Bloodwalk

by James Davis

  Kaeless squinted, trying to make out the dark blur against the lightening sky, trying to identify that familiar voice. She held her breath, waiting for that woman to speak again, to absolve her soul of wrongdoing.

  “She isn’t dead.” Morgynn reached out to stroke her mother’s matted hair, leaning in and whispering, “She is damned.”

  Morgynn’s hand clamped over Kaeless’s nose and mouth, foregoing magic or dagger so she could feel the life ebb between her fingers. In moments, her mother’s eyes glazed over, her trembling stopped, and the battle was over.

  A chant arose among the Gargauthans in the blasted field, a prayer to their devil-god. Morgynn heard them, but did not listen. She sat and stared at the hands she had felt melting away in a grave of ooze as demons had bargained over her soul. A gust of the north wind blew across the small hill, and she marveled at the gooseflesh that arose along arms covered in scars and blood.

  Panting, Morgynn awoke. Recognizing her surroundings, she rubbed her forehead and her eyes, trying to clear the fog. The plains and the Sedras camp were gone, replaced by her chamber atop the tower of Jhareat. The dreams had ended.

  Morgynn sat on the edge of the divan, bent at the waist, rubbing her temples and shutting out the phantom noises of her awakening. Khaemil was nearby; she felt the vial of his blood at her belt stir and churn. He could wait. She sat still for a long time, trembling as her emotions ran amok. No matter how much she slept, she always awoke exhausted.

  Morgynn descended the stairs carefully, weary from dreaming too long. Near the bottom, she heard voices outside. Talmen’s was one—his voice and emotions were known to her through the connection she’d forged on his forearm. Khaemil was the other. She stopped to listen before revealing herself. Tracing a finger lightly on the wall and whispering a spell, the stone became as clear as glass so she could watch them, though they could not see her.

  “She sleeps still?” Talmen asked.

  “No, she has awakened. Her screams stopped only moments ago.”

  “Ah, then she has rested. Good. Matters are grim enough without having to worry about her judgment.”

  Khaemil turned away from Talmen, facing the wall, smiling and shaking his head.

  “Did you honestly think you would come to this point and not have your precious life threatened by some enemy? Or would you prefer that we choose a more fitting location for your Order, some place uninhabited and far away, perhaps?”

  “I am no coward, shapechanger. My only fear is that our ambitions may exceed our ability. We have traveled across half of Faerûn, growing in numbers but dwindling in prospects. Any reservations I have concerning this one are well founded, I assure you.”

  Khaemil smirked and looked sidelong at Talmen.

  “Your doubts will mark you, human. Leave them behind when we march or they will pierce your flesh and put your body in the grave where your mind already rests.” He looked back to the tower’s entrance as Morgynn appeared. “This, I assure you.”

  Morgynn stood with her fingertips pressed to her temples. Her eyes were closed as she walked, but her form was straight and her step was sure. Despite the lingering distress of her nightmare, she was confident in her bearing.

  Talmen and Khaemil parted as she neared and passed between them. Her hands slowly left her aching head. Stretching her neck in a spasm that helped to separate physical action and wild emotion, she opened her eyes and beheld the monstrous troops that lay waiting on the field of stone. Although few in number compared to the garrison she hoped to command one day, the nature of the minions would be both horrific and daunting to any enemy.

  “I commend you, Malefactor. Your wizards and priests have done well.” She favored him with a look over her shoulder. “The malebranche will be interesting to observe in battle. What little there may be.”

  Talmen bowed. Morgynn was amused by the change in the priest’s thoughts and actions now that she was in his presence.

  “Thank-you, Lady Morgynn, but our servants are summoned merely to complement your own. The bathor numbers far outweigh my Order’s meager contribution.”

  “Very good,” she replied. “Go. Take your place and gather them. Our path will be prepared shortly.”

  “Yes, my Lady.”

