by James Davis
The boy met the mass head on, swinging his blade valiantly, but the locusts were too many and quickly found small openings in his armor and clothing, landing inside his hood and hungrily feasting on his scalp and neck. Morgynn sighed as her jaw popped and resumed its natural shape.
The boy’s companions sprinted forward to retrieve their swords, determined to make their ends proud and honorable. Morgynn wondered what thoughts crawled through their minds as the dawning realization came that they would likely die here.
Ahead of their grim charge, the boy’s writhing body was lifted into the air. His boots scraped the ground for a moment before the momentum of the swarm bore him down, stripping his flesh to the bone. The locusts’ buzz drowned the young hunter’s muffled screams.
Morgynn watched as the warriors advanced. She saw death in their eyes and hated them for their acceptance of it. Righteousness fueled their spirits, and the sight of it sickened her. Whispering a drone of grating syllables, she pulled the threads of the Weave to her will, determined to teach them the true nature of death and their foolish choice born of courage.
With a single word, the lead hunter’s sword flashed and steamed as cold flames enveloped its length. He screamed as his fingers froze and became fused to the hilt, the flesh burning and brittle. He tried to push past the pain, to wield the weapon against the spell’s mistress, but the sword cracked and split, shattering in an explosion of metal that left his arm a cauterized stump and blinded his eyes.
The next man was closer, and Morgynn had no time to cast again. She spun away, but his blade glanced across her left arm, opening a small wound that sent shudders throughout her body as her blood recoiled from the open skin. Growling another quick spell, she roared the words madly and swung her right arm around before the man could strike again.
Her fingers grew, extending into long, blackened claws like swords of shadow. She raked these across the hunter’s face and chest. Like ephemeral knives of ice, they melted through flesh and bone, leaving gaping scars in his spirit and mind. The man’s eyes rolled and his arms went limp. Dropping his sword, he spasmed but tried to maintain control of himself. Her claws had rent his mind and he babbled nonsense as he fell to his knees.
Rhaeme was last, just a few yards away, and she pitied him for a moment—a morbid, mocking pity as she whispered quietly to the dagger at her belt, freeing the clasp that held it in its sheath. She touched its jeweled pommel once and it flew at her command, slamming into the lone hunter’s gut with a force born of old Nar magic. It knocked the wind from his lungs and laid him flat on his back. The carved figures on the dagger’s handle squirmed against one another and mouthed quietly.
Picking up his dropped sword, she stopped to watch his slow agony. He refused to scream and met her gaze, grasping at the dagger planted in his stomach but unable to pull it free. Her black eyes looked straight through his, not really seeing him, focused on the branching rivers of blood beneath his skin. The bleeding streams of her eyes changed shape on her cheeks, mimicking what she saw inside him. They matched his swift pulse in a red image of twin trees, stripped of leaves and laid bare for winter.
“They barely know they’re alive,” she mumbled as the rage bled from her limbs, dispersed by her arcane tantrum, “then they die.”
Around the pair, the locusts moved from body to body, devouring the fallen and eliciting howls from those not yet passed on. Long she stood, lost in thought as the swarm finished each body, leaving naught but bones under loose armor and clothing. Finally, they gathered in a cloud around her legs and she considered the command that would send them feasting on this last body.
Deciding quickly, Morgynn hissed a sibilant word and the swarm faded into thin air, returning to that foul realm that had spawned them.
“You serve the whores of Savras?” she asked emotionlessly, drained for the moment.
The hunter tried to spit, attempting to show some defiance to her face, but it was all he could do to breathe and force back the burning vomit in his throat. His pulse said so much about him. Strong and stubborn, righteous and honest. Qualities she could respect, but merely a nuisance for her current intentions.
The dagger responded to her twitching fingers, lifting and carrying the hunter’s weight with it. His stoicism failed and he gasped, gurgling as a wave of vomit and blood flowed from his innards and into his mouth. She willed him to move slowly, allowing him a few moments to believe he would be disemboweled by the vile weapon, but it would not release him, however much he wished it might.
