Defiler’sCurse

AN EARTHDAWN NOVEL BY DONOVAN WINCH

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CREDITSWriting: Donovan Winch

Editing: Carsten Damm, Jason Wallace

Line Developer: Carsten Damm

Artwork: Kathy Schad, Janet Aulisio

Layout: Carsten Damm

Managing Director: James D. Sutton

Special thanks to Allen Farr and Damon Richey for their kind support and feedback!

Earthdawn® is a Registered Trademark of FASA Corporation. Barsaive™ is a Trademark of FASA Corporation. Copyright © 1993–2011 FASA Corporation. Earthdawn® and all associated Trademarks used under license from FASA Corporation. Published by RedBrick LLC. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Internet: http://www.earthdawn.com Contact: info@earthdawn.com

April 2011— First Printing

Defiler’sCurseSa

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For Margaret and Peter, who never stopped encouraging me.

And for Melanie: this one is for you.

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The Age of Legend

Before science, before history, an era of magic existed in our world’s dim past. Magic flowed freely, touching every aspect of the lives of men and women of the Name-giver races. It was an age of heroes, an age of fantastical deeds and mythical stories. It was the Age of Legend.

As the levels of magic rose, so did the dangers in the world. The rise of magic lured the Horrors from the depths of astral space—nightmarish creatures that devoured all life in their path. For four centuries, entire nations hid underground as the Horrors devastated their lands during the dark time that came to be called the Scourge.

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During the past century, the people of Barsaive have emerged from their sealed kaers and citadels. Trolls, dwarfs, elves, orks, and humans live side by side with exotic races: the lizard-like t’skrang, the small, winged windlings, and the earthen obsidimen. Fantastical creatures dwell once more in the forests and jungles. Arcane energies offer power to those willing to learn the ways of magic.

In the Age of Legend, bold heroes from all across Barsaive band together—ready to f ight for life and freedom against the remaining Horrors and the oppressive Theran Empire, which seeks to bend the rebellious province again to their yoke. Through noble deeds and sacrif ice, the heroes of the world forge Barsaive’s future, arming themselves for their daunting task with powerful magical spells and treasures.

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7DEFILER’S CURSE •

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Prologue

The darkness in the kaer was now absolute. The last of the huge light quartzes embedded in the ceiling of the cave had gone out days ago, smothered by the creature that had invaded the kaer, or one of its servants. The few surviving Namegivers huddled in dark-ness, barricaded in their houses that had been built to save them from the Scourge. To save them from what had entered their kaer.

The Horror enjoyed the darkness. The evil creature had dis-covered that darkness provoked an enhanced sense of fear and iso-lation in its prey. In the darkness of the kaer the Horror hunted. It fed.

With its prey trapped in the great cavern the Horror had little difficulty with the puny creatures on which it fed. It had discov-ered that the short, stumpy ones called dwarfs and the big tusked ones called trolls were able to see traces of heat, but that was of little importance. Though the Horror itself gave off heat in intense waves, its beautiful children were as cold as the death from which they were constructed. They were invisible in the darkness, even to the heat-seers.

Only the flying insects called windlings had really been causing the Horror any trouble. And the other trained ones that could see the ebbs and flows of magic—adepts, they were called. And they could be of any kind.

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8 • DONOVAN WINCH

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But even these adepts couldn’t hold out forever, the Horror knew. It could smell their fear. It could taste it. If it wanted to end the pitiful lives of all of the inhabitants now, it could do so. But it did not want to. No, the Horror was trapped in this cave with only these few remaining morsels on which to feed. It intended to pro-long their misery for quite some time. Until it could find a way to escape.

But the adepts had to die. Even now, in desperation, they crept about inside their hollow, shattered shield of magic, trying to fight back. The Horror would crush those last fires of resistance.

Now, while the Horror waited, the few residents of Kaer Thar-dinn that still remained alive made futile plans to destroy the evil creature.

