Into the Heart of Evil (37 page)

A
s
Durik sat down next to the whelps, just a moment or two after putting the board
under the door handle, he heard the bar being released.  Someone rattled the
door handle, trying to open it.  Durik felt a chill come over him.  From deep
inside him, he got the distinct feeling that he should not open the door.  This
feeling held him back for a time.  After several moments, he began to relax and
think that, whoever it was, they must have gone.

“Karto and Lat,” Durik whispered.  In the total
darkness of the room, their heat could be seen rising through the wood shavings
and the subconscious movement of their short tails made a soft rustling sound
in the wood shavings.  Durik was counting on the door being open with enough
light to spoil heat vision in order to keep them concealed.

The two whelps raised their heads through the wood
shavings and looked fearfully at Durik.  “I’m going to go see if I can help
Lord Krall.  You two stay here and don’t make a noise.  I’ll be back for you as
soon as possible.”

The two whelps looked at him with big, fearful
eyes.  He patted them on their hornless heads and smiled a hopeful smile. 
“You’ve made it through the ants.  This is nothing, right?”

Suddenly, Durik heard a soft knocking at the door.

“Son?” a distantly familiar voice called from the
far side of the door.  “My son, are you there?”  The door handle rattled, but
the board he’d put under it kept it from turning far enough to open.

Something deep inside of Durik stirred; some deep,
long suppressed memory.  As it stirred, somehow the doubt that accompanied it
seemed to melt away.  Durik could feel something suggesting to his mind that
this was real.

“Durik, I’ve come back.  I’ve come back to help
you.” 

Durik’s heart began to race.  What was this
voice?  Who could be calling him son?  His parents were long dead, and yet…

“Durik?  Are you in there?  It’s me, Durim, your
father.  I have been sent back from the place where our ancestors have gone to
help you in your time of need.”

Durik’s eyes were wide.  He couldn’t believe it. 
His father was dead, six years ago now, and yet… the voice.  The voice was his
father’s.  He was sure of it now.  How could it be?

“Father?” Durik called tentatively.

“Yes, my son.  Come, open the door.  I don’t have
much time before I must return to the nether world,” the voice urged.

Durik stood up quickly, eagerly.  He didn’t even
notice the fearful looks and soft whimpering of the scared whelps beside him. 
“I’m coming, Father,” he called as he made his way over the blocks of ice.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a nagging doubt
remained.

“Durik?  Hurry, I must help you escape.”

Durik stopped at the door.  In the back of his
mind, Durik began to sense a growing feeling of power.  Then, with utter
clarity, a vision came flooding into his consciousness.  At first the light was
so bright as to be almost blinding, then after a moment he could see images
come into his consciousness.  He found his consciousness in a stone room, which
he immediately recognized as the room just on the other side of the door from
where he now stood.

Standing to one side of the door was the
snickering messenger from the trail, Redar, whose cloak and hood must have kept
him disguised on the march.  Standing in front of the door was a kobold dressed
just like the conspirator, holding what appeared to be a glass ball in his
hands.  As the image began to rotate, Durik could see more and more of the
kobold’s bronze-scaled face.  In a moment he could see; it truly was his
father’s face!  Yet, somehow his father’s face was not right.  It looked almost
translucent, almost as if his father’s face was a mask.  In a moment, the
pierced illusion began to melt in front of Durik’s eyes.

Suddenly, the kobold who had been wearing his
father’s face looked up and stared Durik in the eyes.

Khazak Mail Fist was never one to stay put when he
had an enemy on the run.  Grabbing Morigar’s broadsword, he ran down the stairs
and followed after Gorgon, Keryak, and Troka.  Seeing that Gorgon had already
dispatched the one conspirator, he looked around to see if he could discover
the other two.  The last thing he wanted was for them to escape and try this
again.

Not knowing where they could have gone, Khazak ran
through the smashed-in door that led to the great chamber.  There, lying on the
ground, he saw Lord Krall’s two guards as well as the two conspirators he’d
killed and the conspirator that one of the guards had skewered.  He jumped the
steps onto the dais and looked around.  No one was in sight.  He listened for a
couple of moments and heard nothing.

“Curse them, traitors that they are!” he yelled.

Durik could count on one hand the number of times
in his life when he’d become so enraged that he’d acted without thinking.  This
was clearly one of those times.  This kobold, whoever he was, was going to
die.  Durik might not have been thinking terribly clearly, but on that point he
was absolutely certain.

Taking the stout board from underneath the door
lever, Durik kicked the door open and, stepping forward, he swung the board
like a club with all his enhanced might.  Mynar jumped back in time, but Redar,
standing next to the door, had nowhere to go.  With a solid ‘crack’ the board
connected with his upraised arms, breaking both of them just below the wrist. 
Durik had caught him by surprise and he paid dearly for it.

