“Uh, yeah,” I squeaked out uncomfortably. “I… I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I ask,” he said with his most fatherly smile. Then he turned to address us all again. “To ensure there are no accidents or misunderstandings, Captain Stormcloak and twenty of his Wild Hunt will be escorting you to our border. Also, I have this.” Vale pulled a scroll case from inside his robes. “This contains a detailed map of the mountains north of our border, including the location of Vetta Winters and several tribes of darklings. While pursuing your alliance with the great mage, it might be best to avoid mentioning this alliance as it might infuriate her. Also, the most powerful tribe of darklings is the Bloodraven clan of orcs. Win them and you just might sway a few others as well.”
“Uh, thanks,” I said. “I… we’ll keep that in mind.” Vale’s strange interest in me was starting to get under my skin. I knew he must have an angle, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.
“I hope you do keep it in mind,” Vale said with his big smile. “It could keep you from joining us sooner than you should.” His voice lowered and he reached into his robes. “As to that matter I mentioned before the summit…” He pulled a spherical object the diameter of my thumbnail wrapped in paper and tied with string from his robe. “Give this to Vetta Winters for destruction. With luck, offering her the chance to destroy this will entice her that much more to join your crusade.”
“Will do,” I said taking the object and putting it in my pack. It felt like some kind of stone. I’d just pulled my pack on when an uncomfortable feeling started to swell in my stomach. I turned to Vale. “You said ‘with luck’ Winters will want to join. What if we’re not lucky?”
Vale’s face looked almost apologetic. “In that case, she may be slightly upset with you.” My eyes narrowed, and mouth opened to say something, but Vale spoke first. “Don’t worry, my friend. Just be yourself and she will be as enthralled with you as I.” He finished with his biggest smile yet.
I was about done being creeped out by Vale, and dealing with his ability to influence my emotions. With a smiling façade and nod, I motioned for us to leave. There was obvious relief on the faces of our entire party as we started on our journey to put Withermoor behind us. The sun was just peaking over the horizon, bathing us in its red-gold light when I looked back at him. Vale stood in the shadows of the Fallen Palace gate, still wearing his smile as he watched us go.
“Did you sleep at all last night?” Tallus asked in a low voice. He and Lanisa had sidled close for a private confab.
“Nope,” I said. The look on their elvin faces showed concern. “If you saw what I’d seen, you wouldn’t sleep either. Otherwise, I’m fine. I’ll sleep a hell of a lot better after we get out of this place.”
“We all will, brother,” Tallus said. Lanisa nodded her agreement.
We fell silent after that, as much to keep the choking dust of Withermoor out of our mouths as from anxiety. Setting a brisk pace, we hardly spoke ten words until we set up for camp that night. Our Wild Hunt escorts provided a surprising bounty for dinner and wood for fire but didn’t eat or camp with us. They preferred their ethereal form where they didn’t need food or sleep. After a hasty promise to watch over us during the night they vanished into a sudden fog. In spite of the desolation and danger of Withermoor, we were grateful to be free of the undead and still set a watch.
Each day mirrored the last. For two months we ate breakfast on the road and marched hard, desperate to get out of Withermoor as soon as possible. Unfortunately, our undead guides weren’t taking us toward the nearest border like we’d all hoped. Instead, they marched us toward the nearest border to Vetta Winters. Our path cut mostly northeast, through the steep hills and jagged cliffs of the Black Mountain foothills. Our time in such an unnatural land took its toll on our nerves, but we had little choice. Leaving our Wild Hunt guardians would have been far too dangerous.
Except for Stormcloak, who stayed to guide us, the Wild Hunt would appear and disappear at random times. The others would stay in their solid forms no more than a few seconds before vanishing back into their fog. Occasionally, something would attract their attention but their scouts could never find sign of enemy or ambush.
