The Nomad

by Simon Hawke

  “We’re never going to make it!” Ryana shouted. “Sorak! You have to summon Kether!”

  “There’s no time!” he shouted back.

  To summon the strange, ethereal entity known as Kether, he would have to stop and concentrate, empty his mind and settle his spirit to make himself receptive to the being that seemed to descend upon him from some other plane of existence, and he could not stop for even a moment. The undead were all around them and moving closer. He pulled Galdra from its scabbard. Galdra was now their only chance.

  “Stay close behind me!” he called out over the noise of rain and wind and thunder. “And whatever you do, stay on your feet! Don’t fall!”

  Ryana drew her sword as well, but she knew from hard experience that, at best, it could provide only a temporary respite. The undead were animated by spells, in this case an ancient curse that had survived for several thousand years, claiming more and more victims as time passed. Galdra, with its powerful ancient elven magic could kill them and send them to their final rest, but her sword could, at best, only dismember them. And then the severed, rotting body parts would only come together once again.

  Ryana took Kara by the arm and ran to stay close behind Sorak in the blinding rain. Ahead of them, a dozen or more undead were clustered together in the street, staggering toward them with their arms outstretched, their mummified flesh shrunk back to expose brown and ancient bones that glistened in the rain.

  Sorak ran to meet them.

  * * *

  Valsavis groaned and opened his eyes. He was dizzy, and his head felt as if it were splitting. He lay among the scattered treasure, a sorcerer-king’s ransom in gold and jewels and silver, and he remembered what he said to Sorak about too much wealth bringing a man nothing but trouble. In this case, the axiom had been demonstrated painfully and literally.

  “Get up, you fool!” Nibenay’s angry voice spoke within his mind. “Get up! They are getting away! Go after them!”

  Valsavis raised himself to his hands and knees, shook his head to clear it, and slowly got to his feet.

  “Hurry, you great, hulking, brainless idiot! You wasting time! You’ll lose them.”

  “Shut up, my lord,” Valsavis said.

  “What? You dare to—”

  “I will not find them any easier for your voice yammering in my mind!” Valsavis said angrily. “I need no distractions!”

  “Go!” said the Shadow King. “Go quickly! They have the talisman! They must not get away!”

  “They shall not, rest assured of that,” Valsavis said grimly. “I have a score to settle with that elfling.”

  He left the treasure lying there and went outside. The sky was dark. The clouds were sparking with sheet lightning. Thunder rolled. Any minute, it would start to rain. If he was to pick up their trail, he would have to move quickly.

  He saw the dead roc lying in the plaza in a giant, dark pool of coagulating blood. Well, he thought, so much for his ride out of here. Nibenay must have had the giant bird attack them, and they had made short work of the creature. But then, what did Nibenay care about his leaving the city safely? Had the Shadow King even paused to consider that when he set the bird upon them?

  The thought of leaving the city safely suddenly and unpleasantly reminded him of its undead population. The sky was darkened by clouds. Night had come early to Bodach. And even as he stood there, he heard the wailing start, a chorus of doomed souls crying out their agony.

  “Stop standing there like a stupid mekillot!” the Shadow King’s voice hissed in his mind. “Find out which way they went!”

  “Be silent, you noisome worm,” Valsavis said, not caring anymore how he spoke to the sorcerer. If he could, he would wrench that damnable ring off his finger and fling it as far away from him as he could, but he knew only too well that it would not come off unless Nibenay wished it.

  For a moment, the Shadow King actually fell silent, shocked by his response, and then Valsavis felt the tingling in his hand start to increase, and then burn, as if his hand were being held in flame. It began to spread up along his arm.

  “Desist, you miserable reptile!” he said through gritted teeth. “Remember that you need me!” The burning sensation suddenly went away. “That’s better.”

  “You presume too much, Valsavis,” said the Shadow King sullenly.

  “Perhaps,” Valsavis said. “But without me, what would you do now?” He scanned the plaza carefully as he came down the stairs. There were bloody footprints left by a pair of moccasins going off to the left. He began to run, following them.

  The Shadow King fell silent. Logically, without Valsavis, he could do nothing, and Valsavis knew that if there were some threat of punishment hanging over him, Nibenay could wait a long time before he saw the Breastplate of Argentum or learned the secret of where the uncrowned king was to be found. He grinned to himself as he ran down the street that the elfling and the others had taken. It was not every man who could manipulate a sorcerer-king. For all his incredible powers, Nibenay still needed him. And that meant that he, Valsavis, was in control. At least for the moment.

  The thunder crashed and lightning stabbed down from the sky. The wailing of the undead grew louder. Things were about to get interesting, Valsavis thought.

  He ran quickly down the street, following the path they had taken. They were heading north. He frowned. That seemed very peculiar. Why would they go north? Their flying raft was on the other side of the city. Of course, they must have realized that they could not reach it in time. The streets would be full of undead before they had gotten halfway. So what was to the north? Nothing but the inland silt basins.

  That was insane, he thought. Had they lost their senses? All they would succeed in doing was trapping themselves between a city full of the undead and the silt basins. The living corpses would come after them, and they would have nowhere left to go except out into the silt basin, where they would drown in the choking stuff, a death that was certainly no more preferable than being killed by the undead. It made no sense at all. Why would they go that way?

