Of Shadows and Dragons (8 page)

“Is your spell weakening, Sorcerer King?” asked the Duke.

“We shall see which enchantment will last longer.”

“Mine has empowered my body for a full year,” boasted the Duke. “After this winter passes, if we still continue our struggle here in this place, will your spell remain fresh and potent?”

“By then you will be ash,” Therian said. He did something then which took everyone by surprise. He grappled with the Duke, and pulled both of them into the open fire.

The fireplace had enough wood stacked up within to build a new bench. It burned merrily, sending flames four feet up. A hot bed of coals glimmered orange beneath the blackened logs.

The Duke hissed and screeched. Therian’s clothes smoldered, but his ensorcelled body was only singed. Therian took the moment to hammer at the Duke’s neck until it crackled, then he hopped out of the flames. He quickly planted his boot upon the Duke’s neck and held it there while the other struggled. Due to the great deal of damage his body had sustained, Strad was unable to rise.

Therian leaned on his planted boot, breathing heavily, while the Duke’s clothes burnt away and the flesh beneath bubbled.

“Pull him out of there!” shouted the retainers.

Gruum tensed, expecting them all to rush his King.

“I will if he yields to my terms,” Therian shouted back. He pulled the Duke’s body forward by the hair of his head. He propped up Strad’s head on a hearthstone so all could see his face. The dead eyes rolled about, and his struggles continued. Therian’s boot kept him down. A most horrid smell arose in the room. Gruum wrinkled his nose, knowing the odor to be that of burning manflesh.

“I will not yield, though you burn me down to a skeleton. Know that I will fight you even then, Therian. You can’t kill that which does not truly live!”

Vosh appeared in the arch of a darkened hallway. The retainers who stood closest to the spot shuffled away.

“You will release the Duke,” Vosh said, the sound of his words echoing in the minds of everyone present.

“And if I do not?” Therian asked. Skin peeled from the Duke’s limbs, but Therian seemed unconcerned.

Vosh lifted a finger and approached Gruum. “Then I will have your manservant here. His soul has teased my palate for far too long.”

Therian snorted. “You have foresworn combat with me and mine when we met in Anduin’s lair.”

“It has been more than a year and a day since we made that bargain. My vow has ended.”

“And what of the Duke’s pledge? Did you not take service with Lord Strad? Were you not at least a guest in his house, if not a retainer? We stand in his lodge. He has sworn to me his men will not harm mine. You cannot dishonor that, lich.”

Vosh let his hand of white bone drop down slowly to his side. He turned to the retainer who dared stand closest to him. It was the chamberlain, the very man who had opened the door to Therian and Gruum the night before.

“I have no pledge regarding you, child,” Vosh told the chamberlain.  “Unfortunately, I require sustenance.”

Vosh stepped forward, and the chamberlain shook, but did not retreat. Gruum watched in horror. He knew not what power kept the man from running. Perhaps it was sheer terror. He recalled having seen the phenomena before in the caverns beneath Corium. He drew his steel and swore to himself he would fight when the lich came for him.

The chamberlain fell to his knees before Vosh. He strained his neck, lifting his head up to the splayed finger bones, as a dog might stretch when seeking its master’s caress. The moment the lich touched him, the howls began.

Gruum looked back toward Therian, who gestured toward the door. Gruum followed the gesture. Was the King suggesting a hasty retreat? The thought was sweet in his mind.

But no. Therian made a tossing gesture and pointed toward the pouch in Gruum’s hands. He’d almost forgotten about the oily pool of shade within. Did Therian wish him to block the exit with it? To infect any man who might run?

Gruum could not do as his master wanted. Not this time. Instead, he uncinched the pouch and threw it toward Vosh. The leather landed upon the flagstones. Something dark leaked from the mouth, resembling tar. Neither the lich, nor the screaming chamberlain, paid it any heed.

At this point, the armsmen in the room had had enough. They backed up two paces each, and then turned to flee.

Vosh had paid them no attention at all up until this moment. But now, his skull snapped toward them, as a predator’s gaze might fall with burning precision upon fleeing prey. He lifted his second hand, as the first was engaged with clasping the chamberlain’s skull. The chamberlain’s face had sunken, becoming flaccid and empty. His howls had stopped, turning into fluting sounds as he drew his final breaths.

