The Masked Witches

by Richard Lee Byers

  He retrieved his greatsword, and Nyevarra, her mask. The two zombies who’d gone mad had stopped thrashing, and when he told them to get up, they obeyed as if they didn’t even remember their panic.

  Uramar ordered the creatures to finish smashing a way through the wall. When they did, the burial chamber stood revealed.

  It was full of gold and gems, often used to fashion grotesque images of devils and demons in the forms of statuary, brooches, and sword hilts. One of Uramar’s selves, a simpleminded one, wished he and his companions had brought a lantern so he could see all the treasure gleam. Others felt a reflexive thrill of greed. But he barely noticed the stray flickers of thought. He was too intent on the trio of sarcophagi on their pentagonal dais.

  Nyevarra grunted. “That was a lot of trouble to go to for only three,” she muttered.

  Uramar smiled. “I think it will be all right,” he said. “Tombs are like houses. It’s powerful folk who have big, luxurious spaces all to themselves, or nearly so. And if these people were powerful before they died, we can hope they’ll come back the same way.”

  Prying with their pickaxes, the zombies shifted the heavy stone sarcophagus lids out of the grooves where they fit, then slid them to the side. One by one, the lids crashed to the floor. Whatever ultimately came of it, Uramar found he enjoyed this bit of desecration for its own sake. For how often, during the idleness and solitude of his long years in bondage, had he wanted to do something similar?

  Inside the boxes were crumbling bones, dust, and the gem and metal portions of whatever garments the dead had worn. Uramar took a bottle of Lod’s pigment from the pouch on his belt, and, careful not to crush the fragile things, daubed symbols of reanimation on what remained of the skulls.

  It was time for the incantation. Nyevarra joined in, and gradually other voices started whispering along as well. For a change, they were not the phantom voices that commonly pestered Uramar. He didn’t know whose voices they were. He wondered if even Lod did.

  As he, Nyevarra, and the unseen chorus neared the end of the spell, he had a sense of twisting, or pressure and resistance, as though some abstract but fundamental aspect of the world was being forced into an unnatural shape. Somehow blacker even than the utter darkness of the crypt, shadows seethed and rippled inside the sarcophagi. On the final syllable, the shadows exploded outward, and for an instant, even he was blind.

  When Uramar’s sight returned, the Nars were already sitting up. The magic had brought them back as ghouls—gaunt, hunched, and hairless—with sunken eyes, mouths full of fangs, and claws on the ends of twisted fingers.

  “What’s happened?” asked one of the creatures. He’d come back with his nose entirely rotted off, which made his withered face look even more like a skull’s than was the case with the other two.

  “We’ve given the world back to you,” Nyevarra said, “and you back to the world.”

  “Why?” Skull-face asked.

  “Because we want your help,” Uramar said.

  Skull-face sprang out of the sarcophagus, then faltered, seemingly startled by his own agility.

  “We’re reborn better than we were before,” Nyevarra said.

  Skull-face looked down at himself, then examined his rotting features by touch. “I would have thought I’d be repelled,” he murmured. “But I’m not. What I am is hungry.” He licked his lips with a black and pointed tongue.

  A second ghoul sprang up. That one had been a woman. One breast dangled, and one was gone, along with the ear and cheek on the same side. “It’s strange,” she said. “I can’t remember anything after the axe came down. Was it all just nothing, then, without even a hell to suffer in?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Uramar said. “You’re here now.”

  “Thanks to you,” said the third ghoul, standing up in a more gingerly fashion than the others. He’d been extensively tattooed, and he twitched repeatedly as the designs redrew themselves, a stroke at a time, in his shriveled hide. “Because you want our help. With what?”

  “You were lords and conquerors once,” Uramar said. “We invite you to be such again, and help found an empire like none the twin worlds have ever seen.”

  The female ghoul grinned. “Will this enterprise involve killing Raumvirans?” she asked.

  Uramar sighed and replied. “Actually, that’s one of the many things we need to talk about.”

