Andalarn

The darkness closed down over the men ahead as Andalarn paused at the entrance to the underground.

"Not this way," he muttered to himself, looking back at the three behind him who were straining to get by.

They had reached his cell with little resistance. D'Jemo, the keep's master, was deep into another dark summoning and could not be disturbed for any reason. Tchek, his second in command, was seeing to the defenses, and would be beyond reach for just long enough. Andalarn had at first thought that his benefactor Coltharn had anticipated everything, that he was to slip from D'Jemo's clutches with a minimum of effort. Now, he realized Coltharn didn't know the full extent of D'Jemo's dealings. The old soldier's men had freed him from imprisonment only to place him in the deadliest of peril. A familiar paralysis crept into him from a spot deep in his mind, spreading over him with dread certainty. Wordlessly, he cursed at it, but it ignored him.

There was a strangled scream from the dark ahead, then another, both cut short. The three behind him stopped their pushing and listened.

"Could Tchek's men be waiting there in ambush?" one of them ventured, looking at him. "Is that what you felt?"

He could not meet the man's gaze, could not take his eyes from the dark ahead. "No," he said, at last. "Tchek's men are not there..."

For a few seconds, the others stood torn between their fear of the unknown and their certainty that discovery, arrest and execution, were mere moments away.

"We can't go back," another hissed, bulling his way by. "Come on, then!"

The other two took him firmly by the arms and they plunged into the dark.

"Four years! Four years, and that's all you have to say?"

Andalarn dismounted to look at Coltharn. The old soldier leaned against a nearby wagon, his worn leathers dark against the soft green of the hills outside Moorkai. There was a little grey in the thick black mane that spilled out from underneath the ill-fitting leather cap, and the beard that never seemed to get past three days' growth was peppered with signs of age. But, the arms were as large as he remembered, and the body was still like an ale keg, solid and booming out a voice that carried for miles.

"What should I say?" Andalarn asked. "Nice to see you again?"

A growl rumbled low in Coltharn. "A little show of gratitude..."

Andalarn grinned around his mustache and showed Coltharn the scar that ran down the side of his head, along his neck and on to the collarbone. Coltharn's rumbling subsided suddenly and the big man's eyes narrowed.

"Some of my captors felt that D'Jemo's sentence wasn't enough," Andalarn offered by way of explanation. "They stretched me a little each day for nearly a month. A rope around my neck, one for each arm, one for each leg. Then they'd let me heal. Until they were ready again. For four years."

Coltharn shifted his weight uneasily and looked away.

"What should I say?" Andalarn repeated. He watched Coltharn squirm for a moment, then relented and placed a hand on the man's shoulder. "Easy, old friend, I don't blame you. You carried out your orders. Loyalty, no matter how misguided, is to be admired."

Coltharn turned a hesitant look to Andalarn, meeting the smaller man's grey eyes that had always seemed to penetrate into his soul. Slight, nearly gaunt, he was all steel and taller than most men by over three hands. Only Coltharn was large enough to meet the man eye to eye, yet he felt intimidated in some indefinable way.

"You were right about D'Jemo," Coltharn said, trying to turn the conversation away from Andalarn's recent imprisonment and more to their present problem. "He has set aside the Moorkai Council, shut down the Magicks Teachers, locked the Library, and brought in mercenaries. Their colors fly from the coast to the Smaele River." Coltharn could not hide the bitterness in his voice. "The Council is in exile and our forces are rallied against D'Jemo north and east of Moorkai..."

"Near the lake at Sak'a Prin," Andalarn finished for him. "Your bivouac is visible for miles."

Coltharn bristled. "We do not hide from the likes of D'Jemo's mercenaries."

Andalarn smiled mirthlessly and shook his head. "You should."

Settled in the tent, listening to the camp's quiet evening sounds, Andalarn considered the last few days. His escape from the Moorkai dungeons had cost the lives of fourteen of Coltharn's men, dead in the labyrinth beneath the keep. They hadn't commented on his hesitance to leave his cell, attributing that to his weakened condition, but it wasn't physical fear that made him balk at entering the underground. It was the knowledge of what D'Jemo had summoned and hidden away in its depths.

