Turning again under the momentum of this stroke he impaled a third before one of them drove a sword into his back. The King rounded on his attacker and severed his hand, but another struck him from behind. His onslaught would have scattered ordinary men, but the Mathidrin were creatures possessed as they closed on him like a pack of hunting animals, regardless of their own safety.
After a few seconds, Rgoric lay face down in a welter of blood, his back and head torn and gashed with appalling wounds.
‘Thus perish all our enemies,’ said Urssain, his face exhilarated and his eyes shining with a strange fervour.
But, no sooner had he spoken the words, than he stepped back in alarm. The King’s hands moved. With painful slowness, they started to claw at the defiled floor and pull the wrecked and bloody body forward towards the pinioned form of Dan-Tor. The circle of Mathidrin widened, horror overcoming their bloodlust.
The King raised his head and stared into the baleful eyes again.
‘I see you truly now,’ said the King weakly. ‘Oklar, Servant of the Great Corruptor.’
‘Little may it avail you,’ replied the Uhriel, though he pushed himself back in his chair as if to escape this relentless witness.
‘And I see more,’ said the King. A spasm of pain shook him and he grimaced, but still he crawled forward. He seemed to be looking at some distant scene.
‘When you die, Oklar,’ he said, ‘it will be at the height of your power, when all are set to fall before you.’
The red eyes could not free themselves from Rgoric’s dying stare. ‘You lie,’ rumbled Oklar’s voice. ‘You ramble in your death throes, King. I am immortal. None can slay me. And none can read the future. Not even He.’
The King laughed faintly and shook his head, scat-tering a skein of blood across the Uhriel’s feet. ‘Ah, Oklar. How have you been deceived? Your death is before me now. Am I not descended from the Lords of the Iron Ring? Your assassin… He coughed and his body twisted in pain. ‘Your assassin will be ancient and insignificant, but you will die as surely as I die now, though you will die in failure, while I die in victory… Know that my wife carries my heir.’
The King’s voice was failing, but his dying body was all that moved in the hall.
‘I see beyond your death, Oklar.’ Again pain inter-rupted him, and his voice was weaker still when he spoke next. ‘Know this. And take what solace you can, for it is not what it seems. Nothing shall end the reign of your Master.’ Then he laughed strangely and, with a last effort, his bloodied hand clawed forward and gripped the foot of the cringing Uhriel before he fell dead.
Oklar stared down at the stricken King. His eyes blazed red and terrible, but any who could have met his gaze would have seen also fear and doubt. His boast of immortality had been idle. There was a weapon and a hand for any creature; even Him. The King’s words burned inside him. Could it come to pass that he, Oklar, greatest of His Uhriel, would perish at the hands of a mere assassin, while He would reign without end? Was that to be his reward at the end of his interminable journeyings through the ages? A great roar of denial swirled inside him at this blasphemy, but he knew that he was impaled on Rgoric’s death vision as surely as he was impaled on Hawklan’s Black Arrow.
Slowly, the dead King’s hand relaxed and slid from Oklar’s foot. The movement seemed to release the Uhriel. ‘Get rid of this carrion,’ he said grimly.
Almost desperate to be away from the terrible pres-ence of their Lord, several Mathidrin ran forward and, seizing the body, began dragging it across the floor. Oklar looked at the bloodstained path trailing behind the corpse and then struggled to his feet. He grimaced and Urssain stepped forward.
‘Ffyrst, your injuries… ’ but his words died on his lips at Oklar’s glance.
‘Are beyond your aid… Commander,’ he said. ‘Be-yond all aid until… ’
He looked down at his hand. A deep and festering weal ran across its palm where he had seized the shaft of Hawklan’s arrow.
But the pain of that was dwarfed by the threefold pain he still felt. The pain of the arrow smashing into and through him. An arrow forged in the Great Harmony of Orthlund and delivered from Ethriss’s Black Bow. Then the pain of the Old Power he had released in his rage and hurt, for Ethriss’s Black Sword, ineptly wielded though it had been, had returned much of it upon him. But, worse by far, was the wrath of his Master as His hand had reached out belatedly to tear his very soul in its cold fury.
Only that Ethriss had not been awakened saved Oklar from the eternal black dissolution that He offered him. ‘Ethriss still sleeps, Uhriel. Accept, then, this, My benison, lest your folly better you again. Go now and do My Will.’
Then Oklar knew he must bear the arrow until He saw fit to remove it. For only He could, such was the nature of its crafting. It would remain embedded in his side, his blood dripping inexorably from the glittering point of its barbed head, to mark his passing with a carmine trail, in mocking echo of the dead King’s departure.
Now he could use the Old Power only to the extent that he could withstand the pain its use would bring as the arrow drew it back upon him.
‘Your wisdom and mercy are without bounds, Mas-ter,’ he had cried in his agony.
Yet, through his pain, and for all the price he had paid and must pay again, all was well. Ethriss slept, and Hawklan, whoever he might have been, must surely have perished in the destruction that had been wrought by the Old Power. The Queen and Eldric were fled. They would serve as scapegoats and, together with the Lords in the east, would act as a focus for the fear and hatred of the people.
And his Mathidrin were ready.
Slowly he closed his long fingers on Urssain’s shoulder for support. ‘Your wisdom and mercy are indeed without bounds, Master,’ he intoned to himself softly.
All was well.