  The thunder crashed, filling the city with its deafening roar, and the rain came down in torrents. Valsavis came to a fork in the road. There was no more trail to follow. In seconds, the rain had washed away the already faint traces of roc blood that Sorak had left behind, and there were no footprints to follow on the paved street. Which way had they gone? To the left or the right?

  Valsavis suddenly felt a hand grasp his shoulder. He spun around, drawing his sword in one smooth motion, and chopped the arm off the grisly specter that stood behind him, empty eye sockets staring, mummified flesh drawn back from aged bone, nothing but a hole where the nose had once been, a grinning rictus of a mouth whose jaws worked hungrily.

  The arm of the corpse fell to the ground, but it did not bleed, and the corpse seemed not even to notice. Valsavis swung at the corpse’s face with his fist and knocked its head right off its shoulders. It fell to the rain-slicked street with a thud, its jaws still working. The corpse turned away from him and fumbled for its severed limb with the arm it still had. It found the amputated appendage, picked it up, and simply reattached it. Then it reached for its head.

  “Gith’s blood!” swore Valsavis.

  He swung his sword again in a powerful, two-handed stroke, cleaving the body of the walking corpse in half. The two severed halves of the corpse fell to the street, splashing into the water sheeting over the paving bricks. And, immediately the two halves started wriggling toward each other, like grisly slugs, and as Valsavis watched, astonished the rejoined, and the corpse starting searching for its head once more.

  “How in thunder do you kill these things?” Valsavis said aloud. He looked up and saw several more dead bodies lurching toward him through the rain. “Nibenay!”

  There was no response.

  “Nibenay, damn you, help me!”

  “Oh, so now it’s my help you want, is it?” said the Shadow King’s voice unpleasantly in his mind.

  The
re were more undead coming out into the street around him. And each of them started toward him. Some were no more than skeletons. One came almost within reach, and Valsavis swung his sword again, decapitating the corpse. It simply kept on approaching, headless. He swung his sword again, grunting with the effort, cutting the skeleton in half. The bones fell apart and dropped, splashing, to the flooded street. And then, once more, they began to wriggle back together and reassemble themselves.

  “Damn you, Nibenay,” Valsavis shouted, “if I die here, then you’ll never get what you want! Do something!”

  He felt something grab him from behind and spun around, kicking out hard. The corpse was knocked back, falling with a splash to the rain-soaked street. But it rolled over and started to come at him once again.

  “Beg,” said the Shadow King. “Plead for my kelp, Valsavis. Grovel like the worthless scum you are.”

  “I’ll die first,” said Valsavis, swinging his sword once more as the rotting corpses closed in around him.

  “Then… die.”

  “You think I won’t?” Valsavis shouted, laying about him with his sword as the corpses kept coming, relentlessly. “I’ll die cursing your name, you misbegotten snake! I’ll die like a man before I grovel at your feet like some dog, and your own miserable pride will deny you what you want.”

  “Yesssss,” said Nibenay, his voice a hiss of resignation. “I truly believe you would. And unfortunately, I still have need of you. Very well, then—”

  And in that moment, Valsavis felt something crawling up his leg. He screamed with pain as one of the corpses he had felled climbed upon him and sank its teeth into his left wrist. Valsavis cried out, trying to shake it off, but there were still more corpses reaching for him and he had to keep laying about him with his sword to stay alive. He could not stop for a second. Wailing in agony, kicking out at the corpse that had its teeth fastened on his wrist, he could not afford to stop swinging his sword even for an instant to keep the undead from overwhelming him. Each one he struck down only got back up again moments later. And more were closing in. He was fighting for his life, as he had never fought before.

  The pain was incandescent as the corpse chewing on his wrist crunched down with teeth that were as sharp as daggers. Valsavis felt the pain washing over him, and he fought with all his might to jerk his left hand free as he kept fighting off the advancing corpses, and suddenly, there was a sharp, snapping, crunching sound, and he was free.

  His left hand had been chewed off.

  Roaring with both pain and rage, he fought his way through the remaining corpses and ran down the street, through the rain, gritting his teeth against the pain. Blood spouted from the stump of his left wrist. As he ran, he tucked his sword beneath his arm and unfastened his sword belt with his one remaining hand. He shook it hard until the scabbard fell free, then bound it around his arm tightly, making an improvised tourniquet. He twisted it tight, pulling it with his teeth, and then made it fast. His head was swimming. His vision blurred. And, through the rain, he saw more undead stumbling down the street toward him.

  Nibenay was gone. Whatever he might have done to help him, there was no possibility of it now. With his left hand gone, the ring was gone, and the magical link was broken. Valsavis stood there in the pouring rain, breathing hard, righting back the pain, struggling to keep from passing out, and as the walking corpses shambled toward him, he suddenly realized that he had never in his life felt more alive.

