The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy (47 page)

The heaviness in his mind grew. He
found himself lifting his sword, swinging it around, meaning to slice at his
own neck. He dropped it, and it clattered to the floor beside a smoking body. Breathless,
knowing he did not have much time before Gilgaroth’s presence grew strong
enough to destroy him, he hobbled over to Raugst’s corpse. The bastard gripped
the shards of Niara’s light-blessed sword in his hands, and the remains of the
blade still glimmered with strange lights. Giorn ripped it free. Turned to the
altar.

“Now for you.”

He stumbled toward it. Darkness filled
his mind. The chill sapped his strength. If not for the opposite power the
sword emanated, he had no doubt he would have collapsed or even slain himself on
the altar, right beside the body of a priestess that lay slumped before it. It
must be her blood that stained it.

Gritting his teeth, Giorn crossed
to the slab, dragging his bad leg behind him.

A wispy figure rose directly before
him.

Die
,
he heard in his head. Strangely, he recognized the voice, or perhaps its
author, though the voice was made by no human lips. It was Saria’s, the temptress
of legend, the woman who had seduced him and stolen the Moonstone. That was why
the Borchstogs had chanted her name. As the highest servant of Oslog nearby,
and the guardian of this altar, she commanded them now.

“You failed,” Giorn said. “Your
troops are scattered, your cause lost.”

You
look so like him, you know. So like Orin. I did not see it before. Orin reborn
. . .

“You seduced and betrayed us both,
I suppose, that’s the only similarity. Only
I
will have my vengeance.”

She flew at him, wrapping her
ghostly hands about his throat. Their coldness shocked him, and he could not
draw breath, despite the fact that Saria’s talons were phantasmal. She still
had power.

Just
like Aunt Yfrin
, he thought. And just like her, her power must come from
the altar. Destroy the altar, destroy Saria.

Wheezing for breath, Giorn stepped
over a body and approached the block of stone, which seemed to throb with
horrid energies. He felt a Presence reach out from it, toward him . . . but the
doorway was not wide enough yet. It was getting wider, moment by moment.

Giorn raised the sword, admiring
the whitish lights that danced in the shards. He gripped its hilt in both
hands, using his right hand and arm to give his blow strength, and pointed the
shards downward.

No!
Saria cried.

A deeper voice, wordless but
mighty, growled in Giorn’s head, and his legs turned to jelly. He nearly
wavered, and for a moment his weapon angled toward his breast, but he turned it
aside and drove the sword down into the black altar.

He saw light, felt a blow, and heat,
and was flung back. The world grew gray and dim.

He blinked. The world snapped back
into focus. His soldiers stormed up the stairs, their footsteps echoing on the
marble walls. They must have been drawn by the noise. Giorn picked himself up
and stared about him. No sign of Saria. And the altar . . . it was not white
anymore, nor black. It was grayish and cracked. The sword hilt jutted up from
the slab, and the remains of the blade no longer glimmered.

His soldiers reached him just in
time to catch him as he fell.

The tower shook. They heard a great
roar, and Giorn felt a darkness swell up from the room, a great Presence with
nothing to anchor It now. It rose up, drifted through the gaps in the ceiling,
became one with the smoke still rising upward. A shadowy, shapeless form
emerged, writhing and furious. The moonlight shone down on it, and the Presence
made a sound of wordless hate. Giorn and the soldiers clapped their hands over
their ears. Giorn felt needles crawl through his skull. Then the shape wheeled
away toward the south, and the winds dispersed it.

Giorn breathed easier.

The moonlight shone down into the
profaned sanctum, and Giorn stared up at the white orb and ground his teeth.

“Come,” he said.

He rejoined his troops and led them
against the surviving Borchstogs. The fighting was close and bloody, but he and
his men drove them from the city and sent them fleeing into the hills.

For days Giorn pursued the Borchstogs, driving them back and
back and back. He left in his wake tens of thousands of dead demons and their
allies, the trolls and corrupted giants and the vampires and others. The bodies
of glarums and their Borchstog riders littered the ground, and he laughed when
he saw vultures eating their guts.

Finally he drove the Borchstogs
over the Pit of Eresine and beyond, drove them through the ruins of Feslan and
at last out of Fiarth altogether. Only then did he rest. But in his mind and
heart, he was uneasy.

