From far below they heard a high-pitched scream. Several of the creatures loped off toward the sound.
Skilgannon came to an oval wooden door. It was locked. Stepping back, he took several deep breaths, then hammered his right foot against the lock. The frame shuddered, but the lock did not give. Twice more he struck at the lock. On the third blow the door shuddered, and wood splintered around the frame. A fourth blow snapped the lock, and the door flew open. Skilgannon stepped inside. The room was an antechamber, leading to another door. This was not locked and Skilgannon passed through into a larger room, shelved along the far wall and stacked with books and scrolls. There was an open window with a balcony beyond, and before it stood a wide desk of beautifully fashioned oak. An old man was sitting there. He did not rise in alarm as they entered, merely looked at them with weary eyes. His face was oddly shaped, heavy bone around the brows and cheeks. His mouth was wide, the teeth misshapen.
“What is it you want, Demon Woman?” he asked Askari.
“She is not a demon,” Skilgannon told him. “She is a Reborn.”
“I know what she is. She is evil. We brought her back. We thought she would tell us the wonders of her age. She told us nothing. Landis begged her, and she laughed. Vestava questioned her, and she said she could not remember. Give me time, she asked us. Then she rode out and gathered an army. The days of blood and death began. I know her. I know her too well.”
“You are mistaken, priest. This is not the Eternal. She is one of her Reborns, and is, with me, trying to end the Eternal’s reign. We need to find the silver eagle and its egg.”
The old man laughed. “You cannot find the eagle, warrior. It floats so high that the sky is no longer blue. It moves among the stars.”
“But it sends power here,” said Skilgannon. “To feed the egg.”
The old man lifted a gnarled hand and rubbed at his face. “I am so tired,” he said. The hand was webbed, the knuckles grotesquely distorted.
“What is happening here?” asked Skilgannon.
“We made an error—a dreadful error. We tried to move the temple outside of time. Just a few seconds, so that she”—he pointed at Askari—“could not steal more artifacts. We discovered a series of hidden tunnels below the temple. There were artifacts there. Terrible artifacts.” His misshapen face turned toward Askari. “She knows this. Weapons that deal death over great distances. There were also scrolls and documents that spoke of even more ghastly devices. Aye, and maps that showed where they were hidden. She wanted them. It was not enough for her that she had corrupted our work. She desired even more power, even greater weapons. We could not allow it. We sought to hide the temple from her. At first we thought we had succeeded.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Instead we merely slowed time within these walls. What followed was more horrible than you could imagine. We began to change. Our structures became unstable. Bone continued to grow. Many of the brothers died, others became deformed. It was slow at first, and we did not realize what was happening. Once we did we tried to change the spell. It only made matters worse. The spells around the temple grew in power. After that everything happened so swiftly. There was no time to escape. Some of the brothers managed to reach these higher levels, where the mutations slowed for a while. Gradually they all changed, reverted to beasts, and tore one another apart or fled below to join the packs that roam the lower levels.”
“Yet you survived,” said Skilgannon.
Lifting his grotesque hand, he pulled clear a golden chain hanging from his neck. Upon it, in a golden clasp, was a black-and-white crescent, part crystal, part stone. “I carry the Abbot’s Moon,” he said. Idly he stroked the crescent. “Its power is almost gone. Once it shone white and bright. It sustained me.”
“It has been five hundred years,” said Askari. “How do any creatures still live here?”
“Five hundred years, is it? Not when each day outside passes in under an hour. By my reckoning it is fifteen years since we cast the spell—though my mind is not what it was, and I could be wrong. For a while we could leave and bring in supplies. When more of us became beasts we began to feed on each other.” His head drooped. “We believed we were the Keepers of Knowledge, that we could lift the world from its savagery. Instead we became savages. The mutation in our bodies also made us long lived.”
“Why did you not just end the magic?” asked Skilgannon. “That would surely have stopped the horror of the Eternal.”
The deformed priest looked bemused. “End the magic? How would one accomplish such a feat? We tried to change the spell. We knew it was destroying us. But the more we meddled with it, the worse it became. A few months back we made our last attempt. All we succeeded in doing was accelerating the process. Now there is no food, my people are dead, or changed. They feed on each other.”
