by J. C.
A yellow speckled lizard crawled slowly across a spruce's wide trunk, its tail twice the length of its body. The tail dragged behind the reptile in a lengthy curve like a mouth in the bark below the glittering eyes of other creatures in this massive tree's shadowed upper reaches.
Why do you call us... now that you have abandoned us in our need to go your own way?
Chap bowed his head as the lizard's tail slipped out of sight behind the trunk.
I stand by her. I stand by my choice. And nothing you hope for has been lost as yet. But the others...
A flurry of skittering filled his ears like tiny claws and paws racing through the forest canopy in agitation.
Chap padded back and form impatiently. And the half-elf? He still serves his purpose, to keep Magiere from the reach of the enemy... and perhaps more.
A telling silence was the only reply, and he pressed further.
Let life bar death in this place. Hold off the restless dead. Hold them for even a short while. Keep the sage and the anmaglahk safe.
Whispers and rustles in the leaves grew louder.
Chap knew his kin hated this forest of death. He rumbled in anger at their indecision.
Without her companions, the dhampir will fall to the enemy. Hold back the spirits of death, or what we seek will certainly be lost.
Whispers faded to silence.
Chap felt a wind, gentle at first but growing in strength, until it whipped at his fur. He heard cries in the dark that mingled with whispers from the trees and the skittering of life among them.
White mist whipped among the branches around the hollow in which Chap stood.
The grizzled soldier and scores of others took half-form in the air as they swirled together above him. More and more of the forest's wandering ghosts were pulled in. The girl with dark curls and torn throat rushed past him, caught in the gale. And all began to blur until they became nothing but translucent glowing streaks.
The whirlwind expanded until its circumference touched the dark branches above. The threads of white mist split and tangled in the forest canopy. Bit by bit, the wind died down to a breeze.
When the rustle of Chap's fur ceased, there was only the dark above him. All trace of the spirits had vanished, trapped by the forest.
Relief filled him. Leesil could find a way to face almost anything else that came, and Wynn might yet survive this night.
Chap waited no longer and bolted through a space in the sentinel trees. He thrashed through tangled branches and curtained moss, until he broke into the open and followed the scent of Magiere.
* * * *
Leesil was well into the forest when the first ghost assaulted him. He dodged only to be struck in the back by another. Icy pain made him stumble to his knees, and streaks like vapor in a wind exploded from his chest. When he rose, ducking through the trees to escape, he lost track of Wynn. When he circled back, she was nowhere in sight.
Breathing brought pain as he backtracked to find her, but a hideous form flew toward his face.
The man looked as if he'd been stretched until his bones were broken, and his arms and legs hung in the night air, distended from his shoulders and hips. Madness twisted his features as the spirit melted to a white blur and struck Leesil's torso.
The cold was so severe that the breath clogged in Leesil's chest. He tumbled to the wet ground trying to expel the chill from his lungs.
Leesil clawed up the trunk of a tree to his feet.
He had lost control of this journey, and he couldn't fight what his blades couldn't touch. He and Wynn would die here. The ghosts wouldn't stop until the very life was frozen out of them. And what would become of Magiere, left alone in this world?
Leesil drew in a painful breath. A gentle breeze crossed his skin, pulling at the branches and dangling moss around him. He looked for any place he might run, remembering the rush of air in the cavern when Ubad's guardian spirits had attacked them.
The breeze built to a wind... and then a gale that whipped his hair into his eyes as he clutched for a handhold on the base of a low stout branch.
Spirits all around thrashed frantically—but not at him.
The anger in their warped features transformed into fear. The broken man opened his slack jaw in a whispering scream as the wind dragged him away into the forest.
Translucent figures flew past Leesil on the air. Within moments, the forest around him emptied of all but the dark branches and wet foliage and long strands of moss.
The wind dropped with a last gust that pulled at his hair.
