Avenger botm-3

by Richard Baker

  “It’s the nature of the Shadowfell,” Sarth answered. “Sometimes things that have come to ruin in our world remain intact here, and other times things that are still whole in our world have been destroyed here. It can be capricious.”

  “Well, capricious or not, it’s damned inconvenient,” Hamil said. “We’re still on the wrong side of the Winterspear.” He looked at the river, swift and dark in the ever-present gloom. “I hate the thought of swimming it. I don’t suppose we can fly or teleport across?”

  “It’s too far for my teleport spell,” said Geran. “Sarth, can you carry us one at a time?”

  “If I managed you once, I can certainly manage Hamil and Mirya.” The sorcerer gauged the distance, and sighed. “Let me begin with you, Geran.” He murmured the words to his flying spell; Geran felt the shadows drawing in around them as the magic took its shape, but nothing more happened. Sarth stepped close behind him, locking his arms beneath his, and sprang up into the air. The cold waters raced swiftly beneath Geran’s feet, and the broken stone piers of the old bridge reeled by on their left. Then the two of them landed heavily in the ruins by the riverbank, not far from where the Troll and Tankard stood in the Hulburg Geran knew. Sarth panted for breath.

  “Well done,” Geran told him. “Bring Mirya next-we don’t want to leave her alone in a place like this.”

  The sorcerer nodded, and rose up into the dark sky again. Geran turned to study his surroundings, keenly aware of his solitude. He’d never been one to take fright easily, but the shadow world was no place for a living human to linger, and he was keenly aware of his vulnerability if something should happen. He could see more of the ancient city wall than he would have expected; it seemed that the Shadowfell remembered Hulburg as the ruined city it had been a hundred years previous, not the thriving town it was today.

  A small scrabbling sound echoed through the darkness not far off, a sound like someone or something slipping across the weed-choked rubble. “What is that?” he murmured softly. He set his left hand on Umbrach Nyth and drew the sword from its sheath, aiming the point in the direction of the unseen thing moving about in the shadows. Nothing more happened, so he took a moment to perform a couple of simple attack and defense patterns with the dark blade. It was ready and responsive in his hand, despite the awkwardness of using the wrong arm. Without any false modesty, Geran knew he was an excellent swordsman under normal conditions; he’d only met a handful he knew to be better in his years of adventuring and travel. Fighting left-handed, he still had his learning, his knowledge, his footwork, and his swordmagic, but his strength and quickness suffered. He could probably handle a strong but inexperienced opponent, or perhaps a swordsman of average skill and no great natural talent, but he wouldn’t care to hazard his life on the outcome.

  “I’ll get better in time,” he told himself. Unfortunately, he didn’t see that he had any great need to fight six months or a year from now, but he might very well have to fight in the next few hours-possibly several times. Rhovann couldn’t have picked a worse time to cripple him.

  The flutter of a cloak in the air caught his ear as Sarth returned, carrying Mirya with an arm around her waist and one of her arms over his shoulder. The tiefling alighted, and Mirya eagerly disentangled herself. “I thank you for sparing me the swim, Sarth, but I think I’d rather leave flying to the birds,” she explained. “It’s no natural thing for a person to do.”

  Sarth smiled. “I’ve come to like it,” he said. Then he shot off into the gloom again.

  Mirya glanced at Geran, and frowned as she noticed the sword in his hand. “What is it?” she asked in a low voice.

  “I thought I heard something moving about. It’s probably nothing. A rat, perhaps.”

  “Are there such things as rats here?” She set the stirrup of her crossbow on the ground and drew back the string as she studied the shadows around them.

  He started to shrug-and at that moment the creatures attacked. Several gaunt, gray houndlike monsters bounded from the shadows of the ruined walls and rubble mounds, charging the two humans. Their flesh seemed tattered and dessicated, and bare bone showed beneath; their eyes were sunken, black pits in which fierce pinpoints of crimson burned.

