Cry of the Ghost Wolf con-3

by Mark Sehesdedt

  Jagun Ghen tried to push himself up, but his strength failed him and he fell again. His hands were shaking like an old man huddled next to his hearthfire. Damn Vazhad. He had done this-and then escaped punishment.

  “Where is Kathkur?” said Jagun Ghen.

  “The heights,” said Guric. “He wishes to perfect the eladrin’s gifts with the winds.”

  “Does he?” Jagun Ghen forced himself to sit up. “The circle is prepared?”

  “In blood and fire, lord.”

  “Good.” He squinted up at the light leaking in around the thick curtains. “How long until darkness?”

  “A while yet, lord.”

  “Then I will rest. When the sun sets, bring Kathkur to me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  In full sunlight, Hweilan got a good look at the place where the hobgoblins had brought her the night before, where she had found her mother’s corpse and robbed it of its covering. It was shaped like a bowl, with a rim that rose up toward the sky. And nearly every inch had been decorated with pictures and symbols drawn in blood or carved into the stone itself. Hundreds of old fires had scorched the bottom.

  Hweilan reached the entrance, the wolf just behind her. Her mother’s corpse had been wrapped again in new cloth and bound in leather cords. A bed of dry brush, twigs, branches, and even a few logs lay in the very center of the bowl.

  Just then, Uncle gave another growl. A large hobgoblin was kneeling next to her mother’s body.

  It was Rhan. The Greatsword of Impiltur lay on the ground beside him. He stood and returned her gaze.

  “What are you doing?” she said. “Why are you here?”

  His gaze locked on the knives she held, but he made no move for his sword. “I honor the slain.”

  “What?”

  He held out his arms. “This place,” he said. “We call it the Cauldron of the Slain. This is where we bring our most honored heroes to rejoin their gods.”

  Hweilan blinked. “You had my mother brought here?”

  “Your mother’s spirit has moved on,” said Rhan. “But I intend to honor her.”

  Hweilan looked down at the wolf, whose attention was fixed on the Razor Heart Champion. The hobgoblin had still not so much as glanced at his sword. Hweilan lowered her knives, but she did not sheathe them.

  “Why?” she said.

  “She was a warrior.”

  “No,” said Hweilan. “I mean, why are you doing this? After what I did to you?”

  Rhan held her gaze a long time. “I do not regret my challenge. You tricked me. Shamed me before the Razor Heart. You owed me that fight.”

  “And now?”

  “Now we stand even. Unless you wish otherwise.” He looked down at his sword, holding his gaze there to be sure she noticed, then back at her. There was no mistaking the challenge in his face. “Then, I stand ready.”

  “We are even,” she said, and she sheathed her knives. “For now.”

  He closed his eyes and gave her a small bow. When he opened them, there was the barest hint of a smile on his lips. “You are much like she was, then.”

  Hweilan approached, Uncle following silently just behind. “Explain.”

  “I met your mother once.”

  She stopped, her mother’s corpse between them. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her palms sweating. “You lie,” she said.

  “No,” said Rhan. “When I was young. Only my third summer as a warrior. We left the mountains to raid into the grassland. Gureng, our chief, had a taste for horseflesh, and we wanted to impress him. We numbered seventeen, but the Nar who found us had more than twice that. It was a fierce, bloody fight. We were scattered, and five horsemen cornered me in a valley. No trees. Not even a bush to hide under. I managed to kill one, but the others captured me, beat me, and dragged me back to their fellows. They were Creel. They tied me up and were about to flay me when a shadow passed overhead. The horses screamed in panic. Great beasts came down from the sky. Three of them.”

  “Scythe wings,” said Hweilan.

  “Yes,” said Rhan. “Knights from your Highwatch. Led by one named Ardan.”

  “My father.”

  “And your mother was with him.”

  It was so preposterously outlandish that Hweilan knew Rhan wasn’t making it up. No one would be stupid enough to lie about something like that. Not when she stood ready to gut him.

