Plague of Shadows

by Michael Wisehart

  Bek told of how he had first noticed the changes in the townsfolk, then of his failed attempt to warn the rovers, which was where he had met Ayrion, Tameel, and Zynora.

  After that, Zynora and Bek described their battle with the creatures, while Ayrion recounted his experience with their leader, Argon.

  They were careful not to mention anything about Nell’s transformation. There was no point to giving these people reason to fear her.

  Ayrion finished with their decision to raise a force willing to fight back against this threat. “If we don’t stop him, Argon could spread this disease across all of Aldor.”

  Zynora leaned on her cane. “These creatures are like a plague. Death would be preferable to what’s in store for anyone they claim.”

  “It appears there’s no need to go to Belvin to fight this army,” Abiah said. “They’re standing on our flaming doorstep.”

  Ayrion pointed at the door. “What you see here is just a small hunting party. There’s a whole lot more where they came from.”

  Abiah blinked. “And you want us to just go strolling on into Belvin all willy-nilly? Are you mad?”

  Ayrion smiled. “Probably.”

  Concerned voices filtered across the tavern. Ayrion was having a hard time selling this. He could see now why Tameel had quit allowing him to deal with the customers.

  “That’s right,” he said, looking around at the frightened faces. “You should be afraid, but not of what’s out there. You should be afraid of what’s coming if we don’t do something now. We have an opportunity we can’t afford to squander. The vulraaks have taken Belvin, and have reached as far as Saeida, but they are restricted to traveling only while the sun is down. Because of this, their infestation will be slowed.

  “We chose Saeida first because you are the closest to Belvin, which means if they are only just reaching us here now, then there’s a good chance they haven’t gotten any farther. But if we fail to stop them, they will continue to spread.

  “We need to raise a large-enough force to go after Argon. He’s the key.”

  “And how exactly do we go about stopping this Argon creature?” Abiah asked.

  Ayrion scanned the frightened faces and realized he had backed himself into a corner. “I . . . I don’t know. Yet.”

  Abiah thumbed his chin. “So, you want us to strap on our swords and bows and attack an army of flesh-eating monsters in order to kill a thousand-year-old general without the first idea as to how we’re going to pull it off?” He looked at Bek, then back at Ayrion.

  “Well, I don’t know if I would have put it quite in those terms.”

  Abiah snorted. “Well, you’ve certainly got a pair; I’ll give ya that.”

  “One of the things we need to figure out,” Zynora said, using a cane for support, “is how this dark creature is creating the vulraaks. If we can determine that, it might just give us a way to destroy them.”

  Abiah lifted his tankard and took another swallow. “Seems pretty obvious to me.” He rubbed the foam from his chin. “He’s casting a dark spell on ’em.”

  “I doubt it’s as simple as that,” Bek said. “I don’t think Argon merely strode into town one day and cursed everyone to turn into monsters. If it were that easy, I reckon he could’ve conquered Aldor when he was around the first time. From what I could tell, it looked to have started with just a few and spread from there. If everyone had gone to bed one evening and woken up cannibals, it would have been rather obvious, but it wasn’t. It was more subtle than that. It began with personality changes and then moved on to physical. Although, now that I think about it, the speed of those changes seemed to vary from person to person. For example, when the—”

  A woman screamed somewhere off to the right, and then another. Before long, a wave of bodies was rushing straight at them. The townsfolk stampeded like a herd of cattle away from whatever was going on near the stage at the back.

  “Stop!” Ayrion yelled, but they didn’t listen. He dove for an elderly woman who’d been knocked from her feet. He could hear her brittle bones snapping as her fellow citizens crushed her to the floor. He knocked three or four men off their feet to get to her.

  He handed the woman to Bek and leaped up on one of the tables to get a better look. In the far corner, he could see Orin with a chair in his hand, trying to force his wife up against the wall.

  “Stop it, Clara! It’s me. It’s Orin!”