The blade pushed him against the trunk of a tree, pinning him to the wood. Morgynn followed closely with his lost sword. With a powerful thrust, she buried the blade just beneath his shoulder and deep into the tree. He gasped, his voice barely a whisper, his breath shallow and quick.
“You would die for peddlers of visions and prophecy? Does your life mean nothing?”
Morgynn twirled her fingers languidly and concentrated. The dagger worked itself free from his stomach and returned to her hand.
“Kill me, witch! F-finish it!” he spat through clenched teeth.
She glared at him and put a hand on his impaled shoulder. Caressing the bloodied flesh, she called to his pulse, feeling it roll and tumble in his distress. It pushed suddenly, fighting weakly against the walls of muscle and skin that bound it within him. She held it for a moment, exerting her control over its ebb and flow.
He tensed as his body tried to right itself. She felt his body as if it were her own, though his pain did not register as sharply within her. Pressure built behind his eyes, and his skull felt as if it would burst. Needlelike spasms caused his limbs to twitch. She could see the end looming in his mind, unreal and unbelievable. His thoughts wandered, trying to escape what was happening. She watched, reading his thoughts, observing the landscape of his retreat and the emotions that lingered there.
“You are Rhaeme, yes? And Elisandrya, that is her name.” Morgynn spoke as if she stood beside him in that rain-drenched image in his head. “You still love her, but she seeks the Hoarite.”
Unbidden primal panic stole over Rhaeme in a sudden chill at her words. Morgynn withdrew her fingers, ceasing her pull on his blood, satisfied that fear of death still hung with him on the tree. His head drooped and he managed a single sob.
Without a word, her hands melded into his chest painlessly, opening the doorway of the bloodwalk through his body. Rhaeme passed out. The warmth that her passing sent through him was gone almost in an instant and did little for the cold that would creep into his extremities.
Then he was alone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Alone. Mile after mile had passed and Elisandrya had not seen a soul.
Littlewater was far behind her, and an invisible dawn was fast approaching. She searched the eastern horizon for cracks in the cloud cover, seeking some sliver of elusive morning. Morningstar was slowing beneath her. His muscles trembled with wear, his breathing became more audible. She feared the Ghedia’s magic of speed had taxed him more than she’d expected.
The ground was soaked with rain. Lightning lanced overhead, its branches stretching for miles, well beyond the perimeter of the powerful, southward-moving tempest.
Her stiff muscles complained, aching and demanding rest despite her willpower. With a gentle tug and a tap on Morningstar’s sides, Eli slowed him to a walk. The sudden silence that fell in the absence of his hoof beats was oppressive. Her pulse pounded in her ears, an almost deafening cadence that rattled her eyes as heavy lids tried to steady them.
Resentment floated in her thoughts, of herself, of Rhaeme, and of Sameska.
I should have gone into the forest with Rhaeme, she thought. This is a fool’s errand, chasing ghosts and the fears of an old woman.
Her head lolled back and she reached up to hold the threaded fethra around her neck, beseeching Savras one last time, one more chance. Then might she turn back to find Rhaeme’s tracks and join him as she should have in the forest.
“Savras, I
was blind—” the prayer passed listlessly across her lips, dry despite the damp all around her, and she could not finish. A wave of slumber rolled through her body and jolted her mind with an answer to her summons for aid. The vision was quick but awoke her in an instant of shock.
Wings, hundreds of wings flapped noiselessly in a small cage. A beast of feathers and wingtips, raging against the enclosed space, fluttered in her mind’s eye.
Shaking her head and rubbing her eyes, the image faded, but remained burned on her memory.
“What could it mean?” she asked aloud. Morningstar huffed and snorted at her. “I wasn’t actually asking you, Star.”
As the vague vision played through her mind, rolling in the miasma of lost sleep, a tiny pinpoint of light became visible ahead. It winked like a firefly in the charcoal darkness that ruled the Reach.
