by Brian Fuller
While Gerand diligently inspected and enforced discipline, in the end there was little to do but wait while Mikkik hatched some further plot or threw some new horror at them. Without the moons in the sky, sundown brought a darkness compounded by the choking smoke that hung over the city in a cloud. Pockets of orange beneath the haze created pools of flickering, diffuse light that brightened and dimmed as the fires breathed and then starved when the fuel ran out. The constant chatter and commotion behind the wall made the abandoned city seem all the more dead by comparison, a giant graveyard for the brave men hewn down during the day.
Maewen coming up the stairs holding a waterskin brightened Gerand’s prospects. His arm ached horribly, and the constant pain robbed him of vigor and clouded his mind.
“Take only a sip every hour or so,” she warned. “It will make you sleep if you drink too much.”
He nodded and eagerly took the dosage prescribed while she watched to ensure he didn’t overdo it.
“Any developments up here?” she asked.
“No. Nothing has approached the walls as yet, and it is simply too dark to see anything. They must know not to let us rest. They have us on the edge of exhaustion and fear. A bold push now could end this battle tonight.”
“We can hope the wall is as strong as they say,” Maewen said, coming to a crenellation on the edge and peering into the abyssal darkness. “There is movement in the streets, though to what end it is hard to say.”
They remained on the wall for nearly an hour while Maewen surveyed the city, using her superior eyes to try to give some advanced warning. Gerand made one last inspection of the men, and when he returned, he could tell by Maewen’s posture that something was amiss, her face registering an uncharacteristic shock.
“What do you see?”
“Look down at the base of the hill,” Maewen said, pointing. “I can hardly make sense of what it might be.”
Gerand peered. There was something there, something big, but in the poor light, it was impossible to make out, even as it started to move.
“Holy Eldaloth!” Maewen said, stepping back. “I’ve got to warn them!”
She darted away without explaining, and Gerand turned his gaze back to the winding cobble road that led up to the castle. It took a while for what Maewen saw to become plain to his human sight, but when it did he joined the rest of the soldiers along the wall in muttering an oath. Mikkik had unleashed his last horror upon them. Khrona Dhron: the Abomination of the East.
Before the Chalaine could react, Sir Tornus roughly dragged her off the ground in a bruising grip that pinned her arms to her sides. Gen continued to bleed, clearly weakening with each pulse of the blood from the cut on his wrist. Without her touch, the curse covered both her and him in charred, ashen skin. Joranne stood next to him, watching as Sir Tornus dragged her backward toward a greenish light now casting ghoulish shadows across the rubble and reflecting off the slick blood.
As he pulled her back, they jostled against scaly Uyumaak who were staring at the lantern, just as she had seen on that final night on the shores of Shroud Lake. By the sounds of scraping and crunching, more were filing in through the archway behind her.
“What are you doing?!” the Chalaine yelled, struggling in vain against the embrace of her captor. “He’ll die!”
“I don’t want to kill him,” Joranne said, stooping and gray with age as she joined Sir Tornus in the midst of the Uyumaak. “He has information I need, and he won’t give it up without a little incentive. The way you two have been getting on, I think you’ll be just what I need to persuade him!”
Joranne concentrated and muttered the healing words of blood magic. Hidden among the Uyumaak, the Chalaine had to crane around the transfixed creatures to see Gen slowly rise, drawing his sword as he noticed the enemies filling the chamber around them.
“Joranne!” he yelled. “What’s the meaning of this? Let her go right now, or you will not leave here alive!”
“I will not let her go. If you incant one word of blood magic, I will kill her and Sir Tornus will let loose the Uyumaak. Listen to me very carefully. . .”
“If you want my help,” Gen said, “you will let her go!”
Joranne scowled. “Sir Tornus you can aid, but you can’t help me, and you know it!” Joranne returned angrily. “And did you think I would let you restore Elde Luri Mora while we were still in it? You know what would happen to us. You will uphold your end of the bargain to Sir Tornus, but I want something else. I want all the incantations of blood magic. Mikkik taught me once so I could teach you, but then he took the knowledge from me. I know how to heal, but I want the rest of it. Teach me the words to bind power to a weapon. Teach me how to bring someone back to life.”