“
No,
” Vosh said to the fleeing men. The door before them slammed shut. The bar fell, and though they raced to it and grunted and strained with trembling arms, they could not lift it free.

All around the Great Hall each door slammed shut. There would be no escape for any of them.

Therian knelt upon the hearth and, using both hands, he dragged the struggling Duke’s head up to see what transpired.

“What say you now?” Therian asked. His voice was not mocking, nor angry. Instead, he held the tone of a man who was idly curious about the thoughts of another. “You shall watch as Vosh drains away the soul of each of your loyal retainers. You are Vosh’s creature, whether you know it or not.”

Vosh stepped now to catch the nearest armsman, who had climbed the stacked furniture toward an archer’s loop high up the wall. The Lich caught him by the ankle and plucked him from the wall. Screaming, the man knew the agony of having his living essence ripped from his body. He thrashed like a fish upon a fisherman’s deck. Blood and spittle flew from his lips in a spray.

“Release me,” gargled the Duke.

“First, you must release me from my pledge,” Therian said, leaning close, “I can end your servitude to this network of bones. Or do you wish to burn here until you are only a head with rolling eyes and a slack mouth?”

“I will stop the lich,” Strad said, “as I have no soul for him to drain.”

“I admire your will, but you have no strength. I can only release you from this wretched existence. You are not truly the master of your own house. You are an embarrassment to your bloodline, man. Have you no pride?”

The Duke rolled his eyes up to meet Therian’s. “I ask for an honorable ending. I must defend my house. Allow me this, Hyborean.”

Gruum had come near to his master now, calculating that Therian might be his only hope of survival. He held Seeker and Succor still with is left hand, while his right brandished his saber.

“Milord, we must do something!” Gruum said.

Therian held up his hand. Gruum was surprised to see his master looked—troubled. That was a strange emotion to see upon his ever-certain face. Gruum was barely able to identify the expression.

Therian suddenly stood up and lifted his black boot from the Duke’s neck. He offered the other a hand and dragged him out of the fire.

A wave of stench washed up Gruum’s nostrils. The Duke’s legs were charred black. Much of his clothing had burnt away.

“Give him your dagger, Gruum,” Therian ordered.

“Milord?” Gruum asked, but at a single, blood-red glance, he nodded quickly and handed it over.

The Duke took it and shuffled forward, his body smoking. That horse-toothed grin which Gruum had seen before returned. He crossed the room toward Vosh.

“Release me from our pledge,” Therian called to him, “that I may avenge you should you fail.”

The Duke lifted one smoking glove. “I release you!” he said, then he began a shambling charge.

“My weapons, Gruum,” Therian said.

Gruum handed them over. Therian strapped them on and drew his twin blades.

The Duke reached Vosh and grappled with him. It was a strange thing to witness. Half-burned, but still vital, Strad fell upon the lich. He stabbed deeply into the vermilion robes again and again, but found no flesh there to pierce. The robe tore in places and the ribcage, yellowed with age, was revealed.

A strange sound erupted that made all there save Therian wince. Gruum knew the sound, he had heard it a year ago. The lich was laughing.

Vosh had dined on no less than three souls now. His muscles had withered away centuries before, but he had power in his bones again. He backhanded the Duke and sent him flopping and sliding away. The Duke crawled to his feet, but Vosh stepped to him and grabbed one of the great oak tables. With a crashing sound, he flipped the table over and slammed it down upon the Strad’s shivering form.

Gruum watched, amazed, as the table continued to heave and shudder. The Duke kept struggling to rise, but could not. His body was too badly broken, the table too fantastically heavy. Gruum had a vision then, a scene to be played out perhaps a century hence, when a lost woodsman might rediscover this place. Would the woodsman find the Duke—by then nothing but bones—still pinned beneath the table and squirming?

While Vosh dealt with Strad, a strange thing had overcome a group of men. They no longer ran from the lich, nor tore at the closed doors until their fingers were nailless and bleeding. They had drawn their weapons and advanced.

