Cry of the Ghost Wolf con-3

by Mark Sehesdedt

None of them moved. They looked from the disciple to Hweilan and flexed their hands around their weapons.

  “Go!” The energy crackling around the hobgoblin woman’s fist flared and lit in her eyes. “Go or I’ll boil the blood in you where you stand. You think I can’t handle this whelp?”

  The three warriors obeyed. They’d scarcely left when the sound of heated conversation came from the stairwell. Buureg himself emerged a moment later, a half-dozen warriors right behind him. The warchief gave Hweilan a hard look, then focused all his attention on Maaqua.

  “It’s true, then?” he said. “Elret, this is true?”

  “Buureg,” said the disciple, the one whom he’d called Elret. “You and any two you choose may stay. Send the rest away. Quickly!”

  Buureg motioned sharply to two of his warriors and the rest filed back through the door.

  “Shut the door,” said one of the other disciples.

  The last warrior on the stairs looked to Buureg, who nodded. The door closed, but Hweilan noticed the latch didn’t slide home.

  “You three stay where you are,” said Hweilan. She still had her knife in hand.

  “The queen was using a ritual to spy on our enemy in Highwatch,” said Elret. “It was working at first. All of us could feel it. But then … something went wrong.”

  “What?” said Hweilan.

  The disciple cradling Maaqua’s head in her lap looked up. “She encountered something and …”

  “It caught her,” said Elret.

  “Caught her?” said Buureg. “What-?”

  “If we need something sliced or stabbed, I will call for you,” said Elret. “Until then, hold your jaw. If half of what this girl said is true, she knows our enemy better than anyone. She may be Maaqua’s only chance.”

  Hweilan looked down at Maaqua. The old crone had seemed ancient the first time Hweilan had seen her, but now she appeared absolutely frail. Her skin had the look of wet parchment. She spared Buureg a glance, then put her full attention on Elret. “I can’t help your queen,” she said. “But I know someone who can.”

  Elret’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “Is there a portal here in the fortress?”

  Palpable tension ran through the group, and Hweilan did not miss the warning glance Elret cast the others.

  “Do you want your queen to live or not?”

  As soon as the words left her mouth, Hweilan realized the danger. Hobgoblins generally attained positions of high status by defeating their predecessor. If Maaqua were to die …

  “Yes, there’s a portal,” said Buureg.

  Elret cast the warchief a murderous glance, but the magic swirling around her fist dimmed. “I’ll have your head for this, warchief.”

  “If Maaqua dies,” said Buureg, “I’ll eat your heart.”

  Hweilan looked at Elret. “Well …?”

  “Below the temple,” said Elret. “In the queen’s private chambers. Few know of it.”

  “If you want your queen to see the dawn, you have to take us there. Now. But I have a few demands of my own.”

  “You dare?” Buureg roared. “I’ll kill you where you stand!”

  “And your queen will die!” said Hweilan.

  Buureg looked down at Maaqua, and Hweilan wondered what the story was there. Surely not love. Maaqua was at least twice the warchief’s age. Perhaps more. But there was no mistaking the loyalty in his gaze that bordered on zealotry.

  “What are your demands?” said Buureg.

  “First,” said Hweilan, “I want your oath that no harm will come to Mandan until we return. And I want those three idiots brought out of their hole, set beside a warm fire, and given a good meal.”

  “The one you call Mandan is not mine to protect,” said Buureg. “His life belongs to Ruuket and her children. The rest shall be done.”

  “Mandan lives or your queen dies.”

  “His life is not mine to give!”

  Hweilan pointed at Maaqua with her dagger. “Her life is mine to save. Or not.”

  Buureg growled. “I will send warriors to speak to Ruuket and explain to her what is happening. I will have them beg her in my name to do your friend no harm until you can speak to her. This is the best I can do.”

  Hweilan thought on it for a bit, then nodded. “Done. Now let’s move.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  By the time they left the tower, the only remaining ravens were dead, and the wolves gave no more resistance, fleeing back the way they had come. All but one.

