Glen Cook
Surrender to the will of the night
1. The Grail Empire: Forest of Night
Eighteen remained of the seventy Chosen who had departed chill Sparmargen, holy hunters headed south. Most had been injured or were wounded. Five had to be kept tied into their saddles. Once they stopped outside the gateway they discovered that Drengtin Skyre had been dead so long his corpse was cold. His pony was in a state of supernatural angst.
There was nothing remarkable about the gateway. It was an opening in a rail fence. On this side there was ice and a frosting of hard snowflakes. A manic wind hurled dead leaves about aimlessly. The world beyond the fence might be warmer. The leaves there were sodden. The wind could not pick them up.
The ragged, pale pilgrims with the bones and small skulls in their hair stared at the wintered wood. Something built of gray stone could just be discerned through the skeletal trees. Each sacred assassin hoped their quarry was there, so this harsh quest could be brought to an end.
From among them came Krepnight, the Elect. He wore somewhat human form. He was a divine artifact. His left hand had seven fingers. His right bore six. His toes matched that pattern. He had no hair on him anywhere. His skin seemed impossibly taut and shiny and shone a sickly snot green with irregular patches of deep reddish brown. His cheekbones were exaggerated. His eyes were those of a great cat. His teeth were sharp and numerous and serrated at their back edges.
Krepnight, the Elect, had sprung forth full-grown from the imagination of Kharoulke the Windwalker. He existed for one purpose. Its target lay just a bit more than an arrow’s flight ahead.
Krepnight, the Elect, urged his frightened mount forward. He ignored the sign beside the gateway, BEWARE THE WOLVES AND WERE, in faded Brothen capitals. He could not read, anyway.
Nor could many of his companions. None, the language of this land.
Krepnight, the Elect, paused after a four-hundred-yard advance. He faced a small castle from barely a hundred feet. Its drawbridge was down, spanning a wet moat eight feet wide.
Krepnight, the Elect, could not cross running water without help. The water in the moat was in motion.
Water was not relevant.
An arrow slammed into the artifact’s chest. It drove through till fourteen inches protruded from his back. The shaft was thick, oak, tipped with armor-piercing iron. Krepnight, the Elect, rocked back after the impact, then just sat petrified in his saddle.
Brittle cold air swirled round him. He felt every breath.
He could do nothing.
Two old men came across the drawbridge. One carried an iron shovel, the other a rusty bill. Shovel man took the reins of the divine artifact’s mount and led him away, the horse quaking in terror. A hundred yards on, at the brink of a gully, the bill man used his tool to unseat the rider, who tumbled into the little ravine.
Both old men shoveled and dragged dirt, sticks, stones, and fallen leaves onto the immobile body.
The light went away. A long time passed. Ravens watched quietly from the trees. Wolves came to consider the fallen artifact and be amused by his misfortune.
In time, the pilgrim’s companions found the divine artifact. They dug him out. One broke the heavy arrow and drew the shaft. Krepnight, the Elect, shook off the dirt and leaves and got his feet under him. The crows above chattered eloquently about this grand practical joke. The wolves kept their distance but their body language bespoke cruel contempt.
There were shamans among the Chosen. They stayed close as Krepnight, the Elect, resumed his advance on the castle. They suppressed the power of the water. A dozen men were within touching distance as Krepnight, the Elect, crossed that drawbridge and carried his god’s will into the rustic citadel.
A blinding flash. A vast roar. A thousand needles of agony. An irrevocable death for Krepnight, the Elect, and all who walked with him.
While the corpses still shook and twitched wolves hit every man who had passed the warning sign.
Three younger riders, left outside by their captain, flew off to report the disaster.
Ravens followed. Mocking.
The Night knows no special love for those who consider themselves its own. Of the three, two fell victim to ruthless minor Instrumentalities. The last was too mad to report anything useful when he did win through.
His return was information enough.
His god rewarded him as gods do. It devoured him.
2. Lucidia: In the Eye of Gherig and the
Shadow of the Idiam The wind had an edge like a rusted saw. No man living remembered such cold in the Lucidian desert. For sure not when full winter had not yet arrived. Some had seen snow before-in the distance, on peaks in the highest of the high ranges.
The stone tower atop Tel Moussa offered an outstanding view for leagues around. Built by crusaders to watch for invaders from Qasr al-Zed, the watchtower had been captured by Indala al-Sul Halaladin, Wielder of the Sword of God, after he crushed the crusaders at the Well of Days. Now it was home to desperate fugitives from Dreanger who had taken service with Muqtaba Ashef al-Fartebi ed-Din, the Kaif of Qasr al-Zed.
The cruel wind plucked at the graying hair and beard of Nassim Alizarin. They called him the Mountain. He was a man so large only western destriers could carry him. And he required a string of those when he traveled. He wore them out quickly.
Nassim turned slowly. The Unbelievers had chosen the site well, though they built on foundations set down ages past. A hundred armies had traveled the road below, headed one direction or the other, since men learned to make war. Nassim thought more would come and go before long.
A solitary horseman approached from the south, bent over his saddle, miserable. That would be the old man, Bone, back from a circuit of Sha-lug outposts along the far borders of the Crusader states. Behind Bone, crouched like an evil sphinx on the horizon, loomed the dark silhouette of Gherig, the Crusader stronghold no mere mortal could hope to capture. The Brotherhood of War manned Gherig. Sometimes those hardy warrior-priests approached Tel Moussa, hoping to draw out the fugitive Sha-lug. The Mountain would not play. In the best times he had fewer than four hundred followers scattered across the Realm of Peace. His war with his onetime friend, Gordimer the Lion, Marshal of the Sha-lug, was not going well. Most Sha-lug agreed that the murder of Nassim’s son Hagid was an abomination. Yet they did not see that as an excuse adequate to justify bloodshed between brother warriors.
The essence of al-Prama was submission. The essence of being Sha-lug was discipline.
The Master of Ghosts, al-Azer er-Selim, joined Nassim. He cursed the bone-biting wind. Softly. The Mountain tolerated neither blasphemy nor the invocation of demons. Az asked, “Is that Bone?” His eyes were no match for those of the General.
“Yes. And bringing no good news.”
“Uhm?” Az looked northward and slightly to the east, toward the Idiam, that harshest of deserts. Az dreaded bad news. If it turned bad enough-so bad that Muqtaba al-Fartebi no longer saw any value in supporting a Sha-lug splinter faction against the Kaif of al-Minphet-then the only safety might lie in Andesqueluz. The haunted city.
The Mountain read his stare. “We’ll never be that desperate. The Lucidians need every blade. The Hu’n-tai At threaten in the north and east. Once Tsistimed the Golden finishes devouring the Ghargarlicean Empire he’ll turn on Lucidia.”
Below, the weary rider began the climb to the tower. Would he make it? Did he have strength enough left?
