Lady of Poison

by Bruce R Cordell

  Elowen stared at her friend with dawning alarm in her eyes, and Ususi didn’t finish her thread of logic. Marrec was gratified to see that Ususi had empathy enough to spare her friend’s feelings. It gave him hope.

  The group bedded down for the night after establishing a watch schedule. Marrec went to his rest, thankful to have avoided first watch, but sleep was too brief. He woke to the relentless black of middle-night at Gunggari’s prodding, whose turn it was to cast off into dreamland. He held back an irritated comment with a real show of will. Where lack of sleep was involved, the cleric knew he was sometimes bitter.

  Marrec was on the middle-watch, when by rights all earthly creatures should be snug in their dens—except for the worst sort of creature, which, after all, was why he was awake to guard against them. His eyes roamed the waycache, picking out each of his fellow travelers wrapped snuggly in their blankets. They’d had a small fire earlier, but Gunggari had let it die down to mere embers. Marrec lit the lamp. Elowen had found a store of lamp oil in one of the storage shelves, more than enough to last through several days of continuous burning should they need it.

  The sound of a child crying dimly reached his ears. He stiffened, his eyes immediately shifting to Ash, but the girl slept soundly, her eyes and mouth closed. He could still hear the crying, unmistakably that of small child. Was it his curse to find orphans around every corner? Better check it out, he chided himself.

  Before he exited, he shook the tattooed warrior, “Gunny, you awake?”

  The Oslander opened one eye and used it to fix him with a baleful stare.

  Marrec whispered, “I’m going out to check something. I heard some kid crying out in the woods, just outside the waycache. Stay alert, I’ll be back in a minute if it’s nothing.”

  Gunggari craned his head, listening, but the crying had stopped.

  Marrec held the lamp up in one hand, held his spear Justlance in the other, and exited the cozy waycache into the darkness of the forest.

  Pausing some feet beyond the large boulder, he scanned to the extent he was able, listening with all his attention. He heard a quiet sob off to the right.

  He moved toward the sound, cautious and ready for a trap. What he found was an elven boy of not more than thirteen years, cringing from Marrec’s lamplight, hiding behind a great tree. He was dirty and his clothing was ripped. The boy’s eyes were wide with fear.

  “What in Lurue’s great wilderness are you doing here?” asked Marrec.

  The boy looked at him, then said something in a language Marrec didn’t know. Elvish, but strangely accented.

  Looking around, the cleric couldn’t find any other evidence to explain how an elven boy could be hiding and crying outside the waycache.

  “All right, let’s get you back to the others. Elowen will know where you come from, I wager.”

  Sheathing his spear, he then held out a hand for the boy to take. “Come on, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The boy took Marrec’s hand and allowed himself to be lad into the waycache.

  The waif’s eyes were wide as he took in the group, most still sleeping, except for Gunggari and Elowen. Gunggari must have woken Elowen while Marrec was outside the hollow, he thought. Good, then he didn’t have to be the one …

  “What are you doing?” yelled Elowen at Marrec.

  As she yelled, she struggled for her weapon, which was snagged in her sleeping furs.

  Taken off guard, Marrec stared dumbly. That’s when the elven boy gave voice to a horrible roar and leaped through the air toward Ash.

  In a timeless instant, Marrec saw the boy bloat and elongate, his boy-shape melting away to reveal a gray-white hairy apelike thing. Its twisted limbs scrabbled through the air as they unfolded, and a dozen completely black eyes set all the way around its head glared in all directions.

  Gunggari, closer to Ash than anyone else, managed to throw himself into the path of the creature, but the creature that smashed into the Oslander was at least four times the mass of a man. It bowled Gunggari over, sending man and dizheri flying.

  Gunggari had offered enough distraction for Marrec to react, but he was too far from the beast. Marrec had sheathed his spear, and his goddess-granted spells seemed as distant as ever. He felt an unwelcome heat behind his eyes, as if in answer to his frustration.

  Elowen, bringing up her sword, hissed, “An uthraki!”

