The Wizard and the Warlord (The Wardstone Trilogy Book Three) (50 page)

Sholt waved him off, for De’Rain was sending a message into his head. “The gateway has opened. Out there in the garden yard,” Sholt repeated the young mage’s warning, but he left off the pain-filled scream that extinguished the spell. “Something’s crawled out of there,” he finished in a panic.

“By the gods, sound the alarm,” Mikahl said as he bolted out the door and down the hallway to find his wife. Before he even rounded the corner, the frantic clanging of the alarm bells rang out from the guard towers outside.

Mikahl charged up a stairway and down a short passage full of huddled, terrified castle staff. He found the room where he was supposed to meet his wife and his friends, but only the handmaiden, Allysan, was there, and she was a teary-eyed wreck.

“Where’s my queen?” Mikahl asked sharply. It was enough to bring her into focus.

“She and Lady Lavona went off to the building supply lot.” She sniffed and continued. “I was told to wait until you arrived and tell you to meet them there, my king.” She wiped away a tear and looked at Mikahl pleadingly. “Are we under attack? What was that sound?”

The sudden lurching of the floor as the ground shook again caused the young Valleyan servant girl to cry out. From outside the window, Mikahl heard another scream. It was Rosa’s voice, and with the sound came a grumbling roar, and the realization that the supply lot the girl had been speaking of was where the gateway had just opened up. Without another thought, Mikahl drew Ironspike and charged through the shuttered window.

He burst into the cold evening air four stories above the earth, and as he started to fall he called forth the bright horse. The flaming pegasus flared to life between his legs and, on magical wings, it carried him toward the garden yard.

A bright explosion of crimson and lavender energy sent bricks and broken stone fountaining into the air ahead of him. A gut-shaking demonic roar followed. The new construction built where the Dragon Queen’s apartment had once been blocked his view, but the yells and commands from his guards told him he would find the worst when he got there.

The only thing on his mind at that moment was the queen and his unborn child’s safety, but as he caught sight of the thing ravaging the soldiers in the supply lot, even they became secondary. The demon beast’s eyes locked on Mikahl’s, and the High King shuddered seeing the resemblance of his friend Hyden Hawk in them again. This was the Lord of Darkness himself, the thing Hyden’s brother had become, and even now it was barking out orders to the swarm of demons that were climbing up out of the earth behind it.

When their eyes met, the part of the Dark Lord that was once Gerard Skyler recognized Mikahl, too. The last time the Warlord had stood in this courtyard Mikahl had lopped off the Dragon Queen’s head.

The beast roared in anger, sending a searing gout of dragon fire at Mikahl. The High King managed to call forth a shield from the symphony of magic his sword blasted through his mind. Had he been on a real horse, he would have perished in the flames. Mikahl could smell his burnt hair and could feel the tightening skin where the dragon flames had touched his face before Ironspike’s power could divert them.

He scanned the courtyard for Queen Rosa and nearly crumbled from the air in a heap of despair when he saw her. She was mauled and bloody, lying in an impossibly twisted position near the open hole in the earth. A little black-robed girl was trying desperately to drag the queen’s body away from the Demon Lord. If she wasn’t dead, she would be within moments. The horrid way in which her slippered feet faced upward, but her torso lay limp and facing the dirt, said it all. Mikahl had fought in enough bloody wars and had seen enough carnage to keep from fooling himself. The emerald dress she had been wearing earlier, when she asked him to meet her, was now blackened with blood and left him no room to doubt that it was Queen Rosa the girl was trying to protect.

Mikahl gave a savage war cry that rivaled the call of the Dark One. His sword blazed white hot and sent a streaking beam of destructive energy into the Warlord’s plated chest. Gerard screamed out in pain and went tumbling over backward. Only a last-second leap gave him enough altitude to throw out his wings and catch air. Mikahl urged the bright horse onward and made to attack again, but a violent fist of crimson energy slammed him sideways, so that the magical mount carried him crashing into the corner of a newly built wall.

A hellcat and a Choska demon rained blast after magical blast down and around where he’d crashed. Then the entire wall structure collapsed over him. The last thing Mikahl heard before blackness swept through his mind was the Warlord’s horrible laughter and the pleading cries of the little girl in the black robe.