“To what end, Joranne?” Gen said. “It’s over! There are no more cards to be played for your personal gain! Help me restore Ki’Hal before it dies, or there is no point to any of this!”
Joranne pulled a long thin dagger from her boot. “The words, Gen! How do you bind the power of blood to a weapon? Now!”
“How do I know you won’t just kill the Chalaine and set the Uyumaak loose anyway?”
Joranne put the point of the blade to the Chalaine’s neck, dimpling the skin. “The words!”
“Stop! I’ll tell you.”
With the painful point at her throat, the Chalaine kept as still as she could, listening as Gen repeated the words she had heard Mikkik speak in Aldemar’s vision of Eldaloth’s death, the invocation of the dark speech seeming to darken the room further. Joranne absorbed the knowledge greedily, eyes shining.
“Good!” she crowed once Gen finished. “Tell me, Chalaine, would you give the power of your blood to release Sir Tornus from his long, tormented life?”
“Yes, of course,” the Chalaine answered.
Joranne removed the blade point from her neck, and the Chalaine took a deep breath of relief. With a quick jab, the Ash Witch plunged the blade into her side. The searing pain emptied the Chalaine’s mind of thought, a soundless scream issuing from her open mouth until her lungs caught up enough to issue it out loud. If it wasn’t for Sir Tornus’s inescapable grip, she would have collapsed in agony, Joranne keeping the blade inside her body while she groaned. Gen started to incant.
“Stop or she dies!” Joranne yelled. “I want all the incantations, Gen. Do it now, or this will get messy.”
“Sir Tornus, let her go,” Gen begged. “You were a knight once! Let her go, and I will destroy you now!”
Joranne twisted the blade in the Chalaine’s side, her blood dripping down her hip and leg, staining her riding dress. Her screams brought Gen up short.
“The words!” Joranne demanded while the Chalaine cried. “And if I sense for one second that you are using them to heal this place, she will die.”
“Take the knife out of her side, and I will tell you!”
“Tell me and then I’ll take the knife out of her side! Quit bargaining and do what I say!”
“But the incantations are long!”
“Then you had best begin.”
As Gen recited the spells to Joranne, the Chalaine felt life draining from her, the pain of the knife dissolving slowly under her weakness as the room around her seemed to dim and spin. She rallied herself, prodding her eyes open with sheer will.
“Now let her go!”
“One last thing,” Joranne said, smiling wickedly. “Throw yourself into the chasm, and I will let her live. Take a step forward or attempt to use magic, and this blade goes to her heart.”
“Let me heal Ki’Hal!”
“I will heal it after I am far enough away!” Joranne said. “You are no longer needed. In you go.” She punctuated the command with another painful twist of the blade that brought the Chalaine out of her haze to writhe in agony.
Face ashen and eyes wet, Gen turned toward the edge.
“No, Gen, don’t,” the Chalaine cried, tears sliding down her face. “Please. I cannot live without you. I won’t!”
“Goodbye, Chalaine,” Gen said, sheathing his sword and peering down into the darkness. “Whatever you do, live. Live and love!”
“Wait!” In her weakness, a blind fury awakened, a primal need to keep Gen alive, to repay every goodness he had blessed her life with. He had saved her enough; it was her turn to repay. A surge of energy—her last—rose within her, and with all her might she pushed her body into Joranne’s blade, twisting to drive it deep within her. Blood flowed freely, streaming down in a cascade of red. Gen howled in rage, and the Chalaine knew no more.
CHAPTER 88 - ABOMINATION AND ABSOLUTION
Gerand fought to keep his nerve. Horrors he had faced. Horrors he had beaten. Horrors he had endured. But with every step of Khrona Dhron’s approach, his senses and courage reeled, duty and honor serving as the last anchors against turning away from the battlements and running as some of the men on the wall now did. Mikkik’s evil truly knew no bounds. Gerand had to fight off the amazement seizing his tongue. He had to find the words to stiffen the shaking knees and feet now standing in puddles of urine.
