The Masked Witches

by Richard Lee Byers

  With a thought, she brought the fire inside her leaping forth to cloak her from head to toe. She also tapped the butt of her staff on the cracked and grimy floor, and the torches in the wall sconces—evidently deemed unnecessary because shafts of sunlight shone through the openings higher up—all burst into flame.

  Aoth meanwhile leveled his spear, set the head aglow with blue phosphorescence, and swung it in an arc to point at each oncoming guard in turn. They faltered, and so did almost every other stag man in the hall.

  “I told you they were mages,” said Zyl. Jhesrhi noticed that he was sitting up on his haunches at the foot of the Stag King’s throne.

  “Did you also tell him we claim ‘guest right’?” asked Aoth. “That means nobody should be trying to lay hands on us.”

  “I trust Zyl’s judgment within limits,” the Stag King said. “Still, it’s one thing for him to tell me you have power and mettle, and another for me to see for myself. Now, I have.” He beckoned. “Come forward.”

  Jhesrhi drew her fire back inside herself, and Aoth raised his spear to point straight up again. They advanced side by side to the dais. Aoth’s bow was deep enough to show respect, but no deeper. She copied it as best she could.

  “So,” the spirit said. “Interesting. Two mortals, both reborn in fire of one sort or another.”

  “I didn’t tell Zyl about that particular part of my past,” Aoth replied. “You fey are good at seeing what lies under the surface. Or else you’ve heard of me.”

  The Stag King grinned. So close, his massive frame had a musky smell, pungent but not unpleasant. “I’d be a poor host if I said I hadn’t heard of you, wouldn’t I, Aoth Fezim, and so bruised your pride?” he said. “But then, I’m a poor host anyway, offering no refreshment.” He clapped his hands and called out in Elvish, “Mulled cider for our guests!”

  It only took a moment for a female to enter through an archway carrying steaming earthenware goblets on a tray. The cups didn’t all match.

  Aoth shot Jhesrhi a warning glance, a reminder she didn’t need. When she, the war mage, and the Stag King had each taken a cup and pledged one another, she only pretended to sip.

  But apparently she or Aoth didn’t pretend well enough, because the Stag King cocked his head and asked, “Isn’t the brew to your taste?”

  “It might be pleasant,” said Aoth, “to spend a hundred years in revelry that would pass like a single night for us. But our business won’t wait.”

  The hulking spirit laughed. It occurred to Jhesrhi that the action might have set the bells in his antlers chiming except that, as she observed, he didn’t have any. Perhaps, since he possessed the ability to speak, unlike his subjects, he saw no need for them.

  “Evidently,” he said, “the two of you have heard your share of nursery fables and tavern tales.”

  Aoth shrugged. “A person can only act on the basis of whatever information comes his way,” he said. “That’s why you’re fortunate that Lady Coldcreek, Zyl, and I are here today. We have important tidings to share.”

  Tilting back his head, and so clicking his antlers on the back of his throne, the Stag King drank from his cup and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yes,” he said. “My trusty spy said the durthans have risen to resume their old quarrel with the hathrans, this time with new allies. But should that concern me? I helped the hathrans once. It entertained me. But who’s to say it would do so a second time?”

  “As I understand it,” said Aoth, “most dark fey sided with the durthans. Even though the fomorian lady you sent Zyl to spy on wasn’t all that keen on the idea, it’s a safe bet that many will again. And if they defeat the hathrans and the Iron Lord, isn’t it likely that they’ll want to settle old scores? You’d be wiser to fight them now, before they build any more strength, and before they kill the folk who are willing to stand with you.”

  The Stag King grunted. “Perhaps,” he said. “Or maybe, now that the hathrans have mighty wizards like you and the lady here to help them, my assistance is unnecessary. Or perhaps I’ll simply go away, deep into the Feywild where no old foe will ever find me.” He waved a hand in a gesture that encompassed the hall. “You see the dreariness that passes for my court. My blood may have been a little too potent.”

  Jhesrhi scowled. “You’d forsake your own children?” she asked. “Abandon them to suffer and die without you?”

