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  It must be said that no one gave ground easily. The guardians of the city did not break and run. But when Khaxan Mundurucu took personal charge of the assault and started across the Hidradny Bridge, flinging fire and destruction in every direction from amorphous, black-shrouded hands, Goughfree knew in his heart of hearts that all was lost. Fears of defeat became a certainty when first the Salmisti tower, then the one on the Hidradny, fell to the invaders' relentless onslaught. To save the remainder of the army from complete destruction, and to preserve what he could of the city on the river, he and the rest of the general staff agreed to a full and complete surrender. There was nothing to be gained by trying to hold only the castle against the kind of otherworldly might they had just seen so overpoweringly demonstrated.

  They met the enemy officers in the wide, central square. It was quiet, the clocks in the town towers silent, the crackle and roar of burning buildings much less than would have been the case had Goughfree and his colleagues chosen to fight to the last. Heroic bronzes of heroes and artists looked on in silence, unable to influence or comment upon the disturbing proceedings. Ranks of sullen, exhausted soldiers tried to maintain a semblance of order as they were forced to gaze across the two-inch-square individual paving stones at smirking, triumphant men, women, and spear-carrying creatures that were neither.

  Standing near the center of the square, apart from the ranks, Goughfree, Chaupunell, and the others waited stoically. Their aim was to save the city and preserve as much of the Gowdlands as possible from pillage, rapine, and worse. Anxious eyes searched the lines of monsters and men for their enemy counterparts.

  The forward line of the enemy suddenly parted to allow three figures to step forward. Two were men, tall of body and brutal of aspect. Goughfree was unsettled by their appearance, but did not let it show. What did he expect—court dandies fitted out in elegant silks and brocade? The third figure was much shorter, an impossible progeny of rodent and human, with a long orange-red face, a small mouth full of thin, sharp teeth, and downward-slanting, mournful eyes.

  Behind them came the massive, black-clad shape of the diabolical wizard Khaxan Mundurucu. Searching in vain for a face, Goughfree and the others saw only an ambulating tower of lumpy black cloth.

  "I am General Drauchec," announced the foremost of the three warriors. "Myself and generals Boroko and Feelleq-aQua are here to present the terms of capitulation." So saying, a mailed hand passed over a sheaf of papers that appeared to have been inscribed in blood—though the blood of what, Goughfree could not have said.

  Glancing down, he began to read aloud. "This part the third," he muttered, "that concerns the turning over of stores. If we give everything we possess into your charge, what is to guarantee that my troops will have food enough to see them back to their often distant homes?"

  "No guarantees, no guarantees!"

  The defeated general staff of the Gowdlands looked up sharply at the source of the voice. Even the three Totumakk officers turned. None of them had spoken. The objection had come from the hulking figure that loomed behind them.

  The voice, though clear and delivered with some force, had been surprisingly tinny, with an oddly reverberant echo. Almost, Goughfree thought, as if it had issued simultaneously from multiple throats.

  Black cloth began to slough away from the figure. Behind Chaupunell, the colonel of horse gasped, and murmurs of confusion could be heard from other members of the staff as the true and natural aspect of Khaxan Mundurucu was at last revealed. Goughfree was no less stunned than any of them. The much-feared Khaxan Mundurucu was not a person, not an individual.

  He was a them.

  It was difficult to say which of the acrobatic goblins that together comprised the hulking form was the ugliest. One by one, they tumbled and leaped from their perches to assemble in a group on the stones of the square. Joined together by strong hands and feet, they had filled the vast black cloth in the shape of a person. Now they stood exposed for what they were: twenty-two goblinlike personages of varying size and appearance, each one of them less pleasant than the next to look upon.

  A resigned, slightly fearful Drauchec confirmed what everyone could see for themselves. "May I present the Clan Mundurucu; Masters of the Mystic Arts, Commanders of the Totumakk Horde, Ravagers of the Earth and Despoilers of Kingdoms Grand and Small, Distributors of Omnipotent Unpleasantness. I, and those beneath me, serve at their pleasure." So saying, Drauchec and his two equally intimidating fellow officers proceeded to bow low in the direction of the gathering goblins, arms crossed across their chests in a gesture of utter submission.