It was half again as high as the walls, a single mass of hundreds if not thousands of human bodies clinging together to form a single mass in the rough shape of a man. Some were naked, others clothed in rotting rags falling away with every heavy footfall. The desiccated, rotting forms of men, women, and children with gray, tattered skin compacted together in one form, but each twitched and moved individually as the creature lumbered forward with dark purpose. The rotted hands and arms and legs of each individual member clung to their neighbors to form the creature’s shape and musculature, and, like a gigantic brute of the Abyss, it came steadily forward, pounding toward them in the wavering light of the fires and torches on the walls.
But while its appearance shocked, its smell sickened, the rank odor of decay, stale sweat, and feces wafted before it in an invisible, poisonous cloud that challenged the fortitude of every stomach in its path. As it neared, the wails and moans of Khrona Dhron’s corpses unnerved even the sturdiest soldier, every man on the walls stupefied and waiting to wake from a nightmare that dwarfed their darkest imaginings.
Maewen grabbed Gerand’s hand. “You must raise your voice. Get them moving!”
Gerand shook his head to clear it. “Stand your ground!” he yelled sprinting along the wall. “Arrows and ballistae, fire now! Fire now! Get the spearmen ready!”
His calls echoed along the wall, and the other commanders picked it up as the Generals and Dukes sprinted up the stairs from below. Awakened from their torpidity, the arrows and heavy bolts of the ballistae poured from the walls and into the creature. To Gerand’s dismay, the arrows did little, the bodies convulsing and wrapping around each other to snap the protruding arrows off and present fresh flesh for targets. The ballistae ripped holes in the great mass, only to have them filled again.
“Archers down, spearmen forward!” Gerand yelled as Khrona Dhron loomed above them. “We must push them off the walls. They’re coming!”
The switch of soldiers had only begun when the creature lurched forward with renewed speed and crashed into the walls above the gate. The bodies of the top disconnected from one another and crashed onto and over the wall, spilling into the main courtyard while the rest clambered up the backs and appendages of their fellows to stream over the massive barrier with inhuman celerity. They ran fully twice as fast as any human Gerand had ever seen, and the long fall from the walls seemed to do little to slow them. With bony fists, ragged teeth, and clawed hands they beat and scraped and wrestled down everything in their path with a ferocious purpose. Once they felled a foe, they took his weapons and continued on their deadly rampage.
“They’re headed to the gatehouse!” General Harband screamed. “Keep them away! Fight to the last!”
The men in the courtyard streamed forward, but it was too late, the steady stream of Khrona Dhron’s quick and deadly minions too fast to prevent the slaughter of the gate guard and the slow opening of the mighty doors and portcullis. The remnants of Khrona Dhron crammed through the slowly opening gap and joined their companions. Once again they gathered, climbing up and over each other, forming into a solid mass. With monstrous feet and fists, Khrona Dhron pounded and crushed the soldiers in the courtyard while making its way toward the doors of the Great Hall.
Gerand swore and tore down the stairs, Maewen following. “We have to chop them down one at a time!” he yelled to any soldier that would listen. The courtyard was an unruly mess, the creature outpacing and outmaneuvering every attempt to form an assault against it, all the while smashing down with heavy feet to crush anything that approached near it. Some of the corpses in the lower legs still held weapons and would reach out from their clinging positions to swipe at anyone who got too near.
In frustration Gerand realized that nothing could stop it in time. It would reach the Great Hall and slaughter its way to the chambers where Mirelle waited as decoy. She would be trapped and defenseless. Her only hope would be to escape out a side entrance and try to win free of the city.
“The Uyumaak are coming!” someone yelled from the wall.
Gerand swallowed his panic and bolted to where his horse waited with the wounded of his company. His injured arm reminded him of its existence as he pulled himself up onto the horse.
“I’m going to get Mirelle,” Gerand yelled to Maewen. “See if they can get the gates closed before the Uyumaak get here!”
She nodded and sprinted away. Gerand dug his heels into his mount and crashed into the square, heedless of bowling away friend or foe as he tore ahead of the abomination that was dismantling everything in its path. The men had clumped thickly before it, slowing but not stopping its progress, and Gerand rode around them and up the stairs to the Great Hall. The creature would be there in minutes, and Mirelle would die.
