Morigu: Book 01 - The Desecration Read online

  Acknowledgments

  There are several people who contributed to the success of Morigu and it is hard to thank them all. Brian Berkley has been a great help since the beginning. I shudder to think how many times the poor guy typed up the manuscript, not to mention all the late nights (and early mornings) he spent discussing the book with me.

  Denise Workman also contributed a great deal. My wife Christine has been a constant source of inspiration and support. And it was Ben Greer more than anyone who taught me my craft.

  I'd also like to thank Brian Thomsen, my editor, who knows and understands the Morigu as well as anyone and is the only human being alive who could've got me to make certain unnamed changes in the book. He did it by the unlikely manner of convincing me he was right.

  And last, but probably most importantly, Lynn Abbey and Bob Asprin who have believed in my work and who I owe more than I can ever repay.

  The Legend

  It is in the tenth year of the newly formed empire of Tolath that our tale begins, 160 years ago. For that is the year that the dark powers of the inner and outer world rose up and sought the domination of the land and nearly was the world riven in that time. The Dark Siegn Wars had begun.

  Three hosts did the enemy gather and the land shuddered beneath their weight. In the south from the country of Dark Siegn the cruel Dragon Lords unleashed their might on the empire and the free states of Maihan. In the north fell creatures marched from Maigull, invading the elven kingdom of Cather-na-nog and laying siege to the dwarf hold of Cardoc-nae-corond. But it was from the west that came the greatest threat.

  There over the mountains of Tir Dium marched the third of the evil host, an army of endless numbers, led by none other than the black Princes of Hell. In that dark time elf, man, and dwarf joined forces and created the Alliance of Light with which to face their deadly foe.

  The war raged on for a full twenty-seven years. The whole of the north-west fell to the invaders. In that time the dwarf kingdom of Der Dium fell, Mai-Methra was destroyed and her magic forest burnt to dust. And one by one the city states of Daiunna were overthrown. Such was the destruction of those three lands, that now that part of the world is known as the Devastation.

  But there were other lands, and other peoples, and from them great heroes rose to lead the Alliance, determined to fight the enemy to the bitter end.

  King Fergus Strong-Arm led his people from Cardoc-nae-corond and broke the enemy's siege that had lasted twelve years. Few of Maigull host made it back to the haunted lands. But the dwarven folk paid a heavy toll in that battle. They went back to their caverns, barred tight the gates, and marched no more to war.

  The elves of Cather-na-nog left their forest led by their Ard Riegh Lonnlarcan, and he was as a demigod. Bright and deadly was the army of the elves, riding upon their magic steeds. They strode the battlefields of the world, bringing hard death to their enemies. How many of the immortals died in that most desperate of wars? Who can say? But the world is poorer for their loss. And of the great elven princes only Ceallac, King's cousin, Breeda the battlemaid, noble Cucullin and the Ard Riegh himself survived.

  From the dwarven caves of the Crystal Falls came the greatest of the ally host. They came to the west to fight with the elves and the tread of their army's feet brought fear to the dark ones. It took the two allies nine years, but in the end they crushed the enemy and revenged the lost kingdoms of the Devastation. And together the two victorious armies marched to the aid of the beleaguered empire of Tolath and the dwarves at last came to grips with their most hated of enemies, the Dragon Lords of the Dark Siegn.

  And one more army did join that battle there in the gentle plains of Tolath. From the magical land of Aes Lugh did they come, and it was Arianrood who was their queen. The Ead, the eldest of all the world's children. Beauty and power are her birth right. But it was a hard lot her armies faced and all of her great lords were slain.

  So it was that the last battles of the great war were fought in the empire, and the world shook with the wrath of the Alliance of Light.

  In those last years of the war the emperor fell in battle and his son was proclaimed emperor, Fealoth the Bright, the savior of the land. It was he who led the allied armies with the Arch Mage Dammuth ever at his side.

