by John Shirley
“Ah … he did not reveal that name to me.”
“No? His name is Revenge, young fellow! Revenge!”
Gnarl remembered, then, the warlock’s cryptic remark: Time runs short … my name must be fulfilled soon.
Rorik turned to Miriam. “I came unprepared. What of you? Any magic in that quiver?”
She shrugged. “My arrowheads are of elven steel—they’ll resist the rust vapors. I have a healing gem, and one magic arrow that might apply—its arrowhead is treated with demonbane. I’ve carried it for two years and never had occasion to use it.”
“One magic arrow!” Rorik groaned. “Not enough. The place stinks of necrotic energy. Listen—the very wind is revolted by the spirits who flit through it!”
They listened, for a moment, to the keening of the wind—and its metallic soughing carried a note of horror.
“Still,” Miriam ventured, “we must try the fortress. Perhaps there’s water there …”
“Poisonous water, if any at all,” the dwarf grumbled. “No food, no water, few weapons. A fine mess. Come along, let’s get this over with—we’ll parch up here in the wind.”
They descended the far face of the dune, half stepping, half sliding down until they reached the flatter ground below.
Rorik stumped impatiently ahead, battlehammer in hand, and Gnarl murmured to Miriam, “You said you could have killed me with your arrows, but somehow you missed. How did that happen?”
“Perhaps I wasn’t trying too hard to aim.”
“Does that mean that you pity me—or you like me?”
She rolled her eyes. But he saw she was smiling. “Well—”
But up ahead of them, Rorik gave out a howl of dismay. He was sinking in the coating of rust particles as in quicksand. It was a sinkhole over the Bloody Fen. The sinkhole could be seen now that Rorik thrashed in it, up to his armpits in rusty muck.
Gnarl ran to him, knelt near the edge of the sinkhole, and reached one hand toward Rorik, the other to Miriam. “Take my hand, Miriam!” She braced herself, digging her bow into the rusty sand, and they clasped hands to wrists. The touch thrilled him, but he concentrated on pulling Rorik out. Miriam pulled Gnarl, and Gnarl pulled Rorik by the battlehammer’s head. Grunting, they dragged the dwarf out of the sinkhole.
Rorik got to his feet, swearing blackly as he brushed damp rust from his short legs. “Damn it to the reeking depths of the Ninth Hell!”
Gnarl noticed a juddering turmoil in the red scum on the sinkhole—a kind of corroded metal shark’s fin surfaced, wending back and forth. Then something reared up out of the sinkhole, a bestial face made of rust on a framework of necrotic energies, a gigantic feral visage, seven feet high with red-iron jaws like a bear trap, snapping at Rorik. The dwarf shouted in mingled fear and fury and swung his battlehammer—it struck deep, and the bestial face exploded into a sparkling cloud of rust particles, some of which the dwarf inhaled, sputtering as he backed away.
Rorik wiped his eyes, then looked in puzzlement at his battlehammer. “What’s wrong with my hammer?”
Gnarl saw that the hammer’s iron head was steaming, seething within itself—and then it buckled inward, crumbling into a streamer of red powder. The rust was blown away on the wind, leaving only the hardened oak handle.
“Will you look at this!” Rorik snarled. “I’ve had this hammer for—” He broke off, shivering, blinking rapidly. His eyes glazed over and his mouth opened wide with a demonic howl. A harsh, sibilant voice issued from his mouth. “This one shall replace me in the red pit!” And Rorik began to walk toward the sinkhole, as if determined to plunge into it.
“No!” Miriam cried out. “Stop him!” She jumped toward Rorik and tried to pull him back. He struck at her shoulder with his hammer handle, knocking her sprawling.
Gnarl drew his ivory tube—it was in fact the hollow finger bone of a wizard—and he stepped between Rorik and the hidden pit. Face twisted, the possessed dwarf raised the hammer’s handle to strike at him—but Gnarl blew hard through the tube, directing it at Rorik’s head. A jet of brilliant green mist issued from the ivory tube and formed a ghostly cobra in the air. The green, transparent cobra struck at Rorik’s forehead—sinking fangs into his skull without drawing blood, striking only the possessing spirit. The fiend was driven out, showing itself as a visible shriek emitting from the dwarf’s mouth, and it rushed at Gnarl.
