Sungar was weak from another beating, his hands bound with iron once again. Two dungeon guards marched him from the Lord's Keep, across Llorkh to the Central Square, but a few blocks away, they put a blindfold on him.
"The mayor's orders," one of them explained. "Geildarr says he wants to be there to see your expression." Sungar did his best not to show any reaction, but when the blindfold came off, he could not help himself.
Geildarr laughed at the chief's surprise and sorrow. "Priceless, priceless, Sungar!" He gestured at the wide square before them. "Thunderbeast, meet the thunderbeasts!"
Sungar wept. These were the living totems that he revered, and like him, they were Geildarr's prisoners. They were myths that were never meant to be real. He would have been overcome with wonder had he seen the beasts in a forest's depths, grazing and roaming, but now, interred like living statues in this square, the sight was a tremendous blow to Sungar. Incomprehensible sadness showed in their massive eyes. Sungar tried to make a fist, but his fingers were too weak.
A young woman stepped up to Sungar. Small and dark-eyed, she wore a smug smile, and she strode up to him flaunting her lack of fear.
"I brought them here," she said. "Just like I brought you here."
Sungar knew her name and spat it. "Ardeth." The traitor to Hurd's conspiracy.
She was surprised. "You know me? Oh yes—you learned it from the dwarf."
"Uthgar will destroy you," Sungar said. An unexpected feeling of peace flooded up inside him.
"Will he?" she asked. "Trice Dulgenhar said that Gorm would do the same, just before I chopped his head off. Why is it that only the most obscure gods have it in for me?" She giggled.
"And you, Geildarr," Sungar said. "You will fall. This precious city of yours will fall." He nodded toward the behemoths. "The buildings will topple under their strength."
He did not feel as if the words were his own any more.
They flowed from his chest unbidden. Across the square, amid the enslaved behemoths, a ghostly figure flickered—King Gundar.
"Vague proclamations of doom from a barbarian chief," Geildarr said. "What a shock."
"You have stolen our birthright," Sungar went on. "This theft will not be tolerated. My tribe will arrive to reclaim them." And he believed it. He knew it.
Geildarr leaned close to him, so Sungar could feel the mayor's breath on his cheeks. "We took more than just these dumb beasts. Ardeth claimed for me an object of power from before the Fall of Netheril."
Geildarr was so close—if Sungar were less weak, and he not been bound, he could have killed him with his bare hands. But he felt no compulsion to do so. His anger left him. The specter of King Gundar in his vision smiled widely.
"I will watch your fate unfold," he told Geildarr. "And it will be soon."
Geildarr took a few steps back. "The dungeon usually drives its residents insane," he said, "but not this swiftly."
Ardeth spoke to the guards who stood around Sungar. "Instruct Kiev to step up the torture. This pathetic man must be brought to his lowest point."
But Sungar was smiling as they led him away. Gundar vanished into nothingness but left Uthgar's grace behind, and Sungar awaited his captors' comeuppance with giddy anticipation.
* * * * *
A few days' march south of the Sanctuary, the Thunderbeast party continued to make its way through the High Forest. They kept a discreet distance from the Unicorn Run and slipped through the deep woods without incident. As they walked, golden and red leaves cascaded down on them and formed a carpet stretching forward, guiding them to victory or ruin. But the leaf fall was coming to an end, and all around trees stood leafless, their bare branches reaching out and grasping like the thin arms of desperate men.
They spoke very little. Thanar and Rask at first attempted to keep the mood light, though they swiftly realized that this was futile and joined the silence. The Shepherds' revelations had cast a shadow over the Thunderbeasts' entire history. Now, to be doing the work of these loathsome tokens of the past rankled especially. And whenever Vell and Kellin's dark eyes met, they knew without speaking that her thoughts concerned her father—another idol fallen, and another dark secret of the past unearthed so unwelcomely.
Thluna carried the axe, though it was heavy for his lean stature. It was his tactile reminder of their real purpose. It kept his focus on Sungar. He bade Rask carry the oaken club given as a gift by Chief Gunther.
At a quiet, grassy clearing at the forest's edge, next to the quick-flowing Delimbiyr, they came upon a figure standing in the half-light of evening, staring into the distance, robed in rothehide. They recognized him instantly, even before they saw his face. Thluna yelped when he saw the man. "Keirkrad!"
He turned to face them. A festering red wound crawled across Keirkrad's cheek. His eyes were frozen oceans of blue streaked with lines of bright crimson.
Keirkrad smiled a warped, feral smile, his teeth glistening with saliva.
"The champions come," he said, his distinctive rasp familiar but somehow infused with malice. "Uthgar's champions come marching from the wood of their ancient home." He extended a finger in Vell's direction. "The blessed one," he hissed, "the brown-eyed one—Uthgar's favorite."
"No," said Vell. "No, Keirkrad. You must understand. Uthgar did not choose me."
"No?" Keirkrad's lined brow furrowed. "No? He did not pluck you for glory on Runemeet, on the site of his own death, the most sacred Morgur's Mound? He did not invest in you all the power he denied me?"
Vell shook his head firmly. "I am not of Uthgar's choosing, and this is not glory. This is a curse."
"Again you spurn the honor!" Keirkrad shouted to the sky. "Again you turn away from your god's calling! Is there no end to your gall? I will do his work in destroying you, though I have found a more potent master than Tempus's son could ever be. As a child, Uthgar granted me a glimpse of Morgur's Mound, but cruel and capricious he was, revealing to me the place where I would be undone and betrayed. Now the Beastlord has granted me what Uthgar would not."
Keirkrad snarled, and the red in his eyes spread till his eyes swam in crimson. Huge leathery wings unfurled from his sides and his face twisted and distorted into a drooling werebat. Heskret had inflicted lycanthropy, the ultimate punishment, on an enemy of old. He had not foreseen how the blessing of Uthgar resident in Keirkrad would manifest in his new form. With Keirkrad's mind wrested from his old form, he served his new master with devotion far exceeding that which he had lavished on Uthgar, and Malar responded to this fervor. Keirkrad was no simple werebat, but a nightmare of strength and power.
He was quickly a mass of fur and vast wings. Sharp claws spouted from his hands and feet, his ears grew huge and cupped like a bat's, and his teeth lengthened into glistening white fangs. Most terrifying of all was that he was still Keirkrad. Something indescribable in his movement—the way he held his shoulders and his head—and those watery blue eyes were the same, but now set in a bat's leering face.
The Thunderbeast party fanned out and drew weapons. I am a werebeast of sorts, too, Vell realized for the first time.
Keirkrad advanced in slow steps, his wings dragging on the ground. His eyes locked on the axe in Thluna's hands.
"How is this?" he asked. "The axe reclaimed? Sungar's folly undone?"
"There is much to be explained, Keirkrad," said Thluna. "We Thunderbeasts have been misled and manipulated. Let us explain."
"There is no reasoning with a werebeast," Kellin warned.
Keirkrad let out a throaty chuckle. "For once, the southland whore and I agree. You are weak creatures, all. I have borne witness to the fickleness of your kind all my long life." He scanned the assembled Uthgardt. "The child chief, the traitor druid of Silvanus, an orc infiltrator, and warriors of no particular distinction. You disappoint even so minor and weak a god as Uthgar. Only one among you is worthy of the transformation, of Malar's blessing, and that is purely for the power that resides in you. A repository, the treant called you. Just what is a reservoir, if not a power waiting to be tapped?"