The ghostwalker lowered the battered sword, and stared into Talthaliel’s eyes.
“Interesting,” the seer said, as though he had just observed something and was probing to see if Walker had as well. “Ah, well. It is not relevant.” The diviner shrugged. He continued, putting aside whatever he had found interesting. “I regret interfering with your quest, Spirit of Vengeance. You have fought valiantly, as befits your training and skill, but your fight against the Lord Singer is over.”
“Your master deserves death,” Walker said. “Release me.”
“Please; the Lord Singer is not my master.” The tiniest flash of irritation crossed his face, but Talthaliel’s words remained even and solid. Walker felt a tiny chill—he had rarely met one who could suppress his emotions so forcefully. “Regardless, you are right. But, for the moment, I do his bidding, and that bidding means your defeat.”
“Then you have me,” said Walker. “My quest is at an end.” He lowered his head. “Kill me then—if you serve such a villain.”
Talthaliel didn’t flinch.
“Actually, I have a different plan for you.”
Walker met the elf’s gaze, his eyes confused.
Talthaliel shrugged. “All is occurring as I have foreseen. I have but to borrow a few moments of your evanescent time, then we will escape the Lord Singer’s clutches together, though we shall never meet again in this world.”
Walker furrowed his brow, but accepted without fully understanding. He felt, rather than saw, that the diviner meant him no harm—even encouraged his quest.
Hope flickered, but not at the thought he might defeat Greyt. Rather, this meant he might see Arya again….
Sitting, Walker folded his legs beneath him and closed his eyes.
“In the next moments, would you like me to tell you of your past life? What I have seen and you cannot remember?” asked Talthaliel. “This may be your only chance.”
After a long moment, Walker shook his head. “Rhyn Thardeyn died fifteen years ago,” he said. “Whatever you would tell me of the past would mean nothing to me now.”
Talthaliel nodded.
“One thing only,” he said.
Walker inclined his head to hear.
“Your voice was beautiful,” the seer said. “For that of a human.”
Walker almost smiled.
Greyt thrust at his son, but Meris stood with a flourish, brought the shatterspike from right to left, and cut the golden blade neatly in two.
Greyt watched, stunned, as Meris continued into a spin and brought the blade snaking around, only to plunge the point between the Lord Singer’s ribs.
When Greyt looked at his son in shock, the wild scout spat out a chicken heart and a small flow of blood trickled down his chin. That was why his voice had seemed odd. Greyt’s bracer knife had merely pierced flesh—no vital organs.
“I have learned many habits from you,” said Meris. “Gloating is not one of them.”
Fighting the agony, Greyt tried to stab at Meris with the blade in his gauntlet, but the scout slapped it aside with his axe. Then he twisted the sword, wrenching a gasp from the Lord Singer. The shatterspike burst from Greyt’s back.
Greyt slumped to his knees, the blade through his body, and fiery pain spread through him. Words came from his lips, along with a trickle of blood.
“Meris, please,” he croaked. “Lyetha … tell her I … I am sorry. I killed Tarm and little Rhyn … all those years ago. I alone! Tell her—I’m sorry.”
Meris laughed at him.
“Lies to the last, eh, Father?” he asked. “I suppose it’s close enough to true—true enough to keep me Quaervarr’s hero.” He smiled.
Greyt choked. Then he tried to speak again. “Talthaliel … you lied to me … you said you would fight … and defeat … my son … you lied …” With one shaking hand, he clutched the amber amulet that hung around his throat.
Then a boot fell upon his hand and Meris held him down.
The dusky youth grinned hideously. It was time for the final act of revenge.
“No, no he didn’t, Father,” he laughed. “He kept his promise. He has fought and defeated your son.” Then he pushed with his foot, pulling the sword out, and the Lord Singer fell over.
Awash in a sea of pain, Greyt’s face was wracked with both agony and confusion. Then, understanding came upon him, and his eyes softened.