  The uthraki, its path clear, focused its attention on the just-waking Ash. Its eight foot height towered over the child. Marrec’s eyes began to burn. He felt the ache form a searing circuit from the back of his head to his eyes, and …

  As if reaching up to pluck a fruit from a tree, Ash touched the advancing creature. A dim flash … and where once stood the uthraki, there was nothing, save perhaps motes of dust glittering in Marrec’s lamplight.

  Silence descended on the hollow, as all eyes fell on little Ash. The girl seemed oblivious to the attention. She settled back into her furs.

  Marrec released his pent-up breath, and with it the pain in his head dispersed, just as quickly. His oath remained intact. He gave silent thanks to Lurue, but the girl … what powers did she yet hide? No wonder she was so important to the goddess.

  “She has more than just the hands of a healer,” commented Gunggari, saying aloud what all must were thinking.

  Ususi, who had woken late but in time to note Ash’s spectacular destruction of the threatening beast, said nothing, but she watched the young girl closely.

  Elowen said, “It is odd that the uthraki was so intent on Ash. Usually, they attack those they’ve duped, after they’ve led their intended victim into a secluded spot.”

  Marrec realized that Elowen meant that it should have been Marrec who was attacked, while he was outside the hollow. Perhaps she was even rebuking him for falling victim to such a dupe. He felt the urge to defend his choice to investigate the sound of a crying child—but instead, he quietly accepted the blame.

  The figure stepped forward, entering the stone circle while darkness yet reigned. One of his spies had perished. The spell that linked him to the shapechanger was severed. He cared not for the welfare of the uthraki—it was little more than a beast. It had served its purpose merely in giving warning through its death. Someone approached.

  Gameliel woke his thralls. There were preparations to make, rot to culture, and spells to unsheathe. He wouldn’t allow the newest, most important outpost of the Rotting Man’s empire to fall back into the idle hands of idiot druids. He glanced at the dark shape that still hung impaled on one of the great stones, smirking.

  The blightlord felt the weight of the Keystone’s cord around his neck. With it, Gameliel possessed the power of the Mucklestones. There was no place the Rotting Man and his most powerful servants could not penetrate at whim.

  First, he had to prepare the ambush.

  CHAPTER 9

  When darkness failed, they broke camp.

  Marrec thought the woods were too quiet. In forests to the west, he would have been able to identify the calls of over a dozen species of birds in as many seconds. Instead one crow cawed in the distance as they set out that morning, and for the next several hours he heard nothing more.

  “Is the forest usually so …” began Marrec.

  “Silent?” finished Elowen. “No.” She frowned. “Even yesterday, if you recall, all seemed well. Something’s changed.”

  “It’s Gameliel,” spoke Ususi from behind them. She continued, “His influence may extend beyond the Mucklestones, and we are close to the circle. I begin to feel the stone shapes in my mind.”

  “If we are close, we need to be cautious,” advised Gunggari, who rode abreast of Marrec and Elowen.

  “Agreed,” nodded the elf hunter. She added in a tentative tone, “I worry about Briartan.”

  Marrec said nothing. If Briartan were responsible for the Mucklestones, he doubted the man had come to any good with Gameliel’s arrival, or worse, Briartan had been co-opted. He’d seen similar things in the past. T
hey’d find out what was really going on in just a few miles.

  He said, “We need a plan, of course.”

  Gunggari smiled and waited.

  “First, let’s hear more about this Gameliel,” said Marrec. “What should we be prepared for? What does it mean when you say he is a blightlord?”

  “The blightlords serve the goddess called Talona,” said Elowen. “They are corrupt priests who revel in rot and decay. Their plagues and blights have transformed the western reaches of the Rawlinswood into a foul green hell of diseased monsters and deadly poisons. Gameliel is but one of three, that we know of. Always they seek to infect the healthy forests and lands nearby with the same sickness that is rapidly destroying the ancient Rawlinswood. Though they ultimately serve Talona, their direct master is the Rotting Man, the one who stands highest in Talona’s putrid grace.”

  “What’re the other two called again?” wondered Marrec.

  “Anammelech and Damanda.”

  All were quiet for a moment, absorbing Elowen’s words.