  The spirit grinned. “Forgive me if, for whatever reason, that pierces to the quick.” he said.” But perhaps it doesn’t have to be that way. I might be amenable to marching off to war if someone was willing to make it worth my while.”

  “I’d imagine,” said Aoth, “that when the war is done, the Rashemi will be happy to reward an ally.”

  “But the hathrans and the Iron Lord aren’t here,” the Stag King replied. “Nor do you truly have the authority to offer treasure on their behalf. Whereas you and Jhesrhi Coldcreek are here. What will you pay? Will she indenture herself to me as Zyl has done?”

  “Are you sure?” the Stag King asked as he turned his gaze on Jhesrhi. “I’m not such a bad master. Zyl will vouch for that. I can teach you a great deal, and make it easier to complete your transformation.”

  “It is complete,” she said through gritted teeth. “And I like it where I am.”

  The Stag King turned back to Aoth. “Well, then, Captain, that leaves you,” he said.

  “I have wealth to barter,” the Thayan replied. “Gold, some talismans, enchanted weapons, and such. It’s not all in Rashemen, but if we make a deal, I’ll get it to you.”

  The enormous creature grinned. “No need. Your greatest treasure is here: eyes infected with the Blue Fire that changed the whole world. Eyes with truesight. Give me one of them. You’ll still see better than any other human in the world.”

  Aoth snorted and said, “Unless some foe sneaks up on the wrong flank.”

  “Then you decline the offer?”

  “Of course. I explained that it’s in your best interest to ally with the hathrans and me. That should be enough. I shouldn’t have to haggle with you like I’m trying to buy a carpet in a marketplace, and it’s laughable that you think I’d give up one of my most valuable officers, or mutilate myself, to purchase your help. With all due respect, it’s nowhere near that important. So sit idle in this tumbledown pile if it pleases you. Jhes and I will find a way to beat the undead without you.”

  The Stag King glared. “Is that your final word?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Aoth replied.

  The spirit’s glower softened into a crooked smile. “Well, I may not be a rug merchant, but you still can’t blame me for trying,” he said. “But all right. My warriors and I will accompany you to the Fortress of the Half-Demon. We’ll see what we can learn and whom we can kill.”

  S

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  Zyl had alluded to berserkers cutting themselves and frothing at the mouth. But though Vandar fought like a madman when the fury held him in its sway, Cera hadn’t seen him do either of those things, and so she’d assumed the hare was exaggerating.

  She didn’t think so anymore. Even though the warriors of the Griffon Lodge weren’t headed into battle at the moment, and the excitement they were experiencing was likely only a shadow of what they would feel then, a few were indeed slicing their own brawny arms and chests. Others gnashed their teeth in a gesture seemingly intended to mimic a griffon snapping its beak, a gesture that often sent spittle flying through the air. Meanwhile, the rest had other ways of acting crazy. They screeched like griffons, swept their arms wide like griffons spreading their wings, or punched their neighbors for no particular reason.

  Which was to say, with Vandar having delivered his news, his brothers were raising the feral spirit they’d likely need when they reached the Fortress of the Half-Demon. Cera suspected that Jet, standing with Vandar and her in front of the crowd, was a potent source of inspiration. The berserkers might constitute the Griffon Lodge, b
ut how many of them had ever been so close to their totem?

  At first, Jet regarded the berserkers’ display with what Cera had learned to recognize as dour tolerance, an attitude of “Humans are idiots, but there’s nothing to be done about it.” Soon, however, he raised his black-feathered head high. Some of the Rashemi fell silent, and the echoing clamor inside the lodge diminished.

  “What is it?” Cera asked.

  “I need to get outside,” the familiar replied. He glanced at a tall mullioned glass window, surely an expensive luxury and object of pride in that rustic land. Already wincing, Cera imagined him leaping and smashing through it. But instead he turned and bounded down the length of the smoky torch-lit hall toward the double doors in the far wall. Startled berserkers scrambled out of the way, and she and Vandar scurried to keep up.

