The Goblin Corps (2 page)

A gleam of triumph in her bright blue eyes, the young warrior raised her slim-bladed sword high, determined to see Havarren’s head cleaved from his body.

It would have gone better for her had she not been quite so focused….

Even as he parried blow after blow from another of duMark’s companions—a heavily built, dark-skinned man with a scraggly goatee and a head as bald as an egg—Falchion interposed himself between the woman and Havarren’s crumpled form. He’d been overwhelmingly tempted to stand back, to focus on his own opponent and let the chips—and swords—fall where they may. But he knew that the Dark Lord valued Havarren’s council, that he would be
perturbed
if the arrogant bastard were allowed to die.

So, since his blade was occupied at the moment, Falchion hauled off and slammed his mailed fist into the young ranger’s face. Blood spurted between his knuckles, and Lidia’s nose disappeared amid a spreading mass of pulped cartilage and bruised flesh. Not dead, perhaps, but quite firmly out of the fight, she collapsed backward in a heap.

The mage hauled himself to his feet, tossing a grudging nod of thanks Falchion’s way. That simple gesture sent new spears of torment shooting through his fractured jaw. A growl deep in his throat, Havarren raised the back of his hand and wiped a smear of blood from the corner of his misshapen mouth—and if any in the room noticed that the blood was some odd shade other than red, or that it congealed too thickly to be normal blood, they assuredly dismissed it as a trick of the dancing, insufficient light.

It would almost, he thought bitterly, have been better to die than to owe his life to that—that imbecile! This was
not
something he could afford to have hanging over him. He needed to repay the debt, and fast!

Hmm. The bald man, dressed in leather leggings and precious little else, was giving the good general no small amount of trouble. His obscenely large axe hadn’t yet penetrated Falchion’s defenses, but a number of thin lines scored the general’s hauberk, and the dark-skinned intruder showed no sign of tiring. With a nonchalant gesture, Havarren sent a stream of iridescent orbs hurtling from his fingertips, balefire summoned from the bowels of hell itself. A brief sizzling sound accompanied the stench of burning flesh, and the dark-skinned man collapsed with a scream, his back charred black by the sorcerous assault.

Falchion couldn’t be bothered even to return in kind Havarren’s own nod of thanks. With barely a sideways glance to acknowledge the aid he’d just received, he stepped toward the hallway, blade raised to meet the next invader.

Arrogant bastard. Should’ve let him die.

The gaunt mage tensed. Another offensive spell danced on the tip of his tongue; his hands glowed with the vile radiance of demon-spawned magics. Desperately he twisted about, seeking the face of the man who had started it all.

Too late. The half-elven interloper had reached the northern wall, his meandering steps having somehow carried him between the various combatants. He stood at arm’s length from the incandescent form of the Dark Lord himself.

The Charnel King of Kirol Syrreth, though absorbed in his own magics, remained well aware of the world around him. His head slowly swiveled to stare directly at Ananias duMark. Within the greater aura of the ancient spell, his unholy glow left a luminescent streak as he moved, not unlike the slithering of an eel beneath the surface of a stagnant pond.

“I grow bored, Ananias.” Morthûl’s voice, distorted by the eldritch whirlwind surrounding him, seemed to come from the deepest corners of the room—as though the walking corpse had been but the mouthpiece of something greater, something darker, that no longer need confine itself to his form. “This spell you see taking shape before you is ancient, far older than you or even I could ever dream. Even at your best, you could never hope to disrupt it. And though you may have fooled the others, I know well that you’re hardly at your best. Havarren’s dragon did you more harm than you let on, did it not? Flee, Ananias duMark. Flee now, and you may yet escape my reach before the night is through.”

It was a pure, unadulterated bluff. Truth be told, Morthûl hadn’t the barest idea what duMark, or any other sorcerer, might or might not be able to do to the ongoing incantation. That worried him—but not so much so as the fact that every iota of his power was tied up in maintaining these most ancient of magics. If that damn half-breed
did
interfere, there wasn’t a bloody thing Morthûl could do to stop him.

But even as the interloper lifted his hands, the Charnel King saw Havarren rising, bolts of cobalt-blue lightning arcing between his fingers, preparing to strike duMark down. The Dark Lord’s rictus grin widened, and he felt the eldritch forces around him surge and dance, as though they, too, celebrated what was to come.

