Morigu: Book 02 - The Dead Read online

  Prologue

  It was a light drizzle, the first rain in a month, and the parched ground sucked at it greedily.

  It was easy to imagine hearing the sound of the land's hunger, but it wasn't imagining for the Morigu. He heard the voices of all living things and he shuddered as he felt the earth things fight their silent battle for survival, for the precious drop of water that could mean the difference between life or death.

  The whole south of the empire of Tolath had been suffering under the worst drought in its short history. It only added to the pain, the unbearable pain of the war, to the dead.

  Margawt once more stood among the dead, though these he hadn't killed. A family, a human family. Father, mother, sister, younger brother. Farmers of the land... caught in their fields, caught as they tried to keep their crops alive... caught by raiders from the south.

  They had been killed quickly: no torture, no rape. The goblin raiders were in a hurry, the humans had slowly stabilized the front not ten miles south of here. A guerrilla army had been built by the monks of the hunter, and it was no longer only the Morigu who hunted down raiders.

  The Dark Ones could no longer pillage the land at will.

  There was a price to be paid.

  The Morigu squatted down beside the dead farmer. The man had fought for his family, fought with a hoe as his only weapon. He hadn't lasted long. Long enough to see his family die before him. Margawt poked the dead face with one finger. There were worse ways to die, he thought, but not too many...

  The goblins had had time to savage the bodies somewhat, and all the corpses had many wounds, wounds that were slowly drying, hardening. Margawt waited.

  He waited for the blood to stop flowing, waited so the earth could suck up the last bit of liquid. The drizzle was already beginning to stop. And the land knew it. Margawt heard its sigh, its despair. He prodded the farmer's arm where it was half severed, forcing a little more of the thick blood out. He watched the red fluid as it slowly rolled down the white elbow bone, which jutted out from the ragged meat of the farmer's arm like some blind eye staring from a red, purple hell. Only a few drops hit the ground, fizzled in the dusty earth, then dispersed in its depths. He did not look up when Bronwen appeared from the tree line that bordered the dead farmer's small field. He just waited and watched the blood.

  She was a small woman, but only in stature. Her full name was Bronwen ap Remon, princess and heir apparent to the throne of Fiodha. She had renounced her title, as she had renounced her father. She was a monk of the Hunter now, and many assumed that soon the god would choose her as the next stalker master of the hunt. She wore the light leather armor and clawed cestus of her calling. She moved quietly, making no sound, sniffing at the wind like a shy animal. She approached the Morigunamachamain carefully. He did not look up even when she stood before him.

  "There are twelve of them," he said. "They killed the family and went south. They left an easy trail. Find them and kill them." Bronwen bit her lip, holding herself very still. As the leader of the monks here in the south she knew the Morigu had been in this area the last weeks, hunting down the followers of the dark. But he was rarely seen, even by her. And he spoke even less often. And never, never had he been known to send another to hunt down raiders when he could do so.

  "I came with a message for you." He didn't look up. "My lord," she added hesitantly.

  "Go now and you can catch them easily."

  "But"--she clenched her hands till the metal of the cestus grated--"I was told to find you; undead have appeared in the villages north of here. Donal wishes you to track them down."

  "Go," he said.

  "Margawt," she spoke quietly, "you know the people fear the undead most of all and elven magic is no good in tracking them down. It is for you to do." He did not reply. Bronwen was confused. Though technically one of the leaders of the alliance, she could not order Margawt to do anything. Nobody could. He did as he willed. But it was known that he had a special hatred of the undead and before he had always been quick to go wherever they appeared.

  "Go!"

  "GO!" she shouted, and for a moment she stood revealed as the princess that she was. Her dark eyes flashed. "You do not order me, Morigu!" Still he didn't look up. "Damn you," she said, "if you want them so bad, hunt them yourself! Isn't that what you do?" She saw the muscles under his mail shirt tense and slowly he stood up. She took a step back. He was not tall, not for an elf. But his face had their unearthly beauty and his eyes were as black as his hair. And he was a power. A true power.

