The sun had yet to set in Westland when Hyden Hawk’s powerful call rang through the aether. King Jarrek and the dwarven delegation had long since made their way back to Castlemont, and both Lord Spyra and Master Wizard Sholt were preparing for their newly appointed positions. The carefree spirit of the feast was all but a memory.
Lord Spyra was off braving the snow and touring Settsted Stronghold and its many outposts. He insisted on doing it now, so that when the southern weather worsened he could spend that idle time planning and preparing his command over the garrisons.
Master Wizard Sholt was now instructing De’Rain and a few other promising students, and had resumed his role as the High King’s Master Wizard.
It was in the capacity of both positions, teacher and royal wizard, that Sholt, De’Rain and a young girl of seven, named Suza, were all out in the strange bailey yard this evening. This particular bailey had once been Queen Shaella’s garden. The Master Wizard and his apprentices were studying the qualities of the circle the red priests of Kraw had burned into the grass there the previous year. Sholt had tried all of the obvious banishing and replenishing spells to try to make the dead spot hold life again, but none had worked. King Mikahl had ordered the anomaly removed, destroyed or even built over if necessary. Sholt and his students wanted to understand why no snow would stick there when the ground was no colder or warmer than that around it, and why no vegetation had grown there all last summer.
Sholt secretly hoped that the youngsters would notice something he’d overlooked, or maybe come up with some new angle of approach to the problem. Master Sholt was contemplating these things when Hyden Hawk’s sending blasted into his mind like a war drum. De’Rain and Suza heard it, too. The sound was so harsh in Suza’s little head that it made her cry out in fear and pain.
“Defend the Wardstone with all you have, Mikahl! Go, do it now!”
Once Master Sholt realized the sending was from Sir Hyden Skyler, he went into immediate action.
“Stay with her, De’Rain,” Sholt said. With a flourish and a sizzling crackle, he disappeared.
The High King was on his way to meet his queen, her handmaiden Allysan, and Lady Lavona. The women had a concern about something or another and wanted him to hear it out so that it wouldn’t alarm anyone else in the castle. Mikahl had no idea what the issue was, but since he couldn’t seem to refuse his wife anything, he was about to find out; at least until Master Sholt came rushing down the corridor pushing servants and workers aside like a madman.
“King Mikahl!” Sholt yelled. “King Mikahl, there is urgent word from Hyden Hawk!”
Mikahl glanced around, saw a closed door, and ushered the wizard into the room. It was a pantry full of linens. Shelves full of gleaming brass chamber pots and a few stored oil lanterns lined the walls. As soon as Sholt was in, Mikahl shut the door. The total darkness, after being in the bright, lamplit hallway, was sudden, but Sholt immediately cast an orb light into being.
“My lord, Hyden says Xwarda must be defended at once!” He sounded distraught and out of breath. Master Sholt had spent most of his life in Xwarda training under the late Wizard Targon. It was the closest thing to a home the serious-looking middle-aged wizard had ever known, and he cared for the place and the people there deeply. “I can only assume they are under attack or something drastic…”
His voice trailed off as the entire foundation of Lakeside castle slowly shook and rumbled. Yells, screams, and the sound of crashing dishes could be heard from nearby. Mikahl and the wizard shared a wide-eyed look.
“You must go protect the Wardstone, King Mikahl! That’s what Hyden said.”
“Aye,” Mikahl agreed. “I will go after I find Rosa, but what’s happening here?” He looked into the wizard’s eyes for an answer.
Sholt waved him off, for De’Rain was sending a message into his head. “The gateway has opened. Out there in the garden yard,” Sholt repeated the young mage’s warning, but he left off the pain-filled scream that extinguished the spell. “Something’s crawled out of there,” he finished in a panic.
“By the gods, sound the alarm,” Mikahl said as he bolted out the door and down the hallway to find his wife. Before he even rounded the corner, the frantic clanging of the alarm bells rang out from the guard towers outside.
Mikahl charged up a stairway and down a short passage full of huddled, terrified castle staff. He found the room where he was supposed to meet his wife and his friends, but only the handmaiden, Allysan, was there, and she was a teary-eyed wreck.
