by Barb Hendee
Chapter Thirteen
Curled in his tree's bower, Most Aged Father gaped in pain. The pale-skinned monster touched the birch the instant his awareness slipped into it.
He felt the tree's life slipping away into her flesh. He felt it as if she touched his skin, feeding upon him, and memory welled up to wrap him in suffering.
Another like her had come for him in the dark… long, long ago…
Sorhkafare-Light upon the Grass. That was his true name back then.
He had dropped weary and beaten upon a stained wool blanket, filthy from moons of forced marches. He did not even care to have his wounds tended and lay in the darkness of his tent.
Only two of his commanders had survived the day. He had lost more officers upon that field than duringall of the last moon. Someone called to him from outside his tent but he did not answer. Hesitantly, the voice came again.
"The human and dwarven ranks are too depleted for another engagement. They must fall back."
The enemy's condition was unknown. With his eyes closed, Sorhkafare saw nothing but the sea of dead he had left on the rolling plains. The fragile alliance had been outnumbered nearly five to one on this day.
Again he did not answer. He could not look at the faces of the living, and even if he opened his eyes, he couldn't stop seeing those of the dead.
The enemy's horde had pressed north along the eastern coast of the central continent. At dawn, he had received word that Baalale Seatt had fallen to an unknown catastrophe. The dwarven mother-city in the mountains bordering theSumanDesert had long been under siege. Scattered reports hinted that neither side had survived whatever had happened there.
The enemy's numbers seemed endless. And all that remained in the west to stop them were Sorhkafare's forces, the last to keep the enemy from turning inland toward Aonnis Lhoin'n-First Glade-the refuge and home of his people.
He heard the footsteps outside fade away. Finally they left him alone.
Sleep would not come, and he did not want it. He still saw thousands slaughtering each other under the hot sun. He had lost all reckoning of whose cries were those of his enemies or his allies. He lost fury and even fear this day upon the plain.
Countless furred, scaled, or dark- to light-skinned faces fell before his spear and arrows, and yet they kept coming. One mutilated body blurred into another… except for the last rabid goblin, dead at his feet when it all ended. Its long tongue dangled from its canine mouth into the blood-soaked mud.
Sorhkafare heard a shout and then a moan somewhere outside in the camp, and then another.
The wounded and dying were given what aid could be rendered, but they only suffered the more for it. Who would want to live another day like this one?
More shouts.Running feet.A brief clatter of steel.
Someone fumbled at the canvas flap of his tent.
"Leave me," he said tiredly and did not get up.
The tent ripped open.
Camp bonfires outside cast an orange glow around the shadowed figure of a human male.Sorhkafare could not make out the man's face. The light glinted dully upon the edges of his steel-scaled carapace. His skin seemed dark, like that of a Suman.
Sorhkafare's senses sharpened.
By proportions, there had been as many humans among the enemy's horde as among his alliance forces. Most with the enemy had been Suman. Had one slipped into camp unseen? He sat up quickly.
The man's arm holding aside the tent flap was severed off above the wrist. His other hand was empty.
No one walked about with such a wound. Sorhkafare heard another cry somewhere out in the camp.
The crippled skulker rushed in with a grating hiss, guttural and full of madness.
Sorhkafare rolled to the tent's far side and pulled his war knife. His attacker fell upon the empty bedroll. As the man turned upon the blanket, Sorhkafare drove his blade down.
It sank through the man's dark-skinned neck above the armor's collar, and he slumped, limp.
Sorhkafare rushed from the tent. He searched the night camp for any officer to chastise over the failure of the perimeter watch. The few remaining cries died away one by one.
The nearest fire had been doused, and only smoking embers remained. Many of the torches were gone, and darkness had thickened in the camp. The moon was not yet high enough for his elven eyes, but he thought he saw figures moving quickly from tent to tent. Now and thencame strange muffled sounds or a short cry.
"Sorhkafare… where were you?"
A figure approached, slow and purposeful, between the rows of tents.He knew that voice. It grated upon his nerves every time the man spoke.