Her hands immediately reached to touch the pommel of her sword, the bow at her back, and the stiff feathers on the arrows hanging across her shoulder. Though reassured of her own preparedness, the sense of alert brought her to full consciousness. Bandits were not unknown to lie in wait for merchants and lone travelers, but she had seen few of their like on this, the lesser used Low Road.
Angling toward the dancing light of the distant campfire, she straightened herself into the stance of a hunter. Exuding authority outwardly, she was inwardly enthralled by the many-winged beast in the cage in her head. Savras was rarely clear, but he was never arbitrary in those insights he gifted to his faithful. Briefly, she wished Dreslya had come with her, but touching her sword’s hilt once again, she was grateful to be alone. The monster of wings continued to flutter and beat against its prison. Unexplained and unavoidable, the sound of its freakish limbs matched the pounding in her ears.
Khaemil knelt on the cracked flagstones of what had once been a courtyard. His bare arms hung loosely at his sides, palms up, in a mood of quiet meditation and supplication. He was not as knowledgeable in magic as Morgynn, nor so dutiful in prayer as Talmen, but Gargauth heard his call and answered his loyal servant.
Though he’d served many lords and minor powers in Avernus, he had taken to Gargauth the Exile quite readily upon being summoned to the Realms. Though Morgynn’s face had been the first he remembered seeing, it was Gargauth’s essence that drew him to stay in the world, to serve so strange a mistress. At first this had been by request, but Khaemil became enamored of Morgynn over time, trusting in the devil-god’s instinct about her.
In the midst of his concentration, heat flushed his black skin, rising to a boil within him like a fever. Morgynn burned her way into his bloodstream, angry and prepared to tear her way out as she’d done with the first hunter she’d killed. It was not mercy that stayed her intention. Touching fresh air beyond his body, she emerged, fingertips and arms followed by the rest of her in a wet, warm rush.
She stood before Khaemil, quietly at first, stoic as he matched her gaze. He noticed the small wound on her left arm. It did not bleed, nor did it pain her, but it displayed her current mood. His moment of quiet meditation and prayer ended as she cast cold eyes on his kneeling form.
“Your crusader is neither gone nor dead. The Hoarite travels south even now, no doubt hiding in his shadows. Why is this, Khaemil?”
“I-I do not know, my lady, but surely—”
“They are looking for him!” Her anger was born anew as she witnessed his stammering and confusion. “Their hope gives them courage, makes them move beyond their walls, scouring our forest and riding north in search of the phantom!”
Khaemil could only bow his head in failure. Sharp claws tore into his palms and she smelled his infernal blood dripping to the ground. The aasimar would be a greater nuisance than she’d expected, more tenacious than others who walked the Hoarite roads.
“He will be dealt with directly, my lady, along with any who seek him.”
“See to it.” She turned as she said the last, looking to the tower and picturing the tiny box that lay within her chambers. The scroll within that ancient box, the Word of Goorgian, amended and altered in her own handwriting, would call its unholy plague again. The wards and protections of the Temple of the Hidden Circle were nothing to her. By proxy, she knew its secrets.
Whispering, she added, “I will deal with the oracles.”
One of the secrets of the Temple of the Hidden Circle were its hidden chambers, rooms all but forgotten except in time of need. For the past few tendays, the oracles and younger priestesses, acolytes known as savants, frequented the chambers out of mercy and duty.
On the backside of the temple, in the Gardens of Thought, a spiraling stairway led down to these places, growing full with the weak and diseased. Though still in its infancy this far south, the blush had taken its toll on old and young alike. The rooms were kept dark, since the disease made the eyes sensitive to light and would form welts and rashes on the skin when exposed to brightness. Shuttered lanterns provided a dim glow by which caregivers could see and move from cot to cot, and victim to victim.
The smell of close, feverish bodies was overcome by incense and the scent of fethra leaves as they boiled to make a broth that eased pain and fever and seemed to stave off the worst of the symptoms. Delusional cries sometimes echoed down the corridors, carried by the curving walls and acoustics of the temple’s architecture. Each cry found a fearful ear somewhere in the temple’s silence, waiting in the dark for the storms to pass and for the deliverance of Savras’s prophecy.
