It hit Hound in the chest and vanished inside of him. Rufus howled with rage and fear—a howl that transformed into the keening wail of something inhuman, something that should not be.
Hound shook, trembling, his head thrown back, his eyes clenched shut, his mouth open wider than should be possible, every muscle in his body straining in a desperate struggle against the dream-beast. He stood there for a long time, looking as if he was soundlessly screaming to the heavens for help. Suddenly, the tension broke and he hunched his shoulders forward, hanging his head for a moment before he started laughing—not human laughter, not the laughter of mirth, but the laughter of triumph.
Then he slowly looked over at Ben, his glowing red, virulently evil eyes boring into him. Ben snapped awake with a gasp, scrambling to his feet and drawing his sword all in one frantic attempt to escape the surge of fear coursing through him. His head whipped this way and that, taking in the camp and his family and friends, most still sleeping, blissfully ignorant of the danger in their midst.
Homer was growling, his teeth bared at Hound, who stood staring at Ben with a vacant expression and dull red eyes. He took a step forward, not easily or naturally, his legs flopping and jerking, uncoordinated like a puppet made to walk by a child that had never played with such a toy before. He bared his teeth in an inhuman snarl, staring at Ben with singular determination.
He took another step, nearly toppling over from a gross lack of coordination, stopping to right himself before attempting another step. Hound’s face contorted, his mouth opening in an effort to scream but no sound came out. As his face spasmed, he stopped midstep.
Ben watched in alarm, growing understanding threatening to unravel his tenuous grasp on sanity. Hound’s face relaxed and the eyes again fixed on Ben. He took another step, this time just slightly more coordinated than the last.
Homer barked, rousing Cyril and John in the same moment, followed by Imogen and Frank. John rolled easily to his feet, bow in hand and an arrow nocked.
Cyril took in the scene with a glance. Seeing Hound take another jerky, forced and awkward step toward Ben, he snatched up the stew pot sitting near the fire, filled with water to soak for the night, and hurled the contents at Hound’s face. Water splashed over him, stunning him, not from force but from shock and surprise. He fell backward, stumbling to catch himself but failing, landing hard and struggling to gain enough breath to sputter through the rivulets of water dripping out of his hair.
After a moment, he shook his head, coming fully awake, wiping his face.
“What the hell just happened?” he asked weakly.
Cyril took a moment to light his lamp before kneeling in front of Hound and looking into his eyes. “I believe you were possessed,” he said quietly.
Hound looked around, frowning at the fact that he was several feet from his bedroll.
“I remember eyes and then darkness and struggle,” he said, rubbing his face again. “But it was more than darkness, it was nothingness, utter emptiness.”
“I saw it too,” Ben said, almost afraid to give voice to his nightmare lest it be made real.
“The darkness?” Cyril asked.
“No, the eyes. I was watching them watch me, but then they looked away and I saw Hound in my dream. The eyes took him and I woke to find him coming toward me.”
Cyril sat back heavily and closed his eyes.
“Are you trying to say that you both had the same dream?” Frank asked.
Hound nodded. “I didn’t see Ben, but everything else was just like he said.”
“It would seem that the stalkers are far more dangerous than we thought,” Cyril said.
“Wait, are you saying the stalker that we killed is haunting their dreams?” Frank asked. “That’s just crazy. The thing is dead.”
“The wolf that it animated is dead,” Cyril said. “Apparently, the being itself is not.”
Frank huffed. “That’s just not even possible.”
“I think you’ll find that when dealing with magic, there’s no such thing as impossible.”
“What are we going to do?” Imogen asked.
Ben was wondering the very same thing. He could meditate to rest his body, but he still needed sleep. Sooner or later, he would have to face his enemy again. If Hound couldn’t resist it, how could he?
“Tie me to a tree and take my weapons,” Hound said.
“He’s right,” Ben said. “Me too.”
Cyril sighed, nodding in resignation.
Ben didn’t sleep much for the rest of the night. When he started to drift off, he willed himself awake. When he failed at that, the discomfort of his bindings and the tree against his back woke him instead. He was grateful when the sky began to show signs of dawn, but not half as grateful as he was that the eyes hadn’t visited him again.
Chapter 12
Ben trudged through the forest, each step a contest between his will and his exhaustion. He wasn’t paying much attention to anything except his own fatigue but he knew that Hound was in similar shape.
They had broken camp at dawn and followed the stream, which ran roughly parallel to the trail cut into the forested hillside above. They planned on rejoining the trail when they reached Four Mile Lake.
When Frank came to an abrupt stop in front of him, Ben stumbled into his brother’s pack, his awareness returning to the world around him rather than fixed on his internal struggle to place one foot in front of the other.
He looked around and saw that everyone else was frozen in place, scanning the trees for something—what he did not know.
“What is it?” he asked Homer.
“There’s something out there, but the wind isn’t right for me to smell it.”
His mind focused anew, bringing him fully into the moment as he searched the wilderness for any hint of threat. A twig broke. His eyes snapped on target, all of his senses straining to detect the source of the noise. The brush moved, and a deer stepped out into a clearing, tentatively looking about.
