Son of Thunder (35 page)

Rask looked for Leng among the Cyricists, but was disappointed not to find him. He could think of many reasons for the priest’s absence, but somehow Rask suspected he was dead. He sighed, wishing he could crush him under his heel, smash his body, grind him into nothingness.

He would settle for Leng’s creation instead—the foul temple to the Prince of Lies.

Some Cyricists ran toward the doors to flee, but Rask shifted the bulk of his weight against the doors to block them. All would die together. Rask’s vision blurred, and the walls seemed to close in on him. The skulls leered at him, pressing closer. The Dark Sun had always seemed like a giant tomb to him, but as a child, he never anticipated that it would be his tomb.

Magical chains tore at him, huge claws raked him. The hell hounds bit through Rask, exposing white bone. The priests stole his vision and tormented him with diabolical spells. Flames lashed over his body. He was dying. Every part of Rask’s vast body rang with pain, but he was happy. He was laughing inside as he swung his great tail and threw his body about, upsetting ebon pillars and smashing through walls. Chunks of the ceiling collapsed. Acolytes ran for the exit but found their way blocked by falling debris. Their wailing prayers were not answered by their cruel god.

As the world fell around him, Rask lost all sense of body and place. Amid this destruction, he was at peace. He had a sudden vision of himself in his own half-orc body, resting for all eternity in the shade of Grandfather Tree. The boughs swayed, and the leaves danced. Eternity waited.

When the roof finally let go, bringing down the Dark Sun in a final, glorious ruin, Rask Urgek had never felt more satisfied.

Thluna swung the axe, cleaving the skulls of the last survivors among the Lord’s Men who guarded Geildarr’s Keep. Forcing open the great doors, he was surprised to find bodies lying within, slashed by swords. The dead had been dispatched ferociously but efficiently—a hallmark of a raging barbarian.

“Sungar!” he exclaimed. The chief must have escaped, saving Thluna the need to rescue him. On the wall nearby he noticed a painting of a man who could only be Geildarr, standing before a crowd of adoring citizens. Thluna smiled as he noted the blood smeared across his face.

He saw bloody footprints going up the staircase and followed them.

Netheril falling. This was not the same, but it felt just like it. Geildarr watched from his balcony as the Dark Sun collapsed in on itself, the final reservoir of magical strength in Llorkh destroyed. Buildings were falling all over Llorkh, and whole portions of the city were lost to his eyes in the haze kicked up by the debris. Rampaging behemoths went wherever they cared to, destroying whatever offended them.

A small stone cougar in the hall fell from its pedestal and smashed on the floor. It had come from Ammarindar and was almost a thousand years old. It had survived so much, only to break apart now.

His city. They were destroying his city.

The citizens of Llorkh, those who were smart, quit their lodgings and ran for the city gates. Geildarr could see them moving through the streets by the hundreds. He looked toward the Merchant District, where caravans were crushed and devastated by a behemoth’s destructive passing. Their goods were surely beyond rescue. Perhaps this assault would finally convince Zhentil Keep that Llorkh required a larger garrison.

In all likelihood, however, it would convince them that it needed a new mayor.

Geildarr looked down at the Heart of Runlatha, still clutched in his right hand, and wondered if it gave him that dream to taunt him.

Ardeth appeared to report bad news. “The barracks are gone. At least fifty of the Lord’s Men were killed there alone, and just as many in the disaster at the gate. Battles are going on all over the city. The soldiers and Leng’s hell hounds are the only ones fighting against the dinosaurs. This was a well-coordinated, intricately planned assault.”

“The Dark Sun has fallen,” said Geildarr. “Cyric must be mightily displeased with us for letting his temple be destroyed. No rabble of barbarians could be so calculated in a siege. What force can be behind this?”

“I don’t know, but Chief Sungar has escaped from his prison. He is racing through the Lord’s Keep, killing anything that moves. I only barely escaped from him with my life. No doubt,” Ardeth added, “he’s looking for you.”

“I can handle one rabid Uthgardt,” said Geildarr.

Ardeth frowned. “We have far more to deal with than one Uthgardt! Llorkh is being demolished building by building! Have you considered what will happen when Fzoul hears about this? He’ll ask questions. He’ll ask ‘Who brought this on?’ ‘Why did this happen?’ and ‘Who do I blame?’ You said he was angry that our incursion into the Fallen Lands failed—how do you suppose he’ll feel about all of this?”

