The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy (46 page)

The wolf-lord, barely conscious,
watched him approach with heavily-lidded eyes. Saria circled him. Raugst could
hear her hissing sobs in his ears.

Closer and closer he drew to
Vrulug. Time seemed to slow, and hours passed, and years dragged into
centuries, and still he could feel the echoes of that explosion. Smoke trailed
up from his light-blessed sword.

Then he was standing over Vrulug. Saria
shrieked and wrapped her ghostly talons around Raugst’s throat.
You will not touch him!

Unable to breathe, he lifted his
sword. His arms almost buckled under its weight.

“No,” said Vrulug. His eyes opened.
“No . . .” He was too weak to summon his fires.

Raugst brought his blade down with
all his strength. Vrulug’s armor shattered. Blood spurted. Raugst chopped down
again, and again, widening the wound. Then he thrust his hand inside, hearing
Vrulug’s moans, and rooted around in the warm, sloshy guts of his friend until
he found what he sought. His breath caught in his throat. The thing was hard
and rough, and covered in fluid, and so hot that it nearly burnt his fingers. Nevertheless,
he yanked it from the steaming wound—it did not come easily—and held the
glistening, gore-coated Moonstone up to the light. It was the Last Gift of Man,
or once had been, but now it was grotesque and corrupt, and Raugst felt
filthier just holding it.

Vrulug, still alive, grabbed it
from his hands. “Thief!” His voice was watery, his lungs filling with blood.

The black-robed priests spilled
into the room. The High Priest’s amber eyes widened, then narrowed. “Stand away
from the Master!” he shouted, air whistling strangely in his nose-less face. The
red light of the braziers flickered on his maggot-white visage. His sharp teeth
were slicked with slaver.

Suddenly, pain filled Raugst. Gasping,
he stared downward. Vrulug’s sword stuck out from his belly, and Raugst’s blood
coursed down the blade to flow over Vrulug’s clawed hand. While the priests had
distracted him, Vrulug had run him through.

Blood bubbled on Raugst’s lips as
he tried to form words to curse the wolf-lord with. Saria, laughing, throttled
Raugst with greater ferocity. He could not draw breath. The world dimmed and
faded. All except for Vrulug’s eyes. They blazed with hate and fury. Raugst
gasped again as the wolf-lord twisted the blade, shoving it up under Raugst’s
ribs.

“Die,” Vrulug growled, pushing the
blade deeper, seeking Raugst’s heart, a sneer on his wolvish lips. “Die, my
friend, and burn in the fires of the Second Hell.”

A sword glanced off Giorn’s helm. His head rang. He stabbed
forward, feeling hot black blood gush over his hand. The Borchstog fell away. Three
more replaced it.

A sword whistled out, slashed at
his face. He dodged back. The blade sliced his cheek.

His bad leg gave out. He fell. The
floor smacked his back, driving the breath from him.

Borchstogs swarmed toward him. He
tried to rise but slipped in the blood of a soldier. The Borchstogs converged. He
saw their blades lift, hover over him. They flashed by the light of the
lightning and the fires, sharp as needles.

“Farewell, King of Men,” said one. It
had seen his crown.

Giorn closed his eyes.
Niara, I am coming
.

Fire suffused Raugst as Vrulug’s blade dug inside him,
seeking his death.

With his left hand, Raugst reached
out and gripped the blade in his naked flesh. Blood, red blood, trickled over
his fingers. Vrulug shoved deeper, harder, seeking Raugst’s heart, but Raugst
clamped his hand tight and the blade stilled.

The pain was great. He wavered, and
the world grew dim, and the darkness from the altar seeped into him. He grew
cold, and the world receded, and he saw a great black shape looming over him
and knew it was the One, come to claim his soul at last . . .

Somehow he gathered the strength to
lift his own blade overhead. He gripped its hilt in his right hand and summoned
all his might for one final blow.

Vrulug’s priests, momentarily stunned,
moved forward to help their lord.

Vrulug shoved harder, forcing his
blade up under Raugst’s ribcage—Raugst could feel the grate of metal on bone—shoving
toward the heart . . .
closer
. . .
Raugst seized Vrulug’s sword tighter, slicing flesh and tendon. He only needed
another moment . . .

