“Tonight,” said Ruuket, “you think on that. Tonight, my children and I will chant Duur’s soul to the Fire of the High Chieftain. We will feast. When the sun comes, we will sleep. When the sun goes, we will come back. For you. Think on that.”
She turned and left, taking her children with her.
Rhan had not slept. He spent the day in his chamber with Ghir of Orlung’s brood. She had proved herself most exertive, and after their third bout, he was giving serious consideration to taking her as a mate. She was beautiful, and all her older sisters had borne strong children—except for Vuurl and Gorueg, who had sworn off the cave in favor of wielding steel in battle. Once the gunhin wore off, if nothing else happened to change his mind, he would ask her and prepare the proper price to Orlung.
His ears occasionally still caught the sound of revelry. None had dared to come down the tunnel to his chamber, but at least some of the celebration had made its way to the outer halls. Rhan felt no desire to join them. They would press food and drink into his hand and slap his arms, congratulating him on his victory over the Hand.
Still … it felt like no victory.
He was glad to be alive. No mistake. Rhan hoped to die in glorious battle—perhaps thirty or forty years from now. But something about the fight with the girl stuck in his throat. Her prowess had both surprised and pleased him. She had not flinched when he pushed her back, insulting and taunting her. She had taken it once, then twice, then struck back and come at him with a smile. If only half the humans had her mettle, then Rhan suspected his people would not be long for the world. But he knew that killers like the human girl—and like himself—were as rare as blue tigers. Perhaps it was the gods’ way of keeping the peoples of the world in their place.
But she had gone down too easily. He had hit her with all he had—and he had cracked the skulls of many warriors with far less strength behind his fist. But he had also felt the power behind her first kick. It had taken all his strength not to fall on his arse in front of the entire clan—yet he knew, instinctively, as one warrior knows another—that she had been holding back, playing with him.
He reached up and touched the soft new skin near his neck. That one strike of her knife had been the closest he had ever come to dying. And it hadn’t even hurt all that much. Sharp and quick, it had almost been pleasant—a moment of cold, followed by flowing warmth. He was even a little disappointed that the gunhin had healed it completely, that he would bear no scar. A good scar could serve a warrior well, to remind him of the nearness of death.
“I should be dead,” he said to himself.
Ghir mumbled something in her sleep and burrowed deeper into the blankets. The fire in the pit had burned low, and a chill had returned to his chamber.
Rhan threw off the fur coverlets, climbed back into his trousers, and pulled on his boots. He hadn’t worn them in the fight, but he would want them where he was going.
“Rhan …?” Ghir leaned up on one elbow and looked at him.
“Sleep,” he said. “I will be back.”
“Where’re y’going?” she said, sleep tugging at her words.
“Sleep,” he told her again. Then he grabbed his sword, snatched up Hweilan’s knife, and left the chamber.
The outer hall was stiflingly warm from all the fires burning there. Warriors gnawed on haunches of meat and passed around skins as they entertained each other with tales of past battles and current gossip. Catching sight of Rhan, they hailed him.
But he ignored them and stomped into the dark tunnel. The gunhin had still not worn off, and the cooler air was a relief upon his bare skin.
He walked outside, his breath steaming in the night cold. He could see the orange glow of fires burning throughout the fortress. He passed many groups of hobgoblins, some celebrating, some fighting, some halfway in between. Rhan ignored them all and kept on his way to the High Place.
Once he left the celebration behind, he hung his scabbard on his back to free his hands. He knew a smoother way up the mountainside on more level paths with well-cut steps, but it was three times the distance. Instead, he took shorter paths that required a certain amount of climbing. His fingers and palms were bloody by the time he reached the final stretch of path, but he did not care.
A high haze hid all but the moon and brightest of stars, and yet Rhan’s sharp night sight served him well. He listened intently for the sound of ravens or other carrion feeders.
There were none. Strange, but not unexpected.