The newest patient in these suffering chambers was the young oracle stricken during the gathering. In her panic, Nivael had run from the gathering, frantically trying to stem the steady flow from her nose. She’d felt the fever but could not accept her own sickness. She collapsed in her small room, covered in her own blood. No one had sought her out, most still weighing the import of Sameska’s prophecy and her edict of inaction against the encroaching evil.
Waking early and feeling little rested, Nivael had gone about her duties in the quarantined room. There, she stumbled and fell as the blush closed its grasp on her health. Her heart pounded and she breathed hoarsely, trying to cry out, but her voice was inaudible. Her throat was wet and tasted of blood. She didn’t know how much time had passed while she lay there, delusional among the others.
Eventually a surge of strength filled her limbs, tensing them in spasms she could not control. Gnashing her teeth, her eyes rolled back in her head and her body heaved itself from the floor. She felt that she was dreaming and let go of her will, half-conscious and unaware of her wild charge at the wooden double doors. Her impact reverberated through the halls. Oracles and lingering hunters raised their heads in alarm, wondering what fresh terror came upon them.
Nivael could see the walls and floor of the temple passing beneath her bare feet, almost in slow motion, as if she floated rather than ran headlong toward the sanctuary. Her face was hot. The chill of the stone floors could not quell the heat of her blood as it again poured from her nose, and soon her mouth and eyes. An impossible strength sent her flying through the heavy doors of the sanctuary, gurgling a weary groan as she did so.
High Oracle Sameska, Lord Hunter Baertah, and several other oracles looked on in shock as Nivael made her way toward the altar, her arms outstretched. Dreslya raised a hand to her mouth as she saw the state her friend was in, covered in blood and swaying in a trancelike stagger.
No one moved, afraid to go near this walking plague, the blush in a form and face of one of their own.
Nivael stopped before the altar, standing on the top step of the dais, on even footing with the marble statue of Savras that stared calmly beyond her. Baertah raised a perfumed handkerchief to his nose as Nivael’s stained hands gripped the shoulders of the statue. Rust-colored claws touched the image of their god. She turned reddened eyes on the small congregation and her voice spoke of its own accord. She could hear herself and wondered when this horrible dream might end. Blackness clouded the edges of her vision.
“Those who resist shall die. All o
f these are dead. It is done.”
At those words, Nivael fell in a heap at the foot of the statue. As the others watched, the base of the statue cracked—a line webbed upward along the figure until two thin branches touched his peaceful eyes and gushed forth tears of blood.
Dreslya gasped as Nivael’s words echoed in the chamber. Those who resist … All of these are dead. She reached carefully into a pocket of her robe and her fingertips brushed the edges of Elisandrya’s letter.
Dimly, at the edge of her attention, someone screamed, but no one approached Nivael’s limp body or the horrifying spectacle of the bleeding statue.
Morgynn gently closed the lid of the box and rested her hands upon it, mumbling the words of the warding spell to keep it safe. The secrets of the plague, written by the archmage Goorgian centuries ago and improved upon by herself, lay within. Admiring the skeletal carvings on its surface, she placed it upon the table with her other possessions.
She descended the stairs in a mixed mood, feeling lighter as the threads of the Weave responded to her presence, but more determined than ever not to leave anything to chance.
Talmen waited outside as Khaemil returned from an excursion to the forest. Talmen’s eyes sparkled within his bony mask, detecting her look of command and standing up straighter as she approached. Khaemil appeared pleased with himself, possibly eager to deliver good news to make up for his previous failure.
Looking upon them both, she realized more than ever the scope of her own destiny. From the east came a resounding rush of need that filled her being, and she smiled at the eagerness of those dreadful creatures that awaited her command. She could sense their masses, shaking with uncontrollable desire, unfounded animosity held in check only by her will. Their sightless eyes glittered like a thousand stars, a ribbon of diamonds beseeching her to grace them with her wishes. They were so much more pliable, so much more useful, than they’d been in life.