The Withermoor representative Gallinea, likewise appeared and disappeared from view on the trek. Often, when seen, she would be fascinated by something mundane or gazing at something far off that only she could see. But, as the days ran on, I started to notice her gaze locked on me. At first, her gazes were veiled, easily interpreted as something relatively innocent. But as time went on they started to get more and more fixated. I tried to ignore it but, as the days wore on, I became the sole object of all her gazes. Some times they were curious, other time more contemplative. But most often she stared at me with a skin-crawling hunger.
Our claustrophobia at being in Withermoor was close to a breaking point when we started noticing the elevation change. Hills grew higher and chasms became more jagged. The mountains ahead started showing more and more detail. We knew the border must have been close, but the landscape stayed the same: barren stone and brittle scrub.
Hearts fell with nightfall while we were still in Withermoor. Everyone had hoped to make it out before sunset but we just couldn’t make it. We considered pushing on through the night but abandoned the idea. It was too dark for me to see and several of our party needed rest to keep from breaking.
Our escorts provided the usual food and firewood. Tallus set to work cooking the provided food while the rest of us set up camp. There was some disagreement whether we were safe, but it didn’t take me long to convince them Vale wanted us alive. Of course, the smell of Tallus’s cooking helped.
“Where’s our new shadow?” I asked Tallus as he stirred a pot of potatoes. Ever since we’d left the Fallen Palace, Gallinea had vanished from sight anywhere between a few minutes to an hour, only to reappear somewhere else. Sometimes she’d pop up in the middle of our group and other times she materialize more than a hundred yards away. Right now, she was nowhere to be seen.
“Not shadow,” Gallinea said suddenly appearing at my shoulder. “Phantasm.” She gave a giggle and disappeared once again from existence. Her giggle continued, a strange disembodied voice on the wind.
“Phantasm?” I whispered.
“An exceptionally capricious undead,” Lanisa said. “Their generally not as cruel as the others, but far more unpredictable. One story tells of a phantasm risking everything to save the life of a Hospitaler that was trying to destroy it, and there are several that tell of the creatures slaughtering entire households.”
I looked around, searching to see if Gallinea had materialized. My eyes found her strangely enthralled by a scraggly weed about 70 feet away. The phantasm was becoming very hard to see in the dying light.
We bunked down straight after dinner. Earlier to bed, earlier to rise and we wanted to get out of this hell as fast as possible. I had the worst watch, middle watch. Three hours sleep, up for two, another three hours sleep.
The first three hours were fitful, but better than the two on watch. Soldiers are trained for life in combat zones, not cops. And my meager time in basic training sure as hell didn’t prepare me for this. My imagination drove me fucking nuts. Each bit of wind was a moving specter, every sound an approaching assassin. My imagination was running so wild that several times I was sure I saw something. I almost woke Tallus twice. My attention was so focused on the blackness surrounding the camp that I forgot to wake Lanisa. I covered fifteen minutes of her shift before I woke her.
When I finally crawled into my tent, I was mentally shot. I was asleep before my head hit the knapsack I used for a pillow. For the first time since I’d entered Withermoor, I slept hard and deep.
Late in my last hour of sleep, I was deep in the most phenomenally erotic dream I’d ever had. The woman knew me better than I knew myself. Her every action was bliss, her every word a paradise. Even her breathing sent shockwaves of ecstasy through my body.
I aw
oke in a panting fever, gasping for breath and head spinning. She was so enthralling, so addictive, she still occupied me even after I woke. Dark silken hair, almond eyes, and supple naked skin chased through my head like a tidal wave. I still could feel the press of her bare hips into mine as we spooned and the luxurious sensation of her firm breasts under my hand. I took several deep inhales of her lingering sex.
After a few minutes, something deep in my head, started to nag at me. The thought, barely heard or conceived, continued to work at my conscience until a sudden realization hit. If I was awake, why the hell did I still feel and smell her?
“What the fuck?!” I growled. She rolled to face me, and a naked Gallinea pressed her body against me.
“Good morning,” she purred into my ear.
