by David Benem
She saw her opening and shot forward, shoving her twin blades toward the fleshy parts of the man’s side.
The swords found their targets, driving into the meat between the warrior’s ribs and beneath his underarm. He gasped and stumbled, slowly pulling free of the blades and leaving spouting wounds in their places. He turned to Fencress for an instant, clearly stunned. He began to collapse and, as his did, Karnag reached outward to seize the man by his knot of hair.
“I have become death!” Karnag boomed. His hand flexed upon the man’s hair then yanked upward with a great crack. The body slumped to the ground, separated from the head Karnag now hoisted before him.
The Arranese and their Necrist companions seemed dumbfounded, shrinking and silent.
“Come and find your ending!” Karnag threatened, brandishing the head before him. He drew back his arm then heaved it forward, hurling the disembodied head toward the gathered foes below. The head wobbled and spun as it soared, spilling gore in all directions.
The Arranese scattered, though Hazzak’s skull still managed to smack one of the warriors square in the face. The man—a thick fellow with ears pierced by many ringlets—teetered back, swiping hands against a face spattered with blood and fleshy bits.
“Take Hazzak to your Spider King,” Karnag taunted. “Take him now, lest I take all your heads. Every one of them. You have this last choice, the last you may ever make.”
Fencress looked to Karnag. His eyes were trained upon the group below and his mouth moved and mumbled once more.
“Karnag…” she whispered.
He regarded only the foes.
The Arranese seemed to gather themselves, faces flushed with rage. “Take him!” roared the man with the bloodied face.
“Ha!” Karnag snorted. “Your fate is foretold, then.”
The warriors charged as one. Six vicious Arranese tore up the slope, hoisting curved swords and long spears and wicked axes ready for violence. Behind them the Necrist witches seemed again able to work their magic, mouths chattering and hands gathering shadows. Darkness swelled about them, moving upward to mingle amidst the rush of warriors.
Karnag laughed a roaring laugh. He whipped Gravemaker about as though the blade were weightless. He steadied his feet then thrust the sword’s point toward the oncoming foes. He shut his eyes for an instant then smiled. “The Gravemaker sings again, and now your master will hear its song at last! Listen to my song, Thaydorne!”
Footfalls thudded up the hillside and the Arranese screamed in fury.
They came then upon Karnag and the clash of weapons grew to a maddening cacophony. Karnag slithered between many blows, moving and dodging in ways that seemed inhuman. His sword, too, appeared unnaturally fast, fending away strike after rapid strike.
Fencress moved along the edge of the combat. The Arranese pressed upon Karnag but the highlander’s parries had turned to strikes, piercing and slashing and taking parts and pieces from his attackers. Several staggered away grasping deep, weeping wounds.
She knew to take advantage. She slipped about just as she’d done many times when working with Karnag, thrusting and turning and dancing about the stumbling wounded, soft on her feet with hands swift as murder. They fell about her, clumsy and clutching grave injuries. She watched them fall and readied herself once more, shaking blood from her blades.
She watched as Karnag wrestled with the last few Arranese. He roared and another limped away, a dumb look on his face with Gravemaker stuck in his chest.
Karnag seemed to pay no heed to his wayward sword, working his hands like weapons upon his foes. All about him curled swelling tendrils of shadow.
Fencress stared down along the length of the shadows—down the hillside—and saw the witches concocting their horrors in earnest once more. They worked the night like weavers upon a loom, deft hands spinning and twisting as though drawing the dark toward them.
“I am death!” Karnag roared, then threw the two remaining Arranese from him. “I am the light and the darkness! K’Sharvukkam!”
They tumbled away, bleeding and lame, limping like beaten dogs. One had lost his arms, another his nose and the better part of his jaw. The shadows, too, receded, falling from the hill like the outgoing tide.
Karnag straightened, many wounds crossing his form though he seemed to notice them not. In bloodied hands he held the arm of one Arranese and the jawbone of the other. “I have taken these from you, but I must take more to form the verses of my song. Whose verse will first be heard by your so-called Spider King? Whose ending will be first to reach his ears?”