  “Most of the Creel scattered, but the knights hemmed in a few. They demanded to know why Creel were so far out of their homeland. The Creel claimed they were ridding the land of hobgoblins. Seeing a beaten and bloody warrior, the knights were ready to believe them. But your mother saw true. She saw that a dozen warriors had been beating one. She told your father that the only thing she hated more than a brute was a cowardly brute. A dozen against one … that was a coward’s fight. She cut me loose, put one of the Creel’s spears in my hand, and announced that if four of them could beat me in a fair fight, it would prove their words true.”

  “And you beat four of them, even after suffering a beating?”

  “I beat six of them,” said Rhan. “Sent them to the Hells. Your mother spoke true. They were cowards and broke the honor of the fight. When I killed the first two, more joined in.”

  “My father allowed this?”

  Rhan chuckled. It was the first time Hweilan could remember anything like laughter coming out of him. “He and the other knights were none too happy about the whole thing. But they didn’t like craven brutes, either. I think they knew Creel for the treacherous liars they are. And your mother … she had a way about her. A strong spine, I think your people say. She had a rage on her that day. A real burning anger. Had the knights tried to stop her, I think she might have fought them herself. When it was over, she gave me food and water from her own pack and told me to get back to the mountains where I belonged.” He paused. “Your mother was a true warrior.”

  Hweilan looked up at him, and only when she saw him through a shining blur did she realize she was crying. “Yet you didn’t hesitate to kill her.”

  “What I killed … that wasn’t your mother, and you know it. I killed the thing defiling her.”

  Hweilan turned away. She wiped her face on her remaining sleeve.

  “No, you didn’t,” she said. “You just freed it so that it could take another.”

  “Menduarthis?” Rhan snorted. “No loss there.”

  Hweilan chuckled, then said, “He grows on you after a while.”

  “Yes,” said Rhan. “Like a rash.”

  Hweilan looked down at the covered corpse, and all mirth left her.

  Rhan gave her a long silence, then said, “We must burn the body. Soon.”

  He didn’t elaborate, but Hweilan knew what he meant. The body had been outside for too long. Much longer, and it would begin to rot. The nights were still cold enough to freeze a thick skin of ice on the surface cisterns, which might have slowed the putrefaction. But Hweilan could sense something amiss anyway. So could Uncle. The wolf had come near the body more than once, sniffed, then whined and backed away. Hweilan’s own sense of smell was far more sensitive than most people’s-the final rites she had endured with Nendawen had made it sharper still-and she picked up a foulness around the body. Perhaps being a home for one of Jagun Ghen’s minions had left some sort of stain inside the flesh itself. It didn’t matter. This had been her mother once, and Hweilan needed to honor that. She owed it to her mother.

  Hweilan looked over the bed of brush and sticks Rhan had gathered. Nothing looked suitable.

  “May I ask a favor of you, Rhan?”

  “For you or your mother?”

  She looked up at him, uncertain if he was trying to provoke her. She could see nothing but genuine curiosity in his gaze, but then, she wasn’t exactly an expert on hobgoblin wit.

  “Both,” she said.

  “Ask.”

  “I need a spear.”

  Rhan frowned.

  “Or just the haft,” she said. “It needs to be abou
t as long as my forearm. But straight and smooth.” She motioned to the pyre. “None of these will do.”

  “As you wish.” He shrugged, picked up his sword, and walked away. Uncle watched him until he was out of sight, then looked up at Hweilan.

  She returned the wolf’s gaze, and neither of them blinked. “Why won’t you talk? Why won’t you-” she struggled for the right word, then gave up-“change? Or can you not change?”

  She’d asked Gleed, and the old goblin had confessed he didn’t know. Living, Lendri had been able to change from wolf to elf whenever he wished. But he wasn’t living any more. Not dead either, but some state in between. Not even undead, though Gleed had explained to her it was something like it. Ken kucheh, he had calling it. “Living dead.” Even though the wolf’s heart did not beat and he only breathed to make a sound or find a scent, the spirit in him moved the body. Gleed did not know if this new state of being kept Lendri in his present form, if his mind and spirit had somehow been damaged, or if he was keeping this form out of pure spite. And if Gleed didn’t know, Hweilan could only guess. She had named him Uncle out of spite, that was certain. If he would not speak to her, she would not grace him with his given name.