Gnarl ducked, warding the apparition off with the ivory tube. The ghost cobra still had hold of the spirit—it whirled overhead once, then dived down into the pit. Gnarl glimpsed the dark spirit’s horrified ectoplasmic face as it was pulled down in a whirlpool whipped up by the ghost snake, both apparitions vanishing into the red murk with a final sucking sound. Rorik squatted on the scarlet sand, gasping, rubbing his eyes. Then he shook himself and stood, stretching. “Thought I was going to drown in that stuff,” he muttered. “Couldn’t control myself.”
“Rorik,” Miriam said, as Gnarl helped her up, “you might consider thanking Gnarl for saving your life.”
“Bah!” Rorik snorted, glaring at Gnarl. “Rubbish! I would not have been here to sink in sinkholes if not for his theft, his deception—his foolish truck with tiefling warlocks!”
“He has a point,” Gnarl allowed. “Miriam, are you hurt?”
“Nothing broken. Rorik, if we are to proceed, let’s use what’s left of that hammer to prod the ground, find the way through.”
Using the hammer handle, they soon found a hidden shore, curving along the edge of the fen under the ferrous crust. They kept to the shoreline and at last found themselves standing on solid ground within the rusty spines and the leaning, red-crusted towers of the old fortress.
Gnarl decided he’d better keep them moving. He looked around for the landmark the warlock had described. “There’s supposed to be an entrance under the tower that leans farthest toward the horizon,” Gnarl said. “There it is!”
The half-fallen tower was like a great corroded sword two hundred feet high, thrusting up diagonally from the metallic sands at a sharp angle, pointing to their left. Gnarl led the way, almost excited about the quest again, wondering if he could really be close to triggering the creation of Glorysade.
Then he saw a crescent-shaped opening at the base of the swordlike tower. “There! Look, Miriam!” His destiny seemed to call to him—and he ran toward it, dimly aware of the others shouting for him to be more cautious. He stopped at the entrance. It was dim, but not truly dark within. Rusty sand had blown through the entrance, covering the floor. A muted reek of decay and alien musk wafted from somewhere inside.
There was no turning back. He stepped through the entrance, feeling a drumlike hollowness under the thin, rusty floor beneath his feet, before his upper arms were grabbed from above. He felt himself dragged upward, into the air. He looked up and felt ice where his heart should be. A vrock! His uncle had told him of these winged, vulturelike demons—and had given him nightmares with the telling. Now he was living the nightmare as he shouted and writhed in the vrock’s grasp. With his arms pinioned, he could not reach a weapon.
The vrock’s body was humanoid but with a raptor’s claws for feet, a vulturine head, and silvery eyes glittering with intelligence under stubby horns. The creature had a twenty-foot wingspan and a lean, muscular body far more powerful than Gnarl’s own. It squeaked at him. “Ceeeease to struuuuugle! I will lift you to my aerie and tear you to pieeeeces at my leisure—be pleeeeeased to feed your betters!” Gnarl struggled in its grip as it lifted him into the dimly lit interior of the high, narrowing, rusted shaft. He recoiled from the reeking tongue that issued from its snapping, fang-lined beak to taste his face.
“They like to eat the face first,” his uncle had said matter-of-factly.
“But why wait to rend, to tear,” the creature creaked as it flapped its great wings to lift him higher. “I shall pull you apart and watch as you feeeeel it all!”
And then he heard Miriam shout from beneath, “Stop moving, you fool! I can’t get a shot!”<
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He made himself go limp. The yellow beak gaped to encompass his face—and then an arrow swished from below, buried itself in the base of the vrock’s long neck. It squealed, the shrieking so close his ears ached with it, and his face was sprayed with rancid spittle. Black blood spurted about the fletch of the arrow—and more spurted about the second and third arrows shot from below, each shaft burying itself deeply. But something else issued from the beast, like motes into the air. Gnarl’s mind clouded, his limbs suddenly heavy from the spores, his thoughts veering wildly.
Thrashing in the air, the vrock squeezed him brutally, vindictive in its death throes, so he could hardly breathe—and then it gasped and its grip relaxed. He was slipping free, falling, plummeting toward the dusty floor of the chamber. He seemed to fall in slow motion.
