Kingdoms of Light

detestable ease when pint-size Klegl came running in from outside, his expression all wheeze and spittle.

'Brethren, my brethren! Kobkale and Kmeliog, Kwort and Kmotho—all of you, come quick, quick come!'

Displeased by the manic interruption, no less so because it came from one of his own, Kobbod rose from the backs of the whimpering young human children on whose ribs he had been composing a musical interlude and followed the squat, distraught Klegl outside. Kobkale and the others of the Clan who were present joined him, muttering various and inventive calumnies under their collective fetid breath. Their intention to pummel the obstreperous Klegl severely was forgotten as soon as they saw what had so unsettled him.

Approaching from the southeast, a veritable tsunami of roiling, coruscating color was rushing in all directions—including straight toward the castle. The fantastical phenomenon filled the sky, transfiguring the gray clouds as it embraced them, washing over and transforming any birds or treetops in its path. His heavy lower jaw dropping, Kobkale stared in disbelief as the onrushing chromatic juggernaut came screaming toward him. At the last instant he threw up his thick, short arms to protect his face. Around him, other clan members gasped or squealed in alarm.

The spectral surge passed over the castle with a great sigh and continued on its way toward the most distant reaches of the Gowdlands. When Kobkale lowered his arms and opened his eyes, he saw to his shock that the massive stone fortifications once more glittered with colorful crystalline inclusions. Color had returned to the pennants that hung limply from staffs, to the noisome liquids that stained the harsh stone underfoot, to the wood that framed certain of the windows—even to his own clothing.

A hand pawed urgently at his shoulder. Kesbroch was next to him, babbling incoherently. Drawing back his left hand, Kobkale dealt his relative a furious blow across the face that knocked him into a complete back flip. By the time he landed on his belly, the stunned but unharmed Mundurucu had managed to regain some control.

'But what are we to do? No one is powerful enough to break a curse of the Khaxan!'

'No one.' Eyes narrowed, Kobkale was gazing speculatively into the distance from whence the prismatic storm had arisen. 'Assemble the Clan. It appears that our work here is not quite finished. There remains one more overlooked detail that demands our attention.'

He remained by the parapet, brooding into the southeast, as the bewildered Kesbroch waddled hastily back into the castle, bleating at the top of his considerable lungs.

It did not take long to gather the two-and-twenty. The return of color had left every one of them alternately appalled and confused, agitated and enraged. Several fights broke out among the assembled as they waited to listen to Kobkale: not because the respective combatants were particularly angry at one another, but because among themselves brawling and scuffling were a traditional means of releasing frustration.

Even those with teeth buried in a kinfolk's arm or leg, however, desisted when Kobkale demanded their attention.

'Our hex has been overturned,' he declared, utilizing his toadlike mouth to the fullest.

'We know that,' croaked Kushmouth. 'What are we going to do about it?'

'Grork , that's right,' added Korpbone. 'If we don't put things back the way they were, some of these treacherous humans might start to get ideas.' He ground one warty, pustulant fist into a leathery open palm. 'Best to keep them crushed underfoot with their faces in the dirt.'

Turning his head slightly, Kobkale spat something vile over the wall. 'While you were all running around with loose heads, I have taken care to mark the nexus of the countervailing conjuration. Calculating backward from the place where the ripples of color first were seen, I believe I know the place where it originated as well as the possible identity of those who perpetrated it.' His eyes blazed. 'The Clan will go there, and we will put an end once and for all to those who dare defy our mandate.'

The bloodthirsty cries and shrieks of support that greeted Kobkale's avowal sent shudders through those humans in the castle unfortunate enough to have been conscripted to serve them. Fear was visible even on the faces of the members of the Horde who arrived shortly thereafter with a trio of recently transformed individuals in tow. But the expressions of the soldiers were tranquil compared to the looks on the faces of Quoll and his companions.

As the members of the Clan pushed and shoved, clustering tighter and tighter together on the high open platform that overlooked enslaved Kyll-Bar-Bennid below, Kobkale greeted the new arrivals. Halting in front of Quoll, the squat Mundurucu looked up at him and the two former vampire bats. Too much the berserker to be really afraid, Quoll glared defiantly back at him. Ruut and Ratha, on the other hand, were quaking with unashamed terror.

'What's the meaning of this?' The tightly bound Quoll glared at the silently seething Mundurucu. 'Why have we been brought here like this?'

Kobkale's voice was dangerously calm. 'It would appear, friend Quoll, that you have not been entirely truthful with your friends the Khaxan Mundurucu.'

More mystified than frightened, Quoll stammered with repressed energy, 'What are you talking about?'

'I have only just now been given reason to believe that the scorned wizard Susnam Evyndd's personal creatures not only survived the strange kingdom into which you insist they were exiled for all time, but have returned equipped with unsuspected powers.' One arm rose to encompass their environs. 'I believe that the return of spitefully cheerful color to this conquered country is their doing.'

Wide-eyed, Ratha struggled futilely in her bonds. 'That's impossible! They were to be banished from the last kingdom of color, but we saw them destroyed before our eyes!'

'You should not have relied on others to do your work for you.' Kobkale picked something small, green, and not entirely deceased from between his front teeth.

'We had no choice!' Ruut objected. 'We were compelled to—'

'You were compelled to do what you were told,' the Mundurucu interrupted. 'Evidently, not adequately.'

'It won't happen again,' Ratha stuttered.

'It certainly won't.' Raising both hands, Kobkale uttered a string of suggestive phrases incomprehensible to prisoners and guards alike. Then, apparently satisfied, he turned and threw himself with ferocious energy into the churning pile of Mundurucu that comprised the Khaxan. Following the arrival of the last of the two-and-twenty, there was a violent implosion that momentarily sucked the startled onlookers forward, a loud phut that sounded like a diabolic entity casually breaking wind, whereupon the Mundurucu vanished. Every one of them. Disappeared, down to the last unkempt hair, exfoliating horn, deeply stained fang, and bilious eye.

Uncertain what to do next, the handful of guards eyed one another in confusion. Then Ratha screamed; a ghastly, quavering sound whose timbre trembled at the very edge of human audibility. She was echoed by her mate Ruut, and finally, though he fought frenziedly against it, by the defiant-to-the-last Quoll.

Very little there was capable of horrifying the fighters of the Totumakk Horde, but what unfolded before their eyes on that open platform near the topmost floors of Castle Burgoylod caused even the most hardened among them to recoil in terror.

Writhing and twisting, emaciated black worms began to emerge from the convulsing bodies of the three prisoners. Wracked with pain, they collapsed to the hard stone, every muscle in their bodies twitching and spasming, causing them to jerk and flop about like gaffed fish. Too lost in agony even to scream, they lurched and quivered like that for some time, until finally, mercifully, they lay still. Not black worms but the axons, the actual nerves, had erupted from their bodies. Now these lay in stagnant, lifeless coils about the motionless corpses of three former servants of the Khaxan Mundurucu.

Even in death, the red eyes of a certain maniacal marsupial seemed to burn with hatred for everything living that was not a quoll.

TWENTY-ONE

Cezer and Cocoa were locked deep in conversation. Taj was in the kitchen trying to catalog what edibles remained in the pantry. Samm was busy helping Mamakitty repair a few bare spots on the roof. As for Oskar, he was sitting in his favorite place, dining on bread and a meat roll on the front steps of the house, when an ascending whine pricked his ears. Rising, he cast a puzzled glance in all directions. At the same time he became aware that