  Geran moved to intercept them without a moment’s thought. “Cuillen mhariel!” he snapped, automatically invoking the silversteel veil to protect himself in the coming fray. Silver streamers of mist took shape and began to flow around him-and Mirya as well, since she was close beside him. Then he leaped forward, thrusting his point straight at the breast of the first of the gravehounds as he spoke another sword spell: “Reith arroch!” A brilliant white radiance flicked along the ebon blade as it found the gravehound’s chest in midleap. He shouldered the dying monster aside as it slammed into him, evading a snap of its jaws only by jumping back out of the way.

  “What are these things?” Mirya cried out. Her crossbow sang behind him, knocking another of the creatures to the ground. It snapped at the bolt in its flank before scrambling to its feet again.

  Geran fixed his eyes on the next creature rushing them. “Naerren,” he breathed, invoking a spell of hindrance that took the form of red-gold lashes streaking around the monster, steering it away from Mirya. Then he ran over to meet the one Mirya had shot as it started after again. Mirya yelped in panic and backed away as it snarled and snapped at her. Geran slashed at it with his sword and managed only a glancing blow from its bony shoulders. The things stank when he came too close; the air was filled with a foul rotting stench, and his stomach-none too steady for a while now-threatened to revolt entirely. He managed to drive it back with a flurry of wild cuts before turning back to the other he’d enmeshed with his hindering spell. The gravehound rushed at him and leaped for him. This time Geran’s thrust missed its mark, sinking into the creature’s thick shoulder instead of skewering its heart. The impact took him off his feet, and out of pure reflex he threw his arm behind him to break his fall. Instead, he jammed his stump against the ground and screamed as white-hot agony nearly overwhelmed him. Only the swirling silversteel warding saved his life, resisting the monster’s vicious fangs as it struggled to find his throat.

  “Kythosa zurn!” From somewhere behind Geran’s head, Sarth’s powerful voice thundered in the ruins, and a barrage of golden force orbs hammered into the gravehound pinning him to the ground. The orbs blasted fist-sized wounds in the monster’s side, hurling it away from him. Geran rolled to his side and scrambled to his feet. Sarth and Hamil battled furiously against the rest of the pack, Hamil keeping close to Mirya to fend off the creatures darting and snapping at her, Sarth scouring the monsters with one spell after another. In another moment the gravehound pack broke and retreated-not before Mirya loosed another bolt at the fleeing creatures, bringing down one with a quarrel in its spine.

  “Geran, Mirya, are you hurt?” Sarth asked urgently, descending to the ground.

  “The one tore the hem of my skirt, but I’m all right,” Mirya replied.

  Geran sheathed his sword and brushed himself off. “Not much more than my pride,” he answered. “It would have been much worse if you hadn’t returned when you did.” In fact, he was fairly sure that the gravehounds would have killed both him and Mirya. They wouldn’t have found me such easy prey if I’d been at my best, he thought angrily. He scowled in the shadows.

  “Were those creatures of Rhovann’s?” Mirya asked.

  “I doubt it. I’ve never known him to employ undead servants-he prefers to work with inanimate subjects.” Geran forced himself to set aside his frustration; there was no point in dwelling on the fact that he’d been caught and maimed. Will this poison me the way it poisoned Rhovann? he wondered. There would be all the time in the world for wishing otherwise later, but now he had things to do. “No, I would guess that the skeletal hounds are simply denizens of this place. We should keep moving before any more are drawn to us. The castle’s not far off.”

  “I don’t care for the idea of marching up the causeway to the front
gate,” Hamil remarked.

  “Nor do I,” Geran answered-especially since he doubted that he’d be able to help much if it came to fighting their way in. He studied the towering shadow of Griffonwatch’s crag, crowned by its flickering curtains of violet light. The spires and battlements of the Hulmasters’ castle had a jagged, menacing look to them, stabbing up at the starless sky like a thicket of spears. The lower floors were lost in the gloom, but he could see flickers of light in the uppermost portions of the old castle. It struck him as likely that Rhovann would appropriate the safest and most comfortable part of the old fortress for his own use, and that meant the Harmach’s Tower or some part of the castle close by it. “But how to get in without being seen?” he mused aloud.

  Mirya glanced at Sarth. “Can you fly us up to the top?” she asked him.

