The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy (15 page)

Giorn made his way through the
tunnels, finally coming upon a large laboratory area—a dark, loathsome room,
cluttered with strange relics: glass jars occupied by awful fetuses, some still
alive, tendrils whipping, human mouths gaping and sucking at the glass; obscure
herbs and elixirs; staffs with monstrous heads, some obviously sentient; a
great bat-like thing with a long, tooth-filled snout. This last spoke
intelligently, and Giorn was obliged to kill it lest it betray his presence.

More. Human heads hung on plaques
from the wall. A living brain hovered in a fluid-filled jar, pins sticking out
of it. This horrified Giorn, who put the brain out of its misery with a stroke
of his sword. What had its owner done to so displease Vrulug that he had
punished it in this fashion? For a moment he wondered if the brain of his
ancestor Lord Orin Feldred might have been persevered by Vrulug’s arts . . . But
no. When he turned the jar over, he saw a name inscribed on the bottom. The
letters were in Oslogon, but the name was Fiarthan: Adlan Osfryd. The name
meant nothing to him.

Giorn found more weird creatures in
jars, odd apparatuses, surgical instruments, rows of arcane books. A human
corpse was chained to a wall.

Noises led him from the laboratory
down a hall. He heard chomping, grunting, ripping. Moans of pleasure. What
could it be? There was a stench of rotting meat . . .

Dreading what he would find, Giorn
followed the hall until it terminated in a stone doorway. He paused at the
doorway and peered into a large, circular, domed room, all of stone. Vertical
niches at regular intervals lined the walls, black recesses from which one could
come and go if one knew the way. Comely, naked girls with collars about their
necks were chained to the walls between recesses. Some drowsed, but most stared
toward the center of the room. Giorn could not stop his jaw from dropping open
at the sight at what stood there.

It was a great mound of bodies of
all races—some whole, some in pieces, a mountain of dead flesh giving off an
awful reek. The mound rose up and up, high overhead, and on the crest of this
gristly hill sprawled Vrulug, lord of Wegredon. In one hand he held the
Moonstone—glistening and black. The other encircled the waist of a woman. She
had large, high breasts, long legs, flowing black hair, and haunting green eyes.

It’s
her
, Giorn realized. The woman who had stolen the Moonstone. He remembered
the feel of her lips against his, the feel of their bodies joining.

She and Vrulug both lay on their
sides, her back to his front. Her white limbs were adorned with golden baubles,
and they flashed by the lights of the torches along the walls. Vrulug, covered
in blood, flies buzzing about him, had evidently been rolling about in his
mound of death, and he was a horrid sight, tall and wolf-like, but upright like
a man, with long, claw-tipped arms and black batwings spread out behind him. He
grunted as he rutted with the woman, she seeming enjoying it every bit as much
as he. He squeezed one of her breasts, and she gasped in and thrust her
buttocks against him.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

At last Vrulug arched his back and
bellowed loudly. He groaned, long and loud. Red-tinged drool ran from his lips.
The woman gasped and collapsed, her sweat-stained breasts rising and falling.

“Oh, Vrulug,” she sighed.

“Saria . . .”

Giorn started.
It can’t be,
he thought. Saria—the Temptress. The bride of Orin
Feldred, Giorn’s ancestor who had died leading a rebellion against Vrulug. Saria
was the wife who had betrayed him and doomed his revolt, the one who had chosen
Vrulug over her husband. Giorn could hardly believe it. And he had slept with
her! He felt like he had walked into a fairytale.

Vrulug withdrew from her, and his
thick, dark juices ran across her thigh and dripped from it over the mound of
death. His black, slick member stood stiff and proud, then gradually wilted.

Saria wiggled around to face him,
ran her delicate white hands through his fur and kissed his chest. “It’s been
too long,” she said.

“Yes.”

She looked up at him. “But I did
it, didn’t I? I got the Stone.”

“That you did, my little minx.” He
lifted the Moonstone so that the torchlight stroked its dark whorls and
glimmers. Most of it was charred and rough, but smooth, glassy sections poked
through.

“What will you do with it? Perhaps you
should forge a chain and wear it around your neck, or give it to your priests .
. .”

He chuckled. “No. There is only one
place it shall be safe. One place alone.”

“Where?”

