by Jim Hines
A rapier took him in the throat. It was one of Pynne’s illusions, but the man didn’t know that. He clutched his throat in agony, eyes widening, and fell to the ground unconscious.
Moments later, another man stumbled to the ground. There he moaned and clutched his thigh, from which another of Whoo’s arrows protruded.
“Seven left,” Nakor observed.
“No problem,” commented the double on his left.
Raising their swords, they prepared for the next assault.
From a nearby doorway, Galadrion watched the last rays of the sun as they faded from view. Careful to avoid stepping into that light, she waited as the last of the sun’s light disappeared, spreading a gentle darkness across the land.
Galadrion’s name was totally not stolen from Lord of the Rings. Really! It’s 100% original, just like the rest of this book!
Sprinting, Galadrion raced toward the sound of fighting in the distance. Seeing the struggling figures ahead, she slowed to a walk.
One of the combatants turned, hearing her approach. His eyes widened as he studied the woman who stood before him. Galadrion was an attractive woman. She was tall for a woman, with long brown hair. She was dressed in a black leather vest over a white shirt, and black trousers. A leather-bound sword handle jutted over one shoulder.
Puffing out his chest, the man raised a hand, signalling her to halt. “I’m sorry m’lady,” he said in an official sounding voice, “we need you to stay clear of the area.”
Galadrion didn’t reply. She simply reached out and grabbed the man by his neck. There was a snapping sound as her fingers tightened, and she hurled the lifeless body into a nearby tree.
A few of the remaining fighters spun to face this new attack. Galadrion watched impassively as one of them slashed at her neck. At the last moment, she raised an arm and caught the blade in one hand.
“Run,” she whispered. Wrenching the sword away, she grabbed the handle in her other hand. With a slight flexing of her muscles, she snapped the blade.
The man’s eyes widened, and he turned to flee. His companion watched in disgust.
“Coward,” he muttered, raising his own sword.
Galadrion shook her head sadly as she drew her own weapon. Wielding the graceful, curved scimitar with both hands, she waited.
The man brought his sword down in a powerful overhead blow, which Galadrion parried effortlessly. Before her opponent could react, she sliced deep into his side, severing the iron links of his mail armor.
The fleeing man stumbled to the ground, an arrow in his calf.
Galadrion looked in surprise, wondering where the arrow had come from. Turning toward Nakor, she allowed herself a slight smile.
There was only one man left standing, and he was panicking. The three Nakors in front of him smiled in amusement.
Giving a silent prayer, the man lunged at one of the images before him. It gave no resistance, and vanished as his sword touched it. Stumbling, the man turned and looked at the two remaining figures, both with rapiers ready.
Slightly more confident now, he thrust his sword at the image directly in front of him.
Shifting his weight, Nakor allowed the thrust to pass harmlessly by, at the same time extending his own sword. The man tried desperately to stop, but was unable to halt his forward momentum. His face twisted into an expression of pain as he impaled himself on Nakor’s waiting blade.
The other illusion vanished as Nakor withdrew his sword from the body. Kneeling down, he wiped the blade clean on the dead man’s shirt.
With a sigh, he looked to the west, where the sky was fading into darkness. It had been such a beautiful sunset.
Connecting the end back to the beginning like this can be a useful and effective technique…unless your beginning was really, really boring.
Chapter 2
Galadrion walked over to Nakor as he finished cleaning his rapier. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She nodded curtly, then turned and walked to the unconscious man who had been stabbed by Nakor’s illusionary double. She bent over and grabbed him by his cloak. Standing effortlessly, she tossed him over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“What are you doing?” Nakor called out.
Galadrion stopped for a moment. “I’m a vampire,” she replied without turning. “You don’t want to know.”
Nakor watched her walk away. Then he turned around. His spell was starting to wear off, but he could still make out the dimly glowing forms of Whoo and Pynne. “Thank you, whoever you are,” he said to the two shapes.