“Lyetha … why didn’t … didn’t you tell me?” He gasped one last time. “Beloved … forgive me … for … what I did not see …”
As the room faded to black, he imagined that he saw a laughing face before his eyes. It was a young Rhyn—his Rhyn—and his dazzling blue eyes, so like those of his beautiful Lyetha, gleamed in the lamplight.
He heard Rhyn running toward him, but from so far away. He would never arrive in time, Greyt knew. Rhyn and Lyetha had never been his, and he had hurt them so much, he was almost glad they would never be his now.
“We will meet again,” he whispered, almost fondly. “In a world free … of hate and pain.”
For the first and last time in his life, Greyt felt regret.
Then he felt nothing at all.
Talthaliel’s mouth curled up at the edges. “Ah,” was all he said. Then he vanished.
As he went, the shimmering sphere around Walker disappeared. Tarm, his father, was at his side, silent as always, urging him to stand.
And stand Walker did.
Walker ran for Greyt’s manor. Lightning crashed overhead, threatening fierce rain as before, but nothing came down.
In the courtyard, the cherry trees—imported from far south—were just beginning to blossom, showing white and pink all around him. The cobblestone path running from the gate to the front door seemed impossibly long and Walker ran for all he was worth, his cape billowing behind him black against a sea of beauty.
Once through the front portal he slowed, watching every shadow for hidden attackers. He stalked through halls he did not know but remembered, somehow, as though he had walked them before—a memory washed away with his own blood that night fifteen years ago.
After his meeting with Lyetha, he found his memories creeping back, as though his shattered mind had pulled itself back together. Now he regretted turning her away, refusing to hear what she might tell him. His anger had blinded him, and now he wondered.
There were, after all, the mysterious memories of Greyt’s manor that crept into his mind.
There was something eerily familiar about this building he had avoided studiously for the last fifteen years, lest his thirst for revenge get the better of him. That wall hanging there, that end table … The layout of the corridors, the design of the carpet … Walker could have sworn he could say where each and every door led, as though….
Even as he ran through the halls of his greatest enemy, Walker felt the cruel sensation of coming home.
“Empty as the darkness,” he said under his breath, washing his mind of the memories. With the words, Walker pushed the painful, bittersweet sensation out of his mind, much as one would ignore a moment of déjà vu. It was difficult, but he did it.
Then he heard cruel laughter from ahead and knew his destination: Greyt’s study.
After running a hand through his black curls, Meris took his time wiping the blade with a kerchief from his pocket. Then he slid the shatterspike back into its scabbard and dropped the bloody cloth on his father’s corpse. Absently picking at the blood spatters on his white leather armor, he paused to consider the fallen man. Greyt’s face knew an almost peaceful expression, but there was sadness there also—a duality of emotion.
By contrast, Meris felt nothing.
That only made him smile.
His smile faded as the lithe Talthaliel stepped out of the air next to Greyt’s body. Meris dropped his hands to his weapons.
The black-robed diviner ignored him entirely. Talthaliel knelt over the Lord Singer’s body.
“I am to assume that Walker has been dealt with, then?” snapped Me
ris. “Did you kill the wretch? Where is Bilgren?”
“Yes, no, and dead,” Talthaliel replied absently.
“What? Make sense, elf!” shouted Meris. “You were my father’s slave, and he’s dead, so you are mine now! Speak!”
Talthaliel looked at him with an expression Meris might have called amusement. He pulled an amber amulet from Greyt’s dead hand and admired it.
“I serve no man,” said the seer, “unless he holds this.”
Meris looked at the amber without comprehension. Then he thought he saw a tiny gleam. “And what is that, your life-force? Your soul, or whatever you rat-faced elves have instead?”
“My daughter,” said Talthaliel. He stood, and Meris watched as the amulet vanished into his robes. “But to answer your question, the Spirit of Vengeance has been defeated, once, but I have not slain him. He comes for you even now, and I do not have to see the future to know the violence he will bring.”
“You fish-skinned, tree-kissing, elf bastard,” growled Meris. “You get back there and—”
Talthaliel vanished as though he had never been.
Meris’s frown deepened. Walker? Coming here?
