The Fall of Waterstone

Haugr and Lich

Open battle does not thrill them, for the servants take after their master. What they relish is falling upon the unwary, overwhelming the unknowing. There is no shame in subterfuge, for war is war—but the lord of the Black Land does not fight for aught but domination, and his thralls only out of fear and the lust for pillage and rapine.

—Aenarian Greycloak, Aphorisms

We must make for the southron quarter,” the princess said, urgently. “Come, this way.”

The palace of Taeron Goldspear was curiously deserted, holding only soft light from unheeded lamps, the wavelike song of distant cries, and the throbbing of bells. The guards were called to the walls and other points to provide direction, for though the king thought his secrecy secure he still required his folk to practice for emergency, and his warriors had not forgotten readiness.

“Riding a giant wolf.” Arn was not breathless but flushed, and a faint sheen clung to her forehead. “Or it looked doglike, but it had scales and smelled surpassing foul. Efain leapt upon it; Gelad shouted that I was to find you, so I ran.”

“Tjorin? And your father?”Aeredh was upon my other side, and between him and my shieldmaid all I had to worry about was clasping the iron box to my chest, sharp corners digging through cloak and layers of Elder dress.

“My father charged me with finding thealkuine, and rendering any aid I might.” For once Naciel was not barefoot, her slippers moving over carpet, stone floor, or inlaid wood with hardly enough force to draw a whisper. Her skirts rustled, running with silvery gleams, and her hair shone. “My husband has his own work; this was not entirely unforeseen. Yet I wonder…”

“They were closing the gates.” Arn glanced aside, but there was no motion in the hall we ran past; we plunged down a short staircase and out of golden palace-glow into yet another shadowed garden. “I think most Elder are inside, but there was a child screaming and…” She shuddered as she ran; my own heart sank in response.

The shadowmantle swirled, and the cloth was strange. It seemed to drink light, not even giving back the faint sheen of well-woven stuff. In garden gloom it turned wholly indistinct, as if I had no body. If I gazed at my feet only the tips of my slippers peeking from under the too-long hem were visible, popping in and out of sight.

Such weirding roiled even my stomach. So I did not look down.

“We are betrayed.”Aeredh sounded grimly certain, and his sword scintillated, the blade alight and hilt clasped in his left hand, for his right was occupied with bracing me. “Is there a secret way from the city?”

“Naturally.”Naciel turned aside, and we followed her as a pack of hounds at a rider’s side. My bee-torc bumped my collarbones, and ’twas a good thing I had slept in the boat’s embrace, for I felt oddly rested.

But very, very frightened. “Eol.” Why was I not saving my breath for running? “The wolves. And the other Elder—Daerith, Kirilit—”

For though they were disdainful, the Elder from Nithraen had also suffered through Mistwood and the Glass with us, and had taken every care with their Secondborn companions. I misliked the thought that they might be left without aid in this fresh catastrophe.

“I do not know.” Arn’s jaw set, her hazel eyes alight and leather-wrapped hornbraids slapping armored shoulderblades. “The wolves may find us, but if not…”

“Here.” Naciel turned again; the palace revolved around us, dizzying vistas in every direction. I had not seen a quarter of its glory, but then, I had only been here some few moonturns. The thought—How truly old is this place, I never asked—spun through my head and away. “We will be in the streets soon, and you twain must stay close. In the southron quarter, the Street of Ten Alleys—if we are separated, Aeredh, look for the sign of the kaelaia bird.”

Aeredh’s grasp tightened upon my arm; I could not even wonder if he would wield his blade left-handed. A wall reared before us, and Naciel hardly paused before throwing wide an iron door, its outside disguised with a thin veneer of white stone. We were suddenly in an alley, other garden-walls funneling down a slim rock-walled throat.

Naciel slowed. The bells were ringing differently now, one set jangling discordantly against the frantic music of the others. “The eastron gate has been breached,” she said, and the princess was pale as a mortal, though her dark eyes burned. “Stay close, my young friends. We may yet…”

The alley spat us onto a sloping, gently curved street lined with yet more gardens and graceful pale houses. Their beautifully carven gates—wood or metal—were almost all askew, and the emptiness was eerie. A tangle of bright color turned out to be a cloak wadded against a blue-flowering shrub; a tiny, painted child’s cart-toy, already shattered, crunched under Arn’s boot.