  Ayrion noticed the blood on the floor of the healing station. Two or three bodies lay in front of the small stage. He looked at Orin’s wife and reached for his sword.

  Her eyes were solid black.

  Chapter 43 | Ayrion

  AYRION SCANNED THE HEADS in front of him as the people screamed and clawed their way backward, squeezing each other to the point of suffocation. There was no way he was going to make it through. They were packed tight enough to walk across. And for a brief moment, he even considered it.

  Above him, the ceiling angled upward toward the peak with thick beams running horizontal to the floor, spaced just enough that he thought he could get across. He sheathed his sword and leaped into the air, catching hold of the first. One by one, he swung across the rafters, his feet dangling just above the people’s heads. But they were too busy trampling each other to even notice.

  From there he could finally see what was happening.

  Clara half yelled, half shrieked at Orin as he fought to keep the chair between him and her. He leaned all his weight into it as he forced her up against the wall. “What are you doing? Don’t you recognize me?”

  None of the other bodies on the floor were moving. Ayrion winced. Two of them were Orin’s children. The little girl Clara had been holding was on her back, her throat ripped out, and the boy was simply lying facedown in a pool of his own blood. The third was a woman Ayrion didn’t recognize. She had deep claw marks on her side.

  Ayrion was hanging from the second-to-last beam when it hit him. What am I going to do when I get there? It was one thing to blindly kill those creatures outside. He could tell himself they were no longer human, but this was someone who hadn’t yet been turned. “Zynora! We need you over here!” He realized how stupid that sounded as soon as he said it. He’d just crossed the tavern by swinging from the rafters. How was she going to get there?

  Ayrion grabbed the last beam, swung, and dropped in front of the crowd. He drew his sword, not sure what else to do, and started forward. A memory of Nell in her bed with Zynora telling him to cut off her head flashed through his mind. But they had found another way, he told himself. Zynora had been able to use her magic. He needed her.

  Clara screeched again. She was changing faster than the others. At least, faster than Nell. Her skin was already blanching, and her hair was coming out in clumps, covering the floor around her.

  Orin saw Ayrion coming. “No! Please. She didn’t know what she was doing. She’s my—”

  Clara ripped the chair from her husband’s hands and raked five claws across his chest, cutting deep into the flesh. Orin fell backward, begging the whole way down for Ayrion to spare her.

  She lunged at Orin, but Ayrion tackled her before she could reach him. They rolled across the ground, and somehow, he managed to stay on top. “Clara, stop!” He knew his words were falling on deaf ears, but he was desperate.

  She struggled to push him off. She was strong. Very strong. He dropped his sword to free his other hand. He had her pinned to the floor, but he couldn’t keep her there on his own. “Help me!” he yelled at anyone who’d listen. No one wanted to get near her.

  Orin dragged himself over to where Ayrion was holding her and grabbed one of her arms, freeing Ayrion enough to hold her feet as she tried to kick him off her.

  “Zynora!”

  Clara tried to bite him, and he punched her in the face. “Hold her arm tight!” he shouted at Orin, then twisted around and swung her over on her stomach. She flailed, but as long as they held her arms, she couldn’t go anywhere.

  Orin’s grip
was slipping. “I can’t hold her much longer.”

  Ayrion knew what he had to do. It was the one thing he didn’t want to. The people were already scared of him. Why was he the one everyone looked to when it came to killing? He reached for his sword, still holding her wrist as she hissed and jerked.

  “No! Please!” Orin begged, weeping. “Please.”

  “We don’t have a choice.” Ayrion was afraid Orin would let go just to stop him, but he didn’t. Ayrion raised his sword and stopped when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. It was Bek. He was pushing his way along the outer front wall past the boarded windows. Zynora was right behind him.

  Ayrion lowered his blade. “Hurry! We need your help.”

  Bek had his arm around Zynora as they rushed over to where Clara lay prostrate between the two men.

  “Hold on, Orin,” Ayrion said, encouraging the man not to let go. “If anyone can help, she can.”

