by Monte Cook
Like a rain of knives, a torrent of ravens dived into Vheod, stabbing and tearing with beaks and claws. Using his free arm, he beat at the ravens to make them go away. As soon as he forced one away, however, another grabbed his flesh with tiny talons and began attacking with its beak. As one raked his face, his vision was filled with flapping black feathers. He wanted to reach up and grab Whitlock with his free hand, but he had to use it to protect his own face and eyes from the relentless attack.
Suddenly, he felt a raven land on his arm. He reach up to grab at it but missed. As he clung to Whitlock’s foot, the small raven tore into the flesh of his hand then each individual finger. He clenched his fingers tighter and tighter, but they became slippery with his own blood. The giant raven carrying the two of them dropped lower and lower down into the trees. Still Vheod clung to Whitlock.
With a sudden jerk, the raven shook Whitlock and wrenched his boot free of his foot. Vheod suddenly found himself covered in ravens holding nothing but a boot. As the giant raven rose once again up into the sky, Vheod dropped. He frantically focused on his power to levitate, but it wasn’t enough to completely compensate for the momentum that carried him into the tree tops. Branches and needles tore at his wounded, bloody flesh, and the ravens loosed him and flew away.
Vheod finally used his supernatural power to catch himself and slow his descent, sinking down from the tree tops. The ability granted him mostly vertical movement, and certainly not the speed needed to catch the huge raven now. He hit the ground and crumpled, closing his eyes. His wounds quickly dragged him toward unconsciousness.
Before the darkness could completely claim him, Vheod felt a soothing warmth flow through his body. He felt the pain from some of the larger wounds fade, while the sting of the smaller wounds disappeared completely. Despite a longing to enjoy this pleasure fully, letting him fall into a peaceful sleep, he forced his eyes open. Melann kneeled over him, Whitlock’s sword and crossbow at her feet. Sweat and blood covered her body and stained her hair. It appeared the ravens had been as savage to her as they’d been to Vheod.
“Come, Vheod,” she pleaded. “We can take the horses. We can follow the raven. It’s got to land somewhere.”
She was right. He rose, saying, “You should heal yourself first. You can’t make it too far like that.”
She nodded quickly and recited her plea to Chauntea. Her eyes contained an intensity Vheod hadn’t seen in her before now. He watched as her own gashes and bleeding cuts disappeared, her healing magic sealing the wounds as if they’d never existed at all.
“You saw him,” she said. Vheod wondered if she blamed him for his failure to bring Whitlock down. He’d been so close.…
“He was still alive, wasn’t he?” she asked as she stood and grabbed her brother’s weapons.
“Yes,” Vheod lied. “I saw him breathing.” He handed Whitlock’s boot to her—he’d held on to it the whole time.
She forced a weak smile and took it. “We’ve got to get going, then. It flew to the west.”
The two of them ran back through the pine copse once again. They crossed though the wooded vale. Neither spoke.
Crossing through the trees, they ascended the hill and reached their camp. Melann stored Vheod’s sword and crossbow on her horse and quickly threw their packs over the steed’s back. Vheod helped load Whitlock’s horse.
Melann paused only long enough to ask Vheod one plaintive question: “What’s going on?”
“Orrag spoke of someone called the Ravenwitch. He said I should beware her. This can’t be a coincidence.”
She only nodded and went back to her work. A tear—probably more from exasperation than anything—flowed down her cheek. Something inside Vheod grew tight at the sight of it.
When they were finished loading the horses, Vheod climbed into the saddle of Whitlock’s mount. It snorted and stomped as if it sensed something wrong. It took Vheod a moment to realize that what it sensed was him. The creatures of this world would never let him forget how different he was. He jerked hard on the reins with a grimace crossing his face. His might brought the horse under control, but he kept the grimace. Melann looked away from this scene and mounted her mare. The two of them beckoned the animals to speed.
They headed west, looking upward for the raven.
