Stormblade

31

Hornfel had no sword. He had no dagger. He had only his life, and that he would not have for long. Hornfel lifted his head and spoke with a simple dignity.

“Murder me now, Theiwar, and be known as the Cursed King.” His brown eyes glittered. “And no curse carries more weight than that of a murdered man. Meet my challenge. Here above the kingdom you want to rule is where we’ll decide the matter. Have you the courage to face me without your warriors?”

They faced each other on the ledge like statues carved from the living rock of the mountain, Hylar thane and Theiwar. Though bitter wind tore at them, whipping their hair and clothes wildly around them, Stanach had no sense that they were anything but some stone cutter’s monument to strife. Grounded on the stone of the narrow ledge, the blood-darkened swords Realgar held reflected the eerie twilight only thinly. Though they must have heard Stanach’s approach, and Hauk’s a moment later, neither Realgar nor Hornfel looked around.

Stanach heard his own voice, his words, before he was aware of speaking. “We can take him, Hornfel Thane.”

Hornfel did not take his eyes from Realgar’s as he accepted the weapon the Theiwar passed to him. When he spoke, he spoke to Stanach.

“So you can. But, I’ve made a challenge, and he’s accepted it.”

Yes, Stanach thought, but will you be the one to survive this? We need a king regent, and not the mad rule of a derro mage. Hornfel Thane! Don’t do this!

Like a ghost’s whisper, Isarn’s strange words echoed in Stanach’s heart: I made the sword for a thane. Realgar will use it to kill a high king.

In the Deep Warrens, Stanach had been reluctant to believe the old master’s words, had refused to hear the prophecy ringing behind them. Now, standing on the ledge a thousand feet above the fiery valley, the Kingsword’s crimson steel heart shining with the reflected light of Reorx’s forge, Stanach wondered if Isarn had spoken truly.

Reason tried to dissuade him. Where was the Hammer of Kharas?

Where was the legend that would consecrate a high king? No one knew. No one even looked for the mythical hammer anymore. Yet Isarn Hammerfell, who had crafted a god-touched Kingsword, spoke of Hornfel and called him high king, as though, in the last moments of his life, the old master had seen legends become real.

Behind him, Hauk moved restlessly. Stanach stilled the ranger with a gesture.

“We can take him,” Hauk whispered. “Stanach, we can end this.”

Stanach shook his head. “This is the thane’s business. We’ll wait, Hauk.”

Hauk heard nothing in Stanach’s words but a brave warrior’s death sentence. His hands tightened on the grip of his sword. “We’ll wait for what?” he said harshly. “For Hornfel to die?”

“He’s a good fighter. He won’t die.”

Realgar’s smile was cold as ice. He lifted his head a little, as though scenting victory. In the gray twilight, the Theiwar’s eyes were like a snake’s, the pupils narrowed to slits to protect his retinas from what to him must seem a blazing glare.

Stanach shivered with sudden fear in the wind.

His eyes! No light-hating Theiwar would choose to fight even in the dim twilight if he could avoid it. Why was Realgar here? Why hadn’t he maneuvered Hornfel back into the darkness of the gatehouse?

Realgar lifted a hand and moved his lips in a soundless word of magic. Fear, like sudden sickness, shot through Stanach and filled him with dread.

“Hornfel—!”

His cry of warning came too late.

Twilight became midnight, starless, moonless, and as complete as the darkness of the tomb. A dragon’s battle cry thundered against the cold sky. All heart and strength sucked out of him, Stanach fell to his knees. Stunned with dragonfear, blinded by the dragon’s spell of darkness, he only dimly heard Hauk’s cry and Hornfel’s shout of anger. Realgar’s triumphant laughter soared through the darkness as though on the wings of the dragon.

“Bastard!” Stanach snarled. “Treacherous bastard!”

The wind of the dragon’s passing flung him back against the face of the cliff and sucked the breath from his lungs. Suddenly dizzy, disoriented, and numb with fear, Stanach was reft of his will and helpless. Caught in a web of darkness, in a swamp of horror, he was incapable of moving. A thousand feet below the valley still burned. The flames, leaping high, seemed to reach for him with certain confidence that they would have him. The wind of the heights, the blast of the dragon’s renewed passing dragged him so close to the cliff’s edge that Stanach knew he must fall. Hauk screamed his name. With the unbreakable strength of panic, a hand clamped on his right wrist. Though Stanach couldn’t feel the grip, he felt the pull in his shoulder. Hauk had him and dragged hard, hauling him back from the drop and into the gatehouse.

