Morigu: Book 01 - The Desecration Page 8

  Fin shook his head.

  "I thought your masters more clever than this, to so underestimate me." He moved closer to the two, staring in their cat eyes.

  "You are certainly much more inept than your predecessor. He managed to give me a bruise at least." He drew a dagger and held it in front of him, its blade winking in the light.

  "As I said, my wife was a knight," he continued, as if lecturing two truant children, "and all the knights of the Green Branch are trained with Tag-Aug-Neal, the chosen death. Even unconscious a knight can and will use death if he sees no other way. My Katherine was quick to see how you would seek to use her. She did the honorable thing, and since she is my wife, and since I am who I am, I knew of her passing; I felt her leave. I see by your eyes you do not understand.... Your kind never do." He turned away for a moment and surveyed the warriors in the room.

  "I feel pity for your kind, you do not know love, you do not understand nobility, honor. You are destroyers and you serve those who destroy you. You know only death, never life. But my pity goes only so far," he walked up to the two, "because there is really nothing I hate more than liars!" With that, he cut the goblins' throats with two quick strokes. As their blood spurted across his boots, he just watched.

  The warriors let the bodies fall, Fin feeling nothing as the bodies banged to the cobblestones. He reached one finger down to the blood and dipped it in the still steaming liquid. He lifted the finger to his face, staring at the bizarre pink-green fluid for a moment. It seemed thinner somehow than human blood, but it was warm, like all blood it was warm....

  He streaked the blood across his forehead, his lips forming a silent "Katherine." With that, the Laird of Dun Scaga left his hall. The blood of war called him and he eagerly sought its warmth.

  Within the earth She felt her two children, their needs beating inside her. One--strong, curious, angry; the other-- nervous, scared, yet in him She detected the steel core that She most admired in these, her most misunderstood followers.

  She centered some of herself and sped it toward them, to bring the comfort they needed, even as her body shook in pain at the ravages of the Dark Ones.

  Colin did not become aware of the Mother immediately, for as Mearead had said, sight was of no use here. He felt the blood inside of him change, go rich and strong, the heart beating hard and steady. His skin flushed with the warmth he felt inside and out. There was comfort all about him, as if some huge arms had held him close. Only then did he remember Mearead's words: "The breast, the heart, the very womb of the Mother." Then he knew She was there, and he was safe.

  "Ahh," the voice soothed Colin, though he could not say where it came from, or how it sounded. It was not of sound, but of the physicalness of that which surrounded him, a hand brushing his hair lightly. "You have done well, Mearead. He is strong and full of such light."

  "Thank you, Goddess," Mearead's voice seemed hoarse and jarred Colin's ears. "He is the son of my heart."

  "Indeed, he may one day eclipse even you, my hard little warrior."

  "Perhaps, Mother," the dwarf did not seem insulted by the goddess's words, "but so soon, he, all of my people, it is so soon for this test."

  Colin felt the comfort remove itself a little. The air grew cool as he focused on the two voices, one behind, one around him.

  "This is no test." Colin saw for a moment the gleam of a cat's eyes in firelight. "This is death, destruction--annihilation! For your people, for me, for all my children."

  "It cannot be!" the king's voice shouted.

  "It is, it is. . . " the Mother soothed again. "Old powers best forgotten walk the earth again, and dark things that were never mine dare to tread my breast."

  "What is to be done?"

  "Death, death, my children."

  Colin glimpsed an old woman shuddering in the cold. There was silence for a moment. Slowly, the arms spread wide again, this time to hold both the dwarves.

  "War," Mearead whispered, "true war." He went silent as he relaxed into Earth's warm embrace. "What of our cousins of Cardoc-nae-corond? Will they help, Mother? Do you know their fate?'

  "I know the fate of none, not even myself. You know that they have turned from me and follow the Cold One." A sigh massaged their souls. Sorrow too great to stand, to comprehend, withdrawn immediately before it broke them with despair. "That one was my son, too, but he left me long ago, long even for me. Cardoc-nae-corond is no longer part of me. I fear they are all dead, or worse."