***

After eating the girl’s squirming body, the Warlord ordered his horde east. As much as he would have loved to stay and terrorize Westland more, he had an agenda. Xwarda, and the Wardstone bedrock upon which the palace was built, was waiting for him. By taking control of its power in his own form he could do more than rip open the boundaries. He could create an impenetrable protective shield, behind which he and his hordes could gather, plan, and rest behind between attacks. He could use the powerful Wardstone to blight crops and burn the forests. He could poison the lakes and streams and summon all the beasts of the earthly plane into his service. From Xwarda he could slowly, painfully bleed the hope and life from the world of men. On powerful wing beats he and those who could fly moved swiftly eastward. The wingless, the walkers and lopers, the slithery, scaly things, of his horde followed on the ground.

In the back of the Hell Master’s head a voice was screaming out a warning, but the Warlord paid it no heed. The voice was that of a demon called Shokin, who had been ripped apart long ago by Pael. Shokin was part of the evil against which Ironspike was created to defend, and he knew its powers. When the High King went down, even now, while he was buried under that pile of rubble, Shokin screamed for the Warlord to take the time to utterly destroy him. Once that was done, the blade would be dead, too.

The Warlord ignored Shokin’s advice. So loud and intense in his head were the calls and murmurs of all the demons the Hell Master had consumed, the rambling of a single voice was lost in the jumble. The surge of hatred and malice toward the world they had all been banished from, and the desire to feed upon its terror, made it hard enough for the thing Gerard had become to keep its focus on Xwarda. So intense was the desire to wreak havoc that the Warlord himself couldn’t resist the urge to bathe in the blood of men.

The city of Castlemont’s lantern lights became visible in the cold, dark night, and the Warlord chose that place to land first. Dozens of breaches had opened up across the land, and his army needed a place to gather. What better place, the Warlord decided, than a city full of struggling people trying to salvage a life after war? If crushing hopes and dreams would fortify his legions, then in Castlemont they would feast like gods.

***

In the city of O’Dakahn chaos reigned. Demons tore through the streets and neighborhoods with wild abandon, killing and destroying anything they could. Along the river and the marshland villages of the south, those witches and dabblers who served the Dark Lord were finding the bloody rewards of their loyalty. From their sacrificial circles, from the rune-marked altars, and from other places where certain magical symbols were etched, breaches between the Nethers and the world had opened. Across the entire realm, etchings on medallions or small statues were spilling forth demon kind. Buzzing black hornets and long, venomous things slithered out of the darkness, while imps and devil dogs shimmied out of the places they could fit through. In the marshlands, the circle where the red priest of Kraw had preformed the ceremony that let the Warlord into Shaella’s resurrected body was a gaping gateway. All sorts of dark things were escaping their banishment.

Legions of them.

On the Isle of Borina, where the same priest had resurrected Shaella’s body in the first place, there was a larger hole. In the Giant Mountains, more than a dozen teleportals had opened for the Dark Lord, and in the sacred heart of the Evermore forest, already the earth was soaked blue with blood. In King Jarrek’s lands, though, the nightmare was only beginning, because all of the denizens of hell that had come to the land of mortals were now moving toward Castlemont to answer the Warlord’s summons.

***

King Mikahl opened his eyes to see the shield he’d called forth. It was holding several chunks of rubble up off of his body. Ironspike was still in his grasp, he realized. Had he let go during his brief stint of unconsciousness, he would have been crushed. He blinked away tears from his eyes. He loved Rosa dearly, and with all of his heart. To lose her and his unborn child was deeply painful, but he was the High King and couldn’t let his own emotion come between him and his duty.

A deep, loving voice echoed in his head from the past. “Think, then act,” it said, and Mikahl did just that. He had to get to Xwarda to defend the Wardstone from the thing Hyden’s brother had become. That he knew for certain. If he didn’t, if he took even another moment to mourn Rosa and the baby, then maybe a dozen more mothers could die. Hyden would be waiting in Xwarda and, according to his missives, the would-be wizard had some sort of plan. Mikahl wiped away one last tear and then let his anguish fuel the symphony of Pavreal’s blade. In an explosion of brick, fractured stone and dust, he emerged from the mound.

