“I’m the Rislind Ghost!” shouted a small girl, as she chased two boys—one a troll, the other a human. They reciprocated her game, acting as if they were scared.
“Oh no! I’m crazy Mayor Doings, and I can’t defend my people!” the gnome boy shouted with laughter. The other children nearby joined in.
“Children, please!” cried one of the mothers, but it was useless—the children were too excited. Some were scared, and clung to their mothers’ pants. Even some of the troll children, typically braver than the others, asked in terror again and again if the ghost was real.
The hour passed slowly, and what would normally have been merry feasting felt like a solemn affair. The imminence of change was in the air. Most of the townsfolk who believed there was a ghost feared that more would come; that somehow, though Grelion had never found their fair village, malevolent spirits had, and they would turn good Rislind into a nesting haven for their wandering evil. Rislind’s militia did possess two great specimens of strength to combat outside forces—a man and woman, both human. Neither could do a thing against a spirit, and the town knew it.
Rislind had long prided itself on the brute strength of Taisle Bellwend, a gifted young man of twenty-two years, proficient with bow and arrow as well as unarmed combat. Pursaiones Medeflour had always been the one to win in competitions of swordplay—despite being a girl, she had taken up the blade with natural ease, and ever defeated the men and boys she’d come across in the Rislind Fair tournaments. Now a full grown woman, Pursaiones was deadly quick, and Rislind often thought of her as the militia’s greatest asset. Though Rislind had never required defense, except from an occasional rogue wolf, cougar, or bear, the comfort offered by Taisle and Pursaiones’s collective abilities was tremendous. It was no surprise that both of them had a growing throng that traced their steps through the square, producing a steady stream of questions:
“Can you kill a person twice?”
“Taisle, it’s going to have to be you to go into the forest and find it. Are you up to this? Please restore the peace here.”
“Have you ever heard of a ghost attacking?”
“It’s only a matter of time, Pursaiones, before you come to blows with this ghoul!”
“You better be prepared to keep us safe—you are, aren’t you?”
“Will you please find and unmask the fiend?”
The questions were ignored and Pursaiones spoke to them:
“No one has ever fought a spirit, and I don’t think anyone will—it has not been proven that there even is a ghost!”
Mayor Doings was seen from the side of the town square, lumbering toward the front platform where he would stand to address the restless audience. He walked slowly but with purpose, dressed in his traditional attire: a cobalt jacket that swung down to his knees, black tights and shoes, and on his head a tan hat with an enormous brim stretched out at odd angles. Feathers poked out from the hat in odd places, and he seemed altogether disheveled—his jutting triangle jaw was framed by a sagging mop of greyed facial hair, and drooping from his half-open mouth was a thin pipe. His belly bulged when he propped himself against the podium that was erected in the front of the square, and his hands began to fidget around for his matches. The crowd roared with anticipation, chattering restlessly until the moment when Doings would silence them and begin to speak. Taisle and Pursaiones stood together near the front, patiently awaiting the words from their haphazard mayor. To their left was a group of trolls, all wearing their festive clothing—as Sundays called for—and at their feet were the gnome children, sitting up front so as to see what would happen, bored and growing irritated.
“Good, eh hem. Good Morn—” Doings began hacking violently at the podium, as he had tried to speak at the same time as lighting his pipe. He’d inhaled a pouch full of ash. “Agh, ugh…”
“Crazy old fool!” shouted one of the children.
“Ex—excuse me. I will not dally, as you all know a ghost is preparing to strike….”
“Whaaa!” the crowd roared in unison. A great wave of shock and fear rolled through the crowd, and some of the children began to cry.
“I knew it! It’s true! We must flee! It’s the Kidnapper of Old, returned for vengeance!”
“Shut up! Everyone, he is crazy! There is no proof!”
“There is proof, I’ve seen the evil spirit with my own eyes.”
“And have I!”
“Liars! You’re all paranoid liars!”
“Quiet, the mayor is not done!”