  "Yes, Bronwen ap Remon." His voice was quiet, but she could not meet his eyes. "That is what I do. That is all I do. I hunt and kill." He looked down on the dead farmer's blood on his finger. "I have asked you to do this thing for me. Why is it you will not?"

  "You are needed in the north," she said stubbornly.

  "I will go, you know that, all know that. Why will you not hunt down the murderers of these people?"

  "Because." She hesitated. "Because I am not like you!" she blurted out.

  "No, no one is like me. For I am the Morigunamachamain, the only one." He sighed. "Very well. I will make a bargain with you; hunt down the goblins for me, and I will go to the north and do as Donal has asked. Also, I will return the favor."

  "What?"

  "I will hunt for you, I will kill your father for you." She made an odd sound at his words, something between a moan and a cough. She shuddered as from a cold wind.

  "What are you, to say such things?" Her voice was a whisper.

  "I am the Morigu," he answered. His face was no longer hard, indeed he looked confused. He could feel her hurt, her anger. But he could not understand what it came from.

  "Are you so cruel..." But she could not finish her sentence.

  "I do not understand," he said. He did not like to talk, it was always so when he spoke with the others; with those who were not as he is: and no one was as he is. "Your father has destroyed your family, your nation. He has betrayed all and willingly serves the Ead. He is the enemy--your enemy. I have made a fair bargain. Why is it you react so?"

  "He is my father."

  "He is a follower of the dark. He is corrupt. He is the enemy. He must die."

  "Yes, but..." She shuddered and looked Margawt in the face. For a moment she could see what he once was. A young elf. A boy, nothing more. A child. "Margawt, I cannot speak of this thing. I--" She growled in frustration. "Damn, I will hunt the raiders for you." He nodded and squatted back down. For a moment she just stared at him.

  "Margawt!" This time he looked up. "At least tell me why you don't want to hunt them down."

  "Because," he started and then stopped. He had no need to explain, not to her--not to anyone.

  But she was soft. Not weak. Not fragile. She was soft. She was full. Alive. Soft. He didn't want her to hurt. No, that wasn't it. It was that he didn't want her to fear, not to fear him. For he was made to avenge, but also to protect. To protect so many things. Her included ...

  "Because the Morigu does many things other than kill." Her eyes were gentle, the light played in the wetness of them. "Because I, I sometimes must mourn." And he would say no more. He turned from her eyes, to the eyes of the corpse at his feet. To the dead around him.

  Bronwen stood there for a moment, quietly. She could hear her breath, the sounds of the forest not far away. The uncouth buzz of the flies making their meal on the dead. But she could not hear him, for he made no sound. He was silent even when he spoke. He had secrets he could never tell, even if he wished to. He stood there like some ancient marble statue, staring at the corpses. His long hair covered his face. His arms were well muscled and sleek, the skin a light, light brown. He was an infemo, standing there, a creature
of terrible passions. He was a primal god of man's youth, a being of immensity, legend. And he was alone.

  "Margawt," she whispered, but he did not answer and she turned away. It was, she thought, the saddest thing, perhaps the saddest moment, that ever she had borne. For in this war all were being assaulted and burned, but the Morigunamachamain was burning for them all.

  It was an hour later when Margawt finally carried the dead family back to their empty home. It was a small home, but carefully crafted. One large room with a kitchen and pantry on the bottom floor, three small bedrooms on the top. The furniture was handmade, the walls barren of any ornament. One fading rug on the wooden floor. That was it--little more. But to Margawt it seemed to have the echoing silence of an ancient cathedral. A sarcophagus of the dead, their names etched in marble and forgotten.

  A large oak table dominated the main room, and about this Margawt sat the family, each corpse on its proper chair. The bodies were stiffening and it wasn't easy to get them to sit upright. But he did.

