The Sorcerer's Bane Read online

  The troops did as he bid, kicking stacks of writhing bones and flesh into heaps on the cobbled streets. There, they poured lamp oil upon the mass and set it alight. More scraps were brought in and added to the looming fire. A choking black smoke filled their eyes with tears and burnt their raw throats. Men coughed and spat, but continued the grim work.

  A messenger came running from the palace, and Gruum grabbed his tunic. “What is it, man?”

  “The palace has fallen,” the man panted. His face and body were black with soot. His shirt had been burnt away. Only the white circles of his eyes could be seen in the night. “The dead have overrun us.”

  Gruum looked to the palace. Flames licked within the closed windows. He released the messenger and moved toward the central stair.

  Therian stood there, having driven back the marching dead to the threshold. As each came up, he gutted it and tossed it back down from whence it had come. Each enemy he cast down tumbled into more of the throng that struggled upward. They snapped their bones and dented their skulls, but still heaved themselves back up.

  “Milord!” Gruum shouted.

  Therian flicked his eyes to him, then back to the throng of wild dead.

  “The palace, milord!” Gruum shouted. “It is burning!”

  Therian craned his neck. “We must seal this entrance then,” he said. The King called for help, in a voice that was too loud to come from any human throat. His words were instantly obeyed. Huge barrels of oil were rolled forward and down the central stair into the very faces of the marching dead. Torches were cast down after the barrels, which split open as they bounced and fell into the dark. Light and heat flared soon after, brighter than the Sun in the black night.

  Everyone shuffled back as the heat grew intense. Gruum threw up his arms to shield his face. “Will it stop them, milord?”

  “The stair is supported by thick timbers,” the King replied. “When they burn through and buckle, the stair will fall.”

  “Will the town center not burn as well?”

  Therian nodded. “Quite possibly, but it is more important that we save the palace. Come with me, Gruum.”

  Gruum followed the King at a run toward the palace. He could see flames in seven windows now. Curtains and tapestries curled at its touch. Ancient stained glass windows cracked and let in fresh air, causing the flames to surge out through the newly opened aperture. Tongues of flickering orange licked the sides of two of the towers hungrily.

  “What can we save?” Gruum asked, panting as he ran to keep up. “The gallery? The treasury?”

  “Art comes in an infinite supply. Melted gold can be reminted. But the library—there are texts there that are irreplaceable.”

  With a full company of troops behind them, many dressed in ancient battle armor, Therian and Gruum burst through the lower entrance. They made their way to the back of the palace where the library sat. The long marble corridors rang with pounding boots. Smoke filled the halls with a gray haze that choked everyone except the King. He seemed to breathe rolling palls of smoke as if it were nothing more than morning mist.

  There, amongst the shelves crowded with scrolls and spidery texts, they met a familiar figure. She stood atop a table full of wax-splattered diagrams. Gruum recognized the designs—it hurt his mind to look at them. They were Therian’s latest works. Nadja stood among these parchments, her feet buried in paper. In her hand she held a lamp that guttered, so full was the vessel with oil.

  “There you are, father!” Nadja said. “I had thought you would never come to save your beloved books.”

  Therian slowed to a walk. He approached her cautiously. As he did, she carefully poured the oil over the papers at her feet. Gruum stared at the girl, who was fully grown now into a young woman. She was shapely, with high cheekbones, long black hair and a nose that turned up slightly at the tip. Had she been a tavern wench, Gruum knew he would have tried to bed her. The thought made him feel slightly queasy.

  “Why do you distract me on this day of Corium’s doom, daughter?” the King asked.

  “You speak to me?” she asked. “I had thought your tongue was cut from your head.”

  “Ah, a tantrum. I’ve read of such things. I had not thought a Hyborean princess would need discipline in these matters, but I was clearly wrong.”

  Nadja’s lips compressed into a thin, tight line. “I will burn your books, father, as I have burnt the rest of Corium this day.”

  Therian’s chin lifted into the air. He looked over his nose at his daughter. His hands slid to his hips. “You make me curious, daughter. Are you insane or spiteful?”