“Brave men,” Gruum said, watching.

“It is not bravery that fills them,” Therian said.

“What then?”

“Madness.”

Gruum squinted and he saw then the blackness in their eyes. The armsmen were full of the oily shadow he had released upon the flagstones.

It was madness to approach the lich. But it was madness to approach Therian as well. Therian thrust Seeker into the back of a huntsman who stood too close. The other had time to crane his neck around and witness the cold face of his slayer. Therian spoke words then, words of Dragon Speech. He consigned the man to sleep with Anduin this eve.

Gruum dared to grab his master’s shoulder. Therian whirled upon him, snarling. Gruum did not drop his hand.

“Milord, what are you doing?”

The light of a fresh soul’s strength shone in Therian’s eyes. Gruum thought it was no less terrible to see than the strange madness that had overtaken those who now traded blows with Vosh.

“Unhand me if you value your life,” Therian growled. “I have been released from my pledge. I may harm any in this house now.”

“But why, milord?” Gruum asked, pointing down toward the cooling corpse on the floor.

“Did you think I could defeat both Duke Strad and Vosh without supping upon the strength of another? Upon
many
others?”

Horror overcame Gruum’s face. “All of them?”

Therian shoved him away and strode toward a surviving group of terrified armsmen and servants. A washerwoman, a butler and two armsmen who clenched broadswords in white fists stared at him.

“Know, retainers of Duke Strad, that you have knowingly and willingly served the dead,” Therian said loudly. His words rang in the ears of everyone present, drowning out the screams of the panicked. His voice was like that of doom itself. “I have borne witness to your willing participation in events here. Such wickedness can never be forgiven. No quarter shall be given this day.”

What followed was a most gruesome slaughter. Vosh consigned each soul he captured to the Red Dragon Yserth, while Therian sacrificed in the name of Anduin the Black. It was a race between the two to see who could harvest souls faster. Vosh had a head start, but was hampered now by the fact that his victims were no longer compliant and weak. They fought him with the black madness in their eyes. They strove with Vosh, despite his growing strength and power. They slashed and beat at the bones that hugged them. They grinned as they died, even as their souls were ripped from the shriveled husks of their bodies.

Therian’s victims fled, but he was a wolf among trapped fowl. He killed each with greater speed than the last. He leapt from place to place, traveling half the Great Hall’s width in a stride. He fell upon them, and whether they fought him or not, their throats ran crimson, their bellies opened, and their guts slid out upon the floor. Some met their fate upon their knees, pleading. Others went down fighting and growling like animals.

Within a few minutes, none survived save Therian, Vosh and Gruum. The only other source of activity was Duke Strad, who still heaved and strained stoically beneath the massive oak table.

“So,” said Vosh. “We meet again, King of my homeland.”

Vosh had gorged himself upon most of the retainers in the room, and his gluttony had swollen the lich’s form. His skull brushed the hanging candles in the Great Hall. Every bone had thickened and swollen. The vermillion robe he traditionally wore had become nothing more than a tattered cape that fluttered over the curving ribs, each of which was now as thick as the haft of an axe.

“You speak truth, Vosh,” Therian said. “I am your King. As is my right, I would offer you peace.”

Vosh looked about and discovered there were no more souls to harvest. He took a step toward them, then another. After three great strides, he stood in the center of the chamber.

Gruum looked on fearfully. As terrifying as Vosh was, Therian was nearly as fearsome. Such was the strangeness of his master’s voice—such was its potency, that Gruum did not dare to gaze upon the Hyborean’s countenance.

Vosh’s great jawbone sagged open. The lich’s rang in their minds. “You fear! You see me in my bloated state, full of fresh, wriggling souls and you fear Vosh!”

Gruum wondered at the change the lich had undergone. His manner was very different. Rather than being calm and philosophical, he had become bestial in speech and attitude. Gruum recalled the lich had likened the consumption of souls to that of drinking wine. Perhaps he had become drunk with the souls he had consumed.

Therian shook his head. “Sadly, I see you do not understand. What I offer you is the everlasting peace of the grave. I will aid you on your journey. You shall pass on as you should have so long ago.”