Through his brand, Gen felt the Chalaine’s life fade and then flee. He watched Sir Tornus release her, her body collapsing in the midst of the Uyumaak mob still mesmerized by the green lantern light. Gen drew his sword. The blood on the floor could still save her. He need only bathe her body in it. He could bring her back. Shoving away the doubts in his mind, he let the anger and sadness loose, yanking his sword from its sheath.
Joranne slunk back, face panicked. With a quick glance at Gen, she muttered the words of blood magic under her breath, the bloodstained dagger in her hand flaring with power. Sir Tornus eyed it.
“Stay away,” she said, retreating back toward the fallen archway, “or Sir Tornus will set them loose.”
“That dagger is the only thing that can end your life, Sir Tornus,” Gen said. “I won’t help you after what you’ve done, so it is your last chance.”
Sir Tornus needed no further prodding. Like a savage animal he bolted after Joranne, who dropped the dagger and darted away into the gathering darkness of the Hall of Three Moons. With reverence Sir Tornus lifted the weapon from the floor, regarding it with a smile of gleeful anticipation.
“At last. At last!” he said, kissing the blade. “Oh, sweet oblivion, my only forgiveness!” With a decisive downward thrust, he plunged the knife into his breast, closing his eyes with pleasure. A glow gathered around Sir Tornus for a brief moment, and in an instant the white hot radiance consumed him, the hilt of the now bladeless dagger falling to the ground.
“That was quite a show,” Joranne cackled, voice emanating from somewhere in the motionless horde of Mikkik’s creatures.
Gen walked among the Uyumaak and found the witch with her hand on the lantern. Amid the scaly, color-shifting legs of the Uyumaak, the Chalaine’s body lay still, though the raspy, burned skin of her arms and the brittle hair had changed back to their natural color and luster. He struck out toward her body, but Joranne shuttered the lantern, and in the near total darkness, the Uyumaak awoke and smelled an enemy near.
Gen backed out of their reach as they came to their senses. Wary of the slick blood and the chasm’s edge, he angled away deeper into the chamber. Debris littered the room, mak
ing movement treacherous. As one, the Uyumaak slapped their chests and darted after him. Gen turned and dove behind a rubble pile to keep them all from falling on him at once. Flinching away from a dark arrow loosed upon him, he laid into an Uyumaak Warrior that had followed him over the stone. Gen gutted it with a single stroke of his sharp blade, kicking the body away. With a back stroke he decapitated a Basher rounding upon him. I’ve got to get to a wall! he thought, seeing that they could surround him at any moment. With two powerful strokes he hacked two Hunters in half and bolted for a section of the wall that would keep the creatures off his back.
Negotiating the room tested every sense he had, his enemies at his heels stumbling along behind him. Another arrow sped by him, nicking his shoulder as he at last reached the protective wall and spun with a wide stroke, killing one Warrior and amputating the arm of a Hunter, who tripped and fell. With all the speed and skill of his training he fought, Joranne’s echoing laughter mocking him.
In the end, there were too many, the desiccating curse upon his skin slowing his movements. A claw dug away a furrow of flesh from his chest. A sword carved a bloody gash in his leg. A Basher’s hammer pulverized his arm. Still he fought on until an arrow he could not avoid dug into his belly, slamming him into the wall and knocking him to his knees. Almost all was dark now, and he felt as he had at Butchers gap—spent and waiting for the last blow to send him to Erelinda. Send him to the Chalaine. A Basher raised its hammer above its head, and Gen closed his eyes, welcoming death.
But it never came.
He opened his eyes to find the ruins again bathed in green light. The Uyumaak retreated back toward the other side of the hall where the Chalaine lay. Gen couldn’t move, and he awaited Joranne’s jeering face to come mock him before finishing him off. But instead of the old and bent witch, a robed figure strode purposefully toward him, staff in hand. He pulled his hood down around his shoulders as he bent down. Even in the weak light, and despite the burned skin, Gen recognized Athan, Pontiff of the Church of the One.
