The Doom of Fallowhearth

by Robbie MacNiven

  More of the cursed things were coming at him, scrambling over their brood-kin’s twitching body. With a vicious twist he dragged his spear free and thrust it into a second, slashing his knife at another before freeing it once more. The wicked, curved blade lopped through a furry limb, spattering him with more of the creatures’ internal fluids. It stank, and stung his bare skin, but he barely noticed as another met his spear-tip.

  Behind him he could hear Ulma wielding her mallet, while Logan jabbed desperately up from beneath her, the two struggling to keep the wall of arachyura at bay. The whole clearing was infested not only with the great mother-beasts, but millions of smaller arachnids. Durik could feel them swarming up his body, trying to bite their way through his leathery skin. He stomped down with one boot, crushing one the size of a large rat, grinding it into the forest floor.

  As he fought to disentangle his spear from another, one crawled in under his guard, latching its mandibles around his wrist. His furred vambrace took the worst of the bite, but he still felt its jaws cut deep before clamping around him. Almost immediately his hand and lower arm started to go numb.

  Grunting, he spun the knife in his other hand, reversing the grip and plunging it down into the arachyura’s head. Its jaws began to spasm, and he wrenched his arm free, though in the process his dead fingers lost their grip on his spear.

  Knife it was, then. He held it in a horizontal back-grip, slashing at compound eyes and every hooked limb that reached for him. The numbness in his arm was reaching up past his elbow now. The deadweight the limb had become made fighting with the other arm all the harder. He gritted his tusks and carried on, cutting open a bulbous torso as a gout of webbing sprayed at him, splattering his left leg. He kicked out, breaking more multi-jointed legs. Despite himself, he began to laugh.

  This all really must be Logan’s worst nightmare.

  • • •

  “What do you mean you didn’t see your attacker?” Kloin snapped at one of his men-at-arms, Havard, as they climbed the staircase to the solar, the main bedchamber directly above the castle hall. “He didn’t blind you, did he?”

  “He got the drop on me from behind, sir,” Havard said apologetically. His scalp was still bleeding. “I heard someone coming at me fast, but I didn’t turn quick enough.”

  “Truly you are Forthyn’s finest, Havard,” Kloin said bitterly, reaching the door to the solar. He raised his fist, hesitated for a second, then knocked.

  Nothing. He glanced at Havard, then spoke.

  “My lady? It’s Captain Kloin. We… have a situation.”

  For a few moments there was no sound from behind the door. Then a dull, dry croak finally answered the captain’s words.

  “Situation, captain?”

  “Yes,” Kloin said, throwing another angry glance at Havard. He felt like a fool. “It seems as though someone has stolen your horse from the stables. We also may have an intruder within the keep.”

  “An intruder?”

  “I’m not sure yet, my lady. Several of my men have been attacked. I came immediately to check on your personal safety.”

  “How reassuring, captain,” came Damhán’s deathly rattle. She sounded unwell. He found himself hoping she was. “I very much hope this so-called intruder will be in irons come sunrise, for your sake, captain. I also hope that our prisoner is still secure.”

  Kloin’s eyes widened. The little witch! He’d completely forgotten about her. Without answering Damhán he snatched Havard by the hauberk, furious that the man’s stupidity was risking his authority.

  “Stay here and guard this door,” he hissed. “Think you can manage to avoid getting attacked from behind while looking down a stairwell?”

  “Yes, sir,” Havard said, but Kloin was already clattering down the steps and shouting for Grubin. He met him at the bottom, outside the doors to the main hall, along with two local guards, Abelard’s.

  “Kellos burn my soul,” Kloin swore, gesturing for all four men to follow him. “It could be the clansfolk. They’re going to free the girl!”

  • • •

  It was a nightmare. That’s what Logan had almost convinced himself of. A terrible, terrible nightmare where he was in pitch blackness, paralyzed, assailed on all sides.

  There were things crawling all over him. They were running along his arms and up his back, over his face and through his hair. He couldn’t scream or they’d get in his mouth. He screwed his eyes shut, trying not to throw up.