Vrulug’s face turned fearful, even
as Raugst’s blood puddled on the floor. In his other hand, the wolf-lord raised
the Moonstone. It glistened with viscera, but it was so hot that it burned
through its coating, smoke rising from it.

It was Vrulug’s last hope. Once more
it seemed to swell, and the world around it receded. Darkness emanated from it.
Its energies were building for one more burst . . .

Raugst bunched his muscles,
readying for the final blow. Saria still wrapped her ghostly talons about his
neck, choking the breath from his lungs. Stars flashed before his eyes.

“Kill
him!”
said the High Priest.

Vrulug’s priests closed on Raugst,
daggers glimmering.

Raugst wasted no time, said no
final words. This was it, what Niara had kissed him for, this one moment. Staring
Vrulug in the eyes, using all his strength, he slashed down, ignoring Saria,
ignoring the priests that even then stabbed into him—he slashed down and struck
the Moonstone with all his might.

The Moonstone . . .
cracked
. The sword shattered, bursting
brightly, showering all around with white fragments. The priests screamed and
fell back.

Raugst, pierced in half a dozen
places by their blades, grinned fiercely down at Vrulug. “Farewell, my friend,”
he said.

Vrulug growled hatefully, his eyes
savage.

The Moonstone exploded.

Black light and white suffused
everything. It turned the world to fire and pain, and Raugst howled in agony,
feeling his flesh blister and peel away as if torn from his bones by a powerful
hurricane, and then the world turned to white, and he knew no more.

All the Borchstogs near the temple felt a tremor, saw a
flash of many lights from the tower, and heard a strange roar. They glanced up
at the graceful white spire to see purple, green, and red light glowing, then
fading, from the topmost chamber. Smoke sifted through the chamber’s windows. As
one, a wave of dizziness and confusion swept the Borchstogs, and they knew,
without being told, that Vrulug was dead.

Desperate, the Borchstogs inside
the temple quit raping and slaughtering and stormed the tower. They ascended to
that topmost chamber, what had once been the Inner Sanctum to Illiana, to find
that all was blackened and smoking.

A score of pale-skinned corpses, or
their blackened husks, lay upon the floor. To the side, propped against the
blood-stained altar, clung the smoking remains of Lord Vrulug the wolf-lord,
master of Wegredon, favorite of Gilgaroth, he who would have destroyed the
peoples of the North. Steam rose from his skeletal jaws, imitating life, and,
as the Borchstogs watched, one of his arms fell to the floor and broke. All
that remained of him was a blackened skeleton.

Shards of some unidentifiable
artifact littered the floor. Borchstogs looked at them but did not touch them.

A final smoldering body drew their
gaze. This skeletal figure was of a man, and he had been blown across the room
by the force of the explosion. In his right hand he gripped a sword, or the
shattered remains of one. All that existed now was the hilt and the fragment of
a blade that jutted up. The Borchstogs saw strange lights gleam on the sword,
and they refused to go near it.

They were also intimidated by the
man himself. For, though he was clearly dead, he wore the most ghastly grin
upon his blackened face.

White light flashed. The Borchstogs fell back, screaming.

Giorn opened his eyes to see Hiatha
standing over him. “The Light,” she gasped. “It’s returned.” She stared at her
hands in amazement.

She helped him stand, and just in
time. A Borchstog rushed them. Giorn knocked its blade aside and prepared for a
thrust. No need. Hiatha raised a hand. Light flashed from it, and the Borchstog
burned away.

Giorn stared around him. All the
other priestesses were stepping forward and aiding the soldiers, not with
swords but with their powers. Light gushed from their hands and fingers, and
Borchstogs fell away, howling.

As well, some calamity seemed to
have been sensed by all the Borchstogs at once. Many screamed and beat their
chests and slashed themselves, and the human defenders looked on in surprise. Not
Giorn. Giorn had not expected this, but he had hoped for it, prayed for it. Vrulug
was dead.

“It’s a miracle,” Hiatha whispered.

“No,” Giorn said, half in
gratitude, half in disgust. “It’s not the work of the light at all. It’s the
work of a demon.”

“What . . . ?”

“Never mind.” He gestured to the
Borchstogs, whose advance was now in disarray. “See to them.”

