by Unknown
Elyana did her best to rub out the tracks, though she grew increasingly concerned about the Galtans. The grass was not dry enough beyond the rise to maintain the blaze, and without any real wind, the fire was dying. When Arcil, watching from the height of the hill, announced that he saw riders, she knew it was past time to leave. The wizard had notoriously bad eyesight.
She leapt into the saddle of her palomino gelding and urged the others to hurry. “Run them hard the whole of the way,” she instructed. “And spread out. We want to show them as many clear tracks as possible.”
“Have no fear,” Arcil told her. Mirelle only dipped her head in acknowledgment. Elyana watched them ride off toward the dark bulk of the woods, leading Vallyn’s riderless horse. She followed, halting only a hundred feet out to look back from a small rise. Already the hill where they’d made their stand seemed smaller. Beyond the long trail of dead hounds, feathered with arrow shafts, was a clump of blackened bodies. As unsettling as that was, she was even less pleased by the count of figures on the horizon. They rode at a trot, a swath of them numbering four dozen or more, the dust cloud kicked up by their travel stained red by the lowering sun. She hoped she had not oversold her prowess.
She clicked her tongue, and her horse shot down the slope and after the others, toward whatever the forest might bring.
Chapter Two: City of the Dead
“I don’t care for it at all.” Arcil had swung down from his horse to contemplate some glyphs carved into a stone pylon thrust into the ground beside an oak tree. It was tilted a few degrees off vertical, and pitted with age. Overhead, the leafy canopy was so thick it seemed twilight had already fallen.
Elyana was eager to keep moving; she meant to lose the Galtans only after she’d led them deeper into the woods, but she hadn’t reckoned on them pressing so close. Perhaps the sight of their quarry fleeing before them on the plain had excited them, for they were now crashing through the brush a few bowshots behind with almost reckless intensity. Yet her voice did not betray her concern. “What do they say?”
“This is old, and marks a boundary. A warding, perhaps?” Arcil brushed at some moss with two fingers to better view one of the glyphs.
“A warding for what?” Mirelle asked. She glanced over her shoulder, apparently more focused on the noises of their pursers. Her horse shifted uneasily beneath her, stirring the leaves with its hooves.
“These are more initials than words,” Arcil said hesitantly. “I’m not certain I can correctly infer the meaning.”
He sounded as if he knew something and did not wish to say it. “Speak, Arcil. We’ve no time to waste.”
He glanced up at her and then brushed fingers over the three uppermost glyphs. “I think this means ‘the walkers.’” He stood, frowning, and brushed leaves and dirt from his pants. He passed close to Elyana, speaking softly as he glanced up. “Walkers from the crypt.”
“What was that?” Mirelle asked, straining forward, her face screwed up with worry.
“We’re in this together,” Elyana said to Arcil. “You might as well tell her what you’re thinking.”
Arcil climbed back into his saddle, sighing a little. “I think we’re heading toward an old burial ground. We’re being warned away. It’s likely some local superstition.”
“Looks like we’ll find out.” Elyana started forward. She planned to keep moving south, into the woods. Come nightfall, she’d use her better vision and skills to cut west from the forest. She doubted even the best-trained Galtan woodsmen could keep up with them in darkness. More troubling was what a Galtan necromancer could do with a whole graveyard beneath his feet. Hopefully his selection of spells would be as limited as Arcil’s after a full day of work. Surely it had been no easy feat to send so many hounds against them, even if he were a caster of great power.
She guided her charges on, ignoring the occasional grunt or low oath from behind her. The humans didn’t always notice the branches she ducked.
Occasional gaps in the forest canopy allowed wide shafts of evening light to stream in, but far from reassuring, the muted illumination served only to emphasize the greater darkness around them. There was a silence here. The bird calls had diminished.
“I don’t like this place,” Mirelle announced quietly.
“Do not worry, my dear,” Arcil told her. “Do not worry.”
