He put the sword back in its sheath and, as politely as he could manage, he woke Dugak.
They started back the way they had come. Vaegon had never been happier to see the light of day than he was when they came out of the mouth of the necropolis, into the afternoon sun. The moment they were drenched in the bright, welcoming warmth of it though, he knew something was wrong. He turned, and saw the source of the rancid stench that had assailed his nostrils. A troop of soldiers was there, looking just as surprised as he and Dugak were. Every one of them was dead, and rotting on the bone, but coming at them with murderous intent nonetheless.
Mikahl was back in his childhood bed, in his mother’s tiny apartment, in the servants’ wing of Lakeside Castle. His mother was in the old, creaky rocking chair in the corner, needling something or other out of a peach colored yarn. The fall of her golden hair shone with angelic radiance, and he was bathed in her feelings of love for him.
“Creeek…Krooth…Creeek…Krooth…Creeek…Krooth…” the chair sounded, as she slowly rocked it to and fro. In a nearly inaudible voice, she hummed an old lullaby in time with the rocking of the chair.
Quietly, so as not to disturb the tranquility of the scene that he found himself in, Mikahl crept out of bed, and tiptoed to the window.
Outside, he saw the ocean rolling and swelling in the distance. A deep, dark sea wasn’t supposed to be outside that window, but he accepted it as if it was. He felt a comforting presence ease up beside him, and peek its furry head out, to see what it was that he was looking at. It was Grrr, the Great Wolf, and sensing him there, caused a coldness to churn inside Mikahl’s belly. As he scratched the wolf behind the ears, he realized that he was no longer a boy, and that the sound he was hearing wasn’t his mother’s rocking chair, but was the creaking, and groaning of a ship. He looked from the wolf, back out the window, and it was there, passing very close to them.
“Creeek…Krooth…Creeek…Krooth…Creeek…Krooth…” the timbers slowly groaned, and the taut ropes protested.
The ship’s deck was littered with bodies. A small group of tired and haggard looking men worked to throw them overboard, one at a time by the limbs, like sacks of grain. Each of their faces was full of fear and defeat. At the front of the ship, leaning out like some half dead bowsprit, was King Glendar.
Glendar turned, and looked at Mikahl with eyes as cold and black as jet, and smiled a grin of needle sharp teeth. It wasn’t a smile of victory or menace. It was a smile full of contempt; contempt for the living, for the ship was floundering aimlessly at sea now. There was no crew in sight, only King Glendar, and a few Westland soldiers tossing corpses out into the vast, cobalt expanse, while drifting to their own certain deaths.
Mikahl turned from the window, and hurried to the door of the little room, but it wouldn’t open for him. He tried and tried to turn the knob, but it wouldn’t budge. Terror shot through him like wildfire.
“There has to be a way!” Loudin’s voice spoke from the chair where his mother had been sitting.
Mikahl’s fear ebbed away, and he smiled at his big, tattoo-covered friend.
“Aye Loudin, but what is it?”
“There is only one way!” King Balton’s hoarse voice croaked from the bed.
He was buried under a pile of blankets, and the skin of his face was greenish pale, and slick with sweat. The poison was still eating his life away, and he was gasping for breath.
“Think…Then act…Think…Then act…Think…Then act…” the raspy mantra echoed on and on.
Suddenly, Grrr rose with his hackles standing on end, and a deep rumbling growl in his throat. Mikahl turned to the window. Peeking in, with a gleeful smile on his sickly, white face was the wizard Pael. His cackling laugh echoed through the room, and it all collapsed into a sudden blackness that overtook Mikahl.
Alone again, back in his coma, the only sound Mikahl could hear in that dark empty place, was the sound of his own broken body trying desperately to draw breath. “Creeek…Krooth…Creeek…Krooth… Creeek… Krooth…”
***
After he stepped inside, Hyden Hawk closed the door to Pratchert’s Tower behind him. Talon flapped up from his shoulder with a start, and he jumped a little himself.
