The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy (10 page)

Only a few more days . . .

Niara,
I’m coming.

He was hardly aware of the noise
when it came, and for a moment he was not sure what had jerked him out of his
sleep. Then it came again, a slight scrabbling sound. Then a feminine giggle. He
frowned, smacked his lips. His mouth was very dry. Why hadn’t he taken a bottle
with him?

A slender form appeared from the
top of the stairway, and a giggling girl clad in the wind tiptoed up to his
nest. She was young. Too young. Moonlight gleamed off the blond hair on her
head and the blond mound between her long legs. Her breasts were small and
high, and they jutted out from her chest, tipped by small dark nipples.

“Who . . . ?”

She knelt beside him, and for the
first time he noticed she held a goblet. When she knelt down, some of its
contents sloshed over, and he smelled the bittersweet odor of Borchstog wine.

“My lord,” she said, leaning over. He
could smell the wine on her breath.

Without thinking, he reached out
and grabbed a breast. Instantly he drew his hand back. Suddenly sober, he sat
up and backed away from her.

“Who are you?”

“Why, don’t you recognize me, my
lord?”

It was Hallys, he saw, the girl who
had fallen for Mikel. “Hallys. Why are you up here? You should be downstairs,
with Mikel . . .”

She giggled and sipped her wine. Some
of it trickled down from her lower lip and over her right breast.
Niara
, he thought.
Think of Niara.

“I should,” she agreed happily,
“but instead I’m with you. I decided Mikel was too young.” Her shoulders
sagged. “Besides, he took up with that slut, Santha. Anyway, he isn’t a lord. He’s
just some foolish boy who can barely hold a sword. You’re a baron.” In a smaller
voice, she added, “A hero . . .”

She edged closer to him and draped
herself along his side. Casually he took her goblet from her and downed a sip. The
bittersweet liquid parched his thirst, stung his throat. “Hallys,” he said. “You
must go.”

“Why?” She stroked his bare chest
with her light, small fingers, running them through the hair that covered his
belly. “Do you like it all alone up here, all alone in the Roost?” She giggled
again. “That’s what people are calling it, you know. The Roost.”

He shoved her hand away, setting
the goblet down. “Yes,” he said. “I do. Now, if you’ll go.”

She laid her head on his shoulder. Despite
himself, it felt good there. Her hair smelled clean. “You don’t really mean
that,” she said.

He did not immediately push her
away. Wind whispered over the edges of the crumbled wall, and clouds streamed
across the jewel-laden sky.

“Hallys,” he said.

She turned her face up to him. He
didn’t know if it was the wine, or something else, but when she parted her
lips, just slightly, he bent his head and kissed her. She tasted sweet, with
just a hint of bitterness, the exact opposite of the Borchstog wine. He found
himself squeezing one of her breasts again, and she moaned in his mouth.

Then she was pushing him back onto
his nest. Her hands fumbled at his breeches, jerked them down.

“No,” he said. “Niara . . .”

“No,” she answered. “I am Hallys.” She
giggled.

His member popped out, stiff and
proud. The breeze felt good against it. Then he couldn’t feel the breeze, for
Hallys had slid down upon it. All he could feel was her tight, wet, warm
embrace. She rose up and down on him, her curves framed by stars and clouds.

“Oh,” she said.

“No,” he said. “This isn’t . . .” His
head swam. She towered over him, huge, a goddess. Her eyes gleamed strangely. His
head spun.
That wine is no good . . .

Despite himself, he thrust inside
her. He cupped one of her buttocks, and she moaned. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

She rocked her hips, sliding herself
up and down. She closed her eyes and arched her back, gasping with pleasure.

“Yes,” he said, and the word felt
as though it were torn from him. The stars blurred and danced behind her. His
mind reeled.

She rocked her hips, faster,
faster. He couldn’t take it anymore. Suddenly, he erupted inside her, and all
his strength fled him.

“Where is the Moonstone?” she said,
panting.

“Over there.” He gestured to the
corner of his roost. “Under that mound, there’s a stone. It’s beneath it.”
Why did I say that? The wine . . .
But
there was a blurring in his mind that did not feel as though it came from wine.

