"Elionbel. Elionbel," it whispered as softly as a gentle breeze in the treetops. Louder now it called her name, forcefully
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laughing from the darkness, "Elionbel. I have come to take you!"
Elionbel shrank into a tight ball, the palms of her hands trying to press the sound of the Nightbeast voice out of her ears. Martbel took a defiant step towards the door, her sword arm raised, but the voice turned to shrieking laughter that froze her to the flagstones. The door frame shook, the door bulged and rattled.
"Elionbel! I have come for you with a gift from Thanehand, the Gallopersp.a.w.n!" screamed the voice. "Come, stand before me, the Master of Darkness, and take the gift!"
The great door shook again, the wood tearing away from the iron studding" splitting across the main beam brace.
Krulshards drew back his arm and punched at the door, shattering the timbers apart. His bone black hand appeared through the jagged hole, delicately holding the silver finger bowl by its broken chain. The hand flexed and threw the silver cup across the great hall, bouncing it on the flagstones.
"Thane!" Elionbel cried, watching the cup come to rest. For a long moment she stared in silence at her love token, seeking in it Thane"s pale blue eyes and laughing lips. "Thane," she whispered again as the picture faded and she shuddered to think of his death at the Nightbeast"s hand.
"I promised him that I would come for you!" sneered the Nightmare voice of Krulshards. Elionbel looked up across the hall at the skinless, beckoning hand that had blackened and despoiled her love token, and felt anger swell up, pushing back the despair, and giving her strength. For a moment she had more strength than ten Granite Kings.- "I love you, Thane," she whispered, pulling a white hot fire-iron out of the flames, "and I will avenge your death!"
Springing forwards, both hands holding the hot iron in front of her, she rushed headlong down the stairway, glittering tears of rage and hate streaming down her face. She charged blindly across the hall, plunging the fire-iron deep into the centre of the Nightmare hand. Black, acrid smoke
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billowed up from the rotten flesh as the fire-white metal seared through to the bone. Krulshards screamed with pain, shutting his fingers on the dull red-hot iron shaft, cooling it in his grasp before s.n.a.t.c.hing it back through the hole in the door.
"Elionbel!" he thundered, swelling the malice with rage and
throwing it against the entrance to the Wayhouse. With one devastating blow it destroyed the door and wall in a shower of crumbling masonry. "Elionbel!" he hissed, dribbling her name across the flagstones as he entered, "You shall pay dearly for this, just as Thanehand paid for daring to enter the City of Night."
"You can take nothing more than my life!" answered Elionbel coldly, the strength fading as she retreated to the foot of the stairs and took a Marcher long spear from the server who was crouched, defending the first stair-riser.
"Living death in the darkness. Life without light," laughed Krulshards, advancing towards her. "I bring darkness to all Elundium, but to you, Elionbel, I bring the key to the City of Night."
Elionbel tightened her grip on the smooth polished spear shaft and hurled it at the centre of the Nightmare, shouting as it left her hand, "Die, foul Nightdemon. Die!" but Krulshards laughed, stretched out his smouldering hand and caught the spear long before it reached the malice. He turned the blade and drove it through the first server kneeling beside Elionbel.
Elionbel stared, open-mouthed, at the quivering spear shaft and retreated as Krulshards stepped forward, his shadowy foot on the first step. "I want you, Elionbel, it is payment for the love token I took from Thanehand. You have hurt me with a power that I do not understand, but only a king can kill me and he is far away in Granite City. Come to me!"
"No!" Elionbel hissed, proudly lifting her head, "My power
comes through love, and with that love I shall defend this house against you." Bending, she took the second server"s spear and turned it towards Krulshards.
"You are as weak as Thanehand," cackled Kerzolde, creeping forward in the shadow of the malice. Elionbel spun round angrily and flung the spear at Kerzolde, catching him a glancing blow on the shoulder. He snarled and leapt at the stairway, hooking his broken claw in the second server"s cloak and pulling her through the splintered bannisters. One sweeping stroke from his cruel curved scythe cut short her screams.
Elionbel hesitated, poised to take a spear from the third server. Krulshards now had his foot upon the second step.
"Thane is dead, Elionbel," whispered the Nightmare, casting back the malice, "and to prove it I have a second gift for you. Here, hold his hand once more."