  As Hweilan walked out the tower door, Uncle padded out of the darkness. Blood dripped from his muzzle.

  The hobgoblin warriors cried out, and the archers among them raised their bows.

  “Stop!” said Hweilan.

  “Do as she says,” said Buureg as he walked out behind her. He looked to Hweilan. “Your wolf will do us no harm?”

  “Not unless you try to harm him. Or me.”

  Four warriors bore Maaqua on a litter deep into the heart of the fortress. One could have easily carried the frail old hobgoblin, but Elret insisted that the queen be treated as gently as the finest crystal. It occurred to Hweilan that any gods watching her this night must be laughing. She had decided to forsake her friends to kill Jagun Ghen, and here she was risking her life to save the one person within a thousand leagues that she would love to see dead.

  Buureg and two warriors led the way, Hweilan and Uncle just behind them, and Maaqua’s other acolytes following. Green and blue witchlights lit their way, flying soundlessly around them as they walked.

  As someone who had grown up in a land where most of the moisture fell as snow, Hweilan was truly awed by the size of the hobgoblins’ cistern deep under the mountain. The cavern ceiling hung low over the water. Some of the stone columns actually descended into the water itself. And the glow of the witchlights could not reach to the far side. One could have easily drowned an entire herd of swiftstags in the lake and left not so much as a ripple on the shore.

  Once they passed the lake and went into the underground caverns, Elret stepped forward so that she could “set the wards to sleep,” as she put it. Still wearing her bone mask, Hweilan occasionally caught glimpses of the auras, but she had no idea what they were. It was like reading a book written in a language she couldn’t speak, much less read.

  They crossed passages of absolute darkness that caused the witchlights to dim. And the smell emanating from them made Hweilan’s gorge rise. In one she distinctly heard something moving.

  They crossed a chamber more than twice the size of the temple sanctuary in Highwatch and stopped before a set of double doors. To Hweilan they looked like plain wooden doors, but she could feel the magic radiating off them like heat from an open oven.

  Elret turned to them. “Buureg, your warriors can come no farther. We will take the queen from here.”

  Buureg nodded to his warriors, and they carefully handed the litter over to the acolytes.

  “Wait here until we return,” Buureg told the warriors.

  “And if you don’t return?”

  “Don’t be foolish!” said Elret. She turned to the only acolyte not holding a corner of the litter. “Stay here and see that they do nothing stupid.”

  The acolyte bowed.

  Elret turned to the door, threw her head back, and spread both her arms. Hweilan knew the Goblin tongue well, but she could not understand a word of Elret’s chant. When she stopped, everyone was so still that the only sound was Maaqua’s labored breathing. Elret clapped her hands suddenly and the hobgoblin warriors jumped. Then she spoke a final incantation and traced an intricate pattern on the door. Hweilan saw an after-image behind her finger’s trail, an angry red light that faded slowly, and with it the aura of power emanating from the door.

  Elret turned and fixed her gaze on Hweilan. “If you ever speak outside these walls of what you see beyond this door, your life is forfeit.”

  Hweilan kept the anger from her voice. “Lead on.”

  Beyond the
door they walked a short while in darkness, for the witchlights did not follow. Hweilan could feel the closeness of the air, and the sounds of their footfalls came back to her ears sharp and fast. They were in a tunnel. Hweilan counted just under fifty steps before they emerged into light again.

  It was another chamber, even larger than the last. At first, Hweilan thought it was open to the sky, but no, the ceiling was simply far, far overhead, and hundreds of thousands of lights sparkled there, all swimming in a miasma of sickly purple. A wide stone stairway wound up the wall and ended at a cave over halfway to the ceiling. More cave entrances pierced the wall in a dozen places-some with no paths so that only bats could have reached them.

  “Follow closely,” Elret told Buureg and Hweilan. “Do not trust your eyes.”

  She walked off to the left. The acolytes bearing Maaqua followed, with Hweilan, Uncle, and Buureg coming behind. Hweilan noticed that, despite the light overhead, none of them cast a shadow on the floor.

