Jonathan Strahan - Swords & Dark Magic - The New Sword and Sorcery

If the doorway had not been so narrow, they would have backed off, but that was not easily done. Warily, they edged towards the albino, beginning to form a half-circle, closing in on him. He smiled at them as if in welcome, holding Stormbringer almost lazily. He was breathing heavily from his exertions but otherwise the creature’s own tainted energy still sustained him. He was vaguely aware of the blood running down inside his armour from his wounded back.

“I am glad to see you gentlemen.” The albino offered them a brief bow. “I cannot tell you how famished I have been.”

With rather less confidence than they had shown on first entering, their boots slipping in the demon’s dark, stinking blood, they began to close in.

Elric was laughing easily now, enjoying their dismay. He mocked them, feinting with his growling, insatiable blade. The men’s eyes narrowed as they pressed in. Then the albino reached out, almost elegantly, and took the head off the nearest soldier. They backed away, pushing one another aside in their panic. All they wanted to do now was escape, but Elric moved quickly so that he was between them and the dying demon. He reached behind him and drew the door as shut as possible. The severed head had rolled into the aperture and stopped the door from closing completely. From outside, a single bar of light entered the tower room. He feinted again, moving like a herdsman gathering his flock. Then, when the men were grouped together in the light, he swung the great, moaning broadsword so that its blade sliced into one, cutting him so deeply in the torso that half his body fell backwards while the other half fell forwards.

Elric yelled with battle joy as the slaver’s energy filled him. He struck again and two arms flopped in the mess made by the demon’s dying. He stabbed, drawing that man’s life-force deep into himself, and then, when only the saturnine slave-trader was left, he took his sword and slipped it delicately into the man’s chest so that instantly the pumping heart sent energy into the sword and from Stormbringer into Elric’s own glowing body. His white skin blazed like silver and his red eyes glared in triumph. He lifted his head, surrounded by its halo of milk-white hair, and laughed—a sound which filled the tower with anguished triumph and which keened and echoed through all the countless worlds of the multiverse.

When Elric had drawn a quick breath, he stepped through the door and saw the amphitheatre filled with startled faces. Addric Heed and his slavers stared up at him in baffled astonishment and Lady Fernrath ran like the wind towards him, shouting, “The slave quarters! Follow me!”

“The slave quarters? Would you free the slaves?”

“That, too, if we can. It might buy us time.”

Then, while Addric Heed and his baffled warriors began to absorb what had happened, the two albinos dashed down the outer steps of the tower. Panting, she led Elric into the bowels of the White Fort. She had armed herself with a massive, beautifully balanced battle-axe, which she handled with considerable expertise. Together they cut down any who sought to stop them while Stormbringer sang its bloodthirsty song.

Then, at last, they stood in long corridors stinking of human waste and putrifying flesh. There, shackled in every available space, were the choice men, women, and children whom Addric Heed had taken from all the cities and ships of the coast to be sold at the slave markets of Hizss in the coming days. These were the healthiest. The rest had failed to survive. Some corpses still hung in their shackles beside the living. Some slaves raised their heads, hopelessly curious. They were reconciled to their future.

Lady Fernrath did not listen to their questions or answer their hope. She was headed for a large marble enclosure at the far end of the corridor, whose bars were set further apart and were four times the thickness of any others. She dropped the axe, her eyes fixed on that great cage. But, while she ran on, Elric spared time to strike through chains wherever he could and release as many slaves as possible, especially the men. He anticipated rapid pursuit from Addric Heed and his slavers and wanted as many people fighting for their own interests as possible.

By the time he reached her, she had drawn back heavy bolts from the gigantic cage. Within, its empty sockets staring into space, its wings crumpled and awkwardly set, its claws clipped and bound with brass, sat a frail old Phoorn seemingly on the point of death.

Lady Fernrath approached the creature and placed gentle hands upon it, stroking its grey-white leathery scales and crooning to it in the ancient language of her people.

“Father, it is I, your daughter Fernrath. Here to free you.”

“Oh, child, you know I cannot be free. I cannot see to be gone from here. I cannot fly. Your brother will always keep me prisoner. There is no hope, daughter. You should not have risked Addric discovering the truth, of knowing what only we two know.”

“It is different now, Father.”

From the far end of the slave quarters, there came shouts and the noise of fighting. Clearly, now they were free, the slaves were not readily going to lose their liberty again. They understood that this was their last chance. This knowledge gave them the power to fight, even though few of them were professional soldiers. Clashing metal told Elric that some had already seized weapons. But he knew only a miracle would allow them to prevail for long against Addric Heed’s trained warriors.

With a deep, not-unhappy sigh, Elric prepared to do battle with an army.

The old Phoorn was called Hemric and he was, of course, Lady Fernrath’s father. “He has been here for over two centuries,” she told the albino, “dying to serve my brother’s despicable descent into trade.”

“Your brother is a poor specimen of our race,” said Elric in distaste. “And he has held his own father with human slaves?” Elric frowned. “Bad form at best, madam. If one would blind and imprison a relative, it should be with its own kind.”

She was too hurried to answer. “Quickly, the pearls. Give me the pearls!”

He slipped them from his shirt, already half-guessing what she meant to do. Stroking her father’s long snout, she persuaded the old Phoorn to lower his head, then, taking the glowing crimson pearls from Elric’s hands, she placed them one by one carefully and delicately into the long-healed sockets where his eyes had been, all the time crooning a long, melodic spell. Elric watched, fascinated, as the flesh began to form around the orbs and suddenly the Phoorn blinked. He blinked again. He could see.

And then, as there came a shout from up ahead and the battling slaves, protecting their children, began to fall back before Addric Heed’s well-armed warriors, the twin crimson pearls glowed and pulsed. Intelligence came into them and with intelligence came anger. The old Phoorn’s venom had long since dried up, but the long, beautiful snout twitched and snorted as fury filled him.

A deep, distant boom rose from somewhere within the old Phoorn’s huge chest. He lifted his head, and the quills—each the height of a tall man—rattled on his chest, while all along his tessellated tail the huge combs rose and stood proud. Even Elric found the transformation astonishing. The booming grew deeper and louder. He raised himself up on his muscular legs and blinked. From each eye now fell a drop of blood. The face, which regarded first his daughter and then Elric, was benign and profoundly sad, full of bitter wisdom. “With vision comes power,” he said in Phoorn. And blinked again. This time it was a gigantic salt tear which fell.

Elric realised that the slaves had fallen back, were running past him, seeking the freedom of the forest. Addric Heed was there, riding astride a massive battle horse, blond and armoured. Behind him were massed more cavalry and fresh infantry. The slaves had, for the most part, dropped their weapons, taken up their children, and ran out into the light, only to stagger back in, pierced by the arrows of Addric Heed’s waiting archers. “Like all others, save Hizss, this place was designed for warfare,” she said, “no matter what the occasion.” She watched as her father flexed wings long unused.