TORRENTS CRASHED DOWN over ruins of an age even the coldest memory could not recall. Men had not looked upon those hateful stones for long and blissful centuries. But the derelict stones were not entirely dead. Here and there, shadows flitted, betraying the presence of vermin corrupted by the vile powers seeping from the depths.
Hundreds of ratlike eyes bore witness to the vicious bolt of lightning that struck among the rubble. The last thing those eyes saw before they were burned away by the power of such an arrival, were two men emerging from that deadly light: a one-eyed elder in a dark robe, and a young man, straight of back and powerfully built. He wore a bronze elm upon his black-haired head, and a broadsword belted across his back. Cold gray eyes took in the ruins with suspicion and contempt in equal measure.
Ulrem doffed the helmet and let the rain fall for a moment on his face, washing the sweat and heat from him. His flesh sung with the memory of the storm, of the vast and mountainous clouds piled in their enormity. He had glimpsed stars for but a heartbeat, glimmering and bountiful as the silver sands upon the western shores.
And then down, with unspeakable speed, back to the mud. Mortal once again. Thunder rumbled distantly overhead, and the rains rolled out on gentle zephyrs.
“This way,” Zores said, heading towards the crumbling ruin.
“What is this place?”
“Irom na-Thar: the Gates of the Dead. A spear driven into the earth’s heart.”
Ulrem grunted. In the gloom, it was difficult to make out anything like a gate. Above them loomed a crippled spire: a hideous scar upon the earth born of the Starless Age, made all of black stone. Unlike the blocky towers of the cities he knew, Irom na-Thar seemed fused, like wax, melted to a seamless, running whole. Time and damage had broken this illusion, though.
Huge chunks of the keep and its walls were blasted away, and what still stood was eroded by countless cruel and lonely years. Gray, threadbare weeds poked through the gravel, but no moss or lichen stained the fallen masonry. The vegetation seemed to avoid the strange stones.
Zores worked his hands across the face of one such chunk, and then another. Lightning flashed, but distantly, flickering unsteady light across the ground. Specters leaped out at Ulrem from the stones: gouged into their waxy surfaces were hideous, leering faces. He scowled and held up a warding gesture.
“That has no power here.”
Zores stopped before a wall. It seemed stretched from the bones of the earth itself, rather than constructed piece by piece. Heaps of rubble were dashed about, evidence that they stood at the epicenter of whatever cataclysm had wrought such devastation. But it wasn’t the remains of fury that held Ulrem’s eye. It was that patch of wall before which Zores stood puzzling. The wall was disturbed in some way, as if it had been...Ulrem groped for the word as his hand slid unconsciously towards the hilt above his shoulder. His eyes struggled to take in the space. They slid over it like beads of water over wax.
As if it had been removed.
“A great fiend is buried here at Irom na-Thar,” said Zores. He pushed up the sleeves of his robes. Bony, claw-like fingers began to massage the air. “My master spoke of this place, many years ago. After he died, I read his notes. I have dreaded it ever since, and prayed I would never stand before the Gates of the Dead myself.”
“A fiend?”
“A man who sold his soul to the powers of the black hells. A warlock known as the Deadtongue: a great captain of the Enemy. During his reign, this place was his keep, in the time before the Return. After he was slain, it became his tomb, and the gates were smashed to seal it off.”
“My people build cairns for the dead. Barrows for the chieftains.”
Zores searched Ulrem’s face and said, “I have heard the songs of the crows. There will be no more cairns for your people, will there, Slayer?”
The younger man looked away bitterly.
“Alas for the passing of great men and worthy kings! The world shall never know their like again. But hark! The Deadtongue was the master of these lands. He cursed and raped them, broke them to his will, and drank the very life from them to power his mad designs. They have lain dead and barren ever since.”
Ulrem peered up at the slouching tower. He felt hundreds of melted, black faces glowering down at him. “Then why are we here?”
Zores made a strange gesture and uttered something in a tongue Ulrem had never heard, nor wished to hear again. The stones around them shivered, and then began to shift, dragging across the muddy ground and rising towards that place of...emptiness.
“What remains of my order has become aware that certain elements are seeking to restore that which was buried here.”
“How?”