He rounded the final bend in the path, topped the last rise and stared. He clenched his jaw so tightly that he heard his teeth grinding.
Only one body. And the cloak he had laid over it was missing.
Hweilan was gone.
Rhan cursed. Surely even that old meddler Kaad was not foolish enough to thwart Rhan’s will and disobey a direct order from Maaqua. If he had done something to her …
No.
Rhan ran forward and kneeled beside the body. Even in the dark, he could see that the soil beside it had been disturbed, and there was even a small amount of blood staining the ground. Another body had been here. Then what—?
There. He saw it only a few paces away. He walked over to it, kneeled, and picked it up. A small vial, cut from a young ram’s horn. Rhan brought it under his nose and sniffed.
“Gunhin,” he said, then his eyes narrowed. “Kaad. That med—”
A rattle—the sound of soil falling down the lip of the bowl. Rhan looked up, and there, on the rim of stone, was a large shape, pale in the dim light. But its eyes shone with more than reflected moonlight. Hweilan’s wolf. It made no move to approach. Other than the slight whisper of its footfall, it still hadn’t made a sound. Very slowly, Rhan’s hand moved toward the hilt of his sword.
A leg erupted out of the dirt and swept his own legs out from under him. Rhan went down and rolled away. It was the wrong choice.
A weight came down on him, stopping him from rolling further. His sword would do him little good in this position. He grabbed the knife. As he lifted his legs, hoping to buck off the attacker, he swept backward with the knife.
Some of the weight lifted off him, but something soft wrapped round his knife hand, tightened, and pulled. The angle was so precise, the right amount of strength applied just so by using Rhan’s own strength against him, that his arm twisted backward and his hand released the weapon. He half-expected to feel it fall beside him, but he didn’t.
Instead, his body hit the dirt and he tensed to try to throw off his attacker, but the feel of a sharp point of steel jabbing into his flesh, right where his jaw curved into his ear, changed his mind.
“Thank you for bringing my knife,” said a voice above him.
He recognized it at once. Hweilan.
He kept the look of fury on his face, but inside he was smiling. He braved a glance upward and saw that the cloak he had left over the other body was twisted around his arm. He knew he could free himself with little trouble—but probably not before Hweilan buried the knife in his skull. Sand still fell from the cloak, and he realized what had happened. The little fox had dug a shallow trench in the dirt, lay down, pulled the cloak over her, covered it all with sand, and then waited. Had it been full daylight, no doubt he would have been able to discern the disturbed soil, perhaps seen the bits of cloak she hadn’t been able to cover. But in the dark …
“Now,” she said, “here is what’s going to happen.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
SCENT CAME BACK TO HWEILAN FIRST. SHE SMELLED cool, dry air, spring grass, flower petals, and … something else. Something hot and choking. Blood. Fresh blood. So strong that it filled her head like wine.
That is you, that smell.
She opened her eyes and saw wolves before her. A huge pack, two dozen or more, and in their midst the chief, a massive male with fur the color of new snow. The same wolf who had spoken in her dream the day before.
A plain stretched all around them. Not Narfell. The breeze on her cheeks felt too warm. I
n the grasses, too many shades of green mottled the brown, and there were no mountains to crack the horizon. Grass undulated into forever, rising and falling on shallow hills like sea swells.
The pack scattered, some running away and others merely receding before their lord. The chief wolf lowered his head and looked at her. His eyes …
Not like any wolf’s she had ever seen. They were too bright—the color of a clear winter sky. A gust of wind stirred his fur, and for just a moment Hweilan thought she saw him covered in uwethla, much like her own. She saw the blood there, pulsing in the skin, and for the briefest instant he was not a wolf at all. He stood on two legs, his white hair hanging well past his waist. Three scars marred his skin from scalp to cheek to chin, leaving empty tracks through his frosty eyebrows. But then the vision passed, and he was a wolf again.
“You know me,” she said, before she’d even thought the words.