Whoo hesitated briefly, then allowed himself to become visible. Pynne followed suit a moment later, and was the first to speak.
“Interesting friends you have,” she said with a wry smile.
“Yeah,” Whoo added, “I’m sorry I had to shoot them.”
Nakor grinned. Pixies were distantly related to elves, as could be seen by their pointed ears and narrow features. Their language was an offshoot of elvish.
“So you were the ones playing games with me?” Nakor asked, switching to their language.
The two pixies looked at each other, and both started giggling. Pynne was the first to speak. “You have a human accent,” she complained.
The elf-with-a-human-accent thing is actually a deliberate character trait, not a lazy author screw-up.
“I’m Whoo, that’s Pynne,” the other pixie added.
“You’re Nakor, I assume?” Pynne asked.
He grinned. Still speaking in the pixie tongue, he said “That’s correct.”
Nakor looked around the rapidly darkening woods. “Why don’t we continue this discussion at my home?” he asked.
Pynne and Whoo glanced at each other, and shrugged.
“Sure,” Pynne decided.
“There’s a ruined castle about a quarter of a mile in that direction, by the river. I’ll meet you there in a few minutes, okay?”
“What are you going to be doing?” demanded Whoo.
Nakor glanced around at the corpses who littered the ground. “I have to clean up my forest,” he answered. I also have to check on a friend, he added silently.
The diminutive pair looked at each other and vanished. Nakor could faintly make out their laughter as they flew toward his home.
* * *
Galadrion trembled. The unconscious man lay in a crumpled heap a few feet away, where she had dropped him. She had been a vampire for twenty six years. For twenty six years she had tried desperately to fight the urges, the overwhelming instincts within herself. For twenty six years, she had failed.
Galadrion is TRAGIC and DARK and TORMENTED!
It had been many days since she tasted fresh blood. She slammed her fist into a tree, hating what she was about to do. Bark splintered around her fist, falling unnoticed to the earth. It was a curse, she thought angrily, running her tongue across the pointed tips of her two elongated teeth.
TRAGIC and DARK and TORMENTED and also CURSED!
She walked back to the fallen man. His forehead was bleeding slightly from when Galadrion had dropped him. She stared, fascinated, at the red drops that gradually ran down the side of his face to drip onto the earth. With a trembling hand, Galadrion reached out and wiped the small cut with her finger.
Galadrion seemed dazed as she stared at the red stain on the tip of her index finger. She studied it for a moment, turning her hand slightly. She could feel her willpower beginning to fail. Screaming silently at herself, she brought her finger up to her mouth and licked the blood.
As the coppery taste hit her tongue, Galadrion finally lost control. She grabbed the body and slammed him viciously into a tree. Shoving his head to one side, she sunk her teeth into his neck and began to drink.
A few minutes later, she tossed the body to one side. She knew that in a few days, the man would awaken a vampire, just as she herself had awoke all those years ago.
It had been the day after her nineteenth birthday. Her husband had come
home after a long hunting trip, bringing a stranger with him. He had been pale and sick, and spent the next few days in bed.
The stranger had helped around the house, making himself useful in whatever way he could. The day after he arrived, he walked up behind Galadrion while she prepared lunch. Without warning, he pinned her arms at her side and sank his teeth into her neck.
“This is not making yourself useful!”
Devin, her husband, stumbled into the kitchen upon hearing her scream.
“No!” he protested, grabbing the stranger by the shoulder. “You promised not to take her!”
“Fool,” the stranger hissed, dropping Galadrion to the ground. “I give you immortality, and you dare to question my actions?”
The stranger is also a habitual puppy-kicker, just in case his EVILNESS is too subtle.
Devin pulled a hunting knife from his belt and lunged at the stranger.
He laughed as the knife danced harmlessly off of his skin. His hand shot out and grasped Devin by the throat. Lifting him off of the ground, the stranger carried him out of the house.