  Chaupunell leaned forward to whisper into Goughfree's ear. "Surely each of these wee creatures does not possess the power of the whole?"

  "Nay," declared a dumpy figure with big ears and the frenzied face of a maniacal toadfish, "we must work together to defeat the likes of the late and unlamented Susnam Evyndd, may his pure and noble soul lie corrupted and befouled forever. It is good that our attack drew him forth to a place of openness where we could get at him. But we all also have our individual powers. See, and tremble!" Raising a hand full of fingers like unpeeled carrots, the goblin whispered a few words and gestured.

  There was a poofing of air and a putrid, mephitic odor rushed up Goughfree's nostrils. Turning in horror, he saw a frantic rat with the face of one of his fellow generals scamper wildly past his feet. With a cry of delight, a goblin built like a sack of potatoes with a face banned from the land of frogs leaped into the air and landed with both broad, flabby feet on the fleeing thing that the brave Chaupunell had become. Tiny bones snapped and blood squirted out from beneath heavy, oversize boots.

  Goughfree swallowed hard. Behind him, someone was throwing up. "We accept your terms," he managed to choke out, "without guarantees, relying on your mercy as victorious soldiers of noble and chivalrous mien."

  "Noble? Chivalrous?" A heavily cowled something resembling a leprous monk sidled up to Goughfree and without warning or hesitation viciously kicked the general in his right knee, cracking the patella and driving the senior officer to the ground, where he lay clutching himself and writhing in pain. "We be the Khaxan Mundurucu! We take, and you give!" Thick, rubbery lips rolled into a terrifying sneer. "Give 'nobly,' if you like, but give you will!" The squat horror whirled. "Drauchec! Boroko! The city is yours. Have at it!" A great cry that was terrible to hear promptly arose from the assembled Horde.

  Not everyone died that day in Kyll-Bar-Bennid, though there were many who wished they had. Some few escaped, fleeing in terror back to their farms and far cities, to spread word of what had happened, of the terrible defeat and the slaughter and destruction that had ensued. Little hope of resistance survived anywhere within the Gowdlands. The river Drimaud had been the place to stop the invaders. With most of their best soldiers and fighters now dead or in captivity, the smaller cities and communities could only try to welcome the invaders without resistance, and perhaps to buy them off. It was a feeble hope, a faint wish. Especially in light of what the Khaxan Mundurucu did while much of the city burned below them.

  Ascending to the highest tower of the castle keep, the goblinish clan gamboled together while observing with pleasure and satisfaction the fiery turmoil that raged below. Most musically gifted of them all, knob-nosed Kobbod composed deviant arias on the screams that rose from the chasm of the tormented city, while his twisted sisters Kelfeth and Krerwhen put their arms across each others' hunched shoulders and gleefully cackled forth each new morbid stanza invented by their sibling.

  Kobkale, generally acknowledged to be the ugliest and therefore the most admired member of the extended family, stood by the edge of the wall appraising the work of the rampaging Horde below. Kushmouth waddled over to his clan-mate, his long-whiskered, flattened face alight with the pleasure to be gained from observing the final damnation of others.

  "What think you, brother? A good week's work!" A leathery arm waved eastward. "All the lands of these pustulant braggarts are now ours."

>   "Not quite." Buried deep with Kobkale's profound repulsiveness was a mind steeped in abhorrent knowledge and sharp of thought. "Some may continue to hold out against us."

  "Think you so? Genuinely?" Kushmouth frowned, an action that drew eyebrows like dead larvae halfway down over his protuberant eyes. "Don't you think the destruction of the primary city of the Gowdlands will cause all the others to bow in terror to our will?"

  "Mostly, yes. But there may still be some who think it better to resist than to acknowledge our suzerainty. For them, laying waste to a town and its inhabitants will not be lesson enough." Kobkale glanced skyward. "A greater lesson may be wanting. The everlastingly stubborn must not merely be terrified: they must be reminded of that terror every day. They must be reminded of their helplessness as much as of our power." Turning from the rampart, he gathered his black-and-gray robes around him.

  Depraved anticipation filled Kushmouth's grotesque face. "You have something in mind, brother!"

