Cry of the Ghost Wolf con-3

by Mark Sehesdedt

  “This one,” said Jagun Ghen, “is deliciously stronger. I could spend decades chewing his soul, tasting his essence. Alas, my perfect vessel awaits.”

  Hweilan’s step faltered. “Perfect vessel?”

  “You.”

  She stopped. His presence, so close, was almost overwhelming. Part of his mind touched on hers, and she could not resist it. Her gorge rose. It was like drowning in sewage. But she could sense no lie in his words.

  “It was always you, Hweilan. Grandmother Spider knew it. The Fox knew it. That meddling old toad by his lake knew it. Even your precious Nendawen knew it. And you know it, too, don’t you girl? You can feel it. Feel me. Your soul crying out, hungry, starving for-”

  A sob escaped Hweilan, and she let go of the bowstring.

  It was a near thing. But again Jagun Ghen summoned a cord of wind, striking the arrow less than a yard from his chest. It flew away.

  Then he opened his arms, put his head back, and sucked in a deep breath through his mouth. He looked down at her. “You taste so wonderful. Now all your arrows are gone. Time at last. Time to-”

  Hweilan threw down the bow and charged, one hand pulling the stake from the band at her chest, the other reaching for her red knife.

  Jagun Ghen took one step back and swept both his hands forward. Air hit Hweilan like a battering ram. The stake flew from her grip as Hweilan shot through the air. She struck stone, and the steady throb in her mind rose up and swallowed her.

  Hweilan struck the wall of the fortress not five feet from where Rhan lay.

  He kept himself absolutely still, save for tightening his grip around the hilt of his sword. The girl had failed. Maaqua had feared she might. Even Hweilan had warned him that she was less than sure of her victory; that they were marching toward death. Still, he had let himself dare to hope, to believe …

  Watching through the bare crack of his eyelids, seeing her sprawled senseless on the ground, Rhan raged. But he swallowed it, stoking the fire in his heart, and thought like a warrior.

  Arrows were no good against Jagun Ghen. Whatever sorcery he commanded protected him. That meant Rhan had to get in close.

  He’d seen the monster he cut in half still come crawling after him. Even after he’d smashed the skull open, still the thing had twitched and clawed in pursuit. Hweilan had warned him that he had no power to kill these things. Slaughter the bodies, perhaps, but the demons inside them Rhan could not kill. Even had he not believed her, the dead zuugruk standing with the others proved her true. Which meant Rhan had a lot of hacking to do.

  Jagun Ghen sauntered toward Hweilan. He waved, and a gust of wind swept the red blade from her hand. She moaned but did not wake. Two baazuled followed behind their master.

  Jagun Ghen stopped-no more than four paces away now-and looked down at Rhan. In the presence of so many demons, the purple light danced furiously along the Greatsword of Impiltur. Rhan could feel their power crackling against his skin. Jagun Ghen flicked his hand, almost as if he were shooing a fly, and Rhan felt the air around the blade tighten and try to rip the sword from his grasp.

  No time to get any closer. It was now or never.

  Rhan kept hold of the blade and lunged. He didn’t try to regain his feet, but instead kicked away from the wall, hit the ground, and rolled, bringing the sword around with all his strength toward the monster’s legs.

  Jagun Ghen took to the air, and the black iron sliced under his feet. He came down, light and graceful as a dancer, and swept his hands toward the Razor Heart champion. Rhan braced himself for the battering to come. But what did come was much worse.

  Air forced its way inside Rhan’s body, filling his lungs almost to bursting. He clamped his jaw shut, but still the air came in his nose. Pain ravaged him, pain like he had never known, and he couldn’t even scream. Every muscle in his body had locked up. A sound like stone cracking shot through Rhan’s right ear, and a moment later he felt a wet warmth leaking out. Lights danced before his eyes, bright and blinding-

  And then his breath burst out of him. He fell to the stone, taking ragged breaths through his torn throat.

  “I could pop you like a boil,” said Jagun Ghen.

  Rhan could only hear out of his left ear. His hand went to the right side of his head and came away bloody. His empty hand. He had lost the sword.

  “But you are a strong one. One of my brothers might find you a more suitable home than these other broken wretches. Yes?”