  Elret took a step and her foot disappeared into the floor. Another two and she had seemingly sunk to her knees in the stone.

  “An illusion,” she said. “After the first step, you will see your way.”

  Soon she was gone altogether. The acolytes continued, and Hweilan made note of where they stepped, then followed.

  Elret spoke truly. Hweilan’s right foot disappeared. But as soon as it came down on solid stone, the illusion dissipated before her eyes, and she saw that they were descending a wide staircase made from smooth, green stone. It descended a long way, then turned to the left. It did this again and again. Hweilan stopped counting steps somewhere in the high three hundreds. Even though she could see no discernible light source, a soft green glow lit their way.

  A final turn and the company found themselves standing in what may have been the most perfectly round chamber Hweilan had ever seen. Even the walls bent upward into a perfect, smooth dome. In the center of the room was a perfect half-circle arch. It was twisted and braided like metal in the hands of a master craftsman, but its texture had the look of stone. Under the arch, the air shimmered, much like Hweilan had seen in Vaasa, when the heat made the distance blur and waver. But the thing that struck Hweilan the most was the utter lack of smell. Up until now she had been surrounded by the scent of stone and damp and the otherworldly fragrance of the spells that hid just beyond sight. But after crossing the threshold into the room, Hweilan could not even smell the hobgoblins, which in itself was a relief.

  Elret turned a wary eye on Hweilan. “This portal leads to only three places that we know of-one in the far west, one to another portal in the mountains, and the other to a realm where the very air burns. You are certain you know how to use this?”

  “No,” said Hweilan. “But I have no better idea. All I can do is try, yes?”

  “Know this,” said Elret. “If you intend some treachery, if Maaqua dies, or any one of us does not return, your friends will be disemboweled, then healed, then have a fresh limb chopped off every day. They will-”

  “I understand,” said Hweilan.

  “I have shown you one of the Razor Heart’s most guarded secrets,” said Elret. “Now tell me where you’re taking us.”

  “To the one person I think might be able to help your queen.” Hweilan reached into the largest of the pouches riding her belt. “Everyone should stand back,” she said.

  She removed the sacred drum from her pouch. It was only three finger widths thick and had a skin only along one side. The back was a web of taut cords, both binding the skin and serving as a handle. Symbols had been burned all around the wooden rim and painted on the skin itself. Hweilan saw Elret studying them carefully.

  “And who is this person?”

  “If this works,” said Hweilan, stepping forward, “you’ll meet him soon enough. If not …”

  And she honestly had no idea if this would work. She knew that the portals scattered across Faerun were different from kingdom to kingdom. They had never been entirely reliable, and after the Spellplague, many had become outright dangerous. She had only tried this before on two portals, and both times a master had been watching. And the ways between Faerun and the Feywild were not set. She knew if she didn’t get the rhythm exactly right, they might well return to find that a hundred years had passed during the day they spent in the Feywild.

  Hweilan held the web of the drum in her right hand and curled her left into a fist with her thumb and smallest finger extended to strike the drumskin. She beat a steady rhythm, first in time with her own heart, then varying as she remembered the ebb and flow of the portal to which she called. The tempo tumbled like water over rocks. She matched her breathing to the rhythm and forced her mind to recall the places she sought-every sound, every smell-the dampness of the air, the smell of mud and rock and living things. Once she had the rhythm and held the vision, she began the chant.

  The shimmering air under the arch darkened, and tiny red sparks appeared in its depths. Light shot out from spark to spark, like hundreds of cracks forming on thin ice, each flaring to the rhythm of the drum. Green light joined the red, replaced it, faded to a fireheart blue, then melted together to a silver, like bright sunlight on unquiet water.

  “Stay close,” said Hweilan, then looked over her shoulder. “And you should cover the queen’s face.”

  “Why?” said Elret.