“Where’s my queen?” Mikahl asked sharply. It was enough to bring her into focus.
“She and Lady Lavona went off to the building supply lot.” She sniffed and continued. “I was told to wait until you arrived and tell you to meet them there, my king.” She wiped away a tear and looked at Mikahl pleadingly. “Are we under attack? What was that sound?”
The sudden lurching of the floor as the ground shook again caused the young Valleyan servant girl to cry out. From outside the window, Mikahl heard another scream. It was Rosa’s voice, and with the sound came a grumbling roar, and the realization that the supply lot the girl had been speaking of was where the gateway had just opened up. Without another thought, Mikahl drew Ironspike and charged through the shuttered window.
He burst into the cold evening air four stories above the earth, and as he started to fall he called forth the bright horse. The flaming pegasus flared to life between his legs and, on magical wings, it carried him toward the garden yard.
A bright explosion of crimson and lavender energy sent bricks and broken stone fountaining into the air ahead of him. A gut-shaking demonic roar followed. The new construction built where the Dragon Queen’s apartment had once been blocked his view, but the yells and commands from his guards told him he would find the worst when he got there.
The only thing on his mind at that moment was the queen and his unborn child’s safety, but as he caught sight of the thing ravaging the soldiers in the supply lot, even they became secondary. The demon beast’s eyes locked on Mikahl’s, and the High King shuddered seeing the resemblance of his friend Hyden Hawk in them again. This was the Lord of Darkness himself, the thing Hyden’s brother had become, and even now it was barking out orders to the swarm of demons that were climbing up out of the earth behind it.
When their eyes met, the part of the Dark Lord that was once Gerard Skyler recognized Mikahl, too. The last time the Warlord had stood in this courtyard Mikahl had lopped off the Dragon Queen’s head.
The beast roared in anger, sending a searing gout of dragon fire at Mikahl. The High King managed to call forth a shield from the symphony of magic his sword blasted through his mind. Had he been on a real horse, he would have perished in the flames. Mikahl could smell his burnt hair and could feel the tightening skin where the dragon flames had touched his face before Ironspike’s power could divert them.
He scanned the courtyard for Queen Rosa and nearly crumbled from the air in a heap of despair when he saw her. She was mauled and bloody, lying in an impossibly twisted position near the open hole in the earth. A little black-robed girl was trying desperately to drag the queen’s body away from the Demon Lord. If she wasn’t dead, she would be within moments. The horrid way in which her slippered feet faced upward, but her torso lay limp and facing the dirt, said it all. Mikahl had fought in enough bloody wars and had seen enough carnage to keep from fooling himself. The emerald dress she had been wearing earlier, when she asked him to meet her, was now blackened with blood and left him no room to doubt that it was Queen Rosa the girl was trying to protect.
Mikahl gave a savage war cry that rivaled the call of the Dark One. His sword blazed white hot and sent a streaking beam of destructive energy into the Warlord’s plated chest. Gerard screamed out in pain and went tumbling over backward. Only a last-second leap gave him enough altitude to throw out his wings and catch air. Mikahl urged the bright horse onward and made to attack again, but a violent fist of crimson energy slammed him sideways, so that the magical mount carried him crashing into the corner of a newly built wall.
A hellcat and a Choska demon rained blast after magical blast down and around where he’d crashed. Then the entire wall structure collapsed over him. The last thing Mikahl heard before blackness swept through his mind was the Warlord’s horrible laughter and the pleading cries of the little girl in the black robe.
After eating the girl’s squirming body, the Warlord ordered his horde east. As much as he would have loved to stay and terrorize Westland more, he had an agenda. Xwarda, and the Wardstone bedrock upon which the palace was built, was waiting for him. By taking control of its power in his own form he could do more than rip open the boundaries. He could create an impenetrable protective shield, behind which he and his hordes could gather, plan, and rest behind between attacks. He could use the powerful Wardstone to blight crops and burn the forests. He could poison the lakes and streams and summon all the beasts of the earthly plane into his service. From Xwarda he could slowly, painfully bleed the hope and life from the world of men. On powerful wing beats he and those who could fly moved swiftly eastward. The wingless, the walkers and lopers, the slithery, scaly things, of his horde followed on the ground.
