by M. C. Planck
With a sickening lurch of fear, Christopher realized that the shadow of a scrub bush had moved. Before he could convince himself it was an optical illusion brought on by low-light conditions and nervousness, the shadow rose up to the height of a man, blocking out stars on the horizon.
Several soldiers leveled their guns, and the sound of hammers cocking rang through the camp. The shadow ignored them while it took form, a ghastly, twisted humanoid shape.
“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” it moaned. There were words in there, if only Christopher could tease them out. He put his hand on the cavalryman’s shoulder, to delay him from firing for a moment, and listened harder.
“Mmsmlmmsmmlmmlsmmslmslsmlslms.” The sound was unnerving, like a sick old man in a hospital ward mumbling to himself. The urgency of the message was unmistakable, though. Christopher cocked his head and tried to separate the endless whispering string into pieces.
The world grew gray and then black, but Christopher, intent on understanding the ghost, barely noticed. Every time he got close to a coherent message, it slipped away from him, and he had to struggle twice as hard to get back again.
Underneath the babbling speech, now so loud it drowned out the calls of night birds and the whining of the shuffling, disturbed horses, there was a different sound. It was annoying, bright, and swirly and marching up steps, only to jump down at the end. It kept getting louder, even though Christopher was trying to ignore it. Then he realized it was a lyre playing.
He pulled his attention away from the moaning and the lyre, trying to make his tongue work again. He wanted to tell Lalania to knock it off. But extracting himself from the ghost-babble was proving very difficult. Panicked, he stepped back, his muscles straining as if he were stuck in molasses.
Consciousness returned. The shadow was directly in front of him, its blobby arms outstretched and grasping his head with an intangible touch that was nonetheless dry and cold.
Staggering away, out of its reach, he tried to think of something more intelligent to do, but his brain was as deadened as his limbs. The ghost followed him, its whine now hideous and terrifying instead of sad and curious. Lalania was pounding on her lyre, singing at the top of her lungs, tears of fear pouring down her face.
All around her, men began to come out of their trance. Torme was quickest; he spoke in Celestial, and his carbine began to give off an unearthly light.
Christopher, trying to run backward, stumbled and fell. As the shadow loomed above him he felt himself giving way to unreasoning panic. Then Torme stepped over him and began firing, streaks of light tracing out the path of the bullets as they flew through the babbling shadow.
The moaning turned to shrieks of grief and loss. Christopher rolled, over and over, until he got control of himself. Climbing to one knee, he saw Torme slowly retreating, emptying the carbine into the wailing, thrashing figure. With his last shot, the ghost began to dissipate, like a column of smoke fading into clean air.
Christopher did not even have time to think a congratulatory thought, let alone say one, before more shadows rushed in and engulfed Torme. They were different, their outlines more distinct and their insides darker. They mobbed Torme while he screamed in pain, blackness flowing between their touch and his body. Christopher was amazed at how much noise one man could make, until he realized other people were screaming too.
The camp was in pandemonium. Men and horses shrieked in unnatural terror. Above it all he could hear the tie-lines snapping as the horses panicked and bolted. In an instant they were swallowed up by night, thundering back up the avenue. Lalania had stopped playing her lyre, and was doing a funny kind of dance. Christopher got his sword all the way out of his scabbard before he understood that she was dodging shadowy lunges.
Torme fell to the ground without twitching, having died on his feet. The shadows abandoned his corpse and welled outward, looking for more victims.
Gregor’s sword began flickering blue light as he battered at the insubstantial figures, chasing them off Lalania. Men were firing guns, but without magic, they did nothing. The ghosts ignored them, clustering around Gregor. Karl dashed into the fray, his hands full of his huge black sword, and put his back to Gregor’s. Together the two men tried to hold the shadows at bay. They were doing pretty well, until the shadows began coming up through the ground at them.
Christopher was desperately trying to think of a spell to help them, but he couldn’t seem to settle on the best one. He fell back to old tricks. Grabbing a cavalryman by the shoulder, he cast the weapon blessing on his carbine. Then he pointed at the unnatural duel.
White-faced, the man swallowed and breathed hard. Christopher wanted to slap him back into rationality, but he didn’t have to. The man took three steps forward, and began firing.
Immediately several shadows peeled off and mobbed him, but the guns fired as fast as a man could pull the hammer back and let it fall; the cavalrymen prided themselves on their speed. He emptied the gun before he started screaming, and Christopher was sure another shadow had dissipated, but seconds later the man was crumpled on the ground, unmoving. Instantly the shadows began flowing back to where Gregor and Karl were busy losing.
No wonder the man had been frightened. He knew that Christopher had signed his death warrant. Why hadn’t that occurred to Christopher?
He tried to make himself think. Looking around, he saw that the men were on the edge of panic. Their rifles were useless; they were, once again, helpless peasants in the face of unworldly evil. Any second now they would break and run, following the horses out into the night, to die lost and alone in the trackless swampland.
Christopher raised his sword. “To me!” he cried, and then he switched to Celestial. It didn’t matter what words he used. It was the intent that counted. These monstrosities were unnatural and absurd, abominations of darkness. The Marshall of Heaven would not abide them. Christopher told them that, with all the conviction of his heart, as he walked purposefully toward them, now cloaked in a shimmering light.