Giorn strained his ears to hear the
answer, but he needn’t have bothered. Vrulug simply opened his wolf-like maw so
that his red-pink insides glistened, and Giorn fancied he could see bits of
human flesh clinging to sharp teeth; he could almost
smell
the fetid odor— Vrulug opened his mouth and shoved the
Moonstone down his gullet. Giorn watched, transfixed, horrified. Then Vrulug
pulled his hand free—now wet with his juices—and burped.

“There,” said the wolf-lord. “It is
safe.”

It was more than that, Giorn
supposed. Now Vrulug could absorb its power.

Saria kissed the wolf-lord’s chest
again, then rose. She seemed quite steady atop the mountain of corpses.

“Be well, my love,” she said. “There’s
a prisoner waiting for me to torture.”

“Enjoy yourself.” There was
something rueful in his voice. He watched admiringly—and so did Giorn, for that
matter—as she picked her way down the mountain of death with ease and entered
one of the dozen narrow doorways that led off from the chamber.

Vrulug stretched himself out on his
grisly bed and closed his eyes. Giorn waited. Time passed, and he heard the
whimpering of the slave girls and the slow drip of water, or perhaps it wasn’t
water but putrefying flesh. A shudder worked its way up his spine. All the
while, he stared up at Vrulug, wondering if he could really go through with
this. At the very least, it was unwise. And yet, what were his choices? He had
come here to take back the Moonstone and could not leave without it.

Vrulug snored, a low, rhythmic
sound, interspersed with what sounded like small growls. A furry leg kicked
occasionally. Every now and then one of his claws would twitch.

Giorn stared up at him, knowing
what he had to do.

It’s
madness!

He rose from his hiding place and
crept into the chamber. Immediately, the slave girls scurried away from him, as
far as their chains would permit. He placed a finger to his lips, and they
nodded, eyes wide. He could save them, set them free. He would slit open
Vrulug’s belly, steal the Moonstone, and they would be slaves no more.

Giorn approached that towering
mountain of corpses. It reeked of rotting meat and offal, and the stench
overwhelmed him so much that it was all he could do not to retch. At the base
of that awful, grisly mountain, he stared up at the slumbering, gore-coated
demon sprawled at its peak, then steeled his nerves and began climbing. Bodies
shifted and slid, some even breaking open at his touch, and he winced at every
glop and rasp and glug and rustle.
Quiet!
He reached for a hand, meaning to haul himself up on it, but the arm the hand
was attached to had been severed below the elbow and there was nothing to
anchor him. He flailed, nearly fell, then stuck his fingers into the eye
sockets of a corpse so old its flesh had liquefied. It made slurping noises
when he pulled his fingers free.

At last, tasting bile on his
tongue, sweating and covered in unnamable filth, he reached the top of the
mountain and stood, chest heaving, over the inert body of Vrulug. He stared
down at the beast, slicked with blood and gore and sex, and hate surged through
him. This was the monster that had once ruled Felgrad, long ago, and now sought
to raze it—for thousands of years and more he had done so, and nearly had more
than once. This was the monster that had ordered Raugst to infiltrate Giorn’s
family and destroy the Wesrains, one by one. It must be.

Giorn, lip lifting, raised his
sword in both hands, ready to hack open the beast’s belly and recover what he
had come here for.

Vrulug’s eyes snapped open. It
happened so fast Giorn nearly stumbled backward. One of Vrulug’s arms lashed
out, and a claw slashed Giorn across the belly.

Gasping, Giorn dropped the sword and
reeled back.

Vrulug laughed. Nonchalantly, he
climbed to his feet and towered over Giorn, and Giorn was overwhelmed with the
reek of his awful breath, which was worse even than the mound. And there was a great
power about him, as well. Giorn did not know if it was his naturally or if it
came from the Stone, and supposed it didn’t matter, not at the moment. What
mattered was keeping his guts from falling out.

Vrulug approached, a smile on his
lips.

Giorn took a step back—

Into nothing. He lost his balance
and fell, rolling and bouncing and sliding down the mountain of death. He
struck a body, dislodged it. It struck another, and another, and soon the whole
side of the mount was sliding down after him, and the new reek this unleashed
finally did make him retch, even as he was being borne down the side of the
hill on a crest of death. Above, Vrulug alternately laughed and swore at Giorn
for rearranging his lair.