He lost sight of the expiring demon as he crashed through the rust-eaten iron of the floor and into the subchamber beneath.
6.
Sitting up on the dusty floor of the subchamber, Gnarl heard the demons stalking through the darkness toward him, but he found that he didn’t much care. A seductive numbness was upon him—the effects of the spores of madness. Lunatic thoughts flashed through his mind, tumbling his senses in hellish ecstasy; it was as if the Elemental Chaos occupied his skull. As laughing faces of fire lit his brain he found he could scarcely move; it was as if his arms and legs each weighed hundreds of pounds. Why not just lie here, and get it over with? It might be interesting to be torn to pieces.
Yes, why not? And he watched the skulking silhouettes of the approaching demons, recognizing them from his uncle’s grimoire; evistro, newly awakened by his intrusion. How long had they waited in dormancy here? He supposed someone had placed them to guard against the activation of the Glorysade device. He found it all very interesting, in an abstract sort of way.
Hunched over, clutching the air with their oversized, pawlike hands spread wide for tearing, the seven evistro approached him. They were hairless, thickly muscular crimson demons, their tooth-lined maws as oversized as their hands and three-toed feet. The grimoire had said the carnage demons usually came in larger numbers, swarming and rending—unless some wizard sent a group of them on a specific mission. It seemed that Sernos wasn’t the only sorcery worker concerned with Glorysade.
The seven demons encircled him, a couple of strides away, their mouths gaping in great slavering grimaces. Gnarl was captivated. Fascinating creatures, he thought. Wonder what it’ll be like to be eaten alive? Missed my chance with the vrock.
He heard Miriam in the chamber above, shouting at Rorik. “The vrock has struck him with spore madness! He’s paralyzed, he’s not in his right mind! We have to, Rorik!”
“But it stinks of demons down there! I hate demons!”
But just as the evistro reached for Gnarl, Rorik leaped down into the subchamber, swinging his hammer handle—braining one of the demons before he’d even touched the floor. The demon flailed, falling back, and the others retreated a few steps, squalling in confusion. An arrow whickered into the subchamber from above, and then another, and two demons fell writhing. But the other five slashed at Rorik with their clawed paws. He swung the handle of his hammer furiously, using it as a club to drive them back. He’s quite a little dynamo, thought Gnarl, sitting on the floor. It can’t go on, though. They’ll overwhelm him soon and we’ll both be eaten. How their jaws drip with saliva … intriguing.
Then he was aware that someone had dropped down behind him, was pressing a small circle of cold to the back of his neck, over his spine. A cleansing fire flashed through him, then a wave of nausea, swept away by a surge of energy. Miriam had used her healing gem to save him.
His head clearing, Gnarl jumped to his feet and plucked the glass ball from his cloak pocket, even as Miriam loosed two of her three remaining arrows. The demons were circling them, leaping, slashing—and her arrows missed their marks, striking one in the shoulder. The wounded demon screamed in fury and snapped at the dwarf, who was nearer. Rorik dashed some of its teeth out with his club.
Gnarl exposed the glass globe—and almost dropped it in his startlement as he saw the grisly face staring out at him: a lich vestige. The lich’s skullish face pressed eagerly against the curve of the little glass sphere, distorted and leering. “Release me!” hissed the diabolic face, bony jaws gnashing, empty eye sockets shining, “so that I may destroy all!”
He swallowed. “Kill only demons, in the name of Vecna!” he ordered.
It sighed in disappointment. “Very well. Only demons … if you insist!”
The demons chose that moment to rush—but Gnarl threw the glass ball at their feet. It burst, and they scattered before the bleak effulgence that blossomed out of it. Porphyros, the gaunt, skull-faced spirit warrior, expanded from the shards and leaped at them with extended claws, ripping into the demons, gibbering happily as it tore them to pieces.
“Come on!” Rorik shouted. “Let’s get out of here before it turns on us!”
Head still swimming from the departing effects of the spores, Gnarl followed Rorik and Miriam through a narrow passage, onto a descending ramp of rusted iron. The warlock’s words drifted in Gnarl’s mind. Once inside, if you win so far—descend!