Echoes from a nightmare, the belling of steel clashing against steel rang in the darkness.

The thane! Oh, Reorx, the thane!

“He’s fighting blind!” Hauk cried. The young man’s horror ran like lightning through his hands and set Stanach’s bones vibrating. Tyorl pulled himself up, leaning heavily all the while on Lavim’s shoulder. He’d seen men do it, stand when they should have been incapable of even breathing. Once he’d wondered what that must feel like, and now he knew. A slow draining of life, his blood seeped from the jagged sword wound in his belly.

It had happened fast, all in a moment. The rage and fury of the battle had risen to a mad pitch as red and silver uniformed Daewar poured into the great hall and the gatehouse. Tyorl, back on his vantage point on the gate mechanism, had seen Realgar, Stormblade leveled to plunge into the Hylar’s unprotected back. There was no time to load a bolt into the crossbow. The elf had moved without thinking.

Tyorl had put himself between Realgar and Hornfel. Stormblade had been like ice tearing through him, like fire when Realgar ripped the steel free. Now, he felt no pain. By that, more than even the lifeless cold, he knew he was dying.

And what was dragonfear to one who was dying?

“The—the crossbow,” he whispered.

Lavim swallowed hard. “Tyorl, I don’t think you—”

“Please. Help me now, Lavim.”

“No, Tyorl! You have to wait here for Kem.” Desperate hope made the kender’s voice ragged. “He’ll make you better. You’ll see. You’ll see, Tyorl.”

Tyorl leaned his face against the stone wall and braced his legs. These small movements, this trying to talk, only left him colder. He slid the flat of his hand along Piper’s flute, still on his belt.

Lavim had once claimed that Piper could read his thoughts. Tyorl clutched the flute.

Piper, he thought, tell him to help me. I can kill that dragon if he’ll only help, Piper …

Do as he asks, Lavim. Do as he asks.

As he heard Lavim’s frantic objections, Tyorl’s fingers tightened, white-knuckled, on the kender’s shoulder. “Please.”

Even as he pressed the crossbow into Tyorl’s hand, Lavim protested again. “Tyorl, you have to stay here. You have to wait for Kem. He’s with Kelida now—”

“Kelida!” Tyorl whispered. “Lavim, she’s all right?”

Lavim nodded vigorously. “She’ll be fine. Kem says so. Please, Tyorl, please let me help you sit until he can get here.”

Tyorl shifted his grip on Lavim’s shoulder.

“Help me onto the ledge.”

“No, Tyorl!”

The pain he should have been feeling snarled within him, not felt yet, but stalking him like a relentless wolf.

Piper, tell him.

Tyorl watched the kender, head cocked and listening while Piper spoke soundless words.

Lavim. It’s like when you had to help Kelida set Stanach’s fingers. I know you don’t want to, but you have to. There’s no time to argue. Do as he asks.

“But what are we going to do? He has to stay here! He has to wait for Kem! Piper—!”

The kender’s voice faded and became the howling of the wind. The stone Tyorl now braced his back against was the mountain wall, and he didn’t know how he’d come to be outside the gate. Gnarled hands gentle and trembling, Lavim still held him up. The cold on the ledge seemed almost warm when compared with the emptiness filling him. Close, and yet seeming so far away, steel whined on steel. Blackness shrouded the ledge. Distantly, like an old, old memory, fear of heights whispered in Tyorl’s heart. But it only whispered. As he did not feel the dragonfear, he did not feel the clutch and drag of the fear of heights.

“Lavim, nock the quarrel.”

He heard Lavim ground the crossbow and grunt with the effort of drawing back the string. Shrieking higher than the wind, the black dragon flew high and wheeled for another pass at the ledge.

Hauk’s voice, harsh and thick with fear, cried: “Stanach! He’s fighting blind!”

Steel sang, boots scraped on stone.

Tyorl opened his eyes when he felt the bow pressed into his hand again. I can’t see in this darkness!

“Piper can.” Lavim whispered. “It’s all right.”

Guide me!

“He will-”

“Have you loaded the bow right?”

“Of course I have, Tyorl!”