The shadows retreated, leaving the two fighting men gasping in their wake. There were only four or five shadows left, milling about a few yards off the avenue. Christopher stopped advancing only because Gregor leaned on him for support.
“What do I do now?” Christopher was close to panic. The radiance would not last forever. Sooner or later the favor of the god would fail, as it always did. Then the creatures would swoop in to finish their feast.
Christopher remembered he had another weapon blessing he could cast.
“Give me a gun,” he stammered.
“No,” Karl said. He pulled a round, black object from his belt. “Do this instead.”
Christopher obeyed without thinking. He cast his spell on the grenade, and then looked fearfully out at the shadows again. Still clutching his sword, he held it in front of them like a barrier. He was very disheartened to see the blade shaking.
Karl pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade into the midst of the shadows. They casually moved out of the way, somehow managing to exude contempt for the feeble attack despite the lack of any facial features or, indeed, any features at all. Once the grenade hit the ground, they ignored it.
Christopher was thinking how ineffective that was, until he remembered that grenades explode. Then he fell to the ground so fast he almost impaled himself on his sword. Everyone else was already down, with their arms over their heads and their faces in the mud.
The prone humans were shielded from the blast by the thick shrubbery close to the ground. The ghosts, floating a foot above the earth, were ripped to pieces, their insubstantiality mixing with smoke and fading away.
Gregor tried to stand, and failed. “Get this cursed plate off me.” He flopped in his heavy armor, too weak to even roll over. Lalania bent over him and began ripping into the laces that held it on.
Christopher felt himself surge from terror to racking jealousy. He turned away and found a place to sit down, fighting to get his trembling, seething emotions under control.
“And you?” Christopher thought it wildly unfair that the handsome young man should be unscathed despite his reckless heroics.
“I am one of the weakened.” Karl put his hand on Christopher’s shoulder. “And you?”
“Yes. There’s something wrong with me. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something wrong.” It felt good to confess his confusion and fear. His eyes began to tear up.
“We should move,” one of the cavalrymen said. “All of that gunfire. They’ll know where we are now.”
“We’re not moving in this darkness,” Lalania snapped at him. “You can barely walk. You’ll fall into a pool and drown. And besides, nothing we fear in this tainted land will be woken by noise.”
“Then what? What woke them up?” Christopher was astonished to hear how close to whining he sounded.
She softened her voice. “You did, Christopher. You blaze like a beacon of light. You and Gregor. So if we move, we risk waking even more of them. Let us hope this area is now clear, at least for the night.”
“And tomorrow?” He couldn’t be patient. He had to know right now.
“Tomorrow we flee. There can be no hope of taking Cannan now.”
“You underestimate the power of our guns.” Karl still wasn’t afraid. Christopher found that amazing, and gaped at him in awe.
Lalania didn’t. “Karl, we rode into this taint. We have to walk out, carrying our wounded. We don’t have time to fool around with some idiotic vengeance quest.”
“What she said,” Christopher agreed. “That’s right.”
Karl stood up and spoke directly to Lalania, over Christopher’s head. “His orders can’t be trusted anymore.”
“I know, Karl. That’s why I’m arguing with you.”
“Hey,” Christopher said. “Hey, I’m right here.”
Lalania knelt down beside him now, and put her arm comfortingly across his shoulders. This was a lot nicer than when Karl had knelt next to him.
“Christopher, everything is going to be fine. But you have to do what Karl says, all right? Can you do that for me?”
He felt a desire to please her flow through him like a warm fountain. Intellectually he knew she was doing that damned charm spell, but the information was swept away on a tide of puppy love.
“Okay. I can do that. For you.”
Karl looked down at him. In the darkness it almost looked like disgust. “Rest,” Karl ordered everyone. “We have a long march in the morning.”
Gods, but Christopher was tired of long marches. But he could fly now. Snickering, he imagined the outrage on Karl’s face tomorrow, when everyone else was trudging through the mud and Christopher was sailing far above, bright and clean where nothing could touch him.
After breakfast Karl and Lalania went through the saddlebags, separating out what they would take and what they would leave behind. Bored with waiting, Christopher cast his flight spell.
Nothing happened. He had cast magic the night before, but only first-rank spells. Apparently anything more advanced than that was now beyond him. This was the second time he had been robbed of his magic, and he found it terrifying.
“Take a day’s worth of rations; leave the rest, and all the tack. We will be burdened enough as it is.” Lalania was giving orders.
“I can walk,” Gregor asserted, leaning on his sword for support.
“Of course you can, my hero,” Lalania said. “But someone else will have to carry your sword.”
“And my armor?” Gregor looked too stricken by the facts to respond to Lalania’s baiting. He turned to Christopher and smiled weakly. “You always did want to get rid of it.”
Christopher nodded in satisfaction. Now they’d have to dump his armor, too, and Karl couldn’t make him wear it anymore.
Lalania looked around and frowned. “What about the bodies?”
