Twilight Falling

by Paul S. Kemp

  Riven scoffed and spat at Dreeve’s feet. The gnoll spun on him and growled dangerously. Riven merely sneered.

  Cale could barely keep the relief from his face. It was nothing more than a negotiating ploy. He hurriedly stepped between Riven and the gnoll. He didn’t fear for Riven’s safety, of course, but killing Dreeve would leave them without a guide to the Moonmere. Besides, Dreeve was behaving exactly as any good Sembian would—new facts required new negotiations. Cale could appreciate that. Still, he had to play it out to keep the new price within reason.

  “We’ve already negotiated a price, Dreeve,” he said, and he waited for the gnoll’s predictable retort.

  “This new information would have affected price,” Dreeve growled.

  Cale had to keep from smiling.

  “A fair point,” he acknowledged. For a time, he feigned deep consideration. “All right. Four hundred gold then. Our final offer. Well enough?”

  Dreeve flashed his fangs in a smile, blew out a satisfied sigh, and crossed his arms over his chest. The rest of the gnolls too uttered a round of satisfied growls.

  Dreeve turned from Cale and raised his voice for the benefit of his pack.

  “And now we will deal with those who dare track us.”

  The rest of the pack barked enthusiastic agreement.

  Cale didn’t think it was Vraggen himself who was pursuing them, and that made the pursuers but a distraction. Cale could not afford a distraction. Vraggen had to be at the Moonmere already. He jerked Dreeve around by the shoulder.

  “Ignore them,” Cale ordered. “You’re being paid to get us to the Moonmere. Nothing more. We don’t have time to waste on whoever is tracking you.”

  Dreeve growled, “Tracking you, human. And none follow this pack and live, gold or no gold.”

  The rest of the gnolls snarled agreement and thumped their axe hafts in the earth.

  Cale let his hand glide to his blade hilt. He spoke low enough that only Dreeve and Riven could hear him.

  “Listen to me, you stinking son of a bitch. You’ve played your little game and gotten your price. Fine. We’ll pay it. But if you push any further, I’ll split you wide open out of spite. We do not have time to spare. You show us to the Moonmere and you do it now. Otherwise….”

  He let the threat hang.

  Dreeve’s hackles rose; his ears flattened. His hands spasmed near his axe haft but didn’t touch it. His breath came fast. Behind him, the other gnolls sensed his anger and they too began to snarl, low and dangerous.

  Cale held both his ground and the gnoll’s gaze.

  “You’ll be the first to die,” Cale promised in a whisper. “Then the rest.”

  Cale’s certainty seemed to take Dreeve aback. He stared at Cale for a moment, considering. Abruptly, his hackles sank and he took a deep breath.

  Without releasing Cale’ gaze, he called back to his pack, “Gez and Nurm, circle back, find the she-dogs chasing us, and kill them both. The rest of you, break camp. We take these humans to the Gulthmere and the Lightless Lake. Let the demons there have them.”

  The gnolls did as they were told.

  “Well enough?” Dreeve asked Cale.

  Cale turned his back on the gnoll guide without answering.

  After Dreeve walked away, Riven chuckled.

  “That’s quite a bark, Cale,” the assassin said, “but the time’s coming with that one when you’re going to have to bite.”

  Turning to look at Dreeve, and seeing the pent-up anger in the bunched muscles of the gnoll’s back, Cale knew that Riven spoke the truth.

  “Those two trackers aren’t the mage,” Riven said.

  “Agreed,” Cale said. “Vraggen’s already at the Moonmere.”

  “The half-drow?” Jak asked.

  “Perhaps,” Cale said. “But at this point it doesn’t matter.”

  He looked at the stars glowing in the moonless sky. He thought of taking the sphere from his pack and comparing it to the sky but decided against it. The sphere had become irrelevant. They knew where they were going and they knew when they had to be there.

  “We need to get moving,” Cale said. “We’re almost out of time.”

  Gez smelled horseflesh in the wind—faint, but it was there. He knew the two human riders were less than quarter hour’s run upwind and closing. Surprisingly, night hadn’t stopped them from tracking the pack. Gez figured them both to be very skilled.

  But, he reminded himself, they were but two, and mere humans at that.