  "Most assuredly. Gather the Clan."

  They assembled atop the captured castle keep. When Kobkale put forth his proposal, there was no dissension. All present thought the notion admirable, which was to say surpassingly malign. It should ensure the subjugation of the peoples of the Gowdlands forever, and render them pleasantly malleable in the hands of the Clan and the Totumakk Horde. No chastisement more terrifying had ever been proposed by a member of the group. Kobkale was duly applauded.

  This time there was no need for them to bind themselves together in the form of a giant. Instead, they gathered in a closed circle, gnarled hands clasping misshapen fingers, and focused on an imaginary point midway between them. Individually, every member of the clan could perform one kind of powerful sorcery or another. When they combined their efforts, conjoined their exertions, nothing necromantic or normal could stand before the force of their malign vision.

  In accordance with Kobkale's instructions, the secret words were whispered, the special incantations invoked. In the center of the circle, unmoved and unaffected by the howls of despair still rising from the doomed city, a dark something began to take shape. As the chanting of the Clan Mundurucu rose in intensity and increased in volume, so did the convocating darkness. A roiling sphere of ultimate blackness congealed from the depths of places where men did not go; swelling, expanding, engorging itself on the words uttered in concert by the enclosing goblinate.

  With a vast, guttural sigh, as of Death itself exhaling, the sphere suddenly spewed skyward. Reaching the clouds, it began to spread outward in all directions. Gazing at it, a delighted Kmeliog brushed back the worms that were her hair and thought of a monstrous quantity of ink spilled on a floor, only all of it turned upside down.

  Where the darkness touched, the light faded, until only grayness remained. All across the Gowdlands, and beyond, natural light was blotted from existence. With the light went every suggestion, every hint of color, until all the known world found itself existing in a state of enduring grayness, permanently somber and sad. When on the following morn the sun rose, it would not shine, but instead cast only a cold ashen glow on a world cast down into an abiding melancholy.

  Concluding the hex with a necromantic flourish, Kobkale and his clanmates contemplated what they had wrought, and were much pleased with their effort. None of them had ever cared much for color anyway, so its absence did not trouble them. Even the fires that leaped from building to building in the town below were devoid of brilliance, the dancing flames no longer blushing red and orange, but only an all-consuming, all-destroying gray.

  "That demonstration of power should put an end to any thoughts of resistance," Kobkale declared firmly as the circle broke up and its component clan members proceeded to go their individual ways.

  "Genuinely, genuinely!" Kesbroch clapped thick hands together in delight. Devious and irresistible were the ways of the Clan whose destiny it was to dominate the whole world.

  He was not alone in his praise for their brother's counsel. Later that night, in the great hall of the castle where they had taken up residence, the other members of the Clan raised a toast of the blood of slain virgins to their noble Kobkale while they feasted on the tender meat of freshly butchered young children who had been dragged from their hiding places throughout the city.

  Genuinely (as the Mundurucu were wont to say), the overarching pall of grayness that descended upon the Gowdlands sowed fear and consternation far and wide. Communities that had yet to feel the heavy foot of the Totumakk trembled and cried out as every trace and speck of color vanished from familiar surroundings. Flowers lost their tints, while paintings became as simple ink drawings set down beneath gray wash. Pinkness disappeared from the cheeks of young girls, while no longer could eager swains speak to their loved ones of eyes of dancing blue, or green, or any other hue. The world was plunged into a morbid, dreary grayness, where everyone could still see, but had lost the heart to do so.

  Forced to dine on leaden grass, cattle were put off their feed and grew thin and listless, until their ribs began to show through their sides. Fungi of all manner of malformed shape and size grew large, overwhelming fields of grain, assailing orchards, and even invading the fabled, meticulously tended vegetable gardens of the kingates of Spargel and far Homimmu. Birds ceased their singing, reduced to an occasional subdued croak, while ducks and chickens found no solace in eggs that instead of issuing forth ivory white, emerged from their cloaca ashen of aspect.

