Guardians of the Lost

by Margaret Weis

  The grass whispered, but that was the wind. Tree branches creaked, but that, too, was the wind. There came no other sound.

  “The Void take you, then,” Gustav yelled and, hoisting his knapsack on his shoulder, he set off for his campsite.

  Gustav faced a dilemma. He could either ride off with his treasure now, tired as he was, and risk being attacked on the road by the unseen watcher, or he could have a meal, rest and maybe even get some sleep. If he had brought along a companion, they could have split the watch, but he had not, and he did not regret it. His motto had long been: “He travels fastest who travels alone.” Gustav liked few people well enough to endure their company for months on the road and those he did like were too busy with their own pursuits to set off on an old man’s quest.

  He concluded he had better be fed and rested, rather than try to run away from danger when he was so tired he could barely put one foot in front of the other. Always fight on ground of your own choosing, if that is possible—an axiom of his former commander and mentor. If the unseen watcher was planning an attack by night, hoping to catch Gustav witless and befuddled, he would be in for a surprise.

  Trudging back to camp, Gustav kept close watch, but he saw nothing, nor did he really expect to. By now, he knew the watcher well enough to have a healthy respect for his woodcraft skills. Just as well he had no companion. Anyone with him would have decided by this point that the old man was barmy. No sign or sound or sniff of anyone out there and here was Gustav preparing to be attacked during the night.

  By the time he arrived back in camp, darkness had fallen. Gustav tossed the knapsack carelessly into his tent. Having checked his snares on the way back, he cut up and roasted a fine, plump rabbit over his campfire. He made much of his horse, to appease the animal for having been without company all day, made certain the horse was fed and had plenty of water. This done, he doused the fire. Leaving his horse flicking at flies with its tail, Gustav entered his tent.

  Once inside, Gustav removed two small silver bells from his bed roll. Keeping the clappers muffled, Gustav hung the bells on the tent supports, near the top.

  “An old thieves’ trick, appropriate for an old thief,” Gustav said to himself with a smile. A touch, no matter how gentle, on the fabric of the tent would set the bells to ringing. He had carelessly left his cooking pots in front of the tent flap for the same purpose, hoped that he himself didn’t forget they were there and tumble over them when he had to make one of his trips to the bushes.

  Figuring that he had done all he could to make certain the watcher didn’t catch him unaware, Gustav wrapped himself in his blanket and, using the knapsack as a pillow, lay down on the ground. He kept his sword and a pile of dwarven sulfur sticks close to his hand.

  Gustav was not one to fret and worry or to lie awake, staring into the darkness, listening for the snap of a twig. Sleep was as essential to the warrior as sword or shield or armor. Gustav had trained himself to sleep and sleep well at will. He had gained fame by once sleeping through an ork siege. His comrades later told tales of catapult-flung boulders smashing into the walls and flaming jelly turning men into living torches. Gustav, who had been awake three nights running battling orks, had finally had a chance to sleep and he meant to use it. His comrades had been considerably startled when Gustav rose up the next morning and walked out among them. He had slept so soundly they had assumed he was dead and had been—so they claimed—on the verge of tossing his body onto the funeral pyre.

  Worn out from the day’s exertions, he slept soundly, counting on his horse and the traps he’d laid to warn him in time to confront any intruder.

  It was not the clanging of pots that woke him, or the ringing of the small silver bells. It was a dream.

  Gustav could not catch his breath. He fought to draw air into his lungs and he was losing the battle. He was dying, suffocating. It was the knowledge that he was dying that jolted him out of sleep. He woke with a gasp, his heart racing. The dream was very real, left him half-convinced that someone was inside his tent, trying to smother him. He looked around, but concentrated more on listening.

  The night was dark. Clouds covered the moon and stars. He could see very little inside his tent. The bells had not rung. The pots had not been disturbed. Yet something was there.

  His horse sensed it. The animal snorted uneasily, hooves raked the ground. Gustav lay back on his bedroll. The feeling of being smothered had not left him. He found it difficult to breathe, as if he had a weight on his chest.

