Chris Pierson: Divine Hammer

“You think you have won!” he shouted. “You have won nothing! The gates of this Tower will remained closed and its, halls empty until the day when the master of both the past and the present comes to claim its power!”

With that, he stepped up onto the windowsill.

“No!” Merroc cried.

The Black Robe jumped.

People screamed as he fell, robes fluttering like wings, but not bearing him up, not even slowing him as he plummeted, down, down, down.

The sound his body made when he hit the gates was unspeakable. The golden points drove through him in half a dozen places, impaling him. The latticework bent and warped beneath his weight, turning red as his blood poured out onto the ground. The Black Robe didn’t die right away, though. Somehow, he found the strength to tilt his head up, and speak one last spell with his final breath.

“Casai morvok na timoralo, lagong tsarantam uvoi…”

“No,” Merroc said again, his skin turning to ice. He knew those words, knew what would happen even as the Black Robe slumped at last, his life draining away to seal the curse he had laid upon the Tower. “Oh, sweet Solinari, no.”

The golden gates groaned, writhing like a living thing. As Merroc watched, the gold and silver changed from bloody red to the black of corruption, the jewels falling to dust. That wasn’t all, though. Above, the Tower also began to transform. Its minarets cracked and crumbled, chunks of stone raining down on the ground below. The white and red colors faded, turning ice-gray, the Tower’s beauty becoming gruesome. The path through the Shoikan Grove closed.

The crowd’s screams were all around now. Lord Yarus shouted for his men. Lord Urian was gone, running away with the rest, the high priest too. Only Astinus remained, one eyebrow raised as he stoically observed the chaos.

Feeling dead, Merroc sank to his knees, bowed his head and sobbed like a child.

The Dark One laughed, watching the Tower of Palanthas wither and die, the folk who had come to celebrate its fall fleeing in terror. Peering into his scrying vessel-the skull of a silver dragon, cut open and filled with its namesake metal-he nodded in satisfaction at what he had wrought.

It had been a long time coming, and more bother than he had expected. Another man would have regretted that so much death had been necessary to accomplish these things, but it troubled Fistandantilus not a bit. The knights of the Divine Hammer … the people of Daltigoth and Losarcum … his fellow mages … even Andras, whose death had sealed the Tower of Palanthas. What were they to him? Even if ten times as many had perished, it would not have given him pause.

At last his perseverance had its reward. The Order of High Sorcery was driven into hiding, where it could not meddle in his affairs. The church of Istar was in disarray, and he had a place close to the Kingpriest, close to the Lightbringer.

He waved his hand above the dragon shull, and the image of the blighted Tower faded.

The next move would have to wait-perhaps for years-but Fistandantilus had lived for centuries. Above all else, he was patient.

In the darkness, he smiled. The time would come.