  Marrec finally said, “Gunggari should sneak ahead and scout when we get a little closer, then report back. He’s good at that sort of thing.”

  “I’m going with him,” stated Elowen. “I also know a thing or two about forest craft.”

  “Great,” said Marrec. “We’ll proceed at a slower pace. Double back when you have the chance. Give a signal if you need help.”

  “What signal?” wondered Elowen.

  “If I can not reach my dizheri, I will yell for help,” said Gunggari.

  Elowen smiled. She and Gunggari dismounted, then forged ahead, melting into the greenery.

  They moved through the forest. Like leaves on a breeze, from the shadow of one tree to the next, Elowen and Gunggari closed on their goal.

  Elowen called upon her stealthcraft, gratified to see that Gunggari knew at least as much as she. To many of her race, surreptitious forest travel came naturally. Elowen liked to keep her techniques in the forefront of her mind. She felt that by doing so, she was all the better at evading detection.

  For instance, movement itself is a target indicator. The eye is drawn to movements, so a stationary target may be impossible to detect, and even a steadily but slowly moving target might go unnoticed. Quick, jerky movements are almost always seen, so her slow but silky movements from bole to trunk were deliberate. She didn’t give herself away by talking to Gunggari. Of course, she always stowed her equipment in a way that eliminated chance rattling.

  Both she and the Oslander were already dressed appropriately for such movement. Neither openly carried anything reflective. Both wore colors designed to blend into the foliage in an attempt to obscure their silhouettes. A body’s outline, or even just the head and shoulders, are silhouettes that draw an intelligent eye; even if a watcher can’t identify what it sees immediately, the eye is unconsciously drawn, and recognition eventually percolates into consciousness. Camouflage helped.

  The trees ahead of her were obviously not right. She held her right hand up and made a fist, a sign for Gunggari to pause. Taking a moment, she scanned the area, noticing the blighted trees and a gray, unhealthy looking fungus growing over trees, leaves—though there were few enough of those—and the ground. Beyond those she could make out a clear circular space bordered by weathered stones. She was seeing the edge of the Mucklestones.

  Normally, the ring of trees surrounding the stones reached their branches out above the hollow bowl, entirely protecting it from the sky’s open gaze. But the surrounding trees, fungus-wounded and dying, had lost most of their leaves, and the sky was easily visible above.

  Just as the nearby trees were host to the life-sapping fungus, the very stones that gave the place their name were scarred with innumerable patches of growth, staining them with gray slime and obscuring the nature runes etched into the stone.

  There, too, was Briartan. Elowen gave out a gasp before she could rein in her reaction. Her old friend was staked to one of the Mucklestones, spread-eagle, an iron spike driven through the palms of both hands. His head lolled down on his chest, and he didn’t move. His left leg was missing, amputated. Blood stains spattered his clothing.

  “Briartan!” whispered Elowen, unable to stop herself.

  Something else moved within the bowl. Many somethings, but from her current position, the recessed nature of the bowl hid what moved, or how many potential foes lurked within.

  Defiant, Elowen moved. She motioned for Gunggari to accompany her but didn’t wait to see what action the Oslander would take. All her attention was on Briartan. She needed to see if he was still alive, despite his awful state.

  Defying her stealthcraft, she darted up to Briartan. The druid was staked up on an exterior face of one of the great stones. She reached up and felt for a pulse on the man’s neck. A slight staccato beat, but it was, oh, so faint.

  “We’ve been spotted,” hissed Gunggari.

  She glanced into the bowl. Gunggari was right.

  Marrec didn’t know what to do with Ash, he realized too late. He debated leaving her back with Ususi, but according to Elowen, the woman was a skilled mage, and they could use her talents against the Blightlord, if indeed Gameliel was found in the center of the Mucklestones. Besides, he doubted Ususi would hang back—she was out for Gameliel’s blood.

  Gunggari’s dizheri blared forth, penetrating clearly even through the thick forest growth. It was a call for aid.

  Marrec realized the time for worrying was over. He whipped Henri’s lead around the bole of the nearest tree and tied it with a loose knot. He had tied Elowen and Gunggari’s horses on the same bole when they had departed. Ash sat her mount without comment.

