Summoner of Storms

by C. Greenwood

  The dryad shook his head. “Just natural weather passing over, I think. But we should make for Arneroche as quickly as we can before the storm breaks.”

  Despite his warning and the ominous thunder rumbling overhead, the clouds never did open up, and it was several hours yet before they arrived at the floor of the valley. With the angry clouds bringing on a premature dusk, Eydis and Geveral reached the vale’s winding river. They planned to refill their waterskin before crossing the fields to where Arneroche lay not far off.

  As they neared the water’s edge, Eydis heard a rustling in the tall grass. At the same time, she caught a blur of movement at the edge of her vision in the direction of a cluster of boulders beside the lapping stream.

  Her mind flying immediately to the assassin who had attacked her in Hedgecote, she drew her knife. She hissed a warning to Geveral before realizing the dryad was already standing frozen, face-to-face with the enemy.

  It was not the foe Eydis had first feared. The assassin would have been bad enough. But the decaying human who stood with the tip of his sword against Geveral’s chest made her heart stop. She had seen living corpses like this one before. Had viewed them in her dreams and, even before that, had witnessed them in action at the battle of Asincourt. This was one of Rathnakar’s undead soldiers.

  At the sound of stealthy footsteps behind her, Eydis spun to find two more corpse soldiers creeping out from behind the boulders. She tightened her grip on her knife even as the high grasses nearby parted to reveal dozens more enemies rising from their hiding places.

  She didn’t dare take her eyes away from their approach long enough to glance back at Geveral. But she heard the thudding sound of his staff dropping to the ground in surrender.

  As Eydis stood trying to decide whether to follow his example or to fight for her life, despite the enemy’s overwhelming numbers, a strange voice cut into her thoughts.

  “So these are the catalysts my master seeks.”

  The undead soldiers encircling Eydis and Geveral parted to allow a newcomer to enter the ring.

  He was not an impressive figure, this stranger. He was a middle-aged man of average height and build. His clothing beneath his dark cloak was poor and simple. But he possessed a face that was impossible to look away from. One side was ordinary, neither handsome nor ugly. But the other was hideously marked with the shape of a great hand burned into his flesh from temple to chin.

  Eydis knew exactly how he had acquired the burn, for she had been an unwilling witness to the scene, through a dream. It was in the eerie green room in the Umanath tomb that Rathnakar, clad in his dark armor, had laid his hand upon this fellow and claimed him for a servant.

  The marked man was speaking again. “When the master’s spies informed me of your passage through the swamp, I was intrigued.”

  Eydis’s mind flitted briefly to the flock of ravens that had watched her and Orrick struggle through the marsh.

  “Finding such an unlooked-for prize about to drop into my lap, I would not risk frightening you off,” he continued. “Not when you could be apprehended with so little effort.”

  As Eydis mentally added up the numbers of her enemies and weighed the chances of breaking through them, she played for time. “Who are you?” she demanded of the marked man.

  His lips twitched in what might have been amusement. “I suspect you already know who I am, dream watcher. But if you desire a name to match my deformed face, I will give it. I was once called Varian. Varian Nakul, keeper of the crypts at Umanath.”

  If the name meant nothing to Eydis, at least saying it aloud seemed to have some effect on its speaker. His look of amusement faded to be replaced by one of mild confusion or unease.

  As if to steady himself, he reached for the heavy-looking chain he wore around his neck and closed his fist protectively over the glowing medallion that dangled from it. Next to his deformed face, that magical medallion was the most striking thing about him.

  “What is that?” Eydis prodded, sensing her enemy was distracted by some internal struggle.

  The lost look that had crept into Varian Nakul’s eyes vanished as quickly as it had appeared. With a seeming return of confidence, he answered, “It is a gift from the master. A tool to ensnare and enslave the minds of the weak. Last night, I would have commanded its power to add the inhabitants of Arneroche to my army. But as we made stealthy preparations for attacking the town, we learned of your approach. Knowing the master would value your capture above all the lives of Arneroche, we delayed our plans and lay in wait for you.”