He sounded less soothing than patronizing.
They continued a gradual decent, and then, suddenly, arrived at what Elyana first took as the forest’s edge, though she knew intellectually that the Verduran Forest stretched south for hundreds of miles. Slipping from her horse, she advanced to find instead that they had arrived at the edge of a small, crescent-shaped valley mysteriously bereft of trees. Within it were scattered the bones of a small city. Long-shattered stone walls stood out from the gnarled bushes. Paving stones showed gray here and there beneath the undergrowth and detritus. A few buildings were intact, notably a tower near the center, but most were fallen in, and all of the roofs had collapsed long ago.
The abandoned city felt even more desolate than the surrounding woods, and she thought first to skirt it, then reasoned that she could use the place to better confuse their pursuit. She even briefly considered wearing away their numbers from the defensible positions at hand.
They wound deep into the ruins, Elyana leading the way, and the silence here was so deep the sounds of the Galtan mob were quickly lost to her behind crumbling walls marred by thick vines . The sun sank lower, and twilight came on at last. Elyana had been raised by humans and was well acquainted with their instinctive fear of the dark. Still, she was surprised to hear the soft but clear concern in Arcil’s voice.
“Elyana.”
She looked back at him, saw him paused at a turn down a winding, cobbled road angling for the tower. Mirelle had paused beside him.
“What is it?” she called back.
“Something… someone… waved for me to follow.”
There was no time for hesitation. Not hearing the Galtans made her more concerned about their position. If they reached the valley before her team cleared it…
Yet it was unlike Arcil to sound so indecisive. Or troubled. “A Galtan?” she asked.
“Arcil may not be as suave as he thinks he is, but he’s a good man to have in a fight.”
“I think it may have been a ghost,” Arcil admitted.
“You’re sure you saw it?” Elyana asked.
“I am not entirely sure, no,” he said, sounding a little defensive. “I saw something from the corner of my eye, and when I turned to look directly, it was gone.”
Elyana frowned. Arcil was not especially prone to flights of fancy, but a more urgent threat loomed. “Let’s press on,” Elyana said. Reluctantly, she noted a new chill in the air and their mounts’ ears swiveling nervously to catch no sounds but their own.
As they passed beneath the dark silhouette of the tower, Elyana herself glimpsed a figure standing in the gap between two craggy walls. It had the semblance a man, garbed in a white robe and motioning them onward, but before she could properly focus, it vanished.
At that same moment, from somewhere far behind came a masculine scream and a cacophony of shouting and clashing arms. The Galtans?
“What’s happening?” Mirelle gasped.
Elyana pulled her horse around, but before she could locate a vantage point to investigate the distant struggle, a shadowy figure lurched up from the darkness on their right. The horses shied, laying back their ears, and Mirelle stifled a scream.
It lacked a head. Behind it, striding out from the yawning maw of a ruined building, were a half-dozen helmed figures in broken armor. There limbs were nothing but bone.
Elyana cursed. “Time to go!” Her horse was eager to race ahead, and Mirelle and Arcil followed. They quickly outdistanced the dead, but as Elyana continued down the street, more dark figures shambled out of the darkness.
“This does not seem to be Galtan necromancy,” Arcil shouted up to her.
“We ride, fast as we dare,” she said. “Out of this valley. Follow me.”
She darted down a winding side street, urging her horse to leap over something she took for rubbish in the middle of the street until it rose up, waving a notched sword. She pulled back instead and her animal reared, striking the thing with its front hooves. The dead warrior was flung backward, shedding bones as it flew through the air. It struck the street with a muffled clatter and did not rise.
Other shapes were slipping from the ruins. Some strode confidently, bearing weapons. Other shambled. A few were completely intact, but most were missing limbs, or even heads. And all advanced toward them.
She came to a halt and the others drew up near her. “I’ve few grand spells left, Elyana,” Arcil said soberly.
“Then we shall cut a swathe.” She drew her blade, a comforting weight in her hand.