Ben relaxed, feeling more than a little kinship with the animal, knowing how it felt to be prey. When the deer noticed them, it bounded into the forest, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. Speed and stealth were its greatest defenses. Ben idly wondered what his were.
He knew from firsthand experience that facing a stalker was far more dangerous than he’d ever imagined. When he was willing to face the truth, he had to admit that the stalker may have already won. His injury, just a few scratches, might be his undoing—or worse, it might lead to the loss of his free will and allow the stalker to use his body to harm those that he loved.
That possibility terrified him more than any other. It was a violation so complete that it seemed worse than death. He vowed to himself that he would choose to end himself rather than let the stalker use him. As he considered suicide, he thought he heard laughter from somewhere very far away.
“We should keep moving,” John said.
The day passed in a haze of weariness. Ben’s mind and will were reduced to a singular function … taking the next step. His head hung and his attention narrowed to the ground immediately before him. When the sun slid behind the forested hills, relief washed over him at the thought of rest, followed by trepidation at the thought of sleep—a sleep that he knew he wouldn’t be able to resist.
They reached the lake as the last light of day was fading into twinkling black. It was long, stretching for miles, but not very wide. Hundreds of fallen trees were crowded against the nearest bank, a few pushed up on shore but most were floating in a haphazard and random arrangement that blanketed the water for a hundred feet.
Ben dropped his pack and sat down heavily, taking a few moments to simply breathe the cool evening air.
Hound dropped his pack and flopped to the ground as well. “I’m stronger than this,” he muttered.
“Let me take a look at your wound,” Imogen said.
“I couldn’t stop you if I wanted to.”
“How are you holding up?” Cyril ask
ed Ben, kneeling in front of him and peering into his eyes.
“I’m spent,” he said.
“My feet hurt,” Homer said, lying down on his side.
Ben gently stroked his fur.
“Have you felt any more influence from the stalker?” Cyril asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“How so?”
“I thought I heard laughter when …”
“When what?” Cyril pressed.
“When I decided that I would rather kill myself than let that thing use me to kill you.”
Cyril closed his eyes and bowed his head.
Then he turned to Hound and said, “What about you?”
“I can see its eyes every time I close mine.”
“Does it feel like the product of imagination or influence?”
Hound took a moment to consider the question before shaking his head. “Hard to say. Probably a bit of both.”
“Let’s find someplace out of sight to make camp,” John said. “That thicket looks promising.”
“Is that the trail?” Frank asked, pointing through the growing darkness toward the west side of the lake.
Before anyone could answer, Imogen stood quickly, pointing into the trees. “What’s that?” she asked.
Flickering blue light peeked through the forest. Ben’s heart sank as he struggled to get to his feet.
“We have to move,” Cyril said, helping Hound up.
They reached the thicket on the east side of the lake a minute before the Dragon Guard came into full view, blue flame burning from the barrels of their rifles like torches, casting eerie light across the still water. Nash was second in a line of six. Ben breathed an inaudible sigh of relief when he didn’t see a stalker or tracking dogs with them.
The Guard stopped to make camp on the far side, much too close for Ben’s comfort.
“We have to be quiet,” Cyril whispered. “Sound carries across water. Also, we can’t make any light.”
“This is crazy,” Frank said. “We can’t stay here.”
“Where would you have us go?” Cyril asked. “Rufus and your brother need rest. Besides, they might hear us if we try to move through the forest in the dark.”
“Might be an opportunity,” Hound said.
“What are you talking about?” Frank said.
“We could ambush them.”
“You can hardly walk, let alone fight,” Frank said.
“He’s got you there,” Cyril said. “Best to avoid detection.”
“Yeah, that way they can get ahead of us and set a trap,” Frank said a bit too loudly.
“Quiet!” Cyril whispered harshly. “Our best option is to stay put and be quiet.”
Ben sat down to meditate while Cyril prepared a cold meal. It took longer than usual to settle into the calm and restful state where physical sensation faded into the background and his mind was free to turn inward, but eventually he succeeded. All tension drained away, leaving his body to rest—a rest that he sorely needed.
Focusing his mind was something else. Thoughts and fears crowded into his consciousness. What-if scenarios that started out badly and ended even worse wormed their way into his mind. In spite of his best efforts to focus, his fears repeatedly hijacked his consciousness and ran away with it.
When Cyril gently shook him back to the real world, he felt a sense of relief, followed by a terrible feeling of being trapped within his own body and mind with something dark and altogether beyond him.
A sliver of the moon was high overhead, casting just enough silvery light to throw the forest into a jumble of threatening shadows. Ben could barely make out Cyril’s face in the dim light.
“Eat,” he whispered, sitting down in front of his grandson as he handed him a bowl of dried fruit and jerky.
Ben took the food, nodding his thanks.
“Do you remember what I taught you about lucid dreaming?” Cyril asked, his voice so low that Ben had to strain to hear him over the gentle breeze blowing through the forest.
He thought about it for a moment, nodding. It had been many years, but the lessons came back to him effortlessly.
