David Gemmell - Dark Moon

'Hit my head again,' said Brune. 'Made it bleed.'

'Luckily your head is the thickest part of you,' observed Forin. 'You lost the horses, you dolt!'

'He could have done nothing to save them,' put in Tarantio. 'And if we had ridden a few yards further we would have all been sucked into the abyss.'

'Have you ever heard of such a thing in Corduin lands?' asked Forin. 'For I have not. Down by Loretheli the earth moves. But not up here.'

Tarantio stared down at his hands; they were trembling. 'I think we all need to rest for a while. The horses are too skittish to ride.' Unhobbling the gelding, he led him towards the ruined hill. Above and to the left of the sheared mound was a stand of trees. Tethering the two horses, Tarantio and Forin sat down while Brune wandered away to empty his bursting bladder.

'I think my heart is beginning to settle down,' said Forin. 'I haven't been that scared since my wife - may she rest in peace - caught me with her sister.'

'I have never been that scared,' admitted Tarantio. 'I thought the earth was shaking apart. What causes it?'

Forin shrugged. 'My father used to talk of the giant, Premithon. The gods chained him at the centre of the earth, and every once in a while he wakes and struggles to be free. Then the mountains tremble and the earth shakes.'

'That sounds altogether reasonable,' said Tarantio, forcing a smile.

Brune came running up the hill. 'Come see what I've found,' he shouted. 'Come see!' Turning round he ambled down the ruined hill. Tarantio and Forin followed him to where the hillside had been cut in half, exposing two marble pillars and a cracked lintel stone.

'It is an ancient tomb,' said Forin, scrambling up over the mud which half-covered the entrance. 'Maybe there's gold to be found.' Tarantio and Brune followed him, sliding over the mud and into the entrance. All three men halted before a huge statue, which stood guard over a broken stone doorway.

The sunlight shone down on the marble of the statue and Tarantio stood staring at the carving, trying to make sense of it. The statue stood almost seven feet high. On its left arm was a triangular shield, in its right hand a serrated sword. But Tarantio's attention was not taken by the armour but by the face, which was not human. The bony ridge of its curved nose extended up and over the bald cranium, curving down the thick neck to disappear beneath the sculpted armour. The creature's

eyes were large, protruding, and slanted up towards the thick temples. The mouth was lipless and open, showing pointed teeth behind a ridge of sharp bone, like the beak of a hunting bird . . .

'It is a demon,' said Brune fearfully.

'No,' said Forin. 'It is a Daroth. My father described them perfectly. Six-fingered hands, and eyes that can see in a two-hundred-degree semi-circle. The neck is heavily ridged with bone and sinew. It does not articulate like the human neck, therefore the Daroth needed better all-round vision.'

'You mentioned them back in the cave,' said Tarantio. 'I have heard of them. But they are just myths, surely?'

'No, not myths. They existed before man came to this land. They were great enemies of the Eldarin, who destroyed them utterly. They came from the Northern Desert. Have you ever travelled there?'

'No.'

'Barely an ounce of soil over twenty thousand square miles. According to the legend, the Eldarin used great magic to annihilate the seven cities of the Daroth. Fire from the sky, and all that. The same magic that later destroyed the Eldarin themselves, searing the earth away.'

'They look very fierce,' said Brune.

'They were all mighty warriors,' Forin continued. 'They had two hearts and two sets of lungs. The bones of their chest and backs were twice as thick as ours, and no sword, nor arrow, could pierce their vital organs. A heavy spear could injure them, but it would need a strong man to plunge it home.' He paused and looked up at the cruel, beaked face. 'Hell's teeth, would you want to fight anything that ugly?' he asked Tarantio.

'I would,' said Dace.

'I dread to think what the females looked like,' said Tarantio to Forin.

'From what my father said, this could be one of the females. There was little difference between them; they bred like insects and reptiles, laying eggs, or pods. There was no physical union between mating pairs - and little apparent physical difference between the sexes.'

'Why would anyone want a statue of a Daroth guarding their grave?' asked Tarantio.

Easing past the statue, they pushed their way into the main burial chamber. The sunlight was weaker here, but they could see a massive lidless coffin set by the far wall. The answer to Tarantio's question lay within. The coffin contained a massive skeleton, taller even than the statue guarding the tomb.

Shocked, Tarantio gazed down on the colossal bones of the chest and back. The body had been laid on its side and the immense ridge of the spine could clearly be seen extending up the neck and over the cranium. Reaching inside, Tarantio lifted clear the immense skull. Dust and grit trickled from it. More than ever, the ridge of bone above the mouth looked like the beak of a hunting bird. 'Incredible,'

whispered Tarantio. 'He must have been awesome in life.'

'He's pretty awesome dead,' muttered Forin, reaching out and taking the skull. 'And this is a rare find.

The Daroth were virtually immortal, reborn through the eggs. At the time of rebirth the body of the dying adult would shrivel away, bones and all, then the same Daroth would emerge from the pod.'

'Well, this one didn't shrivel away,' said Tarantio.

'Indeed he didn't. I wonder why. Perhaps he chose not to mate, and there was no pod for him to return to.'

'I can feel the evil here,' said Dace. 'Like a cold flame waiting for life.'

Symbols had been carved into the walls, but Tarantio could not decipher them. There were no paintings, no boxes, no possessions of any kind - with the exception of three bizarre pieces of furniture set against the wall. They resembled chairs, save that the seating area was in fact two curved, horsehair-padded slats set six inches apart and crafted at a rising angle from just above the floor. The back of the chair was low; this was also padded, but only along the top of the back-rest.

Brune tried to sit down on one and he looked ludicrous - too low to the ground, his legs splayed, his back bent. 'No, no,' said Forin. 'Let me show you.' Striding to the chair, he pulled Brune upright and then knelt on the slats, leaning forward to rest his massive forearms on the top of the back-rest. 'The Daroth spine was not suited to conventional chairs.' Rising, he tucked the skull under his arm.

'In times of peace,' he said, his voice echoing eerily inside the enclosed chamber, 'the bones here would have been worth a sack of gold, and the statue outside would have fetched a fortune. Now we'll be lucky to get the price of a meal for the skull.'

'You keep it,' said Tarantio. 'I'm sure there will still be people interested in acquiring it.'

He swung on his heel and walked from the chamber, clambering up over the mud and out into the sunlight.

Forin and Brune followed him. In the bright light of earthly reality the skull looked somehow even more eerie, out of place, out of time.

'The Eldarin must have possessed great magic indeed to wipe out a people so formidable,' said Tarantio.

Forin nodded. 'According to legend they annihilated them in the space of a single hour. Perhaps that is what the Eldarin were trying to do to our army, and their magic betrayed them.'

'Perhaps,' Tarantio agreed.

'I wonder what they ate,' said Brune.

Forin chuckled and lifted the skull. 'Beneath this beak there are sharp teeth, the front canines pointed like spikes. At the rear . . . here, look . . .' he said to Brune, beckoning the young man forward, 'are the molars . . . the grinding teeth. They were like us, meat and plant eaters.'