Each statement drove a nail into Geildarr’s troubled mind. “Do you think you need to tell me this? I know!” he howled, banging his left fist against his thigh. “I know!” he repeated, stamping his feet on his red carpet. He let out a scream of frustration that echoed throughout the Lord’s Keep. If Sungar did not know where to find him, he did now.

Geildarr’s posture collapsed, and he wandered across his study, placing the Heart of Runlatha on a table—the very same zalantarwood table on which the axe had rested when all of this began.

“If only I had more time,” he whispered. “If only I could have learned how to use it. It could have kept us secret, kept us safe from Fzoul, Manshoon, and the world. We could have lived together, you and I, hidden away from the world.” He looked up at Ardeth, tears streaming from his eyes. “If Sememmon and Ashemmi can hide from the Zhentarim’s eyes, surely we could too?”

“This is not a time for dreams,” Ardeth spat. “It is a time for decisions.”

“Yes,” Geildarr said. “Decisions.” He walked over to a case on his wall and pulled out a wand of duskwood. Walking back to his balcony, he looked down at the behemoths bound in the Central Square. “There’s a good chance our foes are here for my pets, that they want to liberate them. We may want to relieve them of that task.”

“Or you could enrage them further,” said Ardeth.

“If we are to fall this day,” said Geildarr, “let it be a glorious fall.”

He pointed the wand at the behemoths, and the wand’s magic crackled forth.

Like a key turning in a lock, Thanar and Kellin’s blended spells succeeded in undoing the magic in the post that bound the behemoths in place. The sorceress and druid clapped hands in their victory as they watched the chains vanish. The great lizards were free, the rings on their legs now only mundane anklets.

Across the city, Vell felt their freedom and shared it. We are free, we are saved! their minds shouted, and they trumpeted in joy. You have freed us, Shepherd! Vell knew their pleasure.

No sooner had they raised their necks to salute their liberation than a lightning bolt flashed down from above.

The thunderous impact sent Kellin and Thanar diving to the ground.

The energy arced down a line of behemoths—the half of the herd that only moments before had strained at the limits of their chains along the west side of the square. Vell felt every stab of their pain as if it were happening to him, doubled and redoubled in his psyche until it became unbearable. The force of it brought him to his knees.

Another lightning blast tore down from the Lord’s Keep, striking the same six behemoths. They shuddered and collapsed, their huge bulks sending the city trembling as they fell to the ground.

A blast of agony struck Vell’s brain as if it carried the force of thousands of tons. Then he felt nothing. The absence was worse than the pain. Six minds fell silent.

The emptiness was deafening.

All of Lanaal’s teachings fell to a forgotten corner of Vell’s mind. All of his careful control of his behemoth body vanished in an instant. A rage beyond all rage overtook him and he was no longer Vell, but the mindless, rampaging monster that had killed the Zhentarim skymage in Rauvin Vale. No recollection of human consciousness, no sympathy for the blameless folk of Llorkh remained in him. Vell had no way to focus his anger on a single source. The whole city stood around him for one purpose—to be destroyed, a mere plaything to sate his bottomless fury.

Lying on the ground, Thanar and Kellin rolled to avoid the bodies of the dead behemoths that fell across the square. The living behemoths were no less of a hazard; consumed by the same anger that had seized Vell, they rampaged through the square, smashing walls with their huge fore-limbs in search of an exit. Thanar and Kellin lay right in the path of a mad behemoth, its eyes inflamed with fury, and unable to recognize friend from enemy. Numb with fear, they scrambled to their feet and dashed toward the street.

Outside of the Central Square, they discovered Lanaal, again in the form of the huge brown-feathered hawk that had lifted Kellin and Thluna over Llorkh’s walls. Thanar and Kellin desperately climbed onto her back and she took wing, just ahead of a rampaging behemoth. Lanaal kept low to avoid Geildarr and his lightning bolts, and circled around to the back side of the Lord’s Keep.

From their vantage point, they saw the city being demolished from within. They easily identified Vell, larger than the rest, smashing his way through buildings with an unfettered appetite for destruction. Ilskar, also in his behemoth form—but apparently retaining his wits—patrolled the inner side of the walls, appearing uncertain of what to do. The liberated behemoths joined Vell in his rage, bursting free of the Central Square and damaging anything that stood in their path.