Epilogue

For months Giorn helped the people of Felgrad rebuild, never
returning once to Thiersgald. He helped the Feslans reoccupy Hielsly, helped
priestesses reestablish the temple there. It would never hold the Moonstone
again, true, but they could still be a force of good in the world, and they
still had Ystrissa as a leader. She had survived the war, though not without
some scars to show for it.

After that, he went north, helping
farmers rebuild their homes, their barns, working alongside them in the blazing
heat and the freezing gusts. And always he held Niara and Raugst and the old
days close to his heart.

Sometimes he wondered, on the long,
lonely nights, if the two had been reacquainted beyond the veil of death. Then
he would sigh and shake his head. It was unlikely. He was not even sure
Raugst’s spirit would be shown the Lights of Sifril. Giorn was not an overly
religious man, and sometimes he doubted the existence of an afterlife, but if
there truly were a Paradise, as the priestesses of Illiana maintained, could
one such as Raugst find sanctuary there?

To Giorn’s surprise, he hoped so.

He made a vow to himself that when
he returned home he would gather up Raugst’s remains, and Niara’s, wherever
they were buried, and he would have them entombed together in a great mausoleum
whose beauty would be admired for ages, and the story of the two doomed lovers
would never be forgotten.

So the days passed, one after
another, rolling into a seamless dream of working, rebuilding, and trying to
drive certain thoughts away.

Only after much time did he return
to Thiersgald. Much had been restored, and the outer city was not as badly
razed as he’d feared, though the scars of Vrulug’s invasion would be slow to
fade, if they ever completely did. But somehow it did not feel like home, and
he was restless and troubled.

Duke Yfrin visited him often, and
one day found them staring out over the city from the second-highest tower in
the castle. The highest, Giorn’s old residence, he had abandoned. After the
horrors witnessed there, he planned to demolish it and to throw the stones into
the Pit of Eresine. There they would keep company the stones that had composed
the Temple of Illiana, which he had seen dismantled—but not before removing
Vrulug’s remains, burning them and locking the ashes away in the recast statue
of the Skinless Man taken from ancient Grasvic.

Giorn had taken up residence in the
second-highest tower, his father’s old tower, and it was from the terrace there
that he and Duke Yfrin shared wine and watched the sun set in a golden haze over
the spires and domes of Thiersgald.

“You don’t have to stay here, you
know,” Dalic told him. The duke brought the goblet of wine to his lips and took
a sip, but his eyes never left Giorn’s. “I’ve seen how restless you are, how
unhappy. This city holds bad memories for you, anyone can see that. But . . . you
are the
King
, my friend. The royal
family has disclaimed all rights to the throne as long as you possess the
Crown. They have even offered you their Palace. They have lands they can return
to. You can
leave
this city, rule the
kingdom from its capitol as a good king should.”

Giorn looked at him, then let his
eyes stray over the city. At length he sighed and shook his head. “No, my
friend. That is not my place. Now that I’ve returned, I intend to restore the
crown to its rightful owners.”

Dalic chuckled ruefully. “But you
are
king
, and still young. You could
have a splendid life, if you would let yourself. You are a hero, lad. A
hero
.”

Giorn smiled mirthlessly. He rose
to his feet and stared out over the grand courtyard before the castle. There,
in the square below, workers were fashioning a great statue. Maybe, Giorn
thought, maybe when that statue was finished he would feel at ease.

Gesturing to it, to the proud,
broad-shouldered figure, whose bearded face was even now being carved, he said,
“No, my friend.
I
am not the hero of
this tale. It was Raugst. Curse it, it was
Raugst
,
the demon, the monster—
wife-slayer,
brother-slayer, traitor, stealer of women, slayer of my family
—it is
Raugst
, curse him, who is the hero of
this tale.”

Making a fist with his good hand,
he drained his goblet with his right.

And the sun burned redly in the
west.

THE
END

A NOTE FROM THE
AUTHOR:

Thank you for reading
The
War of the Moonstone
. I hope you enjoyed it. Either way, please leave a
review wherever you purchased it. Help me get the word out! I would also love
to hear your feedback at [email protected] or you can find me on facebook
at
https://www.facebook.com/jack.conner.98
.

You might enjoy some of my other novels, such as
The Song of Doom
, a two-part epic
fantasy that is a semi-sequel to
The War
of the Moonstone
, only with different characters. The first volume can be
found
HERE
.
 
You might also check out
Empire
of the Worm
, a short fantasy novel that might be described as “Cthulhu
comes to Rome”.
Other novels soon to come. Stay tuned!