough.

  He surveyed the wreckage. Only the landing had fallen away. The third-level rooms were still intact behind the wall against his back. He turned around and inched his way along the ledge toward the next set of steps. As he passed the door to the rooms it suddenly jerked open and Glaeken found himself facing the lunging forms of two more German cadavers.