Beastslayer : Rise of the Rgnadon Read online

  So Rusfaer’s speech cut the heavy silence and seemed to amuse only Draba, but Dereas pulled himself away, horrified by the demonic timbre of his brother’s outburst and the bestial look on his face.

  As Rusfaer glared at him, Dereas forced himself to glower back in equal defiance, though his heart could not stand behind it. The two of them drawn from the same blood could hardly bear being in the same cave together, not to mention the same tribe. Only their mutual dilemma made it imperative to work together, and to leave vengeance for another day.

  Dereas ploughed on in the greenish gloom ahead, frustrated with the direction the argument had taken. The tunnel weaved and showed slick dark walls, oozing with trickles of the same dark-green water glowing with magical impetus. He thought to see animals or strange reptiles carved in the walls, but sidling closer to trace fingers on their damp contours, he saw they were so crude as to be unrecognizable. Rusfaer caught up and nearly trod on his heels.

  Dereas whirled on him with a savage grunt, “It still does not explain why you waste time hunting me down rather than finding your wife’s captors? I see you moan and groan and blame me for all your troubles while you do little to fix your own immediate problems.”

  Rusfaer’s breath hissed sharply between his bared teeth; he leaned in close and his wolfish eyes blazed with a fire worse than Asgolin’s death pyre. “Careful with your hints, brother. We scoured every hill, every ravine looking for Pameel. All traces of her were gone, disappeared from the very sand itself! Our enemies denied any knowledge of my beloved or the episode. My few horseman and I could not find her amongst the rival clans. But there was a rumour that a black shadow had come, a shadow back from the dead. You! For moons your hide had been away, given up for dead. Though I never gave up my search for my raven-haired beauty. One of my scouts spotted you and a band of your riders. It was a stroke of luck—too good to be true. And we followed. Now some sort of a reckoning is upon us.”

  “And what good has it gained you?” mocked Dereas. “A sealed tomb in a haunted mountain under a blood moon.”

  “Waxing poetic now are we, brother?” sneered Rusfaer with a crooked grimace. He pushed forward, hands gripping his knife. “Perhaps it was ever an opportunity to see your snivelling face for one last time before I gutted you.”

  Dereas looked at his gnashing brother and glared in stony irony. “Why are you so blackened with hate, Rusfaer? Can you not see that I am not the enemy?”

  “Who are you to claim anything? You’re a deserting mongrel who is not fit to be chief.”

  “Listen, you idiot! After I was crowned chief, I left on a hunting expedition for antelope and fresh meat. ’Twas a joint venture—to also scout out our perimeters, scope what had been lost during our father’s neglect. Five days I was gone—five days to be there and back, during which time I was waylaid by some dog-vomit of a magician, Ahrion, and I was brought to some faraway place in the west—Phygus. I wish to forget every moment of that. I was sold into slavery, by ghouls. As were you waylaid by jealous opportunists, it seems we both had our enemies at work, but different ones—”

  Rusfaer shook his head in surly impatience. “You lie! Whatever the case, words are moot. In your absence, I could have ruled the clans. Instead I was passed off. I should have ruled. I could have protected the clan! For a time I wandered lost in the wastelands, delirious, consumed by sorrow and out of my mind. Now, I languish, and without a ruler, our people are scattered or struck at the heels by enemies, beggared in our own territories. We live as thieves and outlaws! The Bear, Lynx and Cougar clans harry us like vultures! ’Twas not supposed to end like this!” Grief finally cracked his voice. His eyes pinched shut in sorrow. He raked his sword agonizingly across the black tunnel walls and the shrill scrapes echoed grimly about the ghostly shadows. “This is not the way of the warrior!”

  “It is, brother. We cannot deny what has passed. I cannot back up the wheel of time, or shift things that have already happened. Even Balael can’t juggle fates.”

  “Don’t try to understand the gods or counsel me! Your words do not console me or return me Pameel. Nor does it change anything, or return me in any way my birthright to rule the clan!”

  Dereas shrugged. “Have it as you will.” He jerked a thumb at his two grime-faced men, Jhidik and Amexi. “You have your two wolves at least, I mine.” He made a grand sweep to include his men who had been listening quietly and now beamed with pride.

