The Sorcerer's Bane (8 page)
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.
He could see the Bane now, half-risen from the top of the slab where the Black Priestesses had labored so long to build it from dead scraps. The thing was man-shaped, but clearly was no man. Diamonds the size of skulls formed its eyes. It appeared to have no flesh, but was built of a network of assembled bone and sinew. This framework had been covered over by dead skin from the backs of a thousand corpses.
The Bane’s upper body was awash in flame. Vosh had summoned Yserth’s Breath. He had set the Bane alight. Burning hands still clung to the lich’s neck, however, refusing to let go.
The Bane’s mouth sagged open. A great howl was released, a sound that split the ears and tore at the soul. It was the agony of a thousand burning beings loosed all at once.
The Bane tried to stand up, but its head was so high it struck the ceiling. This seemed to enrage and energize it all the more. Still holding Vosh by the neck, as a drunken man might hold a small child, the Bane blindly grasped one of the lich’s arms. The arm was removed with a loud click and hurled away to crash in a smoldering heap at the foot of a pillar.
Gruum turned back to the matter at hand. He focused on putting as much distance between the two struggling titans and himself as possible, dragging Therian with him as he went.
“Here,” Therian said, gasping, “pause behind this pillar, I must put my leg back into its socket.”
Gruum did as the King wished, easing Therian down with his back against moldering stone. They were far enough, he judged, that even if Vosh released the Dragon’s Breath again, it could not reach them.
Gruum could not assuage his curiosity, however. He heard the two titans struggling, and he crept to the edge of the pillar they hid behind. He peeped around the pillar with a single, wide eye.
Vosh was in pieces. His limbs were off, each lying in a different spot. His skull was twisted off next, as Gruum watched. Gruum felt a grin expand upon his face.
The Bane was engulfed in flame, and the flames did not die down. The monster dropped the final pieces of Vosh, losing interest. It tried to stand again, and was again baffled by the roof above. With a roar of frustration that rent the air, the monster reached up with flaming hands and forced them through the stone above. Chunks of masonry showered it. The Bane stood taller, and then taller still. Tearing its way into the layers of brick and mortar, the mausoleum that had given it birth was buried in debris and roiling dust.
The monster’s efforts finally came to fruition. A great section of the ceiling collapsed. A massive rush of stone pelted the Bane, which thrashed and smoldered. Gruum watched with alarm as whole houses fell, possibly with hapless citizens of Corium trapped inside. He could only imagine their horror as the earth beneath their homes vanished and they fell, only to find the burning Bane waiting for them in their final moments.
The Bane sank down at last, still burning and thrashing. The stink of dead, burnt flesh was unbearable.
Sunlight fell down into the hole that had been opened to the streets above. Pale, gray light that came in shafts through the dust, smoke and acrid vapors.
When Necropolis fell still again, Gruum dared to stand fully and step around the pillar. Dirt still sifted and showered the place. Broken bricks were scattered everywhere. Shouts could be heard coming down from the streets above.
“Tell me your thoughts, Gruum,” Nadja said beside him.
Gruum did not startle or whirl around. He was growing accustomed to the princess’ ways. His nerves were so frayed, he could not be frightened now. He was drained of all feeling.
“So much destruction and death,” Gruum said. “What part did you play in this last disaster, little girl?”
“I aided Vosh to invade this place, and I aided the Bane in destroying him.”
“Why would you help Vosh, then seek his destruction?”
“To punish him,” Nadja said. “I would have thought this was self-evident. The only thing Vosh loved was himself. I have thus taken his beloved from him, as I did for both you and my father.”
“But...such treachery,” said Gruum. He was aghast to learn what a viper he had held close to his chest for long months.
Nadja shrugged. The gesture immediately reminded Gruum of her father.
“I sought vengeance, not treachery,” Nadja said. “Vosh enslaved my mother. I was born into his cold, fleshless hands. I have merely brought matters into balance with all three of you.”
Therian staggered around the pillar and looked at both of them. “Nadja, I have need of your mastery of void magic.”
“State your need, father,” she said.
“Vosh was severed into nine pieces, at my last counting. I require you to create nine holes to other places—preferably other worlds. You will cast one piece of the lich into each hole.”
“Will I then be forgiven?” she asked.
“Not fully, but you will be allowed to reside in what’s left of our palace. Forgiveness can’t come until you help rebuild what you have damaged.”
Nadja nodded to her father. “I accept this mission. Vosh will be looking for his parts long after the Sun goes out forever.”
Gruum watched her walk away toward the clouds of dust and mounds of shattered masonry. “Milord,” he hissed when she was out of earshot, “we cannot take the princess back into the burning palace as if nothing has occurred. How can we trust her?”
“I trust her fully,” Therian said. “She is predictable in the extreme—if one fully understands her motivations. She has vented her rage on everyone who injured her mother. We have nothing to fear as long as we do not cross her again.”
“But she has destroyed half the city!”
Therian nodded coldly. “You forget she is of the royal lineage. Although I’m willing to acknowledge my family bears certain responsibilities of stewardship, Corium exists for our benefit. Now, escort the princess and locate each appreciable segment of Vosh. He will have shrunken now. His great spells will have diminished him.”
“What of the army of dead in the streets?”
“They will be no more, now that their master has fallen and his spell has been broken.”