“Thank you.” She smiled. “I never
would have found it otherwise.”

She slipped off him, his juices
running down her thigh. She bent, shoved away the pile of debris that Giorn had
erected, pulled up the stone he had so cunningly placed, and revealed the
ancient chest that held the Moonstone. The Last Gift. The salvation of Man. Still quivering in
ecstasy, Giorn tried to rise to his feet and stop her. His legs folded like
jelly. The stone floor rushed up and slapped him. Groaning, he crawled over to
her. She was staring down at the chest.

“I can’t open this,” she said. “Not
here.”

“No,” he said, crawling closer.

“It will have to be Wegredon . . .”

She turned to him. She was no
longer Hallys, but some stranger, tall, voluptuous, beautiful. A cascade of
black hair fell across her white shoulders, and her eyes flashed emerald green
by the light of the moon.

“No,” he said again.

She almost seemed to have forgotten
him. But now she remembered, and her foot lashed out and kicked him in the
face.

When he awoke, the woman was gone, and so was the Stone. Groggily,
he roused the castle. Ystrissa shrieked and slapped him when she found out the
Stone had been stolen, and she slapped him again when she found out how. The
girl Hallys was quickly found, nestling with Mikel, and questioned thoroughly. She
knew nothing. Giorn hadn’t expected her to. When the woman that seduced him had
turned to him, her hair had been black as death, not blond like Hallys’s.

Where had she gone? He scoured
Balad’s Folly, but she was nowhere to be found. The search could take days, for
it was a massive fortress, made to contain the entire population of Fenmarth.

It was hours after midnight when he
received the first report of Borchstogs coming through the passes. His
sentries, posted on cliffs throughout the area, had seen them coming, a great
host of them.

“She told them,” Giorn said,
balling his hands into fists. “Omkar curse her, she stole the Stone, escaped
the Folly, then she told them where we were . . .” He wanted to punch
something, principally himself.

“What shall we do, my lord?” asked
Hanen.

Giorn mashed his eyes shut. “We
will have to go through the caves. They will be expecting that, I’m sure, but
the caves are vast and many. If we send scouts ahead, we should be able to slip
through them, and our sentries have already mapped them to a large extent.”

He saw to the preparations, and
within an hour he was leading his ragged band through the winding caverns below
the mountain. He’d had his men light a score of great bonfires in the
courtyards of Balad’s Folly so that the flames would be seen by the oncoming
hordes. Hopefully that would give the Borchstogs some pause.

It was a grim, silent procession
through those subterranean passages. So quiet was the gathering that Giorn
could hear the drips of water from stalactites overhead. Somewhere water
dripped on water. He pictured vast black lakes, slumbering under the mountain.

“What shall we do?” Hanen whispered
suddenly.

The sound startled Giorn. It had
been the first anyone had spoken in hours. “We’ll emerge from the caverns on
the other side of the mountain,” he said. “Then you’ll go north.”

Hanen made a face. “
I’ll
go . . .”

Giorn drew him aside, under an
ancient arch of stone. There were near a black pool, and the light from the
procession’s torches made it glimmer and sway. Giorn wondered how deep it went.

He looked into his friend’s eyes. “I
must go a different direction. The Stone has been taken. Even now it travels
south.”

“We will go with you, my lord. Our
swords are yours.”

“I appreciate that, but the Borchstogs
are too thick in that direction. They’re everywhere, occupying every keep, and
their patrols are like nets between them. There’s no way a band of us could
slip through. But perhaps one . . .”
“That’s madness, my lord. And where will you be going? Do you even know where
the Stone is?”

“Wegredon. She said she was taking
it to Wegredon.”

“The Keep of Fire.” Hanen sounded awed.
“You’ll need swords.”

“It would take the whole army of
Felgrad to storm Wegredon, Captain, and even then their chance of success . . .
but, again, maybe one man . . .” He let out a breath. It truly did seem
hopeless, but he saw no other choice. He could not let Vrulug have the
Moonstone. Whatever the wolf-lord wanted it for, he wanted it desperately, and
that could only mean death and worse to the peoples of the North if he got it. “You’ll
lead our people across the Eresine,” Giorn said. “And I’ll travel south. Hopefully
I can catch that witch before she reaches Wegredon, but if not . . .”

