Gunggari brought his dizheri to his lips and played a quick, celebratory tune, which was difficult with the low, thundering notes the instrument was mostly able to produce, but the Oslander managed to sound a cheery refrain.
Elowen clapped the man on the shoulder when he finished. “What was that tune called?” she asked.
“‘Welcome to the Morning.’ It seemed appropriate.”
Marrec said, “Not morning too far along, by the light.” Elowen nodded.
“Gunggari, do you still have the trail?” inquired Marrec. With the sun above, even through the filtering branches of the Rawlinswood, they might be able to close some ground with their quarry.
The tattooed soldier stowed his instrument, crouched. After a moment, he looked up, said, “It is clearer than ever. This way.”
They traveled then for a time under the boughs of the forest. Where they had ascended to the surface, the forest didn’t seem especially corrupt, for all that it overlay Under-Tharos and was nominally in the control of the Rotting Man. They had found a portion of the forest that had escaped direct contamination with evil or rot. Though the sunlight seemed different there than to the west or south, harsher, it was sunlight all the same. The scents of pine and fir were a welcome break from damp stone. Above, clouds piled high along the skyline as they rushed toward the dryer east.
It eased Marrec’s soul.
Gunggari stopped again. He looked around at an area of forest that didn’t seem too much different than any of the areas they had just passed, at least to Marrec.
Gunggari said, “There was some sort of meeting here. I think I understand now. Two were far in the lead, but four caught up with them, right at this point.”
The Oslander searched the ground and nearby trees more closely. He shook his head, saying, “Something strange happened. One of the pursuers left quickly. There is no further sign of that one. The others were involved in some sort of minor altercation, perhaps just a scuffle. Afterwards, all continued, but in this direction, toward the center of the forest again.”
Marrec had earlier noted that they had been moving away from the center. Strange. He asked, “And Ash?”
Gunggari nodded, “Yes, her prints remain clear, clearer than all the rest, nearly. She was led this way.” He continued to point toward the center of the forest.
“How long, Gunggari?” asked Elowen.
“Sometime before dawn.”
“Then we are a few hours behind, at the very most. Let us make haste.”
As they made to move on, Victoricus tittered. The demon said, “I’ve brought you as far as the Queen Abiding intended. From here, you go alone.”
With its last word uttered, the ice demon cracked, and shattered into small chunks. The pieces began to melt in the sunlight.
Marrec said. “It’s up to us.”
“The demon was useful,” noted Gunggari.
Ususi sniffed. Marrec knew the wizard felt otherwise. He hoped she wasn’t later proven right.
They redoubled their pace through the forest, though Ususi was unable to maintain a speed quicker than a fast walk for too long, but they made good time. Even Ususi finally seemed to lose something of the dolor that had fallen upon the party after their deal with the Queen Abiding.
Around noon, Marrec judged, Gunggari led them to the edge of a clearing. The Oslander held up his hand signaling everyone to stop.
All saw the lone structure. It had an unsavory quality to it, like something one might find in a cemetery.
“Is it the Talontyr’s Close?” whispered Marrec. “I thought it would be larger.”
“No, you’ll know the Close when you see it, if the Rotting Man has truly taken up his seat where the Nentyarch once ruled,” said Elowen. “A great ring of mighty trees surrounds the Close, if the Rotting Man didn’t fell them.”
Gunggari signaled again, with some annoyance. He wanted quiet. Marrec nodded to his friend. Gunggari must have noticed something. The cleric sidled up and raised an eyebrow in question.
The Oslander moved his head close to Marrec’s ear and explained, “The trail goes into that structure. Wait here; I’ll check the borders. If I am unable find an exit track, we may have caught our quarry.”
Marrec nodded. Gunggari went.
The cleric kept his eyes riveted to the structure, waiting. He told Elowen and Ususi about Gunggari’s postulate when they sidled up with questions.
Finally, the tattooed soldier returned from the opposite side of the clearing. He said, “We have them.”
“Lurue is kind,” muttered Marrec. Then, “Gunny, why don’t you slip up to the entrance first; you’re the quietest. Elowen and I will follow once you’re in place. Ususi, stay back here and provide spell support.”
