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  Lorik went through the castle slowly. He knew that Yettlebor’s quarters would be on the highest floor, but he didn’t know the layout well enough to find them without help. He waved his hand, and Spector raced ahead, the wraith’s smoky body disappearing in the darkness. Lorik wanted two things—first he wanted revenge. Issalyn had betrayed him. She had used him and then forsaken him. He could not simply forgive her. Lorik had become the instrument of justice, and her crimes against him and her kingdom carried a heavy toll.

  Lorik stopped occasionally to listen in the castle's dark hallways. In some, torchlight flickered, or shaded lamps cast dim light, but Lorik preferred the darkness. Just as it had called to him on the night he was almost murdered by mercenaries and beckoned to him in the dungeon, the darkness felt like a place of refuge to Lorik. He stayed hidden as he moved quietly through the massive castle, drawing closer to where the people he sought were cowering in the huge fortress. After a while, Spector returned. The wraith sped around Lorik several times, then went off again. This time Lorik kept pace with his ghostly friend. The dark magic pulsed inside him, energized by the anticipation of what was coming.

  Spector led Lorik into a large open space. There were several doorways leading off the anteroom, and one was manned by two miserable looking guards. They were half-asleep on their watch, which was what Lorik had anticipated. The entire city thought that he had somehow fled the capital, and the guards had assumed that their duty was a mere formality. Lorik was amused as their eyes grew round with fear when Spector rushed toward them. He imagined it was a nightmare come to life: the dark hood, the smoky, etherial body, the lamplight gleaming off two highly polished blades. Spector spun at the last moment and slashed both of the men’s throats in one violent yet graceful attack.

  Lorik felt the rapturous joy that Stone took in killing the men. Perhaps it wasn’t necessary, but the soldiers had to be quietly dispatched, and they had made their choice to stand with Yettlebor. Anyone willing to side with a cowardly king deserved to die, in Lorik’s opinion. There was no time for mercy, not when Vera and Stone had been shown none by the current ruler of Ortis.

  Spector couldn’t pass through the door, but the wraith’s ghostly body was more smoke-like than flesh. He floated down and under the door, which was barely an inch off the stone floor tiles. Lorik watched the two guards die, their bodies toppling to the ground, both men clutching at their ruined throats. They tried to cry out, but all they could managed was a frightful hiss and a pathetic gurgling noise. The guards had held spears propped against the floor, which they had been leaning on just a moment before. When the soldiers fell, they let go of their weapons, and Lorik jumped forward to catch the long spears before they clattered to the floor. His reaction was so fast that it even surprised him.

  Lorik stood over the dying soldiers, feeding off the fear they felt as their life’s blood flowed out around them. Their bodies convulsed, causing their arms, legs, and even their heads to smack against the floor. It was a grotesque scene, and while Lorik didn’t revel in watching men die, he didn’t feel sorry for the men either.

  The door latch clicked, and the heavy, wooden door swung open. Inside the room was dark, but Lorik could feel the king and his queen sleeping together in the oversized bed. Yettlebor snored so loudly that there was no chance the guard’s death throes could be heard above the grinding snort. Lorik closed the door, then wedged the spears against it to ensure that no one could get into the room.

  Spector was circling anxiously, and Lorik nodded, letting his friend have his revenge at long last. The moan that the wraith made as he hovered over the bed made the hair on Lorik’s neck stand on end. Even in the darkness, Spector’s ghostly form could be seen. Issalyn screamed, and then Yettlebor did the same. The queen rolled out of the bed, her lithe body slipping to the floor where she scuttled away from the bed like a terrified child. Yettlebor was not as fortunate. He was fat and he grunted as he kicked his feet, trying to get enough momentum to raise his heavy body off the soft mattress.

  Spector stabbed down with one of the blades, pinning the king’s leg to the bed. Lorik saw the spout of blood and heard the agonized scream. It was like music to his ears as he stepped quickly forward and took hold of Issalyn by her long hair. She screamed as well, fighting against him, but she couldn’t pull away.

