by Annie Bellet
Not questioning him, not that I could anyway, I unbuckled my quiver from my hip as I ran, passing it to the shaman.
He began to chant in Orcish and golden light spilled from his mouth in a swirly spiral and sank into my arrows, giving the dull metal tips a faint glow as the spell faded. A warning scream from Rahiel turned us both as he passed the quiver of bespelled arrows back to me.
Again the cold rush of decay washed over my sense as the deathwyrm, tired of playing with the too-quick sorceress and her companion, turned back toward us and hissed its fury at our growing distance from it. The coils ate up the ground, no longer silent or stealthy, churning over the grassy hill and diving with sickening speed toward us.
“You have to shoot it in mouth,” Azyrin said to me, golden light weaving out from his upraised hands. “I will try to hold it.”
A web of magic twisted out from his fingers, growing in size and brightness until I had to squint to see the oncoming snake. I strafed to my right, dropping my quiver as there was no time to buckle it back on. I snatched an arrow from it as it fell and nocked it.
The web caught the sliding front coil of the deathwyrm and it reared back, a stinking scream of pain washing over us like ill summer winds. The golden light of Azyrin’s magic hurt it, charring lines on the stony scales. Burning deathwyrm? Not actually an improvement in smell over regular.
The deathwyrm coiled around and around, rising to three times my height and then it hissed and struck at Azyrin, its venomous maw gaping, teeth curving and wet with worse than death.
I loosed my arrow, willing it to sink inside that horrible mouth, desperately wishing I had my voice, my power, and could bind death itself on that horrible creature. If I missed, Azyrin’s soul could be trapped forever. Mine would likely be next.
I did not miss.
My golden arrow bit into the deathwyrm’s forked tongue, sinking deep behind the curving fangs. The snake seemed to turn to stone before our eyes, freezing in midstrike. Azyrin leapt out from underneath it as it hovered there for a moment and then crashed to the earth, the ground shaking like a phantom of the giant quake that had come before. The cold white light rose from its eyes and burst into a thousand tiny fragments of starlight which flew like sparks from a bonfire up into the dark and were lost among the real stars.
Keeping an eye on the now inanimate deathwyrm, I bent and caught up my quiver. Rahiel flew over us with a tired cheer, and we all turned to catch up with the group. They greeted us with cautious joy and many questions as all their fear and nervous energy spilled over.
“Should we go back to the barn?” Makha asked.
“Is it dead?” Drake asked.
“What about Da’s body?” Enil asked.
Rahiel broke in and her words stilled us all.
“I saw more movement further out. Couldn’t tell what it was, but the air is full of death and Bill detects evil like a closing noose all around us.” She stopped her rush of dire words to catch her breath.
I touched my quiver of magicked arrows and wondered how many things like the deathwyrm were out there. As if summoned, Fade materialized at my side, causing the children to shriek and gasp.
“He’s on our side,” Drake said.
“We cannot risk staying here.” Rahiel’s wings flicked in nervous jerks and she smoothed her palms over the skirt of her gown.
“There is a temple in Fallbarrow,” Alew said softly. His calm tone surprised me and I peered at him in the starlight. His jaw was tight but his gaze as it met mine was steady. “Thunla and the Summer Lady are worshipped there. We have good priests. Could they help if there are more of… that?”
“Aye,” Makha said, looking at Azyrin as he nodded confirmation. “But it is hours of travel yet, especially with the little ones.”
“We’ll make it,” Alew said grimly.
“What about Da?” Enil’s wheedling, fearful voice cut in.
“He’s dead,” Alew said. “We have to get to Aunt Emili and the priests. Then we’ll be safe.” He added the last with a softer tone, as though apologizing for snapping at his little brother.
“We will stay aloft,” Rahiel said. “Scout for danger.”
The plan more or less settled, we set off again, angling back toward the packed dirt track that led to Fallbarrow and, hopefully, help. I kept one of the gold-veined arrows nocked and ready as I ranged ahead in my usual position, Fade nervously sticking close to my side. His growl was a constant low vibration in my ears and I knew that whatever danger this night held, it was not yet defeated. With my own ears twitching at every sound and my eyes searching the shadowed curves of grass and hummock, I led the way, dreading what we might find.
