Chapter 9
There was nothing for Brythia to do but fret. She did not know how long she had been in the library. There was no means of gauging. It felt like forever. The steady, quiet pain of her distance from Tolian was augmented first by the darkest of foreboding and then outright panic as the druidess endured her confinement in the library chamber. She had long since quit her frantic screams and curses. Doubtlessly, no one was permitted even outside the door, lest they take pity on the captive scholar, and thereby interrupt the appointed period of sacred seclusion. If they could have heard her, would they have believed her wild cries of danger, or would they have dismissed them as the ravings of a delirious mind?
Hunger assailed her, worsening the torment of her confinement.
She alternated between the stone chair at the table, hugging her knees with a static worry, and pacing like a caged beast in frenetic mania. She prayed to the gods to let the prescribed time be over soon, and to let nothing happen to Tolian before she could get warnings to Lorm. The danger had not been averted last year, merely delayed. She had felt it all along. Some part of her had known, even in the toppled towers of Keythion. Questions forced away by the sheer force of joy and relief. They had all been too satisfied in their victory to allow even reasonable doubts to linger long.
She forced herself to think about those terrible days alone with the Demon, and that last moment of confrontation. Of nightmare. Of astonishment. Much of it she could still not access, so horrible were those events that they fled from her probing mind as rabbits at the approach of the fox. A few images were burned with supreme clarity in her mind:
The golden tassel. She remembered the remorseless winter air raging cruelly at her wind-burnt face. Her lips chapped, and nearly frost bitten, ached. She could picture the Imperial Palace of the Northern Empire of Keythion in ruins stretched out below her as the Demon brought her there on the back of a dragon on that cold December afternoon. Six other dragons, vast winged reptiles, circled the broken walls. Three of the Demon’s Abominations roamed the burnt remains of the once most majestic city in the world. They were creatures formed by the Demon’s dark power, towering several stories and comprised of the twisted bodies of the fiend’s human prisoners, fused into a thing of madness and used as living siege engines.
The famed white spires of the North’s greatest capital were scorched black from dragonfire. A few tattered pendants, now rags, waved in the icy wind. The largest army she had ever seen surrounded the once mighty walls, now crumbling and breached. The howling cries of the women and children assailed her even from high above the great city. She remembered having the impression that it could not have been more than a day since the Palace City had fallen to the Demon’s forces. Soldiers moved in and out of the mangled gates. As the Demon brought his giant, scaled steed down towards the gate, she could see a corpse, garbed in gold, hanging from the entrance arch.
The warriors in the entrance way cleared the area as the giant reptile landed. The Demon threw Brythia roughly to the hard stone and hopped lightly down next to her. He scooped her up and, holding her by the feet, carried her roughly behind his back into the doomed city. She stared up at the corpse as they passed under it. Something caught her attention. Clearly, it was the Emperor of Keythion. The gentle swaying and flapping of the soiled robes of woven gold, worn for three centuries by the rulers of the vast and powerful land, mesmerized her. Golden tassels swinging gently. The scarred and eyeless face. The expression of terror was still quite evident by the grimace he wore. The golden tassels. The blackness gobbled up that memory.
Another flash of dawning recollection. Again on the dragon’s back. The Demon, using Rwiordes’ body, was holding
her tightly from behind. They were once
again circling the vanquished city. Was
it a different time? Yes. There was something different this time. Something different. She looked into Rwiordes’ face. His eyes were black. That and the cruel curl of a smile were all
that indicated the Demon’s presence there.
The Demon had systematically possessed the three foolish, would-be
sorcerers who had brought him into the world by their failed attempt at
magick. Of course, the druidess knew
that such works of evocation never failed completely--—something always
came, though usually a harmless elemental or sprite.
She had seen their sorcery through the Spirit Vision. The first of the three to succumb to the Demon’s possession was Perelisk, who then raised an army and a host of dragons and conquered the great metropolis of Coertal City. The next to fall to the Demon’s influence was Hertrid, who then contained half of the Demon’s power and laid siege to the palace of Lorm. Tolian beheaded him on the battlefield before the fortress’ gates. Why was this tangent related to the dragon’s back?
That’s what it was. She could see Perelisk’s possessed form on the back of another dragon, flying directly across from them in the same orbit around the despoiled Palace City. There was someone behind him. She did not see him clearly, but she remembered her surprise by his presence. A swarthy rogue, bearded. Black armor. Who he was she had no idea. Could there have been a fourth? She did not think so because the Demon only had that sort of power against the three who were inside the broken magick circle. Besides, even from the distance his discomfort was evident, though he appeared to be no prisoner. Was this the difference from the last memory? No. There was something else. Something too horrible to remember. But she plunged backwards shattering the shields she had built around this image in her memory.
Below them the other dragons circled the Throne City of Keythion. And far below them she could see the vast army that surrounded the fortified walls. The soldiers looked like ants from the terrific distance.