  He said nothing, made no sound, even when his hand slowly traced the table where the young boy had carved his initials. In the pantry Margawt found two brass goblets for the parents, wooden cups for the children. He placed them in front of the corpses and filled them with sour wine. A small candle in the middle of the table completed the scene. They were home now.

  "I had a family once," he said to the dead people. "They were murdered by goblins, as you were. What the goblins did to my mother and sisters was even worse than what they did to you. You were only killed." They didn't answer, of course. Their eyes were filmed over, the blood was dried, brown flakes on the waxy skin. The clothes were stiff and hardened. The mother's mouth was opened wide in a scream, the daughter's grimaced in the last pain.

  "I should have died then," he continued. "I think I might have died"--he started to pack wood from the hearth about the feet of the dead--"but instead I became the Morigunamachamain. I'm not even sure what that means, what I've become." He touched the boy's hand, as if expecting the child to turn and listen to him. A fly crawled into the corpse's tiny ear.

  "I think it means pain. I think it means that. It always hurts now. I can feel it through the floor of your house. I can feel all the agony and hear all the screaming." He started to pour the oil from the dead family's lamps onto the stacked wood. "It's worse now--it always gets worse. South of here, things are happening, things that... it just gets worse..." He stepped back as if to survey his handiwork, then he held out his palm and a bright red flame appeared there.

  But when you're dead you don't hurt, not anymore. You don't hurt, and I don't hurt. The screaming stops." He tossed the tongue of flame onto the mother's dress, where it quickly took hold. "Sometimes I think it'd be better if everyone's dead. Sometimes I wonder if I'm supposed to kill everybody." The flames' heat did not affect him, as one by one the corpses caught fire, but the red light of the pyre turned his face into a profile of hard dark lines.

  "I used to talk to Dammuth sometimes, but I can't find him, so I think he, too, must be dead, that he can't feel the pain either." The fire roared as it devoured the family, the table, and hungrily licked the roof beams.

  "The others killed themselves too soon. There's always someone to still hunt down, some creature that must die. It's what I do. I am the Morigunamachamain." The wind wiped the fire and it ravaged the house about him. It howled like a living thing and he stood among it, watching the flesh peel from the dead, the white bone crack and splinter in the heat.

  "I am the Morigunamachamain!" he yelled, "and I burn!"

  But the heat of the flames could not touch him. "I BURN!"

  C H A P T E R

  One

  The camp of the army of Maigull lay in a valley among the deep wood of Cather-na-nog. Three times, the dark ones had assailed the elven kingdom from the haunted lands of Maigull, the first two had been repulsed at the border. But this army had carved its way deep into the eldren lands, like a hideous worm burying through living flesh.

  All along the march route lay the decaying bodies of the invaders, for the elves had not met them in open battle, but fought them beneath the ancient limbs of the trees of Cather-na-nog in a devastating guerrilla war. But the dark ones had taken their toll, too. All summer long the two armies fought a dirty, hard war and one that must end in total defeat for one side or the other.

  He was only vaguely aware of all this, strategy and tactics meant little to him. He had fought as best he could with the mighty elves he adored, but such as he were not meant to war. .. .

  Goblin scouts had caught him outside his tiny home. He had known the Maigull army was marching right to his front door step, but what was he to do? He could not defend his home, so he returned to gather his treasure and then rejoin the elven warriors. But he had been too slow and they had caught him and his treasure, his only magic.

  They had nailed him to an old table set on one end. He hung there, watching with wide eyes as they drove the iron spikes into his ankles and knees, shoulder and elbows. They had taken a whip to him and knives and one of their necromancers tried magic, but his mind was not as other creatures': It was a thing of smoothness, no crevasses for the dark magic to take hold of, to insinuate itself into his soul and knowledge.

  They marveled at his courage, for no matter how they tortured him, he would not talk. But it was not courage, it was incomprehension. They sought to hurt him as they did all things weaker than they, but pain was not a feeling he possessed. When his body was damaged he felt a slight coldness, a tiny warning so that he might repair any harm. Even when they took the branding iron to him and his flesh melted and steamed, he felt only the burn of winter, as if he played in the snow. They had been questioning him since the sun had risen. He was very cold now.

