by Scott Zamek
“I pray we are close enough.” Andreg turned his head and listened. There was something in the distance, at the edge of hearing, and he could not quite make it out. But he could see the Watcher’s jaw, clenched and grim, and he knew the Watcher could hear.
“We move,” called Aerol, and nudged his horse to a trot.
The clearing narrowed and the wind was lost. The wagon track was once again squeezed thin by the pressing forest. The day grew darker; light reaching the forest floor became no more than that of a slackening dusk. Andreg tried in vain to illuminate a crystal, but in the end, he climbed down off his horse, found an old, dried branch, and wrapped some moss around the top. Then he struck a match to the torch and held it over his head. “There are many ways to battle the minions of evil,” he declared with a feeble grin.
Andreg climbed back on his horse and led onward through the rising gloom. The path narrowed again as night fell, the forest thickening like solid barriers rising to their left and to their right. Andreg’s torch cast an orange circle, small and round, onto the way ahead, but could not penetrate the dense trees to either side of the track. The mage looked out but could see no more than five feet into the limitless night; it was thick, with substance, as if he was treading onward through an atmosphere of stagnant water. Andreg leaned forward, lifting the torch against the darkness. A few lone crickets began to chirp, the sound somehow muffled, seeming distant and forlorn.
Trader hesitated, cocking his head. “Something ahead,” he said; “the sound of water.” They broke into a clearing encircled by pines, a small creek trickling along the northern edge. The sky formed a circle overhead, where dark clouds obscured a thin and distant moon.
“And the cold again.” Trader’s words suddenly turned to frost, and the horses gushed their breath into the frozen air. He stopped. “Something . . .”
Aerol and Andreg waited, listening.
Trader shook his head. “It’s gone.”
Aerol sat atop his black Frasian, tall and wary, but his face was hardened into worry. “We continue on through the night—no more stops until we reach the border.”
Andreg tilted his torch toward the line of trees along the path but could see little. Each trunk was like a vague, brown pillar, with nothing but blackness filling the void between, and beyond, pure darkness reigned, as if dripping from tree limbs and oozing from the forest floor.
The wind became distant and lonely. No one spoke. Aerol lit another torch and took the lead, but the path tightened, and even with two torches burning he could not see ahead. Branches and tangled vines pressed in; Aerol’s horse stumbled over a fallen limb across the path. He pulled to a stop. “We must walk the horses,” he said, and dismounted. “The way is too treacherous.”
Trader sat on his horse, refusing to dismount. “I don’t like it.”
“What choice do we have?” said Andreg, as he followed Aerol’s lead.
Trader shook his head. “We could build a fire, wait for day . . .”
“You want to wait here?” said Andreg, sweeping his arm toward the dense trees.
Trader reluctantly acquiesced, slowly sliding off his horse. Aerol led the way, torch held high in the night. They clambered over thick limbs blocking the path, and around twisted vines forming a web at every turn. The path led on, and they guided the horses, until Aerol ducked his head underneath some vines and came out upon a clearing. They could see the sky again, dark and starless.
“Perhaps we should eat,” suggested Andreg. He looked at Trader and saw him frozen, listening intently.
Aerol raised his torch. “Watcher?”
“Perhaps it is just the wind,” answered Trader. But he did not move. He stayed wary, listening.
Aerol’s breath suddenly turned white. “We will make a fire . . . wait out the night.” He looked at Trader, who was still standing stiff. “In the name of the Ancients! What ails you Watcher?”
Trader tilted his head slightly. “I hear . . . silence. I can’t explain it, but something waits in the silence.”
Andreg and Aerol stood against the torchlight peering into the trees. There was a muffled silence. A twig snapped in the distant shadows. They squinted in vain to penetrated the black night, to see beyond the impenetrable wall of dark trees. Aerol raised his torch and moved to the center of the clearing, scanning the surrounding forest. He walked to the far trees and poked his torch into the gloom, then took a few steps into the forest and stood for a moment, listening.