Christopher stared at the corpses. They were wrapped in ropes, as if someone had been afraid they might get up and walk away. Come to think of it, in this horrid place, maybe they would have.
“They are for the fire.” Karl hefted a small sack. “Only their fingers will come home with us.”
“At least we don’t have to haul Cannan out,” Christopher said. “Thank the gods for small blessings.”
“Why, I do believe I deserve the credit for that particular boon,” a different voice answered. Ragged and hollow, it was still instantly recognizable. Christopher looked to the edge of the grassy avenue, to the figure standing there.
His armor was holed and faded, hanging in tatters. His face was gaunt, cheeks sunken in hunger. His huge red sword had turned rust brown. Despite all of that, the man still projected power and raw menace.
Cannan smiled at them, grinning like a fevered skeleton. “Not only did you bring me breakfast, but you brought me a woman. How thoughtful of you.”
5
RETURN OF THE BARONET
This wasn’t working out quite like Christopher had planned. He had intended to descend upon a frightened and cowering Cannan, with guns, swords, and magic at his back. Instead, it was Christopher who was having trouble stopping his knees from knocking. He hadn’t had a chance to refresh his spells. Without the weapon blessing, he couldn’t enchant his sword to bypass the power of the ring. Absent magic, Gregor was the only equal to Cannan in their camp, and Gregor was barely equal to the task of standing up.
The blue knight had lifted his sword at Cannan’s arrival, but now he had to let the point rest on the ground. Cannan laughed at him.
“Can’t keep it up anymore, Ser? Then I’ll be doing your woman a favor.”
“Shut up,” Lalania said. “Put your sword down and surrender, or you’ll die.”
“To what? A few commoners, an old man, and a cripple? You used your magic in the night. I heard it. You have nothing left.”
“We have plenty enough left to kill you,” Lalania answered.
“No. There was too much screaming for that to be true.” He looked directly at Christopher. “You shouldn’t have come, Pater. You should have left me here, with my own kind. With the shadows. But now you’re here, and I’m going to eat you. I’m so darking sick of lizard meat.”
There was a strange spinning quality to Cannan’s voice that was making Christopher dizzy. The man was clearly insane.
The man was also bent on violence. With a death’s-head grin, Cannan advanced on Christopher, clearly relishing the sword fight to come. Christopher was terrified. His mundane sword would be almost useless against the ring. Cannan would cut through his tael in a few brutal strokes of his huge blade. Karl had a magic sword, but he was weakened, and Cannan could kill him in one blow in the best of times. Gregor was as dangerous as a kitten. All Christopher had left to face the monster with were guns.
Now that he thought about it that way, it didn’t sound nearly so bad. What the heck was wrong with him? What had the shadow taken instead of strength?
“She’s right, Cannan. Don’t make me kill you.” Christopher’s voice sounded courageous enough, at least to him, but he still couldn’t stop his katana from quavering. “And I’m not a Pater anymore.”
“Pity, you. It only means it will take you longer to die.”
The three remaining cavalrymen stepped forward, one wobbling a bit, but the others showing no fear.
“Surrender now, Ser,” Karl said, standing beside them.
“To commoners with clubs? Did the ghosts eat all your wits?” Cannan laughed, and Christopher realized the red knight did not know what guns were. He’d left before Christopher had made the first one.
“You’ve been away too long,” Christopher said sadly, but no one heard him. Cannan had taken another step forward, and Karl had snapped out an order. The carbines blazed fire and thunder. Through the clouds of smoke Christoph
er could see Cannan writhing in shock as bullets shattered against the magically hardened skin of his face and arms, drawing blood despite his protection.
And then he was gone, ducking and weaving into the underbrush, disappearing in an instant. Without thinking Christopher charged after him.
“No!” Lalania called, but too late. Christopher was already into the brush. He could hear the red knight blundering through puddles and shrubs. The contest was unequal. The man was wearing armor. Christopher was not.
He caught Cannan in a hollow, a blank square of grass free of bushes. A building might have stood here once. Now the red knight stood waiting for him, his face ablaze in hatred.
“Man to man, then. Or as much of a man as a priest can be.” Cannan, snarling and bleeding from a dozen wounds, was still a fearsome opponent. Christopher put his sword into a defensive position, and wondered if he could inflict even one more wound before Cannan cut him to pieces.
Before then, Christopher had to ask the question that had dragged him into this swamp in the first place, the mystery that had burned Niona’s body and made a monster out of a good man.
“What happened, Cannan? Why did you change?”
“I came into my own. I gained a prize worthy of my power, and it made me too strong for your petty Kingdom and its mewling rules.”
Reflexively Christopher’s eyes were drawn to the gold and onyx ring around Cannan’s finger. It glittered as brightly as it had the day they had torn it off Black Bart’s corpse, untouched by the decay of the swamp and the man who wore it. Svengusta had said the ring was Dark, but no one took the old man seriously, least of all Cannan. They had warned the knight, but only in general terms that sounded like mere superstition.
And then Christopher had hired the man to fight for him, all but encouraged him to wear the ring in battle after battle, and helped him defend it against Black Bart’s every attempt to regain it. This really was all his fault.