  The smell of urine was strong as Yettlebor pissed himself in fear, but Lorik savored the smell. He wanted to remember how the cowardly imposter died and hoped it might ease the pain of reliving Vera’s death. In the hearth, embers glowed faintly. Lorik threw a handful of dried reeds on the embers, which kindled quickly. Light from the fire began to illuminate the room. Issalyn screamed even more as she looked up at Lorik’s hulking form. He grinned down at her and set several logs into the fireplace.

  “Do you know me?” Spector said to the king, his voice a ghostly whisper.

  “N-n-n-no!” Yettlebor cried.

  “I am Death and I’ve come for your black soul.”

  The king’s scream echoed off the stone walls of this high castle room. Lorik couldn’t help but laugh. The coward’s fear and pain were exactly what he wanted, and as he gazed down at Issalyn, who was whimpering at his feet, the look of terror on her face told him that she knew she was next.

  Spector’s second blade came around so fast that even Lorik had trouble seeing it. The razor-sharp edge severed the end of Yettlebor’s nose. Blood gushed from the wound as the king bellowed in pain and squirmed in a futile effort to escape. Spector was hovering inches above the crazed king, reveling in every detail of the king’s panic.

  “You are the slayer of women,” Spector hissed.

  “No,” Yettlebor screamed.

  “You cannot deny it,” the wraith went on, raising his blade over the king’s face so that he could see the blood smeared across the weapon’s shinning surface. “She was my wife!”

  The blade fell again, this time severing the king’s ear. Lorik heard footsteps pounding on the stone steps that led up to the king’s quarters. It only took a moment for the soldiers to reach the anteroom, step over their fallen comrades, and bang on the door.

  “Help me!” Yettlebor cried, his voice cracking with fear.

  “They cannot help you, coward. No one can save you from my wrath,” Spector hissed.

  The wraith flew away from the bed and wailed a ghostly screech. The pounding on the door stopped for a moment, and Spector wasted no time gliding back under the door and attacking the guards.

  Lorik pulled Issalyn across the floor by her hair. She screamed and kicked, trying to get away from the big man, but she was helpless. Her flimsy shift ripped as she struggled, revealing her pale skin, but none of it moved Lorik. All he could see was the woman who had betrayed his friends and left him for dead.

  “Vera died because of you!” he shouted.

  “Lorik no … please … I didn’t know what he would do.”

  “You went right to his bed,” Lorik said, his voice dripping with venomous rage. “You whore!”

  “I had no choice — he made me,” Issalyn cried.

  “She’s lying,” Yettlebor wailed.

  Lorik was right beside the blood-covered bed, staring down at the frightened king, who was beginning to look like a nightmare himself. Outside the room they heard shouts and screams as Spector slew the king’s guards. The chorus of the wounded only made the king and queen shiver with fear.

  “You will watch!” Lorik said, pulling Issalyn to her feet and whirling her around so that she was facing the bed.

  He held her from behind; her struggles seemed extraordinarily weak to Lorik, whose massive strength had been increased substantially by the dark magic. But he couldn’t help but notice how good she smelled. Her hair was like a field of wildflowers, and he could feel the curves of her body through the thin nightgown she wore. Despite his anger and hurt over Issalyn’s betrayal, he also felt his desire for her rising. He knew if Vera hadn’t been killed, if Issalyn’s betrayal had only hurt Lorik and not h
is friends, he would have forgiven her. He might even have taken her back as his queen, despite her unfaithfulness. But Vera was gone, and Issalyn had played a role in her death. Lorik could never forgive her for that.

  “How did you do it?” the king asked. “How did you escape?”

  “You didn’t kill everyone who believed in me,” Lorik said. “It was your own servant, Kierian, that made it possible.”

  Issalyn's body stiffened when she heard Kierian’s name, but Yettlebor acted as if the name meant nothing to him. Then Spector was back, his blades covered in blood, the dark hood hiding the frightful smile that Lorik could feel radiating from his friend. The door was still intact, but there would be more soldiers soon, more than they could easily fend off. Lorik knew he needed his swords.

  “Where are my swords?” he whispered in Issalyn’s ear.