  His right hand grasped his sword hilt. It felt familiar, natural in his grasp, like an extension of his arm. As the rain came down, soaking him through to the skin, plastering his long, gray hair to his face and running through his beard, reviving him, he threw back his head and screamed in defiance of the death that was lurching toward him. This was the measure of a man, this was the fitting way to die, not with a wheezing, old man’s death rattle in a lonely bed, but with a scream of rage and bloodlust. And holding his sword before him, he charged.

  * * *

  Sorak plowed like a juggernaut through the advancing corpses, swinging Galdra to the left and right. It cut through them effortlessly, and they fell, never to move again, the spell of the enchanted blade more powerful than the ancient curse that animated them. And if Sorak had paused in his plunge through them, he might have heard them sigh with relief as the rain washed away the living death to which they had been condemned.

  Ryana clutched Kara’s arm, holding her sword in her other hand, glancing around quickly to the left and right, ready to strike out at any corpse that came too near. But something strange was happening. The undead that had been lurching toward her and Kara suddenly turned and started shambling toward Sorak, their arms outstretched, not in a threatening manner, but almost in a pleading one, as if they were beseeching mercy. And she suddenly realized what they were doing.

  Having seen Galdra release the others from the spell, these mindless corpses, driven by some fragment of an instinct left over from the days when they were still alive as men, now sought release from living death as well. They were no longer attacking, but instead, they approached Sorak and simply stood there, waiting for him to cut them down. Galdra flashed in the driving rain, again and again and again, and still more of them came, waiting their turns patiently, holding their arms out to him in supplication.

  Ryana and Kara both stood leaning on each other in the rain, holding their breath, unable to tear their eyes away from the surreal spectacle. The undead were simply ignoring them, brushing right past them as they moved toward Sorak, then stopped and simply awaited their turn to be struck down, once and forever.

  “Ryana!” Sorak cried out in exasperation. “I can’t go on! There are too many of them!”

  “Cut your way through!” she called to him. “We’ll follow!”

  Sorak plunged ahead, mowing his way through the corpses blocking his path, and Ryana ran with Kara, hard on his heels. As they broke through and continued down the street, they heard the tormented wailing of the undead rising behind them. “Which way?” cried Sorak. “To the left!” Kara called out. “Straight down to the end of the street! You will see a tower!”

  They continued on, Sorak cutting down the undead that came into their path. Ryana felt bony fingers clutching at her shoulder, and she turned and swung out with her sword, cutting off the arm that reached for her. It fell to the ground and wriggled like a worm as the corpse continued to stumble after her, holding out its remaining arm, fingers like talons reaching out and grasping vainly at the air.

  Ryana felt a momentary pang of regret that she could not free the doomed soul from its torment, but then she thought of all the others it must have killed horribly over the years, and that drove all pity from her mind. If not for Galdra, they too, would have been food for the undead of Bodach.

  The rain started to let up as the storm passed over them. Ahead, at the far end of the street, Ryana could make out a tall, stone tower standing at the edge of the city, beside the rotted docks jutting out into the silt. At one time, in an earlier age, it must have been an observation tower, or perhaps a lighthouse to guide ships in to the docks when the silt basins were still full of water.

  They ran toward the tower as the rain slacked off to a mere drizzle. Their feet splashed through the street as they ran, and now there were no more undead before them. They heard the wailing behind them, but the tower was merely a short sprint away now. They reached it and plunged inside.

  There was no door in the frame, for it had long since rotted away. There was only an open archway, leading into a circular chamber on the ground floor, and a long, spiral flight of stone steps going up.

  “We can try to make our stand here,” Sorak said, breathing heavily with his exertions as he looked around quickly, satisfying himself that the place was empty. “There is no door, but perhaps we may block off the entryway.” He glanced toward the stairs leading to the upper floors. “There may be more of them up there.”

  “No,” said Kara with certainty. “We shall be safe here.
They shall not come in.”

  Ryana and Sorak both looked at her. “Why?” asked Sorak, looking puzzled.

  “Because they know not to,” Kara said. “We can rest here a moment and catch our breath.”

  “And then what?” Sorak asked.

  “And then we go up,” said Kara.

  Sorak glanced uneasily toward the stairs. “Why?” he asked her. “Why do the undead know not to come in here? What is up there, Kara?”

  “The true treasure of Bodach,” Kara replied.

  Sorak glanced out the arched doorway, toward the street. Perhaps thirty or forty undead simply stood there, roughly twenty yards away. They came no closer. The rain had stopped now as the storm moved on, and moonlight reflected off the street. Then, as Sorak and Ryana watched, the corpses slowly shambled away into the shadows.

  “I do not understand,” said Sorak. “They welcomed their final death from Galdra, and yet they seem to fear this tower. What is it about this place? Why do they keep away from it?”

  “You will know the answer to that at the top of the tower,” Kara replied evasively.

  Sorak stood, dripping, at the foot of the stairs, gazing up. “Well, I do not relish the climb after all we have been through, but I have waited long enough for answers,” he said. He glanced at Kara. “Will you lead the way, or shall I?”

  “Go on,” she said. “I will follow.” Sorak stared at her uncertainly for a moment, then started to climb the stairs. Ryana beckoned Kara to go next. Glancing out the entryway, Ryana took a deep breath, felt the familiar heft of her sword in her hand, and followed after Kara and Sorak.