Morthûl’s triumph, his euphoria, were short-lived indeed. At the sight of the half-elf’s sudden smile, he felt his own expression falter.

Ananias duMark released his spell. No great, earthshaking magic was this, no enigmatic ritual from days of yore. Thin streams of pure arcane force, crossbow bolts shaped of light and willpower, sprang from his palm. It was among the simplest of spells, a beginner’s trick, easily mastered by the lowliest apprentice, anger given form. So simple, so weak, it was absolutely useless against the various sorceries and enchantments that protected the Charnel King’s undead form.

But then, it wasn’t
aimed
at the Charnel King. The bolts flew true: straight into the air above the combatants. The Dark Lord’s scream of impotent fury was lost amid the deafening cacophony of the crumbling ceiling.

Slabs of stone toppled to the floor, pulping anything that dared get in their way. Clouds of dust billowed upward from the shattered cobblestones, a raging storm somehow smuggled into the underground chamber. Thunder rocked the Iron Keep’s foundations, echoes blending into echoes until they filled the empty spaces entirely, a physical presence as real as the ponderous rock. The marble altar disintegrated into a fine powder, the magics imbued within it lost as though they had never been. The cauldron, jagged stones already bobbing within its putrid contents, disappeared beneath an enormous chunk of ceiling. The tiny portion of the iron vessel not crushed beyond all recognition was bent so hideously that it would never again hold liquid. The nauseating glow that had permeated the room since the incantation began now faded away, the final moments of a strange and alien sunset.

It seemed as though the torrent of rock might never end. Surely there could be no more stone above their heads! Surely they must have reached the surface by now, and beyond, and still it came. But slowly, ever so gradually, end it did. The stone fell in smaller pieces, in shorter bursts. The impenetrable dust began to disperse, though sight remained a hopeless prospect, as the room’s only torches were long extinguished.

And then the last, straggling portions of the ceiling had fallen, the last of the grit settled. Silence reigned, but for the occasional drip of unseen water.

Until, finally, something stirred.

Like a dog shaking off a light summer shower, Ananias duMark rose to his feet, small chunks of rubble cascading off him—or rather, off of the faintly glowing aura that surrounded him and had prevented him from becoming a permanent resident. Casually brushing the dust from his sleeves, he examined the substantial mountain of debris. Even a creature as overwhelmingly powerful as Morthûl couldn’t conceivably have survived that collapse—not without the same sort of protective spells that had saved duMark himself. And the half-elven mage was quite certain that the king’s godlike powers had been fully invested in the ancient spell. No, odds were good that the terror of a hundred generations was smeared across a hundred square feet of cobblestone.

Then again, this was the Charnel King of Kirol Syrreth and master of the Iron Keep, and “odds” meant precious little. DuMark halted himself halfway through a simple light spell, allowing the inky dark to wash over him. Only then did he once more scour the heaps of stone, searching for the faintest trace of that telltale yellow glow.

“Ananias…Help…”

The half-elf cursed under his breath. He’d completely forgotten…

With a strength born of desperation and fueled by arcane arts, duMark tossed stone after stone across the room, digging toward the source of that plaintive cry. He’d never have gotten so far—never have survived his many clashes with King Morthûl—without his companions, but they could be so bloody
inconvenient
at times.

There! More stone, its jagged edges stained with blood. The sorcerer quickly cleared enough space to see the dark skin beneath the rubble.

“Kuren?” he whispered, scraping away more of the detritus. “Kuren, are you all right?”

“He can’t hear you.” That same whispered voice, and now duMark could just make out a second form lying beneath the insensate warrior.

“Lidia?”

“Yes.” The voice, and the breath behind it, were weak, injured, but alive, thank the Gods! “He—he dragged himself over me as the ceiling began to come down. I—I think he’s alive. That is, I can feel his heartbeat. But he’s bleeding badly, Ananias. His mouth is full of blood, and…”

But the half-elf was only half listening. His hands now glowing with all the magics he had remaining, he ripped the last layers of stone from atop his companions. For just an instant, something snagged his attention, and his head jerked to the side.

But it was only a hand, protruding from between two gargantuan slabs of rock. A hand possessed of long, slender fingers.