There was no room or hallway there. He found himself in a forest. Sort of a forest, anyway. Leading out ahead of him was a tunnel-like corridor formed of greenery. What little space overhead, that wasn’t closed in by branches and leaves, was filled with tangles of colorful, flowering vines, and clumps of hanging moss. The moss seemed to glow a radiant yellowish color, which lit the underside of the canopy like a lantern might. The thick trunks of the trees, that lined the archway in nearly perfect rows, were wrapped in spirals of ivy and creepers. Between, and behind the trunks, an unforgiving wall of thorn-bearing shrubs filled every conceivable space. Beyond that, there appeared to be nothing but blackness.
Talon flew up to the peak of the arch and tried and tried to get through where there should have been sky, but the effort was futile. There would be no bird’s eye view of the layout of this place, Hyden decided.
After further investigation, Hyden found that the walls of this passage were just as impenetrable as the roof was. Seeing that there was nothing else to do, but find where the forest tunnel led, Hyden set off down the leaf-strewn, grass covered floor with Talon winging along beside him.
Clumps of wildflowers sprouted up here and there, some with tiny white petals, some with big drooping orange and red blooms. Around the base of a rather large tree, a cluster of purple and gray mushrooms sprouted up, like a little city of toadstool buildings. A bright, yellow butterfly fluttered by on its way to an even brighter, cerulean colored flower, which bloomed from the thorny shrub beyond the trees. Hyden half expected a group of fairy folk to troop out, and dance a jig for him.
Before long, he came to a junction. The tunnel he was in ended, and he could either go left or right. A few dozen yards down the right hand tunnel, a man sat, huddled with his head between his knees, and his back against the trunk of one of the trees that lined the way.
Cautiously, Hyden walk toward the man, while Talon flew further down the right hand passage to explore it. Hyden called out, but there was no response. When he moved closer, Hyden got a strange feeling in his gut. He nudged the man’s shoulder with his boot, and wasn’t too surprised when the skeleton fell over, with a rattling thrump of dusty bones.
Through Talon’s eyes, he saw that the right and left hand tunnels were identical mirror images of each other. Each went on straight for a ways, than ended in a T-junction, just like the first tunnel had. He decided that he would turn right at each intersection he came to, that way he could find his way back to the skeleton, by making left hand turns on his way back. To his great surprise though, when he turned his second right, the skeleton was there ahead of him, laid over exactly as his boot had left it.
Hyden pondered this for a while, and then sent Talon back to the first junction. When the bird flew left at the corner, there he was, coming right back at Hyden, again from the right hand corner of the other end of the passage. This was unexpected, and confusing. Hyden decided to go left then. There was no surprise when he made his second left hand turn, and saw the toppled skeleton laying there ahead of him. Talon came flapping down, landed on his shoulder, let out a frustrated squawk, and then started preening himself, while Hyden pondered their dilemma further.
While he was standing there, with his chin in his hand, he heard a chirping giggle from the trees nearby. Again, he heard the sound. He looked around and spotted a couple of tree squirrels peeking over a root at the edge of the thorny wall. A few other squirrels scampered along the limbs as they went about their business, but they didn’t seem to notice him. The two squirrels by the tree trunk though, were watching him intently, and giggling.
“You think it’s funny, then?” Hyden asked lightheartedly. He didn’t expect a response, and was shocked when he heard the squirrels plainly speaking to each other. Sure, he had comm
unicated with animals, but it wasn’t a very verbal sort of communication. This was something altogether different. The squirrels were articulate.
“Can he hear us?” one squirrel asked the other.
“He can, I think!” the other replied.
“That’s far better than most that come here.”
“Is there a way beyond this, this…” Hyden indicated the tree-formed passage, but didn’t know what to call it. “…beyond this, this loop?”
“My, my, my, this one might just do,” a squirrel passing by on a limb overhead said to the others.
“He didn’t ask for a way out!” one of the squirrels by the root nodded reverently. “He asked for a way forward. That’s a start.”
“He asked for a way beyond, is what he did,” the squirrel beside him corrected. “A wise word ‘beyond.’ A wise question to ask, not a foolish one.”