Lone hell hounds still roamed the city, but the bulk of them had been killed in the collapse of the Dark Sun. The behemoths stormed streets and alleys, unchallenged. Many of the Lord’s Men withdrew and fled the city alongside terrified townsfolk. Crowds poured out of the gates and into the countryside. But Llorkh was far from deserted, and innocent citizens remained in the path of the behemoths’ rampage.

“This is wrong,” said Kellin. “We have to stop Vell.”

“We have to stop Geildarr,” corrected Thanar. “And we have to do it now.”

Lanaal veered to one side, toward an aerial landing platform jutting out from an upper level of the Lord’s Keep. She settled lightly and turned back to her elf body, a short elven blade hanging from her belt.

“Geildarr’s private floor is three stories below,” said Lanaal. “He was probably firing lightning bolts at the behemoths from his balcony, so I didn’t dare land there.”

The wind whistled across the platform, almost loud enough to block out the noise of the destruction below.

“I certainly hope Geildarr didn’t expect anyone to intrude from up here,” Kellin said, trying the door. It was not locked and swung open.

“I guess he didn’t,” said Lanaal with a smile. “Not his first mistake of the day, but perhaps his last.” The three ran into the keep.

Sungar ran up a staircase to a landing, then up to a higher floor in the Lord’s Keep. No guards waited for him here, and the entire complex was eerily silent. Only the cacophony outside bled through, faint and distant as a dream. A long room unfurled before him, lined by mirrors on each side. A narrow table spanned the length of the room, and the whole place was lit by candles that faintly wobbled as the keep trembled with the vibrations of the city.

The barbarian walked slowly forward. Soon his reflection caught his eye, doubled and redoubled into an infinity of Sungars walking beside him. He startled and turned to stare into the mirror, watching his own blue eyes gaze at himself. He studied his face closely. Sungar’s beard and hair were streaked with white, a token of his time in the dungeon. With his fingers, he traced the scars and the wounds, still red and tender, that Kiev’s cruel lash had inflicted on him.

Sungar’s rage left him; his fury-fueled energy dissipated. He felt every ache again, every stinging wound along his back and sides. His shoulders drooped, his sword arm fell to his side, and he felt as weak as he had when he was sprawled on the floor of his cell so far below.

He stared deeper into the mirror. Sungar had heard of such things, but he had never seen one before. Other than his reflection in water, he had never seen himself. There was something beautiful about the mirror, as smooth, cool, and polished as an icy mountain lake. Things seemed more perfect in the mirror, even his own face and form.

Civilized vanity, he thought. The shamans of Uthgar often described mirrors as the symbol of civilization’s flaws. They represented the tendency to become distracted with oneself, and to become useless and nonproductive. An Uthgardt warrior was trained not to be drawn into excessive contemplation, but Sungar knew that was happening to him now.

His sword fell from his hand, landing on the floor with a thud. Those blue eyes in the mirror—his eyes, but somehow not his eyes—drew him in deeper and deeper.

Suddenly, the mirror smashed in front of him, a thousand shards falling to the carpet. It shook Sungar from his reverie, his moment of weakness shattering. A familiar axe head was embedded in the mirror’s frame. Sungar turned to face its wielder, and his heart soared with joy.

“Thluna!” His cry echoed off the walls. He embraced the boy, pulling him close. “My son! Can it be you?”

“Sungar,” Thluna wept. “Thank Uthgar you’re alive. Thank Uthgar.”

Breaking their embrace, Sungar’s eyes went to the axe. “Is this…”

“Yes,” said Thluna. “It is what you think.”

Sungar gripped the axe handle, the head still stuck in the wall.

“We now know that it was once the weapon of Berun himself, in an age past,” said Thluna, “and also that Uthgar himself wielded it.”

“I know,” said Sungar. “How?” asked Thluna.

“King Gundar came to me in a vision. He showed me that you’d be coming to rescue me.”

“And we feared the Battlefather had abandoned us!” Thluna declared. “He never forsook us. He was on our side all along.”

Sungar pulled the axe from the wall. It felt comfortable in his hands—better than any weapon he had ever wielded. He offered it to Thluna. “This is for the chief of the Thunderbeasts,” he said.