A patchwork of streets, and other living creatures appeared—at first just single or paired Elder hurrying intently in one direction or another, hardly seeming to see us or Naciel. Then small groups, and finally crowd-streams as the streets widened into avenues, each rivulet with a gleaming-armored guard at its head as well as a few studded along its length to provide aid and guidance.

It was the first time I saw actual fear upon ageless faces. The few children were somber, even older ones carried by an adult and the very small clinging to their caregivers; despite that, none of them wept save quietly, and their damp cheeks glistened in the soft glow reflected from whitish stone. The similarities all Elder share—high ear-points, prominent cheekbones, the shape of their eyes, the grace of their movements—gives an unsteady feeling to any mortal observer. Or perhaps only to me, for I was afraid as well, though I do not think I was even so brave as the youngest of their little ones.

The press thickened; we cut across a broad pillared concourse. My head swiveled, I searched for any familiar face and found none. My feet tangled; I almost fell headlong, but Arn and Aeredh hauled me along like a piece of wet laundry.

Two things happened at once. The bellsong changed; one of its constituent voices was stilled. And Naciel halted between one step and the next, her golden head held high as a wary doe’s.

Aeredh stopped too, and I was yanked savagely aside by Arn’s continued motion before she came to rest, her spearblade dipping, giving a single venomous flash.

A ruddiness bloomed along the street to our left. Flames twisted, flattening as they streamed against stone, consuming even that resistant fuel in grasping finger-ropes. A cry went up from two cavalcades of fleeing Elder, for before them a hulking thing stamped, cracks radiating from its hooves. The seidhr it carried ribboned in corkscrews; it was taller than the moss-skinned thing we had seen near Nithraen.

And it burned.

One misshapen fist rose, and its whip was not a length of rope tarred with some excrescence but a heavy iron chain running with noisome yellowish flame. The weapon cracked, shearing through a mass of fleeing shapes, and the screams, by the gods, the screams…

This was the haugr, also sometimes called belroch—a taller, much stronger cousin to the trul, both horrors of the North. It howled, mouth widening, and inside its throat was sickly yellow-white flame, the heat smoking from its splitting, reeking hide enough to scorchcrack granite. It wielded a length of terrible chain in either fist, and its horns dripped with fire.

Yet that was not the only terror. Drifting past the monstrosity was a sable smear with a high-spiked iron helm, disdaining the heat with ease for it carried its own freezing. Its cloak spread, orange fireglow stabbing through tatters, and where its mailed foot landed the paving split, caught between its cold and the haugr’s blaze.

The lich’s helm rose, and two dim gleams in the void covering its face fastened unerringly upon me. It lifted a tarry-bladed sword, and struck down one of Laeliquaende’s bright-armored guards with a sound unheard through fresh cacophony.

“Go!” Aeredh cried, letting go of my arm. He shifted his blade to right-hand as he ran with the swiftness of a young stag, somehow avoiding fleeing, maddened Elder. Screams rang in my ears.

I could not look away from those terrible, knowing gleams under that spiked, frozen iron helmet. It was not of the nathlàs or the greater liches we had met upon the Glass, but even the smaller variety of those undead horrors is terrifying enough. Seidhr snake-struck from it, but the Crownless was there, bright blade flashing blue as he turned aside the invisible attack, and he fell upon the thing like one of Odynn’s own battle-mad warriors.

“Solveig!” Arn shrieked, and dragged me after Naciel. Clutching the casket to my chest, I sought not to be a burden.

We ran, hearts pounding and throats sour, for Laeliquaende was not merely sieged but breached.

Another bell-tower fell silent, but Naciel did not remark upon it, nor did she pause. Lightly the princess danced, through fleeing groups or empty, disarranged streets. We were not so swift, but she held her pace to one we could manage, though black flowers bloomed at the edges of my vision and even Arn was winded by the time we turned parallel to the high, thick outer wall of Waterstone’s southron end.

Great columns of black smoke rose from various points in the city. Screams lifted alongside, and with the eastron gate shattered—and the northwestron treacherously left open, though we did not learn of that until some time afterward—many of the Enemy’s fouler creatures swarmed through. Haugr, liches of both lesser types, other malformed monstrosities, all accompanied by countless orukhar, for their dread lord wished not just to siege but to wreak vengeance.