“The wolf-lord will catch you, sir.
He will catch you and he will feed your soul to Gilgaroth.”

For the thousandth time, Giorn
cursed himself. “That is the risk I must take.”

Chapter
7

Silently, Raugst rode through the forest, Niara sitting
behind him in the saddle. He rode fast and she was forced to wrap her arms
about his waist or be thrown off. He seemed to enjoy it, but her flesh
continued to crawl at the touch. The wind whispered through the trees, and she
tried not to think of Meril’s red-rimmed eyes.

At last they reached Thiersgald,
and Niara’s heart wrenched when she heard bells tolling from all the temples in
the city.
A royal has died. Meril . . .
She
almost wept, but she would not give Raugst the satisfaction.

They rode through the East Gate into
the city. Bells tolled, slowly, sadly, and people wandered the streets in
black, heads bowed. Raugst took her to the Castle, and they dismounted and
strode through the halls to the Throne Room, where Meril was laid out upon a
bed of white roses. Candles surrounded him, save for a space left open for
visitors. At the moment only family and nobility were being allowed to see him.

He was dressed in his richest
finery, a burgundy tunic under a dark green jacket trimmed in white. He had not
died in combat, and so no sword depended from his crossed arms. Not bothering
to hold back her tears any longer, Niara went to him and ran her hands through
his blond hair. His eyes were closed, and his cheeks were smooth and soft. He
almost seemed to be living still, but his flesh was cool, too cool. The smell
of the roses was sickly sweet.

“Oh, Meril,” she said, and lay her
head on his breast.
The last of the
Wesrain men
, she thought.
Now there
is only Fria.

Fria was there, hunched against a
pillar at the edge of the room, staring at Meril with watery eyes. For her
sake, Niara straightened and tried to stand firm. When Niara went to her, Fria
flung her arms about her and wept into her bosom.

Niara stroked her hair. “It’s all
right, dear,” she said. “He is beyond the Lights of Sifril now. He is beyond
the cares of our world. He’s at peace.” She had said the words a thousand
times, and each time she had to find a new way to say it, or else it sounded
rote.

Fria drew back. To Niara’s
surprise, there was as much anger as sadness in the girl’s face. Her left eye
rolled restlessly in its socket. “Poison,” she said, and the word was almost a
snarl. “
Poison
. That’s how he did it.
A craven’s escape. How could he have done it? How could he have left us, and
now?” Her voice was raw and ragged.

Niara stared at her, the truth
bubbling on her lips.
He did not leave
you willingly
, she wanted to say.
He
was slain by a jackal in human skin, or at least by his agents.
Likely it
had been a cup of wine, she thought, given to him casually by one of Raugst’s
men.

Raugst was within earshot, though,
so she could say nothing. To her horror, she realized she must let Fria believe
Meril had sought solace in death, at least for the moment.

“Do not judge him too harshly,” she
heard herself saying. “These are dark times, and perhaps—”

Fria broke away. “
No
. No, there can be no excuse.” Over
her shoulder she added, “Don’t look for me to attend his funeral, Mother. I . .
. I cannot . . .” She paused when she reached Raugst, patted his chest, then
vanished from the room.

Raugst appeared sad, but it was
just a mask. Niara glared at him as he approached.

“Bastard,” she hissed, when he was
close enough. “How could you? He was your
friend
.
You sparred together, rode together, drank together. Rumor even had it that you
shared your whores. He considered you a
brother
.”
She couldn’t help herself. She beat at his chest. Once. Twice. Then she flailed
at him in a fury of hate, and he did not stop her.

At last, though, he stepped back,
and she collapsed to her knees before him, sobbing wretchedly.

“How?” she demanded again.

He seemed to sag, just a bit. “Not
easily,” he admitted, and she sensed some honesty in his words. “He
was
my friend.” He glanced about to make
sure no one was listening. No one was, save his agents. The Throne Room was all
but empty. He returned his gaze to her, then knelt beside her. “But he stood in
the way of the One.” He took a deep breath, let it out. “Now the way is clear.
I
am baron. And the Age of Grandeur
shall begin.”