Andalarn grimaced to realize that, given the proper circumstances, it should be himself seated on the throne there in Moorkai, with D'Jemo rotting in that cell.

"Tchek," Andalarn spat. "Damn him and his spies."

Tchek was maddeningly efficient and savagely, almost inhumanly, loyal to D'Jemo. Andalarn had known of D'Jemo's plans to usurp Moorkai's crown, had even tried to convince Coltharn, who was then one of Tchek's lieutenants, to defect. He knew Tchek was incorruptible, just as he knew Coltharn was discreet in spite of his appearance, but he hadn't counted on the extent of Tchek's network of spies. Coltharn had barely escaped Tchek's displeasure, fleeing with nothing but his tack and gear. Andalarn had not been so lucky. He had underestimated Tchek's ability to act speedily, and had paid for it.

The final straw had been the day Andalarn learned something of what D'Jemo truly was. As a trusted member of the Moorkai Court, a Keeper of the Keys, he was seldom barred from movement within the keep. A locked door was an open challenge to him, and one locked with other than a physical bolt even more so. It had taken him nearly six weeks to puzzle it out, but the lock eventually succumbed, and he'd found himself in D'Jemo's sanctum--seconds before D'Jemo appeared at a door on the other side of the chamber.

What he saw instantly condemned him. They both knew this as they faced each other across the expanse of the symbols on the floor.

Andalarn's discovery merely hastened D'Jemo's itinerary. It was more a catalyst than a hindrance. His moves were quick, calculated, and exact. After D'Jemo's installation, the trial was less than a formality. They wouldn't kill him, Andalarn knew that much; they might need his talents later. But, they could make sure he never posed a real threat to their plans. He was sentenced to stasis, to be shoved into a dark corner then taken out, dusted off, and used at leisure after everything and everyone he knew and loved had died and become less than a memory.

He shivered and gathered the blanket closer around him, closing his eyes and letting the softness of the night soothe him.

His sleep was troubled with dreams of the labyrinth.

Coltharn's ability to gather men to himself was truly inspirational. Andalarn watched him bring his troops up from raw farmers who could barely hold a pitchfork to regular soldiers with passable skill at the sword and bow in just a few months. Coltharn's numbers grew as the harvests finished and the cold of winter approached. They would need to move quickly, build discipline and make an army before the snows. With a full season to prepare, D'Jemo would be impossible to defeat.

He helped the giant keep his men in line using his peculiar talent, and, within only a few days, had become a figure of respect and dread in the camp.

"I've heard you were policing a brawl today," Coltharn mumbled around his meat as they sat at dinner six weeks after Andalarn's escape.

Andalarn shrugged and licked his fingers. Coltharn waved the food at him.

"Be careful," the giant warned. "You know you attract more than just our attention when you do that."

"I'm well aware of that."

"Just so you know..."

"Relax. D'Jemo knows this is the only place I can be, now."

Coltharn chewed in silence, ruminating that piece of information. "Wonder why he hasn't come for you?" he said, almost to himself.

Andalarn caught the subtle edge of fear in the question. He leaned back from his plate and looked at the tent entrance. The flap was open, and, past the guard, he could see the rolling hills around lake. The Prin was a beautiful valley of fertile fields and gently flowing rivers. For generations, it had played host to Moorkai's farmers, feeding the multitude that flocked to the city for education in the Great Magicks. Now, the tents of nearly twelve thousand men covered its slopes. Their exercise and training yards scarred the spent fields, and the sounds and smokes of the smithies cast a great pall over it.

"He will."

Coltharn, too, felt the certainty of that. He set to the meat with renewed gusto.

The attack came a week later, in the dead of the new moon.

Quiet they were, soundless and soulless shades of warriors fallen centuries before. Men on watch were taken without a chance to raise the alarm.

