Brotherhood of the Wolf Part 30

The winds suddenly died. Everything went quiet. Yet Iome could still feel the storm; there was a suffocating heaviness to the air..

On the far side of the door, a deep, inhuman voice whispered, "I smell you, woman."

Iome fought back the urge to cry out. She desperately searched for a weapon. Binnesman did not have much in the room-no sword or mace, no bow or javelin. He was not a warrior.

He had only his magic.

She heard snuffling at the door. "Can you understand me?" the creature asked.

"I smell you, too," she answered. The beast carried the heavy ordors of putrefaction and hair and wind and lightning.

She glanced about. Earth Wardens used magic soils for many spells. She recalled how Binnesman had curled up in the corner, pulling topsoil over himself like a blanket.

She grabbed a handful of the dry soil, cast it into the air.

"Come to me," the Darkling Glory said.

"You can't come in here!" Iome shouted, hoping it was true. She'd sensed the earth power in this room. Suddenly she recalled Binnesman's words: the Darkling Glory was a creature of Air and Darkness. The wizard had drawn runes of warding and earth power on the floor of this room.

And earth was ever the bane of air. Outside, the Darkling Glory had used wind to lift her horse the way a cat might use a paw. But now the winds had gone silent. The beast was crippled down here, weakened. She said again, with more certainty: "You can't come in."

The Darkling Glory snarled like some fell beast. "I can come for you. And I will, if I must."

Iome threw another handful of dust toward the door, hoping to drive the beast away.

"Come to me," the Darkling Glory whispered. "Come out to me, and I will let you live."

"No," Iome said.

"Give me the King's son," the Darkling Glory said. "I smell a son."

Iome's heart pounded. She backed into the corner. The clubfooted boy whimpered. "The King has no son," Iome answered, voice quavering. "There is only a young boy"

"I smell a son," the Darkling Glory a.s.sured her. "In your womb."

Myrrima ran with her bow, panting hard from the effort, racing up the streets of Sylvarresta toward the King's Keep. She could not see the keep. The Darkling Glory had wrapped it in veils of night.

Hail pelted the cobblestones all around, bounced noisily from the leaded roofs of the merchants' quarter.

A tornado of flames seemed to hover above the keep, and the fire whirled and was lost in a haze of darkness. Myrrima knew that Iome must be in the keep. She'd glimpsed Iome racing toward it only moments before.

The sky above remained black as the Darkling Glory drew light from the heavens. Yet everywhere, at the limit of vision on the horizon, beams of light shone down, as if sliver fires burned in the distance. By this dim reflected fight she found her footing over the uneven cobblestones.

As she ran, heart racing, she considered how she might shoot this beast, this Darkling Glory.

She had been practicing the bow for only a couple of hours over the past two days. All her arrows were shot from a range of eighty yards. She didn't trust herself to try for a longer shot.

By the Powers, she thought, I don't trust myself to try for any shot at all!

She'd do best if she got close, if she got within a comfortable shooting range. Her heart hammered, her breathing came ragged.

If I miss, I'm dead, she realized. One shot is all I'll ever get.

The Darkling Glory would hurl bolts of lightning in return.

She reached the Black Corner. Ahead, the portcullis that led to the King's Gate rose, a darker monolith against an almost perfect black.

Hidden beneath the portcullis stood the wizard Binnesman.

He held his staff overhead, swirling it in wide motions as he chanted softly, fearfully, words that she could not hear. A dim green light issued from his staff, as if it were a flaming ember, and Myrrima could see him clearly, outlined by the light. His steadfast gaze was fixed upon the orb of darkness that surrounded the King's Keep.

Something strange had happened. No winds screamed about the keep, no lightning flashed.

The Darkling Glory seemed to have fallen silent.

It's in there with Iome, Myrrima realized. The thought made her faint, and she staggered on the cobblestones.

Myrrima ran softly, afraid that the Darkling Glory might hear her footsteps.

Suddenly an inhuman cry rang from the heart of the darkness around the King's Keep. It split the night and echoed from the stone walls of the castle.