  “This lapdog of yours killed mother—but you ordered it done.”

  “Untrue. The Queen was dead long before we came to find you. We stopped her corpse from operating after death. We ended an abomination.”

  “Am I a dead thing as well? Is it time to end me?”

  Therian cocked his head thoughtfully. “I’m not quite sure of my answer to either question.”

  Nadja looked troubled. “What am I, father? Am I Hyborean? Am I human?”

  “I suppose you have a right to know what you are,” Therian said. “You are my child—but you are only half as human as I am. If it will stop this childish vengeance against Gruum and I, know this: your true mother is Anduin the Black. You quickened within the Queen’s womb, but that is always how it is with the children of Dragons. They cannot come into our world directly. The Dragons can only seed this place with their essence.”

  Nadja’s eyes widened in shock. Gruum could see this was not the answer she had expected.

  “You made me?” she asked. “I am your monster?”

  Therian shrugged. “You are my offspring, regardless of other—details.”

  Nadja stared at him. On her face, a wild rage grew.

  “Sire, I—” Gruum began, but he got no further.

  The girl cast the flaming lamp down at her feet. The papers over which Therian had labored for months flared. Then she jumped down from the table.

  Therian’s eyes were, if anything, wilder with rage than his daughter’s. He sprang up toward her. She leapt away and ran among the shelves, giggling. Dribbling fire as she went, books, scrolls and feathered quills curled and blossomed with yellow tongues of flame.

  Gruum ran after the two of them. Would the King take off her head when he caught her? Could she be caught by a mortal man? He hastened to follow, not knowing what he would see when he ran between two towering stacks of books. Flames rippled up both of the shelves, eating texts that were thirty centuries old or more.

  Therian stood there, looking downward. Nadja was nowhere in sight. There was a hole at his feet. It was round, black, and seemed bottomless.

  Therian glanced at Gruum, and then stepped into the void. He vanished, sucked within as if sliding down the throat of a great beast.

  “No, milord!” cried Gruum, but the King was gone. Gruum stood, panting over the hole. His breath hissed between his teeth. His eyes stung with smoke and his throat was raw from it. Around him, the recorded knowledge of countless sorcerers, historians and philosophers burned merrily. He could hear the guardsmen in the main section of the library, fighting the flames with their cloaks.

  Gruum stepped into the round hole at his feet. He did it without thinking, for he knew that if he pondered this mad action for even a moment, he would fear to do it.

  The void consumed him instantly.

  -15-

  Gruum was falling. He fell into the unknown, into an abyss of indescribable depth. He had felt this sensation far too many times before.

  For a few moments, there was…nothing. No light, no sound—no air. He opened his mouth, but no scream issued from his throat that he could detect, not even a muffled vibration inside his own head. The air was greedily sucked from his lungs by the void as he fell through it.

  Existence returned moments later without warning. He fell to the ground in shock, although he could have stood upon it, had he been ready for this transition. Har
d surfaces slammed into his backside and he climbed up into a crouch, gasping for air. He had released it all in the void between the library and this place—wherever he was.

  He looked up to see Therian staring down at him. “You should not have come,” the King said.

  “I would not abandon you.”

  Therian nodded. He made a gesture, and Gruum’s eyes followed it. Therian pointed to the marble mausoleum where the priestesses of the Black Order had toiled so long and hard, building their construct in secret.

  Gruum stared at the cursed place. His lord walked toward it, and Gruum hurried after. “Why is this place no longer teeming with dead, sire?”

  “Because they now walk the streets of Corium above us.”

  Gruum saw something new as he approached the shrine of the Black Order. Something had spilled over from the marble slab roof of the mausoleum. A huge protuberance, formed of white bone and gray stretches of…skin?

  “What is that thing, milord?”

  “That is the Bane.”

  “Whose bane?”

  “That remains to be seen. Come.”