But Andalarn felt their presence. His spine tingled at their nearness and the fear that ran along it was petrifying. From deep within him, a dark thing rose to strangle his courage. He tried to move out of his bed, but the dark had become a heavy spirit that squat on his chest and stared into his eyes with orbs of bottomless despair.

They lost nearly one thousand that night. Andalarn cursed himself far into the following day and avoided Coltharn's accusing glares. Men in the camp looked at him with confusion and suspicion.

Eight days later, Andalarn woke from a fitful sleep. The moon was waxing but a cloud bank hid its light from the camp. He folded back the tent flap and stepped into the cool night air. They were coming, he knew. He could hear the whisper of their cries in the back of his mind, back where most men thought only dreams dwelt. He felt them close to the ground, gliding along its curves without touching its firmness. The fear sprang where he heard them crying and threatened to spread over his psyche with its paralysis. He took a deep breath, looking to the stars that shone between the clouds, taking comfort from their serenity and steady glow, their peace. He absorbed that peace in the breath, closed his eyes.

He began to sing. Clear, sweet tones caressed the night and even the clouds seemed to hesitate for a moment in their march across the moon. Watchmen paused in their rounds to listen to the eerie velvet of the notes that danced around the camp. Sleepers stirred from deep in their dreams as the song penetrated even to the farthest corners of that realm.

A gentle zephyr of freshening, a light essence of calm began to run the perimeter of the camp, touching waking and sleeping alike, finding the smallest crevice and bringing its mark of serenity. The zephyr became a breeze that slowly expanded out from the campground.

And licked at the oncoming front of darkness.

They were without souls, but not without memory, and the words and the notes awoke in them images of things long lost. Even the dark can grieve, and through that grief find release. As his song reached its last stanzas, he felt them listening, and knew they saw him and waited for his words to bring them something they feared yet desired. He felt the focus of their attention on him, their darkness an arrow directed at his heart, yet the words fell off his lips with glad familiarity. Softness, remembrance, forgiveness...

The clouds parted from the moon's face and, for the briefest of seconds, its pale light spilled across thousands of shadow shapes, nightmare shades that stood spellbound by a single man's voice. A clean, bright note rang out with a keen, yearning edge, and the shapes quivered with its sound until the note, and the figures, shimmered into a bitterly sweet ending.

Andalarn opened his eyes. The sentry beside him, who had at first been drawn by the sound, then stunned by the apparition, took a long-delayed breath.

The singer returned to his tent silently. As he rolled himself into his mat, he shivered. The paralysis, momentarily denied, came back with a vengeance, and he was violently sick. Weakly, he covered the vomitus with dirt and tried to sleep. Dark shapes danced in his dreams, cavorting to a tune that grew from his own throat.

The camp was again friendly to Andalarn in the morning. His song had brought every waking soldier out with weapons ready, and all had seen the force arrayed against them in the flash of moonlight that traced the extent of his influence. Coltharn listened to the murmuring of the men and was satisfied that the camp's spirit was restored. He decided to move.

"We can take the keep," Coltharn insisted. He motioned to the crude map he'd scratched in the dirt floor of the tent. "I know every inch of it, from the walls to the Magicks Tower, where D'Jemo sleeps. I know the ruins to the west, the underground, and the cliff approach to its north. Tchek can station no one anywhere I cannot foresee."

Tchek's forces were extremely well trained, more than a match for three times their number, but Coltharn knew Tchek and how he worked. For years, he had trained under that regimen, until he could recite it in his sleep. Andalarn found himself comforted and irritated by Coltharn's certainty. He set his jaw and lowered his chin to stop himself from remarking on the folly of such assurance while Coltharn's sergeants dutifully listened.

"Our troops will enter the ruins and scale the west wall while we attack the front gates on the south," Coltharn explained. "A detachment of men will secure the underground while archers cover the cliffside."

Andalarn bit back a sharp word at the mention of the underground.

"West and south contingents should meet eventually in the main plaza under the Tower," Coltharn continued, tracing the troop's movement on the map. "I expect Tchek and his main guard will make their stand there."