  A heavy thump and a spray of blood had Orin screaming. Ayrion turned to see one of Bek’s hatchets planted in the floor where Clara’s head used to be. Clara went limp in his hands. He didn’t move, transfixed on the fact that her head wasn’t where it was supposed to be. It had rolled to the side, looking up at Zynora, who was on her knees holding the hatchet’s handle. He looked at Zynora. “What did you do?”

  “What needed to be done,” she said, releasing her grip and letting Bek pull her to her feet.

  “You could have saved her. You could have healed her.”

  Zynora held on to Bek’s arm for balance. “I can’t heal anyone right now, and unless you plan on spending the rest of the night holding her arms so she doesn’t kill us all, we didn’t have a choice.”

  Ayrion finally released the woman as Orin crawled over to his dead children and gathered them in his arms. He turned away, unable to bear the man’s grief.

  He made it to his feet and turned to face the people. He couldn’t see much past the first couple of rows, so he hopped up on the stage.

  “Listen to me!” he shouted, his sword still in his hand. “Why should we worry about keeping the vulraaks from killing you when you’re just as likely to do it for them?”

  The people started to quiet down as they turned to look at the stage.

  He scanned the crowd. All he could see were terrified faces.

  “If we’re going to survive this, you need to work together. I just watched you nearly trample a woman to death in order to save yourselves. Outside, the elderly and feeble were left to the creatures while the rest of you ran for cover.”

  No one said a word. No one moved.

  “I have half a mind to just leave you here to fend for yourselves. Why risk my life and the lives of my friends to help a community who doesn’t care enough for each other to have the human decency to protect the weak!”

  He looked at Bek and Zynora. Bek seemed as stunned as the crowd. Zynora simply nodded. He wondered if he’d taken it too far. He was never one for being subtle, and on top of it all, they still needed these people. He exhaled slowly, trying to release some of the anger, the rush of adrenaline surging through his veins. “Lucky for you, I’m not one to leave people behind.” He lifted his sword and pointed it at them. “Now look around you.”

  No one moved.

  “Yes, right now. Look to your left. Now look right. Look behind you. These are the people you’re fighting for. This is your town. Your family. Your friends. These are the people you are going to be entrusting with your life. We either stand together or die alone.”

  Before he could step down from the stage, people had begun helping up those who had been pushed down in the stampede, offering apologies and handshakes.

  “What now?” someone called from over near the bar.

  Ayrion stopped on the bottom step and groaned. He hadn’t had a chance to think that far ahead. His only concern had been to stop the riot before they lost any more lives.

  “I’ll tell you what happens now,” Tameel’s raspy voice rang out from the other side of the room.

  The crowd parted to allow the white-haired tinker through. Nell, Taylis, and Marissa shuffled along behind him.

  “We lay these dead to rest with as much dignity as we can, we help our wounded, and we continue to fight.”

  “Are we still in danger?” another man asked on the right.

  As if in answer to his question, the vulraaks began pounding on the door and boarded windows, their screeches starting up once again.

  Panic set in, and the crowd started retreating toward the back of the building.

  “Stop!” Ayrion shouted. He jumped back up on stage so they could see him. “You start another stampede, and I’ll cut you down myself. Now pull the elderly, the women, and the children to the back. The rest of you hold your places at the front and keep that barricade protected. As long as it’s up, the creatures can’t get in.”

  “What are you waiting for?” Abiah shouted, pushing his way to the front of the stage. “Move!”

  The townsfolk obeyed, gathering the women and children and those too feeble to fight and moving them to the back. The pounding and scratching continued, but other than listening to the vulraaks’ unnerving cries, the people were in no immediate danger. The tavern was solidly built. Hopefully, it would hold till morning.

  Ayrion smiled. “You see what happens when you work together?”

  “But are we safe in here?” a man near the front asked.

  “What happened to Clara?” a woman asked. “I thought we’d rescued them from those things outside.”