“How the fuck…” I started, but stopped. Stupid question. She got in by passing through the wall of my tent. “What are you doing here?” I whispered.
“Why to stake my claim, silly,” she said with her tiny voice.
“What claim?” A disturbing thought twisted my stomach.
“To you, of course.” She looked at me like a cougar eyeing its meal.
I stared at her in a combination of horror and disgust, but also tinged in a touch of lust. Just like Rasthamus Vale, it seemed this undead girl could affect my mind. She looked real, felt real, even sounded and smelled real. And if my dream was any indication she tasted real as well. I knew I was in danger, but at the same time my libido was screaming at me to take her again. Gallinea kept running her hands over her naked body, paying extra attention to her firm breasts.
It was those breasts that was her undoing. She’d started to pull me back in, regain control of my mind. But watching her fondle her breasts brought back the image of Xerena Frostmere. I remembered how luscious her breasts appeared just before her illusion of beauty failed and revealed the disgusting, rotting flesh that was truly there.
I snarled at Gallinea and seized her throat. She gasped, but seemed more aroused than anything else. The girl faded into her ethereal state, my fingers suddenly closing through her intangible form.
“You know how to touch me in all the right ways,” she cooed.
“Get out and don’t come back.” I hissed. “Ever!”
“Aww,” she pouted. “But you were so willing and virile before.” Suddenly her ghostly visage was behind me whispering into my ear. “You were so powerful you nearly took my breath away.”
“Never!” I said. “I don’t believe it happened and it will never happen. You will never have me.”
“A pity,” Gallinea purred disappointedly. “You don’t know what you’re missing. But it might be just as well. I want your full attention and you’d probably get distracted by the assassins.”
“Assassins?” I asked, but it was too late. She’d already faded into nothingness.
I seized my sword and scrambled out of my tent. Lanisa, a consummate professional, was asleep about ten feet from our campfire. She looked like she passed out in mid-stride. From every other tent I heard snoring, especially loud from the dwarves.
“Wake up!” I hissed at Lanisa. My eyes were focused on the impenetrable darkness around us as I reached down to shake the elf. She muttered sleepily, finally coming awake on the third shake.
“Blast!” she growled shooting to her feet. Her eyes swept the darkness, then locked onto me. “Why are you naked?”
“I…” I look down in surprise. I was in such a rush to get out and so befuddled from Gallinea’s ‘charms’ that I didn’t think about my clothes. “Gallinea said something about an attack. So I was in a hurry.”
“Wake everyone!” she hissed. “Now!”
I went to a tent, but calling did nothing. It wasn’t until I went inside to shake the occupant, a Ranger, that he awoke. I set him out to wake someone else in the manner that I woke him. Each person awoken woke someone else and, in less than a minute, everyone was awake and armed.
Elvin night vision is many times better than human vision, able to distinguish obvious shapes with relative ease even in the blackest night. But it was nothing compared to dwarf vision. Though I didn’t know it at the time, dwarven eyes had adapted, after generations of thriving underground, to see the background radiation present in everything. They could see as well in complete blackness as humans can in broad daylight.
While the elves saw what, to them, looked like clouds of purest darkness moving steadily toward us, it was the dwarves who were able to see the creatures emanating those clouds.
“Twelve of them are coming!” shouted one of the dwarf Invincibles. “Humanoids in the clouds!”
“What are they?” I asked.
“Never seen them before,” shouted another dwarf, a sentiment echoed by the others.
We barely had time to converge around the campfire before they hit us. Twelve clouds of darkness flowing over us like a tidal wave, a guttural growling coming from their centers. One elf stepped a little too far from the group and vanished into an incoming cloud, his screams piercing the darkness our eyes could not. In the space of a few seconds, those screamed died out and the cloud dashed into the surrounding night. What was left of the elf was a desiccated husk.