Kжdmon, commander of the humans among Sorhkafare's forces-or what were left of them.
Sorhkafare had no strength for another argument. It was always Kжdmon who challenged him. He pushed his men too hard and kept demanding night strikes after his people had marched all day.
Kжdmon drew closer, and Sorhkafare saw the dark rents in the tall man's chain armor. He had not bothered to remove it, but Sorhkafare could not blame him. There was no point in doing so, as they would only ride hard with the dawn, either in flight or to face an endless enemy once more.
Someone stepped from a tent beyond Kжdmon, dragging a body.
Sorhkafare had no more sorrow to spare for those who succumbed to wounds. But the shadowed figure dropped the body in the dirt and turned away to the next tent.
"Didn't you see them come?" Kжdmon said. "Did you not hear us cry for help as the sun dropped below the hills? Or was it only your own kind… your wounded that you culled from the dead today?"
Sorhkafare turned his eyes back to Ksedmon. He barely made out the man's long face and square jaw below a wide mouth.
"What venom do you spit now?" he answered. "We left no one who had even a single breath in them! All were carried in, even those with no hope to see tomorrow."
The man's ugly square jaw was covered in a few days' growth of beard. Stubble on his neck looked darker still. His steel coif and its chain drape were gone, exposing lank black hair hanging around his light-skinned face. His bloodthirsty human eyes glittered.
"You didn't bring me," Kжdmon hissed back and his words grew awkward as if he had difficulty speaking. "I still breathed when they crept across the dead, looking for those you forgot… when the sun vanished from sight."
A dark patch at Kжdmon's throat glistened as he stepped to within a spear's reach.
Sorhkafare stepped back.
A gaping wound in the side of Kжdmon's neck had covered his throat in blood mixed with some black viscous fluid. His lips and teeth looked stained as well.
Kжdmon's eyes were as colorless as his pallid skin.
"I can't stop myself… they won't let me stop."
Kжdmon shook with clenched muscles as his crystal eyes scrunched closed for an instant. He took a jerking step. All tense resistance vanished, and he charged with open hands.
Sorhkafare set himself but did not raise his knife.
Kжdmon had seen too much in these long years of battle. They all had. The man's mind finally broke under the strain. No matter their differences, he was an ally who had fought hard beside Sorhkafare's own people. Kжdmon had lost his own father when their settlement was overrun before alliance forces arrived to defend it. But still the man fought on, and his loyalty had never wavered.
Sorhkafare sidestepped, ready to slap away Kжdmon's grasp. He barely drew back his hand before Kжdmon's grip latched around his throat.Too sudden and too quick for a wounded man.
Kжdmon closed his fingers.
Sorhkafare could not breathe. He tried to break the man's grip. Kжdmon's features twisted in agony as his mouth opened.
"Don't fight," he whispered. "Please don't make me… make you suffer."
Sorhkafare almost stopped fighting for air.
Within Kжdmon's mouth he saw malformed teeth stained with blood.A human mouth with sharpened fangs like a dog or short-snouted goblin. He slashed the knife a
cross the back of Kжdmon's forearm, but the man did not even flinch.
Sorhkafare's chest convulsed, trying to get air, and his sight began to dim. He rammed the blade into the side of Kжdmon's neck.
Kжdmon's head snapped sideways under the blow. He gagged once before his face turned back, now little more than a blurred oval of white in Sorhkafare's waning sight.
"It won't help," Kжdmon sobbed. "I'm sorry… it never does."
Air seeped in through Sorhkafare's nose.
He heaved, filling up his lungs, then gagged and coughed as he tried to suck more air. He lay on his side upon the ground, not even knowing he had fallen. A blurred form appeared above him and reached down. Sorhkafare twisted away in panic.
"Get up, sir!" it said, and the words were in his ownElvish tongue. "The horses have been slaughtered… we must run!"
Vision cleared, and Sorhkafare saw one of his commanders. Snahacroe reached down for him, but Sorhkafare only looked about for Kжdmon.