  “What if others start to change?” another said. “How do we know who we can trust? Any one of us might turn into one of those creatures.”

  The crowd grew uneasy, threatening to topple all the work Ayrion had just put into calming them down.

  “It was the bite!” Zynora said. She was down on her knees examining Clara’s body. More accurately, her head.

  “You aren’t going to turn into a vulraak just because you happened to be near one. We were just asking how this plague is spread. It now appears that we have our answer. See here,” she said, pointing at a couple of marks on Clara’s shoulder. She was bitten, whereas none of the others were.

  “How do we know they won’t turn as well?” someone asked.

  Zynora looked at Ayrion, then back at the crowd. “We don’t. Not exactly, anyway. We can only go on what we’ve seen. When we first fought the vulraaks, days ago, we all received multiple cuts from that battle, but as you can clearly see, none of us have changed. Of the wounded we have here, only Clara had teeth marks.”

  Zynora cautiously opened Clara’s mouth with the tip of her dagger and lowered a lantern down to look inside. “Hah! Here’s your proof. She has sacs just behind her teeth.”

  “Like a snake?” Abiah asked.

  “Exactly like a snake,” she said. “Has anyone ever died from touching a snake?”

  Abiah grinned. “That’s debatable.”

  “I mean without being struck.” Zynora frowned at the taverner, and he wiped the grin off his face. “Touching a snake isn’t going to kill you. In fact, there are plenty who enjoy eating poisonous snakes, and it doesn’t kill them. I even know of a few who’ve been bitten by stripers without any effect, simply because the snake’s poison was never released. I’m guessing this is probably similar.”

  Zynora stood with Bek’s help and made her way to the platform. “We will keep a close eye on our injured, but be assured, you aren’t going to spontaneously turn into vulraaks. The last thing we need is for everyone to start mistrusting each other.”

  “As long as you stay within these walls and keep a level head,” Tameel said, “you’ll be safe.”

  The people slowly began mingling once again. A few helped Orin wrap his family in canvas tarps Abiah had been using to cover his larger casks. Zynora made sure no one touched Clara but herself. After the bodies were removed, they began the tedious work of mopping up the blood. They stored the rags along with the bodies in the tavern’s
cellar.

  Once the dead had been seen to, Ayrion’s small group gathered around the stage to talk. Abiah was included in the meeting since he, above anyone else, seemed to be the spokesperson for the town. Taylis and Marissa stood beside Nell, amusing themselves by watching the townsfolk.

  “Anyone else surprised that Argon isn’t here?” Bek asked.

  “After his fight with Ayrion,” Tameel said with a wry smile, “I have a feeling he won’t be as eager to get his hands dirty.”

  “I doubt it has anything to do with me,” Ayrion said. “I barely survived, myself. My guess is that the farther they spread, the more time he needs to spend organizing whatever it is he has in mind. Plus, I doubt he’s gone to the hassle of keeping himself alive all these years just to take a chance of dying now. Why risk your neck when you can have others risk theirs?”

  “Then why did he come the first time?” Bek asked.

  “Probably to find out why his hunting party never returned. If I were him, I’d want firsthand knowledge of what I was up against. No better way to do that than to be in the field.”

  “You talk as though you’ve had some military training,” Abiah said with a raised brow.

  Ayrion smirked. “A little.”

  “More than a little, I’d say,” Abiah said with a snort. “I’ve never seen anyone fight like that.”

  Ayrion changed the subject. “As soon as the sun begins to rise, we need to get these people out of here.”

  “We won’t last another night holed up in here like rats,” Bek said, still propping Zynora up with his arm. “Our best chance is to get to the next town, warn them, and start gathering a force large enough to fight back.”

  “Aye,” Abiah said. “Estermill is about a half day’s journey on horseback. But for a group this size on foot, it could take a day or two.”

  Ayrion nodded. “Have them get as much sleep as possible. At the crack of dawn, we’ll take them back to the rover camp and plan our next move.”