  Over and over it was the same question: "Where are the elves?" for the defenders of Cather-na-nog had faded into their magic forest and the enemy could not find them. The invaders had slowly rebuilt their army from the survivors of the summer campaign. Forty thousand now sprawled about the once fair valley. They did not realize they had been led here by the elves, that even now thousands of the eldren watched them with eyes hot for their blood.

  He knew. He knew where the elven army was. But he did not tell them till the first war horn wavered in the morning air.

  "Where are the elves?" he said in his musical voice. "Why they are here, all around you!" He smiled to see the goblin captain's cat-eyes widen in fear. He kept smiling even when the same creature drove a short sword through his chest. After all, it didn't really hurt, and he had been cold before in his long life.

  He was indifferent to their scurrying about as they tried to organize a defense against the elvish attack. He had eyes only for the small stool before him, for on it lay his treasure, his magic. It was a small pearl-white shell. A thing of mystery for him, for in it roared the voice of the sea he had never and would never see. When he held it to his ear he dreamed of things and sights and thoughts that he could not place into words or action. It was his magic, it was why they had caught him. And he knew, though it was not a thought he wished to dwell on, that if they had threatened to break his shell, his magic, he would have told them all they wished to know. He sighed. As soon as he got off this table he would take back his magic and lose himself deep in the woods; he had had enough of the war and the cold.

  The sorcerers of the Maigull host had searched far with their spells to find the elven warriors, never realizing that they were so close. The might of Cather-na-nog had ringed this valley, its might in warriors and in magic. For where an elf stood, there the Dark Ones' magic touched only the heartbeat of a tree, while the more common scouts were dealt with with sharp blades under the shadows of the wood.

  Three of the elves' mightiest lords led the army. Breeda, the Battlemaid, Warden of the North. She led the charge of the foot from the south. Her warhorse was pitch black, as were her twin blades. The swords were called the "Twins of the Last Song," mighty relics of an ancient pe
ople. These swords had for a thousand years been carried to war by the Warden of the North and Breeda was the fifth chosen for that duty. It was she who had led the guerrilla war all summer. And among the elves, and indeed among all the creatures of the earth, she was as powerful in war as any. Next to Lonnlarcan, it was she who was most feared by the enemy.

  Fiachra was also there, for he was the greatest of the elven wizards, save only the High King Lonnlarcan. It was his magic that had hidden the whole elven army and it was his magic that called sheets of flame from the empty sky to burn the invaders' black tents and frightened warriors. He stood upon a hill overlooking the enemy and where he pointed his magic there the enemy died.

  And the last was in many ways the greatest. Cucullin, high prince of the elves. He led the elven horse from the north and west, fifteen thousand strong, strung out in three lines of flashing armor and deadly weapons. He rode naked to battle as always, but he was clothed in the most powerful of the elven magics. For in his mind's eye he wore the mighty armor of his father and wielded the magic ax Kervalen. Over a hundred years before, his father had fallen beneath the might of Apkieran, lord of the undead, who had claimed the armor and ax for his own. For a long century Cucullin had quested to regain his lost heritage and revenge himself on the demon prince. But he had failed. The only failure of his life. So he had called up the power of Aislinneena and relived his quest, this time successfully and such is the power of the elven kind that now it was as if he bore the ax and armor, for their power was his.

  Nothing could stand against the charge of the elven horse this day, especially with Cucullin leading. They crashed through the enemies' quickly formed shield wall and were soon deep in the camp, hewing down the invaders. The warriors of Maigull fought bravely and well as always the Dark One's minions did, but it was to no avail. Some made it to the woods and retreated north, but it was more a rout than a retreat and few would live through the nightmare of the next months, as they tried to reach their warrens and caves back in the land of Maigull.