  At that, a shadow of understanding flickered in Dereas’s heart, a memory of a long-lost association. Each stared at the other for a few seconds; then the sneers were quick to resurface, but for an instant they were snatched back to an earlier time, a place where the wild wind blew in their hair, and the free sweep of the steppe was before them, and their eyes and young hearts flamed with the thrill of the chase. They stalked a herd of antelope that ran amok before the beating of the hooves of their snorting steeds. It was a moment of peace—a hint from the past, when times were happier and simpler—and then it was gone like a breath of wind.

  “I vow if we escape,” hissed Rusfaer, “we will have it out, you and me. On the battlefield. One on one, in single combat.”

  Dereas crooked his mouth in a dispassionate leer. “So we shall, brother.” Though he did not wish it. There was no joy in any aftermath fighting his bear of a brother. A terrible sadness hit him, as of a great hammer arching out of the sky and sundering roots that had once run deep.

  The bad blood between them remained unsettled; this half-hearted truce would have to do for now.

  And so, the estranged group trudged up the cavern in a strange glowering silence that lasted for all too many heartbeats.

  3: The Mountain King

  A spell was laid,

  To save a people,

  In a sunless hall,

  Where a king slept,

  And a terror dwelt!...

  —The witcher of Yarim-Id

  No untoward blur of movement or fang of demon or ghoulish claw disturbed the greenish gloom painting the way ahead. Each of the company took stock of his surroundings and nursed his own private thoughts. The trickling water at their feet continued to emanate a luminous glow, and ever was it a source of wonder for the haggard men. Past another twist they stumbled and onward: up a rough hewn lone shaft, spidered with murky shadows. Twice their height, the tunnel narrowed to half that in places where no branches or junctions appeared. It was carved by what looked at first sight, primitive hands. The rudely-etched bestial carvings sighted earlier had slipped away. No bas-reliefs or art adorned these aged walls that crowded them on both sides, and Dereas loosed a soft breath, suspecting with an uneasy thrill that the hewing belonged to an earlier age.

  He frowned. A shaft worn by underground rivers? By beasts or man? All possible, yet he thought to detect the signs of activity more contemporary—crude claw marks scraped on the wall, sinister jagged scratches, a half inch deep. The tunnel appeared scored at places both left and right. The warrior entertained some furtive speculations, and no small amount of theorizing. Maybe there was some hint of truth to the legends, about a shadowy menace that roamed the bowels of the myth-shrouded mountain—of headless goblins with pincers stalking the dark, devouring any soul that passed. Such tales brought shivers to his spine, those campfire stories and aleroom tales of old that haunted mysterious Mt. Vharad.

  He could only steel himself against such unimaginable horror and turned his eyes to the arching shadows. Spear clenched in a tight fist, he saw, under the greenish glare, petrified shell creatures embedded in the walls around him, from whose fat, fibril-fringed bodies the companions shied. Rocks and chips had flaked from the walls and ceiling over the years, creating a detritus of moulder and rubble.

  It made for slow going, but they ploughed on. Amidst the water-smoothed rubble and ancient snails, more crustaceans were embedded in the rounded stones—spiralled volutes, shellfish, and other weird sea life.

  At a curve in the tunnel, the path widened and they gladly forged ahead. N
o stir or movement touched the desolate passage, and yet, there lay somewhere in there, a crawling sense of lurking peril. Each man was lost in his own reverie; none uttered more than a low grunt now and then in face of the eerie silence and the echoes careening back at them. Jhidik’s grimaces indicated that he was having no pleasant time coping with his injured leg. They sat after a time with their backs against the wall to rest, listening with one ear trained on the inscrutable purl of the mysterious stream trolling at their feet. The faint odour of ancient must rose from the damp stone. A small sound clinked ahead. Dereas’s hand fell swiftly on the hilt of his sword. Heavy slabs had fallen to either side, shelter for any manner of creature, around which the cool waters tinkled with quiet ease and lit the chamber a sullen green.