  "Can you give us no words of comfort?"

  "Comfort? No, I have none.... Beyond this land the Dark Ones have triumphed over and over. Much of my power has been sucked away. It is here, Mearead, here that the last battle shall be fought. If it is lost, all is lost, for us, for those who could have been, perhaps even for those long gone."

  "Have we no allies? Do not others see the danger?"

  "How could they not? But what those who could truly help will do I cannot say. I have felt stirrings, but of these I cannot speak." Again Colin saw a figure, but this one was small and dark, naked and fanged. He recognized the first face of the goddess, young and dangerous. "And of the gods," the Word was like acid upon the two dwarves, "they will do nothing, secure in their dream world, sure that nothing can truly reach them." A flash of a taloned hand raking flesh. "Fools! If Earth herself can die what chance have they?" Both dwarves froze. They felt as rabbits caught by the wolf. She turned to them and relented, but did not meet their needs again. They must know, they must understand.

  And so She became physical in their sense of the word, and the two saw the third face of the goddess, the face of barrenness and defeat. She stood in front of them, naked, her skin wrinkled with age, her breasts abnormally long and thin hanging past her waist, her hair still rich, white, floating about her, her womb bald, empty. But both felt drawn to the eyes, pure black-brown orbs, rich as newly tilled earth, horrible as the dirt of the grave.

  "See me, my children, see the face of your Mother, battered, beaten, ravaged." The nose jutted out like a fin, the jaw hung slack: the face of senility. But the eyes, the wisdom of pain, anger of time itself. "Listen well. They have killed, destroyed, but I still am! And I will be! It is not for them to choose my death. They shall feel their strength dry up, their sight blur, their purpose wander. You are the greatest of my creations for you are creators! Your strength will be a storm to crash upon them. All my children will rise and Death himself will shudder at their hatred. Life will burn the Dark Ones' bleak souls! There is no hell great enough to enact my vengeance!" The terrible power of her pain swamped the two like a great wave, twisting and turning them, no force could resist it. They screamed in horror.

  And She heard, as She always did. She shook with guilt. She did not need to do this, this outrage had nothing to do with these, her favorite children. The tempest calmed and She held them, rocking them gently.

  "Ah, my dears, my sweet boys, I am sorry, so sorry. I should have protected you from this. So much, so much has gone wrong from the beginning. This, all of this, is never what I wanted for my children. Death and life were meant to be so much sweeter, so much kinder. Even I have changed, and gentleness never moves me as it did at first, so long ago, so long ago when I held my first as I hold you, so long ago, so long ago...."

  The voice soothed the two and sleep claimed them. There were no dreams, no worries, no fear; all was calm. They woke the next day in their beds, warm and happy, full of strength and hope. The fear of the day before was gone, but the anger remained. Both arose to check their weapons before they did anything else. But her last words were for Mearead alone.

  "I have sent him to hunt, my poor driven son. He is the Morigunamachamain! He is as the first were! And you, Mearead, in time, you, too, must hunt...."

  C H A P T E R

  Five

  If there was one creature that understood the pain of the Goddess, it was the Morigu. He could feel the tread of the Dark Ones on the Mother's breast, feel their desecration upon the living world as a disea
se, eating through flesh, gnawing on bone, letting off a putrid stench that would consume all but the strongest.

  Margawt sat perched upon a rock that peered down at the river flowing at its feet. Once long ago, in a life that he could remember only in momentary flashes, this had been his favorite place, his refuge. But now the rock was a magnet, drawing the anguish of the world, pouring up through the souls of his feet, burning his soul.

  He leaped to his feet, brandishing his sword at the skies.

  "Damn you, damn you to the darkest pit! Blood, blood, I will have your blood!!!" At his cry the woods about him grew quiet, the animals frozen by the sound of his outrage. He stood there, defiant, the sun flashing off mail and sword, but that light could not match the fire beneath his brows.

