Wrath of Lions (82 page)

Patrick chuckled as he wiped away his tears. “Wouldn’t that be my
mother’s
failure? She was the one who made him, after all.”

At those words, Ashhur grimaced.

“I feel your mother has had other, far greater failures.”

“What would those be?”

“Not now, my child. I will explain after I do what must be done.”

“Which is?”

The deity gently lifted Patrick off his lap, placing him down on his feet beside him. Ashhur then rose to his full height and leaned over the low partition. Patrick did the same, and when he saw a gathering of massive grayhorns foraging on the grasses beyond the lower outer wall, his heart nearly stopped in surprise. There had to be at least a thousand of them down there, perhaps the entire population in Dezrel. It was then he realized that their hornlike calls had ceased.

“So many…they’re silent,” he said. “Why?”

“They are connected with the land. They know what is to come.”

“Which is?”

Ashhur offered him a sad smile, then knelt down and held his hands out before him, hovering over the wall. He closed his eyes, though Patrick could see their glow intensify beneath the lids.

“From the flesh you gain sustenance,” whispered Ashhur, “and like the plants, from the soil you grow.”

Patrick had heard these lines before, and he made a dash for the walkway that connected the two walls, stumbling on his uneven legs until he crashed into the outer parapet. Wedging his shoulders into one of the notches, he wiggled until he could look down. It had started by then.

He looked on in awe as the grass field outside the walls shriveled and died, watched as the leaves and needles fell from the trees in the nearby forest, the trunks shriveling into brown clumps. The giant bodies of at least a thousand grayhorns shifted as their stumpy rear legs grew, fingers sprouted from their three-toed front legs, their necks extended, their snouts widened, the horns on their noses extended, and the tusks wrapping around the front of their elongated snouts drew back, allowing them to open their mouths wide and scream, which they all did, seemingly at once.

By the time the transformation was finished, a wasteland as dead as the Tinderlands stretched a good mile in every direction. The newly altered grayhorns stood on their powerful two legs, rising upright to a height of twenty feet each. They formed a living wall in front of the one made of stone, standing still, their eyes locked on the horizon.

“By Karak’s hairy ballsack,” Patrick mumbled, his troubles momentarily scuttled to the back of his mind. He moved away from the outer wall, and when he turned, he noticed that Ashhur was slumped over the inner wall’s low barricade. “My Grace!” he shouted, running back up the walkway.

Ashhur groaned and collapsed when Patrick reached him.

“My Grace, why?” he asked. The deity’s skin was now so white it was nearly translucent, and it seemed to take him a great amount of effort to lift his arm and gather Patrick near.

“It was…necessary…” Ashhur said. “Protection, for my people.”

“No, it wasn’t. We need to train the people, wake them up! There are two hundred thousand people within these walls. More than enough to mount a defense of this land.”

Ashhur grabbed him by the front of his tunic, pulling him close and cutting off his words.

“No time,” the god said. He pointed over the short wall with his free hand. “They are here.”

The deity released Patrick, who whirled around and gazed over the now dead valley. To his horror, a black shadow was spreading over the distant hills, swallowing the land like a disease. Ashhur joined him, kneeling now, a bit of color returning to his cheeks.

“Oh shit,” Patrick said.

“Go,” his deity told him. “Ready my children. The hour of dying is upon us.”

C
HAPTER

45

A
fter so much time, so much marching, so much fighting, so many successes and a few setbacks and failures, they had finally arrived.

The army approached from the southeast, spreading out in waves from the Gods’ Road. Karak took the lead, guiding his forces through the wide expanse of grassland nestled between tree-covered hills. Velixar trotted beside his Lord, with Lord Commander Gregorian and the large Quellan, Captain Shen, on their flanks. Behind the foursome, the rest of the army spread out in a wall of steel, leather, and flesh that seemed to stretch for a mile.

They crested the hill, the sound of thousands of marching feet swallowing all else, and Mordeina finally came into view. Velixar gawked at the sight before him. A massive wall encircled what had once been a sprawling landscape of tents, crude huts, and the manse on the hill. A collective gasp rose from the soldiers, though when he turned his head to glance at Gregorian and Shen, he saw no awe in their eyes. It took an individual of might and faith not to look on that wall with fear or uncertainty—even wonder. In all of Dezrel, even Velixar had only seen one walled city: Port Lancaster, in the far
south of Neldar. While that wall had taken many years to construct, this one seemed to have popped up overnight.

