by Paul S. Kemp
Ash snowed down from the charred trees around the citadel and drifted on the breeze in a gray miasma, choking their vision and their breath. The sickly green of faerie fire licked the gathering storm clouds above, heralding a tempest that had yet to be unleashed. Armed men stood still enough to be statues among the trees, their armor darkened with soot to match the forest's painted hue. The night was silent but for the trumpeting horn that echoed off the inside of the crumbling citadel.
It let them know he was coming.
Jaeriko and Maze stood by the boy they had rescued and the man they had brought him to-the General of Reth. Only one part remained to their task-the largest part of which was to stay alive. The smallest part of which was to keep the boy alive as well.
The boy, still swaddled in white linens, lay on a simple cot, lost in the oblivion of disease. His nursemaids, the blackened trees, stood all around him, and the General of Reth stood right behind him, holding a long, slender knife, like a surgeon's tool, to the boy's throat.
They waited like a drawn bow, aimed at the gate to the crumbling citadel.
The General of Arrabar burst through the gate like a lion, his ragged gold mane flying like a banner and his haunted green eyes fixed first on his son and then on the man above him. His face was haggard; his sins written as deeply upon his flesh as upon his soul. He was still dressed in the armor of Ilmater, with a white tabard emblazoned with the ribbon-threaded hands, but the white of the tabard had turned brown with dirt, and his armor bled with rust.
Twisted, pale men hung with the brassy remnants of armor poured out of the citadel and arrayed themselves around the Lion of Arrabar in a ghoulish honor guard. Upon reaching their positions, they stood still-unmoving and not breathing.
The General of Reth dipped the point of his knife in the hollow of the boy's throat and a drop of blood beaded there like sweat. The boy screamed, though whether in fevered dreams or pain, Jaeriko did not know.
"Stop! Don't kill him, Thais." The General of Arrabar's face and voice twisted in distress.
"Tell me why I shouldn't, old friend," said the General of Reth. He turned the knife to display its ruby shine. "Surely he has suffered enough."
"It's what she's been waiting for," the General of Arrabar said. "My bargain with Talona is broken the same moment as her hold on him-by death or by new life. If you kill my son, the ghouls will no longer obey me, the war will be lost, and all my suffering will be for nothing. Do you understand me? The boy's suffering will be for nothing."
The General of Arrabar stood, an arm extended as though he could stop the knife from his son's throat by will alone. Thais, the General of Reth, eyed him, as expressionless as the walking dead.
"A bargain with the Lady of Poison, Paladin of Ilmater? Sacrificing your son, and for what-another chance for Arrabar to subjugate Reth and Hlath?"
"To keep our kingdom whole," the General of Arrabar corrected. Thais shook his head.
"I wouldn't kill your son, Dominic," Thais said, and he sheathed his knife. "You were doing a fine job of that yourself."
The moment the knife ceased threatening his son, all pleading left Dominic's face.
"Now!" the leonine general commanded, dropping his arm and drawing his sword. Ghouls swarmed forward like a plague of spiders over the crumbling walls and over their brethren, murderous animation driving their limbs to inhuman speeds.
Soldiers fell out of the woods to meet them, bringing shields to bear and forming a wall of steel around the general and against the oncoming horde. At a gesture from the general, Maze and Jaeriko snapped into position; Maze guarding the body of the boy, Jaeriko farther back, clasping one of Maze's knives in a white-knuckled hand and searching frantically for ghouls who might be trying to circumnavigate their defense. Bodies splattered unhurt against the shields of the living, testing the soldiers, who held it strong. She could hear the General of Arrabar shouting orders, and in answer, pale fingers sharpening into long yellow nails gripped the tops of the shields, and ravenous eyes cleared the wall.
Thais stood with his back to Jaeriko, between her and the battle, head bowed under the ashen rain as though in mourning for the deaths to come. Soft brown hair obscured his features, and his shoulders were back. Then his hands shot out, fingers spread like talons, and clamped into the blackened bark of the trees that guarded him.
Darkness seeped out of the charred trees and out of his skin, spilling onto the ground and down his body like sap. His men cheered as the waves of night overtook them, but the ghouls skittered and keened, pulling themselves back away from the shield wall, unwilling to step into the spread shy;ing sea of glistening ebony. It overcame them anyway. Thais's head snapped back, stars burning for eyes, and the roiling shadows took flight, swirling upward in a deepening tide until everything was painted in shades of black.
Then the shield wall broke and surged forward, and the battle was joined in earnest.
