Nightblade

by Liane Merciel

  "It looks like some drunk provincial's delirium," Isiem said, pushing the book back. He was careful with it; the tome looked much older than he'd initially realized. Its bindings were peeled and cracking, its pages fragile as onionskin. "What's it meant to be?"

  "The Beast of the Backar Forest," Ascaros spun the book around on the floor to face himself and picked it up again, setting it on his lap. "It's the only depiction I could find. I didn't even find it, truthfully. Silence told me where to look—in this obscure old collection of folk legends and border tales." He made a face. "The shae is taking great pleasure in baiting me on this subject."

  "That thing in the drawing is meant to be undead? How can you possibly tell? It's all blobs and bulges."

  "That was the style of the time." Ascaros sank his chin into the heel of one hand, staring at the candlelit drawing. "I can't imagine it's accurate, any more than all those Opparan debutantes are really as chubby and milky-skinned as court painters portray them. They all look like the same woman—and so this beast looks like every other monster to have been captured in a woodcut two centuries ago."

  Isiem crossed the two steps to his own bedroll and sat on the piled blankets, facing Ascaros. "Is there any written description to go along with the drawing?"

  "Nothing useful. ‘The Beaste of Backar, encountered this our year of 4504 in the Reckoning of Absalom. Slaughtered fifteen men, four horses, two oxen and a dog in a great charnel stinke.' It goes on for three paragraphs, but the only useful information is that the creature apparently was ‘clad in the earth of graves' and was so terrifying that all who saw it loosed their bowels. Oh, and it has ‘skulls innumerable,' but no head. That part actually makes a bit of sense, though. Khorsaveir was known to be obsessed with the ancient runelords of Thassilon, and they were said to have created undead guardians with multiple skulls. If he was imitating them, or uncovered some bit of their arcana, he might well have made a similarly over-skulled servant."

  "That's something to look forward to." Isiem took off his cloak and folded it up to make a pillow, then lay down in the bedroll. "How did they drive it off? The people who encountered it during the Oxen-Slaughter of 4504, I mean."

  "They didn't. It killed everyone it could reach. When there didn't appear to be any more survivors, it lumbered off, dragging clawfuls of corpses back into the forest. The witness who reported the encounter escaped by playing dead under the wreckage of his wagon. Later he killed himself, apparently unable to live with the memory of what he'd seen."

  "Oh good, even more to look forward to." Isiem sighed. "Look, if the book isn't telling you anything useful, stop reading it. Why play into Silence's game?"

  "It might be useful." Ascaros closed the book and put it aside, then snuffed the candle. In the darkness, Isiem could hear the shadowcaller climbing into his own bedroll. A whisper of smoke and hot wax lingered in the air. "It tells me that the Beast drags off its victims. That wasn't the only attack. Since then, the Beast has reemerged every few years, slaughtering small parties of travelers and pilgrims, down to the present day. Little else is consistent in the accounts, but it does always seem to take the corpses of those it's killed."

  Isiem rolled over, propping his head up on an elbow. "So how do we use that? Zombies? Made to look alive with illusions and loaded with Ena's bombs? We could let it drag them off to its lair, track it, detonate the bombs, and attack immediately after."

  "Good, but maybe not good enough. How are we to know if the illusions will deceive it? Undead often sense things differently, and we may only have one chance at it. No ...to be sure, we must use living bait."

  The unspoken suggestion hung heavy between them. Then Isiem said: "I don't think Ena's going to be eager to volunteer as beast bait."

  "I wasn't intending to use her."

  "Then who did you want to use?"

  "It needn't be your concern," Ascaros said softly, after another long pause. "Your new friends would surely object if they knew. They might blame you if you were involved."

  "I already am."

  "You are not. But you might be, if you keep asking questions. Is that what you want?"

  "Tell me," Isiem said. "What's your plan?"

  Chapter Eight

  Temptations

  Treasure, you say? How much treasure?" An expression of almost comical greed washed across Caffoc's face. He hunched closer, dropping his voice to a hoarse conspirator's whisper. "Who else knows about it?"