“I’m here!” Hyden snapped. “You talk about me as if I’m not, or as if I couldn’t hear you. You’re awfully rude squirrels. You should know that I have friends that love to eat squirrels.” The last was said lightly, but the possible threat caught the little creatures’ full attention.
“Your friends may eat careless squirrels,” one of them replied, indignantly. “But we’re not careless.”
“Not careless at all,” the other added.
“Careless or not, it’s rude to talk about someone as if they weren’t there,” Hyden scolded. “Now that you’re talking to me, instead of about me, would you please answer my question?”
“No,” one of the squirrels answered simply. “You already know the answer to the question that you asked.”
“Use your head, and ask the proper question,” the other one told him. “We will only answer one.”
Hyden made a face at the squirrels, because he knew they were correct. Of course, there was a way out of the loop. The right question became obvious then, but Hyden thought it through before asking it.
“What is the way to get beyond this place?”
“Follow your heart!” a squirrel giggled from the trees.
“Follow your familiar!” another added.
The two squirrels, by the root, started bounding away, into the thorny wall. Just before they were out of earshot, one of them turned, and said, “Try going both ways, at the same time, and looking through all of your eyes at once.”
It took several attempts, and as much concentration as it did for him to climb the nesting cliff of the hawklings, for him to be able to see through Talon’s eyes with his own eyes open, but he finally managed it. It was even harder, to keep Talon moving through the left-hand tunnel in a restrained hover that matched the speed of his jog through the right-hand side. When it finally happened, when four eyes looked together down both corridors at once, it all became clearer. When he turned left, just as Talon turned right at the T-junction, they met in the middle, and the forested passages shimmered away. The trees were replaced by a long torch-lit hallway. At the end of the featureless passage, was a single door.
Beyond the door there was an empty room. As before, when Hyden closed the door behind him, the room shifted. The door vanished, and he found himself somewhere, that was as beautiful, as it was terrifying. Talon, who was holding a steady hover, over and just behind his head, cooed out a sigh of relief at seeing the open sky overhead.
They were standing on a slow, rolling plain of fertile green, an emerald sea of turf, which stretched as far as the eye, or eyes, in this case, could see. Right behind where he stood, was a single, monstrous old oak. Ten men might not have been able to put their outstretched arms together to form a ring around it. Littered among the leaves and deadfall at its base, were the bones of a score or more men. Some were scattered about, some were in neat little piles. Others were still connected at the joints, and sitting there, in half rotted clothes, with packs and pouches strapped to their bodies. A few empty water skins, a handful of books, and even a sword or two, lay among them in various degrees of weathered decay.
Suddenly, movement caught his eye. A huge, dark knothole in the tree trunk had shifted, he was sure of it. Cautiously, he took a few steps back. Talon landed on a shoulder, and sunk his claws firmly, and reassuringly, into Hyden’s muscle. A breeze cooled his skin, and the leaves rustled about him.
It was warm, probably hot, beyond the shade the tree provided. He was about to send Talon off to explore the lay of the land, when the knothole moved again. There was no mistaking it this time. The knot closed, and puckered, like a mouth, and then in a voice as deep as the ancient tree’s roots, it spoke. The rhyming riddle came out slowly and rhythmically.
“A guide will come, if your heart’s been true, and lead you to a door of mine.
Ponder this, while you wait, if you want to go inside;
A pyramid, a patterned knock, made up of only ten.
You must start from the bottom; if you do I’ll let you in.”
After the voice stopped, Hyden spoke the words to himself, over and over again. It was hard to do, considering the shock, and bewilderment he was feeling after being spoken to by a tree. He didn’t dare forget the words though. They made little sense to him now, but he would think about the meaning later. At the moment, all he wanted to do was commit the riddle to memory. By the look of the others waiting, he figured he might have plenty of time to sort it out.
He grimaced at his morbid sense of humor. His faith that the White Goddess of his clan would send him a guide hadn’t wavered, at least not yet. He was certain that she wouldn’t let him whither and rot, like these others had.