  He was partly aware of Ulma standing over him, her stout legs planted against the arachnid onslaught, her mallet cracking down relentlessly. It sounded as though Durik was laughing behind them, though he assumed a part of his mind was just going insane. Ulma’s voice reached him over the chittering, scrabbling assault.

  “Cut their legs off,” she bellowed. He swung his sword desperately. It bit and stuck. He hacked again, a strangled, demented noise rising from inside him. Something gave way. A sticky substance smacked his face. It stank and burned. He swung again, wildly, blindly, hewing at the forest of furred limbs that was threatening to bury them.

  He didn’t know how long it lasted for. It could’ve been hours. It could have been minutes. All that he was sure of was that at some point the pressure of the bloated, scurrying things around him began to decrease. He kept hacking, his limbs burning, his whole body numb from a thousand tiny scratches and bites. A scream finally ripped free from his throat, a mangled, feral sound. He beat his face and shoulders with his other arm, crushing and pulping and smearing the things crawling all over him.

  “Logan,” Ulma shouted breathlessly. “Logan, stop!”

  Her hand snatched his, leaving him whimpering and sniveling, twitching at every phantom scuttle he felt across his body.

  He opened his eyes, slowly. At first it hardly seemed to make any difference – the clearing was still in darkness. He was vaguely aware of misshapen bodies heaped around them, some still writhing horribly. The most startling thing, though, was the silence. The rustling, the creaking, that awful insect-like chirring, it was all gone. All that remained was the ragged breathing of the trio and his own heartbeat, hammering in his ears. And the snap of a single twig.

  That was when he realized there was light in the clearing after all. Hundreds of tiny pinpricks, each a sickly green-yellow in color, flickering gently like little candle flames. It took him a second more to realize that they were eyes, sunken in the sockets of the hundred or more figures who now surrounded the clearing.

  Not men or women, but their corpses. They stood still and silent, rank after rank, their jaws slack or grinning, the deadlights in their skulls flickering. Still more lights joined them as bodies that had seemingly fallen fighting the arachyura clambered slowly, painfully, back to their feet. Every single one was facing towards the trio.

  “Oh gods.” Memories of the last night in the tavern flooded back. He’d been right, right about all of it. It hadn’t been a dream.

  “Get up,” Ulma whispered to him.

  “But my leg…” Logan started to say, but Ulma’s hand gripped him by the collar and dragged him to his feet. He found he could stand, just about – his whole body itched and ached from the post-numbing effects of the smaller spiders, but at least the venom in his thigh seemed to be spent.

  “Well, at least I’ll be able to walk when I’m resurrected as a corpse puppet,” he muttered. “I’d hate to be one of those crawling or limping ones.”

  Regrettably, none of the corpses laughed. The deadlights in their eyes did flare, though. Fire rose up behind them, that rotting, ugly green-yellow flame, and ignited the thick webbing that clad the upper branches of the trees all around the clearing. It took like a conjurer’s trick, and in seconds the arachyura nest was a blazing inferno, the light it cast illuminating the maggoty flesh, gleaming bone and ragged, soiled death shrouds of the surrounding undead.

  The ranks o
f the undead parted ahead of Logan. A figure stepped between them, slender and vital next to her awkward, shambling creations. She was clad in tight-fitting black leathers, sewn together with thick stitches of sinew. A ragged black cloak hung about her shoulders, its pointed hood raised. Her upper chest and shoulders were bared above a corset of purple leather and bone, the pale flesh almost white in the balefire. A wisp of that same flame still coiled around her raised left hand. It illuminated the face beneath the hood – sharp and fair with eyes as black as the darkness beyond her flames. She stopped before the trio, who simply stood and stared.

  “It can’t be,” Logan breathed, all the aches and pains in his body forgotten.

  “Hello, friend,” said Dezra the Vile.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You’re here,” Logan said in shock. Dezra smiled and made a gesture with her burning hand that encompassed the balefire-lit clearing and the dozens of arachyura bodies heaped across it.

