Wrath of the Black Tower, page 23
part #5 of War of the Black Tower Series
She stirred.
“Sleep,” he told her, stroking her hair.
All of a sudden, he grimaced in pain, clutching a hand to his chest. His concentration wavered in and out. It was only a matter of time, he knew. He had to make the next few minutes count.
He returned his attention to the Leviathan. Throgmar lay on the charred ground, his body blackened in places and smoking, and he looked too weak to move. His amber eyes were partly open, and he and Baleron regarded each other for several moments silently, sullenly.
Unable to put it more diplomatically, Baleron asked, “Can you go on?”
Throgmar grunted. “I DO NOT KNOW WHY I TRIED.” He seemed to sag, and rested his weary head on the earth. Deflated and hollow, having perhaps killed his mother and helped the murderers of his father escape their rightful deaths, he seemed both angry and racked with guilt. At the same time, he also seemed strangely uplifted, as if a weight had been removed.
Blood from dozens of wounds along his massive bulk leaked into the blackened earth, and his scales glistened redly. Perhaps Mogra’s venoms were even then running through his system, finishing him off.
“Was vengeance sweet?” Baleron asked him, thinking of the Spider Goddess.
“VERY,” answered the Worm.
“So she is dead, then.”
Throgmar did not answer for a long span. His eyes clouded, and Baleron thought the dragon was likely imagining the moment he slew her, or tried to. He must have been right, as the Worm soon said, “I DROPPED HER FROM A GREAT HEIGHT AND SET HER AFLAME. I DESCENDED AFTER HER, MEANING TO WATCH HER STRIKE THE GROUND, MEANING TO FINISH THE JOB ... BUT A PLUME OF SMOKE ROSE UP AND I LOST HER ... AND THEN A SCORE OF MY OWN SPAWN FELL ON ME, SHRIEKING THAT I WAS A TRAITOR ... I SLEW MY OWN CHILDREN, BALERON. AND THAT IS AFTER I TRIED TO SLAY MY MOTHER! WHAT DOES THAT MAKE ME?”
“I don’t know,” Baleron admitted. “But I thank you.”
“DO NOT. I WOULD HAVE SLAIN YOU, AS WELL—IN TIME.” He added this last part sinisterly.
Baleron spread his arms wide. “Then, if these are your last moments, and you were going to kill me anyway ... ”
Throgmar studied him for a long time, and Baleron waited.
At last the dragon lowered his eyes. “I LIED. VENGEANCE WAS ONLY SWEET AT THE MOMENT. TELL ME, WAS IT SWEET FOR YOU? YOU TASTED IT TWICE, IF NOT THREE TIMES.”
“Sweet the first time,” Baleron told him truthfully. “But afterwards bitter. And now I find out I didn’t kill anyone, not then, but ... it hurt the intended target—”
“ME.”
“You,” he agreed. “So—the job was done. The second time? It feels great. I ached to kill Gilgaroth. I know he was your father, but ...”
“OH, I HAVE HATED HIM FAR LONGER THAN YOU. MY HATRED IS OLDER THAN YOUR COUNTRY!”
Aloud, Baleron mused, “It’s hard to believe he’s gone. To live without the constant threat of war and oblivion will be strange ... I suppose. Others will know that peace, not I.”
It was odd to talk with Throgmar like this, Baleron reflected, as though they were two old friends, but in a way that’s exactly how it felt, that they were two comrades sharing a last talk before their deaths overtook them. It was only a question of who would fade first.
“AND ME?” Throgmar said. “HOW DID IT FEEL WHEN YOU HAD YOUR REVENGE ON ME?”
“You? Oh, that was the best, the sweetest of all.”
Chuckling, Throgmar took a large deep breath and let it out in one great, melancholy sigh.
“DO NOT GET TOO COMPLACENT, BALERON.”
Baleron raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“MOGRA LIVES.”
“So?”