The clouds circled us, waiting for someone else to break away from our group. A dwarf at the fringe of our group tripped and sprawled into the open. A cloud was instantly on her. Several elvin arrows pierced the darkness, only one passed entirely through. Five sounds of impact in the center of the cloud made no difference and it moved away several seconds later. The dwarf’s withered corpse remained.
The clouds would feign a charge, trying to bait us into separating from our group. One barely came within striking range, and I leaned forward to drive my sword into it. There was a solid impact as though stabbing a body, and the standard resistance of a body as I pulled my blade free. I heard an aggravated hiss as the cloud streaked away.
“That was stupid!” shouted Sheildwall. She was one of the few dwarves who’d managed to grab her shield before the onslaught. She used it to bat away an incoming cloud. Whatever creature was emanating the cloud made a loud clang and flew off into the darkness. “These things might have gotten you sticking your head out like that.”
“Got to try something!” I growled as several of the clouds jumped toward us again. We were squeezed as close together as possible, with the clouds circling closer and closer. They’d given up on their hit-and-run tactics and were preparing to charge us directly.
A fog sprang into existence a dozen feet away, the sound of hoof beats pounding on the ground inside it. Suddenly, the Wild Hunt erupted from the mist, splitting up to tear through the black clouds on either side of us. Unearthly screeches welled up from the clouds as the undead cavalry ripped into them. Once past, the Wild Hunt wheeled their horses and charged again. The remaining clouds of darkness were suddenly on the retreat, most of the Wild hunt on their heels.
We all gasped in relief, now that the danger had passed. On the ground around us five undead corpses lay still and crushed. All had deep divots in their body from the horse’s hooves, and one sported several elvin arrow shafts.
“What the fuck are they?” I asked. Each of us circle around the nearest dead creatures, staring in a disgusted fascination. They were bipedal like humans, and they had the genitals of humans, but that’s where the similarities ended. The genitals and skin were blackened and withered, their faces contorted into leering grins. Their eyes were a sickly yellow and each tooth was like a two inch fang, sticking out of their mouths.
“Ghasts,” Stormcloak said. “Assassins of Withermoor.”
“And Corporeals from the look of it,” Sheildwall said. “Frostmere’s behind this.”
“I’m sure she is,” Stormcloak said nodding. “But I doubt there’s anything we can do about it.”
“She can just ignore the ruling of your summit like that?” I ask incredulously.
“Ghasts are hard to control at the best of times,” Stormcloak said sounding bored. “The onl
y ones who could prove this wasn’t just a random attack from rogue Ghasts would be her lieutenants and the Ethereals. Her lieutenants are faithful and the Ethereals rarely involve themselves in anything.”
“So she just gets away with this shit?” I growl.
“I didn’t say that. Just make it out of Withermoor and you won’t have to worry about her again.”
“How do we kill them?” I asked. “For future reference.”
Stormcloak shook his head. “You can’t. Magic and other undead are their only weakness. Even we can’t kill them directly since we’re revenants. It was our steeds that trampled the beasts.”
“If they’re immune to our weapons, why didn’t they just charge through us outright?” I asked.
“The elves,” the Wild Hunt captain growled. “Their half-fey nature gives them an affinity for magic. The ghasts hesitated in case you had magic.”
“Looks like we got lucky,” Shieldwall said. I nodded my agreement and opened my mouth to say something more to Stormcloak but he was already gone. All I could do was shake my head in aggravation.
“We may as well prepare to go,” I said. To the east, the sky was just starting to turn a soft purple-pink. Already the snowy mountain peaks to our north were catching just the hint of morning’s color. “It’ll be sun up by the time we’re ready to go, and I think the faster we’re out of here the better.”
I turned away from the snowy peaks and saw the others were all smirking at me. It’s only then that I remembered that I was completely naked.
“I hadn’t realized how cold it was out here until now,” Tallus said looking at me with a grin. Laughter erupted around me and, with my face turning bright red, I pretended to join in. Their laughter followed me as I slunk back to my tent to put on something a little more descent than my birthday suit.
The Caves of Arachnia
A New World Page 15