The wounded Arranese faltered across the hilltop, vainly attempting to flee their executioner. Karnag, though, shoved them down, pinning them to the earth with hands still clutching their disembodied parts. He held them there, side by side, as they bled and moaned and croaked for mercy.
There would be none.
He tossed aside the parts then wound blood-slicked hands about the necks of the two warriors. “More verses,” he growled. “More verses for my song.” An awful gurgling followed.
“No!” wheezed the armless man.
Two quick snaps sounded. Fencress looked to see Karnag tearing the heads from their bodies, parts of the spines still dangling from them. Karnag laughed and thunder above.
“There,” Karnag grated, a sick grin on his face as he cast aside the heads. “Thaydorne has heard. He has heard a distant dirge, a mournful cry of death. He has heard this song but disbelieves its message. Only through their demise will he understand…” He gazed toward the gathered Necrists and his smile widened all the more. “Watch as they try to conquer me. Watch as they fail and watch as they die.”
Once again the Necrists’ chattering filled the air. Fencress stared to them, the black-robed witches with heads made of wriggling flesh and unsightly stitches. Their black eyes twitched and glared, reflecting terrible rage and an abject madness. They conjured the shadows once more and darkness swirled and swelled about them.
But shadows moved about Karnag as well, shadows that drifted from the heads he held and wafted from the corpses nearby. As they neared they coiled about him, encircling his form for a moment before settling upon and darkening his many wounds.
“Karnag…” Fencress whispered. She rubbed at her eyes, wondering if they deceived her.
The images remained. The shadows appeared to be knitting together Karnag’s bloodied rents, seeping within the wounds then drawing them shut. In their place they left stitches, black and gnarled.
Fencress winced and watched as her old friend strode toward one of the dead Arranese and retrieved Gravemaker. He seemed to admire the red slick of blood upon the blade, eyes again dead. He turned his gaze to the Necrists and Fencress eased away, retreating up the hill.
The Necrists beneath worked furiously, forming great billows of shadow that writhed about. Their faces—grotesque things of patchwork flesh—were only occasionally visible in the inky dark they summoned. Then, at once, they screamed, the sound a shrill cry that pained Fencress’s ears. Black tongues flailed in their wailing mouths and their outstretched hands twitched and their flesh wriggled.
Their shadows wound into great tentacles and whipped up the slope, slithering through and within and between the remnants of the dead Arranese.
Karnag laughed. “Bring your darkness!” he snarled through a gnash of dirty teeth.
The tendrils wound up and up and then met him, twirling and twisting around his body and wrapping him in a shroud darker than night.
Though only for a moment.
“Sharvukam khul araga!” Karnag screamed, striding forward. He sloughed away the shadows, unhindered.
He stared toward the witches and lowered his sword to the ground, shadows twitching about him like wounded things. “There are powers you’ve forgotten. Worse, there are places…” He tilted his head to a side and giggled. “Do you not know why I stand here? Why I chose this from so many places I could have confronted you?” He sucked in a deep breath. “D
o you not know!”
The Necrists looked to each other in apparent confusion and their shadows shrank.
Karnag laughed again. He stepped about, snatching the disembodied parts of the dead Arranese and tossing them down the hill in a slow, haphazard way. “Have them!” he cackled. “Have your mighty escort! Perhaps they can still protect you!”
The Necrists whispered and glanced about then resumed their chant. They glared at Karnag with mad, obsidian eyes and soon the darkness they conjured seemed an impenetrable wall.
“Good,” Karnag chuckled. “You will bear witness, then. You will bear witness as I remind you what lurks in the true darks of this world. You will bear witness as I remind you of the old hells left by the Elder God, the ruins left by the Ehlohir Allumahr.”
The summoned shadows of the Necrists rushed up the slope once again.
Karnag threw his arms outward as though to embrace the darkness. He strode farther down the hill, into the wave of shadow. It broke against him and wilted to his sides and his laughter sounded all the louder.