Then it seemed obvious. The fool was trying to rescue Arya. Meris could ambush Walker and rid himself of the ghost at last—the shatterspike should do the trick.
First things first, though.
“Guard!” he called.
The door opened and one of the Greyt family rangers looked in. From his face, he did not find the carnage surprising.
“Too many liabilities,” Meris said. “See that that wench Venkyr and the others have accidents in their cells. Immediately. When they are dead, post six men there. I want anyone who comes looking for them killed just as quickly, no matter who it is.” The man nodded, then Meris continued. “And gather all the other rangers in the courtyard. I am coming soon.”
“As you command, Lord Greyt-Wayfarer,” the scout said. Then he disappeared out the door. Out in the hallway, Meris could hear voices as the two guards left.
“Lord Greyt-Wayfarer,” murmured the scout. He enjoyed the sound of that.
After a moment, Meris bent over Greyt’s body and seized the left hand. The gold wolf’s head ring—the Greyt family crest—sparkled from the fourth finger. Meris wrenched it free, let Greyt’s arm fall with a satisfying thump, and slid it on. It was too big.
“Once, I would have given anything to have your name,” said Meris. He cradled his father’s head in his hands. “I would have done anything to be worthy—anything to make you love me.”
Then he dropped the head and rose, drawing away from the corpse. When he had gained his feet again, he slipped the ring off and admired it.
“It seems, however, that all I had to do for your name,” said Meris, “was kill you.”
He turned and started for the door.
But it was only to stop. He had noticed something new about the ring—something he had not seen before. Meris squinted to see. There was tiny lettering on the inside, elegant letters scripted in Elvish.
“‘It is easier to destroy than to create,’” he read aloud. He touched his stubbly chin as though in thought. “Stupid sentiment. Why create when others will do it for you?”
With a derisive laugh that echoed through the halls, Meris walked away from the corpse of his father, toward the door. As he opened the door, he slipped the ring on. Then he stepped out.
Lancing from the shadows, a blade bit through the white leather and into his stomach.
In the darkness of her prison cell, Arya could see a light approaching down the dungeon corridor, and a feeling of foreboding hit her such as she had never known before. So the great and mighty Lord Greyt had finally ordered her murdered. She would almost welcome death to free her of the pain of watching Walker die, of sending her dearest friends to their deaths, and of knowing that such a twisted lunatic as the Lord Singer was soon to be the most vaunted hero in the land.
Almost.
The knightly oaths that bound her, however, would not allow Arya to give up. Even if it was hopeless—even if everything else was gone—at least she could try.
She swore. This perverted peace, even if Greyt brought it about, would inevitably fail. The Lord Singer was no friend of Alustriel or the Silver Marches. The rebellion of Quaervarr would bring war—innocents would suffer and die for nothing, all so his mad heroism could hold true, a version of heroism he himself admitted to be false!
Burning with resolve, Arya strained at her bonds, her mind racing to formulate an escape plan. She tried to call for Bars and Derst, but the two slept soundly across the way, and her gag allowed only muffled grunts. Arya knew she was alone. Perhaps, if the guards were to come close, she could trip one and get her manacles around a throat….
But then she heard startled gasps from down the hall and the light vanished. Straining her eyes, Arya looked out but could see only darkness. Everything was silent and absolutely still. She could not be sure why, but she felt that a battle was going on, albeit a short one, though she could not hear the screams of either men or steel.
“Illynthas, shara’tem,” came a whisper, and a light the size of a torch flame gleamed into existence inside her cell, a man’s length from her.
It was an eerie, blue-green light that shone from a crystal high overhead. Arya looked up at it, then allowed her eyes to slide down, along a long staff of black wood, down to a thin hand that held it aloft. That hand extended from black robes that swathed a gaunt figure, a figure with glowing green eyes that seemed to bore into Arya’s very soul.
The dark figure made a little gesture, but it was not an attack. Her bonds crumbled and fell away, passing into nothingness before they touched the floor. Arya blinked in disbelief.