She ground her teeth. “No! I’ll go
to the priestesses and rouse them against you—”

“And I will be forced to declare
the priesthood an enemy of the barony, and the army will slaughter them all. Save
you.”

“They would never—”

“Oh, they won’t like it, but they
will obey their baron, especially after they discover evidence that you were
colluding with the Enemy. Much like poor Duke Yfrin.”

“Then I’ll tell the people, and
they will—”

“They will say you lie. I’m a hero
of the people—
and
their last hope. And
again I’ll have the army turn on your priesthood. Any move you make against me
will have the same result. There’s nothing you can do, Niara. Nothing. But . .
. there is a place for you at my side when this is all over.”

“Never.” She stormed from the room.

Niara oversaw the funeral the next day in the great square
before the castle, and it seemed as though everyone in the city came to attend.
Everyone but Fria. True to her word, the new baroness refused to grace the
gathering with her presence. Raugst, of course, was there. With Fria absent,
the people looked to him for a new beginning, and it was clear that they
considered him their leader. Indeed, by custom, since he was male, his
authority was greater than Fria’s, even though she was the true Wesrain.

It was a somber ceremony, even
though the sun shone down from a blue sky and birds sang from their perches on
the buildings overlooking the square. The people kept silent, their faces
ashen. They had suffered much through the loss of the Wesrains, and their gazes
were distant and faraway. Niara resolved to go amongst them and counsel them in
the days ahead, to give them hope and encouragement. She wished there was
someone to give her the same.

But he was dead. He was dead, and
she could not name him.

Over the next few days, more
reports of the Borchstog raiders began to circulate, and word spread that
Raugst meant to challenge them.

Almost immediately, Niara’s days
grew hectic. It seemed half the men in the city chose that time to get married.
They knew war would be upon them soon and they wanted the chance to have been
wed before they died, perhaps to father a son so that their line could live on.
Niara’s days were full of preparing and presiding over bathing ceremonies and
marriages. She often performed as many as five weddings and five bathing
ceremonies a day. Normally she loved such duties, but not now. With each
wedding, she saw a death. The men and women she joined together wed not out of
love, but fear. To Niara the ceremonies were hollow, cold, and she could not
join in the dancing afterward but stood on the dais looking down on their
dancers, trying to hold back tears.

All the while she thought on Raugst
and how to destroy him. She confided the truth to her inner circle of
priestesses, and they discussed the matter endlessly. But none could agree on a
way to remove the demon, and at last Niara resigned herself to assassination. She
would go to him, pretend to give herself to him, then use her powers to destroy
him. His lieutenants—
the wolves
, she
thought, the murderers of Lissia—would surely kill her for it, but at least the
traitor would be no more.

Raugst came to her first. She was
in the gardens behind the Temple,
enjoying a peaceful moment between ceremonies, when a novice ran up to her,
breathless.

“Mother! Mother! Lord Raugst is
here.”

Niara noted how the young girl
smiled, as if Raugst’s unholy presence in this holy place were a blessing.

“He wishes an audience with you,”
the girl continued. In a whisper, she added, “They say he’s massing a great
host before the South Gate.”

Niara had heard the calling of
military horns and guessed that something like that had been occurring. “Very
well. I’ll meet him in the Audience Room.”

Beaming, the girl darted off, happy
to relate the news in person to Lord Raugst.

Niara quit the garden and assumed
her white throne in the long, narrow, white-columned Audience Room, with the
mosaic on the white marble floor depicting the Niethi dancing about the Moon,
helping to guide it in its long trek through the Void. As soon as she sat down
she heard heavy footfalls echoing from the walls, and presently the tall,
masculine form of Raugst appeared, with wild black hair and a newly-grown
grizzled beard, a veritable wolf at the door. As soon as his black-booted feet
crossed the mosaic, actually stepping on the face of an angel, Niara shuddered.
His presence was profane, unnatural, a cancer on this place.

He bowed, but his face wore no
mocking expression. He seemed serious and business-like today. Strangely, when
he lifted his gaze and looked her in the eye, there was something in his face,
some sense of . . .