“Better left unsaid,” muttered the old man. He wiped the rain away from his eyes. The stones were assembling against the wall now, and Ulrem was beginning to see a pattern to their angularity. They were forming a threshold.
At last, it was complete. Two flat, blank slabs formed the doors themselves.
Zores jerked his thumb at the doors.
Ulrem planted his shoulder against the door. It held firm as he pushed with all his might, the heavy lines of his legs and back standing out like cables. Then, it gave all at once.
He tumbled into the darkness beyond, catching himself with legs wide. In a heartbeat he had unsheathed Braveblade, ready to kill.
The ghosts of the ring howled within him: A charnel house! We risk too much coming here. Leave!
He stood on a small platform above a stairway that plunged into the gloom. All was still.
Ulrem took a breath of relief and gagged. The stink of the grave filled his nose and throat: old death and ancient blood, lingering, moldering over lightless centuries. No battlefield had ever smelled so rancid.
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Zores followed him with silent footsteps, unaffected. Ulrem mastered himself, but he kept Braveblade in a tight fist. Together, they descended the broad black steps.
Down they crept into the dripping throat of lightless death. Here and there, they passed the bones of warriors long dead, wearing chain mail hauberks and pointed cone bascinets in place of death shrouds. Swords rotted through by rust and age lay in scattered shards. The sorcerer said nothing, but gave them wide berth.
A hundred steps, two hundred, Ulrem lost count. Bodies floated past them, grim specters drifting by in the pale, mystical light the sorcerer summoned in his palm. Further down, they found other bodies: tortured-looking things of alien shape, their bones scrimmed with vile-looking runes. At the first of these, Zores stopped and knelt long enough to scowl and spit. After that, he ignored the deranged carcasses.
It seemed to Ulrem that they walked through the remnants of a running battle. Many were locked in the murderous embraces of violent deaths. Spearheads and sword blades stuck through the beasts, marking desperate, doomed acts of valor. Enough to earn a seat at the high halls, perhaps—but a bad death nonetheless.
The deeper they went, the worse the nightmare: remains torn limb from limb, or blasted apart, or shattered. Whether the men had been fighting their way into, or out of this horrid place, Ulrem did not know, and did not care to ask.
Madness.
He began to sense a shift in the oppressive air around them. The air grew closer, and the reek of death fouler. Ahead, the depthless void warmed with a distant red glow.
“What is that?” he asked, breaking at last the iron silence.
“The sepulcher.”
They descended the last fifty steps with a great deal of care. The masonry here was ruined, reduced to little more than unsteady rubble. Ulrem went first, picking a safe path, and keeping a careful eye on the old man as he followed.
Beyond the flight of stairs was a long, narrow tunnel cut through undressed bedrock. It seemed to have been gouged out by some terrible force. The way was choked with bodies, and there was no skirting them now. They waded through old bones and rusty armor, abandoning any attempt to preserve the dignity of the dead.
“How many men died here?” Ulrem’s voice echoed over the dry bones.
Zores pulled at his mustaches. “Hundreds, I suppose. A fighting force from Kariath, by the sea. They were old foes of the Deadtongue, and eager to serve. Though the city is a ruin now, its lands burned by Ekith reavers, and the citizens put to the sword. They say the Ekith built stone pillars before the city’s gates and draped them in the flesh of their victims. A terrible business.”
Ulrem grunted. The old man talked too much when he had a mind to speak the truth. Still, the horrors of war were difficult to overstate. “My father spoke of the Ekith as a myth: monsters that crept out of the sea. But Kariath, you say? Do you mean Akkariath?”
“Perhaps. It has been many years since I turned my eyes thither. The Karathians were great fighters in their time, summoned by my master to take up their spears and crush a great evil. Heroes, to a man.”
“Then why do their bones lie here, abandoned?” To this, the old man had no answer.
They came presently to an arched portal in the stone. A vast chamber unfolded beneath a high but natural cavern. Fanged stalactites hung from the ceiling, shedding tears into pools amongst the stones below. Broad colonnades bearing wretched faces lined the walls, one horror twisting into another agonized visage.
At the center of the chamber were two great platforms built like ziggurats in miniature. At the top of one sat a huge ruby carved into the shape of a human heart. From this strange artifact radiated a bloody crimson light that washed the whole space in hellish tones, and cast hungry shadows.