Tyorl drew a thin breath and stiffened as pain finally found him. A blast of wind, like thunder, filled the darkness. The dragon dove, screaming with savage and terrible joy. The ranger’s arms had been so heavy before. They were light now. Hardly knowing that he’d lifted the crossbow, Tyorl gave himself over to Piper’s direction, ready to shoot at a dragon he could not see.

Darknight’s fear spell lay like a deadly weight on Stanach’s heart. Hornfel was blind in magic’s darkness and somehow finding the courage to battle both the dragonfear and a relentless enemy. Blind against Stormblade and the murderer who wielded it. Blind at the edge of a thousand-foot cliff!

Before he could think, before he could remember that he was not supposed to be able to move under the paralyzing constraints of dragonfear, Stanach broke Hauk’s grip.

Dizzy and disoriented, his head aching with his eyes’ efforts to see where no sight could function, Stanach forced himself to stop. He, who could see in places where no light ever came, was blind.

Dragging bitterly cold air into his lungs, Stanach managed to ease the reeling dizziness. He strained to hear and found at once that he could place the fighters by their hoarse breathing, the clash of steel on steel. Somewhere in the icy sky, the dragon still flew. Waves of dread, like the restless motion of a horrible sea, churned the air around the ledge.

Concentrating only on the sounds of the fight, Stanach inched forward, praying for some clue to tell him which of the combatants was Hornfel, which was Realgar.

The high whine of one blade sliding along another sounded in the darkness. Loose stone slithered, and Stanach heard a boot scrape on stone, a tightly drawn breath.

Then, Stanach heard the deep, vibrating hum of a crossbow bolt in flight.

They were nothing, the elf and the kender on the ledge. Hardly anything to whet an appetite. Certainly they wouldn’t satisfy Darknight’s hunger for anything but cruelty. That cruelty became simple rage when the dragon saw the crossbow in the elf’s hands.

Did the puny creature really think to do it harm with that toy?

Darknight cut its wings back and reared high, forelegs reaching for the elf on the ledge, screaming laughter as it dove.

It heard the hum of the crossbow’s string as nothing more than a stirring of the air. The steel-tipped bolt tore like silver lightning through its left eye, and the black dragon’s scream of joy became agonized shrieking. There was room for nothing in its mind but surprise, and then panic, as its wings fouled in an updraft and fire ran along its spine. No sooner had the dragon recognized the pain, when all sense and feeling vanished from its huge body.

There was nothing left to it but one small part of its mind, and that part was filled, for the moment it had left of life, with astonishment. Darknight dropped with the echoes of its death scream into the burning valley.

Like fire in the darkness, the dragon’s scream tore through Stanach’s blindness, reverberating in endlessly wailing echoes from the mountainside.

Slowly, like ice melting under the sun, the terror of dragonfear fell away, and the darkness of the dragon’s spell dissolved like smoke before the wind. Darknight was dead!

Gasping for breath, Stanach looked wildly about him for Hornfel. Hauk bellowed warning. Steel clattered on stone, and Stanach spun to see Hornfel, unweaponed and his back to the burning valley. Dark cloak whipping behind him, mad derro eyes aflame, Realgar held Stormblade in an easy grip.

“The fire,” he whispered, “or the sword? The fall or the steel?”

Hornfel’s expression, deadly cool and steady, warned Stanach off.

“Give me the steel,” he said to Realgar and crooked a finger in a mocking “come ahead” gesture. “Let me see if you can.”

Realgar firmed his grip on the red-hearted Kingsword and leveled Stormblade. Under the guise of shifting his stance, he lunged for Hornfel’s throat.

Stanach dove for Realgar the moment Hornfel dropped low and shouldered in under his guard. The two hit the Theiwar at the same time, Stanach high and grabbing for his wrist with his left hand; Hornfel low and toppling him hard to the ledge.

Stanach caught an elbow hard under the jaw and fell away. He tried to scramble to his feet, but didn’t make it. The Theiwar, Stormblade still in his fist, struggled to free himself from Hornfel’s hold and kicked back hard. Stanach felt the boot heel like lightning on the side of his head and heard the blow as resounding thunder. Almost at once, two hands, large and strong, hauled Stanach to his feet. Knees weak as water, Stanach still tried to break Hauk’s hold.

“No room,” Hauk said, pinning Stanach’s arms behind him. “No time.”