  She kneeled so she could look him in the eye. “Tell me of my mother’s father.”

  Uncle blinked. Nothing more.

  “A name,” said Hweilan. “That’s all I want.”

  Nothing.

  Hweilan ground her jaw, thinking, then said, “I’ll tell you a name, then. Someone I met on the dream path. Haerul.”

  Uncle growled. That low rumble from deep in his chest. Close as he was now, Hweilan could feel the ground trembling with the force of it.

  “Tell me my grandfather’s name,” said Hweilan.

  Uncle snapped at her, his teeth closing less than an inch from her nose. But she didn’t flinch. The wolf turned and walked a few paces away.

  Hweilan stood and called after him. “If you won’t speak, at least keep watch while I prepare.”

  The wolf padded off to guard the path.

  Hweilan sat down next to her mother’s body, facing it. Even though she knew it was a corpse and the demon that had used it was long gone, she could not bring herself to turn her back on it.

  Rhan had done a masterful job of wrapping the body in the cloth, then binding it. The hobgoblin champion had taken great care, and Hweilan had to admit she was touched. It almost made her feel guilty for severing the tendons in his leg the night before.

  Hweilan closed her eyes and prayed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  When the thing had first seized Menduarthis, he had never before been so afraid. Over the years, he had learned the value of caution, though with the power he had gained in Ellestharn, there were few things that he truly feared. But the one that still haunted him, the one secret he told absolutely no one, was the one that had been with him the longest. Since childhood. More than anything, being confined in a tight place terrified him. Small rooms made his skin feel too tight, and he could not even abide heavy blankets while he slept.

  On Maaqua’s doorstep, he thought he had done a reasonably good job of hiding his growing panic. When the rotten thing had gouged her yellowed fingernail into his forehead, even then he had held on to reason-he’d suffered far worse wounds in his days than a little ripped skin. But then-so quickly he hadn’t even had time to resist-that wound had opened a doorway into his mind, and some thing had entered him.

  That had been his worst moment. It had been confinement not just of his body but of his mind as well. Every movement, every sensation, taste, touch, sight, all of it had been taken from him. It had felt like drowning, pressure, sinking, blackness-but it had burned like fire.

  Since then, awareness had come to him in broken images and sounds. Like dreams. Only they were all confused. He tasted light, felt sounds, heard smells-all of them tinged with the reek of flame. Now and then, the dream splintered, and he woke to fight. But every time the black fire returned.

  Menduarthis was growing weaker, and he knew it. He could no longer put names to many of the images in his dreams, could not remember the feel of winter or the smell of flowers. But always the fire burned in his mind.

  And then it was gone. All at once the substance of Menduarthis’s reality-fraught with hundreds of cracks and fissures-shattered entirely.

  He fell to the ground, fighting to breathe, and only then remembered what ground and breath were. Dry grass rasped between his fingers, and he could feel wind-real wind and not the foul miasmas of his dreams-stirring his hair. His tongue felt swollen, his skin dry and cracked.

  “It’s awake,” said a deep voice from nearby.

  Menduarthis opened his eyes, and the sheet of silver stars overhead struck him as the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, their light pure and unsullied. Then a deeper darkness moved between him and the sky.

  It took most of his strength and all of his will to raise his head. He was outside. It was full dark, but the starlight seemed very bright, and Selune, riding a third of the way up the sky, was only a few days from her fullness. The wall of cliffs in the distance told Menduarthis where he was. He’d never been here, but the place had a reputation. Nar-sek Qu’istrade, the grass-covered valley at the foot of Highwatch, hemmed in by the last embrace of the Giantspires.

  “I know you,” said another voice.

  The sound that hit Menduarthis’s ears cracked with the effort of speaking. But under it he sensed a will that was far stronger than anything he had ever faced. Kunin Gatar’s power would melt and steam away before this flame.

  “I know who you are. I know what you are. And what you tried to become. You reached far, grasping at mist. And when true power came into your reach … you let her go. I know what you are. And I name you: fool.”