  The enemy fell before them, and one by one were their strongholds overrun. All that remained were those in the fell marshes and scarred mountains of the Dark Siegn and the evil ones' fate lay before them.

  In desperation did the enemy commit their final desecration, for they called to their master in Hell and made a pathway for him into the world. And, He came.

  Now the whole land still sings of those days. Of how bright Fealoth was gifted power by the world's greatest wizards and how he did battle the Master of Corruption for three nights and days before casting the Dark One beyond the world's path. For that great deed Fealoth was raised to godhood and now his temples cover the land.

  With the Bright One's victory the Alliance did win the war and the Golden Age began. The time when evil would no longer plague the peoples of the world and all the hurts of the war would be remade.

  And now the tale is told and most of the heroes of that time are long dead. The nations of the land have prospered and few of the dark ones walk the earth in any form.

  But still, even now evil stirs in the land. Who would travel through the Devastation? And the haunted lands of Maigull is as black a realm as ever. It is known that those along the Dark Siegn border do still sometimes hear the cries of war when goblin raiders come a hunting. And have you not heard the rumors of trolls and darker things? And even has it been said that not all the dragons had been destroyed in the great war.. .

  Prologue

  On the outskirts of the ancient forest of Cather-na-nog, a young elf slumped against the bole of a large oak, his slim hands picking idly at the tree's bark. His black hair hung well past his shoulders, surrounding the thin face in a dark halo, and his eyes were so dark no pupils could be seen. Like all his people, he was exotically handsome.

  Margawt slid further down the tree until only his head rested on a fat root. He took a deep breath, sighing in exasperation.

  It just wasn't fair, he told himself. Not two weeks ago, the Ard Riegh Lonnlarcan had announced to the royal council that Margawt was one of the Shee. 'One of the Shee!' he mouthed to the sky. The Shee were the greatest of the elven kind and rarely did they appear among any but the noblest of the elves. Though his father was a respected scholar, no aristocratic blood flowed in Margawt's veins.

  The Shee have many powers. They can learn and control more diverse and powerful magics than any other elves, and they are much hardier and stronger. But perhaps their greatest power, and weakness, is that they haven't the power of Aislinneena, the dream knowing.

  It is the Aislinneena that sets the elves apart from all others. Time is not an absolute to them, it is controllable. The power of Aislinneena is the power to relive any moment in time and change the outcome of that event. The elf, while in the dreamstate, not only changes the decisions he made at any point in time, but all his actions from that time to the present. So an elf may emerge from Aislinneena a completely different creature from what he had been before the process.

  The elven people cannot know true love since they never know pain. Their growth as individuals is controlled by themselves, not by fate. Rarely do they feel powerful emotions since anything causing such emotions can simply be relived and eradicated from their life. Thus an elf is the product of ultimate free will.

  It was the Aislinneena that was frustrating Margawt at the moment. Neither of his two sisters were Shee, and, being young for elves (barely twenty) they used the dreamstate of
ten and randomly. Margawt's younger sister, Downet, jealous of her brother's newfound importance, had used the power to relive the events of the last weeks.

  Now in her mind Margawt was dead, having died in an accident on the way to see the king. Thus, she was in mourning for her elder brother. He did not exist for her and nothing he could do would change that. Such is the power of the Aislinneena that even when Margawt pushed her, his hands passed right through her. He wanted to return the favor and make her dead, but being Shee, he did not have the power.

  Now his mother was guiding Downet in the dreamstate to reverse what had happened, and Margawt was looking forward to his sister returning to normal. 'Then,' he planned, 'I will make a squirrel bite her, and personally punch her harder than she's ever been punched before.'

  Margawt left off his fantasies of revenge and leapt to his feet. His skin burned as if a hot fire blazed nearby. He was too new to his power to understand the meaning of his doomsense, but he was able to understand that what was happening to him was a warning of danger. Before the thought of action formed in his mind, Margawt was off and racing with the speed only the elves can attain.