  Gruum got to his feet and staggered after the King. The bustling activity of the shrine had ceased. He saw no one living. Nothing moved, not even the gathering carts which sat here and there, their green lanterns glowing. They soon found the priestesses, however. They lay in slack heaps all around the marble floors. A dozen, a score—possibly a hundred of them. All had been drained of their essence.

  “Who’s done this, milord?” Gruum asked. “Vosh, or—Nadja?”

  Therian shrugged. “I’m not certain.”

  “It was both of us,” said a voice behind them.

  Gruum whirled. There stood Nadja, having appeared behind a pillar of pink marble. Gruum’s hand went to his saber, though he doubted he could draw and strike with it before she vanished again, if that was her wish.

  Therian stooped and picked up a slack mass of flesh. This one had white hair, and looked more wrinkled than most. Therian spread the face out, as one might hold up a tunic in a tailoring shop and unfold it to examine the quality of the cloth. Gruum thought he recognized the face; it was that of the crone he had met when he had first come here.

  “I know this one,” the King said. “She is Isabella, the High Mother. Is she not?”

  “I believe so, father,” Nadja said. She stood warily, half her body visible, the other half behind the pillar from which she had appeared.

  “The priestesses were halted in their labor then? They were not able to complete their construct?”

  “It was a close thing, but no, they did not finish.”

  “A pity,” said Therian. “I could have used the aid of the Bane that sleeps above us. I would request an accounting, daughter of Corium. What have you done here and why?”

  “Another is coming who you must meet,” Nadja said. “After that, everything will be made clear.”

  Therian inclined his head.

  Gruum, who had been walking quietly among the pillars on a circuitous route behind the princess, stepped now into view. He was close to her, almost near enough to strike or grasp her.

  Nadja flashed him a bemused smile and waved her fingers at him—as she had done months ago, when she had been but a playful child. She fell silently into the floor then, where a black hole appeared at her feet.

  “Should I follow her, milord?” Gruum asked, hoping the answer would be negative. He stared into the void, thinking of the cold nothingness inside.

  “We shall hold here, awaiting the other she spoke of,” Therian said.

  “This seems to me to be an obvious trap.”

  “Your instincts are always sharp, Gruum.”

  They did not have long to wait. A minute or so later a familiar voice boomed, invading their minds. “King of this land!” shouted Vosh. “I would have words with you.”

  “Come here and have them, then,” Therian said in return.

  Thunderous clacking sounds came to their ears. Gruum peeked out of the mausoleum into the dimly lit Necropolis. Something moved there—was that a pillar? But no, it was not as large as that. It was instead the size and thickness of a tree trunk. Two tree trunks, Gruum corrected himself. The grayish trunks moved rhythmically, approaching the mausoleum.

  Vosh, over twenty feet tall, marched up to the marble structure and bent down. His swollen skull, fat with the souls of a hundred priestesses, leered in between the columns. Gruum marveled at the skull which was a yard in diameter. Each rotted tooth was as big as a man’s hand. Gruum felt like a rat in a trap.

  “Come out! Or must I reach inside and crush you?”

  Therian and Gruum backed away as a huge hand of bone scraped and rattled. It swept in between the columns, groping for them. Therian slashed out with Seeker, but the blade could only chip at the thick bone.

  “What will we do, milord?” Gruum asked in a whisper.

  “Circle around outside, I will keep him busy here. See what might be done.”

  Gruum slipped away between the crowded columns and out into the Necropolis. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and looked up. It was the huge Bane of gray skin and assembled bone on top of the slab above. Like the foot of a man who sleeps on too short a mattress, the shape that hung over the edge of the roof overhead had shifted. Had the Bane twitched? Gruum shuddered at the thought. One dead giant hunting him was quite enough.

  “Ah-ha!” Vosh roared triumphantly. He withdrew his fist of bone. In his grasp, he had Therian, pinched by the waist.

  Gruum stepped closer, but his master was a dozen feet in the air. He knew he could do nothing, but he had to try.

  “What part shall I pluck from your master first, tiny being?” asked Vosh, turning toward Gruum.