The kaer’s population had numbered approximately 1,500 Namegivers at the time the kaer was sealed. This number had gradually and then more steadily declined over the first years of the Scourge. The Horror’s presence had been suspected after the first few unfortunate events. With nearly all new babes stillborn, that suspicion had grown to near certainty. By the close of the first decade of the Scourge only one half of the original population remained and only a dozen kaer-born children had survived. The residents of Kaer Thardinn were doomed and they knew it.

Once it had become plain to the residents of the kaer that a Horror was in their midst, the elder members of the kaer council had made an important decision. Though they hoped and prayed to the Passions for the kaer’s survival against the Horror, they knew little of the foul creature’s power and had no idea how it had made its way inside. They examined the protective wards that imbued the gates with magical energy to repel the Horrors, and found them

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9DEFILER’S CURSE •

• • •

still sealed. They examined every square inch of the walls and ceil-ing of the huge chamber in which the kaer sat, and examined the kaer’s floor wherever they could get to it, and found everything intact. They came to the only conclusion that seemed logical: the Horror had been inside Kaer Thardinn when the gates had been closed. Their fate was sealed inside, with them.

So they had doubly sealed the kaer in secret from the inside. They had warded the kaer against the Horror within as well as the Scourge without. If the Horror killed them all, then by the Pas-sions they would stop it from getting out into the world once the Scourge was over.

Now, barely sixteen years since the closing of the massive kaer doors, less than a hundred Namegivers remained alive in Thardinn.

A handful of adepts led the survivors. The adepts fought val-iantly, but ultimately in vain. They did everything they could to keep the others alive and sane in the face of their certain demise at the claws and teeth of the Horror that had taken away their future; the Horror and its filthy, perverted minions that had once been their friends and relatives. There were a dozen groups of survivors. They had decided to separate, providing their insidious enemy with more targets on which to concentrate and at the same time allow-ing each group to be as discreet as possible.

Only one child remained: a thin and sickly dwarf boy of eight with haunted eyes and a raspy voice. He ran with the largest group, led by a dwarf Wizard Named Charr. Everyone knew the boy’s par-ents had sacrificed themselves to allow him to survive, but not one of the nine others in the group held it against him. Everyone had made sacrifices. Theirs were no different.

The group was holed up in the center of one of the larger res-idences. The building had belonged to a dwarf family of some renown and had once been elegantly decorated. The room in which the group huddled had no windows and only a single door. Two

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10 • DONOVAN WINCH

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guards remained awake at all times, patrolling the deserted house. The single door in the small room was closed, the gaps blocked off with cloth to prevent the escape of any of the dim light from the small light quartzes by which the beleaguered Namegivers slept.

“I’m hungry,” rasped the boy. They had all known his Name once, but now they just thought of him as the boy. After all, he was the only one left.

The others looked briefly to Charr to answer—one of his many responsibilities as their leader.

“We all are, boy,” the Wizard said. His voice was toneless and tired. “Sleep now. Once we’ve rested we’ll try to find more food and water.”

It was the same answer he always gave, but it seemed to sat-isfy the boy, who wiped his dirty nose on his even dirtier sleeve. The boy sniffed and settled his head down, his deep-set eyes star-ing at the light quartz lying next to him on the smooth rock floor.

Charr sighed wearily as he adjusted his position, turning his head to one side to stretch out a cramped muscle in his neck. He picked up the small leather-bound book in which he had been writ-ing and dipped his pen in the little bottle of ink that was the last of his supply. He resumed writing in the dim light, his hand leaving a gentle smudge of grime across the page as it moved.

Their plight was hopeless, Charr knew, and they could not last much longer. But he felt he had to record their efforts. To let future generations of adepts and explorers know what had hap-pened to this accursed place and its inhabitants. So he wrote, again, of another day’s flight from the Horror. Another day’s survival against the odds.

When he had finished the entry he wiped the tip of his pen on his dirty robes and sealed the ink bottle, once more pressing the cork stopper tight. He tied the journal closed with the length of

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