In the back of the Hell Master’s head a voice was screaming out a warning, but the Warlord paid it no heed. The voice was that of a demon called Shokin, who had been ripped apart long ago by Pael. Shokin was part of the evil against which Ironspike was created to defend, and he knew its powers. When the High King went down, even now, while he was buried under that pile of rubble, Shokin screamed for the Warlord to take the time to utterly destroy him. Once that was done, the blade would be dead, too.
The Warlord ignored Shokin’s advice. So loud and intense in his head were the calls and murmurs of all the demons the Hell Master had consumed, the rambling of a single voice was lost in the jumble. The surge of hatred and malice toward the world they had all been banished from, and the desire to feed upon its terror, made it hard enough for the thing Gerard had become to keep its focus on Xwarda. So intense was the desire to wreak havoc that the Warlord himself couldn’t resist the urge to bathe in the blood of men.
The city of Castlemont’s lantern lights became visible in the cold, dark night, and the Warlord chose that place to land first. Dozens of breaches had opened up across the land, and his army needed a place to gather. What better place, the Warlord decided, than a city full of struggling people trying to salvage a life after war? If crushing hopes and dreams would fortify his legions, then in Castlemont they would feast like gods.
In the city of O’Dakahn chaos reigned. Demons tore through the streets and neighborhoods with wild abandon, killing and destroying anything they could. Along the river and the marshland villages of the south, those witches and dabblers who served the Dark Lord were finding the bloody rewards of their loyalty. From their sacrificial circles, from the rune-marked altars, and from other places where certain magical symbols were etched, breaches between the Nethers and the world had opened. Across the entire realm, etchings on medallions or small statues were spilling forth demon kind. Buzzing black hornets and long, venomous things slithered out of the darkness, while imps and devil dogs shimmied out of the places they could fit through. In the marshlands, the circle where the red priest of Kraw had preformed the ceremony that let the Warlord into Shaella’s resurrected body was a gaping gateway. All sorts of dark things were escaping their banishment.
Legions of them.
On the Isle of Borina, where the same priest had resurrected Shaella’s body in the first place, there was a larger hole. In the Giant Mountains, more than a dozen teleportals had opened for the Dark Lord, and in the sacred heart of the Evermore forest, already the earth was soaked blue with blood. In King Jarrek’s lands, though, the nightmare was only beginning, because all of the denizens of hell that had come to the land of mortals were now moving toward Castlemont to answer the Warlord’s summons.
King Mikahl opened his eyes to see the shield he’d called forth. It was holding several chunks of rubble up off of his body. Ironspike was still in his grasp, he realized. Had he let go during his brief stint of unconsciousness, he would have been crushed. He blinked away tears from his eyes. He loved Rosa dearly, and with all of his heart. To lose her and his unborn child was deeply painful, but he was the High King and couldn’t let his own emotion come between him and his duty.
A deep, loving voice echoed in his head from the past. “Think, then act,” it said, and Mikahl did just that. He had to get to Xwarda to defend the Wardstone from the thing Hyden’s brother had become. That he knew for certain. If he didn’t, if he took even another moment to mourn Rosa and the baby, then maybe a dozen more mothers could die. Hyden would be waiting in Xwarda and, according to his missives, the would-be wizard had some sort of plan. Mikahl wiped away one last tear and then let his anguish fuel the symphony of Pavreal’s blade. In an explosion of brick, fractured stone and dust, he emerged from the mound.
The bright horse whinnied and pranced, eager to be of service. All around Mikahl in the torchlit garden yard, men yelled and dove for the ground as more terrible things crawled from the hole and took to the sky.
Along the walls the alert soldiers cheered when they saw their king come flying out of a cloud of dust and debris.
Mikahl took the bright horse up into the frigid sky so high that all he could see below were the tops of the clouds. He hated to abandon Westland, but there was no choice in the matter. He set into a streaking course due east and hoped with all he had that he could get to Queen Willa’s palace to meet Hyden Hawk before the Warlord got there first.