Hiatha led her priestesses against
the enemy, and the creatures screamed and gave back. The priestesses stood
arrayed on the inner wall at regular intervals, and when Hiatha gave the signal
they blasted into the Borchstogs simultaneously, like the very wrath of Illiana
herself. Streams of white light poured from their hands and from their blessed
artifacts, lancing into the Borchstogs and roasting them where they stood.

Giorn rejoined the fray, stabbing
furiously, spraying Borchstog blood with every stroke. All around him,
priestesses called on the light, and the Borchstogs died in agony. Soon they
began falling back from the wall, crying to each other to retreat.

Giorn encouraged them by leading a
host of riders out from the gates of the inner wall. He brought his riders
against the scurrying Borchstogs, lopping off their heads and grinding them
into the mud. He laughed as he rode one down, splitting its skull to the nose. All
around him, the outer city burned, and he rode through it in a red haze of
fury, along with his riders, skewering the Borchstogs where they hid and
smashing them when they tried to form into defensive positions.

They fell back, gravitating toward
the Temple of Illiana. There before its gates they massed, and Giorn stared at
the smoking tower and felt a great darkness there. The air seemed to hum, and
there was a bitter taint on his tongue. The hackles on the back of his neck stood
on end, and his riders muttered fearfully. Even Hiatha paled, her eyes fixed on
the Inner Sanctum.

“Roschk
Gilgaroth!”
the Borchstogs cried.
“A
Uchas Saria!”

Seeming to gather strength from the
darkness, the Borchstogs rushed Giorn’s forces. At the head of his men, Giorn
drove like a fist into their ranks, and beside him Hiatha and her sisters smote
the creatures with bursts of light. The Borchstogs pulled men from their
saddles, hurled spears at priestesses, and for a moment it looked as if the
demons might rally, might prevail. The dark energy in the air intensified, and
Giorn could feel a heaviness descend upon him and knew it came from the Inner
Sanctum. Something powerful was there.

Blood spattered him, and a rider
beside him listed over and fell from his saddle, gripping the spear that stuck
from his chest.

“Ra!” Giorn said, spurring his
horse. “To me!”

His men surged forward, a great
wedge plowing into the Borchstog masses, dividing them and trampling them. If
there had been more of them, if so many of the demons had not gone off to loot
and rape and torture, they might have won out. But Giorn’s men were many, and
mounted. As well, the priestesses of Illiana blasted light from their fingers
and burned the Borchstogs to cinders where they stood. At last Giorn broke
through, and the Borchstogs scattered.

His men laughed. Captains urged him
to rout the demons, to pursue them, and he assigned General Levenril to see it
done.

“But where will you go?” the
general asked.

Giorn pointed to what had been the
very essence of Light and Grace on earth. Now the tower’s top smoldered,
sending black gouts of smoke across the stars. At least Vrulug’s cloud was
beginning to disperse.

“Something evil is here,” Giorn
said. “I must see to it.”

He dismounted and made his way
inside. A group of soldiers came with him. He steeled himself against the
horrors he would see, but even so he was not prepared. White, slender bodies
ravaged, mutilated, used . . . Blood dripped from the walls, and ran in
congealing rivers across the white marble floors. Several Borchstogs had
remained to amuse themselves with the priestesses who had survived, and Giorn
gladly led his men against them, making their deaths as painful as he could. Die
they did, but as they perished they cried,
“Roschk
Gilgaroth! A Uchas Saria!”

Giorn puzzled on it as he mounted
the stairs of the central tower. Drenched in blood and sweat, breathing in
labored gasps, his sword arm tired and his dulled blade dragging on the steps,
he hobbled up the tower alone, his soldiers safeguarding the rest of the temple,
and at last came upon the Inner Sanctum. Here the darkness he had felt was very
powerful, and growing, as if some dark Thing had shoved a toe into the doorway
of Fiarth and was trying to widen the gap, to drag the rest of It through. All
the love and tenderness in Giorn was ground down, made bitter, and he wanted
only to fall to the floor and wait for death.

He forced himself through the
archway and beheld the small white room and the butchered corpses. There was
Vrulug, it had to be, and there Raugst’s blackened remains. But what seized
Giorn’s attention was the altar, black and awful, and giving off a chill, as
well as a sulfurous stench.