  From the tiny wrinkle of Ascaros's nose, Isiem could tell that the mercenary's breath was uncommonly foul, although he himself was too far away to be touched. Rendered invisible by his spell, he watched their conference from thirty feet away.

  The shadowcaller did not recoil. Smoothing his disgust away, he replied: "No one. Except you, me, my friend, and yours. Let's keep it that way, shall we?"

  "Yes," Caffoc agreed at once, sinking back onto his heels. He scratched the back of his neck unconsciously, then caught himself doing it and yanked his hand away with a fleeting look of nervous guilt. "Yes. It must be a secret."

  The man was an addict. To what, Isiem didn't know, but it was plain that something had its hooks deep in his soul. His need and his shame were written in his shaking shoulders and constant twitching. Caffoc picked at himself ceaselessly: he scratched his neck, wiped at his huge beak of a nose, and pinched the peeling skin from his lips—and every time he realized he was doing it, he shot furtive, darting glances at anyone who might have seen.

  It was those anxious glances, more than the tics themselves, that betrayed Caffoc's addiction. His guilt and his fear told the tale.

  And it was because of that guilt and that fear—and the greed that fed them—that Ascaros had singled the man out for temptation. The Beast of the Backar Forest needed bait, but so did the intended bait himself. A man like Caffoc, who had clearly once been a soldier but had likely lost his position as a result of his weakness and was now desperate enough to march into the Umbral Basin for money to feed his vice, was easy to hook.

  "Good," Ascaros said easily. The shadowcaller wore a false face, as he had for almost the entirety of their journey. Once he realized how distrustful the Molthuni were of his true appearance, he'd changed it—and, because versatility was useful and the caravan was large enough to hide it, he'd adopted three separate illusory guises throughout their travels.

  Today Ascaros appeared as the least-used of the trio: a sandy-haired mercenary with a deep cleft in his chin and a heavy Taldan accent. "As to how much, we don't know exactly. The creature's hoard must be considerable. It's been in the forest for ages, and no one has ever raided its lair. But, of course, as no one has ever laid eyes on it, no one knows how much gold might be waiting."

  "It's a lot, though." Caffoc squeezed the words out in a whisper that sounded like a prayer, not a question. "It must be a lot."

  "Surely," Ascaros agreed, putting his hands on his knees as he pushed himself up to stand. "And we'll cut it into equal shares. With four strong arms, I'm sure we can defeat any beast in these woods ...but we'll need all four. Can we count on your assistance?"

  Caffoc's thin red ponytail swept across his shoulder as he nodded jerkily. He wiped at his nose again. "Equal shares."

  "Your friend's in, too?"

  "He will be."

  "Good man." Ascaros clapped the red-haired soldier hard on a shoulder, causing Caffoc to startle and wince. "I'll be back when we get closer to its lair."

  The disguised shadowcaller strode away. The caravan was about to start moving again. All around them, mercenaries were pulling up horses' stakes and emptying latrine buckets, while tents collapsed like mushrooms under the heat of a withering sun.

  Isiem waited a moment longer, watching Caffoc gnaw his lip. The addict took an indecisive step toward his gathering company, hesitated, and then cursed himself furiously but near-soundlessly and hurried back to his tent, his entire body shaking with suppressed emotion.

  Outside that tent, a young male half-orc was trying without much
success to scrub a couple of bowls clean with handfuls of grass. Isiem knew, having spied on them invisibly before, that the half-orc called himself Otter, and that he was Caffoc's ward. The soldier had found him somewhere—where, exactly, Isiem wasn't sure, although he had the impression it had been on a battlefield or near one—and had taken him under his wing, for Otter was incapable of caring for himself.

  Whether because of an injury that had rattled his skull or simply because he'd been born that way, the half-orc was slow, suggestible, and earnest as a puppy. He leaped to do anything Caffoc asked of him. In Isiem's first few days with the caravan, Otter had been just as eager to do anything anyone else asked of him, too; the boy had been the butt of some cruel jokes before Caffoc put a stop to that.