  Talmen walked swiftly toward the forest’s edge. He showed no emotions, but she felt him tremble beneath his mask as he stared into the trees and gripped the scar seared on his arm. Khaemil’s words still echoed in his mind, and Talmen endeavored to bolster his feelings to match his show of courage. She left his mind then, confident that his fear of her was greater than his fear of death.

  “I wager he will soil himself if the oracles have a guard posted at the gate, my lady,” the shadurakul said over the droning work of the wizard-priests around the tower.

  The humor in Khaemil’s jest was not lost on her, but her mind was elsewhere as she scanned the damp ground.

  “No doubt. But as long as he makes it that far, his fear is irrelevant.”

  Finding what she sought, Morgynn knelt on the ground, tracing long fingers around a puddle of water. She mumbled words of magic and waved one hand erratically over the water’s surface while the other reached for a pouch at her side. A sliver of wood appeared in her hand from the pouch—a splinter from the ancient scrying bowl in Goorgian’s Well. It would be a catalyst for her spell to allow her simple scrying to become more intrusive than her targets might enjoy. Completing the words of the spell, she finished the incantation by biting her lip and drawing blood. This she spat in the center of the puddle and it flashed with light, dimming to show a scene of swirling mist and impenetrable gray.

  “Sisters,” she whispered, focusing on the materializing image of the pale grove of oaks hidden in the forest.

  Their leafy voices emanated from the water, sounding hollow and far away. Though their words were unintelligible, their tone of defiance was unmistakable.

  From her pouch, Morgynn produced the Stone of Memnon and held the glossy black stone above the puddle, dipping it to brush the surface. Tiny ripples tore through the sylvan scene. Its effect on the trees was immediate, causing the branches to twist and writhe as they’d done before when confronted with the artifact.

  “What do you want, blood-witch?”

  She ignored their insult, admiring their tenacity and empathizing with their anger.

  “A path. You three together have much control of the forest. I desire that you part the undergrowth and allow my followers to pass. East, if you please.”

  They did not respond, but the sounds of a disturbance in the forest served as their answer. Morgynn watched eagerly. To her left, trees parted, roots shifted, and entangling vines and bushes pulled back, revealing a wide road of soft soil.

  The leaves in the image of the grove shook and hissed as the sisters spoke.

  “Our influence reaches far, but not to the other side. You must forge your own road beyond ours.”

  “We shall make do,” Morgynn replied, and dismissed the image in the puddle.

  Rising, she brushed mud from her red robes and discovered Talmen standing at the edge of the road, staring into the shadowy avenue that had seemingly appeared from nowhere. She touched a fingernail to her arm in a place corresponding with the dark glyph on his.

  Morgynn revealed the true extent of the link she had forged into his skin and spoke, her words resoundingly loud in his mind. “Follow the path as far as it goes. The bathor will clear the rest.”

  He nodded, clearly unnerved by the sudden command, then shouted to those waiting behind him.

  Morgynn smiled as they marched into the Qurth. She felt the weakening pulse of her children as they moved away from her, leading her army to the gates of Brookhollow and the doorstep of the Hidden Circle.

  Sodden grass lay bent and broken across the western edge of the Reach in the wake of the heavy rain still moving southward along the Qurth’s border. In the midst of the swamped plain, a solitary figure paused in her travels and gathered the ingredients of tr
aditional magic. The ancient language of the Ghedia, the grass witches of the Shaar, sang in the air.

  Mud sucked at the Ghedia’s bare feet as she circled a pot of boiling water. Floating reeds churned and tumbled on its surface. Her loose clothing rippled in the wind and beaded bracelets dangled from her wrists, clicking like tiny wind chimes as she waved her arms and hummed, working the old magic of the Shaar.

  As she hummed, she traced a stick through the mud every so often, writing down what she saw in the boiling pot. Her deep voice continued the casting song of her ancestors, but her mood grew grim as understanding dawned on her.

  Her Ghedia sisters had already moved on, wandering the troubled grasslands of the Reach seeking answers and signs, protecting anything sacred as well as the ancestral ground of the Shaaryans. Their auguries had become erratic of late, showing danger and threat from every direction but not revealing the source. Lesani slowed her dance and stopped, her long brown hair falling from beneath her hooded cloak, framing the worried expression on her exotic and mature Shaaryan features. The flames of the fire danced in her deep brown eyes as she gazed upon the muddy runes.