Andalarn was able to manage a brief nod when Coltharn looked up at him from the map. The giant turned his attention back to the design. His massive fist plunged into the center of the map with a thud. "Tchek must be taken, dead or alive. If he escapes, we will have to go through this again some other day. D'Jemo needs to control Moorkai, for the Magicks are strongest there."

"And Tchek will pursue D'Jemo's ends to the exclusion of all else as long as he draws breath," Andalarn said coldly. Coltharn's soldiers turned their faces to him. "I wish there were some other way to be sure that the Magicks of Moorkai remained in safe hands."

Coltharn picked up his weapon.

Moorkai was a walled city standing on an outcropping that overhung the Smaele River. Coltharn's strategy for taking the fortress was based on weaknesses he had earlier tried to shore up when serving under Tchek. Coltharn knew how many mercenaries Tchek had under his command. It wasn't the human contingent of the defender that bothered him.

Andalarn dismounted on the knoll beside Coltharn's colors. The gentle roll of the land slipped under the black walls of Moorkai less than a mile away. To his northwest, the ruins of the pre-human race that some whispered still haunted the land here spread across the landscape like the bones of some ancient animal. Andalarn lifted his hands toward his city--Moorkai, where the Magicks were strongest, where men became more than men, where mages and bards were born. The greatest prize known.

Though the sun rose, a darkness refused to quit the air above the city. In the dawn, he could see the wings on that darkness; in the morning breeze he could hear them. The darkness mocked him, filling his mind with questions. Was there not some other way? Must so many people die, people whose greatest concerns mere months ago had been whether the Prin would give a good harvest or not? What right did he have to take these men into battle against the kind of forces that even now gathered above the City of the Great Magicks? He looked down on Coltharn's forces arrayed along the slope, saw their faces turned up toward his. It suddenly struck him that most were young men, some not yet reached their coming of age. How had he been reduced to this? How could he let these men, these children, die for some old books and artifacts that hadn't seen the light of day in over a hundred years?

"So, you know," D'Jemo's words came back to him. They had circled each other, there in the sanctum. "You know what I plan."

Hands outstretched, he sang a song of war.

His heart beat in time to the music, strong and solid, and he felt the blood coursing through his veins to carry strength into his arms. His lungs filled with the sweet air of the morning as his voice carried across the fields to the walls of Moorkai, where sentries, reinforced at the first sight of the enemy, heard it as the roaring of an approaching juggernaut.

Coltharn's thousands stood silently listening, drinking in the sureness of the lyric, the prophecy of triumph, the courage of the saga. They listened to the exploits of the great men, then began to hear the names of men around them in the lyric. The song took on an immediacy to them, a personal theme, and they surged forward as a single unit, thousands marching in preternatural unison, confidence building, swelling with the metre of the song. Forgotten were the dark winged shadows that hung over the city, forgotten was all thought of anything but the glory of the day.

On the walls, Moorkai's defenders heard the movement of something huge toward them, a single supernatural entity of a thousand arms, each turned against them. They heard the voice carried on a wind that blew against the river's breath, a voice that spoke of victory of old, and warned of a coming fall. Nervously, they fingered the edges of their weapons. Archers struggled with their bows, sometimes stumbling against each other in their haste to find their posts.

And the song grew in volume. No longer was it a single voice uttered from a single throat. Coltharn's men took up the refrains and strode forward toward the black walls fearlessly. First by tens, then hundreds, then thousands, they sang as they moved toward the battlefield. On the walls, archers rose to the battlements, planting their feet against the heavy vibration of the stone beneath them. A flight of arrows wafted to fall among Coltharn's men. The song reverberated off their shields and pushed the missiles aside. A second flight found some targets, but the distance was quickly closing between Coltharn's front and the gates. Walking, then jogging, finally running and giving a great shout that reverberated through the stone of Moorkai's carapace---

The wall, shaken from within and without, collapsed in a dozen places.

