Nancy Berberick - The Inheritance

Light drifted down from above. A door stood open, and torches flared and hissed. Elansa climbed up, taking the unfamiliar stairs slowly, eyes on the golden glow. At the top, she stopped and sighed as the first breeze touched her cheek. Brand stood at the far end of the Tharkadan, head low and talking to Char. They leaned against the wall, Brand with his elbow on the parapet, Char with his back to it. It was the dwarf who heard her first. He looked up, his face pale in the light of his torch, rough and white with his thirst, unable to ease it. He jerked his head in her direction, Brand turned to look, then looked away.

They left her alone, kept the distance of the wall between while she stood at the parapet, looking out over the valley. She tasted the breeze and listened to the profound silence of the heights. Dawn had broken perhaps an hour before, and new light spilled down the valley. Elansa filled herself up with it, and in that silence she prayed. She did not pray for rescue. It startled her to realize she'd stopped doing that-she couldn't remember when she had. She prayed only to be seen, to be known to gods who were so very far away.

See me, she whispered, soft in her heart, praying to the god she had always served. Wherever you are, O my Blue Phoenix, wherever you have gone, see me, for I am here.

Just that prayer she made, and then she left the wall, for the night was cold and her cloak was thin. Footfalls sounded behind her, echoing against the parapet. She knew the step, the measure of the tread. Brand followed, and he carried a torch to light their way.

"Peace," he said, low behind her. "Go back to sleep."

Elansa nodded, but she didn't turn to look at him.

In the dark cellars below the east tower, Velg had not been able to sleep. He took flint and steel from his pouch and broke the branches into pieces, kindling sized and larger. He made a fire because he didn't like the dark.

In a chamber not far from where he and Ithk rested, something woke, something thin and rattling and dressed in rusted chain mail and a helm that fit better when it was fleshed. Light didn't wake it, but the smell of flesh did, of pumping hearts and blood running in veins. Behind a closed door, it sat up on its bier, aware of a great hunger.

It cried, "Brothers!" in a voice like wind, and when it moved it sounded like naked branches rattling in storm.

Others awoke, not all, but the most hungry of them. They opened the doors of their crypts. Darkness was nothing to them, these creatures who had no eyes but only gaping holes where eyes once had been. They? left their cold beds, ancient warriors uncorrupted in life but corrupted in death. They woke from the dreamless sleep, and the waking was like a cold birth. Out from their crypts, they shambled across the great hall, wandering through the spaces between the pillars. Corpses of gully dwarves lay in the corners, headless, armless, crawling with maggots. The sickening odor of decay filled the cellar. The creatures hardly noticed. They smelled living things.

They had no voices, not anymore, though in centuries past their voices had lifted in praise to a king, in oaths sworn upon valiant hearts. Elves and dwarves and humans, they had made the Royal Guard of the elf king Kith-Kanan. They had loved him in life. Every one had guarded him, each willing to trade his own life for that of the great king. They had no voice now, though, nor heart or soul to remember the glory of kings or the legend of their own devotion. Wretched, corrupted, they made no sound at all. None, until one shoved its shoulder against the stout oaken door, trying to get past it, out of the hall to where it smelled warm flesh and blood. Others joined the first, flinging against the door, mindless and driven.

The thunder of their need boomed through the corridors and up into the towers of the fortress itself.

Brand heard the drumming first. As he walked down the tower steps he felt it reverberating in the cold air.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Behind the thunder came voices, and though the drumming was distant and the voices closer, those voices sounded far and frail, the startled sounds of men and women wakened from sleep.

"In the name of gods," Elansa whispered.

Up the stairs, four flights and distant, Char’s voice called, "Brand! You down there?"

"Here! Down here, Char! What’s-?"

"Trouble up here!"

"The banging, I know. I hear it."

Silence, a breath held, then the booming started again. Hinges squealed as though Char yanked the door wide. His voice echoed down the stairwell. "Don't know about banging. It ain't coming from here. Up here, we got real trouble, an army's worth of it and riding hard!"

For just that moment all the world stood still to Elansa, frozen in the bright glare of Brand's torch. Even the shadows held. She heard the voices beyond the door, she heard the banging, but she didn't move. And then she turned and said to Brand, "Go! Go up and see what's coming." Boom! Boom-boom! Boom! "I’ll go see what's here."

If she startled him, suddenly commanding, he didn't show it. He was gone, leaping up the stairs after his shadow. Only once did he turn, and when he did, she saw his eyes bright and keen in the mage-light.

"Go!" she cried, "go!"

He went, and Elansa turned from the sight of him leaving, for she had the feeling that something had changed, like a wheel turning. The turning filled her with strength, as though gods had looked at her from far, far away.

"Oh, damn," Brand whispered.

Dawn's quickening wind caught his hair, blowing it back. It combed his beard and stung his face, for up here the wind never blew warm. He squinted against the blowing cold to see a bright line running across the stonelands. The army ran swift upon one of the old roads that stretched a good distance before failing. Gray as pearl, the sky breathed with the first light of the new day. Stars were fading, the moons had gone west beyond the Qualinesti Forest, and the bright line ran on, catching the predawn light and taking the frail glow for itself. At the wall Char turned, and the white look on him said he wished he'd had a fine fat skin of dwarf spirits.

"I reckon," he said, "there's got to be about a hundred of ’em, and those ain't goblins, Brand."

Brand leaned over the parapet, peering into the ghostly gray. "Too bright for goblins, that's for sure. And look at the dust; it's hanging high. Mounted men." He squinted at the twin lines of horsemen and the plumes of dust rising up in the cold air. "Elves."

"Elves, all shining in armor and bristling with swords and arrows and lances." Char spat over the wall. "And I'll wager I know what they're looking for."

Brand shook his head and squinted out over the plain again. "I don't think they're coming for her, or not just now." He slapped Char's shoulder and pointed west. "There!"

There went unmounted men, enough to be marked by their dust, only this cloud rode lower, from this distance like a smudge right above the ground. These did not ride but went on foot.

"Ah, now. Those are goblins." Char leaned his back against the parapet and looked up at Brand. "You reckon they're running for here?"

"I do."

"You suppose the elves are after the goblins?"

Brand nodded, and wind moaned around the towers.

"And we'd be idiots to think we're not going to get squeezed in the middle."

Brand agreed that they would be idiots to think so.

Char looked at the mountains and the towers and all the ancient fortress, the stone scarred by time, steadfast and standing. "Ah, well. It was a nice high fastness for as long as we had it." He heaved a gusty sigh. "Wish I had a drink."

Brand nodded, still looking at the dawning day. "I wish you did, too. But you don't, and we're here."