Leesil looked about, uncertain what had happened. His first instinct was to call out to Wynn, but he stopped himself. If anything else lurked here, he would give away not only his own position but possibly Wynn's, as well.
He silently cursed himself as a fool.
He never should have agreed to Magiere's reckless gambit. The four of them shouldn't have separated. He tried searching again for Wynn, but he had lost his sense of direction. Every step in these marshy woods looked the same as the last.
A spark of light in the distance caught his attention. It blinked in and out as it moved among the trees.
Leesil's fear melted in relief as he remembered Wynn's cold lamp. Then he spun behind an oak as that same relief vanished. Wynn hadn't been carrying her lamp when they'd fled the cavern. And the light was an orange yellow tint rather than crystal white.
He crouched as the glimmer came around the side of an oak. The figure carrying it took shape in Leesil's night sight.
Grayed and shriveled skin took on a sickly yellow cast in the glow and revealed eyes that bulged in sunken sockets. The topaz amulet Leesil had lost was still clutched in his bony hand.
Vordana held his shoulder where Leesil's blade had sliced through.
Leesil smelled the walking corpse even at a distance and remembered how that cut had broken the sorcerer's focus in the cavern. Vordana had a weakness in his decaying flesh that other undead did not.
Leesil crawled quietly along the ground, keeping his quarry in sight. The topaz glowed in Vordana's presence like a beacon. The sorcerer stopped to look about in puzzlement, and Leesil turned his course to move out ahead. He found duck brush between two trees and crouched there, gripping both blades.
Vordana wandered, turning slightly to his left, and Leesil bit his lip in frustration. Then the sorcerer curved back upon his original path. Waiting in the darkness, Leesil gauged the distance as his target neared.
Ten paces, five, two...
He sprang up and forward, driving his right blade in below Vordana's collarbone.
A soft metallic click came just before the sound of severed bone scraping against steel, but Leesil kept his eyes on his opponent's face. The force took Vordana off balance, and Leesil followed on the momentum.
Vordana's back slammed against a tree as the blade's tip drove deeper. The impact brought a shower of water drops cascading down upon both of diem from the branches above. The dead man's putrid stench thickened from the wound, and light dimmed as the topaz fell from his grasp.
Leesil raised his other blade to hack into Vordana's throat, and the sorcerer's filmy eyes widened. A chant rose behind Leesil's thoughts, filling the back of his mind. He changed the second blade's swing, taking the quicker path into Vordana's stomach. As the blade sank in, the chant swelled to a shriek, then ceased.
Vordana's mouth gaped. Leesil jerked the blade from the dead man's gut to draw back and strike for bis neck. A wave of fatigue struck him, and his blow faltered.
The blade's edge clipped Vordana's wounded shoulder, and the sorcerer flinched. His bony hands grasped Leesil's arms.
Fatigue flooded Leesil's body so quickly that his legs and arms quivered as he fought to stay on his feet. Vordana's voice filled his head.
Your life is my strength, half-breed. What a meal your elvish blood is.
Vordana's words were filled with malicious joy, but there was still fear in his skeletal face. Focus appeared to take great effort o
n his part, but Leesil felt his life being ripped from him by the walking corpse. He needed to break the undead's concentration, but he felt himself growing weaker.
Leesil let his legs buckle and the blade slide from Vordana's chest.
As he dropped, he twisted his wrists so that the blades came over the top of Vordana's forearms. Something hard jabbed his back through his hauberk as he hit the ground. He gave it no notice, and summoned all his strength to pull one leg up to his chest.
He used the weight of his own fall combined with the undead's grip. When Vordana began to topple toward him, Leesil kicked out into his abdomen.
Vordana rose up in the air, filmy eyes widened in surprise.
As the sorcerer flipped over Leesil's head, he slashed his blades outward in a last effort. Vordana slipped from sight, and Leesil lay prone and sweating on the wet ground.
Breath came with difficulty, as if his chest had no strength to rise and fall. Something still poked his back where he lay. His mind cleared, and he felt fingers still gripping his forearms inside the wings of his blades.
