Vaddi looked around at the piled dead, the smouldering ruins of the demon warriors. Among them, not one of the lords from Khorvaire bad survived. To his horror Vaddi saw that all but a handful of the Deathguard had perished.
“Nyam!” he gasped, breaking free of Zemella. “Where is he?”
Both Fallarond and Zemella looted about them, but at first they could not see the peddler. He was not standing.
Vaddi stumbled across the chamber, searching the fallen bodies, calling out the name of his friend. At last he found him, almost buried under one of the many-heaped mounds of the dead.
“Nyam!”
There was a groan of response then movement. Nyam slowly eased himself up on to an elbow. “Sovereigns, Vaddi, have I given up all my wealth to Vortermars for this? I can’t go on—”
Vaddi laughed, tears of relief springing from his eyes as he hauled on the peddler’s hand, dragging him out from the carnage.
“No need, old friend. It is over.” Vaddi helped him to his feet, but it was clear that Nyam had been only slightly wounded, both in the arm, the thigh, and across the side of his face.
“I’ll sleep for a month,” the peddler grunted.
“If that is what you desire, you shall,” said Vaddi.
Fallarond and Zemella joined them.
“We must quit this place soon,” said Fallarond. “We must rendezvous with the pirate and leave Xen’drik. Zuharrin has been destroyed, but who knows what other horrors lurk here? But before that, we must honor our fallen.” He indicted the Deathguard who had given their lives in the venture.
“Can we make a tomb of this citadel?” Vaddi asked. “Would it be a fitting place of rest for them?”
Fallarond looked sadly at the fallen bodies of his fellow Deathguard. “I think it would. What has occurred here today will be long remembered. Let us use this very chamber. Seal it up as we leave and wall our fallen safely in. Their presence will purge the last of the evil from this place.”
While Vaddi and Fallarond spoke, Nyam limped across the chamber, himself looking with sorrow at the bodies of the fallen Deathguard. How they had fought? He came to the remains of Zuharrin’s body, but it was like a broken statue, cracked open to reveal a hollowness within. It had been no more than a vessel, a convenient housing for the essence of the sorcerer. What had been snatched away by T’saagash Mal might have been that essence. Zuharrin had found his place in Khyber.
Nyam moved away, seeing another smashed figure under the shadow of the wrecked balcony. It was the cleric. This was no shell. His corpse was all too clearly flesh and blood, subjected to a grim ending when he had fallen from the heights. The eyes were open, but whatever vision they gazed on in death had given them the look of madness. An arm had been out flung from the blood-spattered robe, the fingers of its hand clutched around something, Nyam bent down and prized those fingers open. Discreetly he removed the object they had been clutching and slipped it out of sight in his own robe.
As he turned to go, the broken hand clawed at his arm. Nyam stared down in horror as something, a faint light, glowed in the cleric’s dead eyes. Bloody lips pulled back and whispered words through a crimson froth.
“Never … meant harm … to the boy.” Intense pain pulled at the cleric’s face as the distant light receded. “Deceived … him. And you. But also … Zuharrin. To … thwart him.”
Nyam nodded. “Be at peace, cleric.”
“Loved … her. Always. Indreen. Indreen, I … saved your son …”
Nyam knelt, one hand on the object he had taken from the cleric, and saw the final darkness close over him.
None of the others in the hall were aware of this exchange. Nyam rose, saying nothing of it as he returned to his companions. He saw that Zemella had taken Vaddi’s hand. Both were slick with blood, though little of it seemed to be their own. In Zemella’s other hand she bore Erethindel. It was cold now, lifeless as stone.
“What of the Crimson Talisman?” Nyam asked.
“Vaddi must bear it,” Zemella gave it to him.
“I will never call upon its power again,” Vaddi said. “I see now why the elves wanted it sent far from their lands. It is dangerous beyond understanding. Too dangerous for one to carry.” He slipped it into the folds of his shirt.
She cocked her head on one side and grinned at him. “You think so?”
“I think so. It will need at least two of us to watch over it. Always.”
“That sounds like a major commitment,” said Nyam, his smile full of familiar mischief.
“Yes, but I cannot command you,” Vaddi told Zemella, a sudden uncertainty rising within him.
She laughed. “Perhaps. But I agree with you. It will take two. Always.”
Epilogue
Moonlight washed the ruins on a night devoid of clouds, daubing the broken towers and overgrown walls in unusually brilliant light. A few figures armed with pikes spread along the ancient battlements, and a solitary flag fluttered in a breeze from the northern sea, far below the cliffs. Waves sighed as they broke upon the distant shore. On the tallest of the ruins a group of figures studied the citadel, a brazier burning beside them, smoke from its hot coals drifting up into the crystal skies.
“Marazanath,” said Vaddi, looking down at the former stronghold of his father.
The forces that had brought about its decline had left it as feasting jackals quit a corpse whose bones have been picked clean. Since the fall of Kazzerand, the warlord’s knights had largely withdrawn from it, leaving a few to garrison it. They were more relieved than alarmed at Vaddi’s return, recognizing his birthright to stewardship of the hold.
Beside Vaddi, Zemella and Nyam Hordath took in the scene in silence. Since Vaddi had fled, the site had succumbed to the encroaching ivy and other weeds. In another few years the citadel would be so overgrown as to be no more than a relic of past times, a cemetery. Above the group, on its pole, the recently struck unicorn flag snapped open in a sudden gust, revealing its resplendent colors and motif. The three watchers looked up at it.
“There’s an omen for you,” said Nyam with a grin.
Vaddi also smiled, his fingers twining with those of Zemella, his new bride. “Yes. A favorable wind.”
Their journey home had been without incident. They had gone back down past the immense ruins of the crumbling city of giants, along the river to the coast, where they had met Vortermars within the agreed deadline. It was evident the captain had never expected to see any of them alive. Fallarond’s valiant Deathguard had been reduced in the battle at Azzahareb to a handful of no more than a dozen warriors. They sealed up the citadel, making of it a mausoleum for the fallen. They carried a weapon of each fallen back to Aerenal, and they murmured their prayers for those they had entombed.
In Shae Thoridor the company visited again the ancient grove in the forest above the city and had undertaken a last ritual of remembrance with the families of the dead and had blessed and buried the weapons. A few days later, Zemella and Vaddi were wed, and no one wore a broader, more beaming smile than Nyam. As he told the gathered Aereni, no father could have been more proud of a son nor have wished for a worthier daughter.
Not long afterward, they sailed to Pylas Maradal but decided against visiting Kalfar, in view of Nyam’s previous turbulent relationship with him. There was a surprise awaiting the peddler at the clocks, however. Vortermars took receipt of the promised treasury of his old rival with evident delight, for it was indeed a fabulous trove, but to Nyam’s amazement, he was taken by several of the freebooters’ ruffians to an isolated quayside. There, fully rigged and equipped, was a sleek vessel, not so large as the Sea Harlot, but nevertheless a redoubtable craft.
“It’s yours,” said one of the pirates.
Nyam stared at the craft suspiciously. “What’s wrong with it?”