The sky was still filled with birds, but the diabolical creatures no longer paid them any attention. As they flew to the west as one, they made it easy for Vheod and Melann to follow.
The saddle chafed at a wound on his leg that Melann’s healing hadn’t coped with—Vheod’s body still sported a number of small scrapes and scratches, in fact. He looked down to his thigh and saw that his leggings were ripped open. He did remember a pain there early on in the fight. He saw that the Taint had been slashed by a raven’s beak. The pain he remembered, however, came before ravens swooped down on him, Vheod thought, and it had been more of a prickling than the sharper pain he now felt from the wound.
Chapter Twelve
Melann hoped that keeping up with the ravens would be easier, but even with their swift, well rested horses she and Vheod fell behind. The birds didn’t need to worry about the physical landscape, while Melann and Vheod were forced to guide their mounts around trees and rocks and ride up and down steep slopes. The ravens flew straight and swiftly together like a flight of arrows launched from powerful bows.
Melann thought about Vheod’s words. She didn’t like the sound of someone who called herself the Ravenwitch. What could this witch possibly want with Whitlock? Was it something special about him, or was he just a random victim of some horrible desire? Had they fallen into someone’s trap, or was Whitlock simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?
She glanced at Vheod and saw the grim determination in his set jaw. Melann was glad not to be alone. If Vheod hadn’t been with her, she was sure the ravens would’ve carried her off as well. His presence comforted her, though she was still just a little afraid of him as well.
The savage fury that Vheod displayed reminded her that he was, in part, a demon. When she saw him fighting with the ravens, for a short while it seemed he took on a completely different countenance. He’d seemed a different person—if a person at all. She didn’t like thinking these thoughts, but they came to her unbidden. A part of Vheod was, and probably always would be, a monster.
The glimpse of the savage Vheod she’d seen seemed the exception, not the rule. If she could keep him from getting into similar situations, perhaps she could help him resist his evil nature. Of course, having him ride with her to encounter the ravens again—and perhaps their mysterious mistress—probably wasn’t a good start. She vowed to herself to do whatever she could to help him fight to be the man he wanted himself to be. Perhaps that was part of the reason the Mother of All had brought them together.
Or perhaps Chauntea knew Melann would need Vheod’s help to rescue Whitlock. She shuddered again at the thought of riding into unknown danger like this alone. Surely Chauntea was guiding her and taking care of her.
They followed the ravens, pushing their horses as much as they dared. The sky remained mostly overcast, and the air was cooler than it had been. Whitlock and his captor were out of sight, but Melann and Vheod moved fast enough to see the cloud of smaller ravens moving steadily westward. Once or twice they lost sight of the birds but saw them again once they crested the next hill.
They entered a wide valley filled with trees and lush greenery. Melann assumed that a river most likely flowed through the area, fostering and nurturing all the plant life. Once again, they lost sight of the ravens. The canopy of trees was thick, casting shadows over large areas, but letting in just enough light in others to produce a thick undergrowth of grasses, bushes, and climbing vines. The air was still.
Wordlessly exchanging glances of indecision, the two slowed a little and rode westward through the woods. As they rode, Melann wondered if they’d lost the ravens for good. Perhaps the birds led them into this wooded area for just that reason. They’d seeme
d rather intelligent, at least in their ability to coordinate their actions. Melann wondered if she and Vheod had been drawn into a trap—a fate as horrible as that which befell Whitlock. Melann steeled herself against her fear, but she remained wary.
* * * * *
Blood coated the blade of his sword. Vheod looked around and discovered he had no idea where he was, or how he’d gotten there. He stood on a smooth wooden floor, thin wisps of gray-blue mist coiled around his feet and partially obscured the floor, but he could see and feel enough to know it was made of wood. Rounded wooden walls rose to either side, each almost close enough to touch. Smatterings of black moss grew on the wood, clinging like perspiration. The air was cold, but damp. He held a torch in his left hand, which had been burning for some time, it appeared. He didn’t remember lighting it. The light revealed that, forward and back, this passage of wood extended into darkness.