“Listen to me, old man,” Skilgannon urged him. “The eagle feeds the magic. It comes somehow through the Mirror of Heaven. Where does it then go?”
“Magic does not go, warrior. Magic is.”
“Where is the holiest place here?” asked Askari.
The old priest gave a cackling laugh. “That you of all people should ask that! How amusing. Evil seeks holiness.”
“Is there such a place?” Skilgannon pressed him.
“The Crystal Shrine. The great abbot built it, I believe. That is where we used to meet and pray, and heal the sick.”
“Is it close, this Shrine?” asked Skilgannon, patiently.
A distant scream sounded. Then another. The old man seemed not to notice. He stared at Askari.
“Where is the Shrine?” asked Skilgannon. The old man did not reply, but his gaze shifted to a far door on the western wall. “Let’s go!” said Skilgannon. The priest stumbled toward him.
“No!” he shouted. “She must not go near it. She would defile it!”
“Listen to me!” said Skilgannon, taking the man by the arm. “Try to understand. She is not Jianna! She is Askari, a young woman from the mountain lands south of here.”
“She might once have been this Askari you speak of. Not now. I am not fooled. I see beyond the flesh. I see the aura of her soul. She is Jianna. She is the Eternal.”
Skilgannon turned slowly toward Askari. She was standing behind him, her saber in her hand.
“The twisted magic here has driven him mad,” she said.
“No,” said Skilgannon, softly. He sighed. “I knew something was wrong back on the road when I looked at you in the moonlight. My heart almost stopped. I think I knew then. I just didn’t want to believe it. How did you do it, Jianna?”
He thought she was going to deny it. Instead she merely smiled. “Decado gave one of Memnon’s jewels to the girl. It connected me to her. All I had to do was die. It was most painful. Much like this . . .” As she spoke her saber lunged forward, spearing Skilgannon’s chest. He staggered back and tried to draw his own sword. Strength seeped from his body, and he fell heavily. Jianna leaned over him. “Do not fret, my love,” she said. “I will have you Reborn. Perhaps by then you will have put aside notions of destroying me. And now I must go. Memnon is waiting for me.”
With that she walked past the old priest, and through the far door.
A s the sun rose the Drenai warriors filed out onto the road, forming up in ranks twelve men across and seven deep. A little way back a second phalanx formed, ready to rush to the aid of the first when needed. Stavut had been placed at the rear of the second group, along with the less experienced of the Drenai. These were the younger men, new to the front line. Stavut glanced at their faces. Many were nervous, but all stood ready. From this high vantage point Stavut could see the Eternal Guard forming up below. In their black-and-silver armor they looked invincible, and the inspirational speech Druss had given the night before seemed suddenly hollow and unconvincing.
Stavut felt the weight of the chain mail on his shoulders, and sweat was beginning to trickle down his neck. How odd, he thought. Water is running freely from my skin, and yet my mouth is parched and dry
. It was then that he realized his bladder was full. He swore. “What is it?” asked the man beside him. Stavut told him, and the young soldier smiled. “Me, too. It will be the same for every man here.”
“Why?” asked Stavut.
“According to Gilden it is the tension and the fear. It tightens the muscles around the bladder. The feeling will go away once the battle starts.”
“Oh, I’ll look forward to that,” muttered Stavut.
The Eternal Guard began to march. Instinctively Stavut reached for his sword hilt. “Not yet,” said the soldier. “Your arm will be tired enough by the end. Wait until you actually need to draw it.”
Up ahead Stavut saw Druss, dressed now in a long mail hauberk, walking along the front rank, Alahir beside him in the Armor of Bronze. The axman was talking to the soldiers, but his words did not fully carry to the second phalanx. Stavut thought he heard the word wedge.
“Can you hear what he’s saying?” he asked the soldier beside him.
“Don’t need to,” said the man. “Alahir told us last night what the plan was. We will hit them when they reach the narrowest point of the road. They will be expecting arrows. Instead they will be met by a charge, in wedge formation. It will hit them like an arrowhead, with Druss at the point.”