  “Possibly, although I doubt I could bear Geran so high aloft. But I do not advise it.” Sarth pointed at the flickering aurora around the keep. “We would have to pass through the wardings there. If they were to incapacitate me or suppress my flying magic …”

  Mirya shuddered at the thought. “Never you mind, then. We’re not meant to take wing anyway.”

  “We’ll make for the postern gate,” Geran decided. “It’s easily overlooked, and Rhovann may not have paid it much attention. If we’re careful, any guards that Rhovann’s posted won’t notice us until we’re well inside the castle.”

  Tugging at his baldric to seat his sword more comfortably, he led the way from the clearing by the Burned Bridge into the shadow of Rhovann’s castle.

  TWENTY-SIX

  15 Ches, the Year of Deep Water Drifting (1480 DR)

  Geran and his small band met no more gravehounds or other undead as they made their way through the gloom of shadow-Hulburg. From time to time they heard strange rustlings in the dark alleys or the creaking of floorboards behind dark doors, and Geran felt unfriendly eyes upon them once or twice, but nothing emerged to trouble them. Near the square of the Harmach’s Foot they encountered a number of intact buildings-houses and workshops and storehouses-in more or less the same place that they would have been in the living Hulburg. The windows were dark, and no lights glimmered behind their shutters, but Geran sensed that the place was not as empty as it appeared.

  Mirya must have sensed it too, since she drew closer to his side. “Who raised these buildings?” she whispered. “Does someone live here?”

  “I think that no one built them. Each one’s here because someone put up a house or a workshop or a storehouse in Hulburg.”

  “Do they just appear out of nothing here when someone builds them in our Hulburg? And why is each one wrong in some way?” Mirya pointed at a cooper’s workyard as they passed by. “That’s old Narath’s place, but his front door faces across the street, and there should be a fine old laspar tree in his yard.”

  “That’s the nature of the Shadowfell. It’s a reflection in a broken mirror. What it shows isn’t the truth of things.”

  “What of the people? I can feel them nearby. There isn’t a copy of me here, is there?”

  “Souls wander here,” Sarth answered her. “Dreamers drift through briefly, and the dead linger here, sometimes for centuries, before they fade away to the godly dominions. Some know that they are bodiless phantasms, and have no true life in this place. Others do not perceive their incorporeity, and settle into the habits and places they have-or had-in the firmament we come from. And there are also those few who, like us, are here in body and soul at once. Most are travelers who don’t stay long, but a few make homes here for reasons of their own. I have never seen them, but I have heard of strange inns and gloomy towns where those who live in the shadows gather.”

  Mirya shivered. “So the shades of the dead are what we feel around us?”

  Geran drew close and took her hand in his. “We don’t perceive them because most are already fading from the world. Only the most determined-or most confused-would take a shape we might see.”

  “What a terrible place,” she breathed. “The sooner we’re done with it, the better.”

  They rounded the base of the causeway, and threaded their way into the woods that lay south of the great stone massif on which the castle stood. The small stretch of woodland in the heart of Hulburg was wild and dark even in the normal world, but here in the Shadowfell the gloom beneath the branches seemed physically impenetrable. It took a conscious act of will for Geran to force himself to take the narrow path leading into the trees.

  The silence and the gloom settled in around them, even thicker than before. He felt Mirya pressing up close behind him, and even Sarth and Hamil hesitated before following after him. A walk of a hundred yards or so brought them around to the south side of the crag, a towering shadow that now loomed menacingly over them. To Geran’s left a wrought-iron fence leaned crookedly, marking off a small space where a flight of stone steps led up to a thick door of iron plate in the side of the crag. He let himself in through the rusting gate and approached the doorway.

  “Allow me to examine the door,” Sarth said. He murmured his detection spell, peering closely at the postern gate. After a moment, he nodded to himself. “It is warded, but I believe I can suppress it.”

  “Go ahead,” Geran told him. He drew the shadow sword again and waited as Sarth began to incant his spell, weaving his hands in the complicated gestures of his craft. The swordmage sensed his magic gathering, exerting invisible pressure against the magical wardings sealing the portal. With care, Sarth checked his power, keeping his effort as stealthy as possible. Geran waited for the sudden clatter of runehelms closing in from the forest, or the lash of some deadly spell trap … but the moment of tension passed, and the postern gate swung open under the sorcerer’s power. Impermeable darkness waited beyond.