  “But now I see one of you is not as described,” he said. His gaze sharpened, shifting from Eydis to Geveral. “You are no barbarian swordsman.”

  Geveral exchanged glances with Eydis and shrugged helplessly, obviously reluctant to give Orrick away. If the two of them were doomed, there was no need for the enemy to know Orrick too might yet be near enough for capture. At least one catalyst had evaded the trap.

  Varian shrugged off their failure to answer. “The real question now,” he continued, “is what to do with the two of you. Until the master communicates his will on the matter, you must be kept on hand and safely out of the way. You can’t be allowed to interfere with plans for Arneroche.”

  Eydis looked to the nearby settlement just visible in the fading daylight and pitied its inhabitants.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was just like Eydis’s dream. The burning village. The smoke rising to the sky. The villagers killed or pressed into Varian’s army by means of the medallion that enspelled them. Except tonight it was happening to Arneroche. And this time Eydis watched from a distance.

  She and Geveral had been disarmed, their hands bound in front of them, and kept under the guard of a half dozen undead soldiers. Their party remained behind at the riverbank while Varian and the rest of his army had gone on to attack the settlement.

  Helpless to do anything but watch the destruction unfolding on the horizon, Eydis comforted herself with one small flicker of hope. As yet, no one had taken notice of the golden scepter. After splitting with Orrick up in the hills, she had returned the scepter to Geveral’s keeping. He had tucked it back into his belt, where it remained conveniently concealed by his cloak.

  It was their good fortune that their captors apparently considered the injured dryad so little threat they had yet to search him. Keenly aware that circumstance could change at any time, Eydis was cooperative and gave no cause for trouble. Geveral followed her lead.

  Hours after the start of the attack, when the settlement was finally subdued, Eydis and Geveral were finally moved from their location and driven through the fields toward Arneroche.

  As they drew near, Eydis saw that only one side of the town had been burned, the other half allowed to remain standing. It seemed even Varian’s people saw the wisdom in preserving what they hadn’t yet had a chance to plunder. Or perhaps they had simply discovered the stone walls of the dwellings, unlike the thatched roofs, resisted flame.

  Led through blood-stained paths and past eerily silent homes, Eydis and Geveral approached a tall building that might have been a meeting hall. The only completely timber construction in the settlement, it was being consumed by fire, the crackling flames and red sparks rising up to the night sky.

  Silhouetted by the blaze was the figure of Varian Nakul, standing with his hands on the head of a kneeling villager. Eydis recoiled at the vacant look on the captive’s face as he gazed up fixedly at Varian’s glowing medallion.

  When Varian turned from enspelling this last villager, he looked spent, as if excessive use of the medallion had exhausted much of his strength. But he also appeared triumphant, surrounded by hundreds of soldiers newly won to Rathnakar’s cause.

  “Now to finish this night’s work,” he said ominously when Eydis and Geveral stood before him. “Only two remain as yet unwilling to submit to the master’s will.”

  As she was forced to kneel before the medallion’s wearer, Eydis mentally ran through the magic
skills she possessed, desperately searching for a way one of them could be used to counter the Raven King’s magic. But neither lifetouch nor masking could deflect the power of the medallion, she knew. Neither could her visions save her.

  She knew a moment’s panic as Varian placed his fingertips against her temples. A strange shivery sensation washed over her. She felt the magic running down like cold water from her scalp to her heels. Expectantly, she waited for something to follow. Loss of will. A sudden desire to serve the dark purposes of Rathnakar.

  Nothing happened. After the initial ripple of discomfort, she felt no different than before.

  Varian appeared to sense his medallion was not affecting her as it should. He pressed the warm metal against the bare skin of her forehead, but still nothing changed.

  Clearly frustrated, Varian tried the magic on Geveral next. But again he had no success.