“Ashhur has been busy,” Velixar said.

“As I told you he would be,” his god replied.

“I never doubted your wisdom, my Lord. But there is a difference between being told something and seeing it with one’s own eyes.”

“You seem impressed.”

“I am. It is an impressive wall.”

Gregorian chuckled humorlessly. “It is still but a wall, and any wall can be brought down.”

Karak held up his hand, and the massive force came to an abrupt halt, almost in unison. The deity then looked down at Velixar and nodded, before striding toward the walled enclosure. Velixar signaled for Shen and Gregorian to stay put, then urged his horse onward, keeping stride with his god.

When they had put a good five hundred feet between themselves and the waiting force, Karak drew to a stop. They were three-quarters of a mile away from the settlement, yet the wall was still large enough to fill their peripheral vision. It was strange. The grass was brittle and dead beneath his horse’s hooves, and the forests on either side of the valley were filled with leafless trees, their empty branches jutting out like dried bones, snapping with the slightest breeze. Velixar looked toward the wall again and saw a tall figure standing atop it, facing them. Even from such a great distance he could see the twin glow of Ashhur’s yellow eyes, the fluttering of his white robe in the wind. Velixar’s gaze then wandered down, and he noticed giant forms standing before the wall, their color a gray so deep that they almost blended in with the stone.

“My brother greets me,” said Karak.

“Yes, it seems he does. And he has also brought pets. What
are
those things in front of the wall? Why is the land dead?”

“Those are grayhorns, altered in the same way Ashhur altered the wolves that fell upon our camp. The earth looks the way it does because of the way the universe is balanced. One cannot improve on one creation without draining life from another.”

“I see.” Velixar began to feel edgy as he finally saw the giant beasts for what they were—horned monstrosities standing twenty feet tall on two legs. Any one of them could easily wipe out ten or more soldiers without injury, and there looked to be at least a thousand of them. He took a deep breath and clenched his fists. Closing his eyes, he pictured Karak filling him with strength, and the demon’s magic inside him expanded tenfold. He suddenly did not feel so afraid.

“Why are they not attacking?” he muttered.

The deity did not need to respond.

“Karak!” called out a booming voice that rattled Velixar’s bones. “Turn away now. Return to your lands across the river! There has been enough bloodshed, enough meaningless loss of life.”

Karak stood there, silent, looking smugly at Ashhur as the distant god stared down at them.

“We do not have to destroy each other!” continued Ashhur. “We were brought here to live in peace. Turn your soldiers around and return to Neldar! All will be forgotten.”

Still, Karak remained unmoved.

“Will you answer him?” Velixar asked.

The deity shook his head.

“The time for speaking is done,” he said, “and the time for bringing your plan to fruition is upon us.”

“But what are we to do? Charge the wall? Bring a fireball from the sky as you did to the temple in Haven?” Again, the fear of his lost journal resurfaced. “How are you to destroy your brother without assistance?”

“I do not want my brother destroyed,” Karak replied. “I want him shamed. That is why I preserved my power over this long
journey. I will show my strength, and then his children will bow before me. They will acknowledge my superiority while he still breathes. It will defeat him more surely than death ever could.”

“Why bring an army with you if you plan to use your power?”

Karak stared at him disapprovingly. “My children
are
my power, High Prophet. Do you not understand that yet? When the wall tumbles, when our soldiers rush inside, when the blood flows…
then
the citizens of Paradise will understand my
true
might. Then, my brother will bow.”

“And what of the wall?” Velixar asked. “How will we topple it?”

Eyes fixed on the wall, Karak said, “I brought fire from the sky to destroy a temple that blasphemed my name. This wall is an even greater insult, and it will burn in a greater fire.”

With that, Karak raised his hand, pointing two fingers at the sky while chanting long-lost words of magic that not even Velixar recognized. His chanting grew louder and more intense, until his voice overrode all other noise. Velixar looked at the wall, at Ashhur still standing atop it, and somewhere beneath his god’s chanting he heard thousands of voices screaming at once, from both ahead and behind.

The sky lit up as a ball of flame at least three times as large as the one that had impacted the Temple of the Flesh appeared overhead, screaming down as if from the hidden stars. Velixar felt his skin grow hot, felt the hairs on his arms smolder as it careened toward the massive wall.