  “I cannot guarantee that Rhovann is ignorant of my work here,” Sarth said. “He may have sensed the breaching of his defenses.”

  “In that case, we’d better not give him much time to react,” Geran replied. With the shadow sword in hand, he plunged into the darkness of the gate. Inside, a short passage led to a low, barren mustering hall where the castle’s defenders could gather for a sortie or mass to defend against any enemy effort to force the postern gate. Geran half expected to find Rhovann’s servants waiting for them just inside, but the hall was empty-evidently the wizard counted on his magic to protect the door. On the far side of the hall a stairway spiraled up through the living rock of the crag, climbing toward the halls and buildings of the castle proper. He murmured the words of a light spell to dispel the brooding gloom, crossed the hall, and began to climb the steps.

  The stairway seemed narrower and longer than Geran remembered, another subtle lie of the Shadowfell. His head grew light and his missing hand throbbed as he hurried up the steps. By the time he reached the top, his heart pounded in his chest, and his legs felt weak and rubbery under him. He paused, leaning against the wall to catch his breath. Mirya peered at him, a taut frown across her face. “Are you in pain?” she asked quietly.

  “It’s nothing I have time for,” he answered, and winced. She snorted, seeing through his bravado.

  Hamil and Sarth reached the top of the stairs. “Which way?” the halfling asked.

  Geran set a hand on the shadow sword’s hilt, and reached out for the touch of magic, dark and strong. They stood in a passage that ran beneath the upper courtyard. To the left it led toward the kitchens and storerooms near the great hall. To the right, it met another short stair that climbed up to the chambers built in the cliffside beneath the Harmach’s Tower and the rest of the castle’s highest ring. The air seemed to shiver with the potency of Rhovann’s wards in that direction. “To the right,” he decided. He hadn’t really expected Rhovann to hide the runehelms’ master stone in the kitchens, after all.

  He led the way up to the next level of the castle. Now they were just beneath the library and the tower. Here, on the southern face of Griffonwatch, the crag’s top had been leveled and excavated so that the
foundations of the buildings above had rows of windows facing the Moonsea, and served as an intact and inhabited floor in its own right. Geran reached the long hall with its windows peering out on the dark, endless night outside. Ahead of him stairs climbed up to the Harmach’s Tower, but the unseen currents of magic did not draw him any higher. Instead they washed over him from his left, where a large council room and trophy hall stood at the end of the corridor. A pair of runehelms stood guard outside the door; he drew back quickly, hoping they hadn’t seen him.

  “The trophy room,” he whispered to his companions. “Rhovann’s device is in the trophy room.”

  “I sense it too,” Sarth said. “Is there any other way in?”

  “No doors, I’m afraid. There are a number of large windows, but most look out over a sheer drop. You might manage them with your flying spell, but the rest of us would need a rope.”

  “It sounds like we’re going through the guards, then,” Hamil breathed. He crouched by the corner, drawing his knives as he prepared himself for his rush-and there came a loud clatter and rustling from the corridor behind them. Half a dozen of Rhovann’s constructs appeared by the postern stair, and charged wordlessly up at Geran and his companions.

  “Behind us!” Mirya cried.

  Sarth spat an oath in his own tongue and whirled. “Narva saizhal!” he shouted, raising his scepter at the towering monsters. A barrage of deadly icicles took shape in the air before him before sleeting through the corridor. Dozens of the icy missiles skewered the leading runehelms, to little effect-there were no vital organs to pierce, no blood vessels to sever. White patches of frostbite spread from each icicle, stiffening the constructs’ flesh and hindering their movements, but still they came on. The thin glaze of ice coating the floor and walls after Sarth’s spell proved more effective than the hail of deadly icicles; while the runehelms were hard to hurt, they could slip and fall as easily as any human might. Several of the gray guardians briefly tangled up in the hallway, but the two in the lead kept coming.