Upon the other platform was a long box of plain stone.
Across the floor, a field of death. Skeletons lay where they had fallen in melee centuries ago, so deep in the earth, in a land so dead that even rot and corruption had not finished the job. Amongst them were more of the monstrous remains. Their skulls were bullish and broad, with sharp, curling horns. They were wholly unnatural, freak abominations that had killed many men as they were extinguished.
Here and there, wide rings of scorched stones were all that remained of great pyres. The victors’ last act had been to burn the Deadtongue’s horde of secret writings and verboten lore. Zores' voice was grave as he lamented the great deal of knowledge sacrificed, for some of those maddening texts had dated to before the Return. His master had been adamant, however: they would burn all they found. Nothing discovered beyond the Gates of the Dead would ever again be carried to the surface.
Now, the silence of the tomb weighed on them like the incalculable mass of all the stone above their heads. Bloodshed had bought a triumph at Irom na-Thar. But was this glory? Ulrem had been living by blade and claw since his exile. Was such a wretched tomb to be his fate, too? A scowl stretched across his face at the thought.
Ulrem sensed something shifting, drifting like a wind felt only on the fingertips. His ring seemed to constrict. He fingered it and looked to the old sorcerer.
Zores Stormrider’s face was a vision of vindication and odium.
“They missed it!” he breathed. “By the blackest cavern of hell, they all missed it! All these years, dreaming in the dark, biding his time. We’ve been lucky, Slayer—incalculably lucky. We must see this terrible task through. Now, before his disciples can bring about the worst.” The old man started across the space, holding his head in his hands as he went, navigating around the piles of the dead.
Ulrem called after him. “Missed what? Speak plain, and tell me why we’re really here!”
Impatiently, Zores flapped his hands at the platforms. “There are two of them!”
“Two of what?”
“The pyramids! Deep in the forbidden libraries of Urt, I discovered a confession of an agent sworn to the Deadtongue. He described not two, but three of the pyramids here in the lich’s lair! So, I ask you, where is the third?”
Ulrem did not see one. “I do not understand,” he said truthfully. He followed the sorcerer down among the bones and refuse.
Zores’ voice drifted out of the darkness ahead. Ulrem could only see the thin concentration of the light the old man held aloft in his palm. The dark seemed to swallow light and voice both. “Those who watch have seen evil signs across the realms of men. First a tree of crows with three eyes, seen in Amadhia’s sacred gardens. Then, eleven years ago, every baby born in the city of Corvair was born with a black tongue. Two years ago, the dead plagued the jungles of Aasakkari, east of the Ymid Valley, and on they spoke but three words: Irom na-Thar.”
“What do they mean?”
“They are signs! Long have his disciples worked to bring their foul master back. Now they have nearly done it, but by the sun’s providence, we’ve beaten them here! The death curse of the Deathtongue, as my master recorded it, was thus:
With three eyes shall we watch you;
and the children of the sea shall bear my name.
At the time of my return, the dead shall go before me:
as you have undone my great work, so I shall undo yours.”
This was something Ulrem understood, for once. Zores spoke in circles. He spoke of stories and places Ulrem knew not. But prophecy? Ulrem was familiar with visions of times yet to come. The kings of the west had kept oracles, and every town had a Good Mother who read the omens of sky and field.
Concerning prophecies, Ulrem had only heard one worse than this. He ground his teeth. “Sounds like they didn’t finish the job last time.”
“How could they have known? The secret was deeply buried. And when my master joined battle here, it was nearly a rout. He was gravely wounded. Those of my order… In their despair, they made a grievous error. And once the gates were sealed, Irom na-Thar faded from memory. Why should it not? The Deadtongue was sealed in his crypt, and his fires gone dark. But he is not dead. He sleeps, awaiting the proper time.”
Ulrem hefted his sword. “Then we should finish the job.”
“Precisely what we’ve come to do.” The old man turned his head about, searching with his one good eye. “Do you stand ready, son of Imaahis?”
“My father said it is better to do a thing, than waste wind. Tell me what to do, Stormrider.” The younger grinned savagely. His gray eyes looked murderous in the obscene light of the diadem high on its platform. Anticipation, battle thrill, began to build in him like a warrior’s chant.