Born of Darkness (William King) - William King Page 0,40

through the old man’s memories and found only faint hints of war among the Eldrim. There were stories of the taint of Shadow. There were tales of humans who had overcome the Eldrim and driven them from their lands in the name of the Holy Sun.

The words triggered another flood of his own memories. The Shadow. Something about that made him salivate. Enormous holes in his recollections surrounded the concept, as if any knowledge of it had somehow been erased.

Who would do that? Why? How? He had no idea. He knew only that he felt a great sense of emptiness when he thought of the Shadow.

The Holy Sun. The great fiery enemy in the sky whose light burned the Eldrim, confused their senses, confounded their magics.

The Holy Sun, the arch-rival of the Lady of the Moon.

The Holy Sun. The deity worshipped by the accursed Auratheans.

He saw them now. Beings who rode from star to star in vehicles of sungold and solar flame, who existed as disembodied intelligences of light.

Suddenly a vivid image exploded into his mind, something he felt certain had happened to him. He remembered great golden ships dropping from the sky, metal giants emerging, living war-machines armed with weapons that burned like the sun.

The sick realisation struck him that he had vastly under-estimated the strength of his foes. They burned their way into his palace and captured him and . . .

Infuriatingly the image faded. He could excavate nothing more.

From the old man’s memories he picked out another image; of a huge Aurathean battleform standing in one of the buildings above him. It was one of the vessels in which they manifested. The metal giant occupying the Cathedral had done nothing in living memory. It was regarded as a mere empty suit of armour that had once been occupied by an angel.

That was wrong. The Auratheans had been a power, almost as great as the Eldrim, a threat to his people’s domination of the world.

He searched through his stolen memories and found not a single reference to Aurathean host forms. The humans knew nothing about what the Auratheans were, what they had once been. They worshipped only their empty vessels.

He needed time. He needed to sort through all the things he had learned and begin to piece together a picture of what had happened. He needed more knowledge too.

Another image flickered through his mind. And he felt a sudden shocking sense of recognition. This mortal had once worked in the palace, in a place where ancient artefacts were stored.

The human remembered relics of the Eldrim. There was armour that would allow him to endure the light of the sun. There were devices that would enable him to shape the aether with a thought. There was a huge mirror, a teardrop of liquid truesilver held within a stone arch, that could only be a moongate.

A moongate! A way out of this hideous place! He could go to where his people had once congregated, to Khazduroth or Winterpeak or the sub-oceanic domes of Talazar.

If it still functioned. It was worth investigating. If he could tap the gate’s power he could wreak such destruction that the mortals would relearn their fear of his people.

Vorkhul knew he would have to do this soon. The human who hunted him would return with others of his kind. He would not give up until one of them was dead.

He had his own reasons for going upwards now. He wanted to find the moongate. He wanted to be free of this place, to seek his own kind. He wanted to find out the truth of what had happened, not some half-remembered fable torn from the mind of a dying human. Most of all he wanted to get his hands on the weapons that would make him master of this pitiful degenerate world.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

RHIANA LOOKED UP when Kormak entered her chamber. She sat on the balcony, staring out to sea. “Where have you been?” Rhiana asked.

“Talking to people.”

“Did you learn anything?”

Kormak took the other chair on the balcony. His whole upper body still hurt and he felt tired. “Nothing that I did not already know.”

Rhiana came over. She draped an arm around his neck and then slid down into his lap. She shifted her weight and Kormak felt a stab of pain where the creature’s claws had bit into his flesh.

“Sorry,” she said when she heard him grunt. She leaned forward and looked out at the harbour.

“All of those ships,” she said. “All of them going so