The Eternal Guard marched on, not swiftly, but steadily, conserving their energies for the battle ahead. Stavut found himself wondering about his lads, and how they were faring in the green hills. He sighed. The sun was bright in a cloudless sky, and he saw several doves flying by. A sense of unreality gripped him. It was hard to believe, standing here in the sunlight, that men were about to die. Then he thought about Askari. She had been acting so strangely these last few days. Ever since the nightmare. She had suddenly awoken beside him with a cry. He had reached over to her, and she had slapped his hand away and looked at him strangely. “It is all right,” he said. “You were dreaming. That’s all.”
“Dreaming?” She relaxed then. “Yes, I was dreaming. Where is Olek?”
“Olek?”
“Skilgannon.”
“He is out scouting the passes for sign of the Guard.” He had leaned in to her then, and suggested they find a spot away from the others where they could be together.
“Not now, Stavut,” she said. It had been odd hearing her use his full name. He had become so used to Stavi.
The men around him began to shuffle and swing their arms, loosening the muscles. Stavut saw that the Guard were approaching the narrowest point of the road. They began to shuffle together, raising their long shields to protect themselves from arrows. Without any battle cries the Drenai line surged forward, Druss at the center, ax raised. It was several moments before the marching Guard realized they were under assault. Stavut saw the huge ax splinter a shield and sweep the man beyond from his feet. Then the noise erupted, metal on metal, screeching and clamoring, screams and shouts and death cries. Several of the Guard were pushed over the edge of the precipice, and fell. Stavut watched them, arms flailing as they plummeted toward the rocks far below. Switching his gaze back to the front line he saw the carnage and his stomach knotted. The ax rose and fell, swept and cut, blood spraying from it. It seemed perpetually in motion, as if it were somehow mechanical. There was a gap opening around Druss as men fought to keep back from the slashing blades. Then, with the initial shock of the charge over, the Guard’s discipline reasserted itself. They began to push forward. Now Stavut saw Legend riders fall as the black-and-silver ranks hurled themselves at the defenders. Slowly, inexorably, the Drenai were forced back. Druss fought on, and the enemy warriors had almost reached the point of encircling him. Then Alahir threw himself into the attack, battling to reach Druss. Several men, Gilden among them, joined him, and once more the two fighting groups became wedged together, neither giving nor gaining ground.
The battle seemed to go on forever, but Stavut glanced at the sky and saw the sun had barely moved.
Another line of Drenai reserves rushed forward to fill the gaps left by the dead and dying. The soldier beside him had been right, thought Stavut, as he and the men around him shuffled forward. He no longer felt the urge to piss, and his mouth was no longer dry. He saw Alahir go down, and then rise again. The battle looked chaotic now. More men fell screaming from the edge, and the ground was dense with bodies, some still writhing, or trying to drag themselves clear of the fighting. Stavut, though he had no experience of battles, could sense that the tide was beginning to turn. The Drenai had been pushed back from the narrow point. This allowed more Guard to enter the fray. Druss was still holding his ground, but once more the two flanks were pressing inward. A second line of reserves ran in, briefly bolstering the defense. Druss suddenly surged forward into the men trying to join the fighting, cutting left and right with his terrible blades. Stavut shivered as he saw men go down, helms crushed, faces slashed away. This sudden, almost berserk attack opened a gap behind the Guard, and Stavut saw many men in the front ranks glance nervously behind them. Alahir must have seen it to, for he bellowed: “At them Drenai! Kill them all!”
The defenders returned to the attack with renewed vigor, hacking and slashing, hurling themselves at the enemy. The Guardsman at the rear turned and fled from the awesome ax. Then the front line caved. Men spun on their heels and began to run, streaming back down the pass road.
Stavut couldn’t believe his luck. He had not been called to battle at all.
Legend riders ran to their fallen comrades, lifting those still breathing from the battle site and carrying them back to the relative safety of the rock pool. Then they began to gather their dead. It seemed to Stavut there were a great many bodies. Swiftly he cast his glance around, estimating the numbers of the survivors. There were considerably less than a hundred men still standing. He saw Druss walk to the narrow point and stare down at the enemy. Then the axman swung back and strode back up the road. Stavut shivered as he saw him. The chain-mail hauberk was splattered with blood, as was his face and beard. There were bleeding cuts on his huge arms, and a long gash on his cheek. A cut above his right eye was seeping blood. “There is a rider coming,” the axman told Alahir.