  Something cried inside him as pictures of his mother and sister floated to his consciousness. Danger, death, rich red blood. "Goddess!" he cried to the wind as he sped through the forest.

  Margawt's shout of anguish filled the clearing as he saw goblin arrows pierce his mother and sister. They had been deep in the dreamstate, sitting near the hill that was their home. Even as Margawt turned toward the band of goblins racing at him, the grass turned bright red as mother and daughter died arm in arm, completely unaware of their own lives passing.

  He clasped his hands together and started the chant his mother had taught him, tears blurring the tableau before him. A large goblin, clad in dirty furs, whirled a staff above his head and Margawt felt a jagged pain along his throat. His spell was broken and the magic dissipated into the air.

  Suddenly a door appeared in the hillside and Margawt's other sister flew at the invaders. A colorless light shot from her brow into her cupped hands, and this she flung at the goblins. Three of them burst from the inside out into a purple, smokeless blaze.

  Before the elf maid could attempt another spell, the goblin shaman spoke a word of power, and she was blown off her feet to smash unconscious into the hill.

  The shaman's earlier spell still bound Margawt so he could do no magic. With a hoarse croak of rage he tore into the nearest goblin. He grabbed it by the neck, crushing its windpipe and bone in one convulsive motion. The goblins, some forty in all, rushed to meet the attack of the berserk elf.

  Margawt picked up the dead goblin's spear and plunged it deep in another's stomach. The shaft passed through the mail corset and caught in the spine of the raider. The young elf lifted the dead goblins by the shaft and, with the terrible strength of the Shee, threw the body into the faces of two more. The shaft broke in half, and, using it as a club, Margawt waded into the goblins.

  The end came suddenly, a mace to the head, a sword into the thigh, and a spear straight through his unprotected torso, but eight more goblins had died before they brought Margawt down, and all who came within range were wounded.

  Margawt fought to stay conscious under the kicks and punches of the goblins, as they pushed and dragged him across the clearing and chained him to a tree, his wounds leaving thick trails of blood across the grass.

  His eyes turned up to the sky as the earth turned and tried to tip him toward the great void above them. The pain was beyond his understanding and slowly it dragged him to unconsciousness.

  He woke to the panic of drowning, but he realized some liquid had been thrown in his face to wake him. Only one swollen eye could still open. At first all he saw was a dancing red/orange haze and then what he thought to be chunks of half-cooked meat. Slowly, his mind recognized the still steaming bodies of his mother and Downet thrown at his feet.

  The bodies had been hacked and mutilated beyond anything sanity could bear. One bright-green eye stared at Margawt from the pulped mass. Something inside him screamed, trying to escape, but in midnight it fell shattered, broken for all time.

  Something landed on the bodies. It was his older sister, naked and beaten, her eyes rolled white. Her mouth opened in a scream, but Margawt could hear nothing. It made what was to follow even more terrible, as one by one the goblins raped his sister, the bodies of her family beneath her.

  Somehow Margawt broke the spell that silenced him and cried a howl of denial. The sound of it lingered in the forest, making even the goblins shudder and pull away from him. But they took heart when he made no more sounds and passed out once again.

  He awoke to see his sister on her knees facing him, two grinning goblins holding her in front of him. Her eyes fastened on his, but he had nothing left to give her. Another goblin stepped into his limited view and slowly unsheathed a wicked-looking knife. The weapon came up. A flash of blood colored the air. Pain, bright pain, shot through him, making him vomit in agony. It took him a moment to realize the goblin had castrated him.

  Nightmare, blood, horror, what were these but words to the young elf? His life slipped from him as the goblins continued their mad game. Margawt could never remember what happened, just flashes of scenes his mind refused to digest. Eventually his sister died. At one point the bitter pang of flesh burning assaulted his senses. The goblins, all teeth and red-veined eyes, laughed as they threw the insides of his sister at him, the organs smacking wetly against his numb body, her blood mingling with his.