“As if I’d do something different,” sniffed Ususi. She was still mad. That woman could hold a grudge with the best of them, Marrec mused.
Gunggari flitted forward, running low but quietly, his dizheri grasped in one hand, his other out for balance. Marrec stood ready to cast Justlance, but his friend made it to the wall next to the darkened entrance without stirring notice.
Next he and Elowen moved forward. He couldn’t help it; his chain mail clinked a little as he moved, but he hoped that the sound wasn’t loud enough to penetrate the building. Elowen was quieter. Both reached the entrance, spread out on the side wall opposite Gunggari, without anyone inside reacting to their approach.
All seemed quiet within, save for the subtle hum of what Marrec supposed to be forest insects.
Marrec turned his head and saw Ususi’s silhouette still back at the edge of the clearing. He saw the wizard’s head nod. He asked, “Everyone ready?”
Elowen drew her blade. Something unexpected happened then.
When the light of the sun above hit the dulled blade, the wood began to thrum, producing an earthy tone that
Marrec somehow equated to the sound of growing things. The veins on the blade, which had shrunk to near invisibility, began to pulse and swell, as if sucking the light in directly. Tiny flickers of emerald light played up and down the blade, and the intensity of the sunlight seemed stronger, more lush, around both elf and blade. The elfs eyes were wide with astonishment.
Elowen blurted out, “Oh. The Nentyarch’s blade… it wanted the sun. Look, the xylem and phloem…” The elf ceased to speak as she gazed at her scintillating blade.
Marrec tried to shush the elf, but Elowen realized her own lapse, clapping one hand over her mouth. She looked at Marrec, an apology in her eyes, but not without a matching gladness that had been absent earlier. Marrec wasn’t familiar with the strange druidic terms Elowen used, but he hoped that their quarry within hadn’t heard her wax so eloquent.
Marrec communicated his hope to Gunggari across the span of the open entrance with two raised eyebrows. The Oslander knew what the cleric’s questioning stance meant, so he cupped an ear against the building and listened.
A few moments later he disengaged, his face diffident. He pointed into the entrance and silently mouthed, “They know.”
Blast. There went the element of surprise. Instead of a raid, they’d be rushing into an ambush. Better to rethink the plan. Why not ambush them instead?
Marrec called loudly, “Hello in there. Why don’t you come out? Fallon, we know you’re here. Come out, Ash unharmed, and we may not extract the full measure of vengeance that you deserve.”
He heard a voice speaking, inside, very quietly. It sounded like a woman’s voice, but he couldn’t make out her individual words.
Then Fallon’s unmistakable baritone responded, “I don’t think so. We, uhm, I prefer it in here where it’s cooler.”
Marrec responded, “Who is this ‘we’ you speak of? Don’t try to hide it; we tracked more than just you and Ash into this ruin.”
“No one you want to meet. Leave here. We’re not coming out.”
Marrec paused, then looked back toward Ususi, who still remained at the edge of the clearing. He yelled to her, “Wizardwhy
don’t you see about flushing our friends out where we can see them? Be careful, though; we don’t want to hurt Ash.”
He saw Ususi rise and step forward. She looked at him, shrugged, and shook her head no. Marrec wondered if, based on the kind of magic he’d seen her throw around in the past, she was unable to whip up a spell quite so discerning. Then the wizard raised one finger, cocking her head. Marrec read that gesture as ‘But…’
Next, she brought two fingers to her face, one to each eye, then extended her hand to point to the side of the structure where Marrec and Elowen crouched. Marrec looked to where she pointed. Solid wall.
Finally, Ususi incanted a spell. When she finished, she pointed to the wall again, a section of which ghosted into empty space. Marrec realized she had created a second entrance. Their element of surprise was back.
“Go,” he hissed to Elowen.
He and the elf rushed into the new opening. Gunggari, ever the bravest of them, dashed in through the main entrance.
It was utterly dark, except for the flickering magical light still clinging to Justlance’s tip; the glow around Dymondheart was too dim to provide light.