  Rhan looked up. Jagun Ghen was walking away with Hweilan in his arms. He looked over his shoulder at the other baazuled.

  “Gather her arrows-carefully!-and come to the circle. Bring enough bodies. And hurry. Time grows short.”

  Another gale roared off the mountain, but rather than battering those in the courtyard, it coalesced around Jagun Ghen and Hweilan, lifting them up and out of sight.

  Rhan heard a shuffling gait, and when he looked around, the dead hobgoblin was coming toward him. It saw him and said, “I like this one better.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Hweilan drifted down the dreamroad. Once, she managed to fight her way to consciousness, saw Jagun Ghen looking down at her through Menduarthis’s eyes, and the sheer power of his will pushed her back down again.

  She saw the day her mother had taken her to see her father’s corpse. But there was no sound, only the overwhelming taste of blood in her mouth and the scent of smoke. Her father opened his eyes. They had gone black, save for a red ember that burned deep in their depths. Hweilan buried a stake in his chest, and the dream dissipated, like smoke in the breeze. No more taste of blood or smell of smoke, but in the far distance she heard music.

  She saw the day Gleed had taught her to cleanse Nendawen’s weapons of the foul spirits within, how the little goblin capered around the sacred circle. But this time, he was on fire, his clothes and wispy hair an angry orange halo, his skin crisping and fuming, and the ravens came to claw his skin and gouge his flesh. But still he danced and laughed. This time, the music seemed closer, and Hweilan’s mind seized on it.

  The dream faded, replaced by the sight of Nendawen, standing in the woods over the falls. He threw his spear, killing Hweilan’s friend and teacher. But when she turned, it wasn’t Ashiin but Hweilan’s mother, dying on the Master’s spear. Even as her mother fell, Hweilan heard the music, only this time there was meaning, not with words, but an understanding that revealed itself in her mind-

  See the way …

  Hweilan chased the song and beheld a place she had never seen before. Hills rolled in long swells like the ocean, miles long and covered in short grass of green and gold. Black rocks broke through the soil, and trees grew only in the valleys where the rivers gathered. Under a thick tangle of trees, she saw a tall man, his long mane of white hair bound in braids. His ears curved up in points, and he had the lean, angular features of an elf. He held a long spear, and with it he fought against another man, similar in build, but his hair was black, his skin dark as rich soil, and he held large, forklike weapons in each hand. As she drew closer, she saw they were antlers, their ends sharpened to needle points, and the white-haired elf’s skin already bore a mass of bloody tracks.

  A flash of green from the depths of the trees drew her attention. Cloaked in forest shadows, a huge figure sat on a throne made from roots, branches, and leaves. A raven sat on one shoulder, an owl on the other. Serpents coiled around his legs, and spiders massed on his chest. Two wolves, each as large as a bear, lounged on either side of the throne. The skull of some great cat hid his features, but Hweilan recognized the gaze burning in the eye sockets. Nendaw-

  No, said the music. See the way of it.

  The dark figure on the throne wasn’t Nendawen. The body was different-large, yes, but lean and hairy as a northman. And the bone mask had no antlers. It was most definitely the skull of a tiger or lion. But the will behind those eyes … it was the Master of the Hunt. Of that, Hweilan had no doubt.

  A cry broke her concentration, and when she lo
oked back to the fight, the dark-haired man was on his knees, one of his weapons laying far out of reach, the other broken in his left hand. The white-haired elf held the point of his spear at his opponent’s throat. Tears streamed down the elf’s cheeks. His mouth moved as he spoke, as did the man’s at his feet. Hweilan could not hear the words, but she knew what they were saying. She and Ashiin had once had the same conversation.

  The Master of the Hunt stood and pointed at the man on his knees. The elf screamed, turned, and threw the spear at the Master, who held his arms open. The spear plunged into his chest-

  The vision faded, broken again by the music, but Hweilan knew the rest. The truth of it burned in her blood. The elf would drink the blood of the Master, eat of his sacred heart-and then the Master would kill his friend and teacher. The elf would burn his friend and use his skull as his own mask, joining their minds that they might hunt the enemy together. Hweilan did not see it, but she knew that mask had antlers. The Hand would wear it as he hunted the worlds for Jagun Ghen and his minions.