When it struck, just like in Haven, there was a moment when all sound disappeared. A blinding light came next, spreading out from the wall like a living cloud, followed by an explosion so powerful that Velixar was almost knocked from his horse. He braced against the force of the blast, squeezing his eyes shut and wrapping his arms around his horse’s neck as it whinnied and bucked. The noise rocked his head, threatening to deafen him, and then suddenly there was silence. A hot wind blew the hair back from his face, seeming to last forever.

Velixar opened his eyes. For a moment he thought he was blind, but then the giant white spot blotting out his vision dissipated. He sat up and righted his bucking horse, his head pounding from the deafening din of the blast, and looked to the rear, where the untold thousands of Karak’s Army were picking themselves up off the ground, shaking their heads, holding their ears. To a man they appeared rattled, more like a massive throng of children dressed up as soldiers than an army. Even the elves were shaken. Of them all, only Gregorian appeared to be no worse for the wear. The new Lord Commander straightened himself in his saddle, his good eye narrowed in concentration, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

Swiveling his head around, Velixar examined the wall. A great plume of smoke rose from it, and fire spread across the dead grasses in the foreground. There was a hole in the wall itself, a jagged aperture of crumbling stone that looked to be hundreds of feet wide. He then peered to the sides, where a smattering of the altered grayhorns stumbled about, looking confused. At least half of them took off toward the dead forest.

Mordeina was ripe for the taking.

“It begins now!” Karak bellowed, addressing his army. “Lord Commander, gather the captains and have them lead the first vanguard through the gap! We will be unrelenting! There will be no mercy until the false god of Paradise concedes defeat!”

His injured left arm in a sling, Gregorian organized the first vanguard, gathering his soldiers into a tightly packed group. The three captains—young, hard men wearing full platemail—circled around the throng. Karak then leaned down and whispered into Velixar’s ear.

“Do you feel my power flowing through you, High Prophet?”

Velixar closed his eyes, his every nerve dancing on end.

“I do, my Lord.”

“There are still many beasts remaining. Use the Ekreissar to destroy them. Pave the way for my soldiers to enter the walls unscathed.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

Shouting voices followed as Lord Commander Gregorian whipped the vanguard, two hundred of his most eager men, into a frenzy. Velixar gazed straight ahead, the glow from his eyes casting a red haze over his vision. The grayhorn-men trumpeted their strange call, then made their charge from a half mile away, their multiple tusks leading the way as they galloped on all fours.

Velixar turned to Chief Shen. “The beasts! Slay the beasts!” he shouted. Shen drew his two black swords from his back and clanged them together. The elven rangers roared their approval. Velixar then drove his knees into the sides of his horse and took off to greet the beasts head-on. Shadows and purple fire rose from his body, and his vision narrowed to the grayhorn-men’s twisted, horned faces. The pounding of the rangers’ horses followed fast behind him, creating a dull thud like a second heartbeat inside his head.

He released the reins with his right hand, raising that arm into the air. The pendant bouncing against his chest throbbed, and energy crackled at his fingertips, siphoned from Karak’s well of otherworldly power. Pressing down on the stirrups and holding tight to the reins with his left hand, he rose from his saddle, feeling mighty, feeling invincible. At least a hundred of the grayhorn-men had not fled, each a ton of flesh and bone, and they were a thousand feet away and closing fast.

“Ignite!”

The word flew from his lips with the force of a hurricane, awakening the ancient knowledge of the demon he’d swallowed. From his raised hand came a spiraling tentacle of shadow, spurting upward and outward, an extension of himself. The tentacle raced over the dead earth, fast as a bolt of lightning, and then descended on the first of the grayhorns. The beast was thrown backward as if walloped by a boulder, the shadows pouring into its eyes, its snout, its ears. Velixar grinned as the creature’s taut flesh became bloated, and smoke rose from its every orifice. The grayhorn-man then exploded,
destroyed by fire from within. The air was filled with flaming blood and bits of meat, and the nearest of the creature’s brethren were impaled by jagged bone fragments. Those few fell screeching to the ground, their great bodies slumping, their elongated snouts trumpeting in pain as their newly created hands tried to rip the shards from their hides. The other grayhorns raced past, casting only cursory glances at their fallen comrades, their eyes alight with rage.