  It was time, he knew it, felt it. He must go to the south, to the human lands. He shuddered as his mind formed a picture of the horrors the people of Tolath were enduring.

  'Even the land,' he thought, a picture of goblins shredding and killing the very ground they walked upon. And of greater powers, the life of all things withering about them.

  "Ayeeeee," he cried, "they even kill the land!" Somehow he bore the agony, turning his thoughts to the battlefields in the south. He searched them, searched the living and the dead, for one man, one being.

  "Dammuth!" he cried. "Dammuth, I am alone. Dammuth! I am alone." And he added in a small voice as he leapt from the rock, "It hurts me, it all hurts me...."

  But there was no answer for him, not from the wizard, not from anyone. There was only the need for revenge, the red haze of vengeance. He turned to the south, blocking out the worst of the land's pain. He ran off with a hard smile on his lips.

  There was one remedy for the pain: kill those who caused it. He raced on, he knew the elves of Cather-na-nog would form an army to help the allies. They would expect him to join them; they would be waiting for him, for his war. The war was not just his anymore.

  "I am coming," he chanted, "I am coming." But whether the words were for his enemies or his would-be allies, the Morigu could not say.

  Dammuth swore as he counted aloud, "... one hundred and fifty-four. By the White Light, why did I put my sanctuary in this damn tower?"

  Dammuth continued grumbling as he climbed the dark tower stairs. And it was dark, pitch dark. Even a dwarf would have been hard-pressed to find his way in that blackness. "Dammit." Dammuth stumbled up the last stairs. He raised his right palm outward and made a series of quick gestures with his left. "Let me in. I'm tired," he chanted in a monotone.

  Slowly, lines of light formed a doorway which opened grudgingly. Dammuth strode into the brightly lit chamber, the door closing after him. A white owl flew to his shoulder and Dammuth gave the bird a big smile.

  "I bet no one will ever figure out the words to open that door, eh, Shorty?"

  Frankly, Shorty thought the joke a little thin. After all, Dammuth had used the same words for over a century now, ever since he had made the tower his sanctuary.

  The room was lit by four globes suspended from the twenty-foot ceiling. The rest of the room was a clutter of benches, tables, a full goblin skeleton, various vials and pitchers, a ripped and tattered wall hanging showing a forest scene, and some rush mats. It looked like what it was: a wizard's workroom.

  Near the far corner of the room stood a pedestal with a half globe of water. The water was not held by anything. It simply formed itself.

  Dammuth moved to the water wyrd and stroked the surface gently. He stared at the water for over an hour, periodically intoning a Word or making small motions with his hand. Finally, he gave up and sighed. He sat down heavily on a bench and peered out the only window in the room.

  "Ah, Shorty, I'm still blocked! None of my scrying spells will work. What power keeps me blind? Who has the strength to resist me? All is unclear and this should not be."

  Dammuth sighed again. 'The weight,' he thought, 'the weight of the empire presses me down.' His mind replayed the encounter with the young warrior, Mathwei, the terror the boy had faced already, and the horrors that lay ahead for all the people of the land. His mind heard their silent thoughts: 'Dammuth will save us, Dammuth has the strength, Dammuth has the power.'

  He walked to the south window of the tower, his witch sight focusing on the dark clouds of red war. He almost could see the tiny figures of struggling forms. He could see, smell the evil, dank and hot, covering the empire, the land dying beneath the strength of that swollen maw.

  "I should have known," his hand banged the ledge with such force the stone cracked. "I should have known! I should have felt it!" But there was no answer to his cry, except the tiny voice in his head. 'You should have known,' it whispered, 'Lonnlarcan should have known, Arianrood should have known, Mearead should have known, the gods, the gods should have known '

  'Ah, yes,' he thought, 'the gods. Where were the masters of the Bright World? Dead like Fealoth? Where was the Goddess? What happened in the rest of the world, so much vaster than the tiny empire? Were the people of the whole world under attack? Was earth herself the prize the Dark Ones lusted for? What had they been doing for a hundred and fifty years? What?!'

