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

“Addric Heed?” asked Fernrath, looking about her at the devastation. “Does he live?”

“After a fashion,” said the Princess of Uyt. “Knowing your relationship, I begged him spared. But I was almost too late. Xiombarg—”

“Where is he?”

Nauha frowned, thinking. “Two floors below and…” She shook her head. “Two to the left. His banners and his horse are there. He barely lives, however. Xiombarg was eating him.”

Lady Fernrath was already running from the hall seeking the downward staircase and calling her father’s and her brother’s names.

“There has been a feasting here today.” From curiosity, Elric followed her, the others coming in his wake. “Was this Xiombarg’s only payment?” He indicated the mounded dead.

Nauha laughed. “I think not. I recruited the priestesses when it became clear the supernatural was involved. Moonglum and the girl came up from the town, ready to defend you, but Fernrath had already—already transformed herself. And carried you off.”

“You knew where we went?” He moved down a staircase covered in corpses. “How so?”

“We were in time to see you leave. Cita Tine knew of the White Fort and how to get there.”

“But you arrived so swiftly!”

“Xiombarg was enlisted for that, too. The priestesses summoned their goddess and she transported us here.”

“Yet no sacrifice was made?”

“Oh, she feasted very well. And there was some trinket at Fernrath’s house, which Xiombarg valued. All she did, she did for that.”

They came upon Fernrath then, amongst all the blood and dismembered bodies, amber-coloured armour discarded like the remains of shrimp sucked clean of their shells. She crouched on the marble floor, her shoulders shaking in grief. In her arms, she held something ragged and red. Elric saw that it was all that was left of a man. Addric Heed, proud pirate prince and dealer in slaves lay there, taking great gasps, his lifeblood bubbling from his chest. Little was left of his face. His legs and an arm were missing. One side of him looked as if it had been gnawed upon. Xiombarg had been interrupted in her feasting. He tried to speak, but failed.

Suddenly a bulky form appeared in the nearest window. It clung uncertainly to the sill, then flapped awkwardly into the gallery, its huge wings slapping and snapping in the sunlight, its bulk vast and white as it turned, its massive tail swinging, its long, pale neck stretched out and topped by a massive reptilian head from which blazed two eyes as brilliant and crimson as Elric’s own. The so-called red pearls, now animated with a new life-force, gazed up into the pale gold clouds passing high above. The Eyes of Hemric had returned to the possession of he from whom Addric Heed had stolen them.

The old Phoorn’s red eyes blazed for a moment and his long, wizened snout grunted as he made his way forwards on stiff legs. At last, he stood over the body of the son who had enslaved him and suddenly all the anger left him. His great, pale wings folded themselves around his son’s remains and he lifted the dying thing in his foreclaws, a strange, soft keening coming from somewhere deep in his chest.

“I cannot,” murmured Hemric. “I cannot.” Then he moved towards the window, still carrying what was left of Addric Heed. With considerable difficulty, he hopped again onto the sill and then he had flapped into the air, the long keening note rising as he flew low over the far forest, making a peace with himself and his kin which the onlookers honoured but could scarcely understand.

When Elric next looked at Fernrath, he saw that she wept silently, her eyes following her father, her head on one side, the better to hear that melancholy music. Then she turned, straightening herself. She saw Elric but walked away from him, to stare through one of the tall, broken windows at her disappearing father and what was left of her wretched brother.

When, after some moments, she looked back to glare at the albino, her eyes blazed green and the tongue, which flickered across her teeth, was not human. “He has paid a fair price for what he did. His blood and the blood of his followers shall feed the forest and soon nothing will be seen of the White Fort. It is all he deserves. But now I am the last of my kind, at least on this side of the world.” She let out a deep, hissing breath.

“Anywhere,” said Elric. “There are none of us who are fully Phoorn and non-Phoorn at once. None who bridge the history of both races. None, save your father.”

She sighed. All the anger was gone from her. “And now we are both avenged.”

Hemric, most ancient of the Phoorn race; father to both Lady Fernrath and the renegade Addric Heed, who had blinded him and forced him under water to drive the last of the slaver’s ships, flew against the golden horizon, his voice still keening, deep-throated and full of the joy of flight, the anguish of death.

“Addric Heed was ever jealous of his father,” murmured Lady Fernrath. “For years he and his fellow Dukes of the Blood plotted to enslave the true Phoorn who were not Halflings like me. And when the time came, and their eyes were stolen, I lacked the courage or the character to resist. I saw the great runes cast and the great sorcery made and then the Phoorn were robbed of their eyes and forced into servitude. First they were harnessed to the ships and made to fly just above the water, guided by sharp goads. As they grew old and too feeble for that task, Addric Heed determined how he might have ships built around them, using their wings to drive those vessels at enormous speeds, terrifying and mystifying all they claimed as prey. I could do nothing but help my brother. He swore that if I did not, then he would torture my father to death. Thus I acted between him and the slave merchants of Hizss.”

“That is why Hizss is the only unfortified city along this coast,” murmured Elric in clear understanding. “Hizss did not defend herself because Addric Heed never attacked there. Indeed, he preferred only to prey on ships and left the well-armed cities alone as his dragon allies died, one by one. But his own father!” He spoke almost in admiration. “This is treachery even I could not match…”

Her smile was tragic, her voice sardonic. “Few could,” she said.

Elric watched the albino dragon as he returned, no longer bearing his son’s remains. He saw Hemric twisting and turning high above them, then diving to sail across the tops of the trees, and for a moment he envied the creature, his own ancestor, who had existed for as long as the bright empire of Melniboné, who had seen its birth and lived to learn of its end.

He looked around. The two priestesses stood a few steps back behind Elric and the others. They watched the old Phoorn’s flight in disbelieving wonder.

“We have to thank you, ladies, for your intervention,” said Elric. “But might I ask what price your patron asked for her help?”

The acolytes of Xiombarg exchanged glances. “It was something not strictly our right to offer her,” said one.

“But the needs of the moment seemed to dictate our agreement with her bargain.” Nauha stepped forward, the better to watch the wheeling dragon. “She knew it was in your house, Lady Fernrath. I knew it was your property…”

“It was all she would accept in exchange.” The other priestess seemed a little embarrassed. “That said, the Balance has been restored and Chaos brought to her rightful place in this plane’s grand cosmology! That was the will of Xiombarg. For as you serve Duke Arioch, my lord Elric, so we serve his cousin, his rival and his ally.”

“Ah,” said Lady Fernrath in quick understanding. “But it was already promised, I think. By me.”

“We had no choice.”

“It was, I take it, a white sword.” Suddenly weary, Fernrath glanced round her at all the destruction.