  The air was tainted, smelled foul. Gustav recognized the stench immediately. He’d once happened on a battlefield three days after a battle. The corpses of the unburied dead lay bloated and rotting in the hot sun. The most hardened veterans in the Vinnengaelean army heaved up their guts at the horrible smell.

  The silver bells shivered. Their chiming was flat, discordant. He heard the sounds of stealthy footfalls drawing near. His horse shrieked suddenly, a scream of terror such as he’d never heard from the well-trained beast, and there came a crashing sound, the thudding of hooves. His horse, trained for battle, who had not flinched when facing the points of a hundred spears, had broken free of its tether and fled through the brush.

  Gustav could empathize with his horse. He himself had faced a hundred spears and he had not experienced the fear he felt come over him now. He was in the presence of evil. Diabolical evil. Ancient evil, from beyond the creation of the world. Attuned to magic of all kinds, he recognized the foul magic of the Void.

  The magus out there was no cantrip parsing hedge-wizard. He was a sorcerer wielding a power such as Gustav had never before encountered. A power he was not certain he could contend.

  The footsteps came nearer. The stench of Void grew worse, turning Gustav’s stomach. Breathing the foul air was like trying to breathe oil-covered water.

  A hand touched his tent. The bells chimed again, but Gustav could not hear them for the pounding of blood in his ears. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His mouth dried, his palms were wet. He had two choices. He could rise up, clad in his magical armor, and accost the sorcerer outside his tent or he could lie here and wait for the sorcerer to come to him.

  Gustav grimly decided to play possum. He wanted to see this Void magus who had spent so much time and patience following him. He wanted to know the reason why. Closing his eyes and keeping them closed required an extraordinary effort of will. He tried, as best he could, to calm his jagged breathing.

  He heard a ripping sound—the intruder slashing open the back of the tent. The silver bells jangled wildly. Gustav thought that it would be only logical for him to wake now and he snorted and grunted and half-sat up, rubbing his eyes with one hand, his left hand.

  The intruder entered the tent, moving on hands and knees. Gustav could not see clearly, for the thick darkness.

  “Who’s there?” he called out in a sleep-fuddled voice while, at the same time, the thumbnail of his right hand scraped against the tip of the sulfur stick.

  Flame flared. Gustav thrust the fire into the face of the intruder: a woman’s face, a face of astonishing, breathtaking beauty. Blue eyes, large and lustrous, full red lips, hair the color of maple leaves in autumn. She wore a dress of rich green velvet, the bodice cut low. She was on her hands and knees. Her white breasts fell forward, heavy, ripe and tempting.

  “I am lonely,” she said softly. “I need somewhere to spend the night.”

  The smothering feeling, the stench of rotting flesh.

  Gustav stared fixedly at the woman and the illusion shattered, burst apart, as if it had been made of ice and he’d struck it with a hammer.

  Beauty disappeared to be replaced by horror.

  The beautiful face deteriorated into the face of a long-dead corpse, a skull with a few clumps of decayed flesh still clinging to it. There were no eyeballs in the bony sockets, but there was malevolent and cunning intelligence. No pity, no mercy. No compassion. No hatred, no greed, no lust. He saw, in the eyes, the Void.

  The Void. A
s it had been before the gods came and the world was created. As it would be when the gods departed and the world came to an end. He saw, in the eyes, the emptiness in his own heart when Adela died.

  Gustav saw his own death in the empty eyes. He could not fight this thing. He could not move to defend himself. The power of the Void emptied him, drained him, drained his will to live.

  The sulfur match went out, burning Gustav’s thumb. The pain reminded him that he lived and that, while he lived, he could fight. Before the flame vanished, he had seen a small knife made of bone in the corpse’s skeletal hand.

  The corpse lunged at Gustav, stabbing at him with the knife. So swift and skilled was the attack—aiming straight for the heart—that Gustav had barely time to grab his sword. He would have died, but for the magical armor of the Dominion Lord that flowed over his body.

  The knife in the corpse’s skeletal hand struck steel. The armor turned the blade from the heart, but did not stop its entry. Few weapons can penetrate the blessed armor and this was one—a weapon of Void magic. The blade missed the heart, stabbed Gustav in his left shoulder.