“We cannot hope to destroy enough of them,” Arcil said, gesturing around at the gloom alive with shambling movements. “What about the ghost?”
Elyana considered the overwhelming number of foes. “What about the ghost?”
“Suppose it meant to guide us to safety? It was the only one of these that did not attack.”
True enough, but that didn’t mean it intended no harm. However, there had been a tower nearby, which at least had the benefit of being a more defensible point. It had appeared intact, and was much closer than the crumbling walls that marked the city’s edge. “Ride for the tower,” she commanded. Her horse reared again as she turned it.
“Let me clear a way,” Arcil shouted, and Elyana reined in. Mirelle looked on with wide eyes as the figures shambled ever nearer. The horses danced nervously.
When Arcil shouted and cast, his horse shied, but the sudden movement did not interfere with the tiny ball that left his hands. A moment later dozens of the corpses were wrapped in a sheath of expanding fire. So sudden and explosive was the blast that it destroyed them utterly, as if the street had temporarily been touched by the light of the sun. Unfortunately, other dead were already moving to take their place.
Elyana kicked her horse into gallop, sword outstretched to catch the corpses converging on their path some lengths beyond the reach of Arcil’s flame. Behind her, Arcil grunted as he laid about with his staff. From Mirelle she heard only shouted commands to the horse. Elyana had no choice but to release Vallyn’s mount, which in any case galloped after its fellows, trying to stay within the relative safety of its herd.
Elyana cut her way forward and slowed just two crumbling buildings away from their destination. Arcil shouted something from her left, and wind rolled forth from his hands, pushing a skeletal assailant into two of its neighbors, tangling all three in a heap of rotting limbs.
“Hurry,” Arcil cried, and they pressed forward. Elyana chanced a glance behind at Mirelle, who frantically kicked a grasping, headless woman away and then saw Vallyn’s horse go down under a pile of scrambling bodies. The horse screamed again and again, and Elyana gritted her teeth.
There must be hundreds of these animated dead throughout the ruins. There would be no way to gallop through them. She wondered if she and Arcil would be able to hold them off long enough even to trap themselves in a high tower room. The mage had already worn through many of his spells. Provided they could even make it to the tower, the poor horses were probably done for.
“One side,” Arcil snapped, and came up a bit ahead of Elyana. In his hand was the black wand they’d found in the river king’s tomb. He shouted a single word, and instantly a wall of flame licked into existence along their left, consuming the first two rows of dead. Arcil spun in his saddle and shouted again to right, and then behind. The flames burned on, and a charred, acrid smell washed over them. The horses screamed and rolled their eyes in terror.
“That,” Arcil said breathlessly, “is about all I’ve got.”
Their way forward was now free, and they kicked their frightened steeds into full flight. The corpses pressed forward determinedly into the flame, immune to fear or concern about their condition.
“Look at that, Elyana!” Arcil said.
The ghostly figure stood beckoning to them from a rotted doorway into the tower. This time it spoke in a strained voice, like a winter wind heard from a great distance. “Hurry.”
They arrived before the portal to the tower. Elyana’s horse uncharacteristically slid to a halt before the dark passage, despite her urgings. Arcil’s and Mirelle’s didn’t make it even that far, and Elyana heard a thump and an oath as Arcil was thrown from his beast. Elyana leapt down from the horse, keeping tight hold of the reins, and reached out to grab the bridle on Mirelle’s. “Go—inside!”
Mirelle slid off her mount and hesitated for only a moment before doing as she was told.
Arcil picked himself up, scowling and distinctly ruffled. His horse danced near the wall of flame, looking for an exit and keeping as far as possible from the tower.
“Arcil, hold this.” She handed him the reins to her horse while she threw her cloak over the head of Mirelle’s mount and led it in a circle, then into the tower itself. Elyana could barely see after the brightness without, but there was no sign of the ghost within the ebon gloom of the large chamber, which surely encompassed the whole diameter of the structure. She handed Mirelle the reins to her horse and hurried back to Arcil.