“Nothing.” Aerol turned back to his friends. “Perhaps the ears of a Watch–” Aerol stopped short at what he now saw before him. Trader lay on the ground, sprawled out on his back and unmoving, sword lying ten feet from his open hand. Andreg’s torch was fallen in the center of the clearing, burning and sputtering on the ground. The mage was not to be seen. Aerol quietly and slowly slipped his sword from its sheath, then crept to the center of the clearing. He dropped his torch next to the other, then pulled a long dagger from his belt with his left hand. He circled, his back to the light, holding his weapons to the front.
Aerol listened. The night was silent. He moved to help Trader, but a shadow swept in front of him, and he froze. He heard a whisper, and a numbing cold rose up from the very ground into his legs, and he shuddered. “Watcher!”
His friend did not move. Aerol’s knuckles turned white around the hilt of his sword. He felt a faint rustling behind him, and he turned and gasped and stumbled back. A tall shadow, blackness itself, loomed over him. And in the nightwraith’s right hand, a black sword darker than the night, with a razor-thin silver edge, almost glowing, reflected the thinnest glint of icy light.
“Come then damn you!” Aerol flung his cloak over his shoulder and raised his blade.
The wraith lifted his black sword and brought it down upon the Far Rider. Aerol crossed his dagger and sword above him and caught the wraith’s blow, and the two swords stopped in stalemate, held high in the air against the moon. The wraith forced his strength upon Aerol, and the Far Rider’s sword began to inch back, then stopped, force upon force. He pressed with all his worth, but Aerol’s sword inched back yet again, until the fine edge of the black blade was touching his neck. A thin line of red widened across the Far Rider’s throat.
Aerol pushed off and leapt back and raised his sword again. The wraith drew up and moved upon him, raising the great black sword overhead. An echo of steel against steel pierced the night, and a sharp blow sent Aerol rolling across the ground. The Far Rider rose up, moved forward, and raised his blade again, and the dread sword of the nightwraith clanged down upon it. The blow sent Aerol against a tree, and he slumped to the ground and fought for consciousness, but a rising blackness closed his vision into a circle, and he fell into the oblivion of darkness.
The wraith stood over the Far Rider, raised his blade like a dagger pointed down at Aerol’s heart, and began a thrust with all the malign force of evil and hatred.
Andreg opened his eyes, his face strained and angry. He had been knocked to the ground, lying unconscious at the edge of the forest, but now he stood. The mage advanced into the clearing and put his hands before him and spoke. “Andril nethrain, dilvas kethrid . . .” A small pinprick of light appeared in the void between his hands. “Mathachral dinalvela.” The light grew and a fresh wind whispered from the west. The nightwraith turned and gave a piercing cry, then moved toward Andreg.
The mage raised his hands higher. “Analach endulthrae, evil spawn return to the darkness!” A sphere of golden light rose from Andreg’s hands, and the wraith strained against it but could not advance. Then the wraith rose up and all the blackness of the forest came to its aid, and the beast grew tall as a shadow rising in the night. The wraith strained against the light and moved slowly forward, until the sphere of light grew dim and began to shrink. Andreg stumbled backward, moved his hands as if pressing against a great wall, and his hands inched forward. The light expanded ever so slightly, and the wind blew stronger and greater from the freshness of the west. The nigh
twraith howled and gave back, and the blackness shrunk back into the forest like something drained from the basin of the world. The beast shrieked a wounded cry and fled behind the night and was gone.
Andreg looked small and weak and tired, like a frail, bony figure standing in the firelight. He raised his eyes to see Trader sit up and moan. “See to Aerol,” shouted the Watcher, as he reached for his sword and gingerly staggered to his feet.
Andreg slowly moved over to the Far Rider. Aerol was awake, holding his ribs with his back propped against the tree. Andreg fell to a knee. “I must rest,” he said. “Summoning the light has weakened me.”
“Can you ride?” Aerol winced and clutched his side with the effort of his words. “We must make for the edge of the forest with all haste.”
“Yes,” said Andreg. “The edge of the forest. The Ancient Lands hold a certain safety from our present foe, but I fear yet a new and unseen evil awaits to the east.”