  And after his last hunt in that world, when his enemy lay dead on the end of his spear, the Master would come to him. Burning in holy fire and the spirit within, the true Primal Master of the Hunt had hunted the darkness between the stars when Faerun was only a gathering of dust around its sun. His mind knew only that the hunt would take on the body of his Hand. And so it went, through world after world, time after time …

  Jagun Ghen and his “brothers” were only a perversion and mockery of this sacred bond that had existed for millennia.

  And at last Hweilan knew her fate. Gleed had tried to warn her-

  When Jagun Ghen is beaten and his sickness purged from the worlds … what then? You think the Master will free you? Nendawen is the Hunter. He has always been the Hunter. He will always be the Hunter. It is his nature. His only … beingness. The Hunter does not free his prey.

  Nendawen’s time had come, and the Master would need a new body to continue the hunt. He needed Hweilan.

  But Jagun Ghen had her-his own “perfect vessel.” Thus the eternal circle would be broken. If Jagun Ghen took her, the Hunt would end, and the Destroyer would be free to roam the worlds, burning and consuming …

  Wake now, said the music. You have to fight.

  “I can’t! Too strong. He’s too strong.”

  You do not fight alone. You don’t have to be strong enough. You only have to do your part.

  And then Gleed’s words came back to her-You were chosen. By Nendawen himself. But there’s something about you that even the Master had not planned on.

  The dream was no longer a road. It had become a river, and Hweilan knew it would be all too easy to drown. Indeed she almost took that path, almost let the river carry her to … wherever. She was so tired.

  But then she saw her father’s face again, and those of her mother, her grandfather, Scith, Lendri, Soran, Menduarthis, and Darric. The river tried to push her down to silence, but Hweilan fought to the surface and swam.

  She could hear a voice. Not only in her mind, like the visions, but filling her ears. The words were beyond her understanding, but the very sound of them was foul, blasphemous.

  She could not move. It was an effort even to breathe. She opened her eyes.

  She lay in shadow, and the day’s light was dying in the sky. Not two paces away stood Jagun Ghen, his arms outstretched, his back arched, his head whipping back and forth, as if Menduarthis was fighting the profane words that were being forced out of his throat. But Hweilan could sense their power. Each syllable tore at her mind, like claws rending flesh. And through each rent she could feel Jagun Ghen’s will seeping through, infecting her soul.

  Hweilan screamed, but Jagun Ghen ignored her. She looked down and saw that she was bound at the wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles. She lay in the midst of a circle that had been gouged into the stone itself. Every sacred arrow she had put into a baazuled since coming to Highwatch had been planted in the grooves of the pact circle. The runes along their shafts still held a green light, but it flickered and was shot through with bits of molten metal. A fresh body lay next to each arrow. Other baazuled, some undead and some living with the glowing runes etched into their foreheads, stood beyond the bodies. They kneeled and joined in their master’s chant.

  She looked beyond them all, searching for any sign of hope or help. It was a place she’d never been before, a high shelf of rock overlooking the fortress. The wall of the mountain rose to one side, broken by a doorway. The sun had long since sunk behind the mountain. In the east …

  Hweilan could feel it, as she had felt it that evening in Vaasa with Ashiin. The very air held the tautness of a drumskin. And then she saw it.

  The sky over the fortress was thick with smoke, and when the first rim of the full moon rose over the far grasslands, it was red as blood. In her mind, Hweilan felt the BOOM as a presence older than the fabric of Faerun entered the world. The mountain shook, and stones and dust rained down on them from above.

  Jagun Ghen laughed.

  The baazuled around the pact circle stood up. The symbols on their foreheads blazed. Their fingers twisted into claws, and those few holding weapons raised them. All of them looked to the doorway in the mountain.

  Hweilan felt it, too. The Master was coming.

  Jagun Ghen’s chant rose to a scream, but he did not turn to face the threat. The symbol on his forehead leaked smoke that hung round his thrashing head like a black halo.

  Hweilan writhed and tugged at her bonds but succeeded only in tearing her skin. She felt blood mixing with the sweat under her clothes. The runes in the arrows were leaking tiny tongues of flame, and the wooden shafts were beginning to catch. The ground beneath her trembled.