  A pulse, a steady beat, building, pounded inside him. Agony, fire searing his bones. Slow, thick warmth running from his wounds. A brief struggle to open his eyes, muscles dead. His body a weight of stone, immovable, dying.

  Fighting the cloak that covers his thoughts, he concentrated not on the pain, but on the drum of a heartbeat. His? No, no, he should be dead, dying long ago from the wounds, the gaping wounds that tore his flesh, jagged, white cracked bone, reaching through the skin.

  The pain drained away as the body died. Soon, soon, his mind whispered, soon. . . but there was another call that turned his soul from Lord Death. The beat, the beat. It stirred something in him, woke it, shook it. It was red, dark red, and hot. It grew in his mind, piles of formless meat, quivering, groping together. It was more than hate or rage. It folded about him, surrounding him in its caress of soft despair.

  "It is vengeance, vengeance that keeps you alive."

  The voice was warm and stifling. There was no escape from it. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to flee. And with a fierce thrill--the sharp power of defiance. He knew he did not want to run.

  "You want blood, blood streaming through your tearing fingers."

  The voice came through the ground, vibrating up through his dead loins. Now he knew, the heartbeat wasn't his, for his heart was cold, long dead. No, it was the earth, the earth Herself, and he could feel the life of it surging beneath him.

  And now there was more than death, more than despair.

  There was a choice.

  It was there, around him, in him. The choice. Release the rage and feel death's cool hand, or, or. . . REVENGE! A lifetime of revenge; a thousand lifetimes of revenge. . . his soul to the earth things for the hard edge of a weapon to fight.

  "You will be that weapon."

  He felt the voice stronger now. The choice made, he followed the flow of his blood sinking into the earth. His body shook for a moment, death striving with him one last time, . . . but the choice was made. A sigh from far away as Lord Death let him go. Was there anger in that sound, or pity?

  With that his body melted into the ground, hot metal being dissolved. He opened his eyes, and Margawt saw darkness.

  But it was not darkness, for the dark is the opposite of light. This world had never known light. He was in the earth's very bones.

  His body arched and sucked in a breath, but there was no air here. His lungs pumped in soil and rock. Thick, heavy, filling his body. There was no pain. I
t was pleasant; relaxing and thrilling at the same time.

  On all sides, top and bottom, he was totally surrounded by the earth. He was part of it. Weightless, free in a way only a creature of the sea might understand. With that there was. . . no, not light, something less. The particles of earth went translucent. Margawt could see each individual grain. A million, billion gems all glowing. Separate and distinct. Alive yet inert. Immovable but active.

  He could see, see through the earth for a thousand miles. He saw the roots of plants hanging down, gently waving in the flow of solid matter. Thousands and thousands of creatures swam about him. Some so small they showed as tiny sparks of life, others so gigantic his mind could not comprehend them, all dancing in the eternal womb.

  He moved his arms. Easily they pushed away the weight that should have crushed him. He dived deeper and rode a current that he knew would bring him to his goal.

  She waited for him. Even in this oceanic world She was astride her small dark pony. She appeared to him naked, long black hair flying in the breezes of rock and soil; her body was smooth; balanced muscles playing beneath the dark skin. Small, tapered hands beckoned to him.

  Her face was indistinct, blurred like the soft outlines of a memory, but the eyes of the goddess watched him as if She peered through a mask. They were dark brown and overlarge for her oval face. At first they frightened Margawt, as if he stared into the eyes of a starving wolf, then something, something behind them, something soft and gentle, like the doe watching her fawn.

  Her black hair wrapped about her body with caressing motions. She smiled, but he would not look. Perhaps her teeth were really fangs? She dismounted and stood before him, her body rocking with the motion of the earth. She was wild, abandoned. She was security and She was heart-binding lust. His useless loins ached with need and he felt a perverse shame at her maddening, demanding call.