Two figures crouched on either side of the main entrance. One was nearly a giant, corpse-white, save for obscene tattoos crawling across his body. He was poised and ready with a great hammer. The other was a thin woman in form-fitting black armor, so tight and articulated that it looked as if it could be a second skin. An aura of tiny, biting insects surrounded her. Mosquitoes? Though not as tall as the man, Marrec somehow knew she was the more potent of the two.
Further back in the shadows stood three more figures. Ash. And that bastard traitor Fallon, holding Ash’s hand in a death grip. Near him stood a bone-slender woman in an obsidian cape. Tomes, scrolls, and wands spilled from her belt. Close cropped hair the color of dying flowers grew on her head.
Everyone in the chamber turned to look at him, caught by surprise by his and Elowen’s self-made access.
Then Gunggari charged in through the main entrance, his dizheri spinning in his hand like a mill wheel. One edge caught the big man, who hissed, falling back a pace. Marrec’s eyes caught the glint of two overly developed canines. The big man was a vampire. He prayed Gunggari could handle one vampire, while he confronted the woman in articulated armor.
Elowen raced across the intervening ground toward the purple-haired caster. Good, keep that one occupied, he silently encouraged the hunter. He and Gunggari had enough on their plates without having to worry about spells from the periphery.
The woman’s armor caught Justlance’s first thrust. She grinned.
Oh, oh, Marrec thought. Two more canines.
“They’re all vampires!” yelled Marrec.
“Great Ones preserve me,” murmured Gunggari. Marrec knew his friend hated night walkers more than anything else, a hate that bordered on fear.
The woman, still chuckling, said, “That’s the least of your worries. I am Damandathe right hand of the Rotting Man.” Marrec knew what that meantin addition to being vampiric, she was also a blightlord. This fight was going to be a lot tougher than he’d anticipated.
If he could overcome his reluctance, Marrec wondered if his ability to turn flesh to stone would have any effect on the unliving tissue of night walkers. Maybe a true gift of Lurue, one he had not depleted in the long decline of his connection with his goddess, might be called.
Bringing his spear up in a guarding position, Marrec bellowed, “Lurue commands that you give way, unholy creatures. Turn your faces and be destroyed!” His spear head, its shape that of a stylized unicorn horn, blazed with golden light for a moment, briefly shining brighter than the magical light that Ususi had cast upon it.
Damanda merely narrowed her eyes and hissed. The large one faltered, vibrating with its desire to resist. Marrec didn’t turn his head to see how the one facing Elowen was responding, but he could feel its resistance, too.
Something wasn’t right. The power of the ritual, which he always imagined as gentle hands on his shoulders, was anemic. If, in truth, Lurue stood behind him bolstering him with her strength, then it was as if she only lightly touched him. Worse, she was backing away, her touch growing ever lighter, until he couldn’t feel it at all.
The resistance peaked; his power broke. None of the vampires turned away. All smiled the wider. The large, hammer-wielding nightwalker croaked, “Your god is weak.” Marrec groaned, giving ground. The vampire was right.
Damanda commanded, “Lex, spell them, will you?”
The purple-haired woman standing near Fallon began to incant. Elowen closed with the incanter, bringing her blade around in an arc sure to separate head from body, but a thaumaturgic field shimmered into visibility, deflecting the blade. Lex finished her spell, and a wave of violet light expanded from her, washing over everyone in the room.
Marrec felt his joints begin to lock up but shook off the effect. He saw that Gunggari also resisted the magical hold. Not so Elowenthe elf hunter stood rooted in place, struggling, but unable to command her body into motion.
Gunggari made to dash to Elowen’s side, but his corpse-white opponent was too near, swinging his great hammer in deadly parabolas, promising death to Gunggari if the Oslander’s attention wavered.
Marrec was pressed by the blightlord Damanda. She moved in, the noise of her insect aura growing maddeningly loud. Recovering more quickly from his failed attempt to turn back the vampires than Damanda expected, he thrust forward with Justlance.
The tip bit deep, momentarily dimming the light in the room, then it was nearly torn from Marrec’s hand as Damanda twisted back. She swiped at him with one handno, it was some sort of clawed or bladed gauntlet composed of darkness itself. The blade caught him along the side, scoring his flesh, but not mortally. Both combatants staggered back a pace. Marrec observed Damanda’s wound begin to knit in a way that his own did not.