Binnesman whirled his staff and chanted in triumph.

Eagle of the netherworld, now I curse you.

By the Power of the Earth I seal your doom.

Let the lair of stone become your tomb!"

The Darkling Glory touched the door to the room where Iome hid, so that it swung open on squeaky hinges.

The hallway behind the beast was darker than any night. A finger of blackness stole over the room. The coals in the fire began to die.

"Milady!" the clubfooted boy cried, lurching toward the fire.

In the shadows, the Darkling Glory snarled. A lightning bolt sizzled through the air, past Iome's head, and exploded against the ancient wooden walls.

Iome held up her little pouch of leaves and roots, hoping it would ward the beast away.

The Darkling Glory roared as if in pain.

Suddenly the Keep shuddered as if an earthquake had struck. Everywhere the walls rocked. The sound of splintering wood and of stone grinding upon stone filled the air. Baskets dropped from shelves. Overhead the heavy oaken beams of the rafters shrieked in protest as they shattered In total darkness, six stories of stone collapsed in on itself.

Gaborn lay asleep in a faint while his troops regrouped. Though men tried, none could rouse him. After listening to his heartbeat for a moment, Sir Langley merely said, "Prop him on his horse and let him sleep, if that's what he has a mind to do. I'll whip any man among you who dares disturb his slumber."

In his dreams, Gaborn hovered above some great and s.p.a.cious building.

It might have been the Blue Tower, near the Courts of Tide, he thought, though Gaborn had never been inside.

But no, this building seemed more begrimed and sinister than any proper building should have. No tapestries adorned the walls, no lanterns hung from wall hooks. The stonework was old, the interior plaster all worn away.

The building was as cold as a dungeon. Many of its gray stones were worn or broken loose from the wall. But it was not exactly a dungeon; it was a ruin, a maze of walls without a roof.

In this dank old building, Myrrima and Iome ran from Raj Ahten with blindfolds over their eyes. Gaborn was imprisoned in a metal cage that hung from a huge tree. He gazed down over the maze, through gaping holes in the roof.

He heard the Wolf Lord's wet feet slap against stones, could hear what sounded like claws sc.r.a.ping the floor. He could sometimes glimpse Raj Ahten's hulking black shape. Yet Iome and Myrrima were at a disadvantage and seemed not to recognize the danger. He had to warn them.

"Hide! Hide!" Gaborn pleaded. Yet each time they tried to conceal themselves in a corner, the dark creature of dream plodded unerringly toward them.

"Hide!" he warned.

Binnesman finished chanting his spell, twirled his staff. A green bolt of light, like a touch of summer bursting through leaves, shot from his staff and raced toward the keep.

The light penetrated the darkness, and was lost.

Stones cracked and splintered in the keep as rocks toppled by the ton.

The fiery tornado above the King's Keep swirled and shattered.

Brilliant sunlight suddenly filled the sky. Dust swirled in the air, and Myrrima raced through the portcullis to stand beside Binnesman.

The wizard gazed in triumph.

Myrrima stared in horror.

The King's Keep had collapsed in utter ruin. A pile of stones fifteen feet tall littered the ground, dust rising around them. Bits of furniture and tapestries added color to the wreckage, and a stone gargoyle that had decorated the upper reaches of the keep sat tilted on the pile of broken stones, grinning as if in mockery.

Myrrima stared in shock, her mind numb.

Binnesman glanced at her. "I've imprisoned the beast," Binnesman said, his voice weary, "sealed him in the Earth." With finality he leaned on his staff and said, "Let us only hope that I can hold him!"

Myrrima looked about the bailey. She'd seen Iome riding toward the keep only minutes before. But Iome's mare had vanished.

Suddenly she spotted it, impaled on the merlons of the Dedicate's Tower, eighty feet in the air. She pointed at the charger and shouted, "But Iome was in the keep! You sealed them in together!"

She staggered back in rising horror.

"No!" Binnesman cried.

And with that, the hill of stone and rubble that had been the keep surged upward. Rocks were pitched aside.

