The War Of The Black Tower (Book 3) (27 page)

Finally the procession crested a
low rise and beheld Thiersgald laid out before them. By then it was night, and
the lights of the city twinkled like a sea of stars on a rolling velvet plain. Home
to a quarter of a million people, Thiersgald was the capital of Fiarth. Giorn
and his people traveled along the brick-paved road and came upon the great South Gate of the city
with its twin guard towers standing to either side. The soldiers stationed
there verified Giorn’s identity before admitting him, as was customary after
nightfall, and when they learned of
Rian’s
passing
issued word for the mourning bells to be rung. Presently their tolling echoed
throughout the city.

Side by side, Giorn and Meril rode
down the cobbled streets, meeting the eyes of the people that lined the road. Some
threw flowers or coins.

The white-
spired
Temple of Illiana blazed with a thousand candles,
and the slender priestesses in their white robes lined up before the
elaborately-wrought edifice to pay their respects. The High Priestess stepped
forward, directly in Giorn’s path. He drew to a halt and bowed his head. She
was a beautiful woman, tall and willowy and fair, with black curly hair and
proud blue eyes, now saddened.

“Lady Niara,” he said.

“Lord Giorn.” She dropped her veil
of formality and stepped closer. Her voice lowered. “I’m so sorry. The barony
is a lesser place without
Rian
.” She went to the
body, said a soft prayer that Giorn could not hear, and stroked
Rian’s
hair. Then, serenely, seeming much like an angel
herself, she bent over and kissed him on first one eye, then the other. Giorn
fancied that he saw
Rian’s
eyelids glow for a moment
after each kiss.

Lady Niara looked upon the shaggy,
bloody mound of the beast, made a sign to ward off evil,
then
turned back to Giorn. “Shall my ladies and I take
Rian
now and prepare his body for entombment?”

Giorn shook his head. “Father will
want to see him first.”

“Of course.”

“But have one of your priestesses
seek me at the Castle later, and we’ll make arrangements.”

“As you wish.”

She let her eyes linger on his a
moment, questioning. He held her gaze steadily but made no further move.
Not here
, he thought.
Not now
.

She bowed and withdrew. Giorn led
on.

When they were some distance away,
Raugst said, with some awe in his voice, “She was lovely.”

Giorn turned to regard him. Raugst
wore a strange expression.

“Yes,” Giorn said. That was all. He
hadn’t the heart to say anything further. The funeral bells echoed loudly in
his ears.

The procession passed through the
outer city and then through the gates of the inner wall, the original wall of
Thiersgald, built long ago before the city had expanded to its present girth. Here
the road was lined by colonnades and great palaces of veined white marble, and
mansions of gold brick and red granite reared in the distance. The procession
passed over the gurgling river, through a great courtyard dominated by a tiered
fountain, then past the massive golden dome of the Library, where so much
irreplaceable knowledge had been gathered over the years.

Father was waiting for them at the
wide stairs that led up to Wesrain
Castle. A tall, thin man,
with a likewise thin mustache and beard, and black pouches under his pale blue
eyes, he sometimes gave the impression of being lofty and aloof, but he was
very low now, and his servants stood anxiously nearby as if ready to catch him
should he fall.

Seeing his father’s grief saddened
Giorn all over again, and as he met his father’s gaze they shared a heavy
sorrow. They would miss
Rian
sorely.

Climbing down from his horse, Giorn
embraced Lord Harin Wesrain, then stepped back as Meril did the same. Raugst
stayed out of the way while the Baron bent over his fallen son and wept. Giorn
gave his father some time, then, in a soft voice, said, “We would’ve lost Meril
too
were
it not for our new companion, Raugst the
woodsman.” He indicated Raugst, who bowed his head.

The Baron scrutinized the woodsman
for some time, his eyes flinty. Raugst said nothing, which Giorn appreciated. At
last the Baron sighed, kissed
Rian’s
forehead, and in
dull tones he said, “Come. I have no appetite, but when I heard you were
arriving
I had dinner prepared. Let’s not waste it. We will
eat, we will drink, we will toast
Rian’s
bravery, and
the story shall be told.” He gestured to Raugst. “And you will be our guest of
honor.”

The dinner that night was somber indeed, and the candles
that stood in a row upon the ancient, darkly-stained dining table were black
and dripping. Even the roast venison with the savory brown gravy and the
cabbages and potatoes that Giorn normally loved tasted like ash in his mouth.

His sister Fria had taken
Rian’s
death badly, and she wept quietly and did not eat. She
was a pretty young woman, with chestnut hair and a small straight nose, but she
had one bad eye that rolled around in its socket, a condition that disturbed
her few suitors greatly.

“By a
hog
,” she said through clenched teeth. Her small fists were white
and trembling. “How could one so bright and fair be brought low by a
hog
?” The notion seemed to offend her on
some deep level, and she did not bother wiping the tears that coursed down her
face.

The Baron merely pushed his food
around, and from time to time he would stare at first Meril, then Raugst, and
seem to sigh. He was a man who spent his days officiating and had little time
for pleasure. Thus he lived through his sons, who were wild and free.
Rian
had been the wildest and the freest, and his carefree
spirit would obviously be missed keenly.

Raugst said little. He’d been given
new clothes and his wounds had been cleaned and dressed, but he still seemed
untamed, a creature of the forest. All these trappings of civilization must
seem foreign to him.