No, Niara told herself. She was
imagining things. Raugst was evil. Love and affection had no place in his soul.
Lust, perhaps, but no more. Yet he had kept her alive for a reason.

“Why have you come?” she asked. She
kept her back straight and her gaze steady.
She
was in control here.

He drove straight to the point. “I
ride to war, High Mother. The band of Borchstogs that crossed the Eresine Bridge before its firing has made its
way north, and they are no longer hiding in the bogs and caves. We must rout
them.”
“
We
? But you are one of
them
.”

His eyes widened, and now he did
give a sly smile. “You speak in riddles, Mother. I cannot see through your
screen of words. Whatever can you be implying?”

She narrowed her eyes, said
nothing.

He cleared his throat. “At any
rate, I ride to counter the Borchstogs and would beg the aid of a powerful
priestess. Perhaps you can assist me.”

She considered this, but any way
she looked at it, it made no sense. At last, she said, “True, I’ve aided Baron
Wesrain in the past, and my sisters have as well. Priestesses often ride out
with the host to combat forces of Oslog. But what could the likes of you want
with us?”

“You have me all wrong, my dear. I
want only what is in the best interests of Fiarth.”

“You’re up to something.”

“Then you had better come along
with me to see to what it is I am up. Perhaps you can stop me.” The half-smile
on his face spoke volumes.

She stared at him, honestly
perplexed. He was acting more like a coy suitor trying to connive her into
courtship than anything resembling what he truly was. It wasn’t until she
tapped her chin that she realized how far she had let her composure slip. Quickly
she gripped the arms of her chair and straightened.
He wants me to go with him for some REASON. Some reason that benefits
him and weakens us. Yet if I don’t go, the demon will be leading the host of
the barony himself, without even my supervision. If I go with him, perhaps I
can stop whatever he’s about. I certainly can’t do that if I don’t go.
Of
course, that sort of logic was just what he was counting on. Still, she saw
nothing else for it.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll come.”

He bowed once more. “Fiarth is
grateful. I will await you at the South
Gate. We ride immediately.”

He spun about and quit the Audience
Room, not waiting for her permission to leave, and she stared at the spot where
he had gone. When he left the Temple,
she
felt
it, as though someone had
been stepping on her chest and then stepped off. This should have relaxed her,
but it did not. Indeed, it seemed she still felt his taint on the air,
lingering like a disease.

With a sigh, she stood to go.

She gave orders to two of her highest
priestesses, Hiatha and Lisilli, who knew the truth about Raugst, and like her
they set off to pack their things. In short order they rendezvoused at the
stables, where they saddled up and set off through the wide streets of
Thiersgald. It was a bright and sunny day, but Niara hardly registered it. She
passed a cemetery and thought of Giorn. Was he truly dead? She often thought of
him, and sometimes she stretched out her mind, trying to find him, or some echo
of him. But he was either dead or beyond her ability to reach, perhaps in the Aragst Mountains
themselves, or near them.

She tried not to dwell on him, on
his soft caresses, his lingering kisses, the light in his eyes when he looked on
her. He had seen her as a woman, not a goddess, not a holy creature, as most
people of Thiersgald did. It was her elvish blood, she knew. In their eyes it
made her divine, or all too near it. And sometimes, surrounded by them, she saw
herself through their eyes—remote, cold, a being of Light and Grace, but not
human. Certainly not womanly.

Giorn had. Now he was gone, beyond
her sight. Could she see herself through his eyes even after he had departed? She
would try. She would not be that cold and distant entity, that unhappy being on
a pedestal. She would be herself, and proud.

Such were her thoughts as she rode
through the South Gates and beheld the grand army of Fiarth, all twenty
thousand soldiers—the riders on their horses, the infantrymen smoking and
talking, the generals gathered about Raugst, who sat a black horse and surveyed
his troops with an inscrutable gaze. Girls from the city were walking through
the milling ranks of the troops, kissing the soldiers on the cheek and throwing
wreaths of flowers about their necks. The new wives were in attendance, as
well, and these shooed away the kissing girls from their new husbands.