  “And not a moment too soon, it seems,” she said.

  “These resurrected bodies,” Ulma said, eyeing the surrounding corpses warily. “You have control over them?”

  “I do,” Dezra said, and snapped her fingers. The deadlights in the eyes of one of the corpses – the body of a withered old man – flared, and he stumbled forward to Dezra’s side before offering a stiff, awkward parody of a bow towards the trio. Logan recoiled, while Ulma and Durik looked on levelly, both masking their shock far more effectively than the rogue.

  “Necromancy,” Logan said. Merely uttering the word made him feel tainted. “Dezra, don’t say you’ve fallen for such depraved arts!”

  “Perhaps I should have left you for the spiders,” she responded.

  “What are you doing here?” Logan pressed. “And how did you find us?”

  “I could ask you the same thing.” The undead beside her was still bowed down. Logan eyed it distastefully. “I suspect I’ve been in this forest a lot longer than you,” Dezra continued, noticing Logan’s gaze and allowing the corpse to straighten and shuffle back. “I’ve been treading the paths of Blind Muir for years now.”

  “Do those paths often include infestations of arachyura?” Logan demanded. “Or was that just unhappy coincidence?”

  “These creatures are invasive,” Dezra said. “I do not know where they have spawned from, but they do not belong here. I am hunting them.”

  To emphasize her point she clenched her fist towards the closest spider body. It ignited with the same toxic-looking flames that still burned through the canopy overhead.

  “You can thank Nordros that I came upon you when I did,” she said, the flames coiled around her. “And thank the screams of your friends. They were the ones who alerted me.”

  “The men-at-arms,” Ulma said. “Have you found any of them?”

  “One. Dead when I found him.” She pointed across the clearing, and the trio turned to see one of Abelard’s soldiers standing amidst the undead gathering. He was still clad in his mail and hauberk, his skin discolored, jaw slack. Long gashes across his stomach spoke of the attentions of razor arachyura mandibles. The wounds were still oozing dark, infected blood.

  “There were more,” Ulma murmured. “The seneschal of Fallowhearth was with us.”

  “Not that I’ve seen,” Dezra responded. “If they are still alive, the arachyura have them now. I have yet to unearth where they are spawning from.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Logan asked. “What brought you to the far corner of Terrinoth?”

  “I’ve always walked in dark places, Logan,” she said, as though the answer was obvious. “Here in the north, servants of Nordros can worship without threat of persecution. I might not be accepted still, but at least I am able to go about my life without constant fear and threat.”

  “It’s one thing to worship Nordros, and another to raise the dead and use them like puppets,” Logan said, unable to keep the force of the accusation from his voice. “You’re avoiding my question; you know necromancy is banned here, yet you practice it anyway. It is wholly unnatural!”

  “I didn’t save your lives to be interrogated by you, much less judged,” Dezra said sharply. “I had enough of that from all of you down the years.”

  She turned, her undead shuffling out of her way.

  “Wait,” Logan said, stepping out and immediately regretting it as his wounded leg almost gave way beneath him. Dezra paused and looked back at him.

  “You’re hurt,” she said.

  “I am,” Logan admitted, then scowled as Dezra pointed past him to Durik.

  “I meant him.”

  Durik shrugged his broad shoulders. He hadn’t spoken since Dezra had appeared, his thoughts as guarded as ever. Sometimes, Logan really did find the orc’s stoicism infuriating.

  “It’s just a scratch,” he said dismissively.

  “I doubt that,” Dezra said, picking her way between the arachyura corpses to the center of the clearing. As she went, the fire around her hand snuffed out, though the unnatural flames in the canopy continued to sear the arachyura nest away. Logan had to resist the urge to reach out and touch the sorceress as she passed by – since the sheer terror of the arachyura attack everything had felt so surreal, so unnatural. A part of him was afraid of Dezra, but the greater part simply hadn’t come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t dreaming.