  “Let me go!” she screamed.

  “Too late for that,” Lorik said. “You have to pay for your crimes.”

  The king was screaming again as Spector sliced open his stomach. Fat, blood, and entrails bulged through the wound. The wraith plunged a hand into the king’s body and snatched out a thick section of intestine. He handed the long, bloody organ up to Lorik, who took it and wrapped it around Issalyn’s throat. Her defiance left her in a rush, and she sobbed like a child, begging him to let her go. She promised to do anything, offering lewd suggestions, and Lorik carried her to the shuttered window.

  “My swords!” he demanded. “Tell me, and I’ll make this quick.”

  “In the dressing room,” Issalyn cried. “Yettlebor took them for his own.”

  “Only kings can carry the Swords of Acromin,” Lorik said angrily.

  He kicked the shutters, smashing the wood and sending a cold gust of wind rushing through the room. Lorik had loved Issalyn, had wanted nothing more than to have a quiet life with her and give her everything she wanted. He couldn’t believe the woman she’d become, selling herself like a prostitute to the imposter king for position and prestige. His free hand came up to her long, graceful neck, taking hold of it just below her chin. She looked at him with large, terror-filled eyes.

  “No,” she cried.

  He twisted hard, snapping her neck almost as if he were breaking a dry twig. Her entire body sagged, and he tossed it out the window. Issalyn, Queen of Ortis, fell nearly ten feet before the entrails around her neck went taut and slammed her lifeless body into the side of the castle wall. Yettlebor screamed in pain, but Spector had already wrapped another section of intestine around the bed’s thick wooden corner post.

  “You’re getting off easy,” Lorik bellowed.

  The king could only scream; blood loss was making him weak, and Lorik knew he had only moments to live. Spector’s knives sliced into the king’s chest, just inside his armpits. The blades sliced through the thick pectoral muscles and jammed hard into his sternum. Then the wraith was lifting the fat king. Lorik grabbed the monarch’s bare feet and helped carry him to the window. They propped the bloody Yettlebor in the window casing while Lorik snatched up a torch.

  “This is for Vera,” Spector hissed, just before pushing the blubbering king out the window.

  He screamed, as his body smashed into the castle wall. Spector hovered outside the window, watching him die. Lorik propped the torch against the window, leaving the burning end outside so that it cast light down on the cowardly imposter king and his faithless bride. Then Lorik rushed off to find his swords.

  Chapter 6

  “We were overrun,” Jute said. “I never imagined such an army. From our position just below the hilltop, we could see the witch’s hordes spread out like some kind of swarming insects. We thought the awful creatures would try to kill us, but they simply went around our defenses, at least a first. Eventually they came at us, like mindless monsters. We killed hundreds, maybe thousands of the bastards, but they had endless reinforcements. Once they got inside our defenses, we knew we had to retreat.

  “Our clans have known that these mountains were once home to dwarves, just like the Northern Highlands. Dwarves have a nose for ore and prefer a cozy cavern to your windswept sky. By the way, does it ever stop spitting this foul rain?”

  “I can try to build a cover to keep the rain off,” Brianna said.

  “Don’t bother. We dwarves are hardy folk. In fact we had planned for the worst case scenario, assigning our best tunnelers to delve down into the old caverns. They broke through not long after the battle started, and once it was obvious that we had to retreat, those of us who were able went down the shaft. The witch’s monsters were too large to follow us, even if they had a mind to. We lost good dwarves that day. King Bloc died to make sure we all made it down to safety.

  “What we found under these cursed mountains was beyond what any of us imagined. Our homes are grand works, as you well know. Cozy, warm, well constructed, and spacious, at least by dwarf standards. But the caverns below us make our caverns in the Highlands seem like beggars’ hovels. There are great expanses of open space, with support pillars carved with reliefs that would make you weep if you saw them. Phosphorescent mineral veins glowed in the ceilings and were worked into huge murals on the smooth stone floors. There were palaces under these mountains, grand feasting halls, great domed caverns filled with treasures that your race would kill for. The stone work is so perfect it could be the home of the gods. We thought we had stumbled upon a paradise, and once we were rested from battle, we explored the network of tunnels, caves, caverns, and clan villages. And everywhere we went, we saw the name of the caverns chiseled in stone. Ostenglaros—in the old tongue, it means cavern of delight.