Realgar had broken free of Hornfel. Stormblade high, he launched himself at the Hylar thane, swinging the Kingsword as though it were an axe. Hornfel rolled back against the mountain and threw himself to the left. Steel screamed on rock, a high, chilling shriek. Realgar, staggered by the blow, struck and missed, reeling toward the edge of the cliff. Hornfel growled low in his throat and then roared a furious curse. He was on his feet before the curse had begun to echo.

Realgar staggered on the brink of the ledge, Stormblade clenched in his right fist. Stanach saw panicked astonishment screaming in the derro mage’s eyes the instant his foot missed the crumbling stone. Panting raggedly, Hornfel dove for Realgar’s arm and caught it in both hands. He fell to his knees, dragged to the stone by the weight of the struggling mage.

“Let him go!” Hauk cried.

With all Realgar’s weight pulling on him, Hornfel gritted his teeth and pulled back.

“Let him go!” Stanach whispered.

Hornfel’s grip slipped, his hands slid up Realgar’s arm to his wrist, his fingers touching the hilt of the Kingsword just as Realgar threw back his head and screamed. The mage fell and Hornfel lunged for Stormblade. Steel flashed, fiery heart catching the last gray light, as Hornfel snatched it back from the void.

Stanach closed his eyes, sharp tears clawing at his throat. For a long, dizzying moment, he didn’t know if his heart tightened for regret or for rejoicing.

They weren’t Hauk’s hands on Stanach’s arms now, but Lavim’s. Hauk had rushed to Hornfel. Still staggered by the Theiwar’s kick, Stanach looked around at the kender in confusion. Lavim was saying something but Stanach couldn’t make it out.

“Slow,” the dwarf whispered hoarsely. “Lavim, go slow.”

Lavim tugged at Stanach’s left hand. “Come with me now, Stanach,” he urged. “You have to come with me now.”

The dwarf said nothing. He wasn’t up to arguing with Lavim and simply went where he was pulled. He heard Kelida’s voice, low and weary. He looked around for her, his vision skewing a little. The dwarf found her on her knees at the gaping door to Northgate, supporting Tyorl. Her hunting shirt was torn where she’d been struck, the gray leather slit neatly where Kembal had cut it away to clean and bandage her wound. She spoke a word to Lavim, and the kender, his wrinkled face white, bolted for the gate, shouting for Kem. From where he stood, Stanach could see Kelida’s grief-stricken expression, the shaking of her hand as she rested her fingers on Tyorl’s throat to feel for a lifebeat that, if it still existed, could not be strong. Too much blood stained the elf’s hunting leathers.

He heard Hauk’s voice behind him. Stanach turned. Hauk looked down at Stormblade in Hornfel’s hand.

Slowly, Hornfel laid the sword down beside Tyorl. The flash of loathing in Hornfel’s eyes toward the Kingsword, momentarily seen and instantly hidden, chilled Stanach’s heart. Stormblade’s sapphired hilt caught the fading light. The fire of Reorx’s forge pulsed in the flat of the blade.

Wordlessly, Hauk took Lavim’s place. He placed shaking fingers on Tyorl’s arm. His lips moved soundlessly, repeating the name of the friend who had traveled so far to rescue him from Realgar’s torments. Hauk’s were the bleakest eyes Stanach had ever seen.

Stanach touched Kelida’s shoulder gently. “Lyt chwaer. ” He went to his heels beside her.

“I sent Lavim for Kembal.” Grief made a tattered thing of her low voice. “It won’t matter. Tyorl is dying, Stanach.”

He wrapped his arms around her, supporting her while she held Tyorl.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Kelida leaned against Stanach’s shoulder and buried her face in his thick, black beard.

Stanach stroked her shoulder gently and looked up to meet Hauk’s eyes. The ranger’s disbelief, and his struggle to understand that his friend was dying, made him seem suddenly very young.

Tyorl stirred. His lips moved as though he tried to speak. When his hand moved in Kelida’s she turned, green eyes shimmering with her tears. Gently, so that she didn’t jar him, Kelida bent and lightly kissed him.

“Ah,” Tyorl whispered, “you kissed me for luck and farewell once before—in Long Ridge.” He lifted his hand, touched her face, her hair.

“Kelida.”

Stanach felt her move as she caught Tyorl’s falling hand. Kelida sobbed, and Stanach’s heart ached with stunned grief.

Tyorl was dead of Stormblade’s steel.