The Castle Of Hape. Caves Of Fire And Ice. The Joining Of The Stone

Below in the castle Jerthon and two dozen troops routed Seers from locked rooms, tearing open bolted doors with a battering post; then turned suddenly to face torch-swinging Pellian troops. The battle was brutal in the half-dark, the torch fires swinging to show face of enemy, of friend, then swinging so only dark shadow lay before a man’s sword. A grim, desperate battle waged in the close, fetid dark. Jerthon’s men fought with a fierce hatred of that dark, fought with righteous fury until at last not a Pellian soldier remained standing, until all around their feet lay the dead and dying. Jerthon’s men swept past them to fling open farther doors down darker hallways. ‘Take no captives!” he shouted. “Kill them all, we want no captives such as these!” Not captives with Seer’s minds to trick them, not in this desperate bid for victory. And as doors were flung open, monsters slithered out, abominations leaping to embrace them—monsters cut down by Jerthon’s men, or sent trembling back to disappear when he held the runestone high before them.

And then in the cellars at last they came upon BroogArl secreted, as if he feared failure, among shadows; cringing. He stood suddenly, naked of flesh in a wild vision, white bone wielding a sword like flame, his sightless eyeholes seeing too clearly the stone in Jerthon’s hand. Jerthon dropped the jade quickly into the pouch at his waist. And dangling from BroogArl’s neck were the bloody heads of a dozen Carriolinian soldiers, comrades fallen in battle.

BroogArl raised white bony hands and brought forces down upon Jerthon and Pol that drove them to their knees. They sought to rise, sweating, straining.

The two powers held equal for a long moment; Jerthon was hardly aware of the battle above, so desperately did he bring his powers against BroogArl. But BroogArl’s force held Jerthon’s sword frozen. Jerthon strained, sweating, until at last the bone-man gave way for an instant and Jerthon leaped on him, splitting his skull with one blow, severing the head so it lay at his feet like a halved apple, gleaming white. Then it darkened, turned once more to BroogArl’s bearded head, split horribly, grinning in the last spasm of death.

And above the castle, as if the Hape and BroogArl were one, Ram at the same moment severed the snakehead. Both heads fell, BroogArl and snake, the dark powers mortally wounded and trying in desperation to rally, trying in desperation to change the Hape into another body; but failed to change it. And now all across Ere, as the dark Seers strove to buoy the Hape’s powers, the timid Seers began at last to come together in sudden resolve, to reach out toward Pelli, to lend the Carriolinians their strength. And that added force maddened the Hape further so it surged with its own last strength in leaping fury and rose uncoiling into the sky, its two severed necks bleeding, its man-face laughing horribly. It tore away treetops in its frenzy, ran wildly in the sky, and it was winged: leathery wings beating the wind. Ram clung to its neck, his hands slipping in blood. The wind tore at him, the Hape writhed, trying to unseat him. And then the winged ones came surging, darkening the sky, and from their backs riders shouted and swords flashed out.

The Hape flew lurching toward the sea. Ram gripped the slippery, bloody body, looked down at the rushing land, dug his knees deeper but was slipping, clung desperately to the severed neck. The wind nearly pulled him off, wind like giant hands tearing at him as the monster sped over Pelli’s coastal city. And now Ram could sense Jerthon and Pol, a second wave of soldiers leaping into the sky above the castle to follow the Hape, could sense as a wild dark melee the battle that singed around the base of the castle itself where Carriolinians and Pellians fought to take possession of the castle now that all inside it were dead; he caught a vision of the wolves fighting alongside mounted soldiers, wolves leaping to pull dark riders from their mounts. And then the winged ones were crowding the Hape’s flight closer so it clawed in the air and screamed.