Black Gate

 

“The Weird of Ironspell” by John R. Fultz

Illustrations by Alex Sheikman

 

4. The Jewel and the Giant-King

 

Yom was a city of magicians.

Of all the kingdoms lying west of the Greyfold Mountains, only Yom boasted that its walls were defended by a legion of sorcerers, or that its wizard-king had slain a dozen ancient wyrms to free the Western Realms of the dragon plague. In the inky depths of night the city’s towers and ziggurats gleamed with all the brilliance of the wizardry that was its claim to fame.

Of all magical arts only the practice of necromancy was banned from the city’s environs, for the people of Yom did not want their dead disturbed. Yet every other manner of sorcery thrived here. Alchemists, adepts, enchanters, conjurors, soothsayers, theosophers, prestidigitators, thaumaturges, and mages wandered its marbled streets and hobnobbed among its hanging gardens. Yom was also home to vast wealth, and the penalty for thievery was death.

So it came to pass that Tumnal the Swift found himself locked in a damp cell, his limbs heavy with enspelled chains, deep in the catacombs below the wizard-king’s palace. Once known in seven realms as the Lord of Thieves, Tumnal was destined to be a footnote in the pages of an executioner’s journal. Although Yom’s penalty for thievery was precise, the bureaucracy of the place was staggering. Through no fault of his own (other than his libidinous nature) Tumnal had been caught and sentenced to death one month ago. But he might linger for years among the rats and roaches of the dungeon until the headsman came with his axe to carry out the sentence.

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“The Weird of Ironspell” by John R. Fultz  

Illustrations by Alex Sheikman

 

3. Return of the Golden Skull

 

War had come to the Kingdoms of the East.

The earth grew rich with spilled blood, and the sky grew black with smoke from the fires of conquest. Yet this war was unlike any that had come before it, for the stakes were not those of boundaries, empires, or territories. This was a war of annihilation, a war of extinction and wild slaughter. A flood of massacres and endless suffering, a surging tide of death to drown the lands of men.

Fleeing refugees and survivors of the carnage called them Agnyri, or Demon-Men. They came out of the ancient land Dylestus, where a new power had risen to twist their brutal natures into an organized mass of marching havoc. They were the spawn of devils, born with an inner hatred of their human half, eager to quench that hate by drinking the blood of any who reminded them of their earthly lineage. The Agnyri ate only human flesh and dressed themselves in the skins of slain women and children. They called up dragons to burn the forests and fields in their path. They came in the screeching millions, bearing the banner of their God-King, a golden skull on a black field.

The feuding kingdoms of Draviah, Mydrithia, and Al-Kahna joined forces for the first time in history to face the rushing horde. Already their easternmost neighbor, the city-state of Nyrion, had been obliterated, its people become fodder for the flesh eaters, its opulent palaces now charred piles of stone and scattered bones. Each of the Three Sultans knew his kingdom was next, so longstanding differences were cast aside and the Triple Alliance was formed.

Now a half-million soldiers assembled on the Plains of Zharra, awaiting the arrival of the man-eaters. Beneath a fading sun the eastern legions spread in glittering waves of bronze and silver.

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