As Redar slumped against the wall, howling in
pain, then falling unconscious to the ground, Durik swung the board again, this
time catching the imposter’s weapon, knocking it out of his hands.  Dropping
the board as the sword went clattering to the ground, Durik drew his own sword
and stepped forward, grabbing the imposter by the neck and pinning him against
the cold stone wall as he pointed his sword at his face.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you right now!” he
yelled.

“Durik,” the imposter said, “you may not
understand why I’ve done all these things, but if you’ll let me explain, I’m
sure you’ll see why this must happen!”

“Who are you?” Durik demanded. “And how can you
see inside my mind?”

“I am Mynar the Sorcerer, and I am a direct
descendant of the First Sire, as are you,” Mynar exclaimed confidently.

“How can you see inside my mind?!” Durik demanded,
baring his teeth as he held his sword closer to Mynar’s face.

Mynar’s confidence was beginning to break.  “I can
read your thoughts.  I have these powers.  They manifest themselves in me
without asking.”  Mynar moved his hand slowly along the wall until it was
behind him.

“How did you change your face to that of my
father?!” Durik demanded.

“It’s just an illusion,” Mynar explained.  His
smooth voice was faltering, almost whining now as he attempted to hold firm
against this foe who obviously had him in his power.  “I found him in your
memories and thought I could get you to open the door by being him… that is
before I knew for sure you were truly the heir of your gen’s stone, as I am the
heir of mine.”  Mynar’s hand found the knife hidden under his jerkin and slowly
loosed the blade from its sheath.

Durik looked strangely at Mynar.  “Is this more of
your trickery?  What are you talking about?  I have no stone!”

“We are direct descendants of the First Sire,
strangers within our gens, brought to these gens to claim their stones and to
sit as rulers of them.  It is our right!  It is our heritage, Durik.”  Mynar
looked as incredulously as he could down the blade of Durik’s sword at Durik’s
face.  “Whether you have the stone, or it has you, I do not know, but the power
of the guardian of the stones watches over you, rightful lord of the Kale Gen.”

“Lord of the Kale Gen?” Durik stared in wonder at
Mynar.  There was much here he didn’t know and hadn’t considered.  Was it
true?  Was what Mynar telling him right? 

“My fellow lord,” Mynar continued in a softer,
more sincere tone, “Kamuril’s power has been given to you.  I can show you how
to use it.  I can show you how to claim what is rightfully yours!”

Durik’s mind seized on a word that Mynar had
said.  “That word!  Kamuril!  I have heard that word before!”  Durik looked
away for a moment in wonder and thought.  His grip seemed to loosen somewhat. 
“What do you know of—”

Mynar had sensed the lessening of the tension on
his neck and saw Durik’s attention momentarily distracted.  With a sudden
motion, he brought the knife from behind his back and slashed across Durik’s
forearm just below the bracers he wore.

Durik screamed with the pain and backed up a pace
or two, looking at the blood gushing out of his arm.  Seeing Durik distracted
by the blood, Mynar jumped to the side and ran through the door to the other
cold chamber where Morigar lay bleeding on the ground.

Jerrig, Arbelk, and Kiria came around from the
back of the great hall and saw a large door standing open on the far side of
the building.  Kiria guessed it was a service entrance of some sort.  It had
been far too long since she had been in her uncle’s great hall to remember all
of its ins and outs. 

Walking quickly toward it, yet slow enough to
catch their breath, the trio cautiously approached the door.  Inside was a
kitchen full of the implements necessary to feed the Lord’s family and all his
staff, including guests.  Between the copper pots, huge array of knives,
cutting surfaces, and water basins, it was obvious that the kitchen had been
built to support a large operation.  It also had many doors leading from it.

“Um… there’s lots of doors here,” Arbelk observed. 
The trio were standing in the door wondering where to go when they heard noise
off to the right.

“Someone’s coming!” Kiria said urgently.

“Let’s hide behind one of the counters and see who
it is,” Jerrig said.

“Sounds good to me!” Arbelk answered as he ran
toward the back of the room and behind a large cabinet construction with a
hard, marble top.  The other two followed his lead.

In a moment, a pair of the Border Guard warriors
who had accompanied them on the trail came running through the door just to the
left of the open service door.  They looked panicked, like they were being
chased by something.

Kiria stood up.  “Hey, what’s wrong?” she called
out.  The pair of warriors barely paused to consider her.  Seeing the open door
to the outside, the pair ran through it and began running toward the front of
the building.

“I think that’s our cue!” Arbelk said as he began
to run after the pair of fleeing warriors.

“But wait,” Kiria yelled.  “We don’t even know if
they’re on the good side or the bad!”

“Doesn’t matter,” Arbelk called back.  “If they
were here to defend Lord Krall, they wouldn’t be running away, would they?”

Kiria began running to catch up as Arbelk and
Jerrig followed the fleeing Border Guard warriors out the door.