  F

  O

  U

  R

  Huldra was a reasonably imposing figure in her black-and-white hooded cloak and mask. The colors flowed and changed from one to the other as she marched along, like she was the moon itself come down to the sunlit center of the village of Yivel. And Aoth fancied that the rest of their little procession—Jhesrhi, Cera, Vandar, and himself—appeared as impressive as the hathran striding at the head of it.

  Yes, all in all, it was no wonder that the inhabitants of the little huddle of longhouses and huts came scurrying to attend them. No one dared to keep them waiting, although, evidently hoping to avoid notice, some villagers made a point of standing behind their neighbors.

  Huldra lifted her staff—a length of birch with an ivory crescent for a head—and thumped it down again. Dirty snow crunched beneath the ferrule. “Who speaks for this village?” she asked.

  Since there was a gray-bearded man, muscular but running to fat, with a silver medallion in the shape of a bird of prey standing right in front of her, Aoth assumed the question was ceremonial. The bearded man’s stony-faced response probably was, too. “I, Borilak Murokina of the Eagle Lodge,” he replied.

  “Do you know why I’ve come?” Huldra asked.

  “No,” Borilak said, and now his anxiety showed through. Traveling hathrans visited the village once a month. But to hear Huldra tell it, it had always been as a friendly counselor and healer, not as the cold, magisterial figure who stood before him with even more threatening-looking associates in tow.

  “Then you don’t know anything about the massacre in the north?” Huldra asked.

  “No!” the aging berserker said.

  “That’s strange,” Huldra said. “Very strange.”

  Aoth had to give the hathran credit. He’d drafted her not because he had any reason to think her a skilled dissembler, but simply because she was the hathran who ministered to the settlement. Yet she was being as subtly menacing as a Red Wizard inquisitor.

  “Please, lady,” Borilak said, “tell us.” A murmur ran through the onlookers.

  “I believe you all know,” Huldra said, “that even with the durthans gone, the Erech Forest is a dark and tainted place. That’s why the Wychlaran urged the Eagle Lodge and those allied with it not to settle the western shores of the lake. But you couldn’t bear to let rich land go unclaimed, and we hathrans have protected you as best we can.”

  Get to the point, growled Jet, monitoring the proceedings through his master’s eyes and ears. Aoth suppressed a smile.

  “Unfortunately,” Huldra continued, bands of black and white flowing across her garments, “it has now become plain that, despite our vigilance, a number of settlers have fallen prey to lycanthropy. And those so cursed have joined into a pack that slaughtered every living soul in Vinvel.”

  The villagers gasped and babbled.

  Huldra waited until they had quieted down. “I promise the same thing won’t happen here,” she said. “We hathrans are going to do everything necessary to identify and kill the werewolves. You all know that my particular patron is Selûne. At moonrise, she’ll give me the power to reveal any lycanthropes living among you, and then my companions will strike them down. Killing shapeshifters is their particular trade.”

  Her gaze shifted back to Borilak. “Meanwhile, we’ll rest in your house,” she continued. “We’ve had a long hike through the snow.”

  The hathran led her companions toward a longhouse with carved jutting eagle heads and images of the birds in flight. Behind them, the villagers resumed their agitated talk, and a couple of women started sobbi
ng.

  Borilak had a good fire leaping and crackling in his field-stone hearth, and the air inside was considerably warmer than that outside. As Aoth leaned his spear against the wall and shrugged off his cloak, he said, “That was perfect, lady, thank you.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” Huldra replied. Distress had supplanted the hauteur in her voice. “I never would have done it if not ordered by the Urlingwood itself.”

  Aoth knew just enough about Rashemen to understand the figure of speech. The Urlingwood was a sacred forest where only hathrans were allowed, and trespassers were put to death. Thus, “ordered by the Urlingwood” meant she had been commanded by one of the supreme matriarchs of her order. In her case, Yhelbruna.

  “I understand how you feel,” Cera began, slipping her gilded buckler off her arm.

  “Do you?” Huldra snapped. “Many of the folk outside had family in Vinvel, and I just told them their kin are dead! How will they ever forgive me or trust me again?”