  She threw open the doors. Jet leaped out into the dirty, trodden snow, and she and Vandar followed. She heard the sound that the familiar had caught even inside the noisy building. Faint with distance, the cries of other griffons mingled with the whistle of the wind.

  “Is it the wild ones?” she asked.

  “No,” said Jet. “It’s the ones from Aglarond.”

  “How can you tell?” Vandar asked.

  “For one thing,” said Jet, a grim note in his voice, “I’d recognize the call of that male with the blue eyes. Trust me, it’s the Aglarondans, and the reason they’re calling to one another is that their riders are rousing them to fly.”

  “In the middle of a cold winter’s night,” Vandar said. “Folcoerr Dulsaer would only order that if he suddenly thinks he knows where to go to strike a blow at the undead …”

  Cera smiled. “If Jet and I shadow them, we can find out exactly what they’re up to,” she said.

  “That’s a good idea,” the berserker replied. “But I should be the one to go.”

  “I’m no griffonrider,” Cera said. “But I’ve at least spent enough time aloft to know how to sit in the saddle and trust Jet to take care of me. Besides, you need to get your brothers ready to travel.”

  Although Yhelbruna had told all the outlanders they could ask for help as needed, Cera and Vandar had judged that the Griffon Lodge needed to sneak out of Immilmar and march on the Fortress of the Half-Demon alone. Otherwise there was a fair chance that the Aglarondans or Mario Bez’s sellswords—either of whom could travel faster in the sky than the Rashemi could on the ground—would race to their destination ahead of them, accomplish whatever could be accomplished there, and claim the credit for doing it.

  Vandar scowled. But he said, “All right, lady, but be careful. My impression of the Aglarondans is that they wouldn’t try to hurt you themselves. But they might not care if the creatures they’re hunting attacked a rival and a spy.”

  With that he turned and started giving orders to the nearest berserkers. Jet and Cera ran toward the shed where they’d stowed the griffon’s tack. He bounded, lashing his wings with each leap, and instantly outdistanced her as she labored with her short legs through the snow.

  When she caught up, he crouched so she could heave the saddle onto his back. She cinched it, climbed on, and buckled the safety straps with the meticulous slowness of a novice rider. Somewhat to her surprise, Jet didn’t offer any acerbic remarks.

  He broke into a run, sprang, lashed his wings, and climbed into the sky the instant she was ready. She caught her breath at the suddenness of it. She trusted Jet and had come to enjoy flying, but that didn’t mean she was at ease every single moment.

  As he wheeled to follow the Aglarondans, Jet rasped, “Your mace keeps bumping me.”

  “Oh! Sorry!” she said. She slipped the dangling weapon off her wrist and into one of the sheaths built into the front of the saddle. The holder made a sucking sound as a minor enchantment made it clamp down tight. “Do you think we can just sneak in among the Aglarondans without anybody noticing us?”

  “I’ll try,” Jet replied. “Don’t count on the griffons mistaking me for one on their own. And if they do realize we’re strangers, they may cry out. But with luck, their riders won’t understand what it means.” His tone made plain his scorn for human stupidity.

  “That sounds good,” Cera said. The night was even colder up here in the sky, and she shivered. “I’m going to ask the Keeper to warm me. Shall I do the same for you?”

  The familiar laughed, a bloodcurdling sound she hadn’t recognized the first time she’d heard it. “Don’t bother,” he said. Nature made griffons properly. We don’t need magic just to endure the winter wind.”

  “Well, aren’t you special,” she said as she began to murmur a prayer. Warmth suffused her body.

  They flew on in silence for a while. She peered into the darkness ahead for a first glimpse of the Aglarondans and breathed in Jet’s smell: a not-unpleasant mix of bird and cat.

  Eventually the griffon asked, “Are you going to stay with Aoth?”

  The question surprised her. She knew Jet was intelligent enough to understand the choice she was facing, but he often considered such foolish human dilemmas unworthy of his attention.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you … think it would be hard on him if I don’t?”

  The griffon laughed again. “He’s a hundred years old,” he replied. “He’s had more mates than he can remember. He’s survived more battles and foes than he can remember. He can survive losing you, too.”