The crowd finally quieted down after what felt like ten minutes of riotous debate. Pursaiones shot a glance to Taisle, who sat with a disgusted grimace on his face, feeling as though his community and his mayor were all losing their minds.
“So, because there are too many eye-witness accounts, that can’t be ignored, we are forced to take action.” The crowd responded to the mayor’s proclamation with roars of approval.
“First, we will have the eye witnesses come up and give their accounts of the ghost, as most of us have only piecemeal information about the sightings; only then can we make an informed deliberation on our course of action,” Mayor Doings presided.
After several moments of disarray an old troll woman wandered up to the podium. Mayor Doings stepped to the side and fidgeted with his pipe, which still hadn’t lighted properly. She looked around nervously, then turned to Doings who merely nodded, urging her to start.
“I don’t know quite how to say it clearer than I already have—I was picking Grainewind Herb from our precious store at the foothills of the Northerly Peaks. In all my years here, I have never experienced anything like I saw….” She grumbled in a low tone, hard for many to hear.
“Speak up!”
“Out with it!”
“Well, as I finished my last collection of the day, and dusk was settling over the trees, I glimpsed something moving at terrible speed, up and away from me—away, deep into the forest.”
“But the Northerly Peaks are inaccessible!”
“Impossible!”
“She lies!”
“Quiet! Listen to her, let her finish!”
Mayor Doings raised his arms and brought them down, up then down again, quieting the disruptive audience.
“Well, he wore rags, they hung off his body—they were yellowed and stained, dirtied, as he was a man of the wild—and then, as I watched in fear, he darted up the mountain side, and I saw him disappear, straight into thin air!”
An audible wave of shock ran through the crowd.
“And that was it, the last I saw of him, but I felt his presence the whole way home! An awful, rotten presence, a pure evil spirit, it was!”
“Kill it! We must kill it!” the crowd began chanting, and those who did not believe in the story were outnumbered greatly by the believers now. The troll woman was thanked by the mayor, and he stepped back up to the podium.
“Alright, settle, settle! The evidence is irrefutable. Nonetheless we will hear more: next we have Crumpet Grames. C’mon up old friend.” Doings motioned to Crumpet, the elderly gnome who was leaning on both his canes. Crumpet began his long trek to the podium, stopping every few steps as his long white mane of hair would get caught on the ground underneath the canes.
“Faster you old cripple!” shot out one of the gnome children in the front row.
“Quiet!” Pursaiones scolded with the seriousness of an executioner. She kept her gaze on the children long after they took theirs off hers—the gnome children had decided to become patient and respectful after seeing the look in Pursaiones’s eyes.
Mayor Doings helped Crumpet up the last two steps to reach the podium, and before Crumpet turned to the audience he took the mayor’s pipe, proceeding to take several quick puffs of the half-lit weed.
“Alright then, here you have your second eye-witness account,” the mayor said, introducing the old gnome. He quickly tried to take his pipe back, but Crumpet would not let go of it, holding on as if for dear life.
�
��Come on old timer, let’s have it…” the mayor visibly struggled in a tug-of-war with Crumpet, who seemed to possess vise grips.
“Look at them go at it, both of them senile!” riled a man from the back of the crowd.
Finally, Crumpet fell over, rolled down the two steps he had climbed, as Mayor Doings won his fight and ripped the pipe violently from the gnome’s claw-like grasp. The audience wooed, waiting patiently to see if the old gnome would get up. To everyone’s surprise, the gnome didn’t move. Mayor Doings stood by, puffing contentedly, not looking over to observe the result of his quarrel.
“He’s dead, the mayor’s killed him!” shouted a pretty young troll girl.
“Oh no he’s not,” the mayor responded, finally turning to view the condition of the gnome: Crumpet lay unresponsive, his canes crossed over his chest. The mayor grew afraid at seeing the odd position into which the gnome had crumpled, and he bent to see if Grames was alright.
“Come on, old Crumpet—Mr. Grames! Don’t play now. It isn’t very funny, not at all.” Mayor Doings prodded, stepping down and kneeling to the motionless gnome. At that moment, as if struck with fiery life, Crumpet grabbed both his canes in a flash of uncanny speed, and amazingly, the gnome began to beat upon the mayor from his position on the ground—thumping one after the other, powerful cane blows, until the mayor cried in agony and backed away.