Leesil rolled to his side.
Bony hands were tightly latched on to his arms, but they weren't joined to anything. Only half the sorcerer's forearms remained, ending in cleanly sliced gray flesh and bone.
Leesil thrashed as he rolled to his knees, trying to dislodge the undead's hands. Their grip wouldn't release.
Vordana rose and stared at his own severed arms. No blood poured from the man's dead flesh. No tears of pain or anguish fell from his milky eyes. His voice called out through Leesil's head.
Bastard... half-blood!
Leesil kept fighting to breathe. How in this hellish land could he kill such a monster if its severed parts still obeyed its will? Taking its head was hopeless.
He slipped his left blade tip under the thumb of Vordana's hand still clinging to his right arm. Weakness rushed through his body, along with pain, as he felt Vordana begin to drain his life again. He slashed the digit off, and the hand fell away.
It hit the ground, fingers clawing air, and Leesil saw something shiny beside it.
His legs gave away under him, and he fell so quickly that his blade tips slid into the ground.
Half-pressed into the wet earth was a small brass urn, its top sealed with a whitish filling that might have been wax. Its chain had been split in half. The soft metal clink Leesil had heard at his first blow into Vordana's chest had been the chain severing on his blade's edge.
Leesil raised his head and saw Vordana coming for him. The sorcerer didn't seem aware that he'd lost the urn... didn't see it lying so close. Leesil knew he couldn't defend himself much longer, and he had to end this. If not by finishing this walking corpse, then at least by driving it off—as Wynn had once done. He shoved himself upright on his knees, and wavered as he lifted both blades.
Vordana hesitated at the sight of sharp steel in the air before him.
And Leesil swung downward, letting go with all his weight behind the blades.
His left blade missed and buried in the soft earth up to his fist.
The right struck true.
A snapping puff of vapor issued as the urn split in half. It smelled of pepper and the scent burned in Leesil's nose, making his eyes water. The sensation of his life draining away ceased.
Leesil's fatigue started to fade, little by little, and he looked up at Vordana.
The sorcerer clenched exposed teeth as he stared at the urn's halves to either side of Leesil's blade.
No... no... no...
Over and over, the one word filled Leesil's head as he struggled to his feet.
Ubad!
Leesil lunged at Vordana. Whatever the urn preserved of the sorcerer's presence, its loss had undone his ability to prey upon the living.
Vordana's filmy eyes turned fully white. They collapsed inside their sockets, and Leesil slashed. Vordana raised the stump of his arm to shield himself. The blade hit, skidded along bone, and tore away rotting flesh.
Ubad! Master, save me!
At this outcry, Leesil's fear sharpened to replace his lost strength. He couldn't let the withered mage save this creature. Vordana's grayed flesh shriveled further and split in places to reveal yellowed bone. The undead sorcerer decayed before Leesil, but it was not enough to satisfy him. He chopped down into Vordana's head.
The sorcerer crumpled to ground, still writhing with a spilt in his skull, and Leesil fell upon him, striking again and again.
When Leesil finally stopped, he was panting in exhaustion. He rose to his feet, wavered there, and stared down at the unrecognizable remains of Vordana's head. With one kick, he scattered the rotted pieces into the forest.
"Come back from that, if you can, " he gasped out.
Now he had to find Wynn... and Magiere and Chap.
A high-pitched scream carried through the forest from a distance.
"Wynn?" he whispered hoarsely.
Leesil snatched up the still-glowing topaz, and stumbled through the trees.
* * * *
Wynn knelt upon the ground, clinging to a tree trunk with both arms as the gale died away. She stayed there, shivering for a long while, before she could open her eyes.
The glimmers of the ghosts were gone, and she had fled so quickly, there had been no time to pick up her cold lamp from the cavern floor. Even the moon was hidden somewhere above the thick forest canopy. All she saw was the silent dark forest.