  But Hweilan ignored her and stepped through the portal. She stepped quickly-not so much out of fear of the waterfall soaking as wanting to be out of the way, for she was sure that-

  Buureg leaped out of the falls, sword in hand. His eyes widened when he beheld his surroundings. Much of the Giantspires had forest, but nothing like this. The smallest trees overlooking the river here were larger than even the oldest giants of Buureg’s homeland. Only hints of the sky could be seen as a breeze wafted through leaves, some of which were bigger than Razor Heart shields.

  Watching Buureg’s fear and awe, Hweilan was struck by something: the perpetual twilight of the thick forest, the sounds of the river and the birds and the breeze, the very smell of the air … she felt home. Highwatch and the plains of Narfell had once held fond childhood memories for her. But all hope of finding home there was gone. Here was where she belonged, and she had missed it. Hweilan turned away so that the warchief would not see her scrubbing the tears from her cheeks.

  Uncle emerged, along with the hobgoblins. Elret cried out, finding herself under a waterfall, then looked around suspiciously, eyeing every shadow for a trap. When she saw that nothing had taken Buureg, and Hweilan was standing relaxed on the riverbank, she pushed one arm back through the portal to wave the acolytes through.

  The queen’s litter came through feet first, her bearers moving quickly to keep from soaking their burden. Maaqua’s head passed through the water, and she gasped, breathing in water. Her back arched, and her limbs shook with such force that the acolytes almost dropped her.

  Hweilan’s first thought was that the water of the river had simply revived her. But one look at Maaqua’s face showed this was something worse. Her eyelids were open, but her eyes had rolled back in her head, and as her servants struggled to get her back in the litter her trembling increased.

  “Get the water out of her throat before she chokes!” Buureg screamed.

  Elret turned and pointed at Hweilan. “What treachery is this? What have you done?”

  Hweilan’s right hand moved toward her knife. “I did nothing.”

  One of the acolytes spoke up. “It happened as she came through the portal. Perhaps-”

  “She knew!” said Elret. “That wench planned this!”

  “No,” said Hweilan, taking great care to keep her voice even.

  “I’ll have your heart for this!”

  “If the queen dies,” Buureg, told Elret, “I’ll hand it to you myself. But until then, we have no choice but to trust her.” He looked to Hweilan. “Now, how do we find this person you’re looking for?”

  “I suspect he’ll find us,” said Hweil
an. Maaqua coughed out water, and Hweilan saw it was tinged with blood. “But there’s no reason we can’t meet him halfway. Come.”

  The hobgoblins did not follow at first.

  Hweilan kept walking, but called out, “Stay close. There are things in these woods meaner than me.”

  Even Elret rushed to catch up.

  Jagun Ghen sat in the middle of the pact circle. He was naked from the waist up, his skin coated in sweat, and his staff lay across his knees. His brothers kneeled around the outer edge of the circle, their chant a rhythmic counterpoint to his own. The bloody gouges on their foreheads gave off an angry orange glow, the only light in the room.

  The grin stretching over Jagun Ghen’s face twitched. He had not blinked since the rite began, and his eyes were now so dry that, as they moved left and right, left and right, over and over again, they made a soft scritch-scritch like a scribe’s pen across fine parchment. His breath came quicker as his chanting lowered to a guttural whisper. Every muscle vibrated like a lute string on the verge of breaking. He threw his head back, spraying droplets of perspiration. His body rose off the floor, and he opened his mouth wide-

  – and screamed.

  His torso snapped forward as if he’d been punched in the gut, and he fell to the floor.

  The power that had been running through the circle dissipated, and the disciples moaned like starving men denied a last meal. One of them reached out, careful not to cross the pact circle.

  “Master …?”

  “Gone,” said Jagun Ghen. “They’re gone.”

  “How much farther?” Elret asked.

  Uncle had long since disappeared into the forest, and Hweilan led them along the twisting course of the river. Through the forest would have been quicker had she been on her own, but she knew that bearing Maaqua through such rough country would have slowed them too much.

  “Not far,” she replied.

  “You said that a half-mile ago.”

  Hweilan kept going, not even turning as she spoke. “Distances can be odd here sometimes.”

  “Then how do you know where you’re going?”