“Good,” Cyril said. “Tonight, I want you to focus on the eyes in the dark before you go to sleep. Visualize yourself in that dream as vividly as you can, except this time see yourself having complete control over events. In that place, the world is yours to command as you will. The stalker is uninvited, an intruder in a realm where your will has total dominion.”
“Do you really think that’ll work?” Ben asked. “I mean, the stalker has magic and I don’t.”
Cyril chuckled softly to himself and then fell silent for a moment. Ben waited for his grandfather to order his thoughts.
“That’s not entirely true. We all have magic within us to one degree or another. Most of us just don’t believe it enough to do anything with it. Admittedly, in the waking world your power to cause change is limited to ordinary action, but in the dream state, your power is limited only by your imagination and your will.”
Ben thought about the dream and the eyes in the dark. They seemed to be in control, seeming to savor his fear and helplessness, while he was frozen in place, defenseless.
“It feels like the stalker is so much more powerful than me. I’m not sure I can face it and survive.”
“Uncertainty is to be expected,” Cyril said. “When you see the eyes, I want you to think about your coin, see it in your hand. Then, make it float into the air.”
Ben frowned in confusion as he tried to understand his grandfather’s intent.
“Lucid dreaming can be instigated by using a trigger,” Cyril said. “If you’re able to deliberately will something to happen that’s impossible in waking reality, then you’ll know you’re dreaming. At that point, you are in control. The stalker may resist, it may fight back, it may even be able to exert some measure of influence over your dream, but ultimately, the battle is taking place within your subconscious mind.”
“You’d still better tie me up.”
“I know,” Cyril said with a note of sadness.
It was uncomfortable, but Ben was so tired that he knew he would have little trouble falling asleep. Cyril set a guard rotation, a precaution that Ben was grateful for. The last thing he wanted was to harm his family or friends.
As he drifted off, he focused on the eyes in the dark, seeing them in his mind’s eye as vividly as he could—too vividly for comfort.
He wasn’t sure when it happened, but at some point he realized that he was asleep … and dreaming. The forest was bathed in silvery moonlight. Wispy streamers of smoke-like fog blanketing the ground obscured his sight past a few dozen feet. The eyes were staring at him through the haze.
Fear gripped him, and he felt paralyzed. He looked down and saw that his feet were rooted to the ground, each of his legs a tree trunk with gnarled old roots burrowing deep into the dirt. He looked back at the eyes, panic beginning to well up in his belly, rising into his throat and threatening to undo all vestiges of reason.
He looked around wildly, searching for any source of help or escape when his eyes landed on Hound not ten feet away from him. Rufus didn’t seem to be aware of anything but the eyes in the dark. The sight of the big mercenary, his legs also rooted to the ground like a pair of trees, brought Ben to his senses.
In that moment, he realized he was dreaming.
A snarl from the eyes sent a shiver of fear through him, but he focused his will, and the tree trunks abruptly transformed back into his legs. With a thought, he placed himself between Hound and the eyes.
An inhuman wail tore through the still night. Fear coursed through Ben, but he mastered it and held his ground, facing the beast with a growing sense of resolve. The eyes began to draw closer, the glowing intensity of their hatred shining like flowing lava.
Ben imagined a sword and it appeared in his hand.
The eyes laughed—a barking, gibbering madness tinged with rage as they began to circle, slowly at first, then wit
h such impossible speed that they were suddenly on the other side of Hound. Ben tried to intervene, virtually disappearing from where he stood and appearing between Hound and the stalker, but it was faster, darting forward, a red streak in the dark plunging into Hound’s chest.
Ben willed himself awake, freeing himself of the surreal dreamworld, gasping for air in a desperate attempt to calm his pounding heart.
“It has him,” he whispered harshly into the night.
Hound began to struggle against his bindings, thrashing and flailing with unbridled fury. Failing to free himself, he tipped his head back and howled. A moment later John splashed a cup of water into his face, snapping him out of the stalker’s dream-possession and leaving him confused and sputtering.
“You’re awake,” John whispered urgently. “The stalker’s gone. You’re safe.”
Hound took several deep breaths and forcibly calmed himself, nodding in the dim light of the approaching dawn.
“They’ll be coming for us,” Cyril said, hastily packing his bedroll. “We have to move. Now.”
John cut Hound and Ben loose, then swiftly packed his bedroll and helped Imogen gather her things.
Loud noises wafted across the water on the early morning air, strident, angry shouting in urgent, demanding tones. Nash was making her Dragon Guard ready.
Ben didn’t waste any time. His legs were still tired and his head was a bit foggy from waking so suddenly, but he was eager to be on the move nonetheless.
“We’ll head out along the lakeshore, fifty feet or so inside the wood line,” Cyril said.
“Won’t they be coming that way?” Frank asked.
“Possibly,” Cyril said. “Hopefully, they’ll opt for speed and take the trail along the other bank.”
“What if they don’t?”
“We fight.”
“Maybe we should head off into the forest.”
“No,” Cyril said, shaking his head. “We need to stay close to the trail or risk getting lost.”
“Maybe lost isn’t such a bad thing right now,” Frank said.
“It won’t be long before they call another stalker to the hunt,” Cyril said. “Speed is our best option.”
The Dragon's Egg (Dragonfall Book 1) Page 12