They descended the ramp between pitted metal walls, traipsing down a gentle slope that clanged softly with their tread. On they went, the passageway lit by the same unnatural light as the surface. Gnarl found himself imagining how he would build his castle in Glorysade—seven spires, perhaps, each a different color, inlaid with semiprecious metals. A fountain—no, seven fountains! Would he have a seraglio? But stealing a glance at Miriam, he thought perhaps he wouldn’t want one.
“I like this less with each step we take,” Rorik grumbled. “And that vrock, the evistro, so closely placed, waiting almost.”
“I had the same thought,” Gnarl admitted. “Someone arrayed them to protect this device—and Sernos gave me no real warning.”
“You were a fool to blunder into this!” Rorik declared.
Gnarl shrugged. “My uncle said my destiny was connected with Glorysade. I always thought he meant a good destiny. So here I am. But now … I’m not so sure.”
“We’re committed,” Miriam said, shrugging. “Looks like a doorway ahead.”
They stepped through a door frame into a low-ceilinged chamber cut into the naked gray stone that underpinned the Plains of Rust. The walls were granite, but the ceiling was rusted iron.
In the middle of the chamber was a glinting dome about seven feet high, sixty in diameter, not quite a perfect circle, made of unblemished silvery metal. In its curving side was an open doorway. Excited by its shiny metallic promise, Rorik scurried eagerly through the low door—he didn’t have to stoop, as Gnarl and Miriam did.
Inside, rising up from a silvery floor, they found a large, glistening artifact shaped outwardly like a polyhedron, some of its panels transparent; it was almost big enough to fill the roughly circular chamber, leaving just a little space to move around its edges. On one facet, partway up, was an opening, within which several curious knobs and studs crackled with miniature bursts of lightning.
“Marvelous!” Rorik exclaimed. “These shapes seem formed to match the many-tool.” He had the magical utensil in his hand, and he tinkered within the device, muttering to himself in a grumbling voice. “Yes, the hexagonal knob asks to be turned this way; the next one requires that I reverse the tool, turning it the opposite way … I seem to hear a whispering suggestion that I press the cool-energy glim”—here he activated one of the magical jewels in the tool, pressing the blue crystal with his thumb, making it shine with a mystical emerald light—“and that would seem to call out for … Yes! And now if I turn this …”
Gnarl felt an odd mix of elation and anxiety at the possibility of Glorysade. Why indeed had the vrock and the evistro been set to guard the interior of the rusty tower? What did he know of Sernos, really?
“Wait, Rorik,” Miriam said worriedly. “Aren’t you being a bit hasty? Who is
telling you how to use the tool? Don’t you wonder? Perhaps …”
But it was done: Rorik stepped back as the artifact was fully activated. Clockworks and magical energies intersected, revolving within it, linking and shifting, armatures rotating.
And suddenly the floor beneath their feet shook. They were knocked flat by the shuddering, Rorik clutching the many-tool, all three of them sprawling on the floor of the little dome-shaped chamber, their teeth clattering with the vibrations as the entire structure lifted itself from the floor, rising up and up, the silvery dome smashing through the rusted iron ceiling. Instinctively, Gnarl looked for the door—but it had sealed shut, quite seamlessly. Two windows opened, opposite, shaped like gigantic eyes—eyes looking outward. The floor continued to rollick and vibrate so he had to crawl to look out one of the windows of translucent blue glass—and he saw that the dome was no longer underground.
They had risen up, out of the underground, smashed up through the crust of the Plains of Rust, lifted high, towering above the scarlet desert. The chamber swayed and Gnarl heard gigantic footsteps—thump, thump, boom, thump. Through the windows he glimpsed giant metal hands and arms, swinging. He realized that he was looking out through the eyes of a gargantuan head. He looked down—saw a nose, cheekbones, the lineaments of a diabolic metal face. The enormous creation was stalking toward the rusted old fort. It reached the towers, paused, squatted, and thrust its jointed metal fingers into the desert of oxidation. The fingers fished around, and then the construct straightened up. As the giant stood, it pulled out the tower that they’d entered to arrive at their current place. It was actually a gigantic sword—its hilt had been buried in the red sands, its semi-rusted blade angling toward the sky.