Blood of my blood, said the wolf. A clever ruse. That old lizard by the lake taught you well. One drink to stop your heart—just for a time. Another to bring you back. And what if that hobgoblin had killed you anyway?
“I think he very nearly did,” she said.
The wolf padded up to her and licked at her face. His musky scent washed over her, and again she was struck by the familiarity of it. She almost had it … but something else was drowning it. Something hot and … metallic. Clouding her senses.
The wolf stepped away, then turned and sat, looking at her eye-to-eye. Broken bones are the least of your worries. You’re bleeding inside your skull. That’s your blood you smell. Only a little at the moment. But it only takes a little to kill you.
“Who are you?”
I am the father of your grandmother’s grandmother.
Hweilan struggled through her memories. They tasted red. But she reached through and found what she wanted.
“Ashiin, she told me of you. You are Haerul. She said you were the father of my grandfather’s grandfather.”
The wolf barked, and Hweilan heard the laugh there. Fox had no pack. She did not know a great many things. But I know you, girl. The Witness Cloud … we are always watching. Your mother’s father—
The wolf yipped in surprise and turned. Hweilan followed his gaze.
“What—?”
He turned and said something, but she could not hear the words. Lightning struck the plains, some so close she felt the burning air, and thunder drowned out all other sound.
The grasses burned away, and the sky split with a crack of lightning that pierced to the heart of the world.
When her vision cleared, the blue-eyed wolf was gone and an antlered figure stood before her. He held a black iron spear in his right hand, gripping it so hard that she heard the crack of his tendons. Blood dripped from his right hand. Green fire burned out of his mask of bone.
He looked down on her, and the ground and sky trembled at the sound of his voice.
“Fool! Time is running out.”
Hweilan could not respond, could not speak, could not … not …
Breathe!
The antlered man held his bloody hand over her, and as the sky let loose a torrent of rain, Nendawen’s hot blood showered down upon Hweilan, covering her face, filling her mouth and nose. She could not cry out, could not look away, could not draw air into her lungs, though everything in her screamed to—
Breathe!
Hweilan sat up, inhaling so strongly that it was an inward scream. Pain filled her head with such forcefulness that for a moment she feared the hobgoblins had buried her own knife in her head as a farewell gift.
She reached up. The entire left side of her face was swollen and sensitive to the touch. An area just under the edge of her scalp was soft as a half-full wineskin. She could feel the fluid gathering there under her skin, and just beneath it—
Her probing finger barely touched it, but it felt like an ice cold nail twisting through her skull, sending threads of agony down her neck, rattling her teeth, and causing her arms to spasm.
“Cracked my skull,” she said to herself, and only then realized her lips were swollen to twice their normal size. She could feel congealed blood clogging her inner cheek.
She tried to spit, but the pain in her head flared and the world tumbled around her and she had to reach out with both hands to catch herself before she fell.
Her left hand came down on something. Taking slow, careful breaths, she waited for her vision to clear and for the world to stop moving around her. But sight never came back to her left eye. All dark. And her head seemed to get fuller with every beat of her heart. Much more and she feared it might burst.
This was not good.
She picked up whatever her hand had found and held it before her right eye. The sun had set long ago, but the moon and brightest stars burned through the hazy sky just enough to reflect off the surrounding rocks. She couldn’t make out the thing in her hand. Her head …
But her fingers recognized what it was and sent the message to her brain.
A vial.
Bone, by the feel of it. Or horn, for it was pointed at the bottom. The other end had a piece of waxed felt as a plug. She considered prying it out with her teeth. But with the pain in her broken lips and head, she feared that might cause her to pass out. And then, she probably would not wake again.
Hweilan fumbled at the stopper with her other hand. Her fingers were cold, and it took her several tries to even get a grip. Then, a quick twist, and it came out.
The wet, loamy scent washed over her. Gunhin.
Kaad. He had been true to his word.
The vial didn’t hold nearly as much as he had given her before. But then, he had been healing the effects of poison, scalding, and whatever Maaqua’s magic arts had done to her.