  But he was strong. Otter looked to be about fifteen or sixteen, in Isiem's estimation, and under his green-tinged skin he had the muscles of a man ten years older. If he'd been born to one of the savage tribes, and trained from birth as their warriors were said to be, he might have a better chance against the Beast of the Backar Forest than his behavior with the caravan suggested.

  As Caffoc approached the tent, he slowed and came to a stop partially screened by another mercenary's tent. He could see Otter, but Otter couldn't see him. The man stood there for a moment, tense, his hands strangling one another as he watched the boy. Half-formed emotions darkened his face and passed, like storm clouds blown across the sky.

  Then he sucked in a breath, retied the leather thong that held back his lanky red hair, and strode toward Otter, all traces of his indecision walled off behind a stony facade.

  "Give me those bowls," Caffoc snapped as he came to the tent. He took them roughly from the confused boy, snatching the clump of stained grass Otter had been holding and tossing it aside. "Get my swords, then take down the tent."

  "They're clean," Otter said, quailing from the man's apparent anger. He hunched his shoulders and looked at the ground. "I cleaned them already."

  "I didn't ask you that, did I? Go get my swords. Like I said." Caffoc shoved the boy toward the tent flap with one hand. There was no real force to the gesture, but Otter stumbled as though he'd been kicked by a mule. He hurried into the tent and back out, clutching a bundle of weapons.

  Caffoc yanked the bundle from him and opened it. He took his own sword out first: a plain steel longsword, its leather-wrapped hilt stained with years of use. The other blades in the bundle were a heavy, notched scimitar, evidently of orc make, and a crude long knife, almost a cleaver, with uneven holes punched in the side of the blade. A moth-eaten dog's tail dangled from the hilt like a tassel.

  Both of those weapons had the look of trophies. They weren't blades meant to sit easily in human hands. The handle of that goblin-made knife was too small for a man's grip, while the scimitar looked too heavy and ill-balanced for an ordinary human to swing without exhausting himself quickly in battle.

  Caffoc gazed at the weapons, chewing his lip again, while Otter struggled to take down the tent by himself. When the half-orc was finished bundling up the canvas and strapping the tent onto its poles for carrying, Caffoc roused out of his trance. "Come here."

  Otter obeyed, his head hanging guiltily. He glanced sidelong at Caffoc without lifting his face, as if he feared a scolding for even that much.

  The soldier sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Otter, I'm not angry." He held out the goblin knife, offering it hilt first. "I want you to have this. It's time you had a blade of your own."

  "No," Otter said, wide-eyed and worried. He took a stumbling step backward, gaping at the proffered knife fearfully. His shaggy black hair fell over his eyes, making him blink. "You said if I have a knife, people will think I'm a bad orc. They'll hurt me. I don't want them to hurt me. I'm not a bad orc."

  "I know what I said," Caffoc muttered. "But it's time now. You have to learn how to fight. I won't always be here to take care of you, and there are times when you'll have to defend yourself."

  "I won't," Otter said stubbornly. "I'm a good orc. I do what people say. They see I'm good and helpful and they don't hurt me. I don't want a knife."

  "You'll take it, by Asmodeus's iron balls, and you'll damn well learn to use it." Caffoc threw the knife at the boy, who hopped clumsily aside. "I need you to help me fight."

  "Fight who?"

  "Not who," Caffoc said. "What." He stepped past the boy, shaking his head as he stooped to pick the knife out of the dirt. He plucked a stray leaf from the dog-tail tassel and wiped off the blade. "A monster in the woods. We need to kill it."

  "Why?" Otter stared at the knife in Caffoc's hands. He lifted his gaze to the man, repeating his question in the same slow tone. "Why? Is it a bad monster?"

  Isiem didn't wait to hear what Caffoc told him. The wizard's invisibility spell was beginning to fail. He could feel the warning tingle of its fading prickle across his skin. In seconds he would be visible to them.

  He withdrew from their camp. By the time Isiem reached his own tent, he was once more in plain view.