At last Giorn found himself under a
pile of bodies on the chamber floor. Shaking in nausea, he shoved his way out
of it with his right hand, as his left was pressed against the thin line Vrulug
had drawn on his stomach. He didn’t know if it was deep enough to release the
tangle of his guts, but it
felt
deep,
and a torrent of blood gushed through his fingers.

He pushed himself free, spilling
out onto the floor near the entrance of the room. The slave girls stared at him
pityingly. Had they been in on it too? He knew he’d been toyed with, played
with. Vrulug, and perhaps even Saria, had known he was there all along.
The archway . . .

Figures stirred from the dozen
narrow side entrances to the room. To Giorn’s shock, a dozen robed figures
emerged from them, and his skin crawled at the sight. Cowls drooped over their
faces, but despite the darkness he saw that they looked human, or at least they
looked like things that had been human once. They were maggot-white and
ghastly, and their noses had been severed, giving them a skeletal, alien look. Their
teeth had been filed to sharp points and their eyes glowed amber when the
torch-light struck them.

“Back,” Vrulug said. Giorn understood
that these must be Vrulug’s priests. He was worshipped in Wegredon like a god. Indeed,
Giorn had heard that he was Gilgaroth’s son, and as such he
was
a god. “Back,” Vrulug said again. “He’s
mine.”

The priests bowed and withdrew into
their recesses. Giorn returned his gaze to Vrulug, just in time to see the
wolf-lord spread his bat-like wings, shake the blood and filth off them, and
launch into the air. He coasted down and Giorn felt the stir of air, then the
coldness of Vrulug’s shadow falling over him.

Giorn scurried back, still on the
floor, toward the main entranceway. Vrulug alighted before him, claws clicking
on stone.

“You’ve caused quite a mess,
haven’t you?” Vrulug said.

“Bastard,” Giorn said, even as he
inched backward.

Flames gathered in the back of
Vrulug’s throat. Giorn smelled sulfur, and he watched, entranced, as the flames
built. Vrulug opened his maw wide, and the fire rushed out, a great leaping,
frothing tide of it. Giorn just barely rolled aside in time. Smoke wreathed up
from the place where he had lain.

Frantically, he scurried back, feeling
the rasp of the floor against his back. The reek of charred stone filled the
air, driving back the stench of death. Back he went, along the tunnel leading
from the chamber. Suddenly, he sensed a shadow behind him, blocking the way,
and turned to see the torchlight illuminating green glints where the eyes
should be.

“Saria.”

“Yes,” she said.

It was then that he realized who
the prisoner was that she had gone to torture.

“Get you back, bitch! You won’t be
torturing me. I’m a Wesrain. I’ll
die
first.” He knew that if he had to he could bite off his tongue and bleed out. He
would not give them the satisfaction of making him a plaything of their
torture-masters as they had his ancestor.

He yanked his hunting knife free
and staggered to his feet, one hand still pressing against his stomach. Waving
the blade before him, he staggered toward her. Smiling—he could see her teeth
shine by the light of the torches—she backed away from him, into the hall beyond.
Snarling, swearing, Giorn followed, knowing what a pitiful figure he looked.

“Saria,” he gasped, hearing the
rage in his voice. “Temptress. Bane of men.”

“Yes . . .”

“
Die
.”

The clicks of claws on stone told
him Vrulug was coming. Giorn moved away.

“Flee, Wesrain!” Vrulug laughed. “Flee
before me!”

Giorn saw moonlight spilling in
from a terrace and staggered over to it. Blood still dripped between his
fingers and down his stomach. He did not think his guts would fall out, but he wasn’t
sure. He remembered his brother Rian with his entrails spilling across the
leaves and resolved not to die like that.

Behind him, Vrulug laughed some
more. “And where will you go, Wesrain?”

Off-balance, wobbling, his vision
blurring, Giorn made toward the terrace. Saria sauntered before him.
Hells
.
She’s going to block my way.

Instead, she opened the door for
him, smiling.

He snarled at her as he hobbled
past, onto the terrace. Wind rustled his hair, driving some of the stink away,
but not enough. Not near enough.

“Flee!” Vrulug roared. “Flee! Perhaps
you can fly, little Wesrain. That I would like to see.”