“I am your ending,” he said in the gravest of tones. “On this day, Thaydorne will hear the last of your mortal pleas. Sing them loudly so he may hear, else your deaths will pass unmarked.”
The Necrists wailed and shook, bodies quivering so fast they became blurs to the eye. It seemed to Fencress they were desperate. Frightened, even. Their mad chanting broke with stutters and stammers and their gathered mass of shadows twitched almost as much as they did.
Karnag slammed Gravemaker’s point into the earth and began a new chant of his own, hands working as though trying to pull something from the ground beneath.
Fencress listened, keen ears finding Karnag’s words amidst the din of the Necrists below.
“Yahe cradus a rasham y despocha… Yahe cradus a rasham y despocha…”
Over and again he said the words, hands and sinews straining as he seemed to will the depths of the ground upward.
Fencress took another step back. What witchery do you work, Karnag?
The earth groaned and shifted and shook, feeling as though it were collapsing beneath Fencress’s feet. She stumbled and nearly fell.
A yelp sounded behind her and she glanced back to see the heads of Drenj and Paddyn peeking just beyond the crest. Both looked on with eyes agape.
Karnag’s words grew louder and Fencress stared to him once more, feeling her curiosity dangerous but undeniable. She crept closer and watched as Karnag worked his sorcery. His muscles tensed, veins bulging from his neck as though he struggled to hoist a heavy thing.
A great rumble sounded and the earth shook again.
She saw then a fissure spreading from Gravemaker’s point. The rift shivered down the slope toward the Necrists, widening as it did. Quickly it grew to a chasm, broad and jagged, and the ground against its edges tumbled into its deepening depths.
Then, abruptly, it stopped.
The Necrists fell silent.
A reddish light emanated from the hole, accompanied by a hideous moan that sounded anything but human.
The woeful cry grew louder and the chasm’s light dimmed, leaving only the pale luminescence Karnag had summoned. A cold wind rushed from the abyss, and upon feeling it Fencress grew fearful. She tugged her cowl tight and retreated another few steps.
The Necrists staggered back as well, clutching each other and staring to the void. Only Karnag held his ground, hands before him like he welcomed whatever had been trapped beneath the world.
Then something emerged from the chasm. It seemed a specter, a wraith, colored and shaped like the elongated cast of a man’s shadow in the afternoon sun. It reached ethereal arms upward, clawing long fingers at the sky as though it could grab it.
Another wraith ascended to its side. Then others still.
At last a total of six figures had risen from the chasm’s depths, tall and narrow and almost featureless things. They swayed about, their lanky, separate forms difficult to distinguish and seeming at times to merge. They appeared only sketches of darkness, though upon whatever heads they had there formed hollow eyes and sad grimaces. The expressions were perhaps no more than gaps in the darkness, though it seemed to Fencress their faces affixed to Karnag.
The wraiths came closer to him and their sad groans swelled. Their mouths drooped and within them Fencress swore she could see glimpses of countless other spirits, distant and ghost-like faces with empty eyes and reaching hands trying to climb to the world above.
She shrank back, harrowed by whatever Karnag had called from the deep. Her hands gripped her blades though she wagered they’d prove no use at all against such terrors. These seemed things forged by the darkest and foulest forces imaginable. Not the evils of men, but the darker evils of dead gods.
The Necrists beyond them—still visible through the spectral bodies—appeared dumbfounded, their ugly, stitched faces slack and their black eyes wide. Hands shook but seemed incapable of commanding the shadows.
“Yahe cradus,” said Karnag.
The wraiths’ moans softened, sounding now like the distant wail of the wind.
Karnag drew a finger toward the Necrists. “Despocha Necrista.”
The wraiths’ mouths turned to ghastly grins. They nodded and spun toward the Necrists. Their long arms and fingers of darkness lashed toward the witches, wispy forms swelling as they drew near their prey.
“More verses,” Karnag grated. “Sing loudly, so he may hear. Tell Thaydorne the pain of his ending!”
Dark robes and pale flesh were rent asunder. With hideous swiftness the wraiths took the Necrists into the depths of the chasm.