  A different kind of grayness in the form of hunger began to stalk the land. Comfortably ensconced within the castle of Kyll-Bar-Bennid, the Khaxan Mundurucu received reports from Horde outriders of what their collective spell had wrought, and were mightily pleased. Town after town, city after city, submitted without a fight to their dominion, begging only that a little color be restored to them. The Mundurucu accepted these capitulations with ill grace, and maintained the full force of the malicious incantation. The despair of their newly acquired subjects was too delicious to discard. So they continued to revel in the all-pervasive grayness they had conjured forth, and to commit unspeakable atrocities within the defiled sanctity of the castle.

  Kobkale had been right about more than one consequence of the Clan's conquest. Among the inhabitants of the Gowdlands were a few individuals too headstrong to realize the impotence of their position even when confronted by the sweeping power of the Mundurucu. These intractables had holed themselves up within the High Fortress of Malostranka, in the deep forest of Fasna Wyzel, and from there steadfastly refused to submit to the rule of the Totumakk. Considering it a minor matter, the Mundurucu sent a small army under the command of General Feelleq-a-Qua to subdue these obstinate ones. Finding the fortress, which was set on a sheer-sided promontory in the midst of a deep river canyon, too inaccessible to assault directly, Feelleq-a-Qua and his staff proceeded to blockade the only access, a bridge built across the tops of smaller, intervening spires, and settled down to starve out the last resistance to the Horde's rule.

  The rodent-faced general was in no hurry to sacrifice any of those under his command. They had plenty of time. With the rest of the Gowdlands subdued there was no fear of being attacked from the rear, and the rich surrounding forest and countryside provided both ample provisions and good sport to the men and creatures under his command. Comfortably bivouacked, they could ravage and burn a village a week without running out of prospects for at least a year. Undoubtedly, the garrison of the fortress would realize the futility of their position long before then, and would request a sullen truce. Feelleq-a-Qua would graciously accept, occupy Malostranka, and then have its surviving occupants slaughtered down to the last infant.

  For now, though, he was content to rest, secure in his mastery of the immediate territory, and have his siege engineers lob occasional great stones or balls of gray fire at the fortress. It would not do to allow its delinquent defenders time to relax, or to enjoy a peaceful night's sleep. Idling in the chair that had been set up outside his tent beneath a canopy of gray silk, guards in
attendance, he contemplated the siege as he munched contentedly on a bowl of ladyfingers that were not made of cake.

  THREE

  Valkounin the Strong stood before a downcast Princess Petrine (who because of the all-pervading grayness looked more drawn than ever) and voiced what most who had assembled in the audience chamber of the castle already knew but preferred not to articulate.

  "As of yesterday week, Gierash, Stenyau-by-the-Drover, the kingdoms of Roun and Rouel, Parbafan, and Grand Tecrelle have all made obeisance to the Horde." Valkounin ignored the despondent murmur that greeted his pronouncement. "We can count on no help from any of them."

  "Even Grand Tecrelle!" someone muttered in disbelief. "They had the finest light cavalry in the far eastern Gowdlands."

  Valkounin glanced back at the speaker. "Who can blame them for submitting? Not I. Of what use are cavalry against sorcery, lancers against incantations?" He gestured skyward, to where the formerly magnificent frescoes that adorned the high, vaulted ceiling now looked down on the assembly out of gray-gormed eyes that seemed to weep silently for their lost splendor.

  "A sword cannot banish a spell. The most accurate archer cannot transfix a hex. Without necromantic help of the first order, we are lost." Turning slowly, he scanned as many faces as he could. Some were known personally to him: others were strangers who had fled to Malostranka in search of sanctuary, or allies—or hope. The first was temporary, the second useless, and the third—the third was scarcely present.

  "If only Susnam Evyndd—" a captain of fallen Partiria began. Valkounin cut him off.

  "Susnam Evyndd is dead! Stunned where he stood trying to defend Kyll-Bar-Bennid. He was the greatest wizard of the Gowdlands. All students and practitioners of the arcane arts acknowledged this. Yet now he is dead, as dead as any ordinary pikeman who fought to hold back the Horde at the terminus of the Salmisti Bridge. Understanding this, the lesser wizards have fled to more congenial climes or temporalities. Still, we must find sorceral help, somewhere…." His deep voice trailed away, into a silence devoid of suggestions.