The flame walls were fading already as she emerged and saw Arcil struggling to copy her actions with his own cloak. With her assistance, they steered the animal inside while the third horse leapt over the diminishing fires into the crowd of dead, then died screaming under their blows.
Elyana briefly took in their surroundings. There was nothing within save some dilapidated shelving, some warped wooden planks—probably floorboards that had rotted out from the floors above—and a staircase leading up. As she studied this last, the ghost reappeared upon a stair. In the utter darkness, even the dim light of his transparent body shone like a beacon. For the first time she saw him clearly, a young man in a robe with great mournful eyes. He wore soft boots, and jeweled rings shown upon two of his fingers. He beckoned once toward them, turned upon the stair, and vanished again.
Elyana stepped back to the doorway, expecting to see the ranks of skeletons marching toward them. However, those few not milling over the remains of the dead horse seemed listless. Many simply sank back to the ground; others were wandering away.
“Well that’s quite interesting,” Arcil said. “I suppose that the tower’s warded against them. Or perhaps they’re unable to recognize intruders within the tower itself.”
“What do we do now?” Mirelle asked.
Elyana eyed the stairway. “I guess we go up.”
Chapter Three: Bones of the Fallen
Elyana withdrew a lantern from her saddlebag and Arcil used a cantrip to light it. With the wizard holding the lamp aloft, she did her best to calm the horses, distracting them with grain and securing their lead lines to some rusting sconces so that the animals would not wander off.
“What do you think the ghost wants?” Mirelle asked. She had been remarkably quiet, given her youth and the horrors she had witnessed. But then, she had probably endured plenty of horror in the prisons of Galt, awaiting execution because her uncle had once served the wrong noble. “Do you think it wants to hurt us?”
Arcil shook his head. “That’s unlikely. It need not have signaled us to safety at all. It was a near thing out there. Presumably, it wants to show us something. I’m concerned that if we do not accede to its demands, it may become much less amiable, and I’m not sure we have the strength to combat it.”
“My sword arm is still good,” Elyana said, though she was as tired as the rest of
them.
“Well, my spells are nearly spent.”
“So you have said. How many charges are left in your wand?”
“Four. But a tower is a poor place to wield a wall of flame.”
“We will do what we have to do,” Elyana said. “For now, let us assume that he is a lord who has invited us to his tower. At the least, we owe him our thanks for that. Spirit or no.”
Arcil frowned, but said nothing more. Elyana took the lantern and started up.
The second floor was sagging and populated by great jagged gaps. There was no sign of the spirit there, so they kept moving upward, noting as they climbed that the third level was in even worse shape and was now largely open to the sky. The stairs continued on, spiraling up the tower’s outer wall to a flat area the width of the staircase and perhaps twice as long. There were no merlons, only a solid, waist-high wall along the rim of what had once been a fine observation deck.
The ghost stood looking over the city as they approached. He appeared to be a young man, translucent and mildly luminescent, in a finely edged robe and boots. A cold wind blew out from over the trees but did not stir his garments. He turned to regard them with sad eyes.
“So has it been for centuries,” he said. His voice was clear, cutting. The sound did not match the movement of his lips.
Arcil and Mirelle reached the parapet. The wizard advanced to Elyana’s side, but the girl waited upon the top stair, her hand clasped to the knife hilt that projected from her belt. Elyana wondered what she planned to do with it.
“We thank you for your aid,” Elyana said to the spirit, “and shelter.”
“It is my pleasure,” said the ghost, regarding them distantly, as if they were themselves transparent. “I wish you might have seen my city in its prime, for it was a lovely, well-watered land, blessed by the gods.”
“What happened to it?” Arcil asked. “And by what name are you called?”
This may not have been the most tactful introduction, Elyana thought, but the apparition registered no offense.