  “They’ll forgive you,” Jhesrhi said, “when you explain the lie was necessary to flush out the werewolf that was living among them.” Though she was the only one of them who likely hadn’t felt the winter cold even slightly, she drifted toward the fireplace, and the yellow flames leaped higher. The light reflected on her staff.

  “But you don’t know that there is a werewolf!” Vandar said. “You’re only guessing!”

  Aoth sighed. He cast about and spotted a jug on a shelf. He pulled the cork and was pleased when the smell of beer suffused the air. “Think about it,” he said. “High Lady Yhelbruna and the Iron Lord sent us all out to hunt the undead. So that’s what Bez, Dulsaer, and Dai Shan are doing. Even though the ghosts and such have turned out to be damned elusive so far.”

  He took a pull from the jug—the hoppy brew tasted good to him, but then, drink nearly always did—and offered it to Huldra. After a moment’s hesitation, she accepted it and turned away to drink, so no one would see when she pulled her mask aside.

  “What the others haven’t considered,” Aoth continued, “or at least I hope they haven’t, is that not all the creatures we fought were undead. Some were werewolves. And since the durthans hailed from the Erech Forest, maybe the shapeshifters came from hereabouts, too. Maybe those who remained behind can tell us something about the witches.”

  “If any did remain,” Huldra said, passing the jug to Cera. “And if they truly do live in one of the settlements instead of in the wild.”

  “It’s reasonable to assume there are some left,” Cera said. “Lycanthropy is a kind of sickness, after all. It spreads.”

  “And such a creature has a divided nature,” Jhesrhi said. “When it’s a wolf, it wants what a beast wants. But when it walks on two legs, it wants to live like a human.”

  “Well, maybe,” Vandar said. “But it’s still a shameful thing to lie to innocent people.”

  Aoth shook his head. “It’s a miracle all you ‘innocent’ Rashemi have held back the legions as long as you have,” he said.

  I see them, said Jet, speaking mind to mind.

  Them? Aoth replied.

  Look through my eyes, the familiar said.

  Aoth did so. As though peering down from high above, he spotted a man, a woman, and a half-grown girl who was almost certainly their daughter, trudging through the snow.

  And they haven’t spotted you? Aoth asked.

  Are they acting like they’ve spotted me? the griffon replied. They’re too busy glancing back over their shoulders at the village to check the sky.

  Aoth redirected his attention to his actual surroundings. Vandar and Huldra seemed perplexed by his momentary abstraction, but Cera and Jhesrhi were merely curious. The sunlady and wizard had seen him in psychic communication with his familiar before.

  “That was the answer to your objections,” he said. “The plan worked. We have a whole little werewolf family fleeing the village.”

  “Have they already changed form?” Huldra asked. The hint of forlorn hope in her tone reminded Aoth that the locals were her flock and her friends.

  “Not yet,” he said, speaking as gently as he could. “But you just told the news that werewolves are roaming the countryside slaughtering people by the score, yet a mother, father, and a child are headed for the forest with sunset on its way. There really isn’t any doubt.”

  The hathran took a breath and squared her shoulders. “I suppose not,” she said. “What now?”

  “You go calm the village down,” Aoth replied. “Jet will keep the werewolves in sight, and my bond with him will lead the rest of us right to them.”

  * * * * *

  Some people had the knack of creeping through a benighted forest, and some people didn’t. Up ahead, Cera was doing her best, and her best was passable. But she suddenly tripped over a gnarled root, pitched forward, and nearly sprawled on her face before she caught herself. She growled a vulgar word under her breath.

  Jhesrhi realized she’d smiled. It couldn’t really be the first time since Tchazzar’s death, but it felt like it, and she decided that Aoth truly had done her a kindness by bringing her to Rashemen. Perhaps, after all the disappointments of Chessenta, it was exactly what she had needed.

  At the head of the procession, Aoth raised his spear to signal a halt, then waved for everyone to gather close.

  “Jet says they’re just ahead,” he whispered. “We’ll circle around and come in from the west, so we’re downwind of them. Remember we’re here to spy, at least at first.” He fixed his luminous blue eyes on Vandar. “No one is to attack unless I do, and I don’t want to hear any nonsense about the spirits taking the matter out of your hands.”