Andalarn turned his song now to storms; driving whirlpools of thunder and lightning gathered from the very waters of the Smaele into the air over Moorkai. A towering mass of power grew, drawing energy from the river and the essence of the song. The mass breathed out in great heaves, and the dark things that hovered over the city, that tore into the throats and chests of Coltharn's men, found this enemy more than they could resist. With a frustrated cry only Andalarn and only one other could hear, they fled into the shadows and did not return.

Coltharn's armies swarmed over the western wall where it was now difficult to tell where the old ruins ended and the new began. They took the gates, the cliffside, in under an hour, an hour that took its toll on Andalarn. The human psyche is quickly taxed by such forces as Andalarn summoned. As he saw the gates open, he sank to his knees and saved the last of his breath for a prayer. Coltharn's men would have to fight without his aid as they approached the Tower.

The defenders were disheartened by the ease with which the enemy had breached their walls. They had lived with the terror of their dark allies, not daring to sleep lest those shades prove more of a danger than any human invader. Now, with a swift stroke, something stronger than those horrors had banished them and thundered just outside the town.

Except for Tchek's personal guard, Moorkai's troops fell back.

D'Jemo's standard bearer stood at Tchek's shoulder, his orange and black design defiant in the still-torturous winds. Coltharn's men broke against him and his three hundred like a wave, engulfing them, surrounding them.

They were a closed knot of armor, black and amber and blood and gore, that forced back the first advance. Coltharn's troops reformed loosely and again essayed Tchek's line, only to leave another layer of bodies before the walls of the Tower. Some pulled the wounded away from the lines, and Tchek's men ignored their action, striking only when attacked, ruthlessly and efficiently. Finally, the invaders staggered back from the deadly fighters to form a restrained circle around them.

Coltharn shouldered his way into the eye of the storm to face his old commander. Tchek was still as imposing as he remembered. The black armor with its umber filigree was scratched and dented, but the only blood on it belonged to his opponents. Tchek held his double-headed war-ax in both hands, turning to face Coltharn with those flaring violet eyes.

"Yield!" Coltharn demanded.

Tchek spat and swung the ax, eyeing his front of enemy. "You bring children and farmers against me and demanded that I yield to such?" Tchek rumbled. "I yield only to those worthy of my loyalty."

A slight, fair hand appeared on Tchek's shoulder. The great armored man tensed, then relented and allowed the touch. He stepped quietly aside to allow D'Jemo forward.

Coltharn had always been puzzled by how such a young man as D'Jemo could have come to so much power so quickly. He couldn't have seen more than seventeen summers, yet the eyes that shone from the unlined face were an ancient dark. His ears, peculiarly shaped, were nearly always tucked under the shocking white hair that contrasted with the olive of his complexion. The boy would certainly be attractive if it weren't for a smile that chilled to the bone and a laugh that echoed hollowly in the soul.

"Coltharn, my old friend," D'Jemo said smoothly, reasonably. "Your request is most welcome, and most laudable. Let us have no more bloodshed today."

A quiet settled over the crowd, through which the dying wind allowed the moans of the wounded and the lessening sounds of nearby combat. Coltharn saw Tchek lower his ax until its heavy blade sank into the bloody earth at his feet.

"Moorkai is a city of peace," D'Jemo said, loudly enough for all to hear without making it a shout. "This strife is unnecessary." He stepped away from Tchek, holding out his hands to Coltharn. "I deliver myself into your hands, Coltharn. You are a man of honor. I am certain you will treat my men well for their service to their master."

Coltharn looked from D'Jemo to Tchek. The men in orange and black stood immobile, watching. To D'Jemo he said, "Do you surrender yourself to my hand?"

D'Jemo acknowledged the ceremony with a nod as Coltharn's huge paw, encased in its metal gauntlet, closed over his own, smaller, hands.

"You took them prisoner ?"

Coltharn rubbed poultice into a gash on his shoulder. "Aye," he said, "they don't deserve to die in battle. They deserve execution."