The man lay crumpled on his side, off to the left. The shaft of an elven spear rose from his torso. Its silvery tip protruded from Kжdmon's rib cage, and black fluids ran from the bright metal to the ground.
Sorhkafare stared at the gaping wound, not truly aware of Snahacroe until his kinsman pulled at him, trying to make him follow.
Kжdmon rolled onto his face and braced his hands upon the ground. He pushed up and lifted his head. Snahacroe halted in shock to look at the human.
Ksedmon began to shake. Once more his whole body seemed to clench. His fingers bit into the earth as if he sought to hold on to it and keep from rising.
"Run," he whimpered.
Sorhkafare still hesitated. The man could not be alive. The spear point dripped more black fluid from his body and the same ran from the knife wound in his neck. The broken stream of fluid vanished as it struck the earth, but Sorhkafare heard the slow patter continue.
"Run… while you can!" Kжdmon shouted.
Snahacroe wrenched Sorhkafare around and they fled.
Grim silhouettes closed in behind them with pounding feet. The more that came, the more Sorhkafare saw one here and there from the ranks of both sides that day in battle. Their faces seemed too pallid in the dark.
All around were figures with glittering eyes.
Sorhkafare…
The name clung to Magiere's thoughts like her own, as she came slowly back to consciousness.
"Sgailsheilleache, hold off!"
It was Brot'an's voice, but Magiere only saw moving blurs around her. She felt and smelled moss against her face.
She began panting hard.
"She is unnatural," Sgaile snapped."Undead… in our forest!"
"No," Brot'an barked. "She is something else. Now do as I say!"
Magiere took three rapid breaths before her thoughts cleared in realization.
Brot'an had never told the others about what he had seen of her in Dar-mouth's crypt. He had kept her secret.
It didn't matter anymore. She'd lost all control, and they'd all seen her.
Magiere's sight cleared slowly. She lay on her side, one hand limp upon the moss before her face. There was blood on her fingernails.
But her hand was not long-boned and tan as it had been in the dream… the vision… whatever she should call the sights and sounds that had taken her. She saw only her own pale hand, not that of the elven man she had become… Sorhkafare.
Why? She hadn't touched the remains of any victim, trying to see through the eyes of its undead killer at the moment of death.
Magiere flopped onto her back, trying to find the faces of those around her. She looked at the birch that she'd backed into and touched before the world turned black. She began to tremble.
The tree's trunk bore the mark of her hands. Where she'd touched it, the bark had darkened and dried dead. Brittle pieces had already fallen away.
"Leesil!" she cried out.
"Here… I'm here!" he answered; and then, "Get out of my way!"
A wet nose grazed her neck, and Chap's head pressed into her face.
She dug her fingers in his fur and hung on. Leesil dropped to his knees beside her.
Magiere latched on to him, thrashing around to bury her face in the chest of his hauberk and hide from all eyes.
"It's all right," he whispered.
She still felt the lingering shock in her body and saw in her mind the marks of her hands upon the birch. Nothing was all right anymore.
Magiere closed her fingers on Leesil's hauberk until its leather creaked in her hands and its rings bit into her palms. The name she'd been called still echoed in her head. Her… his allies came in the dark with colorless eyes and teeth stained with the blood of their own.
Sorhkafare.
"I said keep back!" Leesil growled, and pulled Magiere closer. "It's over."
He knew better than to touch Magiere until she recognized him. But when she fell and cried out for him, he knew her dhampir nature had already retreated.
Brot'an stepped around to wave Sgaile off. Osha finally released Wynn.
En’nish was on her feet but still hunkered from Brot'an's strike. Her one remaining companion aided the other that Magiere had thrown into the trees. They both emerged, but the latter man was limping badly and the front of his tunic was shredded.
Nein'a glared at Leesil in shock. Any hint of fearful and angry denials she'd cast at him were gone. There was only wary revulsion as her gaze drifted from him down to Magiere hiding in his arms.
"It is not over," Freth said coldly, and the white majay-hi shifted silently in her way. "You have brought an undead into our midst. I do not understand how this is possible, but this thing you coddle will not remain."