Where was he? What had happened?
He saw that the blood on the blade was mixed with some yellowish substance he couldn’t identify. He was wounded, and while he remembered a number of scratches from the battle that morning—he assumed it was that morning—he seemed to have a few new cuts and something that looked like a bite on his leg. The Taint had moved to the back of his hand, and seemed no worse for the fact that it had been cut by a raven’s beak earlier in the day.
Melann was nowhere to be seen. Vheod stood in a dark corridor that seemed to have been hollowed out of wood. He looked down the corridor and listened closely. He heard nothing ahead. He checked behind him, and this time he heard movement in the distance, impossible to identify.
Vheod decided to move back that way. Before he did, however, he whispered an intense, “Melann?” He repeated it a few more times. No response came. Nothing changed.
He walked down the wooden passage. The torchlight revealed no signs of boards or even tool marks on the wood. In fact, if anything, it seemed that he walked through a hollowed out log rather than a building made of boards. The curve to the walls and floor gave the impression that he moved through a natural passage or tube that extended through a tree, if such a thing was possible.
The passage took Vheod a few paces then reached a staircase leading down. The steps were of the same smooth wood as the walls and floor, but no tool had crafted these regular, perfect stairs. Some sort of sorcery must be involved here—wherever here was.
Vheod looked behind him, again hoping to see Melann. How could they have been separated? He looked down at the torch he didn’t remember lighting, and the sword he didn’t remember drawing.
Blood.
Lords of the Abyss, no! The very thought that he might have harmed Melann churned his stomach. How could he have done such a thing and not realized it? He looked at the Taint. Was it possible, he wondered in horror, that somehow something else had taken control of him? Worse yet, he considered that it might not be something else at all—perhaps the tanar’ri side of his nature had forced him to do things he now no longer remembered.
He couldn’t remember ever losing time like this before, but maybe his dark, fiendish side did this to him from time to time. Perhaps he wasn’t as in control of his life as he thought.
Vheod ran down the stairs, this time shouting, “Melann!” He so wanted reality to prove his fears wrong.
“Melann!” he cried out again as he reached the bottom of the winding stairs. Already he grew disoriented in this strange enclosed environment. Mist still swirled around every footstep he took. The bottommost step led him into a rounded chamber, the torchlight illuminating most of it. Vheod saw no furnishings, but there was still some sign that an intelligence had designed the chamber and lived within it. He now understood the movement he’d heard.
Ravens flitted about the room, roosting on a high shelf along the opposite side from the stairs he’d just descended. Their droppings stained the floor and gave the room an acrid smell. Black rose-covered vines ran up along some of the walls, entwining around the ravens’ roost and down again. The ravens stopped when he entered, watching him with their black, soulless eyes. Emotionlessly they stared, as if waiting to see what he might do or say.
Vheod did and said nothing. He stared back in confusion. Ravens. He must have somehow arrived here while following the ravens that had taken Whitlock. The last thing he remembered was riding through a valley thick with trees, Melann at his side. She’d appeared so frightened. He’d wanted to comfort her, but things like that didn’t come easily to him. He had no experience with such displays of emotion or caring.
“Melann!” he called again.
At the sound of his shout, some of the ravens nervously flapped their wings, and two or three even flitted to a higher perch on the shelf. A few cawed.
Vheod looked around him quickly. He stepped into the room. The chamber’s only other exit was another curving staircase, leading down even further. Keeping a cautious eye on the ravens, Vheod went to the other staircase and went down. The ravens did nothing, though they watched his every move.
The stairs led Vheod down into yet another room that seemed identical to the first, including the climbing rose vines, though there was no roost filled with ravens. Instead, a wooden table and four simple stools filled most of the room. Vheod looked at the furniture and saw that it wasn’t furniture at all. The stools and even the table grew up out of the floor, from the same smooth, uncut wood that made the rest of this place. Obviously, some sort of plant-affecting sorcery was at work here, though even that didn’t explain where he was.