  Nothing more came to their ears, yet they strained them in the darkness for a long time. “What do you suppose that was?” muttered Amexi.

  Dereas did not answer. The dimness brought an unsettling chill to his heart.

  “We have to eat sometime,” grumbled Rusfaer. “Let’s see what we have. Come on, cough up your wares!”

  With much grumbles, they took stock of their rations, and revealed what they had, appalled to see how little it was. Dereas carried an emergency stash of dried sour goat curd on his person in a small pouch, likewise Rusfaer’s man, Hafta, who produced some dry cornmeal bread, and Jhidik, the same. They held no water. Only did they hope to find a clean source, or things would go badly for them. The others had lost their emergency rations, or neglected to carry supplies. Draba was surly of this fact, and tried to take more than his share when lots were divvied. But Rusfaer rapped his knuckles with the back of his sword. “Wait your turn, greedy guts,” the giant growled. “You get to eat exactly what the others do.”

  The bandit-man scowled. Even his weaselly eyes burned to a bitter pulse at his chief’s reprimand. But he contained himself. His thin lips muttered some rude words, choosing not to defy his lord at this tense time, especially in front of the others.

  The company split the last rations and Dereas hoped the slim pickings would get them to the end of Vharad. The hope was perhaps extravagant. Starving men were no good as fighters, Dereas knew. If it came to that.

  The trickle that seeped down the centre of the tunnel seemed to grow in passing and caused the wanderers new wonder, glowing with its uncanny inner light. The tunnel steadily slanted upward on a small grade. Jhidik knelt and examined the water. “The stream carries a wash of phosphorescent particles. Evidently the source of our greenish glow. It doesn’t smell toxic. It may even be potable.”

  Dereas squatted next to his friend. Curiously, only when the water was in motion did it seem to radiate this fey luminosity. Squinting down at an isolated puddle that pooled at his feet, he saw that the water was black as night, but when he swished it with his toe, the small pool shimmered to the tune of an otherworldly green. A marvel!

  What fortune, the magical water.

  Their eyes had adjusted to the gloom now and they could distinguish vague shapes in the spaces ahead: pillars of rock that buttressed the tunnel’s flanks—stray carven boulders fallen from the craggy ceiling or hewn from the sides, or points along the tunnel which opened onto mini caverns.

  Dereas thought the feature odd and he stared with curiosity, edging around the peculiar columns carved now with the likenesses of strange gods, snakes and toads, salamanders and newts. Some had one eye, others two, others stood with legs numbering up to four. These depictions were feral looking, avatars perhaps, Dereas guessed, or carvings which at one time served as deities for some race, and yet evoked such a repellent horror in the pit of Dereas’s stomach that he felt compelled to look away. But then most gods did, did they not?

  He recalled the savage, ghastly caricatures he had seen many a time inscribed in temples and caves about the lands.

  The knot in his throat grew and he swallowed it. A crawling malaise wormed in his veins, thinking of all the nooks and crannies of this shadowy world that carried hidden evil and votive ghastliness. All the mysterious effigies and worship grounds, the secret lairs, the blood-stained altars and twisted temples that teemed in nameless caves, or forests and jungles, high mountains or ice caves in the far north bared to wind and soul. Here, in the world of Darfala strange gods lurked and cavorted and howled in mocking laughter at the hapless lives of prideful humans. And yet these same occult entities were brought into incarnate form by wilful monks and wizards through arcane worship, either mumbled as hymns or through the monotonous power of cultish incantations. Whether such acts were blessed or cursed, these rituals were the food offered in exchange for power and wealth, lust and glorification, prizes or banes. Whether through prayer or black magic, or devil worship and many unimaginable alternatives, mattered little, Dereas concluded...

  Balael..The word slipped soundlessly from his lips. The name was pure on its own, even as it came ringing in his inner ear, but when he mouthed it, it rang off the cold stone, echoing in the close chamber like a breath of winter ice.

  Most of the other races knew Balael as some obscure pagan figure of terror and myth, but Dereas knew he was real—the true warrior god, whose wolfish bark contained untold power to fill the waning light and top up the strength of a warrior with courage and fortitude in times of darkness and terror. Now, in the time of the Saeth, it seemed as good a time to call upon him...