The blightlord grinned, her teeth again prominent. She pointed at him. The insect mass swarming around her bulged, sending a filament of biting mosquitoes his way. Marrec expected that the insects, like their master, were vampiric.
The mosquitoes would suck him dry in seconds if he didn’t do something…
He called upon his secret heritage. He found it lurking just behind his eyes like a hound eager to be let out. Marrec complied, focusing his attention on the swarm as if a single entity. For a moment, he felt a connection between himself and the tiny points of hunger, but in the very instant the connection was made, it was transformed and snuffed out. A hail of tiny stones fell as one from the air, shattering into so much dust. Damanda’s insect aura was stripped from her with Marrec’s glance. A pain lanced Marrec’s eyes like before. A weakness suffused him; he knew that his ability to call on his deplorable heritage was depleted for now.
Despite the pain and the blood trickling from the corners of his eyes, Marrec smiled at Damanda.
Not so the blightlord. She yelled, “What’s this? A medusa posing as a human?”
A shadow occluded the doorwayUsusi. She appeared mid-spell and with a flourish, released a cascade of brilliant electrical arcs, stabbing full into Damanda and Gunggari’s foe. Both staggered and flailed, as the flesh smoked and boiled under the intense magical assault.
Damanda spoke, tiny sparks flashing across the gap of her opened mouth, “Lex! Stop gawking; kill the one you’ve immobilized.”
Marrec tried to get to Lex, the vampire mage standing next to Elowen, but Damanda, still smoking, was on him again. Gunggari grunted with a similar exertion, beating back his foe. They were both pinned.
In a fluid single motion, Lex extruded spindly white hands, claw tipped, from the folds of her black cloak, and grabbed Elowen as if to embrace her. Lex opened her mouth wide, creating a gap larger than any mere human could accomplish, and brought her head toward Elowen’s unprotected neck.
The vampire shuddered, pausing. “Huh,” grunted Lex, releasing her hold on Elowen. She bent her head to look down at her chest. From it protru
ded the broken end of a wooden branch, darkly slick with pooling blood.
Fallon stood behind Lex. It was he who had thrust the branch through the vampire’s chest.
Marrec blinkedFallon saved Elowen’s life.
Already shriveling and smoking, Lex turned and slashed Fallon with her razor sharp claws. In a spray of blood, both went down, Lex crumbling and Fallon grasping at his neck.
Marrec’s gaze, Ususi’s unexpected assault, Fallon’s betrayal, and Lex’s destruction was enough for the blightlord. She pulled a rolled parchment from her belt with one hand while reaching out to tap her last remaining follower with the other. She began uttering the arcane words inscribed upon the parchment in short, clipped breaths.
Marrec threw Justlance. The spear screamed through the empty air that a moment earlier contained its intended target. Damanda was gone, likely back to the court of the Rotting Man.
On the ground where he’d fallen, Fallon struggled, gasping. Marrec and Gunggari rushed across the chamber, Marrec to Ash’s side, Gunggari to kneel next to Fallon. Ususi stepped tentatively into the chamber, looking around suspiciously. Elowen, still standing stiffly, groaned and tried to move her arms. She managed to do so, if somewhat clumsily. The compulsion was apparently lifting.
“Are you ok, girl?” Marrec asked Ash, inspecting her for bruise, blemish, or other sign of poor treatment. Ash was unmarked. He hugged her close.
Gunggari inspected Fallon’s bleeding neck wound. He said, “Marrec, his wounds are beyond simple tending, and the Nentyarch’s satchel is empty of healing balms.”
Marrec knew that Gunggari, in speaking of his satchel, was actually asking if Marrec retained any healing grace. Marrec met his friend’s eyes, shaking his head. The cleric remembered seeing named vials in the satchel, one of which contained his own name, but none had contained Fallon’s name. Disengaging from Ash, he bent, too, at Fallon’s side.
Fallon looked up at Marrec, whispered, “I should never have taken the girl. I am sorry…” He stopped, coughing blood.
The unicorn warrior said, “It was a brave thing you did, just now. In the end, you chose right.”
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