“You are a cockroach,” Vosh said, taking two more strides forward. Therian stood his ground. His twin swords gleamed.

Therian turned to Gruum. He pointed. “Stand just there and await the outcome of this fight.”

Gruum’s eyes widened. “But, milord…”

“Have faith, man.”

“Yes milord.”

Gruum walked toward the spot Therian had directed, his feet leaden with fear.

Vosh’s huge skull swiveled to follow Gruum as he passed by. “I marvel to gaze upon a man so low he services a cockroach,” he said.

Gruum sneered up at the monster, although he feared Vosh. He expected the lich to reach down and pluck his limbs from his torso, but Vosh let him pass. Gruum stood upon the flagstones. Next to him, he knew, lay the pouch he had tossed. The contents had gone missing, but surely the thing would come back to rest in its pouch, as it had done before. He did not watch for the sliding pool of shadow upon the floor. He did not want to see it stalking him, for if he did, he knew his bravery would fail him and he would run from it.

Vosh struck the first blow. His great fist, now bigger than a man’s head, came down from the smoky ceiling and crashed onto stone. Therian had stepped aside. Masonry cracked and fired splinters in all directions, such was the force of the lich’s strike.

Seeker flashed out to cut into the bones of the great forearm. With a sound like that of a woodsman’s axe chunking into a sapling, the sword bit into bone, but did not sever it.

Vosh’s other hand swept by and caught Therian a backhanded blow. The King went flying, but sprang back up, unharmed. He stalked forward, his blades ringing as they slashed and thrust.

Gruum could stand it no longer. He looked for the stalking shadow. The pouch was there, but—it was fatter than before. As his eyes stared, incapable of blinking or shifting away, he saw the pouch rise and fall, shifting about as if something within settled itself into a comfortable place.

Gruum reached down slowly, offering the shadow the flesh of his hand. He knew if the madness took him he would be able to fight Vosh, but he could not hope to be more than a distraction. He wondered a thousand things in his mind at once as his hand went nearer the pouch’s mouth. Would he see the steppes again? Would he know the love of a warm woman? Would it hurt when the thing in the pouch suborned his mind?

A crashing sound made him turn his head. One of the great oak tables had been smashed down, broken in two by Vosh’s elephantine fist of bone. A score of wooden shards fired around the room like arrow shafts.

Gruum ducked, and looked back down upon the pouch. The shadow had indeed crept forth. Just an inch. It sought his flesh, he felt certain. It had sensed his warmth and slid out a finger-thick tendril of itself into the open again. The surface was oily—so deep a shade of black as to be slightly reflective.

Gruum recoiled, snatching his hand back. He wiped his fingers again and again on his tunic. The thing in the pouch had never touched him, but his hand felt as if it were soiled. He realized he could not force himself to reach out to the creature any more than he could force himself to plunge his fingers into a viper’s mouth.

Something made a scraping, screeching sound behind him, then stilled again. It was the Duke, he knew, still squirming relentlessly beneath his oaken table. The sound filled Gruum with a thought. He acted upon it without further contemplation. He snatched up the pouch and flung it beneath the heaving oak table. He flung it right into the Duke’s straining face.

“Bastard!” grunted the Duke, rolling his dead eyes to see him.

Gruum took no notice. He found one of the guardsmen who lay like an empty sack of soft leather upon the floor. He took up a pike from the flopping fingers and ran back to the Duke. Plunging the butt of the pike under the table, he began to lever it up, heaving and straining as greatly as he could.

Therian dodged beneath Vosh now, slashing futilely at the knees. A dozen scores showed upon the other’s thick bones. But try as he might it seemed the bones were as hard as stone and would not break. The lich, for its part, lunged and clacked its hands together, unable to catch the lighting-quick sorcerer.

Gruum roared and heaved with greater energy. Duke Strad, sensing his purpose, went into a frenzy of scrambling activity. The odor of Strad’s burnt flesh, clothing and bone filled Gruum’s nostrils with a sickening stench.

Something touched Gruum’s foot then. Something hot, that burned like the venom of an insect bite. The burning sensation ran up his leg and touched his mind.

After a moment of cold realization, Gruum went mad.