  And again the voice answered in him, 'Killing, dying.' His imagination formed the pictures. He saw flames, and blood, stretching across the Mother like a leprous growth. In his heart he knew the answers to his questions, but he turned away from what he saw there. The knowledge that the enemy had been smarter, faster than he had ever feared in his darkest dreams.

  He knew, he knew then.

  It was a war of genocide against all the followers of the Light and those who might yet reach for the Bright World.

  A great cry shook the tower as Dammuth let out his fear and hate. His witch sight pierced the veils of the enemy's magic for a moment. He took in the dark hunger that craved to devour a world, and was succeeding. He heard the terror-filled pleas of a million living creatures. His soul cried in rage and his magic shaped that power, and hundreds of miles away the smoke from the fires of war coalesced and formed into a great fist a mile high.

  All that walked the earth--man, beast, god--froze and turned toward the sky as the great fist descended faster than thought, straight into the land of the Dark Seign. It smashed into mountains, shattering stone, and thousands of the Dark followers died beneath that onslaught.

  The vibrations of Dammuth's power ripped deep into the Bright World, but there was no answer to Dammuth's plea. No being, god or other, returned his cry. They hid, the doors between the worlds slammed shut.

  But for a moment he heard laughter, the laughter of the insane, of the tortured, of the victim. And he felt more than saw a deep place darker than darkness, beyond madness, and heard the rattle of thick, world-heavy chains.

  He turned from the window fighting despair. Crackling shards of magic flashed about his form. His eyes burned with a blue, harsh light. He had his answer, he had it! He shook with the knowledge, as a tear slid down his face. It was the war, the last war, the clash of chaos against the walls of life.

  The gods would not answer, for to reach to Dammuth, to reach to the peoples of the earth was to open the doors, the doors to the infinite night, the ending of all. The tear fell to the floor, staining the stone red. He had the answer. Men, elves, dwarves, all the followers of Light, would get no help from the Bright World.

  He stared sightlessly at the walls of his tower. 'Alone,' his mind cried to him, 'we are alone....'

  Did he imagine the laughter that answered his despair?

  He made no movement as he stood high up in his tower of wizardry. His mind slowly unfolded the tale he had lived, the glory, the defeats, the loves gained and lost. The familiar followed the pathways of the old wizard's mind. It felt a new emotion inside itself, one it had never experienced--fear. Fear for the mage who had called it forth to this plane, who had given it three-dimensional form, and through the years taught its soul the meaning of freedom.

  The despair the wizard felt was palatable in the room so attun
ed to magic. It took the form of sad shadows haunting the corners and a faint odor of decay. Shorty could barely retain its owl form in the leeching magic that surrounded it.

  Its mind struggled with the new experiences, the great thrust of Dammuth's magic that had formed the spectre fist. This was power even it had never known the old one to possess, and if he did contain such power and was still blocked, then the enemy was greater than any imagined....

  That was what Dammuth's mind tortured him with-- magic, always the magic. That would be the undoing of them all. Even with the enemy employing all the power that they had, they should not be able to block Dammuth's as they were.

  The wizard, with Arianrood, was the last of the Shields of Light, the fourteen sorcerers, wizards, and healers that had gifted Fealoth with his godhood. Only those two had survived the awesome act. Only she should have the ability to block him, for next to the Ead and the gods themselves, Dammuth knew he was the most powerful of all beings that walked the earth, the greatest wizard man had ever produced and probably ever would.

  "And I feel so helpless," he whispered aloud. It was not a feeling he was used to experiencing. Surely, if nothing else, his imagination would be a potent weapon. But his mind felt so sluggish, as if a cloak covered his thoughts, blunting them.

  He thought of Margawt; the power of the Morigu could and should count as something. But what was a Morigu? And what was this one, the one all the earth things called the Morigu? A boy, by elven standards, little more than an infant. His power, born of desperation and rage. Could any soul survive such a burden?