  He and Nurm had backtracked from the rest of the pack a little less than an hour before, if Gez was any judge of the stars’ movements. Dreeve and the rest of the pack already would have reached the Gulthmere.

  Thinking of Dreeve and the pack reminded Gez of the humans, and his lips peeled back in a silent snarl. The bald headed human mongrel had embarrassed Gez before his packmates. Gez would have to fight hard to maintain his status as Dreeve’s second. Gez had no doubt that Dreeve had sent him on a cur’s errand to make that very point. Likely, he would have to kill and eat the heart of one of his packmates just to reestablish his place.

  For the tenth time, he wished Dreeve had killed the three humans back in the camp and taken their gold. Gez would have feasted on their flesh and lived high on their coin. The thought of what might have been brought a grin to his face. He licked his lips, imagining the taste of human flesh—

  —and stopped.

  Was that Nurm’s scent in the wind? Yes, but …

  What was that pup doing?

  The two had split up a quarter hour before. Gez, too angry at his fallen fortunes to listen any longer to Nurm’s incessant chatter, had sent the younger gnoll ahead to find an appropriate location from which to ambush the humans. Nurm should have been over ten spearcasts away, not nearby. Gez resolved then and there to vent his anger on the impudent pup.

  He stood up to his full height and scanned the plains for Nurm. Even in the darkness he could see clearly as far out as a spearcast.

  He saw nothing. Only the wind over the thigh-high grass. He let out a signal bark, a sharp, quick yip.

  Nothing.

  Only then did it hit him. The night was still—too still—as though a predator was nearby and on the hunt. Even the insects had fallen silent.

  Gez’s hackles rose and he uttered a growl so low that only another gnoll would hear it. He unslung his axe, dropped into a crouch, and put his nose in the breeze.

  No predator, but Nurm smelled close, not far to Gez’s left.

  Gez crept forward, clutching his axe and prowling through the tall grass. His instincts told him that something big lurked nearby, something deadly. He moved as quietly as he could and kept his senses attuned to his surroundings.

  He smelled it before he saw it—the sharp, coppery tang of blood, intermixed with Nurm’s ordinary scent. Voicing a low snarl, he loped forward.

  He found Nurm’s body lying in an area of flattened, blood soaked grass. Gez kneeled and examined the corpse. Nurm’s entire head had been bitten off. It was nowhere to be seen. Nurm’s unslung axe lay on his shoulder. He hadn’t even had time to get his weapon drawn.

  Gez rose into a crouch, keeping his head below the grass line, and sniffed the wind. Nothing but the far off smell of the humans and the horses. Still, the plains were too quiet. Something was near.

  Moving quickly, Gez removed Nurm’s belt purse, took his quiver of arrows, and wolfed down as much of his trail tack as he could. The pack didn’t waste resources. Often, they ate their own fallen, but Gez didn’t have time for that.

  A rustling sounded in the grass near Nurm’s corpse.

  Gez uttered a surprised snarl and lunged forward, axe held high.

  A field lizard darted out of the grass. About the size of a cat, the brown-spotted reptiles were common in those plains. Carrion eaters. It must have smelled Nurm’s blood too and come to feed.

  Gez let out a relieved series of yips. He toed Nurm’s corpse toward the lizard.

  “Feed well, l
ittle frie—”

  A low croak sounded from behind him. His hackles rose instantly; his heart threatened to burst. He whirled around with his axe at the ready.

  Terror froze him.

  A horrible, bipedal, toadlike creature stood behind him, taller and broader than even Dreeve. A strange tingling flashed through Gez’s brain, as though the creature was looking into his mind, knowing what he knew. He caught only a flash of warty green skin, claws, and merciless eyes before it pounced on him and knocked him to the ground near Nurm’s corpse. Gez’s breath blew from his lungs. His ribs snapped under the impact. He mouthed a silent scream of pain and fear.

  Crouched atop his chest, the thing croaked something in a foul, alien tongue that Gez could not understand. It opened its mouth impossibly wide. A mouthful of shark teeth surrounded the black hole of its gullet. Gez wanted to scream, wanted to whimper, but with no air he could make no sound. Pain blurred his vision.