Throgmar blinked slowly, lizard-like. “THE CREATION OF KROGBUR WAS NO ACCIDENT, PRINCELING, AND IT SERVED AT LEAST ONE OF ITS INTENDED PURPOSES.”
Baleron felt a chill. “Which was?”
“TO PROVIDE A PLACE POWERFUL ENOUGH IN DARKNESS FOR GILGAROTH AND MOGRA TO MATE.”
“To … mate?”
“INDEED. EVEN NOW SHE WILL BE SWELLING WITH HER UNHOLY SPAWN—WHICH IS NONE OTHER THAN LORG-JILAAD.”
“You mean … Gilgaroth’s sire? The original Dark Lord?”
“INDEED.”
“Gilgaroth got Mogra pregnant with his own father?”
“HE WAS THE ONLY ONE STRONG ENOUGH TO DO IT, AND EVEN THEN ONLY IN KROGBUR. THAT IS ONE REASON IT WAS CREATED. LORG-JILAAD WAS LONG AGO CAST OUT OF THIS WORLD AND SHUT OUTSIDE THE DOOR OF THE VOID. HE WOULD HAVE TO BE REBORN TO RETURN, BUT WHO COULD SPAWN SUCH AS HE? NOW MOTHER MOGRA WILL GIVE BIRTH TO HE WHO WILL BRING ABOUT THE TRUE END TIMES, UNLESS YOU CAN STOP HIM.”
“How?”
“SAFEGUARD THE MOONSTONE, BALERON.”
Baleron felt sick. “The … Moonstone? You mean, the Elvish artifact? The Last Gift from Illiana? But it was destroyed! It must have been.”
“THEN RESTORE IT, HOWEVER YOU MAY. IT SERVES AS A WEAPON AGAINST THE DARK. IT MAY BLOCK MOGRA FROM GIVING BIRTH TO LORG-JILAAD, OR PROVIDE SOME OTHER BOON.”
“But … how can I restore it, Throgmar? It’s gone!”
But Throgmar had no answer. His golden eyes dimmed.
Baleron waited for the dragon to take another breath, but he did not, and after a few minutes the prince realized the truth of it. He hung his head.
Silently, oddly morose, he closed the dragon’s eyes.
“Sleep well,” he said. “And may your spirit have no need of further vengeance.”
* * *
On the black stairs, Illistriv had burnt itself out, leaving only a smoldering husk where once had been a mighty being. Gilgaroth’s eyes were still half open, and they were still flaming, but the flames were dying. Within seconds, they would be out.
The Dark One opened his maw one last time and groaned, a long, sad groan of lament, and then his fire faded.
Krogbur broke around him. The fires of the Second Hell engulfed the whole of the Black Tower and consumed the last of Gilgaroth. In the end, his own Inferno claimed him. And then it too went out.
* * *
The cold shadow in Baleron’s chest throbbed once, swelled, and he heard a horrible cry inside him. Then something left him. It was as though there had been a cloud on him for years, so long he’d grown used to it, had not even been aware of it, when suddenly it was no more.
It shocked him, and he staggered, almost drunken.
Gasping, he looked toward the Black Tower. Gilgaroth must be dead. Really, truly dead.
The Doom was no more. What had started with the destruction of the Moonstone was now complete. Baleron ... was free.
For a little while.
Returning to Rolenya, he found her still breathing. As he bent over her, he brushed dark hair from her face, and she stirred. He continued to sit beside her, and it was not long before her blue eyes opened.
“Thank the gods,” he breathed.
She gazed up at him tearfully. She must have been having a nightmare, as she looked panicked, frightened. He stroked her head to calm her.
“Did we ... die?” she asked.
He shook his head. Tears leaked out. “Not yet. There is none to claim us. Gilgaroth is dead.”
Wonder filled her eyes. “Truly?” When he nodded, she embraced him tightly. “Oh, Baleron! You did it!”