No ghostly translucent spirits. No thin trails of white in the air that pierced her with cold pain. And no Leesil.
"Leesil?" Wynn whispered.
He was nowhere to be seen, and she had no idea which direction she had run—which direction to turn and search for him. The sound of Wynn's own rapid breaths filled her ears, and she willfully slowed her breathing before it dizzied her.
"I am not lost, " she told herself.
If she could not find Leesil, then Magiere and Chap would come. Chap could track her... if those two had escaped the cavern.
Magiere had been so angry when the communion with her mother had ended. Ubad's suggestive words of her greater purpose only fed fuel to her rage. Wynn so often felt frightened both for and of Magiere that it was becoming a familiar state. She wondered what confidence Magiere and her mother's spirit had shared.
Her thoughts were cut short by thrashing in the forest.
Neither Leesil nor Chap would ever make so much noise. Perhaps Magiere? But wouldn't Chap lead her in a more stealthy fashion?
Wynn grabbed her crossbow and quiver from the ground and crawled around the tree trunk away from the sound. She peered out, and a dark figure moved haltingly through the forest.
She fumbled with the crossbow, trying to cock and load it. The figure pushed through a tangle of low branches, not bothering to hold them aside from whipping at its body and face.
Even in the darkness, Wynn saw the darker hollow of its mouth open and close with no sound but the wet smack of its lips coming together. She made out the long curve of steel in its grip. It was one of the dead seamen who had appeared in the cavern.
Wynn quietly slipped the quiver's strap over her shoulder and raised the crossbow, ready to step out and fire if it came close. A rancid stench surrounded her over the forest's thick smell. She turned at the rattle of branches behind her.
The second seaman's face pushed through a curtain of moss, green strands tangling on the stained teeth in its open mouth. Filmy eyes stared blindly ahead as it slashed at her with its saber.
Wynn screamed and clenched the crossbow's lever as she fell along the tree's side.
The garlic-soaked quarrel struck the dead seaman's stomach as his saber split bark where she'd crouched a moment before. The first seaman closed in from the other side, its clumsy feet stomping the wet earth.
Wynn scrambled on all fours, dragging the crossbow behind her. When she tumbled beyond the next clump of trees, she got to her feet and began recocking the crossbow. The way these things moved, she should be fast enou
gh to stay out of their reach. As she was about to pull out another quarrel, she looked back and nearly screamed again.
They were charging after her.
Wynn turned and fled. She heard more thrashing in the forest close behind as her short robe caught in low brush. Feet skidding in mulch, she jerked herself free.
Something grabbed her cowl from behind, and this time she cried out.
Wynn turned upon the grip, swinging her crossbow as a club. Its bow snapped off in pieces as the weapon collided with her attacker's head. The smell of putrefied flesh welled up around her.
His skin was gray and darkly splotched. Eyes without pupils stared blankly ahead, as the seaman raised his saber and brought it down at her head.
She held up the crossbow stock with both hands, and the saber cracked against it.
A deep voice call out from nearby. "Wynn! Where are you?"
"Leesil?" she called back. "I'm here! Please help— quickly!"
She struggled with the dead seaman, trying to hold him off.
A fist shot past her head from behind, striking the dead man's face, and he fell. But the corpse's grip held on Wynn's cowl, and she was jerked along, spinning around to fall backward to the earth.
The cowl ripped from her robe, and she rolled to hurry away on hands and knees. As she looked back, wiping dirt and muck from her face, she saw the dark silhouette rising up over the downed seaman.
In his hand he held a longsword.
Wynn froze in confusion. The figure standing over the seaman was too tall, and his hair was dark. Even in the moonless night she caught the pale tone of his skin.
Chane turned toward her.
* * * *
The moment Chane heard Wynn scream, he abandoned silence and raced toward her voice. "Wynn! Where are you?"
A loud crack sounded ahead where her voice had come from.
"Leesil?" she cried out. "I'm here! Please help— quickly!"