Only after he was sure that he had gotten the rhyme memorized, he tried to communicate with the tree. It didn’t respond to anything he asked, or commanded. Nor did the tree do more than rustle its leaves at him, when he pleaded. After a while, he gave up, and sat back against the tree trunk among the remains of the others, and began going over the riddle in his mind.
“A pyramid, a patterned knock, made up of only ten.
You must start from the bottom; if you do I’ll let you in.”
He had no idea what the answer was, and after saying the thing a few times out loud, he found he had grown sleepy. It was only a matter of moments before slumber took him to a deep, dark place, where not even dreams dared to go.
Vaegon, having no other weapon at hand, and cursing his lack of foresight for not bringing one, drew Ironspike from its sheath. Dugak raised his walking stick as if it were a club. For a moment, the undead soldiers hesitated. The sword had scared them. Vaegon knew this only because of what the ghost had told him earlier. He also knew that they were slowly starting to realize that he wasn’t Mikahl, and that Ironspike’s power wasn’t unleashed.
“Run for it, Dugak,” Vaegon yelled.
He shook the sword at the undead nearest him, and spoke some strange words in the elven tongue. The dwarf started away on his short stumpy legs. The rotting soldiers cringed back, as if the sword might suddenly flare to life and waste them where they stood. The ruse didn’t last long, and soon, Vaegon was turning to run after Dugak. The undead were swiftly in pursuit.
On his own, Vaegon could have easily outpaced the soldiers. They ran on atrophied muscle, moved by decayed tendons that were covered with putrid skin. The armor they had worn proudly as a second skin in life, now encumbered their failing bodies, making them slow and clumsy. Dugak, however, was churning his little legs madly, and was still falling behind. Finally, after gaining the top of a small hill, the dwarf stopped.
“You know the way! Go on!” Dugak said, between huffing breaths. “I’ll lead them astray. I’m only slowing you down.”
“I won’t leave you, dwarf,” Vaegon said sternly. “So save your breath.”
With that, he turned, ran out into the path of the leading soldier, and swung Ironspike with all he had in him. The silvery steel blade bit into the mushy flesh and bone at the shoulder and the undead soldier’s arm fell away. The thing toppled forward, and Vaegon had to kick it away from him with a booted foot. The
stench was so strong that the elf’s keen senses revolted. He could almost taste the rot on his tongue, and he doubled over to vomit.
A rock, twice the size of Vaegon’s skull, went sailing over him, at the approaching knot of undead soldiers. Dugak’s strong arms had thrown it as if it were a child’s toy. It impacted with a thumping smack, which sounded both wet, and bone crunching. Two of the attackers fell from the blow. The others hesitated then. The next rock caved in the side of one of their heads and splattered the others, with grayish yellow goo.
Vaegon stood, raised the sword, and charged towards them a few steps. There were four of them left. Two of those turned, and loped away, as if the encounter had never happened. One of the others moved forward to meet the elf’s charge. The last one just stood there, as if it had been suddenly frozen in place.
Vaegon cut down the soldier before him with one vicious swing of Mikahl’s blade. The remaining undead stayed stock still. It just stood there as motionless as a statue. Not so far away though, mumbles and grunts could be heard. There were more of them out there in the hills.
Neither Vaegon nor Dugak cared to know why the thing had just stopped. They were too busy running towards the little passage that was hidden in the rocky foothills, almost a mile away. If they could get to it, it would lead them back into the relative safety of Xwarda’s walls.
Chapter 54
Mikahl’s dream about his half brother, Glendar, wasn’t far off the mark.
The ship that the young King of Westland’s undead body was on was drifting aimlessly at sea. The bodies that were being thrown overboard, however, were not willing to stay dead. Nor were the ones doing the throwing. The other two ships had abandoned the King’s plague-stricken vessel. They had gone so far as to pull down most of its rigging with a half dozen well placed harpoon shots, and even made an attempt to set the craft on fire, by hurling clay pots, full of flammable oil at it. No one wanted to chance the King surviving his ordeal, making shore, and then calling them out as mutineers or deserters.
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