A few minutes later, he returned.
Let’s review the timeline. Devin and the stranger arrive at home. Devin, “spent the next few days in bed.” But the stranger attacked Galadrion “the day after he arrived,” at which point Devin went and got himself killed right out of the story. Um…
“Let this be a lesson to you,” he said, kneeling down before the barely conscious Galadrion. “Never challenge another vampire before you have tasted your first blood. Until that time, you are still vulnerable.”
The stranger’s cruel smile was the last thing Galadrion saw as she lost consciousness.
It was only two weeks later that Galadrion killed for the first time in her life. Whatever she had become had created an insatiable need inside her. The more she fought that need, the more desperate she became for blood. Finally, she raced out of the house and grabbed the first person she could find. Dragging them off into the shadows, she murdered him and drank his blood.
It was odd, she never even saw the man’s face. Her only memory of the event was of breaking her victim’s neck in an attempt to prevent him from acquiring the curse that had taken over her life. On that day, she had vowed never to do to another person what had been done to her.
Galadrion stood the body against the tree and drew her sword. With one swift stroke, she struck his head from his body. Having done this, she dropped her sword and collapsed against to the ground, hugging her knees.
We’re done with the flashback and back in the present story now. I mention this only because the author didn’t think to provide any sort of transition here. Lazy bum.
Nakor watched the beheading from the shadows. He waited calmly as Galadrion sat against the tree, trembling. After a few moments, he stepped toward her.
She heard the footsteps, and knew without looking who it was. Nakor was the only one she knew who could get this close to her without her hearing. With a sudden rush of shame, she remembered her appearance. Blood stained her teeth red and was in the process of drying to a dark crust around her mouth. She was covered in sweat and still trembling from her recent ordeal. Only twice in her life had Galadrion been found like this. Both times, people had been horrified. They had cursed her, calling her a demon or worse. She buried her face deeper in her arms, afraid of seeing that rejection in Nakor’s eyes.
Nakor walked over to stand next to Galadrion’s huddled form. He gently rested a hand on her quivering shoulder. A moment later, she looked up. Nakor took a moment to study the blood and sweat that covered her face. Kneeling down in front of Galadrion, he looked into her eyes. Galadrion flinched slightly, and looked away. After a few minutes, her trembling stopped. Resigned, she turned back to meet his eyes once again. There was no rejection in his eyes, only a mirroring of her pain. Nakor smiled slightly. It was a very soft smile, different from his usual, obnoxious grin. When he spoke, it was in a gentle, compassionate tone.
“Come home when you’re ready.”
“And maybe, you know, brush your teeth first.”
Having said that, he squeezed her shoulder gently, then turned and walked back through the forest. Galadrion began shaking again. Home…
* * *
Nakor walked into the ruins in which he had lived for the past year. There were only a few rooms left intact. The majority of the ancient castle was today little more than a mass of broken gray stone and shattered foundations. Shutting one of the few remaining doors behind him, he walked toward his makeshift dining room. Up ahead he could hear the high pitched voices of the two pixies.
Pynne was hovering in the air, studying a small owl who perched on a wooden stand. Its feathers were a deep red, almost black in color. The bird would occasionally flap its wings and make threatening noises at Pynne, who was floating nearby.
“His name is Flame,” Nakor said. “His parents were killed by poachers while they were hunting.”
Even the bird has a tragic backstory.
He reached out to ruffle the feathers around Flame’s neck. The bird twisted his head sideways and let out a quiet chirp of pleasure.
“He’s beautiful,” Pynne commented softly, studying the small owl. Flame was tiny for an owl, with a wingspan of just two feet.
At that point, Whoo flew into the room and landed in the center of a rectangular stone table. He was a curious being, even for a pixie. His first reaction upon entering Nakor’s home had been to race from room to room, exploring and snooping.