Andalarn shook his head in disbelief. "Coltharn, I understand your wish to see they get their just deserts, but isn't how they die less of a concern than that they do die?"

Coltharn glared at Andalarn and tossed the medicine cloth onto a nearby table. "Dying in combat is reserved for warriors of honor, Andalarn. I don't expect you to understand that--no offense meant." Coltharn hefted a jar of wine and splashed some into a cup. "Look, I'm a soldier. I don't know much about politics, but I do know D'Jemo could not be allowed to retain control of Moorkai. We needed someone to stand regent for the Council until it can be reconvened. I supported you because you were a Keeper of the Key."

"And D'Jemo wanted you dead," Andalarn reminded him.

"There was that," Coltharn snapped impatiently. "Damn it, can't you see? The Magicks must be guarded by honorable men, just as they always have been. Only men of honor are chosen Keepers."

Andalarn was, for once, speechless. The depth of what Coltharn said hit him hard. He had thought that it was political maneuvering and luck that had brought him the office of Keeper. Andalarn had promised himself to be head of the Council, in strict control of the Magicks. It had seemed the only worthy goal for a man of ambition. Yet, Coltharn was convinced the Council had chosen him for something else, something he was himself unsure of.

There was a weakness within him, he knew. He'd lived with it, defined as cowardice, all of his life. His hesitation when confronted by D'Jemo there in the sanctum had led to his imprisonment. His hesitation at the entrance to the underground when Coltharn's men came to free him, his fear during the night attack had meant the lives of hundreds. How could someone with such a fatal flaw be deemed worthy as a Keeper unless it was a political appointment? The Council was aware of his ability. They knew he was capable of great mischief if allowed to act unguided. It had seemed only logical to Andalarn at the time that they offer him the Keepership as a pacifier, one he willingly accepted. And would have been content with---for a while.

He rubbed his eyes and tried to push the fears away. "Where are they?"

Coltharn grinned. "In the cell," he said.

Andalarn had to admire the irony of it.

"I meant to ask you before, but always forgot," Coltharn said around a draught from the cup. "Why didn't you just magick your way out of that cell?"

Andalarn did something Coltharn had never seen him do. He blushed.

"Well, I hate to say it, but," Andalarn looked away, "I don't know how."

Coltharn's brow knit. "What do you mean, you don't know how?"

"I was favored by the Council," Andalarn explained, refusing the cup that the giant offered him. "I was a Keeper, next in line to the Ascendant. How was I supposed to know I would need an escape song?"

Coltharn laughed, to Andalarn's chagrin. "Some magicker! He can whip a troop into a battle frenzy, or call the very storms from the sky, but he can't get out of a jail cell." The giant leaned against the wall and downed the rest of his cup at a gulp, then chortled again. His mirth slid away as he saw how Andalarn suddenly had gone pale.

Andalarn realized a rumbling had begun sometime during their conversation. How long it had gone on, he could not remember. It had a cadence to it, an ominous pattern. Unbidden, an image sprang into his mind's eye---something dark, waking to the insistence of the call, in the bowels of Moorkai's underground.

The bard grabbed Coltharn's arm. "Bound? Both of them? Bound and gagged?"

Coltharn at first seemed puzzled by the question. Then he blanched.

They jumped at a pounding on the door. Coltharn yanked it open and one of the sergeants staggered in, blood covering the left side of his face.

"We...can't...get by Tchek...to stop him," the man gasped. He reached out for Andalarn. "Stop him!"

Coltharn was taking the steps two and three at a time, but Andalarn was just as quick. They descended, flying past men frozen in uncertainty as the cadence of D'Jemo's summoning quickened. It was only three words, three spoken symbols that pulsed in Andalarn's memory, three vocalized designs that glowed in a locked room.

Then a chilling silence brought them both up short.

Something large moved under the Tower. They could feel its movements in the soles of their feet, but, worse, in the depths of their souls.

Coltharn spun, wild-eyed, to Andalarn, his face an unspoken plea.