  He fixed the girl with a look and said, “Ash, stay here. We’ll be back. You’ll be all right.”

  The girl looked at him, unconcerned. Now that he had seen her defend herself against the uthraki, some of the anxiety he felt about escorting such a small child into danger was reduced.

  Ususi used the time Marrec was dealing with Ash to charge ahead on her horse, heading toward the dizheri’s call. Marrec cursed and spurred his own horse in pursuit.

  Marrec goaded his steed to the maximum pace it was willing to take through the forest, which was too fast for his own comfort, he realized only after the fact. Tree trunks and low branches whizzed by, and a jump over a fallen log almost sent him tumbling off the back of the horse. The retreating, snaking hem of Ususi’s cloak led him on, elusively remaining just out of reach.

  Then everything opened up, as he flashed past two standing stones, one on either side, and into a wide circle bounded by rune-etched obelisks. At the last, Ususi held back, allowing Marrec to charge into the bowl by himself. He cursed again when he saw what was waiting.

  At least ten gangrenous rot fiends occupied the outskirts of the bowl, concentrated to Marrec’s left; he saw they were engaging Gunggari and Elowen. His attention was consumed by the man who stood at the center of the ring at its deepest point. It was Gameliel. It had to be.

  The blightlord wore dark gray plate armor, etched with runes that appeared to pulsate and overlap each other occasionally, and from which seeped an oily, black fluid. He wore reddish gauntlets and a helm constructed of the same blood-hued alloy. In one hand he seemed to clutch a halberd-shaped hole in the air leading into utter blackness. Marrec felt he could feel cold bleeding from it, even from where he heeled his mount to stand several yards away.

  Gameliel the blightlord stood in a puddle of ooze that was constantly being replenished from the blightlord’s armor. Small tendrils of ooze snaked up away from the shallow pool at the bowl’s center, touching many of the flat stones ringing the space.

  “You picked the wrong day to visit the Mucklestones, friend,” came the blightlord’s rasping voice.

  “You picked …”

  Interrupting Marrec’s witty response came Ususi’s strident yell, “You’ve contaminated the portal system. You’ve wrecked the stones!”

  She had to shout over
the clamor of fighting between the volodnis, Elowen, and Gunggari. Marrec could barely see either the elf hunter or the Oslander. Their fight continued outside the ring and was screened from the cleric’s view by the press of rot fiends, but he could hear Gunggari’s dizheri singing to itself as the tattooed soldier swung it against the swarming volodnis.

  “On the contrary,” rasped Gameliel. “I haven’t wrecked them. I’ve re-routed the stones for my own use.”

  Marrec, in turn, interrupted Ususi, “Call your rot fiends off and yield, or we’ll force you to succumb. If you yield willingly and answer my questions about the goddess Lurue …”

  Ususi struck, interrupting his ultimatum. A rush of unintelligible words preceded her throwing motion. A bead of fire arced high over bowl then dropped toward the blightlord. Marrec sighed. He’d have to get his answers the hard way.

  Gameliel glanced at the falling bead but was unruffled. Instead, he spewed a foul syllable. Even as Ususi’s fiery bead fell toward him, the oily sludge in which he stood inflated, as if it was a mammoth bubble of swamp gas on the surface of stagnant water. In a mere second it enclosed Gameliel in a transparent dome. The blightlord stood within, gesticulating and chanting.

  The bead of fire detonated directly over the blightlord’s head. The rush of heat singed Marrec’s eyebrows, but when the flash faded, Gameliel was unharmed. The bubble was gone, and there was less ooze at the blightlord’s feet than before.

  From the back of his horse, Marrec hurled Justlance at the blightlord. It sped unerringly at Gameliel, but a tendril of ooze rose up and flicked the spear away. Instead of the blightlord’s chest, it buried itself in a rune-etched stone, its shaft quivering.

  Gameliel finished incanting. A flash of dark green heralded the sudden appearance of a monster no more than arm’s length from Ususi. The powerfully built creature stood taller than Ususi on her mount. She yelled in alarm and shrank back on her saddle. Marrec recognized the monster—a forest troll, and a big one at that.