Laughing, Krulshards unhooked from his belt one of the Archer"s hands, severed in the Tower at Stumble Hill and threw it at Elionbel. She screamed, stumbling backwards, as the hand fell on to the flagstones below, rolled once and touched the hem of Martbel"s skirt. Martbel spun round, the spell from Krulshards" shout broken, and looked carefully at the severed hand.
"Mghtmare!" she cried, sweeping her sword at the bulk of the malice. Krulshards snarled, s.n.a.t.c.hed Sethot from beside Elionbel, turned and used her as a shield against the sword stroke. Elionbel cried out as Martbel"s thrust cut into the server.
"Enough!" she shouted. "What do you want of me if not my death?"
Krulshards grinned, a trickle of saliva wetting his chin and let Sethot"s lifeless body fall and tumble its way down to the great hall. "You!" he hissed, reaching out, "I want your life in payment. Your death would be nothing but a moment"s pleasure!"
"You choose wrongly!" cried out Martbel, slipping between them. "I am Elionbel. It was my love token you brought here!"
Krulshards looked from mother to daughter; the grey strips of flesh bound across his forehead drew into a frown.
"Elionbel?"he whispered, holding them both at arm"s length in
l a vice-like grip. Undecided, he turned to Kerzolde.
"Which one is Elionbel?"
"Master, Master!" Kerzolde cried, cleaning the Server"s blood from his chin. "The younger one is the one we took from this Wayhouse, but we did not ask her name."
"I am Elionbel!" Martbel shouted, struggling to bite Krulshards"
hand. Elionbel slipped her hand inside her cloak and unsheathed a small narrow-bladed dagger. "Nightmare!" she hissed as she thrust the blade upwards into the folds of the malice.
Krulshards felt the point of the blade tear through the malice and shrunk away from it. Lifting his foot he kicked Elionbel"s wrist, numbing her hand into dropping the knife.
Frowning he pushed both women towards Kerzolde. There was a strange power in the Wayhouse, clearly these women were not kings and yet twice they had hurt him. "I have two queen-like creatures who have dared to hurt me, the Master of Darkness. I shall take you both!" he hissed. "Both of you shall come into the darkness of the City of Night."
Kerzolde snarled and held them tightly, pinching the skin of their arms in his one good claw. Krulshards reached into the malice, digging with his long sharp fingernails into the layers of rotten flesh that covered his black heart, and carefully pulled out his life thread. Thin and spider-fine, it glistened in his hands. Carefully he looped it around both Elionbel and Martbel"s necks and tied the end in a b.l.o.o.d.y knot. Stepping back he laughed and turned his head towards the remaining servers crouching in the stairhead hearth.
"Darkness is spreading across all Elundium," he sneered.
Elionbel bent, scooped up the dagger and made to plunge it into Krulshards" back, but as the blade touched the malice the life thread looped around her neck began to tighten, choking
her to her knees. Krulshards turned his head back towards her, a sneer of delight wetting his lips.
"You are mine now, you are a part of me, joined by my life thread. If danger threatens me the thread will shrink. Sleep
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ing or waking you are bound to me!" Gripping Elionbel by the folds of her cloak he pulled her close, lifting her off the ground, and spat the words into her face. "If the foul Marchers or Gallopers attack me it will be you that suffers my pain. If an Archer"s strike of arrows breaks through this malice, it will be your lives they threaten. You are nothing now, nothing!"
Krulshards dropped Elionbel on to the hard stone floor and turned away. The thread slackened around her neck but she could feel it pulsating with every beat of the Nightbeast"s heart.
"You have us in your power. Please let the servers go,"
pleaded Martbel.
"My Captain is hungry, he needs food for the long road ahead of us," mocked Krulshards, letting Kerzolde climb on to the first step.
"Please," begged Elionbel.
"Wait!" ordered the Master of Nightbeasts, halting his Captain on the second stair. "We must leave our mark in this Wayhouse for all Nightbeasts to see."
Picking up the finger bowl he placed it at the centre of the hall, and in a pattern around it he stamped his name into the flagstones, shattering them with large black letters, "KRULSHARDS THE MASTER OF NIGHT".
"Meet me beneath the walls of Granite City," he shouted to Kerzolde. "I shall be with your brother Kerhunge who is leading my Nightbeast army. Together we will finish the siege and destroy the last Granite King!"
Krulshards turned away from the stairway and strode out on to the dark Greenway, dragging Elionbel and Martbel behind him.
"The servers, please, spare them," Martbel cried. Krulshards only laughed and quickened his pace.