“Hold tight!” Tyranos immediately roared.
No sooner had he spoken than from above came familiar cries. Gargoyles by the scores shot out of the windows. The shadowed forms were nearly as big as either of the two clinging to the ledge. They beat their leathery wings hard and opened wide their beaked maws as they descended toward the duo.
Tyranos thrust out his hand, in which he held a short staff whose head was a five-sided crystal the size of a fist. There were runes etched on the wood. The crystal glowed silver. The spellcaster muttered.
“No,” Golgren whispered.
But it was too late. The pair vanished from the ledge only to reappear at the base of the mountain a moment later.
“What by the Kraken?” Tyranos snorted angrily. “This isn’t where I wanted to bring us!”
“Return me to the ledge,” Golgren commanded.
The gargoyles, gathered in greater number, were nearly upon them. Tyranos’s leonine face turned angrier yet.
“We’ll just see if you know all my tricks!” he growled in the direction of the citadel. He quickly drew a circle before the two of them.
A hole opened up. Golgren sought to step away, but a terrible suction seized hold of him. He saw the same was happening to his companion.
Grinning, the wizard roared, “Ha! Here we go!”
A cry rose from just above Golgren. The first of the gargoyles was nearly upon them, its taloned paws grasping for the half-breed.
Golgren stretched his hand toward the gargoyle … and was sucked into the hole.
Idaria Oakborn witnessed Golgren’s vanishing, although she had neither watched from outside the dire citadel nor peered from one of its gaping windows. Instead, the elf slave had stood frozen deep within the confines of the citadel in what had once possibly been a throne room. All around there were cracked and ruined statues of a race whose ancient beauty made her feel shabby and as grotesque as her ogre captors. A crumbling spiral staircase led to one of the twin towers. Ancient reliefs worn away by time or covered with immense webs adorned the walls.
The pungent stench of generations of gargoyles made the dusty air even more stifling.
Then there was the throne itself, a high-backed, stone chair with three jutting points at the top, in which the master of the gargoyle legions that roosted there sat, gazing, like her, at where Golgren had stood before he vanished.
The sphere floating before them stood as tall as an ogre. In it, Idaria watched the gargoyles that had been sent to seize the half-breed, at the very moment that the wizard Tyranos had materialized next to him. The creatures looked both furious and fearful; they knew their master might punish them for their failures and they rightfully dreaded his wrath.
But instead of anger, amusement seemed to fill the gargoyle king’s mood, despite the loss of his prey. The low laugh coming from him sent chills through Idaria but not merely for herself. She worried for Golgren; she was an elf fearing for the life of an ogre-or, at least, a half-ogre. She was also concerned for Tyranos-despite the distrust between them-and for his faithful servant, Chasm, a prisoner there like herself.
There had been another prisoner among them, the Solamnic Knight Stefan Rennert, but for him Idaria could only mourn. He lay dead in the citadel, slain foully as he had come to her defense; and then he had been disposed of like so much refuse.
Moving like a wisp of wind, the gaunt figure rose from the time-scarred throne. He appeared more ghost than living, his gray and black robes drifting as if the lower half of his form were nonexistent. A deep hood covered most of his head, and a golden cloth was wrapped tightly across the face, obscuring all but the two long, oval eyes as white as ice … or death.
My Idaria … came his words in her mind, his tone mocking, as he aped the endearment of Golgren. Have you enjoyed the little spectacle? Do you draw any conclusions from it?
She did not reply. During the short time of her captivity, the elf had already seen that her captor had a propensity for twisting matters to satisfy his desires. Whatever her words, they would come back to haunt her somehow.
The hooded form drifted nearer. A pale, almost fleshless hand stretched out to stroke her long, silver tresses. Idaria looked as if she had only recently come into womanhood, but looks deceived where elves were concerned. She was much older in mortal terms, being more than twice the age of the Grand Lord Golgren. That had made her think herself the wiser one when she had entered his life. What a fool she was, Idaria had discovered.
He is thoroughly under your spell… continued the gargoyles’ master. And perhaps you a bit under his.
She said nothing, continuing to stare at the scene of many winged forms desperately scouring the area for the half-breed. However, knowing Tyranos as she did, Idaria was certain that they were far from the vicinity.
And far away from her.
The hand moved from her hair to cup her chin.
So well I chose, finding the perfect ivory skin, the slight nose and red lips and crystalline blue eyes to mask the blind obsession within.
Idaria wanted to pull away, but could only stand there, frozen in the remnants of her low-cut green gown-Golgren’s favored garment for his slave-as though she were one of the statues or worse. She had only the ability to speak and move her eyes.
Yet while Idaria had nothing to say to her captor, she spoke volumes to herself, silently berating herself. She had truly been that creature’s pawn, falling prey to his guise as a Nerakan officer, a leader among the black knights whose hostile domain bordered part of the ogre realms. So determined had the elf been to free her people, no matter what the cost might be to her, that she had agreed to volunteer for slavery and degradation. In return for acting as a spy for Neraka, she had been promised that the knights would guide the elf slaves to freedom once they gained the advantage to seize the ogre capital.
In retrospect, Idaria had recognized many flaws in the plan, flaws that from the very beginning she should have understood. But the elf knew in hindsight that she had been played, just as Golgren had been played. She had been chosen to make the half-breed malleable for the fiend’s plots, and she had performed exactly as her puppet master wished.
She sensed other forms shuffling behind her. One crept into the edge of her vision. The ghoulish figure stood taller than she, though not quite as tall as Golgren. It was clad in the time-ravaged remnants of a once-regal robe whose original color could not be identified because it was so faded. Bits of decorative and possibly magical jewelry still adorned the skeletal hands and the barely shrouded chest. Straggled pieces of hair hung limply from the skull. There was only a veneer of parchment skin covering the face. The scent of death was well upon the cadaverous creature.
Yet it was not dead.
Idaria had believed otherwise when she, Stefan Rennert, and Tyranos’s gargoyle servant had been attacked. The knight’s sword had shattered some, even; but the bones merely pulled back together, as had happened with the army of skeletons-f’hanos-that had attacked the ogre capital some time back. She had looked into the eye sockets of those who seized her and realized the awful truth. Those beings did indeed live, if by a definition of that term that Idaria had never before imagined.
Their presence nearby chilled her, although it was not as bad as that of their leader. She had suspicions concerning exactly what the strange creatures were, yet she could not fathom how they could have come to such a monstrous state. Clearly, though, her captor had been deeply involved in their creation.
And there were plenty of genuine undead around her too. Several rotting gargoyles kept watch on her from a staircase nearby. Even in death, the creatures were subservient to the masked form. The undead who had attacked Garantha likewise must have been part of the plot of the gargoyles’ lord.