Ahead of them, past a jagged rubble of barren rocks and crags, a tower jutted into the sky. Dark it was, and crowned with spikes, and its edges were spined like the back of a reptile. At its peak a greenish beacon burned, a rallying point for all that was vile and evil in the world. There it was, and they were within an easy hour’s walk of its dread portals. They had reached the domain of Darvezian, the end of their quest. They had followed the spider’s path, followed the words of the prophecy, and now all that remained was to confront the Dark Lord and end his reign.

Hooray for us, thought Dion, but inside she felt only empty.

10: Fear of a Dark Tower

LIEF HAD EXPECTED the clear ground before Darvezian’s tower to be a litter of tents, a great and unruly host of Ghants, wicked men, and monsters camped under their master’s eye, ready to go storm Cad Nereg and devour the free world at a moment’s notice. Instead, the place looked oddly abandoned. I mean, yes, he thought to himself, desolate, windswept, bleak, all these are good words, but where the pits is everyone?

There were a few huts at one end of the valley of the tower, a little village of Ghantishmen scratching out a living somehow. Of the anticipated Great Evil Horde there was nothing. Lief—on his own recognizance since Dion had sent him to scout—ghosted from shadow to shadow across the uneven rocky floor of the valley, closing on the tower that loomed so high above. Somewhere up there is Darvezian, he thought, and his mouth went dry. The Dark Lord, the actual Dark Lord himself. And yes, there had been other Dark Lords, a string of them back through history as various evil men discovered the true power of the Dark and rose to dominate the evil creatures of the world. But Darvezian was their own Dark Lord, Lief’s and the rest. Previous generations had, with great struggle and loss, cast down their tyrants. This one was for him and Dion, Cyrene and Harathes and Penthos. They had followed the twists of their quest; they had fulfilled the terms of their prophecy, and now here they were.

Lief was a cynic, a realist, the last to cheer on a hero, the first to bite a coin to see how little gold it contained. Even he, though, felt a thrill of destiny in him, looking up at that tower. Who would have thought we’d ever make it?

And yes, there was the little matter of actually having to confront and kill Darvezian himself, but Lief had assumed that first they would have to cut a swathe through a shambling mass of minions, and such a mass was conspicuous by its absence.