A whirlwind of fire swirled above the gaping hole, and once again darkness saturated the sky, more complete and blacker than ever before.

Binnesman shouted in terror. Myrrima could think of nothing to do but follow the counsel of the Earth King. She raced under the portcullis and put her back to the wall, quivering.

Winds rose and screamed through the portcullis, battered the castle. The stone wall at Myrrima's back shuddered under an icy blast, but Binnesman stood in that storm, and drew runes on the ground with the tip of his staff, shouting words that the gale tore from his lips and carried away.

Yet Myrrima saw something amazing: Though the wind blasted around him, it did not touch him. It did not so much as lift the hem of his robe.

Lightning streaked from the darkness and blasted at his feet, but Binnesman's spells of protection were powerful enough that no bolt could pierce him. Green light glowed steadily from his staff, and Binnesman gazed on in determination.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out the opal. It suddenly blazed in his hand.

Myrrima thought at first that it was sending out light, as it had done in the darkened storage room of the Boar's h.o.a.rd. But she realized that something else was happening instead. The stone now drew light. The tornado of fire that the Darkling Glory pulled from the skies suddenly twisted, and now that light funneled into the stone. Light began to fill it as water fills a sponge.

The gloom softened, and the raging storm that ripped through the castle suddenly weakened, becoming only a stiff gale. The shadows lifted, so that the sky above seemed only to be as dark as evening.

From the deeper shadows surrounding the ruins of the King's Keep, Myrrima heard laughter--a deep, inhuman voice.

"You think to steal my power, little wizard? Your stone is too small to hold it all!"

Myrrima trembled: She clutched her bow rightly. Her arrow had come loose, and she nocked it.

She drew the arrow now to her ear, felt the sting on her fingers where practice over the past two days had rubbed the skin off.

She took a deep breath and ran to the mouth of the portcullis, wheeled.

Ahead in the deep shadows stood the Darkling Glory. He was eight or nine feet tall, looked like a tall man covered with dark hair. Vast wings rose at his back. Cold white flames licked his naked flesh, and he regarded her with contempt.

She did not try for a fancy shot. The brute stood roughly sixty yards away, and she could not hope to hit anything other than his midsection, if even that.

She took quick aim and loosed an arrow. The wind around her suddenly howled as the Darkling Glory swept his wings.

A bolt of lightning surged from the monster's palm and crashed into the stone archway above her head. Splinters of rock rained down upon her neck.

Her arrow flew high of its mark, and looked as if it would race above the monster's head.

But the Darkling Glory's wings had lifted him afoot in the air, and the arrow struck home, piercing the creature's shoulder.

The Darkling Glory's head snapped back, and he convulsed. He fell to the cobblestone pavement of the bailey and writhed, wounded, trying to cover himself with his wings, trying to shelter himself. He screamed in pain and terror.

Myrrima grabbed another arrow and raced toward him, the blood l.u.s.t pounding in her veins. Light still funneled from the skies into Binnesman's opal.

Now Gaborn's shout roared in her mind, and his command came with such force that she could not fight it. "Strike! Strike now!"

Myrrima raced to the Darkling Glory. The creature hissed at her like a snake. He peered up at her in horror and contempt from behind the folds of a wing.

She drew her shaft full and let it fly, taking the beast in the eye.

Full daylight carne streaming from the skies, and Myrrima stood over the Darkling Glory, panting.

She suddenly realized that she was screaming at the thing, had been shouting all along: "d.a.m.n you, foul thing! d.a.m.n you, I'll kill you!"

She raced up and began to kick his still-convulsing form. The monster seemed to reach for her with a hairy three-fingered claw. She danced back a step and found herself still yelling, crying out in terror and relief and pain.

"Get back!" Binnesman shouted. He raced up behind her At that moment, the Darkling Glory arched his back, spread his wings wide, and raised a claw to the air. A sound came from his mouth, a dry hissing rattle, nothing at all like the death rattle of an animal.

A black wind tore from his throat, raising an inhuman cry. The force of that magnificent wind drove the beast hard into the ground, and Myrrima struggled to backpedal, to lift her legs and flee.