  “There were still tools in many of the homes, but no dwarves. In fact there was no sign of life anywhere in the mysterious caverns. We found walls that were covered in gemstones that highlighted the images carved into the rock. There were caverns where the floor was covered in sheets of gold and statues made of gold, silver, bronze, and even copper, but no dwarves.

  “Then we discovered the mine shafts,” Jute said, his gaze wistful as he stared into the flames of their fire. “Never had we seen such shafts, perfect in their dimensions and unchecked in their depths. The dwarves of Ostenglaros delved too deep, their shafts opening a passage to the underworld.”

  Brianna shivered at the thought of the underworld. She had seen the underworld in her battles with the witch Gwendolyn. It was a nightmarish place, with creatures that defied her imagination, even though she saw them with her own eyes. The scorpion-tailed beasts that the witch had unleashed on the Five Kingdoms came from the underworld.

  “We didn’t know that at first,” Jute went on. “We only knew the wonder of the caverns, the greatness of the workmanship around us. We made plans to bring our kin across the great open space of Yelsia. After the horror of war, such a dream kept us sane. It comforted us in our grief and gave us hope. We thought your world was lost, but we had plans to create a new world under these mountains, to increase the strength of the dwarves. In those caverns we thought we would be safe, but we were wrong.

  “After a time, we began to notice that every way leading out of the caverns of Ostenglaros was blocked. Our people don’t feel the need to make many ways of egress into your world, but a few are common. Even among the dwarves, there are outliers who choose to live in the wide open rather than in the warm embrace of the earth with sold rock under their feet and above their head. But in Ostenglaros the tunnels leading up and out were destroyed. Among all the greatness of the caverns, with their unbelievable wealth, we discovered tunnels that were destroyed. It was unthinkable that the workmanship that created the tunnels was at fault. Nowhere around us had we seen any sign of cave-ins. There were no failed projects, nothing that made us think that the mountains were unstable.

  “Then we realized that the dwarves who had made such remarkable caverns had destroyed the tunnels leading out on purpose. There was no other explanation for what we found. And though it seemed too terrifying to consider, we soon knew that the exits were
blocked to keep whatever they discovered deep in the underworld from escaping.

  “We decided the caverns were best left empty and we sought a way out. We had no idea what awaited outside the narrow shaft we'd entered by, so we set to work clearing one of the old tunnels. It was slow going, since the shafts had been left unstable. We removed tons of rock, only to have more fall and fill in the gap. The dwarves who had built the wonders of Ostenglaros had made certain that no feeble attempt would free the evil below.

  “So we began carving a new way out. For days we worked. Always the hammers and chisels rang, and we were close to escaping the caverns, but then from the mining shafts came the Gorslings, the lost children. The old stories tell of lost children from every race, spirited away to the underworld by foul creatures of the night. They are horrible beasts, skeletally thin, most having taken on the countenance of spiders or snakes. They are strong, fast, and vile in every way.

  “They came pouring out of the shafts and overwhelmed us. We thought all was lost, but they didn’t kill us. Instead they dragged us down into the underworld to their master. Have you ever heard of a Bollarg?”

  “No,” Brianna said.

  “They have many names. Your kind calls them devils; in the old stories they are called fire giants. This one is larger than your dragon, with skin of molten stone. He calls himself Straggah and rules the heinous creatures stuck in the underworld. The old dwarves were once his minions, having been captured as we were. He forced them to build a tunnel large enough that the demon could escape the underworld, but they were too clever. They started a grand project and then let it collapse on them. It killed most of the dwarves, and those who lived refused to breed. We are the only dwarves in the Bollarg’s control now.”

  “Now?” Brianna asked.

  “Yes, although our numbers dwindle. Straggah has learned from his mistakes. He keeps half of us as prisoners while the other half work. If we sabotage his tunnel again, then the prisoners will be tortured to death.”