  For years, she and her fellow shamans had ignored the aura of darkness around the Qurth Forest, accustomed to its presence in the background of their seeing spells. Recently, it had begun to radiate with a strange magic—magic that grew stronger by the moment and moved sluggishly, as if just awakened.

  Yet all the signs pointed south, to Brookhollow.

  She narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips, and exhaled a long breath. Scanning the darkness and roiling mist on her left, she deliberated silently. She knew her duty, as all of the Ghedia did, but this would not be an easy decision. The Savrathans had long ago broken ties with the old magic of the Shaar and would not readily accept the assistance of those labeled heretics by the Hidden Circle.

  If they still lived and had not succumbed to plague or secret foes by now, she thought.

  Finding a cure for the blush had been a concentrated effort for the Ghedia lately. The runes Lesani had drawn, though, were clear: Plague, War, Twilight, Blood, and the eye-shaped symbol for Prophecy, the closest rune in the Dethek alphabet for Savras, not yet a god when the language was young.

  Lesani thought of Elisandrya, one of the few hunters still friendly to the shaman sisters and acquainted with their ways. She knelt and grabbed a fistful of grass, twisting the blades together, breaking them in half and rubbing them between her palms, staining her hands green as she squeezed them. The spell of the green-fire sprang to her mind.

  “If for no one else, then for young Elisandrya.”

  She stamped her foot in the mud, chanting the ancient call of the grass witches. The words of the magic were older than remembered time, lost in the history of the Shaar, older than the Shoon Dynasties, and older than the Calim Desert. Her voice was an echo from an age forgotten, passed down from shaman to shaman in the great oral history of the Shaaryan tribes.

  Raising her folded hands to her lips, she blew upon them, igniting them with a flickering green light. She cast the crushed grass into the boiling pot, setting the water aflame. Using a stout stick, she upturned the pot’s contents, pouring them onto the fire beneath. The flame sprang to life, whooshing upward in a blazing emerald bonfire.

  Lesani stepped back from the heatless flame and began to gather her belongings, the sparse possessions of a nomadic life. The flame would reach beyond darkness and fog, beyond ruins and all obstacles, visible only to her sisters. They would return and they would follow, of this Lesani was sure. Whether they journeyed to war or a funeral, though, she could not say. The green-fire was a symbol of both.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A world of black mist and undulating fog surrounded Elisandrya, carrying winds that froze her flesh almost to the point of burning. The realm they traveled not only bore the shadows of the present—Eli glimpsed apparitions of the past, as if lurking in unknown corners. Her grasp on Quinsareth’s hand had quickly evolved into a tight hug around his waist. She could not help feeling that if she lost contact with him she might tumble away forever into the company of half-seen ghosts. She did not look down—it was enough that she felt her feet walking upon a spongy, half-real surface that flew by at ungodly speed. Through squinting eyes, she could make out a tiny patch of darkness that came nearer as they journeyed through the hidden world.

  Their eyes had met once during the swift journey, each sensing the inexplicable connection they’d made, perhaps enhanced by the shadowalk. Her quiet prayer to Savras, finished in this shadowy realm, had given them both an insight they could neither control nor deny. She recognized the connection of consciousness and dream that accompanied her god’s brief and sometimes confusing visions. The shadowalk had somehow awakened that spark of faith within her that called for Savras’s wisdom and vision. Eli had turned quickly away, feeling exposed and vulnerable, but she connected again as Quin’s thoughts and feelings washed over her, a warm wind in the otherwise harsh environment.

  She could see both halves of him at once in her mind. The celestial light of his heritage was overlaid by the shadow of who he was in the world, the muted gray hues of the ghostwalker. She could feel ghostly tendrils passing through them both, like connections from one spirit to another. Lost in these thoughts and emotions, she closed her eyes and pressed her face closer to Quinsareth’s chest, feeling the warmth on her cheek that hid behind his shadow and old armor.