* * *
Nothing else attacked us as we moved through the dark hills, but the sense of menace rose and closed in around me, strong enough that I could almost take a bite out of the air and swallow it. Rahiel’s movements in the air far above us mirrored my own unhappy and fearful thoughts as her spirals grew tighter and tighter.
False dawn lent a corpse-grey pallor to the sky and muted the starlight as the tall fans of a windmill resolved itself from the further-off shadows in the sky. Many paces behind me, I heard Alew say something in a relieved and quiet tone to my companions. His aunt was the miller’s wife. Fallbarrow lay just ahead.
Peatsmoke and the burble of a fresh stream were welcome to my senses, helping to purge the cloying stench of the deathwyrm’s presence from my memory. For a moment, it seemed as though the quiet village had not been touched. We descended the last hill and made our way toward the big shape of the mill. From what I could tell in the dark, the windmill lay on the very edge of the town. Little cottages and a few larger buildings, all built in the same rectangular style as the farmhouse we’d abandoned, hugged a flatter space of land beyond, huddling in the dark like funeral mounds.
Shoving away my morbid thoughts, I slowed to let my companions catch up. With my curse, my total inability to communicate even the most basic things, I was not exactly the best person to have in the lead when it came to introducing oneself in the dark on a night like this one had been. On a good day in these parts, a silent elf woman was a curiosity, on a bad day, well, I didn’t fancy getting skewered by wayward pitchforks.
Rahiel’s warning cry caused me to turn in time to see a slinking shadow break away from the regular shadows in the summer grasses and streak toward our party. I sent an arrow into the black mass as my eyes tried to make sense of the swirling shapes. Golden light flared as the arrow found its mark, and the shadows fell away, revealing a skeletal hound with glowing red eyes. Hellhounds. Great. My second arrow tore into the skull of the injured beast and it collapsed, the red draining from its eyes as it died.
As though a spell of silence had blanketed the village and was now lifted by Rahiel’s warning cry, screams shattered the illusion of peace. Fade sprang away from me, leaping onto an oncoming hound and rending it with his thick claws. Above us, Rahiel resumed throwing bolts of blue fire into the moving shadows as sulfur stung my eyes and choked my nose.
I turned, sprinting back to my companions. Makha and Azyrin were trying to keep the children between them, while Drake had handed off Perl to one of her siblings. He moved around to shield what he could, drawing the rapier Reason from its invisible sheath.
Hellhounds closed in around us, blocking our path to the besieged village. I bared my teeth at them, unable to yell curses like Makha was doing, or to weave spells like Azyrin and Rahiel.
My enchanted arrows flew true, taking one beast through the eye as it grew brave and charged. Another hulking beast met its death as Makha’s shield smashed down, crushing in its bony head. Flesh hung off the undead creatures, sulfurous gas leaking yellow with every hair-raising cry as they backed off and circled us, forcing us to close into an even tighter group around the unarmed children.
Azyrin threw his arms up, twisting golden light coating his leather-clad body as his white hair stood on end, his braids flying up as though lifted by a hidden
storm.
“Storm to fire, fire to bone, bone to ash,” he screamed in Orcish. “Ash to hell from whence you came!”
Lightning smashed down, hot and blinding, crackling in a huge arc through the circling hell hounds. Burning flesh and hideous screams made me want to curl into a ball, closing my nose and ears to the carnage. I blinked away acrid tears and forced myself to stay alert for stragglers that Azyrin’s spell might have missed.
“Go, now,” Azyrin yelled. He drooped and would have crumpled to his knees had not his wife caught him.
We ran, even the children, Makha half-carrying Azyrin as we charged almost blindly toward the windmill.
The tall stone tower was besieged by skeletal soldiers whose pewter-colored armor and tattered vestments gave life to my deepest fear. These were not just any undead, disturbed from sleep by some power or some accident.