“No,” he told her solemnly. “It was—”
The Black Tower exploded.
With Gilgaroth’s death, the energies he had stolen to raise and bind the tower were loosed, and that coupled with the destructive element of the out-of-control Inferno ...
Baleron and Rolenya watched with astonishment as the immensity of Krogbur, flaming like a torch, flamed suddenly brighter, then erupted in a shower of fire and molten stone in a line from the ground to the sky, an immense eruption that showered millions of tons of death out over the wasteland ... and the army camped at the tower’s base. Baleron and Rolenya, even many miles away, could hear their screams. The army that would have spelled the end of the Crescent was no more. A few dragons still wheeled about the spire, but as it exploded it took them with it.
As the countless pieces of the tower smote the wasteland, the earth split and broke, laying ruin to mountains and fields of ash and filth, burning them all away in a bath of fire and red hot magma. Baleron never could have imagined the BOOM or the shock of the rushing air that followed. He could feel it in the very land, feel the vibration as the shockwave swept outwards. The wind of it ruffled his hair, burned his skin.
He and Rolenya huddled tighter as the devastation drew nearer. More wind howled around them, carrying with it the spirits of demons and innocents loosed by Illistriv’s obliteration, as well as the heat from the Inferno’s fires.
Such a huge cloud of dust and ash billowed up from the ruin that Baleron could hardly see what happened next, but he did. All the volcanoes in Oslog seemed to erupt at once, jetting lava into the sky and sending glowing rivers of the earth’s blood down their black slopes. Great earthquakes were triggered, and the land was broken again and again. Lava spewed up from the ground. Old mountains fell and new ones thrust up. The world was sundered and remade.
Baleron and Rolenya, frightened, looked all about at the breaking land. The destruction that radiated out from the site of Krogbur’s fall edged closer and closer. Baleron tensed. It looked as though the ruin would swallow them.
“I love you,” Rolenya whispered, and held him tight.
The destruction rolled toward them, closer and closer. He could feel the earth vibrate. His teeth rattled together.
Then, suddenly, miraculously, the destruction ceased rolling in their direction. The earth continued to split and quake, but the devastation came no closer to the two lovers. They seemed to be too far away to be in immediate danger, even though the ground still shook beneath them, and he could still smell the smoke of the fires.
At last the earth calmed as much as it could, and the former brother and sister breathed sighs of relief.
“It’s over,” Baleron said. Wind howled in the silence that followed. “They’re gone. Gilgaroth is dead. The Black Tower fallen.”
“We ... won.” She said it in a small voice, sounding surprised.
He almost didn’t believe it. For a moment he was absolutely convinced that this was yet another trick of the Dark One’s, and that any second all this would go away and he would be back in Krogbur’s pits, hallucinating, Ghrozm standing over him with a scalpel.
“We did,” she said. “We truly did.”
He winced as a sudden jolt of pain nearly knocked him over, and he had to hold on to her tightly to steady himself.
“What is it, Bal?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
He grimaced again. “I’m dying, Rolenya. The blood of Gilgaroth ...”
A look of terror crossed her face.
“I’m sorry, Rol,” he told her. “So sorry. After all this ... and I desert you now...” He was short of breath. His insides were baking. “Safeguard the Moonstone, Rolenya. Throgmar warned me … against its destruction.”
An odd calmness descended on her. Her eyes flashed with confidence and surety and her usual prideful stubbornness. With conviction, she said, “Gilgaroth said once that he had enough darkness to counter my Light, but he was wrong, and he paid for it. Now let me prove it once more.”
“Don’t try. You’re still too weak.”
“I’m strong enough for this. Now be quiet.”
So saying, she pressed her lips to his and held his face against hers. Her lips were soft and warm and moist, and he felt he could drown in her touch.