  “Hold out your hand,” Dezra ordered Durik. The orc stretched out his right arm. His vambrace was stained with blood. Dezra inspected it for a moment before carefully unbinding it, exposing a gash that ran right around the orc’s wrist.

  “Clench your fist,” she ordered him.

  “I can’t,” he admitted, though he gave no outward sign of the pain he surely felt.

  “It may have cut a tendon,” Dezra said. “Or the venom has worked deep. Either way, you might never hold your spear again. Keep still and say nothing.”

  She placed her hand just above Durik’s wound, her limb looking ridiculously pale and slender next to his. Durik looked as though he was about to complain about whatever Dezra intended, but words died in his throat as the temperature in the clearing plummeted. Logan’s breath started to frost before his eyes, and he began to shiver, even while the flames the sorceress had summoned continued to burn above. He grimaced – the little displays of dark magic were often the worst. Seeing nature usurped made him feel vulnerable, no longer in control.

  He watched Dezra’s hand, expecting the flesh to suddenly slough off or more balefire to engulf them both. Instead a shallow red cut began to appear around the sorceress’s wrist, a mirror image of Durik’s wound. At the same time, the orc’s injury seemed to fade, the flesh re-binding itself. Dezra’s face was one of tight, controlled pain as the change continued until, suddenly, she drew her hand back with a hiss. Durik’s injury still remained, but it looked much shallower. Abruptly, the temperature in the clearing rose again.

  “Clench your fist,” Dezra said, flexing her own fingers. Durik did so, then gripped his spear still buried in an arachyura corpse and wrenched it free.

  “What did you do?” he demanded, sounding more angry than relieved.

  “Participes mortus,” Dezra said, holding her wrist up to display her new cut. “I shared your wound between us. The venom, too. Half the potency, it will heal in a few days.”

  “That is powerful magic,” Ulma said, watching on. Even she had narrowed her eyes, her stance more defensive. “Dark, powerful magic.”

  “These are dark times,” Dezra countered sharply, looking at the dwarf. “It pays to be powerful.” As she spoke, her eyes seemed to glaze for a second and she stumbled, righting herself before Durik reached out instinctively to steady her.

  “It comes at a price, though,” she added, regaining focus. “That is true for all sorcery.”

  “How long have you been practicing this… this sort of magic?” Logan asked. She smiled and
walked by him once more, to the edge of the clearing.

  “You know I practiced it in Sudanya. You know what I have always been. Dezra the Vile.”

  “Never to us,” Logan said. “Your magics were dark, but you were no necromancer. What happened?”

  “I see you’re still charmingly naive,” Dezra said, looking at Logan again. “I am going now. If you wish, I can guide you to the northern borders of the forest. You are free to find your own way, though.”

  “We would welcome your help, Dezra,” Ulma said before Logan could speak. “And perhaps you can explain something to us on the way.”

  • • •

  Dezra’s flames went ahead of the group, leaping from tree to tree above them. Logan noticed that they didn’t seem to burn up the branches themselves, though they scorched away any arachyura webs and left those boughs they did touch look unusually gnarled and ancient.

  Even more unsettling was the presence of the undead, who formed a silent, shuffling guard ahead, behind and on either side of them. He tried not to look at them, but couldn’t avoid staring at shriveled skin and the exposed body parts that snagged on twigs and underbrush as they passed by. The morbid procession looked even more unnatural in the rancid light cast by Dezra’s balefire.

  “I had heard Lady Kathryn was ruling in Fallowhearth,” the sorceress said as they traversed the forest. “But I did not know she was missing. How long has it been?”

  “A month, thereabouts,” Ulma said, trudging at her side.

  “And that’s why you’re here? Looking for her.”

  “Yes. Baroness Adelynn hired Durik to find her, and he called on us. And you.”

  Dezra let out a short, cold laugh. “Where did you send messengers?” she asked, looking back at the orc.

  “Your brother’s dwelling in Rothfeld, your old haunts in Strangehaven and Valdari,” the orc responded. “I couldn’t wait any longer to find you.”