  Rathnakar’s servant looked baffled. “The master’s power has never failed,” he muttered. He looked at Eydis and Geveral with something akin to respect. Or perhaps it was fear.

  Eydis shared his amazement. Catalysts, it seemed, were immune to the powers of at least one instrument of evil.

  Seeming to come to a sudden decision, Varian briskly ordered his soldiers to haul Eydis and Geveral away and lock them up in one of the unburned houses overnight. He would deal with them in the morning.

  As they were led away down one of the many paths twisting between ruined houses, Eydis tried to be aware of her surroundings, to look for chances of escape. But in the darkness and confusion it was difficult even to memorize the route they followed. The rooftops that had been set ablaze cast flickering shadows over the scene, and occasional screams pierced the night as fierce undead soldiers swarmed over the town, looting and pursuing scattered survivors.

  Eydis realized that even if they managed to lose their guards, she and Geveral would almost certainly be recaptured very swiftly. There were too many enemies to be evaded. Besides, Geveral’s injured leg would slow them down, making fleeing difficult.

  Reaching a quieter area that appeared less damaged than others they had passed by, they paused before one of many dark silent houses. Eydis and Orrick were roughly shoved inside the stone house, and the door closed loudly behind them. Eydis had no doubt their captors would remain outside, guarding against any attempt at escape.

  It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the shadowed interior. As she grew gradually accustomed to the darkness, she quickly realized that if the house had seemed undamaged on the outside, the inside had not gone untouched by violence. Furniture had been overturned, food and possessions scattered about the floor.

  Carefully, she picked her way through the mess and made her way around the space, searching for another door, a hidden window, or any means of exit. This was a simple one-room home. Its main contents were a single bed, a table and bench, and a collection of woven baskets hanging overhead. There were no cooking or gardening implements that might be taken for weapons. And although Eydis’s hopes were briefly raised by a smoke hole over the cooking pit, she quickly determined it would be too narrow to squeeze through.

  Her exploratory circuit of the room came to an end when, behind an overturned bench, she discovered an all too familiar form. Even in this dim lighting, she knew a crumpled corpse when she saw one. The body sprawled on the floor appeared to belong to an old man. Unfit for Rathnakar’s army, he had apparently not been judged worth saving alive.

  Hesitating over the silver-haired corpse, Eydis thought of how Varian Nakul with his medallion not only claimed the minds and wills of the living but sometimes raised the dead. In some ways, what he did was not dissimilar to Eydis’s gift of the lifetouch.

  She had never used that skill on a mortal being before, had summoned it only twice in the past, both times giving life to stone. Now, crouching over the old man, she wondered for the first time whether she had a responsibility to put her lifetouch to other uses. It was a frightening idea. Not even when her little half sister, Asfrid, had been killed in Castidon had Eydis dared meddle in a power as awesome as what she contemplated now. Still, she sensed it was an experiment she would eventually have to make.

  She raised her hands, still bound, over the dead man and tried to remember exactly what emotions she had channeled that time on the Isle of Bones, when she had turned the arm of a statue to living flesh and pried a sword from its grasp. Her aim then had been to procure Orrick a weapon. Now she had a more important purpose.

  But just as she felt the stirring of power within her, a memory came to her. Again she heard the voice of the oracle at their first meeting, advising her against using her lifetouch to wake the dead. Had it been mere suggestion or a serious warning? And if a warning, why? Was it possible that if she brought this old man back from the abyss, rather than saving his life, she would instead create a mindless monster, no different than the soldiers of Varian’s making?

  Before she could resolve her doubts, Geveral broke into her thoughts. Upon hearing her friend calling her softly, she returned to his side.

  “I think I can get my hands loose,” Geveral whispered as he worked to wriggle them out of the poorly tied scrap of rope that held them.

  After a few more moments of effort, he was free of his bonds and untied Eydis’s hands as well.