  Gruum gave up on trying to sneak behind the monster. “No part, let him—” he began.

  “I shall choose then,” Vosh boomed, “let it be this arm that cuts at me with such tenacity.”

  “No! I will choose,” said Gruum, “pull out his hair first.”

  The huge skull tilted thoughtfully, then nodded. “An excellent suggestion. Why not maximize the experience?”

  Two tips of bone, a forefinger and a thumb, pinched together upon the King’s scalp. To his credit, Therian did not screech, but he did hiss audibly. A clump of bleeding hair came free. Vosh rubbed his finger tips together. The hair floated down to the stones of the Necropolis. Chuckling, he plucked free another wad of hair. A noticeable bald patch had appeared. Gruum was reminded of a child plucking petals from a spring daisy.

  There was a sound. A grating noise, like the movement of stone against stone. Gruum looked up and saw the Bane’s foot—if that’s truly what it was—had shifted.

  Vosh plucked at Therian’s hair twice more. Blood ran down the King’s face, which was a rictus of pain and hate.

  “I tire of this sport,” Vosh complained. “He’s not even screaming yet. I will have a foot next.”

  “Look lich,” cried Gruum, “the Bane stirs!”

  The great skull snapped around. The black, empty sockets seemed to study the thing that rested atop the slab. “Impossible,” he said.

  But the Bane’s foot twitched again, and a great scratching sound arose. Gruum watched as a second foot slid into place beside the first. Could the sleeping Bane have awakened?

  “Let me down lich,” Therian said. “Run, or the Bane will destroy you.”

  “I rule here in Corium now, puppet,” Vosh said. “I will master the Bane. It will make a welcome addition to my Kingdom. No one will dare argue about the new arrangements with such a construct behind me.”

  Vosh took a step toward the thing on the slab. What happened then caused Gruum’s heart to flutter in terror.

  A huge hand, fully as big as Vosh’s swollen skull, lashed out from the top of the slab. Gruum watched as the gray-skinned hand gripped Vosh’s neck vertebrae. The hand shook the skeleton, making a hundred bones rattle and shift in their sockets. A weird warbling howl sounded. Gruum knew it wasn’t
the voice of the lich, so it must be the cry of the awakened Bane.

  Vosh threw Therian behind him. Gruum saw his King tumble over the stones like a discarded toy. The lich reached up with both his bone hands to clasped the wrist that held his neck. Gruum hoped the Bane would win the struggle. Vosh could not be choked, but perhaps his spine could be snapped.

  Gruum ran to where his King lay gasping upon the stones. “The Bane awakens, sire!” Gruum said, helping Therian to his feet. “What shall we do?”

  “We must aid the Bane,” Therian said. He struggled to rise, but his injuries slowed him. Blood filled his mouth and stained each tooth with a circle of red.

  Vosh spoke words then, before they could do more than stand. The words were nothing that Gruum had heard before. They dug into his mind and ripped at it, causing him to clap his hands to his head and scream. The words still came to him, each terrible syllable lancing Gruum’s mind. The Dragon Speech could not be stopped.

  “What spell does he voice?” Gruum cried, trying to help Therian up again. His master had fallen when Gruum had let go of his elbow.

  “We must run,” Therian said.

  Gruum looked at his master, and saw in the King’s eyes something he could not recall having ever seen before: fear.

  -16-

  Gruum lifted half Therian’s body. The other half limped upon the right foot. Gruum believed the left foot was broken, but there was nothing to be done about it now. The King let the left drag, skittering over the stones. The two men hobbled and staggered over the uneven surfaces. Gruum did not know what it was he fled from, but he knew if Therian feared it, fleeing was the only option for sane men.

  They had crossed perhaps a score of steps before the dreadful spell reached its conclusion. A brilliant light filled the Necropolis. It was the light of an elder sun, a red-orange flare that grew and grew in power. A roaring sound followed, and a hot wind.

  Gruum could not contain his curiosity. Shoulders hunching against the heat that blew against his back, eyes squinting against the red glare, he turned his head and glanced back.