The Ghul struck back at him. A wave of power rushed inwards battering at the walls he had created around his self with the Elder Sign. It smashed through them and dug its talons into his soul and began to shake lose his memories once more. He saw that eight year old boy still standing in the ruins of an empty village. The ancient evil was gone, as inexplicably as it had come, leaving him alone in the place of death. He heard the sound of a horse. He looked up and he saw a grim-faced man ride in, with a dwarf-forged sword slung on his back. The man looked wary at the sight but he did not look afraid. He dismounted and moved towards the boy suspiciously, as if he thought the child might be a demon wearing a different form. The boy stood watching, clutching his father’s hammer. The man reached out and touched him with an amulet, which did not burn and then asked him what had happened.
Kormak saw that Razhak was beginning to understand. Taking advantage of the demon’s confusion, he countered. The memories came in a tide of images, intermingling as the two spirits fought for possession of his body. Kormak was not going to give up. The tide of memories brought back fresh recollections of his training in how to resist magical influence. He strengthened his wards, clawed back at Razhak.
Images flickered through his mind. The bodiless Ghuls raced around the world, disembodied immortal creatures that yet had the appetites born of flesh and which now hungered for the experiences they could no longer have. Disquieting tidings came, as Ghuls started to flicker and fade. There was a flaw in their magic. They had not become as independent of the flesh as they had thought. They could still die, coming apart in a welter of entropic energy, losing form and coherence, as if there was nothing to anchor them to reality.
More memories were ripped from Kormak’s mind. He saw the boy and the Guardian approach the towering spire of Mount Aethelas. He caught sight of the ancient fortress monastery for the first time. He saw himself placed with the other novices. Once again he picked up a training sword and surprised the masters with how good he was with it. He recalled the long years of training and learning. He saw himself grow to become a hulking youth with quick reflexes and a quicker temper, a black-haired cuckoo among the golden-haired second offspring of the Sunlander nobility from whom the vast majority of Guardians were drawn.
He saw the first desperate attempts of the Ghuls to find out what had gone wrong. Without their physical forms it was difficult to work the magical engines they had thought they had no more need for. He saw the Ghuls learn how to seize the forms of others, starting with beasts and working their way up to sentients.
Humans proved best. They lacked the spiritual protections of the Old Ones and there were so many of them, scattering so far and so fast across the lands that the weakest could be picked off without the Ghuls being noticed. Some acquired herds of humans, with scores of new bodies to be taken possession of. Some set themselves up as kings. Some led human armies against their former masters, the Old Ones. Some were worshipped as Gods just as the Old Ones had been. They returned to Tanyth and made a home there, with herds of subject humans to worship and guard them. Life was good until the Emperor Solareon intervened to free the humans from their worship of false gods. His armies smashed Tanyth, bound the Ghuls in great amphorae with potent spells, questioned them as to their secrets, then one day he rode away to make war on new enemies, never to return. His successor, fanatical with holy rage, threw the amphorae into the darkest part of the World Ocean, to rest in the darkness of the ocean floor for long cold millennia. Kormak was struck by a vast sense of cosmic loneliness. Razhak had encountered none of his own kind for centuries. It was possible he was the last.
He saw flashes from his own life again as Razhak struggled back. He saw his apprenticeship to Master Malan and the long hunt that had led to him being awarded his blade. He saw the orc wars of his youth when he had saved the life of King Brand and slaughtered orc chieftains, reaping lives like wheat. He saw himself travel through deserts of ash where the dead men walked, and confronting witches and wizards and Old Ones and demons. He saw the point where his path crossed with Razhak’s and the long hunt across the wastelands had begun.
He sensed now the Ghul’s fear as it desperately tried to elude its implacable pursuer and its growing despair as he eluded every trap, overcame every spell, sought out every refuge. He felt a gnawing sense of terror as the demon realised it could not escape and would have to turn at bay. He felt at last a flow of direct contact between himself and Razhak.
Why have you pursued me, Man? Why have you bedevilled my footsteps for so long?
Because I must. You have broken the Law. You have slain and maimed and killed. You must be stopped.
I merely do what I must to stay alive. As you do to cattle, as wolves do to deer.
We are not cattle. We live and think and feel. You have no right to slay us.
Your sheep would say the same to you, if they could but speak.
But they cannot and we can and that is the difference. You seek to live. We seek to live. In the end all things must die.
You would not if you allow me to take your form. Part of you would live forever with the multitudes inside of me.
That is not what I seek.
No. You seek death. Even as you bring it.
You project your own desires on to me. As I would to you. In the end there is no escape for either of us.
If you have your way and kill me your world will be poorer. All that I have seen and been and done, all my memories and dreams, all that remains of a people will be gone.
It is the same for all of us. With every man’s death, a world disappears.
I have fought Death so long. I will not let it end like this.
Kormak sensed the demon gathering what remained of its strength for a final strike at him. A surge of agony and memory swept over him. He resisted the onrushing wave like a boulder resisting the tide, letting it break around him against the hard rock of his will until the moment was passed and Razhak was gone, leaving him feeling strangely alone.
A loud crash sounded. Kormak opened his eyes and saw the doors to the torture cell were open. Guards poured down the stair. Nuala was with them. Scar moved to block their way.
The Ghul raised its hands and chanted a spell, a wave of energy flowed out from it, stunning the newcomers and the orc and his followers alike. It would have overcome Kormak too had he not been prepared by his spiritual conflict with Razhak to resist it.
The effort of that last spell proved too much for Razhak. Ana’s body was coming apart, decomposing into horrible black fluid, skin bursting and putrefying even as Kormak watched. The darkly shimmering form of the Ghul emerged and flickered around. Tendrils of light touched Scar and he screamed. A moment later his eyes glowed and Kormak knew that the Ghul had claimed another victim.
It turned to look at him for a moment and there was something there, some flicker of sympathy perhaps, or at least of shared understanding. The orc’s fangs drew back in rage and Kormak knew that the Ghul was going to come for him. He leaned back against the wall, giving the chains some slack. If the Ghul came within reach he would try and smash it down with the bunched links of metal. The Ghul shook its head as if reading his resolution. It reeled up the stairs and away.
Kormak’s muscles ached, his bones felt as if their marrow was molten. His brain felt empty as if much of what he was had been lost, and he realised it was merely the absence of the gigantic presence that Razhak had been. He strained with all his might against the chains. They had never been intended to resist a man as strong as he. They came away from the walls, leaving him free to stagger over to the board of keys pinned against the walls and find the one that would free him.