Slowly at first, but then more quickly, he could feel a strange power coursing through him, countering the poison of the Shadow. It washed him of the taint and corruption of Gilgaroth, and he was like a withered plant suddenly given light and water. It seemed to awaken, if accidentally, the remains of the Flower of Itherin, and he felt a glow inside him. Renewed energy and vitality rose in him, burning the poison out.
Their lips parted, and he gasped, staring at her in wonder.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“I feel ... good.” He laughed. “Very good.”
She smiled, her blue eyes wet, and for the first time he contemplated a future in which the two of them lived, in which they walked away from this.
She half sat up, and he helped her. For a while he just held her in his arms, and together they surveyed the bleakness of the wastelands. A great blaze shot up to the south where Krogbur had fallen and the Inferno loosed. Illistriv’s fires were dying, but new ones sprang up. The rest was grim and dark. Occasionally, the earth trembled, and all the volcanoes in the area were erupting like great fountains, sending the burning blood of Oslog high into the charcoal sky. The Dark Country was wounded—perhaps mortally. Rivers of fire cut through it, but the prince and princess were safe for the moment. Just the same, Baleron recognized the need to move while they could. A hot breeze blew down from the mountains, carrying the stench of sulfur.
“I hope our homes don’t look like this when we return,” she said.
“Me, too.”
“Will the armies still be there? Will the war still go on without him?”
“I doubt it. They’ll turn back and hide here for another thousand years, and we’ll rebuild.”
“Rebuild? But you have no home. You have no country.”
“There will still be survivors, hiding somewhere. We will unite them. We’ll make Glorifel even greater than it was before.”
“What was that you said earlier? About the Moonstone and Throgmar?”
Baleron told her, and she nodded slowly. “Then we must stay on our guard,” she said.
“We?”
She took his face in her hands and kissed him again. “Of course.” She paused, closing her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she said, “But I do think the worst has passed, at least for now. The War of the Black Tower has ended, and we have won. The Light has won. There will be years of peace ahead, and the darkness will be driven back, and it all be because of what we did here today. Today should be a day for great rejoicing.”
He reminded himself to be vigilant. The great army of Gilgaroth might be destroyed, but there were still countless creatures out there, prowling the waste. And dragons. Many, many dragons. Baleron realized that he and Rolenya were without weapons, food or water, and had only each other to keep them warm. It would have to be enough.
They climbed to their feet.
“We have a long road back,” she said, her blue eyes scanning the bleak, jagged horizon to the north. To the south, all was ruin: fire and clouds of smoke.
Taking a deep breath, he held out his hand and she took it.
The sun, he saw, was rising to the east, a white disc behind jagged black mountains. The storm clouds were breaking up, revealing the last visible stars. It had been a long night, and he doubted the day to come would hold much light, but it was more than he had expected. Many horrors of the night were likely seeking shelter from the sun; it was probably the first time Brunril’s Torch had been seen in this land in many years. A hot breeze blew.
“Come,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Wearily, bleeding and barely able to stand, Baleron and Rolenya left the body of Throgmar where it lay smoking on the ground and marched out into the wastelands, bound for home.
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 the old days close to his heart.
Sometimes he wondered, on the long, lonely nights, if Raugst’s shade would return to Illistriv, the Second Hell. He was not sure Raugst’s spirit would be granted the sight of the Lights of Sifril. Giorn was not an overly religious man, and sometimes he doubted the existence of an afterlife, despite having seen Illistriv with his own eyes, 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.
So the days passed, one after another, rolling into a seamless dream of working, rebuilding, and trying to drive certain thoughts away.
Only after some 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.
“I worry for the future,” Dalic said. “With the Moonstone destroyed, we’re weakened. The faith of Illiana will likely diminish, and the Enemy will grow bold.”
“Too true.”
Dalic stared into his cup. “This whole war could have been nothing more than an opening gambit, Giorn. Destroying or corrupting the Moonstone was the key. Now that it’s done, we’re on our own, without recourse to greater powers to protect us from the might of Oslog.”