“And this is how we get things done,” Taisle laughed to Pursaiones. She smiled, momentarily forgetting her impatience with the mayor’s procession. After several minutes of Mayor Doings apologizing, and Crumpet resisting the mayor’s desire to still have him speak, Crumpet took the podium and addressed the audience.
“It was eighty-five years ago—to the day—that I first began to experience the premonition of the spirit. In my youth, I was a virile young lad, a carouser—in fact, I can remember the first Rislind sporting games. You see, in those times, we didn’t have a tournament or anything like there is today. Back then, it was all about pure feats of strength such as—” Crumpet went on, and spoke of nothing relevant for several minutes, with a remarkable patience on the part of the crowd. Mayor Doings finally decided he had better try to get Crumpet to the topic at hand.
“Not to interrupt, Mr. Grames, but about the spirit,” Doings prodded as delicately as possible, cutting off the gnome as he was transitioning from the story of his first love to the story of his first adventure to Hemlin. In response to Doings’s prod, Crumpet at once raised his canes and motioned as if to rain blows again upon the defenseless mayor. The crowd was let down, as there was no more amusement. Instead, Crumpet took the hint and jumped to the matter at hand.
“Yes well, the ghost, I have seen it. Was just two nights ago, I saw it. Same as Miss Brewboil said it—wore rags of clothes, he did—orange and yellow, stained with dirt—and he was in my house!”
“Ooohh!” came the crowd, a wave of awe and fear.
“Yes, I too had been at the foothills that day, exploring the West Caves. He must be a fast spirit, as I was on my pony, and he followed me back without a problem—he must have traced my every move. Though I didn’t see him in the woods, I was woken in the middle of the night by a strange noise coming from my kitchen. I know the bears haven’t been down into the meadow for some time, but even still I took caution and grabbed my good sword, Melthang. That sword is no ordinary metal; in fact it is White Steel of the great North Country. Many of you may not know the country’s name, it is Hoperind. I have been to that ice country twice in my life, the first time I can remember I went there with—” Mayor Doings decided again to cut Crumpet off, before his reminiscence ran away for another twenty minutes.
“Excuse me, sweet Mr. Grames, a fresh puff?” Doings interrupted, handing the now properly lit pipe to the gnome. Crumpet took it, forgetting his hostility toward Doings altogether, and proceeded to draw from it. “And the ghost, you saw it in your kitchen, you were saying…”
“No, I heard the noise in my kitchen. When I came into the kitchen there was nothing there but a great mess—my flour had been spilled, along with my milk, all over the floor. Pieces of grainloaf were scattered; it was terrible. Then, from the corner of my eye, I caught him. Saw him through my kitchen window—running away through the meadow, faster than a horse I’ll reckon. He’d already taken off—must have known about Melthang coming to have a piece of him.”
“Thank you Mr. Grames! And there you have it, good folk of Rislind. Is there any need for more accounts? I think not, and that we should decide upon our course of action now,” the mayor said, ushering the unwilling Crumpet off the stage.
“Yea!” the unified crowd roared.
The rest of the day Mayor Doings collaborated with the other respected elders of the village, deciding the best course of action to take. Even though there were some who still didn’t believe the ghost stories, and put it down as senility on the part of those who had seen it, the overwhelming consensus was to make a small party of the strongest fighters and send them into the woods at night by torchlight, as soon as possible. Pursaiones had objected, stating that she believed they should wait and see if the sightings continued, or if any harmful intent was detected of the ghost—but her objection was shot down quickly by those who remembered the days of the kidnappings by Zesm the Rancor, over seventeen years earlier.
Against their wills, Taisle and Pursaiones were set to lead the party into the woods, as soon as the sun waned and the moons rose. The decision had been made by Doings that another night of waiting was a gamble he was not willing to take with his citizens’ lives. There were seven chosen to head into the forest at dusk, each among the most respected of Rislind’s militia. The day carried on with an eerie sense of foreboding, and many wondered if anything at all would come of the trip into the foothills; still others wandered if the party would come back alive.