  The pain was terrible, a stinging, burning pain that slanted through his flesh and struck to his very soul. The pain shriveled his stomach, caused him to gag.

  The corpse made an unearthly sound, muffled scream, as if it were crying out in fury from the grave. Fighting against the debilitating pain that was making him sick and dizzy, Gustav raised his sword. The corpse was close to him. He could feel the rasping of its nails against his armor. He plunged his blade into the corpse’s chest.

  He had expected bone, but the blade struck steel armor. The blow jarred his sword arm so that he very nearly dropped the weapon. Yet, he could tell by a grunt of pain that he’d managed to inflict damage on his murderous assailant.

  Gustav took advantage of the corpse’s momentary distraction to escape the confines of the tent. Kicking aside the pots he had placed in front of the tent opening, he staggered out into the night and turned immediately to face his opponent, who would not be far behind him. His armor glowed silver in the darkness.

  His attacker emerged from the tent and rose to her full height. By the silver light of his own blessed armor, Gustav looked upon his antithesis.

  The figure wore armor that was blacker than the darkness. The design of the armor was hideous, like the carapace of some monstrous insect, with razor-sharp spikes at the elbows and the shoulders, and a helm that was formed in the shape of the head of a mantis with bulbous eyes of empty nothingness. The creature had abandoned the small knife and held in her gloved hands an enormous black sword with wicked, serrated edges. Now Gustav knew what it was he fought.

  “A Vrykyl,” he breathed.

  Creatures of myth and legend. A nightmare come to life. There had been rumors, reports that these ancient demons once more walked Loerem. It was said that they had been responsible for the destruction of Old Vinnengael.

  The Vrykyl swung her blade, a stroke intended to test the skill and strength of her opponent.

  Gustav parried the stroke with his own blade, but the Vrykyl’s powerful blow nearly knocked the weapon from Gustav’s hand. Forced to spend a moment recovering, he could not follow up his advantage and he felt the first twinges of despair. He was far more skillful with a sword than this Vrykyl, but the Vrykyl had the strength of Void magic, the strength of one who has no muscles that will start to ache or heart that will begin to falter. He was wounded and he was old. He could feel himself already starting to weaken.

  Gustav had one chance and that was to end this fight quickly. His magical weapon, blessed by the gods, had the ability to penetrate the accursed armor. He had only to find a vulnerable spot and strike a killing blow.

  He waited and watched, grim and patient. The Vrykyl saw his weakness. She rushed at him, sword raised, thinking to cleave him in two with a death-dealing stroke. The Vrykyl was darker than dark, a hole cut in the night. Gustav balanced, thrust, used all his strength to drive his sword into the Vrykyl’s midriff, beneath the breastplate.

  The sword penetrated the armor. The shock was paralyzing, sent jolts of teeth-jarring pain throughout Gustav’s arm. His hand went numb, he could no longer hold onto the sword.

  But he had hurt the Vrykyl. Her shriek split the night. The horrifying sound sent shudders through Gustav. He stood clutching his arm, trying to rub some feeling into it, trying to halt the jangling of his nerves.

  The Vrykyl fell to the ground, screaming and writhing. The magic of Gustav’s blessed sword entering the Void brought substance to the Void, filled it with light, bringing an end to the darkness that sustained her.

  His right hand was useless. Gustav wondered if he would ever regain the feeling. The wound in his shoulder burned and throbbed and he started to feel a numbing chill spread from his shoulder throughout his body. Using his left hand, gritting his teeth against the pain, Gustav leaned over the wounded Vrykyl and yanked his sword free. The blade was clean, bore no trace of blood.

  The Vrykyl’s screams ceased. She lay on the ground, her body twisted in its death throes.

  Gustav collapsed near his enemy. He spiraled down into darkness, fell into the emptiness of the Vrykyl’s eyes.

  Gustav felt something tickling his cheek. He woke with a wrenching gasp, the horrid memory of the bone knife of the Vrykyl fresh in his mind. His eyes flared open. He stared up in terror, to find that the tickling sensation on his face came from the muzzle of his horse.