FILBY STOOD in the clearing, bloodied sword in hand, cold rain dripping from the blade. He bent down next to Ethreal and saw that her eyes were closed. Rain pelted her muddied face and she lay motionless, up to her ears in brown water. Dark red swirls were reaching into the dirty puddles, like living rivulets expanding outward from Ethreal’s wounds, slowly overtaking the color of rain with the metallic crimson of blood. Filby sheathed his sword, then put his hands under Ethreal’s shoulders and slowly dragged her to the edge of the clearing, where a sprawling oak tree gave some protection from the rain. He looked at her face and her eyes were sealed and she did not move, but Filby was relieved to see her chest rising and falling with shallow breath. He took off his deerskin cloak and covered Ethreal’s wounded shoulder, then rose and walked out in the sweeping rain to retrieve her sword.
He remained in the clearing for some time, watching the trees lest the last trogg return to the fight. The other four troggs were lying in widening puddles, face down or sprawled out on a side with their blood leaching into the wet mud. Filby surveyed the scene and struggled to gather himself and think. Slowly, cautiously, he walked over to the trogg he had shot twice with the bow, bent down, then squeamishly tried to remove the arrow from the body, but it was imbedded in bone and snapped in two with the effort. The second arrow had only grazed the trogg—it was lost somewhere deep in the forest. He knew, only two arrows remained in the quiver.
Filby shivered and crossed his arms; he could feel a chill wind trickling down from the north. The rain slackened, leaving a cold fog rising from the mud and leaves and scarlet water drenching the forest floor, until a slow moan rose from behind. “Ethreal?” He quickly returned to his companion and knelt down and winced; blood was oozing slowly onto the deerskin and pooling on top of the shoulder wound. He thought he could bandage the cuts temporarily—until help arrived, or he could find help, or he could think of something else to do, but another thing worried him even more: a cold sweat ran from Ethreal’s brow, her face colorless in the thin afternoon light.
“Fire, I need a fire . . . but not out here in the open.” Troggs still roamed the forest, and he knew not what other evil lurked in the recesses of the night.
Filby pulled up the hood of his cloak, watching cold rain drip a constant stream before his eyes. Reluctantly, he searched Ethreal’s wet pockets to find the flint, for amid the struggles and battles and rugged hiking he had very clearly seen an open field well off the path, hidden from view in the trees, but it took almost an hour to drag Ethreal’s limp form into the forest. The sound of trickling water drew him on, past the clearing, through a curtain of brambles and finally out onto an open strip of land where the fresh wind blew and the trees drew back like a dark and waiting presence. He set Ethreal down and stretched out his back, but as Filby looked around he began to wonder if he had done the right thing. “It’s exposed.” He drew a long breath, glancing at Ethreal. “But what else can I do? We need clean water.”
He stood at the bank of a wide river, deep brown with flowing tannin. Bending reeds and cattails and a thin band of marsh grass lined the muddy shore, giving a rare view of the open sky, but it was the splashing sound of gushing water that drew Filby’s attention. A bubbling spring on the near bank sent a stream of clear water into the flow; Filby knelt down and drank and cleaned days of dried mud off his face and arms, then filled his canteen to the brim. The current ran east, Filby noticed, as he drenched his head in the cool spring, which meant he had crossed some kind of divide. All previous rivers he had seen flowed west, toward the Sanguine Sea.
He gingerly moved Ethreal next to the fresh spring and rubbed his sore hands together. He was sweating, a cold and uncomfortable sweat on a cold and dwindling day. The wind blew crisply over the slow-moving river, smelling faintly of the sea, a fall sun slipping low and wide and red to abandon its edge of warmth. Filby made a bed out of moss and slid Ethreal onto it before covering her again with the deerskin. Night would soon be at hand; a biting frost was already shifting over the hills and along the length of the water. Filby knew that a fire was essential, and a warm one—no typical campfire would keep Ethreal’s shivering at bay for an entire night. He made his way into the forest, his back sore from the long hike, but time was precious. Barely enough daylight remained for the task at hand, and he used much of it to chop wood, carry armfuls back to Ethreal, and build a steady fire. He rolled two dead tree trunks next to the flames, casting heat toward the campsite.
Filby knelt down and poured a few ounces of water from the canteen onto a torn rag. “Ethreal,” he whispered softly, dabbing her forehead. She opened her eyes for an instant and drank a few sips of water then fell back into unconsciousness.