These were the Saliidruin dead. Fell armies that had lain as bones beneath these hills until all memory of their dread empire and dark powers left the minds of mortal men. Some artifacts remained, of course, like the dark blue mail which Makha wore. I had hoped that all these dead would have long crumbled into dust. The Saliidruin empire had killed off the last of my people, the Elemental Elves, the Worldsingers, from the mortal lands after the bulk of us had fled to our ancestral home in the Between.
I, with all my full power, the ability to sing life and death and force my will upon the very fabric of the world, would have trembled to face a Saliidruin army, even an undead one. Here, neutered as I was with no voice and only an immortal’s understanding without an immortal’s power, I trembled, my blood turning to water in my veins.
This is what despair tastes like, I thought as sour fear coated my tongue. I did not like it.
“In here! Help!” yelled a voice from the windmill. A woman leaned out a high window, waving to us as we waded into the clot of skeletons trying to break in the thick iron and oak door.
Azyrin stumbled free of Makha, drawing his falchion. I sent an arrow into the back of a skeleton’s head, the broadhead making a satisfying crunch as it punched through the grey helm. The skeleton dropped in midswing of its leaf-shaped sword, the red glow of its eyes dying away.
As it died, so did some of my despair. Thorn, my bow, and I could kill these things, same as any other undead. I had taken out many skeletons in my adventures, defeated fell wights, liches, necromancers, and even an undead dragon. And had not Azyrin and I just overcome a deathwyrm?
The skeletons shifted to face the new threat, glowing eyes turning toward us. I risked a glance off toward the main part of town and realized some of the peat smoke smell I’d thought signaled normalcy earlier came from burning roofs. Grey bodies and distant dull coal-red eyes swarmed the village in eerie silence. Dread magic was at work here.
Makha raised her sword and shield and screamed an Orcish battle-cry in unison with her husband as she set to charge into the clot of skeletons blocking us off from the windmill.
The first light of dawn spilled over the horizon behind us, cutting across the land with light the color of old blood. The skeletons hissed and threw up their arms, shying away from the light. They charged past us, seemingly desperate now to flee instead of fight.
We did not let them go without heavy losses. I shot an arrow point-blank into one and danced aside as another swung haphazardly at me as it tried to get by. Drake ducked a swing as he moved up beside me, covering my side. Rahiel and Bill swung down from the quickly brightening sky, two crackling bolts smashing apart another skeleton.
A deep tone vibrated through the air and the ground shook again, though not with the violence of the quake the afternoon before. The remaining skeletons dissolved into shadows, armor, swords, and all, swirling away from us with the oiliness of swamp mist.
The silence broke and the crackling fires from the village mingled with wails and screams.
“Aunt Emili!” Alew yelled, finding his voice before anyone else.
A thin woman with hair more grey than brown now, emerged from the windmill, running toward the children, tears streaking her face. Blood coated her leather apron and simple wool dress.
“Where is Morin?” she asked, then stopped and shook her head. “Never you all mind. We must get to the temple.” She looked at us as though seeing me and my companions for the first time. “Adventurers?” she said. “Thank the gods. Are there more of you coming?”
“I do not think so,” Azyrin said. His blue skin was winter-pale with exhaustion and he leaned heavily on Makha and his unsheathed falchion.
“Uncle Snufi?” Alew whispered, looking at the blood coating his aunt’s clothing.
“Gone,” she said, tears brightening her hazel eyes. “We’ve been fighting them off since dusk. They got into the house, so we tried to make the mill. Snufi held them off and I got inside. He was…” she swallowed and straightened. “It don’t matter. It isn’t safe out here.”
“Show us to the temple,” Makha said.
Fade slunk up to my side, his black-and-silver striped fur matted with ash, dirt, and blackish ichor. I wished I could ask him what he’d been fighting, but I didn’t want to know. I wanted a long drink of cold water, a bath, and for this all to be ended. Somehow I guessed that daylight was a reprieve, not our salvation.
We found no one living as we moved through the village. Bodies lay where they had fallen, torn and shredded by sword, tooth, and claw. The children were weeping openly as we picked our way through the carnage. I tucked my arm against my nose, but my skin stank of death and soot, so even that gesture was useless. Blood dried into the packed earth between houses and flies started to gather, forming clots of seething shadow on the dead.