  “I fear it will not do us much good,” she told him, keeping her voice low. “There is no way in or out of this place but by that door, which will not have been left unwatched.” She rubbed at her wrists where they had been worn raw by the rope.

  Geveral said, “If escape is beyond us, at least we can use this opportunity to better conceal the scepter.”

  “It is a miracle the thing has not been discovered already,” she agreed.

  They debated hiding the golden scepter somewhere in the house for future retrieval. But Eydis couldn’t shake a strong sense that it would be disastrous for the scepter to leave the possession of a catalyst, now it had come into their hands. She didn’t know why she felt this, but she was learning to trust such instincts. Luckily, Geveral trusted them as well.

  In the end, he bound the scepter to his thigh, inside his trouser leg, to conceal it from view. The scepter was of a length that would still allow him to bend his leg, and his injury and limp supplied an excuse for any awkwardness in his walk.

  Now that they had done all they could, they agreed they should try to rest and prepare for whatever was to come in the morning. Neither of them had any desire to touch the furniture or even the scattered blankets of the house’s former unfortunate inhabitant. So they lay down on the bare dirt floor and attempted to sleep.

  Geveral’s breathing was soon deep and even, but it was a long time before Eydis could calm her mind enough to rest. She kept remembering Varian Nakul’s comment about awaiting orders from his master before determining the fate of the two catalysts. She had little doubt what those orders, when they arrived, would be.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Eydis was awoken in the morning by a pair of undead guards bringing food for the prisoners. Eydis was surprised by the gesture and had no doubt it had come from Nakul and not the guards. The undead themselves, she suspected, would just as soon devour their prisoners as feed them.

  Still, the presence of the grotesque living corpses did nothing to weaken her appetite. She and Geveral hungrily consumed the dried biscuits that were tossed at them. When Eydis asked for water, it was given. No protest was made at the fact the two captives had obviously managed to remove their bonds in the night. Although their guards watched them closely, they were allowed to remain unbound.

  This treatment left Eydis wondering what was going on in the head of Varian Nakul, regarding his captives. She had gone to sleep half expecting to be executed at dawn. Instead, their situation seemed unchanged from what it was last night. Their fate remained uncertain.

  After she had finished the last crumbs of her meal, she told one of the guards, “I want to talk with Varian Nakul.”

  The cold-eyed co
rpse she had heard Nakul call Gnash looked at her out of a hideously decayed face and made a noncommittal growl that could have meant anything. Eydis was left doubting her request would be conveyed to his commander.

  The door slammed, and she and Geveral were once more left alone in the semidarkness of the house. At least this time a little daylight seeped in around the edges of the door.

  There was no knowing how much time passed then, but Eydis judged it to be about an hour later that the door was dragged open again.

  Varian Nakul stood before them, framed by the doorway and outlined by the sun at his back. Eydis squinted into the light, much brighter now than it had been earlier. The morning must have worn on later than she realized.

  Although he stood straight backed as he surveyed them, the dark shadows beneath their captor’s eyes betrayed he was not yet fully recovered from last night’s activities. Clearly, using the medallion on so many villagers had sapped a great deal of his strength. But that didn’t stop him from observing they were unbound.

  “I am told you attempted an escape last night,” he said.

  “We untied ourselves,” Geveral admitted. “But we didn’t try to run away.”

  “Have you been fed and well kept ?” demanded Nakul. “My gifts to the master must not be damaged.”

  Instead of answering that, Eydis took the opportunity to ask a question of her own. “What word on us has your master sent?” It was the closest she could come to directly asking why they were being kept alive.

  “No word yet,” Nakul said briskly. “And I can’t await further instructions in this place. My army marches for Endguard today, and you will come with us.”

  Before Eydis could decide what to make of the news, he turned away as if to leave.

  “Wait,” she protested as the door was closing. “If we are expected to travel as far as the Kroadian border, my injured friend here will need his walking stick back. He surrendered it at the river but can’t walk any long distance without it.”