  That horrible mouth descended for his head, engulfing it entirely. Teeth tore into the skin of his neck and snapped closed on his spine. Gez felt a flash of excruciating agony before his world ended in darkness.

  Elura cracked the gnoll’s skull between her back teeth, took the creature’s head out of her mouth, and split the skull the rest of the way open with her claws. When the brain lay exposed in her hands, she slavered it up with her long tongue. She found them a creamy delight, especially when lightly spiced with the tart tang of fear. Since she and her broodmates’ arrival, she had come to enjoy the brains of lesser sentient creatures.

  After licking the skull case clean, she methodically removed the gnoll’s weapons and earrings. She studied what remained of the gnoll’s body. Satisfied that she had a reasonably close mental image of the creature, she invoked the magical ability of her kind to change shape. With a wet, squishing sound, her natural body metamorphosed into a smaller, thinner form—that of the gnoll. She put the gnoll’s earring through her new ears, slung its axe over her shoulder, and smiled in satisfaction.

  With Vraggen’s “approval,” Azriim had instructed she and Dolgan to remain behind and watch for Cale. Dolgan had remained in Starmantle. Elura had patrolled the approaches to the Gulthmere. Nothing was to interfere with Vraggen’s opening of the Fane.

  Elura smiled darkly when she thought of Vraggen. The arrogant shadow adept had no idea of how he had been used. When she imagined how his expression would appear when he learned of she and her broodmates’ true purpose—of the Sojourner’s true purpose—she could barely control her laughter.

  But first matters firstly, she reminded herself.

  Late the previous night, Dolgan had telepathically informed her of the gnoll pack. She had been surprised and distantly delighted to learn that Cale, Riven, and the halfling were among them. The humans’ resourcefulness intrigued her, though it would not avail them. The threatened torture of Serrin had been a masterstroke. Most humans balked at such methods, but not those three. For an instant, she regretted that she would not once share Cale’s bed before killing him. She always gave her human lovers a unique experience before showing them her true form and murdering them. She would have enjoyed providing such an experience to Cale. She also would have enjoyed hearing his screams as she flayed him alive.

  But that is not to be, she thought with regret, for she and Dolgan would kill Cale that very night.

  She had picked up the trail of the gnolls earlier in the night, and had waited for an opportunity to kill and take the form of one of the pack. Dolgan, she knew, was only a short distance away. He had learned of Cale’s presence in Starmantle only after Cale and his comrades had left the city with the gnolls, but had ridden so hard after them that he was already near. Together, they could kill Cale, his comrades, and the pack.

  With the telepathy bred in her and her broodmates by the Sojourner, she sent her mental voice over the plains to Dolgan.

  Dolgan?

  From somewhere to the north, Dolgan’s mental voice answered, I am here, Elura. Less than two hours behind the gnolls.

  I am in the form of the gnoll creature Gez, she said to him. I will return to the pack and tell them—tell Dreeve, she corrected, referencing the information that she had stolen from Gez’s mind—that we have killed the trackers and that Nurm died in battle. Alert me when you are near. If I have not done so beforehand, upon your arrival, we will kill them all.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE GULTHMERE

  In the darkness, the towering cedars, pines, and elms at the edge of the Gulthmere looked as impenetrable to Cale as a siege wall. It looked … foreboding. Cale spared a glance skyward—the last time he would be able to see the stars after entering the tangle of the Gulthmere, he supposed. He wondered whether they would arrive at the Fane in time to stop Vraggen.

  “We’re in time,” Jak said softly, as though reading his mind.

  Cale nodded. He knew it wasn’t yet midnight. Mask allowed him to know intuitively when that hour arrived. But he didn’t think they had much more than a couple of hours.

  Dreeve had recalled the perimeter scouts but Gez and Nurm had not yet returned. The remaining gnolls arranged themselves into two skirmish lines. With Cale, Jak, and Riven sandwiched between the lines, they entered the Gulthmere.

  The fragrance of the pines hung thick in the air. Needles and deadwood crunched underfoot. The forest felt old.

  Each step in created more and more tension in the gnoll pack. Cale could sense it, could see it in their furtive gazes, quickened respiration, and slightly raised hackles. They feared the Gulthmere. Or the Fane.