The sun fell much too fast for the citizens of Rislind, and as dusk settled upon the secluded meadow, a heightened grip of fear could be felt, perpetuated by the stories of Crumpet Grames and Bellawart Brewboil. At last, Mayor Doings congregated with the party of chosen adventurers, preparing to watch them depart from the gate of the village. Some of the crowd from the morning gathered to watch, but many locked themselves inside their homes, as Mayor Doings had advised.
“Good luck brave Rislind warriors! We trust in your valor to vanquish this demon spirit once and for all!” Doings said.
“I would want that as much as you, but don’t get your hopes very high, Mayor Doings—I don’t expect to see anything tonight,” Taisle replied. The party of seven mounted their waiting steeds, each strapped with an unlighted torch, and set off over the several acres of flowering meadow that separated the isolated town gates from the edge of the Northerly Foothills. Night fell, and the Rislind range overtook the horizon as they rode hard and fast toward its dim wooded edge. It wasn’t long before they reached the line of the forest, where the meadow began to slope gradually up, a path to the first trail.
“Alright then, let’s get this over,” Taisle commanded, and Pursaiones led them into the woods.
IV: THE LAST FREE CITY OF HEMLIN
Krem sat with his friends as Erguile led the gathered warriors through an homage to Gaigas for the food they were about to eat. It had been over a month since the emergency meeting of the Grand Council in Erol Drunne. The star had been the matter of discussion then, but in the recent weeks its importance had been thrust aside, as news that Zesm had begun an invasion into Arkenshyr’s northern neighbor, Hemlin, had traveled across the Kalm Ocean.
The matter of the growing star was forgotten, as the council had called for an immediate response to Zesm. A great troop was sent across the ocean to combat Zesm the Rancor, and put a permanent end to the threat of evil on Darkin. By the time Krem and his allies returned to the East Continent to form their garrison, Zesm had already sacked Bentertide, the Grand City of Hemlin. So the great army of allies came through the Angelyn Range to reach the last free realm of Hemlin, its southernmost city, W
allstrong. It was in Wallstrong that the leaders of the united armies of the West Continent gathered, spending their days awaiting reinforcements from Arkenshyr. Krem assured them that aid was coming. He said it would not come from the Reichmar—the battle dwarves nestled in the Angelyn Range who were long removed from the affairs of men—but from the humans by the southern shores of Arkenshyr. The remaining militia of Hemlin, made up of druids and weldumuns, was gathering in Wallstrong, ready to work together with their allies from the west. Because of the looming invasion, it came as a surprise to Krem, Slowin and Flaer when Erguile started the dinner’s conversation with a question about the near forgotten matter of the star:
“Isn’t it a bit strange, old Vapour, that we’ve dismissed the star?” Erguile broached between bites of famed Wallstrong Stew, a medley of meats and vegetables made by the barrelful. Slowin looked sidelong at Erguile. Flaer didn’t seem to pay the question any mind, and he continued to feast, oblivious of Erguile.
“Are you concerned about it?” Krem calmly replied.
“Well, I don’t get concerned very often with mystical affairs. But isn’t it odd that the Grand Council saw it fit to call a meeting about the star, only several weeks ago, and now it’s all but forgotten?”
“More pressing matters concern us now—that is your answer,” Flaer said without looking up from his steaming bowl of stew.
“He’s right—it may have seemed important enough to hold our focus at the time, but we cannot waste thought on it until we deal with the evil forsaking our world. All will agree that destroying Zesm must be our only concern,” Slowin said.
“I understand that. But no one could explain why the star appeared in the night sky so suddenly, or stranger still, why it grows larger, bit by bit, each night. I find it terribly akin to evil magic, as if a giant spell was brewing in the sky, biding its time before crashing down upon all of us, destroying Darkin,” Erguile said.
Darkin: The Prophecy of the Key (The Darkin Saga Book 2) Page 3