  Cera sighed. “Yes. Of course,” she said.

  “But that doesn’t mean he’d like it,” Jet continued. “He cares about you, and you fit in his life. You fit with the rest of us.”

  She touched her hand to the feathers on his neck. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s good to know.”

  “There’s no reason to talk in that hushed cooing way to me,” the griffon said. “I didn’t say that I care what you do. Look, there are the Aglarondans. Can you see them yet?”

  She couldn’t at that moment, but when he carried her closer, she made out vague shapes racing through the sky. As Jet had anticipated, some of the other griffons screeched at the newcomers’ approach, but as he’d also expected, the riders didn’t pay it any mind except to order their steeds to cease their clamor. She and Jet flew along quietly on their rivals’ flank.

  The Aglarondans were headed pretty much straight east from Immilmar, essentially following the track named the Huhrong’s Road. If one could consider any part of northern Rashemen civilized, it was that corridor. Cera occasionally caught a glimpse of hamlets and isolated farmhouses, and land that appeared to be fields and pastures rather than woods and lonely moors. If the undead were raiding there, then that, like the attack on the sacred grove north of the Ashenwood, attested to the boldness and seriousness of the threat.

  The Aglarondans’ griffons started screeching again.

  “Do they sense undead?” Cera asked, keeping her voice low.

  “No,” Jet answered. “They smell horseflesh.”

  A moment later, Cera smelled it, too. She realized that wasn’t right. She wasn’t a beast with a beast’s keen senses. She was a human being, who might not smell a horse even if she was standing right beside it. She definitely shouldn’t have been able to smell one from high above the ground.

  The Aglarondans’ steeds swooped lower.

  In a superficial sense, that wasn’t strange because horse was a griffon’s favorite food. Still, properly trained mounts would ignore the distraction if they were working, and if they didn’t, experienced riders could quickly reassert control.

  But that wasn’t what was happening. The Aglarondans barked orders at their mounts, and their voices became louder and shriller as the griffons ignored the initial commands.

  The smell of warm, juicy meat thickened in the cold night air. Lightheaded, Cera realized her mouth was watering. She looked for the horses and finally spotted them. Apparently oblivious to the threat descending on them, the animals were standing placidly in a snowy paddock.

  The griffon in the lead—Cera wondered if it
was Folcoerr Dulsaer’s—slammed down on a horse and crushed it to the ground. Screaming, the equine thrashed. The griffin dipped its beak and tore loose a first chunk of flesh. The man astride the steed bellowed at it and pounded it with the butt of his lance. His efforts were no more effective than the maimed horse’s struggles to writhe free.

  More griffons plunged down, each on its chosen prey. Then Jet screeched, furled his wings, and dived.

  The unexpected plummet jolted Cera out of her daze. “Amaunator!” she called. “Please, give us your light!”

  The god’s power manifested as a warm golden glow in her hands. She leaned and stretched forward as far as she could and laid them on the sides of Jet’s head.

  The warmth surged out of her flesh and into the griffon’s. For a heartbeat, she was afraid it hadn’t been enough, for, while her deity’s might was limitless, a mortal’s ability to channel it was not. But with a snap like the crack of a whip, Jet extended his wings and leveled off. He hurtled along just above the slaughter, while Cera winced at the ripped flesh and spilled blood and viscera, at the screams of the dying horses, the crunching as the griffons bit and clawed through bone, and the frantic, bewildered cries of the Aglarondans.

  Then the horses changed.

  Had it happened more gradually, Cera might have not have spotted it immediately, because by then, all the animals were shredded, eviscerated, dismembered, dying, or dead. But they changed into a different sort of ruined thing virtually all at once, as a wave of mottled discoloration swept through them. The smell of raw meat and spilled blood in the air became a nauseating stench of decay.

  The equines’ struggles had become feeble, turned to mere twitches and shuddering, or subsided altogether. But paradoxically, as their aspect changed from that of creatures killed moments before to that of ones that had lain dead for some time, their movements became far more vigorous. They no longer appeared to care about escaping. Rather, their only concern was biting a griffon and its rider, or battering them with their hooves.