  Gustav gave a shuddering sigh. He lay back on the grass, looked up to find the sun was shining high in the sky. The warmth was wonderful to feel, eased the pain in his shoulder. The horse, remorseful that he had failed in his duty, nuzzled his master in what was first an apology and second a demand to be fed.

  Gustav lay a moment longer, basking in the sunshine, and then he lifted his right hand, wiggled the fingers. The feeling had returned. He gave another sigh of relief and sat up, carefully, so that the blood didn’t rush from his head.

  He was no longer wearing his armor, which would have acted to protect him while he was unconscious, had there been any threat. Shoving aside his shirt, he examined the wound. It was not serious, at least to look at, being nothing more than a small puncture, such as might have been made by an ice pick. The wound had not bled much, but the flesh around the wound had turned a strange whitish blue and, when he touched it, he could not feel his touch, as if the skin were frozen.

  He tried lifting his arm and gasped in pain. Moving gingerly, he looked over to where the Vrykyl had fallen, feeling a grudging curiosity to see what the loathsome thing looked like in the light of day.

  The Vrykyl was gone.

  Alarmed, Gustav jumped to his feet. He searched around the area hurriedly, thinking that perhaps he had mistaken the location of the corpse.

  He found nothing. It was as if the Vrykyl had never been. He might have thought he had dreamed the entire nightmare encounter, but for the wound in his arm. And there were other signs that a fight had occurred.

  Now that he examined the area closely, he could see where the grass had been torn and trampled. He could also see signs where something heavy had been dragged through the brush.

  He had not killed the Vrykyl. He had only wounded it.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw the injured Vrykyl hauling her body along the ground. Gustav touched his numb shoulder, recalled the deadly little knife the creature had wielded. No ordinary knife could penetrate the armor of a Dominion Lord. Her knife had been enchanted with Void magic—powerful Void magic. Gustav wondered why the Vrykyl hadn’t tried to slay him while he lay unconscious.

  Perhaps she lacked the strength. Perhaps she had counted him dead, as he had assumed she was dead. Perhaps…

  Perhaps she had not found what she sought.

  Gustav followed the trail of broken grass stalks and gouges in the earth. The trail led directly to his tent. Gustav opened the tent flap and caught his breath. The air was tainted with the foul and oily taste of Void magic.
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  He looked inside for the knapsack, found what was left of it. The Vrykyl had torn it to shreds. The objects that had been in the knapsack were strewn about. The dark lantern had been smashed, its glass shattered, its case bashed and dented. The tinderbox had received the same treatment. His spare clothes were cut to ribbons as was his blanket.

  At least he had the answer to his question. The Vrykyl had been searching for the Sovereign Stone.

  The more he thought about this, the more sense it made. The Vrykyl had learned of his quest—he had made no secret of it. She had been following him. She had discovered the tomb and had attempted to enter, planning on seizing the Sovereign Stone herself. The Earth magic that had acted to thwart Gustav would have risen up in fury against a Vrykyl. She could not take the Stone. And so she had retreated and waited for Gustav to bring it out to her.

  She had attacked him in the night, hoping to kill him and recover the Stone. She had not counted on meeting a Dominion Lord and thus she had failed. After the fight, wounded though she was—and she had been terribly wounded, of that Gustav was certain—she had dragged herself to the tent and torn apart everything in search of the Stone. Frustrated, not finding it, she had been forced to depart to nurse her wounds.

  Gustav was under no illusion. She had permitted him to live only because she was certain he would lead her to the Sovereign Stone.

  Gustav picked up a small strip of leather, a remnant of the knapsack. Undoing his thick braid, he twisted the leather in among the locks and rebraided the gray hair tightly around it. Then, unable to breathe the fetid air, he left the tent. Back in the sunshine, he gratefully drew in a deep breath.

  Further search revealed the Vrykyl’s trail. It led away from the tent. He had removed his saddlebags and his saddle from the horse and she had searched those, too. The saddlebags were in tatters. The saddle bore marks of her long nails. She had then limped on, heading northward.