  The tent was already down and packed. Not because Ascaros had lifted a finger to help, but because Ena had bullied Pulcher and Copple into doing it, as she had since the second day of their journey, when she realized that it wasn't going to get done otherwise.

  Ascaros, who once more appeared as his true self—no, Isiem reminded himself, not really his true self; only the healthy, less-disturbing version that he would have been without Mesandroth's curse—sat on a black horse beside their wagon. He nodded curtly to Isiem when he saw the wizard, then resumed watching the horizon.

  Isiem returned the shadowcaller's gesture, although Ascaros was no longer looking at him and didn't seem to notice. The caravan was finally beginning to move, so he conjured his own spell-woven mount. After climbing onto the smoke-gray horse, he fell into place on the other side of the wagon, where he caught sight of Ascaros only sporadically throughout the day.

  The memory of Caffoc trying to force the knife onto his half-orc charge gnawed at Isiem. There was no point discussing it with Ascaros, he knew. If anything, the information would merely seal the shadowcaller's resolve. In the judgment of any true Nidalese, the world would be much improved by the removal of a hopeless addict and a dimwitted half-orc. Such weak, flawed individuals only burdened their societies; they were parasites, and like all parasites, best dealt with by being picked off and cast into the flames. And if their deaths could be played for tactical advantage, it was all but a holy duty to see that done.

  So went the thinking of the Nidalese, and Isiem knew full well that Ascaros would share those sentiments. But he himself no longer felt that way.

  Flawed as Caffoc was, he'd had the compassion to take in a lost half-orc, and the sense of responsibility to protect him from those that would abuse the boy's trust. And slow-witted as Otter was, he had an unswerving loyalty to the man who had saved him, and a prodigious physical strength that would surely be of value to a village smith or Molthuni sergeant somewhere. There were useful traits in both of them, or at least the potential to become useful, intermingled with the weaknesses that Ascaros meant to exploit.

  Unless Isiem intervened, though, that potential would surely be drowned out by their baser desires. Ascaros, like any Umbral agent, was skilled at manipulating people's worst qualities. Jealousy, anger, fear, ambition: all of those were tools with which the shadowcaller could pry open someone's heart and lay the soul bare. Isiem, who had trained beside him in the Dusk Hall, could do the same.

  Appealing to someone's better nature, however, was not something they'd ever been taught. Isiem had tried in the past, but every time, he'd failed. He hadn't even been able to turn his own friends aside from fatal folly, and he doubted he'd have any more success with Caffoc.

  It was tempting to just tell one of the others about Ascaros's scheme—Ena, or Kyril, or Teglias; any of them would surely handle the matter more deftly than Isiem could—but he wasn't sure where that would stop once it started. They might turn on Ascaros in an exce
ss of righteousness, and Isiem wasn't sure which side he would take then.

  Besides, that was the coward's way out. Better he should handle it himself.

  He turned the problem over in his mind while watching the yellow fields and heavy-boughed orchards of Molthune roll past their caravan. Occasionally, they rode past flocks of fat beige sheep or a scattering of angular-hipped cows grazing on a hillside, always tended by one or more of the rough-coated collies that seemed ubiquitous in this part of the world. Some of the dogs were red and white, others splashed with tan; all of them were beautiful, and keenly intent on their work.

  None of the animals paid the caravan much mind, but the locals who watched them did. Whether farmers or shepherds, the Molthuni kept their distance, and they watched the Aspis caravan warily. Everything about the farmfolk said that they wanted no trouble, and that they expected nothing else to come from meddling with foreigners.

  Their stares pricked at Isiem's conscience. Finally, after they passed a young mother who called her children in from apple-picking to clutch them close as the caravan passed, he could bear it no longer. Wheeling his horse around, he rode back toward Caffoc and Otter.

  The red-haired soldier pulled his horse's reins back when he saw Isiem approaching. They had never spoken; while Isiem had spied on them several times, he had always done so unseen. Now, as he rode to them openly, Caffoc drew away warily, his mouth a thin line and his nostrils flared. Otter didn't catch on to his guardian's discomfort until Isiem was within arm's-reach, but he started visibly when he did.