Leesil's anger rose again, but he couldn't leave Magiere.
"Chap," he said quietly, "kill anyone who takes a step."
Chap didn't answer in any fashion. He simply paced around Leesil to stand before Magiere and glanced once at the white majay-hi blocking Freth.
"Enough," Brot'an insisted. "If she were undead, the forest never would have allowed her to enter. There is nothing Leshil could have done to change that."
Leesil wasn't certain about the shift in authority taking place. Both Sgaile and Freth were reluctant, but it seemed Brot'an took charge. For the moment, it served to protect Magiere from the others-but still, Leesil didn't like it.
Brot'an's pale scars stood out like white slashes on his lined face. "We are all fatigued from a night of running with no food. We will rest part of the day in the outer forest."
He gestured toward the fern-curtained passage.
"Frethfare, please report to Most Aged Father. Tell him all is settled, that we have found the human woman and will return soon. Sgailsheilleache, you and Osha find food, and En’nish…"
Brot'an spun toward her, and now Leesil couldn't see his expression.
"You and those serving your purpose will keep well apart from Sgaile and his charges. Or you will have more to answer for upon our return."
En’nish picked up her fallen blade as she hobbled past Brot'an. Her face dark with malice, she joined her two companions and headed out through the woods' passage.
Leesil tried to get Magiere on her feet. When Brot'an approached, Chap lunged, and his teeth clacked shut on air as Brot'an leaped away.
"No more," Sgaile said quickly to the dog. "No more fighting… let him pass."
Brot'an betrayed subtle surprise at Sgaile's words. "It seems there are some things you have not told me."
Sgaile sighed but didn't answer.
"It's all right, Chap," Magiere said.
Leesil's uncertainty grew. Brot'an might have pacified further conflict for the moment. But it was still Brot'an, the one who'd used him. Leesil would never sink to a hint of gratitude, but he let Magiere step forward to follow Brot'an.
Leesil looked back into the glade. Nein'a watched him, but he no longer saw anything recognizable in her cold eyes.
An abomination in his land.
> Most Aged Father-who had once been Sorhkafare-quaked in his bower.
This pallid woman with blood-stained hair had fooled even Frethfare.
In that long night, running beside Snahacroe and the others, he had heard the cries behind him. Each dawn that followed, fewer remained in his company.
There had been humans and dwarves as well ashis own kind. The dwarves had been the first to fall. Unable to keep the pace with their short legs and heavy bodies, fewer and fewer of those stout people were present at dawn when his meager forces fell prostrate upon the ground. They foraged for water and food by day, slept what little they could in shifts, and before dusk each night they fled inland toward Aonnis Lhoin'n.
Not long past each dusk, they heard the shouts and running feet of abominations closing upon them. Each night they were closer, as he and his forces grew more weary and worn with flight. More than once he glanced back to see dozens of sparking eyes, perhaps a hundred, in the dark.
Then humans and elves began to fall behind as well, and no one could turn back for them. Along their harried passage, they found desolate and shattered towns and villages. And more than once, pale figures erupted from the dark ahead of them. They slogged their way through, but more of his fleeingband were always gone when they halted at the next dawn.
Most Aged Father could not shake the memories from his mind.
Cuirin'nen'a andher hidden dissidents no longer mattered. Long ago, he had brought his people here to safety. Now this woman-this abomination-appeared among them.A human-spawned thing. The Ancient Enemy stirred sooner than he had feared. It was the only explanation he saw to account for this new tool of bloodshed and devastation. One that could breach his people's land, the only haven that had saved them in those long lost days.
Most Aged Father lifted his wrinkled hand from the bower's wood, but his fingers would not stop shaking.
Chapter Fourteen
Frethfare ran from the glade with her heart pounding. She fled far into the forest before daring to find a place in which to speak with Most Aged Father. How could she tell him what had happened, what she had seen? Where would she even begin? An undead entered their land and walked freely among the people-and was now protected by Brot'an'duive.