Andalarn felt the paralysis trying to take him again, threatening to close off his throat, strangle his voice. The giant grabbed him by the shoulders and shouted, but at first Andalarn only heard the snuffling of the thing in the underground. He knew it, recognized the symbols, and was terrified more deeply than he had ever been. D'Jemo had sought to ensure his success in his bid to control the Magicks by striking a bargain with something that once roamed this area. The ruins outside were its handiwork. It was a destroyer, a simple force of nature, yet it was diabolically intelligent. It could appear in pleasing enough shape, the shape in which it had negotiated with D'Jemo there encased in the sanctum's symbols, but its preferred shape was its own massive amorphous darkness.

Grimly, he closed his eyes and pushed Coltharn away, using that physical rejection to image his refusal of the fear. As Coltharn released his grip, Andalarn envisaged the fear falling away, and, to his amazement and great relief, he felt the blood again in his throat. Lyrics welled up in him from far back in his mind, lyrics he had learned perhaps in another life, certainly not within his own memory. They were slow, base, and primal, growling from his gut with aboriginal tone.

Coltharn pulled back from the singer as the melody began, forcing his hands over his ears to try to cut out some of the power. A squad of his men, who had belatedly found their courage, ushered him away from Andalarn, grunting in pain at the noise the bard broadcast.

The song went ahead of him like a wall of denial and rebuke as Andalarn slowly moved toward the entrance to the underground. Masonry in the surrounding walls rattled like loose brick, and dust fell thickly around him. The air ahead of him rippled and shimmered, but his eyes had closed. He was being led by other senses, more acute and more accurate, toward the entity that clawed its way up from beneath the Tower.

Coltharn's men followed as closely as they dared, weapons drawn but nearly forgotten in the deafening song that Andalarn canted. Even they recognized that this song was more than a simple charm, more than the powerful call that had brought the storm. Their teeth rattled and their chests thrummed to its pulse.

Below, something dark heard it and moved to meet it.

Andalarn stopped and opened his eyes. The song continued around him, now no more under his conscious control than his own heartbeat. He was at the underground entrance, where, months ago, he had paused in fear when Coltharn's men had come for him. The dark was even thicker now, and swirled with an unnatural life. He could sense the nearness of the thing, though his eyes refused to see it. It strained against the song, waiting for a single break, a minor fault in the melody. It listened and waited and watched.

The song grew in depth and volume. Plaster rained down about him, and Coltharn's men retreated. Suddenly, he realized he was not afraid. He knew, really knew, that the song was in control, and with that knowledge came another realization.

He did not want to be the Keeper of the Keys, nor did he want the Ascendancy of Moorkai. That power was alien to him, imaginary, unnatural. This, this power of the song, was the true power he sought, and through it he could control the thing D'Jemo had summoned or the men who huddled behind him with equal ease. With this power, he could be greater than Moorkai's Magicks themselves. He sensed the dark thing's nearness as if it were somehow within himself, and knew that what had risen up to paralyze him when the song had tried to spring to his lips was made of the same stuff, the same vileness that he faced from behind the song's shield. He was repelled by its noisome feel, and felt violated that he had carried it within himself for so many years without recognizing it for what it was. The song leached it away from him and sent it scurrying to join its parent below.

The dark receded at the song's rebuke. It sensed the rift opening nearby and knew that this wending could forever banish it from the realm of men. For a moment it strained against the power of the rhyme, but the cant's refusal to be denied finally became too much even for the dark one's great power. It roared one last thundering shout of fury and, turning finally to take its frustration out on he who had placed it in such danger, carried the elfin form with it into the rift. Even Tchek's great prowess was little help against its vengeance.

Andalarn felt a great weight lifted from around him as the summoned one crawled back through the rend in space to its home. His song swung upward in timbre, thrilling into ululations of triumph. Its sudden swing into joy carried the spirits of every man in the Tower and in Moorkai, who responded with a resounding shout of satisfaction and conquest.

Andalarn knew the paralysis would never come back.

END

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