A few bird droppings scattered about the floor, just enough to indicate that the ravens—or some of the ravens—came down here occasionally, but this wasn’t their main roost. The mist was even thinner here, and rose vines crawled all about the walls and on the table. Vheod didn’t see any of the black moss here, or even in the room above, like he’d seen in the corridor where it had seemed he first arrived.
Another stairway descended farther, and Vheod left this room and the sounds of ravens behind. This stairway led down into silence but not darkness. Vheod saw that he no longer needed the torch he carried, for the room below was illuminated by a glowing sphere of soft, blue light. The sphere floated in the middle of the room, which seemed about the same size as the two above it, and round like those as well. These rooms seemed grown rather than built. As before, the room was all wood—almost. In this chamber, unlike those above, the wood on the floor parted, leaving patches of exposed, wet soil. Another staircase descended farther on the opposite side of the chamber, but Vheod could see that it sank down into the earth, not wood.
Near the bottom of the stairs, the climbing black rose vines formed a curtain so thick Vheod couldn’t see what it concealed. Judging by its size, however, he thought it might be a door. He had little desire to descend underground at this point, so he hoped the answers he sought would lie beyond the curtain. He paused to yell for Melann again but received no response. In a change of tactics, he called out, “Whitlock?” but still no reply came.
Trying to avoid the long, sharp thorns the vines presented, Vheod gingerly pushed the curtain to one side. Even though he was careful, a thorn pricked him lightly, and he winced for a moment, then cursed himself for forgetting to use his sword to move the curtain again.
Again?
What did that mean? He definitely, for a moment at least, felt as though he’d moved this curtain aside before.
Using his sword to help this time, Vheod passed through the curtain and found himself back in the woods. These seemed to be the same trees into which he and Melann had ridden, though the exact surroundings were not familiar. In the distance, Vheod thought he heard running water, like a river or a stream. Ahead he saw their horses. Both lay slain on the ground, dozens of ravens picking at the flesh of their corpses.
He stepped out of the trunk of a giant tree, larger than he really had the time or inclination to grasp. At his feet, near the curtain-door, lay a giant raven like those he’d fought earlier, dead. It had been hacked by a blade, and
its bloody corpse actually brought a sigh of relief to Vheod. The blood on his blade was almost certainly the same blood that stained the feathers of the giant raven.
The blood was not Melann’s. He hadn’t lost control to his darker side, or at least so it seemed. His memories had still left him somehow, for it seemed almost certain he’d been here before and fought this monstrous raven. There were many unanswered questions, the most important of which was where was Melann, and what was this yellowish syrupy substance on his blade?
As if in answer to his silent query, a creature trotted around the trunk of the tree to the doorway in front of which Vheod still stood. This creature seemed canine, walking on four legs. It stood almost chest high to the cambion, and its flesh was a dark yellow. Unlike a dog, which it resembled in the shape of its face, its tall, pointed ears, and its body’s shape, it had no fur. Instead, covering its flesh were the same black tendrils of rose vines that grew within the chambers through which Vheod had just passed, and he now noticed they grew so thickly over the surface of the giant tree that he almost couldn’t see its bark. The only difference between the black rose vines on the dog creature was that the thorns on it were pronounced and appeared particularly dangerous.
The thorn-covered beast growled at Vheod and leaned back into a battle-ready stance. Vheod had no desire to fight this dog, but judging by the wounds on its back and side and the yellowish substance that oozed from them like sap from a tree, he’d fought it before. Now the creature that he couldn’t remember wanted a rematch. Vengeance and anger filled its red eyes.
“Fine,” Vheod said to the beast resignedly. “If this is what you want so badly, come and get it.” He hefted his blade, dropping the torch to the bare earth so he could hold his sword in both hands.