Gruum gazed after Nadja with narrowed eyes. He thought the shadow-creature that lived in Therian’s pouch was more faithful and considerate. But it was not his place to argue with the will of the King.
“As you will, sire,” he said.
End of Hyborean Dragons, Book #5
The Dragon Wicked
(Hyborean Dragons #6)
by
B. V. Larson
-1-
With Vosh’s power broken and his separated parts no longer existent upon this world, Hyborea knew a few months of relative peace. The people were saddened by their losses and the destruction of fully a third of Corium, but they had fresh hope. The summer months, fleeting though they were, proved fruitful. The southern kingdoms fell to bickering amongst themselves, forgetting about their dreams of reviving the Solerov Empire. Vosh’s spell over their minds faded, and soon they gave up their hates and lusts for Corium and instead began to trade with her. Fresh fruit, sweet wines and a hundred other luxuries were brought to the docks and traded for bright silver from Hyborea’s infamously deep mines.
Hale and full of food again, if not good cheer, the people set to work rebuilding. By midsummer, winter loomed close in their minds, and they knew their city had to be prepared for another long hibernation. They rebuilt the burnt sections of the palace. They replaced the great gates with fresh timbers from the mountains. Longest and most difficult of all, they patched the gaping hole in the central square that let sunlight down into the Necropolis. It would not do to allow the light to burn their ancestors, who now slumbered peacefully again.
Overriding the quiet urgings of Gruum, the King did not disband either of the two temples of Corium. Therian considered instituting sweeping changes in the nation’s religious Orders, but his councilors begged him not to, pointing out that the people had suffered so greatly already. As most of them had perished anyway, he did not punish the Black Order for having lost control of the Bane—nor did he persecute the Red Order for having plotted with Vosh to stop those of the Black from building it. He did admonish both Orders to bury their centuries-old rivalry and return to the tradition of respectful tolerance…a tradition that had recently been abandoned by all sides.
The King
did
act in the matter of the walking dead, however. He ordered that each fresh body that was laid down be permanently disabled, so that if it should awaken some day in the distant future, it would not be able to cause great harm. It was decreed that every corpse must have a spike of silver shot home at the base of the skull. The spike, driven completely through the back of the head to a point just between the eyes would, by alchemical principle, prevent the dead from rising. The injury would be almost unnoticeable to the grieving relatives, and it would not cause the body to decay. But they could no longer be used to walk like puppets for future necromancers.
Some doubters, Gruum among them, pointed out that while such precautions were well and good, an enterprising enemy need only remove the spikes. His unwelcome mutterings were not heeded, and the problem was publicly declared solved, to choruses of wild cheering from the surviving citizenry.
The day after Therian changed the laws of the land, Gruum and Therian stood in the atrium overlooking the freshly rebuilt town square. The citizens of Corium labored below and the Sun shined with relative warmth overhead.
“Gruum,” the King called. He stepped away from the window.
Frowning, Gruum came close. “Yes, milord?”
“I take it you still do not approve of my decrees.”
“It’s not my place, sire, but—”
“Exactly,” Therian interrupted. “It is not your place.”
Gruum bowed his head, leaving his chin to rest upon his chest. He did this to look contrite and also to hide his grimace.
Therian stepped back to the window where he could watch the people mill upon the square. “They look happy out there. Too bad it will be such a short-lived time of cheer.”
“What is amiss?” Gruum asked.
“Winter will soon return.”
“But it is midsummer, milord.”
“According to our auguries, this warmth will soon pass, and it will not return.”
“Never?”
“Never. The ice will form a skirt around the isle of Hyborea as usual, but this year it shall deepen, and never shall it thaw.”
Gruum came to stand beside the King. He did not want passersby to overhear this talk. “Could the auguries be wrong, sire?” he asked in a whisper.
Therian gave him a scathing glance. “The priestesses are rarely wrong when they use human entrails. The last of the Kem pirates we captured gave their lives to confirm the prophecy. Winter will be early and harsh—and for Hyborea, it shall be everlasting.”
“But we have done so much,” Gruum said, aghast. “How can we have worked so hard and failed so badly?”
Therian turned to him in surprise. “I did not say we had failed. We have not yet tried to rekindle the Sun. All our efforts thus far have been a quest for power.”
“What shall be our next move?”
Therian went back to watching the people in the square. Gruum looked out with him. It was cool today, but not cold. No one wore furs. Here and there, exposed skin could be seen. Such frivolities were soon to be forgotten. The thought made Gruum shudder.
“I’m considering a journey,” Therian said.
Gruum nodded, seeing the wisdom in the King’s plan immediately. If the Kingdom were to be encrusted in ice that would never thaw, the time to get out was now, before they were trapped in a frozen tomb.
“Shall I order a ship prepared, milord?” Gruum asked quietly.
“A ship? Certainly not. We’ll be traveling on foot this time.”
Gruum stared. Where could they possibly go?
END Excerpt
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The Dragon Wicked
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HYBOREAN DRAGONS
To Dream with the Dragons
The Dragon-Child
Of Shadows and Dragons
The Swords of Corium
The Sorcerer’s Bane
The Dragon Wicked
HAVEN SERIES
Amber Magic
Sky Magic
Shadow Magic
Dragon Magic
Blood Magic
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Swarm
Extinction
Mech
Mech 2
Shifting
Velocity
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