But they did so bit by bit. The arm of one Necrist, half the skull of another, the odd leg, and on and on. Black blood spouted and flowed. Those witches who still had their tongues cried out, voicing piercing howls that told of the worst of agony. The wraiths, too, cried their sad cry, joining an awful chorus that sounded across the hilltop and beyond.
And above it all rang Karnag’s laughter.
Fencress rushed up the hill and down the opposite slope. Paddyn and Drenj crouched just beyond, both wide-eyed with trembling hands upon their weapons.
Paddyn looked at her, slack-jawed. “What the fuck!”
“Get up,” Fencress commanded, tugging tight her cowl with a trembling hand. “Get up and make ready to leave this place. We’re free of him but must leave as quickly as we can.”
Another roar sounded behind them. Fencress resisted the urge to glance back.
“B-but…” stammered Drenj. “Demons… Demons! We’ll all be slain!”
“Only if we stay here, you fool!” Fencress snapped. “Get your asses up and let’s get away from here!” She thrust out a gloved hand and Paddyn found it and she tugged him upward. She threw the other toward Drenj, but after a moment of his inaction she pinched his ear and yanked it until the rest of him followed. He squealed when he stood, and she slapped him for it.
Drenj spat. “How dare—”
“Get moving,” Fencress growled, her eyes narrowing.
Drenj looked to her, his lower lip quavering and eyes blinking rapidly as though trying to hold their tears.
Fencress held his gaze and remembered something Karnag—the old Karnag—had told her long ago. “Never allow fear to be the thing that kills you,” she said. “There are plenty more dangers worse than that, but if your fear is the one worrying you most it’ll get you before any of the others.”
Drenj nodded and looked away.
“I’ve already packed most things up,” said Paddyn, pointing toward the horses tied to a tree down the hillside opposite Karnag.
“Good work, Paddyn,” Fencress said. She quickly fetched what things were still at her campsite nearby then jogged down the slope. “Let’s go, boys.”
“Where?” called Paddyn.
Fencress neared the horses and shook her head. “Away from here. We’ll find a quiet inn and hide out for a few days, at least until the war makes its way farther north. Then I’
d wager Riverweave would make a decent stop. There’s certain to be plunder aplenty after all that chaos, as well as word of how the war’s going and what’s happening elsewhere.”
“And from there?” asked Drenj.
“If we hear it’s not too dangerous for our liking then perhaps we can start making our way home. Home to Raven’s Roost.”
“I’d like that,” said Drenj, his voice weak. “I’d like that much.”
Fencress looked to both the young men, seeing fear in their eyes. “I can’t make promises but chances are whatever we find will send us heading far from the fighting.” She pulled from her pocket the pair of fine dice she swiped in Shank’s Hollow, tossed them upward then snatched them from the air in a gloved fist. “And you know how I feel about chance.”
25
HOMECOMING
Gamghast looked to the small crowd gathered in the great hall of the Bastion. Several he knew to be part of Alamis’s entourage, others seemed minor nobles or wealthy citizens judging from their finery. All stood with eyes narrow and expressions dour, obviously displeased by the homecoming before them.
“Who dares?” demanded Tannin, sword raised as he stood before the gathering. “Who among you dares to challenge your queen? Who questions her right to rule?”
“Guards!” howled one at the fore, a man Gamghast recognized. A smaller man in a puffy, yellow shirt that neatly matched his puffy face and jaundiced eyes. “Guards! We have traitors within the great hall! To arms!”
Gamghast remembered him. Sir Edren. The nobleman who’d threatened to skewer Tannin ‘like a pig.’
The ring of weapons echoed from the distant reaches of the palace. Sir Edren’s suspicious look changed to one of smug satisfaction. He began rocking on his heels and placed a hand on the decorated hilt of a sword slung upon his hip.
Tannin took a stride forward. “Sir Edren,” he growled, “I’ll warn you but once. Alamis is dead. Your allies are few and justice will be severe for any who proclaim treason. Stand down. Stand down now.”
