Broken Stone 02 - Warlock's Sun Rising by Damien Black

Author:Damien Black [Black, Damien]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780995492844
Publisher: Damien Black
Published: 2017-09-05T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER V

Of Sour Times

Once the spectacle of Graukolos would have impressed him, but now all Adelko could find was a feeling of foreboding as they rode up through Merkstaed into the looming shadow of its eight towers. The skies that compassed its gargantuan frame were azure blue: it was early Balmonath and approaching high summer. The fast-flowing waters of the Graufluss sparkled in the sun’s rays, and birds skittered to and fro above the burgeoning marketplace, hoping to pick up a scrap or two.

None of it could warm the chill of horror that had lain on his heart since the Warlock’s Crown. It had been some two weeks since they left its cursed precinct, but everything he had witnessed there remained embedded in his mind like a poisoned arrow.

As they rode through the market square and out of the bustling town the novice muttered the Psalm of Spirit’s Comforting for the umpteenth time that day.

He did not know which had been worse: the demonic friezes intertwined with angels (angels!) that had lined the asymmetric interior of the blasted ruin Andragorix had called home; the lingering aura of evil about the place; the putrefying stench of the hecatomb of corpses; the no less foul remains of some devilish consort they had found, looking like a half-melted skeleton with gobs of pus and flesh sloughing off it. And then there had been the all-too-human horror of the wretched lad they had found chained up in the mad mage’s laboratory…

Perhaps that had been the worst of all, barely living evidence of the awfulness that mortalkind could visit on one another when caught up in the worship of Abaddon.

Or was the Fallen One just an excuse? The Earth Witch would probably have said as much. Were men wicked because they allowed themselves to be possessed by devils, or did they allow themselves to be possessed by devils because they were wicked in the first place?

Andragorix had made his choice. His mother’s trapped spirit had said as much, just before the spell binding her to the ring he wore had expired, leaving her free to seek whatever fate awaited her on the Other Side.

Through all that horror – man and devil-made – they had searched, destroying everything they could: the grimoires, the scrolls, the paraphernalia. But no Headstone fragments. Together they had conducted a divination, used every psalm in the Holy Book. All to no avail. Andragorix had not, apparently, been lying: he did not have the fragments, nor the power to wield them.

Now they were at Graukolos, hoping to find another clue as to who did.

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