  Their pace slowed markedly as the terrain forced them to pick their way through the undergrowth. Cale quickly lost his sense of direction, though he did feel the ground descending and growing softer as they progressed. He could see only two or three paces before him.

  “Jak,” Cale said. “Your wand. We need light.”

  Dreeve whirled on him and hissed, “No light, human! You will draw attention to us.”

  The rest of the pack softly growled alarmed agreement.

  “We need to be able to see,” Cale said. “This light is not visible from far off.” He looked to Jak. “Little man.”

  Jak pulled out his bluelight wand and uttered, “Inil,” the word in the halfling tongue for “light”. The wand’s tip emitted a soft, blue glow. Shadows danced at the edges of the wand’s illumination.

  “You see?” Cale said to Dreeve.

  The gnoll captain grunted something in his own tongue that Cale felt certain was an expletive, then he turned on his heel and started off. They followed.

  After a short time, the ground leveled off and the air began to feel strange: thick with moisture and something else, something oily.

  “You feel that?” Jak asked Cale quietly.

  Cale replied, “We’re getting close.”

  Riven only grunted.

  Cale called up to Dreeve, “How much farther?”

  The gloom seemed to dull his voice. The shadows swallowed sound.

  Dreeve said over his shoulder in a low hiss, obviously perturbed by Cale’s loud call, “Another hour—”

  Abruptly, the gnoll captain dropped into a crouch. His hackles rose. His lips peeled back from his fangs. Growls sounded from the rest of the pack.

  “What is it?” Cale asked in alarm, scanning the forest around them.

  Beside him, Riven and Jak drew their weapons and went back to back. Jak covered his bluelight wand with his cloak.

  “Something comes,” Dreeve said.

  The gnoll captain hurriedly whispered orders to his pack. Several circled out wide and took cover behind the boles of trees. Others knocked arrows, took a knee, and drew. Cale followed their aim with his eyes.

  Nothing but the forest and darkness.

  Then he heard it: something moving through the woods, cracking twigs, crushing leaves.

  The gnolls tensed. Bowstrings creaked in the darkness. Cale sank into the gloom, withdrew his holy symbol, pulled his blade, and took a step
nearer Riven and Jak.

  The sounds drew closer … closer. Something big.

  Near Cale, Dreeve audibly sniffed at the air. After only a moment, he rose from his crouch and barked something to his pack. The rest of the gnolls immediately stood down.

  “Gez,” the gnoll captain explained to Cale.

  “Light, Jak,” Cale said, and the halfling unshielded his bluelight.

  Gez sprinted into the clearing and stopped cold upon seeing his comrades. His tongue lolled from the side of his mouth and blood covered his cloak. The rest of the pack barked a greeting. Gez returned the greeting absently while he stalked up to Dreeve. The two held an intense conversation. The rest of the pack listened intently. Cale couldn’t read their expressions and wished again that he could understand the gnoll tongue.

  When they finished, Dreeve nodded and thumped Gez on the shoulder. Gez shot Cale a hateful glance, turned, and called for a waterskin. One among the pack provided him with water while the rest swarmed around him and peppered him with questions. Dreeve approached Cale, Riven, and Jak.

  “Gez and Nurm encountered your trackers and killed them both,” the gnoll said. “Gez was wounded, Nurm was killed.”

  Cale was doubtful but kept it from his face. He had seen firsthand the ability of Vraggen’s agents to live through and quickly heal wounds that should have killed them. Gez might genuinely think that he and Nurm had killed the “human” trackers, but Cale thought not.

  “How did they kill them?” he asked, looking past Dreeve to Gez. “What did they do with the bodies?”

  Dreeve’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. His ears went flat against his head.

  “They left their corpses in the grass,” Dreeve said. “Why does it matter, human? Who were these trackers?”

  Cale had no intention of telling Dreeve anything. If the gnoll understood the danger, Cale knew he and his pack would abandon them.

  “Who they were doesn’t matter,” Cale said. “They’re dead. Now, get us to the Moonmere. Quickly. After that, you’ll have your payment and we’ll part our ways.”

  The gnoll captain sniffed the air as though he smelled the lies in the air.