It fell to Giorn to tell the tale
of
Rian’s
death, and he did so with all the energy he
could summon, which was not much. He embellished a few details, making
Rian’s
death sound less random and more truly heroic, as he
thought only fitting. As he told it,
Rian
had
weakened the boar enough, fighting it with his tiny dagger, no less, to allow
Raugst to slay later. To wet his throat for the tale, Giorn drank one glass of
wine after another. By the time he finished, Giorn’s head swam and the
black-stemmed candles seemed like fireflies dancing about the heaving,
shimmering hall. A hammer pounded his temples, and he welcomed it, as it pushed
the grief aside.

Strangely, even though the dining
hall swam, Raugst on his chair remained still and tall, dark and wild, and his
eyes blazed with something Giorn could not place.

And, occasionally, though Giorn
couldn’t be sure, he thought he saw Fria even in her grief steal sidelong
glances at the woodsman.

For a time, Raugst did not seem to notice
these glances, if glances they were, but at last he turned and stared her full
in the eyes for several long moments. Apparently caught, for this time she had
been undeniably looking at him, Fria turned her face away and did not look up
again until the dinner was over.

Grateful, Giorn bid his family good
night and staggered from the room. He wanted to climb his tower, find his bed
and sink into a dreamless sleep, but he had one thing to do first.

He quit the castle through the rear
and shivered suddenly, shocked by the cold night breeze. Blinking, he marched
over to the stables, where the priestess waited beside her white horse. It was
better here, out of the wind, and she smelled of rose and honeysuckle. Giorn
approached her, feeling, as her fingers press into his hand, how warm she was,
almost
hot
.“
I
came,” she
said.

He glanced cautiously around,
seeing no one, not even the stable hands. The place smelled of hay and horse
dung, and the beasts themselves were stamping and snorting in their stalls. Still,
there was no place he’d rather be.

“We’re alone,” Niara assured him.

“Your women can have
Rian
tomorrow,” he said. “Let him stay with his family for
one more night.”

“Yes.
Of course.”
She moved in closer to him. Now their bodies were almost touching. “I’m so
sorry.”

He squeezed her hand tighter. With
her he felt no pain. He breathed deep. “It’s been too long.” He placed a hand
on the small of her back, felt her gasp.

“Yes.” She tilted her face up, her
lips parting.

He bent down . . .

A noise.

Giorn whirled. A stable-boy was
darting in from the cold, huddling his shoulders and rubbing his palms over a
lantern hanging from the wall. He must have come to check on the horses. He
hadn’t seemed to notice Giorn and Niara.

Giorn stepped back. Niara looked
away. Her fingers slipped from his.

“I’ll send some sisters around
tomorrow,” she said.

“Yes.” His voice was choked.

With fluid grace, she swung astride
her mare. Then, looming over him like the moon, she smiled, and her smile was
like the sun. It ignited something inside him, something that roared and
blazed.
Something dangerous.

She spurred her mount and darted
out into the night, the wind whipping her white robe, and then the darkness
swallowed her.

He watched the spot where she’d vanished,
and that roaring thing in him begin to ebb. It was a perilous fire she had
ignited in him. A high priestess of Illiana could not engage in pleasures of
the flesh, not in pious Felgrad, and the man that so tainted her would be
slain, and not slowly. Nobility was no shield.

Giorn checked on the stable boy,
spreading hay for Giorn’s stallion.

“’night,
m’lord
,”
said the boy, glancing at him. Giorn studied that glance tensely. It seemed
idle enough.

“Good night,” he returned.

He turned about and left the warmth
of the stables for the cold outside. The castle reared up black and forbidding
before him, and he imagined Raugst, the wild man, staring out at him through a
window, and he thought of Fria, grief-racked but with eyes wide and adoring,
and suddenly Giorn shivered again, but this time not with the cold.

A rider lit out from Thiersgald that night and traveled
swiftly south, over the Eresine Bridge, through Feslan, finally leaving Felgrad
altogether and coming after many days upon the endless peaks of the Aragst
Mountains. There the rider brought his message to Lord Vrulug in the
wolf-lord’s great fortress of Wegredon.

Vrulug took several slaves and
journeyed through secret passageways, coming deep into the mountain, where the
walls dripped with moisture and thick black columns held up lofty ceilings. Here
was Vrulug’s private temple to the Great One, Gilgaroth,
Lord
of the South.

Vrulug forced the slaves onto the
high black slab that served as Gilgaroth’s altar and slew them, one by one. They
could not resist, such was his power, and he watched as their souls like wisps
of smoke left their bodies and
were
drawn up into the
mouth of the huge wolf-like statue that loomed over the altar. The massive stone
wolf head swallowed the shades, one by one, and fire suddenly blazed from its
eyes, and true smoke curled up from between its fangs.

The fiery eyes fixed on Vrulug, and
the wolf-lord swallowed, bowing.

“It has begun, my Lord.”

END
OF EXCERPT

You can find the rest of Part One
of
The War of the Moonstone
here . .
.

. . .
in
the
US:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GZX6OLU

. . .
in
the UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00GZX6OLU

You can find the concluding volume,
Part Two, here . . .

. . .
in
the US:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IIXU54C

. . .
in
the UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IIXU54C