  Quin’s heart pounded in his chest. Never before had he experienced such a bond in the shadows of his road. A few fleeting times he thought he could sense another’s thoughts, but Elisandrya’s soul had flooded through him, caressing his back and shoulders, flowing down his arms and into his fingertips. Almost immediately, he wondered if she could see him the same way. When their eyes had met moments after the shadowalk began, he knew she could, they both knew.

  So much of himself was secret by necessity. Being unknown and near faceless to his enemies strengthened his powers in their presence. He had left his true name far behind him, in the dying ears of the Hoarite priest who’d inducted him to the lone lifestyle of the ghostwalker. It had become a ritual to him, each night before making camp, to reiterate who he was and remember his past, lest he become lost to sword and shadow. He feared abandoning the man he was and becoming like the mindless gemstone golems he’d heard of in legends as a boy in Mulhorand. He had begun this ritual on the banks of the River of Swords, as the small temple that had accepted this strange young man burned behind him. Ever since, the thought of his true name carried the smell of smoke from that fire.

  Quin refused to look at Eli, afraid of what judgment he might see in her eyes. Instead, he focused on the shadow road. They had traveled for some time, and he expected to reach Brookhollow at any moment if Eli’s prediction of a three-day journey had been correct. The shadows had grown swifter over the years as he traveled them more and more. Most times, he could complete a day’s journey in less than half the time of this journey. He was anxious to meet this High Oracle Sameska and judge for himself the nature of her prophecy.

  He dreaded the action he might take, afraid that the path laid out for him might alienate this woman with whom he felt momentarily bonded. He knew he could not abide, could not accept, the prophecy or the edict it had spawned. This gave him pause, cleared his mind, and made him afraid of a mission that might wield Bedlam against people she knew. The blood of the good was demanded more vehemently than that of evil, for it was often the blood of betrayal.

  The shadows thinned around them. Objects became more distinct, inertia settled in their stomachs as they slowed. Each step became truer to the laws of nature. The walls of nearby homes appeared beneath the shadowy twins. Rain fell upon them like a tide and the shadows disappeared completely.

  No one witnessed their arrival, no herald or watchman, no merchant packing his wares at the day’s end. The streets were empty and still. Even the rats had sought shelter from the pounding rain, explosive thunder, and flickering li
ghtning.

  Quinsareth helped Elisandrya to her feet. The transition from shadow to gravity had unbalanced her and flipped her stomach. A flashing bolt above illuminated their faces as their eyes met.

  Quin could feel her arms clinging to him. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She raised a hand to her cheek, catching her breath before answering. “I’ll be fine.”

  They glanced about, taking stock of their position. The lightning showed them the curving ivory walls of the Temple of the Hidden Circle, mere blocks away. Both noticed that the storm had grown even stronger. It raged above the Qurth and it moved ever closer, a sure sign that little time remained for conversation concerning their shadowalk.

  Quinsareth strode purposefully onward, splashing through the flooded streets. Elisandrya matched his stride toward the temple. They found the structure unguarded, the gates open and banging against the white walls in the icy wind.

  The tall double doors at the top of the stairs stood unbarred. They opened easily to give the pair entrance to the long windowed hallway that led to the inner sanctuary.

  The domed sanctuary of the temple was eerily quiet and full of dancing shadows as the lightning neared the outskirts of the city. A growing dread wracked Sameska’s senses, and she paced the perimeter of the room, stopping to pause briefly each time she passed the murals depicting the city of Jhareat. She stared at the tower in the old paintings, surrounded by burning buildings and bloody warfare. The tower remained untouched by the fires and acts of war, pointing skyward as if to torture her with her own fears.

  She glanced upward warily now and then, as if expecting to find Savras in the clouded sky, looking down upon her through the glass dome above.

  “Foolishness,” she told herself each time, knowing it was a commoner’s idea that the gods lived among great cities in the sky. It was small comfort, though, as she strode on weary legs through his temple.