Nakor grabbed a sack from a corner of the room and pulled out a loaf of bread he had bought earlier that day. It was placed on the table, followed by a block of cheese. Whoo, still standing in the middle of the table, promptly sat down and began to eat.
If you’ve read Dianna Wynne Jones’ wonderful The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, you’ll know the only acceptable meals in Fantasyland are bread, cheese, and stew.
After retrieving some fruit from another sack, Nakor dipped a cup into a barrel of water and sat down at the table. Pynne flew to the table and tore off a piece of bread.
“So who were your little friends?” Whoo asked, taking a bite of cheese.
The grin on Nakor’s face slipped for a moment. Images flashed through his mind. For the most part, they were images of death. The deaths of friends.
“That’s a long story,” he answered.
Whoo looked at him curiously. “You’re our host, you know. It’s your job to keep us entertained.”
Nakor looked him curiously.
“He’s right,” Pynne chimed in. “You have an obligation to your guests.” She smiled sweetly and took a sip of water.
“Besides,” Whoo added, “I’d like to know who I killed today.”
Nakor set his cup on the table and sighed. “It’s not terribly entertaining,” he warned.
They just looked at him expectantly.
“About two years ago,” he began, “I was met by an elf dressed in black robes. The same as the elf you saw today.”
“He asked me to attend a ‘meeting,’ and paid me in gold before I even had the chance to consider it. I decided that it couldn’t hurt, so I let him lead me to a small cabin in the woods.”
Nakor has obviously never watched a single horror movie in his life…
* * *
“Welcome,” said the man in the doorway. Another elf, Nakor noted in his mind.
“My name is Calugar. Please come in.”
Nakor’s guide vanished back into the woods. With a shrug, Nakor stepped into a large, open room. There were five others who seemed to be waiting, sitting peacefully on the floor. All save one, a dwarven warrior who stood sullenly in a corner.
“Nakor, meet Roth, Serina, Brigit, Scrunchy, and Tetichitoani.”
Also known as the characters from my college D&D group. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that EVERYONE wants to hear every last detail of your latest role-playing game!
Nakor nodded at each of them in turn.
“Roth and Brigit are wielders of magic, like yourself,” Calugar continued. “The others prefer less mystical means of defense.”
Nakor took a seat next to Brigit and Serina. Brigit was a plainly dressed woman with a long blond braid down the middle of her back. Serina was a bit more unusual. She was dressed in a leather breastplate and bracers, with a sword at her him.
I assume that was supposed to be “…at her hip,” but proofreading is for loosers!
“Five thousand years ago,” Calugar began, “the god Kohut was imprisoned by his evil brother, Panich. Kohut was respected throughout the land as a just, fair god who blessed his followers with plentiful food and freedom from disease, among other gifts.”
“Through the treachery of Panich, he was cast into an astral prison, where he had remained ever since. Kohut’s follower’s have dwindled through the years. Only a few of us still remain today.”
Another chapter has been infested with invasive apostrophes. I thought I sprayed for those.
“So what does this have to do with us?” Scrunchy piped up.
Nakor glanced over, noting the polished dwarven axe at his belt. Scrunchy, like most dwarves, had taken a nickname to use when he interacted with other races. Most dwarven names were unpronounceable to outsiders.
“After five thousand years of searching, we have discovered a way to free Kohut from his prison. Inside the nearby temple of Panich are six jewels. These are the very tools used by Panich to trap his brother. We have learned that they can also be used to free him.”
Am I the only one hearing that guy’s name as “Panic” in my head?
“I need six people who are willing to retrieve those gems from the temple and participate in the spell to return Kohut to his rightful place among the gods.”
“And why would we do this?” Brigit asked absently. She feigned disinterest quite well, Nakor thought.
“The jewels themselves are quite valuable, and would make a more than suitable reward I think. You are welcome to keep them, after the spell is performed. But more importantly, I ask that you do this to right a wrong that has lasted for hundreds of generations.”
“How valuable are these jewels?” Scrunchy asked.
