Выбрать главу

"Enough!” Gawain screamed, and yelling "The Fallen!" raced towards the creature, ashes billowing in his wake, a poignant reminder of Raheen…

The mighty blade slammed down onto the creature's shoulder, raking a huge gouge in its armour. The force of the blow rocked it back and onto its knees, and on the backstroke, Gawain took its head off. This time, the death-screech was like music to Gawain, and when he screamed "Raheen!" the word was lost in the thing's death-blast.

It was too much for the Ramoths. Far too much. They turned as one, and fled towards the tunnel and the promise of daylight and safety waiting at its end. Gawain surveyed the carnage, and with a curious detachment noted that other Ramoths, carrying tiny lamps and tiny phials of aquamire, were still quietly entering from the far tunnel, still tipping their vile cargo into the great lens behind him.

Martan groaned, and hugged his ribs.

"You live?" Gawain asked, breathless with battle.

Martan nodded. "I reckon.” Then he nodded up at the dark lens. "That what we came for?"

"It's a start." Gawain said, his voice echoing coldly around the chamber.

He helped Martan up the steps to the raised platform, and to the mouth of the tunnel. "You'd best go, friend Martan." Gawain said firmly. "I know not what will happen when I destroy this."

"Don't matter, Longsword. Here now, or on the farak gorin, or at home in Tellek. I bloodied the bastards' noses, didn't I?"

Gawain grinned coldly. "And now it's time to kick Morloch's arse to the moon."

"And yonder?"

"And yonder."

Martan held out a bloodied and bleeding hand, and Gawain clasped the old man's arm gently. "Honour to you, Serre, come what may."

"Honour to you, friend Martan, come what may."

Martan sank down to the ground, his back to the tunnel wall, and Gawain turned, longsword in hand, to face the dark lens of Ramoth.

"I 'eard what you said, Serre, when you cut that black-armoured bastard down. Done my 'eart proud when I seen them cavalry all them years ago. Done my 'eart proud now, seeing one of 'em again."

Gawain paused, his back to the dwarf, the lens before him. He nodded once, and stood tall. He was Gawain, son of Davyd, King of Raheen, and if he was to die, then it was in good company, with friends at his back, and the enemy before him. He strode forward, and cut down a Ramoth lamp-bearer, and stood before the lens.

It was of some clear crystal, hollow, and filled with aquamire. In it, visions swam, and he felt curiously drawn. As he gazed into its blackness, he saw pictures and scenes, people and places. Some he recognised. Flashes of Callodon, of Juria, and the farak gorin outside. A forest, and perhaps a glimpse of an elf. Dozens of images, one after the other. Then he realised what he was seeing. Pictures, through the eye-amulets of Ramoth emissaries. Dozens of them, all across the southlands.

"I see you all." Gawain muttered, and the visions swimming in the aquamire seemed to become clearer. A sudden thought struck Gawain, and he said quietly, "Where are you, Morloch? I want to vex you some more."

The aquamire shimmered, and new vision formed in the blackness. The Teeth, but not the southern side, bathed in weak winter sunlight. The northern side, in shadow. The shadows seemed to writhe, lazy, creeping, and Gawain froze in horror as the image crystallised.

Thousands of black clad men, attacking the Teeth with hammers, chipping away at the sheer rock face. Thousands of them, clambering carelessly over the bones and bodies of their fallen comrades to attack the rock. A terrible sense of despair seemed to fill Gawain, and a dread realisation began to form in his mind. Then the vision swam, and moved, further inland…

A great lake of bubbling brown slime, almost primordial. The landscape around it was barren, lifeless as far as they eye could see. Men and women, in black robes, chanting, making patterns in the air around the lake…other men, dressed in black tunics and hose, guiding naked and shaveheaded people to the lakeside, and then casting them in. Occasionally, a cloud of blackness seemed to bubble up from the lake, and shimmer, and then flash skyward…Gawain's stomach lurched.

Then the image moved further north, rushing, speeding towards a great dark castle hewn from rock, rushing to a tower…and there, sitting on a chair, staring back at him with lifeless black eyes, Morloch.

The dark wizard seemed suddenly confused. Then suddenly terrified. His crumbling jaw dropped, exposing the remains of long-decayed blackened teeth. Black veins suddenly pulsed in the obscene head.

"I have killed you twice!" Morloch cried.

"I told you I would come." Gawain screamed. And raised his sword, twisting his body, summoning all the energy and power of his battle-hardened frame. A word was forming on Morloch's lips, a gnarled and twisted hand reaching forward as if to ward off the blow.

A single word formed in Gawain's mind too, just as a distant bell tolled. The word cried for justice, and vengeance, for Raheen. As the mighty longsword scythed through the air and slammed into the crystal lens, the word filled Gawain's mind, and screamed from his lips.

Burn.

22. Darkslayer

Gawain felt the impact as the blade smashed into the crystal lens, and then time seemed to stand still. His muscles were shuddering, driving the steel through a morass, and then something seemed to jolt through him, this time through his entire body and not just his arms. He was vaguely aware of a tremendous screeching and crackling, and closed his eyes, and waited for death.

Martan, his eyes filled with tears, watched in horror as the longsword warrior was enveloped in an impenetrable black cloud that seemed as if it would draw the very sun from the heavens. A blast of black light shot down the far tunnel, heading for the far side of the rip. The ground shook, dust and rubble began to fall from the roof, and Martan watched, and waited for death.

What they could not see defied description. The bolt of pure aquamire energy unleashed from the lens shot through the tunnel, setting off a chain reaction, liberating the energy from tiny phials in the human chain that ran down the chasm's walls, across its deep floor, and up the other side, each liberation leaving a cloud of burnt ashes in its wake where once a shaveheaded follower had stood.

The main beam flashed through a duplicate lens at the far side of the chasm, blasting it asunder, its liberated energies joining the devastating pulse as it fired north through the base of the Teeth. The chain reaction kept pace with it, flashing west through a human chain of phial-carriers to a vast reservoir of aquamire so carefully horded over the centuries. When this erupted, the shaft of black light that shot skyward literally dimmed the sun.

The main beam flashed ever north, arrow-straight towards Morloch's tower. But at that precise moment, the lake of brown fermenting aquamire erupted a fresh shimmering bubble which rose, and intercepted the beam, and exploded, firing the vile brown lake, incinerating the wizards at its edge, diverting the blast.

In his castle tower, Morloch screamed, in agony and rage and despair. The ground shook, dust and stone falling from the tower's ceiling.

Gawain saw all this in his mind's eye, as though he'd ridden the blast of light himself.

In Threlland, the quaking earth had dwarves rushing from their stone-built houses and from the mines, and gazing north in awe. A massive black pillar of burning black light was flickering and dancing skyward towards the sun, blasting through the snowfall, burning through the clouds.

In Elvendere, elves slipped down ropes and gathered in clearings, and gazed at the northern sky as if this were their last day in the world.

In Juria, animals skittered nervously across the plains, and the crowned heads at court gasped in wonder as Allazar pushed them all aside to fling open the stained glass windows, only to fall to his knees, tears streaming as the pillar of black fire flickered like a far distant tornado.