Azyrin made Makha stop and help him close the eyes of every body we found. After the first few, Drake and I took over that duty. Their eyelids were sticky, difficult to slide down over eyes that had seen their last stars. Some bodies were so mangled I couldn’t find eyes to close. I left those alone.
The temple was at the center of the village. It was built all of stone, dark grey granite quarried from the northern hills and probably brought here by boat and ox cart. The stone was carved around with wheat and fruit motifs, celebrating the gods that were worshipped within. A large unicorn statue reared up from a raw stone base in front of the wide double doors. The doors were scarred with burn marks and deep blade gouges, but it seemed the undead had failed to breach the thick stone and metal.
The right door ground open and a tall, gaunt older human man in dirty white robes emerged, his eyes red rimmed but his face hopeful. A silver medallion stamped with a unicorn’s head marked him as a priest of Thunla.
“Father Titor!” Emili let go of Iera’s and Cher’s hands to greet the priest.
More people spilled out behind the priest as introductions were made. The survivors of the terrible night were few. Too few. My heart ached for them as I scanned their pale and despairing faces. Besides the two priests and our refugees, only five remained and one was a babe in a hollow-eyed young woman’s arms.
Jes, the blacksmith, had the level look and strong arms of someone willing to fight and she said as much as we moved into the wide front room of the temple, but the others were no warriors. They put the children onto cots in the back rooms where the priests lived and then we gathered in the large front room, flowery incense burning in one of the hanging braziers and the doors wide open to try to cut through the smell of death and ash.
“We must bury the dead,” said Odyll, the priestess of the Summer Lady, a middle-aged and plump woman whose light green eyes crinkled with many laugh lines that were now creased with worry and pain.
“We should get far from here in case that evil returns.” This was from a young man with the nice clothing and calloused fingers of a tailor.
“We’ll never make it anywhere. We don’t know what’s come of the outlying farms. What if they come here in daylight seeking safety?” Jes’s voice was as burly as her thick arms. I liked her blunt attitude and tried not t
o think about how I would be happy to die defending a resilient human like her.
Or my companions. I leaned against the cold stone wall with Fade pressed tight to my side, his warm side rising and falling in steady reminder that all I cared about in the world was here in this large stone room with me. Azyrin sat on a low bench, his hand entwined with Makha’s, her flame-red hair mingling with his white braids as they leaned against each other. Rahiel curled against Bill on a large linen covered cushion provided by the other occupants of the room, giving them reverent space. Bill was probably the only living unicorn they had seen and I doubted that many pixie-goblins came through these parts, either. Drake slumped on a bench next to Alew, Perl asleep between them, her tawny head resting on his thigh. He seemed to sense me looking at him and lifted his hazel eyes to mine, giving me a slight nod and an even slighter smile.
“Was it the quake that awoke them?” Rahiel mused.
“Or some necromancer who caused the quake?” speculated Odyll.
“Chicken! Egg! Who gives two shits?” Makha growled, lifting her head off Azyrin’s shoulder.
“Aye,” Drake murmured, clearly not wanting to disturb the sleeping child. “I care only how to defeat it. Whatever it is.”
I knew what we faced, more or less. Whatever terrible power had awoken or come to raise the Saliidruin dead was greater than my little band could defeat. I had watched in the Hall of Windows as the shadow race spread across the lands, choking out life in their greed for more and more power until finally the gods of men had intervened, burying the might of the empire beneath these very hills.
All that remained of this in mortal memory was the name of this place, The Barrows. My jaw clenched with the desire to tell them what we faced, how much worse it could get, of our doom to come. No words were available to me, only deeds. My curse was always in my mind, hugging me like a second skin, but today it seemed to tighten and constrict worse than a deathwyrm’s rank coils.
I knew of nothing powerful enough to raise the Saliidruin dead except one of their own. There had been, in the halcyon days of the dread empire, clerics of Death itself. Their name was a curse if spoken aloud, and so even my people had called these evil men only by a title. Death Knights, avatars of oblivion itself.