  Huge shapes burst from the mountainside door. Wolves almost as large as bears, three gray and one black as obsidian. They leaped for the baazuled, teeth and claws rending, their growls shaking the ground. The baazuled fought back with blade and fist and claws. Ravens descended on the combatants.

  Jagun Ghen’s chant broke-just for a moment-and wind roared down the mountainside, sweeping the ravens away. Hweilan saw one of the gray wolves leap onto a baazuled, her jaws closing on the monster’s throat, and both of them tumbled over the edge.

  The arrows around the pact circle exploded, and Hweilan felt the spirits within pass over her like a fiery wind. The other gray wolf went down under the blades of three baazuled and did not get up again. The black wolf burst into flames, but still it fought. It pushed three baazuled over the precipice, and took another with it when it fell.

  The dead bodies, several of which had been torn or dragged away in the attack, stood. They spared their master a glance, then every one of them leaped over the side. Hweilan was alone with Jagun Ghen.

  The wind died, and Hweilan felt the presence. She turned, and there in the mountainside stood Nendawen. Inside his mask, his gaze burned like green suns, and emerald flames danced along the length of his spear.

  Jagun Ghen turned to face him, and the air between them sizzled and sparked.

  Nendawen raised his spear and charged. As soon as he stood fully in the light of the moon, he threw the weapon. It cut the air like a falling star, but Jagun Ghen slapped at the air in front of him, and the wind swiped it away. The spear tumbled through the air, riding the current, then turned. Jagun Ghen held out his hand, caught the spear, and planted it on the ground beside him.

  “Your time is over,” he said.

  Nendawen charged, both hands outstretched into bloody claws-and ran full force into his own spear. The long iron barb tore through his stomach and came out his back. But he didn’t stop. He grabbed the shaft with his left hand and pulled himself up the length of the spear. His blood steamed in the air. He struck out with his right hand, but Jagun Ghen caught it, almost casually, and twisted. The sound of breaking bone hit Hweilan with the force of a slap.

  Still holding the spear with one hand, Jagun Ghen struck Nendawen’s bone mask with his other. It cracked. He st
ruck again and again, shattering the mask, then the skull beneath. The antlers fell to the ground. The face beneath the mask was broken and tattered, a bloody ruin pierced by Nendawen’s green gaze.

  Jagun Ghen grabbed his ancient enemy by the throat, squeezed, then pulled. Nendawen’s head fell forward, and the light in his eyes died. Then Jagun Ghen released the spear, and the lifeless body slumped to the ground. The primal spirit of the Hunter fled the dead flesh. Hweilan felt it rise and try to flee, but the symbols of the pact circle blazed, flames leaping from them, and a power reached out, seizing the spirit like a fish on a hook. It was caught inside the pact circle.

  Jagun Ghen turned and looked down upon Hweilan.

  “Now,” he said, “we finish.”

  He bent down, grabbed the ropes, and broke them with no more trouble than a seamstress snapping an old thread. First those around her ankles, then working his way up. When the last of them snapped, Hweilan screamed, kicked, punched, used every skill Ashiin had taught her. But she might as well have been striking the waves of the ocean.

  Jagun Ghen seized her, pinning her arms to her side, and lifted her. Hweilan thrashed, then slammed her head forward, smashing his nose. Blood flowed down his chin, but he smiled through it.

  “Break it all you like,” he said. “I am through with it.”

  He grabbed her head and used his thumbnail to gouge a symbol into her forehead. She shook her head and tried to get away, but he was too strong. Blood ran into her eyes.

  He clutched a handful of hair and pulled her head back. The force of his power and will pressed on her mind, smothering her. Looking into his eyes was like walking into a forge fire.

  Jagun Ghen opened his mouth and forced it onto hers. It was nothing like a kiss. More of an invasion. He inhaled, drawing her own breath out of her, and as it left, Hweilan felt her awareness being pressed down. She tried to scream, but her breath was gone.

  Black spots filled her vision. She closed her eyes, still thrashing but unable to free herself. When she opened her eyes again, she could see nothing. And then the sheer force of Jagun Ghen’s mind buried her.