  Saeth. A word barely kept lingering on the tongue of even the bravest warrior, the name of an age darkest to humankind.

  Dark wizards, dark magic...

  ’Twas the mantra of the Saeth...

  A chill ran through Dereas’s body. He fretted with his spear as his mind drifted to Ahrion and the sorcerous black keep in ziggurat-haunted Phygus where he had been imprisoned, seat of countless evils and lineages of black sorcerers before, of heathen priests, heretics, and lost and deranged souls. Ahrion! The name sent a waft of tickling fear in his breast. It held evil power. The many nefarious sorceries the wizard had committed! Ahrion, the primordial necromancer, had brewed untold horrors in his dread chambers. For the hundredth time Dereas pored over the fact that were it not for this fiend and his far-flung magic, he would not have had this strife with his brother. Perhaps he could have averted this tribal disaster in the first place? Was it not during his time of imprisonment at the zombie-patrolled slave camps of Ahrion and later Basilurk keep, that Rusfaer and Pameel were waylaid by unknown kidnappers?—It was a time when he could have, as resident chief, ordered an escort to accompany his brother safely to their new home. Instead, his forced absence had kindled Rusfaer’s wrath and he had stolen off in the night with his bride away from Asgolin, without saying as much as a fare-thee-well.

  Nay! ’Twas useless to try to impress these facts on his brother’s mind. Rusfaer was a lost cause; already, even as he watched him trudging sullenly up the tunnel, it was clear Rusfaer was hopelessly addled with pain over the loss of his beloved. And yet, Dereas’s mind raced with the possibilities of fate, shaking off the what-ifs and should-haves that could have come to pass.

  His eyes instantly lost their glazed look. His reveries were shattered by the clink of Rusfaer’s sword on something hard on the loose shale.

  His neck jerked around, eyes lingering on the irritating Draba who took pleasure in cracking some of the larger eggshell fragments with his ugly blade. The pasttime was something he had adopted evidently from his mentor, Rusfaer.

  Jhidik waved the two to silence, hissing a harsh word over the clash of breaking shells. “Quiet, you sods! Must you alert every predator within ten bowshots of our presence? What devils dwell down here we haven’t a clue, any of which likely have long ears.”

  Rusfaer glanced whimsically at the Pirean, as if he were some specimen to be studied. “Something addles you, lame man?” He jerked a thick thumb toward one of the larger shells and snatched it up in his bear-fisted hand. “Well, something dragged these miserable eggs in here and it obviously had to be something hungry.”

  “These must b
e those wretched birds’ eggs of the Eakors from back at the roosts,” grumbled Hafta.

  “Another splendid deduction,” huffed Rusfaer. “There seems to be a pattern to where these eggs are dropped though,” he mused, his eyes kindling in interest. “Doesn’t look like the trappings of a mindless beast’s hunger to me, or any random foraging. It’s as if the eggs were placed here deliberately.”

  Draba’s mouth twitched. “’Tis unlike what those vultures would do.”

  Rusfaer ignored the complaisant smirk on his henchman’s face, the shadow of which seemed to pop up at his elbow or shoulder much too often.

  Dereas was not altogether trusting of Rusfaer’s capricious rascal either, and trusted him even less in this cramped space. His swagger annoying, no less his condescending grin and cocky quips. Likewise, Hafta’s grimace of distrust and constant sheathing and unsheathing of his weapon. Rusfaer’s stride was much too aggressive, that too, the mean lurch to his shoulders. It brought up pangs of old memories that the war chief wished to forget. His brother had a pent up rage of dark brooding inside him that spoke of a violence ready to uncoil in a blinding sweep of fury, sweat and death.

  The company drew to a halt. A three way junction loomed before them; one branch led to a pit into half murk, another straight ahead narrowing to follow the source of the mysterious stream. And yet another yawned into eternal blackness. The vapours exuding from the last opening were cold and damp. A sound, barely perceptible, emanated from it, the chitter of a soul-despairing cry—one longing for release, strangely human, and yet somewhat reptilian.