  … her? Her who? Hweilan.

  The name floated up out of the darkness to settle in Menduarthis’s mind. And around it, more of reality solidified. Beyond the sensation of his surroundings, Menduarthis remembered who Hweilan was, who he was … and who was speaking to him.

  He raised his head. Other figures stood nearby. Not pacing. But every one of them swayed or twitched with nervous energy, and Menduarthis was reminded of cocoons twitching as moths struggled to break free.

  Beyond all of them was a deeper shadow that the moon and starlight seemed unable to touch. It gave off a presence-not one Menduarthis could feel on his skin, but it burned his spirit. Jagun Ghen. Menduarthis knew it beyond a doubt. He had scoffed at Lendri’s tale to Hweilan. But his derision had only been to mask his own fear. Even he had heard of the Destroyer. The Burning Hunger from the Abyss.

  Menduarthis knew he was doomed. However, now that he could see starlight and feel the wind again, it didn’t seem so bad. And even though he did not have the strength to rise, neither would he cringe.

  So instead he laughed. It was little more than a rasping croak, and it hurt so badly that it brought tears to his eyes. But he clenched his jaw against the pain and forced words out of his mouth. “Let … her go. You make it … sound easy. You’ve been chasing her. For months. Me? I wasn’t even trying. Not much. And I still came closer to her than you. Me a fool? Heh. Name thyself.”

  He felt the shadow stir, but nothing more. He cursed his luck. Infuriating others had always been one of his greatest talents. He’d hoped to stir this monster to a rage, to provoke the demon into killing him before the fire returned to bind Menduarthis and pull him back down to darkness.

  “The spider,” said Jagun Ghen.

  “What?”

  “Your … little flower. She fancies herself a hunter. She learned from the Old Spider. All the lore and knowledge of her people. But she missed the most important lesson. Of all the hunters, the spider is the wisest. It never leaves its lair. It spins its web … and waits for the fly.”

  “If you think Hweilan is a fly, then you are a fool.”

  The silence lasted long enough that Menduarthis began to hope he had finally stirred the demon to
wrath. But no. When Jagun Ghen spoke again, there was no hint of anger in his voice. If anything, he seemed … curious.

  “You don’t seem afraid.”

  “You don’t seem very frightening.”

  Jagun Ghen laughed. “You are a vain thing. Were I to slice open your throat, I suspect you’d use your last breath to spit in my face. But I know the truth.”

  “And what-” Menduarthis’s throat constricted, and he had to swallow hard before he could continue. “What is that?”

  “You are not afraid because you think you have nothing left to lose. I named you true. You are a fool.”

  The shadow surged toward him. Just for a moment, Menduarthis saw what lived inside that shape, and he screamed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The wind turned from cold to frigid, and the sky took on the thicker blue cast of late afternoon by the time Hweilan heard Rhan return. She was ready.

  She stood and turned to face him. He held a long spear in both hands and lifted it for display. “This will do?”

  The shaft had not come from the mountain ash and pine of the Giantspires. The wood was pale but strong. Some westerner’s weapon, where trees grew under a warmer sun. Taken in a raid, most likely.

  “A fine weapon,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Uncle let out a warning yip, then padded to her side. Footsteps approached quickly, obviously trying to keep quiet and not doing a very good job of it. She looked over Rhan’s shoulder and saw Darric peeking from around the stone where the broken rim of the Cauldron met the path. “Why are you here?” she called to him. Rhan turned as Darric, Valsun, and Jaden stepped into view. Darric and Valsun had a rock in each hand and Jaden held a stout branch in his shaking left hand.

  “We heard him”-Jaden pointed at Rhan-“and Darric thought you might be in trouble.”

  Hweilan looked at Rhan. “Why would they think that?”

  Rhan said, “Nuurgen did not wish to part with his spear.”

  “We heard him,” said Darric as he approached warily, “say he needed the spear ‘for Hweilan.’ And when that other hobgoblin wouldn’t hand it over, this one here smashed his face, took the spear, and walked off. We thought …”