Very carefully, so as not to spill a drop or cause her head any unnecessary movements, Hweilan brought the vial to her lips and dribbled in a few drops of the liquid. It hit her tongue like flaming spirits. The skin inside her cheeks and throat sizzled. Between one heartbeat and the next, every pore of her skin seemed to breathe outward, and Hweilan thought if she’d opened her eyes she might have seen steam coming out of her nose. The darkness in her left eye swirled and came back a blur, dark shadows mixed with slightly brighter shadows. But at least it was something.
Once more, Hweilan put the open end of the vial to her lips—both of which already felt their normal size—and upended it. She drank every bit of the foul concoction, then did her best to suck out what little remained in the hollow horn.
She waited, taking careful breaths. And then it hit all at once—the prickling and freezing on the inside, the feel of her skin vibrating like a struck drum, blood burning hot and coursing through her veins at double speed. And then the pain. Far worse than before. She felt the cracked bone on her head snap! back into place.
Hweilan didn’t remember falling, but the next thing she realized, she was face down in the dirt, panting, a thick film of drool and blood running out of her mouth.
She spat out a glob of grit and what she thought might have been the shattered remains of a tooth—now completely healed—and pushed herself up. Her vision had come back and then some. There was little brush around her, and so the only shadows were cast by the stones themselves. High clouds blurred the moon and stars like a sheet of the finest silk. By the meager light, Hweilan realized for the first time that she was not alone.
A large bundle lay a pace away. It was completely covered in a dark cloth, the edges of which had been weighted down by several rocks. But there was no mistaking the shape of a body. Hweilan had seen far too many in the past year to mistake it for anything else.
On one end, two bits of the blanket rose into points, looking very much like feet. Hweilan walked over to the other end, kneeled, and removed the nearest rocks from the blanket. She grasped the edge of the thick cloth …
And stopped. A shiver passed through her, some primal warning originating in the deepest part of her brain, a part that was long dormant in most h
umans. But hers had been awakened by her master, and it was sending a clarion warning to her now.
She knew whose body this was. Knew it before she held her breath and pulled the edge of the blanket aside.
The corpse was headless, but the head had been replaced face-up upon the bloody remains of the neck.
Her mother.
The taut demonic fury that had marred the woman’s features was gone, replaced by the slackness of death. Hweilan could not bring herself to touch the skin, but she knew that had she done so, it would have been cold, and in this weather probably hard as old leather. Someone had placed a stone over each eye. Not just common rocks from the ground. These were black and smooth as oil, and Hweilan could see a rune carved on each one.
Someone had treated her mother’s body with the honor and respect due a renowned warrior.
Who would—?
A noise. Hweilan held her breath and listened, head cocked to one side.
She heard the faintest of footfalls. Thick pads on the dirt. Four steps. A stone’s throw away, the ground rose into a lip—Hweilan noted that she was actually kneeling in the middle of a wide bowl—and then fell away. The wall of the mountain rose some forty yards or so beyond, but it was broken by a wide fissure. Considering her current location, Hweilan suspected that a path wound through the fissure. She looked toward the path and saw a pale form emerge from the shadows. Uncle. She had no idea how the wolf had managed to avoid capture. Had he been hiding in the fortress all this time?
He stopped a few paces away, gave the corpse a wary glance, then his eyes settled on Hweilan.
She opened her mouth to say something when the wolf whirled. His ears stiffened forward, and he focused all his attention on the path. The hairs on his back rose.
Hweilan heard it, too. Someone was coming up the path, boots scuffling on the grit, making no effort at all to be quiet.
Hweilan looked around. Nowhere to go. Besides, she didn’t need to run and hide. She needed to take care of whoever was coming. Otherwise, that person might raise an alarm, making it all the more difficult to get her weapons back.
Cry of the Ghost Wolf: Neverwinter NiChosen of Nendawen, Book III Page 11