The bright horse whinnied and pranced, eager to be of service. All around Mikahl in the torchlit garden yard, men yelled and dove for the ground as more terrible things crawled from the hole and took to the sky.

Along the walls the alert soldiers cheered when they saw their king come flying out of a cloud of dust and debris.

Mikahl took the bright horse up into the frigid sky so high that all he could see below were the tops of the clouds. He hated to abandon Westland, but there was no choice in the matter. He set into a streaking course due east and hoped with all he had that he could get to Queen Willa’s palace to meet Hyden Hawk before the Warlord got there first.

For a long night the elves battled the demon horde in the Evermore. The arrogant Hardwood Coalition set their wizards on the attack, but found out quickly that most normal spells were useless against the hellborn. Blades and arrows weren’t much better, but even the greater of the devils were bound to a body of flesh while in the world of man. They fell and writhed and died just like the elves they were so mercilessly slaughtering.

The elven defensive forces had been split, and while one force, the Hardwoods and their sentinels, raged in to meet the demons like madmen, the other force, led unofficially by Dieter Willowbrow and a few of the Queen Mother’s soldiers, was helping to protect the rest of the elves as they fled.

The crafters and healers, the mothers and children, and the outlying gatherers were grouped together and herded toward the only place Dieter thought might be safe. In the south there were dense tangles of forest. It was no easy task keeping so many elves safe and together while fighting off the attacking hellspawn as they went.

A group of eight young elves, both boy and girl, and their ancient herbology teacher, were trapped in a dense thicket between an acid-mouthed wyvern and a pack of devil dogs. Three of Dieter’s scouts came upon them and were doing what they could to keep the demon kin at bay with their bows. Now they were growing short of arrows. They sent one of their number to get reinforcements, but as one of the devil dogs charged in and latched its teeth on the old instructor, the situation demanded action. Charging like the barbarian berserkers of old, one of the elven archers raced into the group of youngsters, screaming and yelling and waving his arms around madly. His brazen approach startled the devil dogs back.

One of the other elves charged and used the ground the dogs had given to snatch up a few of the errant arrows from the trees and undergrowth. It was then that the wyvern struck.

A boy of perhaps twenty-five years bravely shoved two of the female students out of harm’s way and took the attack of the man-sized wyvern himself. Corrosive saliva and blue elven blood sprayed the group like a shower of warm rain. The wyvern’s teeth were clamped on the boy’s neck, and it shook its head furiously. The violent motion tore a chunk from the young elf’s body and the wyvern chugged it down.

A few of the children began swatting away at their stinging flesh where the monster’s saliva had touched their skin. A cloud of steam rose up from the warm blood pulsing out of the body in the snow.

The thrum of a soldier’s bow and the thump of his arrow impacting into the wyvern’s scaly hide was lost in the shouts and cries of the terrified group.

The wyvern flapped awkwardly into the trees and crashed, going into a sputtering death rage. Large clumps of snow and ice fell down on top of the beast, shaken loose from the branches above.

The devil dogs had the group surrounded in a rough circle. The sudden cry of the old herbologist caught everyone’s attention. A pair of the red-eyed, toothy beasts had gotten hold of her again and this time they quickly dragged her away from the others.

One of the soldiers charged out of the huddle to help her, but even as the other black wolf-like beast finished tearing her apart, she commanded him back. “Save the children!” she shrieked. “Do what you must to save the…” her voice trailed away as her throat was ripped out. The elven students whimpered and moaned in horror as their beloved teacher was devoured like a fallen deer before their eyes.

With the devil dogs busy, the archers cautiously urged the young elves toward the bulk of their retreating kin. They were met in a small clearing by Dieter and a handful of sentinels who were coming to their aid. As the children were calmed and ushered away, a winged panther-like beast the size of a horse came crashing down upon them. Luckily, the youngsters had gotten out of the clearing and into the trees. The forest was too dense for the creature to give chase, but since it had just crushed one elf, and lashed another senseless with its spiked tail, it had plenty to occupy its attention.