Through the rushing air she could hear the Demon shouting something. The twisted howling of his words rang out: “CHALTRHADG HOOS IN UDEWSK THROUZ.”
They were words of power, full of darkness. Vileness. They bombarded her with ancient hatred and wickedness. She did not know their meaning, but could feel their evil vibratory energy.
He let go of her with one arm and raised something over their heads. It was an earth talisman. She recognized it from the Spirit Vision. The clumsy one that the three fools had fashioned in their attempt to gain control of the cold, hard spirits of the tellurian darkness. They wanted treasure; it had been all about avarice for them. In the Demon’s hands the talisman became a potent tool for destruction. His vibratory shriek now became the call of the Earth elementals: “KILROP TY IROUD CURNIT VAZ EWRTY.”
Then again: “CHALTRHAG HOOS IN UDEWSK THROUZ.”
Rwiordes’ lips kept moving and the barbarous words of evocation poured manically out, somehow growing louder and louder. Brythia’s ears hurt from the powerful force of his cries, the volume now drowning out even the bitter wind.
He stopped his cries suddenly and the druidess lost her breath in the sudden, relative quiet. But, not for long. He began his shouts again. This time, however, the druidess could understand the bellowed words.
“Spirits of the Earth, I, who hold the Talisman, command you. Bring forth the fire that burns forever hot in the Earth’s molten core. Let it pour up as from a well. Let the breath of these dragons ignite it. Let my legions stretch across and blacken the world. The Marriage of Fire and Earth. So mote it be.”
And then it happened. She began to twitch violently in the subterranean chamber as the memory burned hot and dreadful; the pain of it searing her brain.
The dragons unleashed their fiery breath upon humbled Keythion. The dragonfire poured down from all directions engulfing the city in one instantaneous bonfire. The flames licked higher than the tallest tower. Clearly there was more than the dragon’s breath at work. She had seen the dragon attacks at Lorm. Although there was a much smaller contingent of dragons there, the destruction she saw in Keythion could not merely be explained by more dragons. She thought of all the people still inside the city, burned to cinders in the blink of an eye. She did not wish to look upon the scene, but she could not divert her gaze. The leaping flames transfixed her. Their great heat reached even up to where the Demon in Rwiordes’s body held her on the back of the dragon, circling the city.
In just a moment more the surrounding army ignited in a brilliant ring of fire, which took off at a burning run as a gigantic, ever-increasing circle of fire, scorching the land around the palace and racing as a vast wall of fire in all directions. The cries of the people burning below reached her ears. They had not perished as quickly as she had originally thought. They were now burning wraiths of flame charging all things in their ravenous rage and unyielding desire to consume them, undead spirits with the hunger of fire set ablaze to devour the world.
All at once the putrid odor of burned flesh found her and memory broke off—lost again in the dim shadow shields, which her mind had erected to protect her sanity as it fought to cope with the unspeakable horrors that had been inflicted upon her.
Fragments. Shards of recollections. The scorched black room. The cold steel chains. The waiting, glad of the loneliness, so much better than when he came to gloat. A wave of repressed terror convulsed through her, as she recalled the ghostly silence broken only by the insane cackling of the fiend’s two voices. She winced as she remembered being dragged out into the blackened courtyard, into the blazing sunshine and the cold north wind.
Then Tolian came and it all ended suddenly, like a brilliant flash of lightning. It happened so quickly. Tolian strode forward, wielding the Moonsword and issuing her challenge. But, the Demon was not afraid. He knew what he was doing. He used Brythia as a tool. He offered to spare her if Tolian would hand over the lunar blade, the only weapon capable of killing him. By that time the druidic love magick that had been used on them was already incredibly strong. As a result, Tolian was willing to sacrifice everything for her. The world. She gave the Demon the Moonsword and rushed to Brythia’s side. With Perelisk’s body the Demon wounded Tolian, and they waited together for Rwiordes’ blow with the Moonsword to take off her head.
But, that was not what happened. Somehow, and Brythia had to admit that she never understood this, Rwiordes’ and Kilfrie’s minds and spirits were united, and the new being created by their union threw off the Demon’s control and brought the Moonsword down on Perelisk’s neck. That was the end.
Even then there were questions. The prophecy could have conceivably referred to two Champions, one Tolian and one Kiliordes, but that explanation never did sit well with her. And where were the dragons? None were seen again after that day. What of the Earth Talisman? Though they searched, it had never been found. Everyone had dismissed these uncomfortable loose ends; they were too eager for the nightmare to be over. But it wasn’t over; she knew it now.
The menace still lingered. If Kiliordes had not been a Champion, and therefore incapable of killing the Demon, then perhaps somehow the fiend had survived. Maybe there was something everyone was missing.
All at once the door opened up, and a lanterns’ light poured into the library chamber. Magara’s voice startled Brythia out of her trance. There was a note of urgency in her voice.
“Quickly, child, we must hurry. Something has happened.”
Copyright 2004, 2015 Diana Hignutt
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