He hated the Elder, did the lord of the Black Land. He hated Faevril and his sons, hated the lords of Dorael and their kin of Nithraen. But Taeron Goldspear the High-helm he both despised and feared, for there was great prophecy of that line. Not only that, but once before the spike-helmed lord of a hidden fastness had arrived unlooked-for, dealing a stinging defeat at just the moment the Enemy thought triumph achieved.

The shimmering city was valiant; its warriors stood and died so others could flee. But the entire valley was ringed, and any hope of escape slim indeed.

Neither I nor my shieldmaid questioned our guide, in word or thought. We were wholly in her hands, and she led us at the edge of steadily expanding chaos. Bestial roars and forlorn wailing mixed with bellsong and the rush of flame as smaller streets branched from our course with the regularity of pine needles from a twig. She slowed, and I thought perhaps our goal was near…

… but there were ash-pale shapes before us, rearing out of the burning gloom.

This time Arn halted first, and I nearly ran into her. Naciel slowed, her skirts swaying, and it occurred to me she must be worried for Tjorin. Where was Eol? And Aeredh, facing that terrible burning thing and its undead-cold companion.

Before us were orukhar—a good half-dozen, ashen hides spattered with filth and gold-tinged Elder blood, their heavy iron armor pitted and scarred, spiked and deadly. The largest wore no helm; his hair was stiffened with chalk-ash, shaped into a high crest like some warlords of the far south past the Barrowhills were said to do with clay. That hulking captain grinned, showing strong polished teeth in a terrible mockery of merriment, and amid the hulking of the Enemy’s most numerous servants was a much more graceful shape.

Maedroth the Watchful had laid aside his black cloth and armor. He was in silver and green, the velvet and silken garb of Laeliquaende’s most noble citizens, and his gaze fastened hungrily upon Taeron’s daughter.

One of the orukhar rumbled something in their strange, unlovely language; it bore little relation to the Old Tongue or southron. Yet I thought I discerned a shadow of meaning, for the phrase lifted interrogatively near the end.

“As you wish,” Maedroth said in southron, enunciating clearly. “The smallest one is what your master wants. Leave the Elder; she is mine.”

“Cousin.”Naciel’s chin rose. The Old Tongue’s word for their particular degree of close kinship was cold, and she spat it like a challenge. “And who are these friends of yours?”

Arneior’s head cocked. “Solveig,” she breathed. Her left arm lifted, and she pushed me back. I did not stagger, though my legs were caught between wishing to flee in any direction and realizing just how far we had already run. “Stay there, do you hear me? Right there.”

She had never said the words so solemnly before. It was the caution of a shieldmaid who must know, absolutely, that her charge will not move during a battle—so she may defend what she has sworn to.

“I hear,” I whispered, numbly.

“Naciel.”Maedroth’s lips shaped her name almost tenderly, accenting it in the way of Laeliquaende’s dialect. The orukhar moved, spreading out, and one or two made heavy snapping noises, champing their sharp, eggshell-colored teeth.

“How could you?” the princess whispered. “My father trusted… You are his kin. Just this afternoon he defended—”

“I do not care.”The Watchful’s lip curled; he did not even glance at Arn or I, consigning us to whatever the Enemy’s servants had in store. The iron coffer bit my arms and chest, and though the too-long mantle did not weigh upon me like my heavy green woolen one it was still a burden I would gladly shed if it would give us some chance of escape. “I will take you to the forest where my father met my mother. Soon you will not even remember that mortal’s name.”

“I would rather die,” Naciel informed him, and drew herself up, a frail hedge indeed. One of the orukhar feinted in her direction, with a deep rumbling chuckle. She did not move, did not even glance at the foul thing. Perhaps her will clashed with Maedroth’s in the way of Elder, their subtle selves engaging in combat more than merely physical.

I do not know. The screams in the distance mounted another fraction. Smoke now tainted every breath.

“Sol.” Arn, again, grimly determined. “Sing.”

What?I could barely breathe.

She tapped her spear-butt against the paving, and all of burning Laeliquaende echoed that single blow. The sound caromed off the buildings on either side, sadly watching this small drama amid larger ruin.

Then my shieldmaid gave a cry like those of the Black-Wingéd tasked with dragging malefactors to the underworld, and hurled herself into battle.