The sorcerer, despite his friends’ condition, couldn’t help but grin. Whether or not Morthûl himself was dead, there was at least
one
foe who wouldn’t be causing duMark any more trouble. Momentarily satisfied with that, he turned back to his companions. “There’s a great deal of damage, Lidia. Shattered bones, internal bleeding. Even this far from the epicenter, it’s a miracle he survived this long. Any other human would be dead.”

Any other, but not Kuren Bekay. Even as a child, he had proven exceptionally strong for his size—a natural attribute duMark’s own spells, some years gone by, had magnified tenfold. The man could rip trees up by the roots, and it would take more than a stone hailstorm to put him down.

Probably.

“Let’s get him out of here,” duMark ordered, hefting the bulky soldier as though he were an armful of dirty laundry. A quick glance at Lidia, only now dragging herself to her feet, suggested far more eloquently than words could have done that Kuren was not the only one in need of aid.

DuMark met the woman’s eyes with his own, refusing to look at the ruined mass that was the rest of her face. “Can you walk?”

“I can bloody well walk away from
here,”
she told him, a horribly liquid tone to her voice.

“Good.” The sorcerer glided across the broken, uneven footing. “Erris and Father Thomas are still upstairs, holding off the guards. We’ll see if Thomas can provide a tincture for you, do something about the pain until he has the time to patch the two of you up properly.”

DuMark threw a single, lingering glance behind him. Nothing but tons of stone. Nothing stirred in the rubble. It was finally over.

“And then…we can go home.”

The door slammed shut behind them with a startling sense of finality, rather like the final page of a long and wearying book. And once again, the room was still.

The air shimmered as if observed through a sheen of rippling water. The very fabric of the room
parted
, and slowly, an inch at a time, Vigo Havarren returned to the chamber. At his sudden appearance, a faint illumination spread through the room, as though invisible torches shed their flickering light upon the walls.

The gaunt wizard was coated in dust and grime. Blood, or something that was
almost
blood, seeped from a dozen small wounds, and his jaw still hung crooked on his face. For a brief instant, Havarren simply stood, motionless, lost in concentration. A grating screech, a sudden crack, and his jaw popped roughly back into place. A single grunt was his only concession to the sharp pain that followed.

Gingerly prodding at his chin with the fingertips of his left hand, he knelt beside the right—which he’d deliberately left in the debris—and wished wistfully that it would prove as easy to fix as his jaw. Already, fleshy tendrils had sprouted from the stump where that hand once rested, but it would be weeks before the writhing mass again formed into anything resembling an actual limb.

Standing once more, Havarren scanned the room. A faint gleam of metal shone from the gaps in a small hill of stone, but he ignored it completely. The wizard neither knew, nor cared, if Falchion had survived. No, his concern was for—

The center of the chamber erupted, showering the already-devastated room with a flurry of jagged rock. A volcanic wave of balefire coursed from the floor, the sorcerous flame melting the rubble into so much slag. Havarren only barely levitated himself above the hell-spawned flood before the all-consuming tide could eat his legs out from under him.

A roar emerged from beneath the carpet of liquefying rock, the mingling wails of a thousand damned souls. Bursts of smoke broke through the eldritch flood, filling the room with the choking stench of sulfur. The walls began to glow with unnatural heat, and the gaunt wizard found himself wondering if even the Iron Keep could survive what was happening to its foundations. Tendrils of balefire climbed those walls, slowly metamorphosing into the questing tentacles of
something:
something unknown, unseen in all the worst nightmares of mankind. Almost tenderly they brushed the sides of the chamber, the touch of a lover—or perhaps the first inquisitive prods of a prisoner seeking escape.

Arms spread, riding atop the final, cresting wave, he rose. He set his foot down atop the ruined floor, and the balefire parted beneath his tread. Eyes blazing to outshine the arcane flame below, the Charnel King of Kirol Syrreth ascended once more from the clutches of damnation.

But duMark’s assault had left its mark. The withered flesh that covered the left side of his body and face was cracked and torn away, leaving gaping windows to bone and muscle beneath. His finery was no longer threadbare, no longer worn: It was nothing but a thin cobweb of dangling threads. Roaches, maggots, and things unidentifiable swarmed across his body, writhing in panic, seeking shelter from the chaos around them. Many fell from him in a great deluge to sink and die in the hellfire below, but an infinite number appeared to take their place.