Filby slumped down and felt useless. “What good is the fire. What good is water, if I can’t get her to drink?” The wound on her leg, he knew, was the one causing the fever. It was not healing, and Filby doubted her condition would improve without proper treatment. To make matters worse, the campfire constantly snapped and hissed with wet branches, causing Filby to dwell on the things in the forest that might see the flames. What he was afraid of, exactly, he did not know: creatures with eyes and nostrils that could detect smoke; creatures with swords and bows that meant him harm. Nightwraith and troggs and halfwraith—it all seemed so hopeless. Who knew what lurked in the trees? The only one who knew was lying unconscious before him.
The bleak day arched over to the west, sending the land into gray twilight before edging the forest with a watery shimmer. Filby stoked the fire, wondering what to do, watching sparks float into the darkening heavens and hoping the warmth would help his companion’s shiver. Twisted oaks at the edge of the clearing flung out long shadows in that tenuous hour between sunset and darkness. Sunlight was slowly superseded by firelight. Crickets began to sing, although weakly, until Filby could not remember the last time he had heard a cheerful sound in the forest.
“Black trees, black sky . . . even the infernal river is black.” The night seemed to close around him, seemed to press in on the clearing until the only visible world was a vague yellow circle. Filby added another log to the fire, then another; it made him somehow feel safer, though he knew it could also draw unwanted attention. And so he kept his sword close by, and Ethreal’s bow securely slung behind his back.
The night drew long but Filby did not sleep. He sat up and shivered and crossed his arms and wondered what day it was, what month. Time had long ago been lost somewhere over the green fields of Meadowkeep, he thought, as he looked up beyond the rising smoke of the fire. A blunt half-moon hovered above the river, storm clouds from earlier in the day taken by a west wind. Sharp stars bore down from a low sky, forming a black and silver circle overhead bounded by treetops. He built up the fire and it crackled embers through the night, and he sat in silence watching the flames.
“Where are we, Redmont?” Filby gasped, then rushed over to see Ethreal open her eyes and stare, not at him, but off into the distance, into the treetops . . . beyond the treetops.
“We’re leaving the forest,” he said
, placing the back of his hand on her forehead. “Don’t worry.” He was heartened to hear Ethreal speak, no matter the weakened condition. He scrambled for the canteen hoping she would be able to drink, but something else drew his attention. Another sound came, from behind. A crackle, somewhere off in the night, like the snapping of a branch. Filby shot to his feet. He stood breathless next to Ethreal and drew his sword, back to the fire, glaring into the impenetrable darkness.
What’s out there? The rustle of underbrush. Two thin eyes, glowing red, peered from the edge of the forest.
Filby backed toward the fire, stumbled and fell, then returned to his feet and brandished his sword. The eyes were gone. He circled Ethreal, squinting into the night. Firelight reached weakly outward, weaving shadows on the ground, playing tricks with the trees at the edge of light. Footsteps were walking the forest, there was no doubt, stirring thickets and branches, creeping around the edge of the campsite. Filby waited and listened, but he could not bring himself to move. He could hear his breath and feel his heart pulsing. The forest was silent. He thought this was the single trogg who had escaped the earlier fighting, but he could not be sure.
He crept around the fire and peered deeply into the black, standing over Ethreal with his sword brandished toward the trees. He listened intently. One lone cricket pricked the silence with a solitary echo; the hollow bark of a fox rang the forest as a stark reminder of what lurked in the grim darkness. And then, far off in the thick depths of the wood came the rustle of branches again, and the faint creaking of tree limbs. Filby strained to listen and the sound grew more distinct, as if something was approaching slowly and with care. Closer, the snap of a twig, then the movement stopped at the edge of the clearing. The thin red eyes flashed on within the solid night like the sudden flipping of a switch.
Filby turned and fumbled to string an arrow. A bush rustled behind the darkness. The two malign eyes inched around the dim edge of the clearing, blinking on and off behind trees, prowling like a wild predator hunting prey. Filby drew the bowstring and took a bead on the circling trogg, and held, straining against the tension of the bow. Still he held—watching the eyes disappear, then reappear, then disappear into the still darkness, until his breath became shallow and faltering—then he let loose with a sudden snap. He heard the rattle of his arrow rip through leaves and whistle through foliage deep into the forest. The trogg scampered away, footsteps and swish of underbrush fading into the distant trees.