The earl of Bronze and the axman walked back to meet him. Stavut wandered up behind them. The rider was a tall man, hawkeyed and lean. He sat his black horse and stared past the two men, observing the battlefield. Then he turned his dark gaze on Druss.
“You have performed bravely, but you cannot hold out much longer,” he said.
“Ah, laddie, that was but a warming-up exercise. Now that we’re loose the real fighting can begin.”
The man gave a cold smile. “Do I have your permission to remove my wounded and dead?”
“What, no offers of surgeons?” said the axman.
“I fear the amount of damage you have caused necessitates me using both my surgeons,” said the officer.
“You can have your wounded,” said Druss. “The men you send to carry them better be stripped of all armor and weapons, or I’ll roll their heads back to you.”
“Your tone is disrespectful, sir,” said the officer, tight-lipped.
“I’d have more respect had I seen you among your men, and not watching the battle from afar. Now scuttle back to where you came from. This conversation is over.”
Druss turned his back on the man and led Alahir back up the road. Stavut watched the officer wrench his horse around and ride away.
“Why were you so discourteous, Druss?” asked Alahir.
The axman chuckled. “I want him boiling mad. Angry men tend to act rashly.”
“I think you achieved that. And you were right about the surgeons.”
“As soon as they have collected their dead and wounded, form up the bowmen and prepare for the beasts.”
Druss glanced to his right. A wounded Guardsman was desperately trying to unbuckle the breastplate of a fallen comrade. Blood was gushing from beneath the smashed armor.
Druss laid aside his ax and moved alongside the men. Together they wrenched the breastpl
ate clear. The man’s right side was drenched with blood. Druss ripped the shirt open to reveal smashed ribs and a huge cut. From the look of the ruined breastplate, and the depth of the wound, Stavut knew it had come from Druss’s ax. Druss pulled the shirt back over the wound and told the second man to hold his hand over it. “Press lightly,” he said, “for those ribs might be pushed into the lung.”
“Where did you come from?” asked the second man.
“From hell, laddie. Let’s look at your wound.” The soldier had taken a heavy hit on the lower leg, which was broken. “You’ll live,” said Druss. “Your friend might not. Depends how tough he is.” He stared hard at the young soldier with the chest wound. “Are you tough, laddie?”
“Damned right,” said the man, gritting his teeth against the pain.
Druss grinned. “I believe you. Normally when I hit a man that hard, the ax cleaves all the way to the backbone. You were lucky. Caught me on a poor day.”
Stavut gazed around the battle site. There were hundreds of fallen Guardsmen, and the road was slick with blood.
And noon was still hours away.
S kilgannon struggled to rise. The old priest knelt by his side. “Do not move, my son. Conserve your strength. Hold on to life and I will help you as best I can.” Skilgannon felt liquid in his throat choking him. He coughed and sprayed blood to the floor. The priest drew the golden chain from around his neck. Turning Skilgannon onto his back, he placed the black-and-white crystal on the bleeding wound. “Lie still, let its power work.”
Breathing was becoming difficult, and Skilgannon’s vision swam. His hands and feet grew cold, and he knew death was close. Then a gentle warmth began in his chest and slowly flowed through his body. His palpitating heart grew more rhythmic in its beat.
He lay there, staring up at the ceiling, and cursed himself for a fool. Askari never traveled without her bow, and the few arrows in her quiver would have meant nothing to the Legend riders. Feeling stronger, he placed his hand over the crystal and sat up. His shirt was ripped, and he pulled it open. Smearing away the blood, he found no wound below it. He turned to the priest. “My thanks to you . . . ,” he began. Then he stopped. The old man was sitting down with his back against the desk. His face was waxen, his breathing ragged. Skilgannon moved to his side, holding out the crystal. Then he saw that it no longer glittered, and was instead merely a lump of black stone.