  Vandar glowered back. “It happened as I said,” he replied.

  “If we do fight, we want prisoners,” Aoth continued, “and I also don’t want to hear how somebody’s crazy bloodlust prevented that.”

  “I don’t take orders from you, Thayan,” said Vandar. “We agreed to be partners, not—”

  Cera put her hand on the Rashemi’s forearm. “Please,” she said. “We decided on our strategy on the way out here. You didn’t object to it then. Surely you’d agree that now is not the time to argue.”

  Vandar’s mouth tightened, but apparently he couldn’t quite find it in himself to spit poison at a pretty, soft-spoken priestess even if she wasn’t quite a hathran. “Fine,” he said, and then looked at Jhesrhi. “You were going to cast some enchantments?”

  “Yes,” she said, and began to work spells of concealment, drawing serpentine figures on the air with the head of her staff.

  When she had finished, the companions prowled onward. Suddenly, the occasional howling they’d heard since entering the forest sounded much closer and louder than before. Aoth hesitated for a heartbeat before continuing forward. Evidently Jet had assured him that the werewolves weren’t reacting to the interlopers’ approach.

  Still, the war mage motioned for everyone to stay low, and he took cover behind the ridged trunk of a shadowtop tree. Jhesrhi crouched behind an alder and peered forward. Her eyes widened.

  There were nine lycanthropes in the little clear space before her. They had already transformed, some to true wolf form and some to a bipedal shape midway between lupine and human, to howl. But they were changing back, their muzzles retracting into their heads, and their fur melting away. It seemed like an odd thing for them to do until she realized they likely found it easier to discuss certain matters with human tongues.

  Naked like the rest of her companions, a female werewolf with a mournful, jowly face and a pudgy belly peered into the trees. For an instant, she seemed to look right at Jhesrhi but evidently didn’t see her.

  “Where is he?” the female shapeshifter said. “He must hear us. I heard the call all the way from Vinvel.”

  “And the rest of you didn’t destroy Vinvel,” said a fellow with bushy eyebrows. He hadn’t quite changed all the way back to human. His arms and upper torso were still furry.

  The jowly female sighed. “
No,” she said, with the air of someone responding to the same stupid remark or question for the dozenth time. “Of course not.”

  “But why would Huldra lie?” asked the man.

  “I don’t know!” the female replied. “We’re careful. Even when the craving’s strong, we only attack people who are off by themselves, and we never leave a body where anyone can find it. I don’t understand why she’s thinking about werewolves at all.”

  “It’s the others,” said a lycanthrope with an eagle tattooed on his chest—a member of Borilak’s lodge, evidently. “They got into trouble somehow, and now it’s coming back on us. They never should have gone.”

  The sole child in the pack—a gawky girl who must be the one from the family whom Huldra had scared into running—gasped and shrank closer to the rather pretty woman beside her. “They’re coming,” whined the child, pointing in Jhesrhi’s general direction. “I feel them looking at me.”

  As Jhesrhi peered around behind her, she heard the man with the bushy eyebrows say, “It’s all right, Sweetheart. They’re our friends.” But he himself didn’t sound entirely convinced, and as soon as Jhesrhi caught a glimpse of the four creatures stalking out of the trees, she understood why.

  The newcomers in black mail and leather were as tall and as massively built as ogres. A single eye glared from each square, flat-nosed face; the pupil smoldered like a hot coal.

  Jhesrhi and her comrades had taken cover to keep the werewolves from spotting them. Only her magic could shield them from creatures coming from the opposite direction. She held her breath, and her heart beat faster, until the cyclopes stalked on by.

  The lycanthropes bowed awkwardly. Then a cyclops with an air of authority about him growled, “What’s so urgent that it couldn’t wait four more nights?”

  “There’s trouble,” said the man with the bushy eyebrows. He’d moved to stand with his wife and daughter.

  When he had finished pouring out the story, the cyclops leader studied him for a moment. The creature shifted his grip on the haft of his battle-axe and said, “You, the bitch, and your whelp don’t have a brain among the three of you, do you?”