“I offer freedom, Nightingale,” said the mage. “And a warning: you are his only hope.”
Arya’s brow furrowed. “What? What do you mean? Who are you?” she asked.
“Someone who is doing what he should have done long ago,” the mage replied. He extended his hand as though to help her up.
Still wary, Arya took that hand and, with the mage’s help, got to her feet.
“What—” she started, but he was gone. Where her hand had held his, there was only a sword: her sword.
The knight looked around in wonder, but the mage had vanished as quickly as he had come, and there was no sign of his passing, except for the open cell door.
And that terrible omen: “You are his only hope.”
Heart pounding, sword in hand, Arya rushed out to release her companions.
In another corridor, not so far away, Meris’s eyes slid from the dagger stabbing into his belly to the hands holding it. Then they traveled up the slim arms to his attacker’s face to see furious sapphire eyes glaring at him with all the fury and hatred of the Nine Hells.
But they were not the eyes of Walker.
Angry tears streaming down her cheeks, Lyetha pushed with all her strength, driving the dagger through Meris’s white leather armor and into the tough flesh beneath. She had stabbed near the spot Greyt’s knife had found, but her blade followed an angle that cut deep into his bowels.
Their gazes locked for a moment, and the two shared a terrible understanding. Meris saw in Lyetha’s beautiful eyes the final cruelty, the last crime that could be committed against her.
He saw the death of her love.
Never had Meris seen something that stunned him—or frightened him—as much as the fury in those eyes.
“For my husband,” she said, steel on her tongue. “And for my son.”
Meris blinked in reply.
Only when the darkness down the hall swirled and Walker materialized did Meris awaken and realize where he was and what had happened. With a flourish, he dropped his hand to the shatterspike’s hilt.
“No!” shouted Walker, leaping forward.
It was too late, though, for Meris drew the blade out and across Lyetha’s chest, sending blood sailing. Slowly, as though time itself stood
still, the beautiful half-elf fell back into Walker’s arms. The ghostwalker, panic and wrenching pain on his face, gazed into her eyes.
Meris, who had never seen Walker express emotion, blinked in stunned silence at the depth of the ghostwalker’s mourning, and it sent a pang through his heart. He did not even think of attacking, though Walker was defenseless.
Lyetha looked up at Walker as though she did not recognize him, for a long, agonizing breath. Then her brows rose and a soft smile creased her face where only a pained grimace had been before. She gripped his hand with renewed strength, as though finally understanding a secret only the two of them knew. Held in Walker’s arms, Lyetha drifted into death as Meris watched. At last, her eyes shifted past Walker’s shoulder, and her lips moved.
“Well met again, Tarm,” she said.
Then Lyetha died, a peaceful smile on her face.
Though Meris knew he should have attacked, should have sent his blade screaming for Walker’s head in the man’s moment of vulnerability, he could not. Some part of him caught the sight of something greater than himself—for the first time in his life—and it stayed his hand. Or perhaps it was his fear of the unknown. He did not understand—indeed, he could not begin to fathom—the emotional depth of the scene before him, and confusion ran through him and with it, terror.
Meris knew then, for the first time, the full measure of his foe, and he was terrified.
Even as he watched her spirit fade away, embracing that of Tarm Thardeyn, Walker gently laid his dead mother on the soft carpet and rose to face Meris, who still stood, apparently dumbfounded. Reaching down to his belt, Walker slowly drew out the guardsman’s sword and pointed it across the short distance that separated him from Meris. The wild scout responded by raising his own weapon—Walker’s shatterspike—and pointing it at the ghostwalker. The points of the blades almost touched.
Meris calmly pulled the knife out of his belly, grimacing as blood leaked out. Not taking his eyes from the ghostwalker, Meris dropped a hand to his belt, drew out a steel-encased potion, and quaffed it.
Walker watched as the blood flowing down the white leather slowed to a trickle, then stopped entirely. His eyes darted into the study, and he saw Greyt’s corpse. Somehow, even knowing that his vengeance was done did not calm the rage that boiled within his heart.
Ghostwalker Page 24