An explosion of light burst from Reth's general, and for a heartbeat, even the shadows ceased to exist. Jaeriko could see soldiers in the process of impaling ghouls and ghouls with their long fingers plucking out human eyes. Maze stood in front of the boy, her long knife wet and dripping, spinning low with a leg extended at knee height. And the General of Reth dropped down from the heavens like a bird of prey, angling his burning blade at the paladin of Ilmater, who just managed to raise a sword in defense. The dark general hit the ground, and the paladin spun with the energy of the deflected blade, angling a strike at his opponent's back.
Just as it looked as though the blade would shear the General of Reth in half, he rolled backward and to his feet, slicing at Arrabar's unprotected neck, but the paladin stepped forward and bashed the hilt of his sword up into his opponent's face. The dark generals head snapped back and he stumbled, his body weaving. A well-planted kick on Reth's ribs threw the wounded general to the ground. Arrabar lunged after him, his sword poised for the killing stroke. His would-be victim cracked a smile, and an ebony tide swept over the battle, plunging the forest into darkness.
The sounds of the dying and the screams of metal on metal filled the air like a crying symphony. Blind, nearly deafened, Jaeriko felt something fly by her ear, and a stinging wetness screamed for her attention an instant later. Dropping to the ground, she felt around for a tree, a body, anything to hide behind, when a brilliant radiance blossomed again. A helmet studded the tree behind her, limned with her blood; near her feet was the head it had belonged to.
Maze screamed-a sound lost in the clamor of battle-and Jaeriko looked up. A white-fleshed ghoul scrambled up Maze's prone form. Her red-streaked hands, somehow bereft of blades, reached back toward Jaeriko, and their eyes met, equally hor shy;rified. Help me, Maze mouthed. Jaeriko's hand throbbed from holding onto her knife. Setting her jaw and forcing her trem shy;bling legs into action, she half ran and half stumbled across the corpse-strewn field to Maze's defense. She fell upon the ghoul in a blade-studded heap. Striking back and forth without regard to angle or point, she plied her knife against the ghoul's flesh until its white skin was rent with red gouges, and the ghoul, hissing in pain, reeled back to face this new threat. Faced with the long yellow claws herself, Jaeriko's mouth opened to scream and she dropped her knife. Then the ghoul dropped like a felled tree, with Maze wrapped around its knees, and the lithe assassin pounced up its body to cut off its head. She raised her blade, and darkness swept over the field once more.
Jaeriko felt around for her knife and recovered it, gripping it with hands sore from unexpected use. Back to back, Jaeriko and Maze huddled together, blades out, striking at anything that came near without radiating warmth. Once, twice, three times she struck at things she hoped to the gods were undead, before the clammy fingers stopped pawing in her direction. Still she crouched, blade trembling, listening for attackers so hard it hurt.
But no more came. The clashes of steel diminished until the only sounds came from a single pair of combatants. Then she felt something fly by her head, heard it thump to the gr
ound, and all sound of combat ceased. The eerie silence was broken only by feet shuffling through leaves, and Jaeriko's heart pounding in her ears. She hoped against hope it didn't mean she and Maze were the only living things left.
Then Jaeriko gasped as a brilliant nova boomed out from Reth's general, bathing the combatants in unnatural light. The shadowy man's bare hands were wrapped around the leonine general's face, fingertips cupping the slackening flesh. Weaponless, the paladin clawed at the hands that lay almost reverently upon his cheeks, drawing blood but not moving them. Sweat glistened on the dark general's arms, and veins rose up in bruising hues under his victim's skin. They stood, locked that way, for as long as Jaeriko could hold her breath.
Then the General of Arrabar's eyes rolled back in his head, his flesh drawn and gray, and he cried out. "Mercy!" And the General of Reth removed his hands.
Upon release, Dominic of Arrabar collapsed to his knees and bowed his head. Thais put a hand on a nearby tree to steady himself, and his ribs heaved and shook. The blinding light and darkness faded, until only the eerie glow of the storm remained.
Pale corpses, weapons, and dismembered limbs littered the ground in a grotesque garden, blooming with arrows and blood. Not a single ghoul had survived the battle, and only a handful of Reth's soldiers lay fallen. They hadn't even had to kill the General of Arrabar to get his compliance-only the men he'd stolen from death's domain.
"Friend, forgive me," Dominic said, staring up into his friend's eyes. Thais looked down with pity, but the paladin's gaze had ascended farther, into the heavens. "Ilmater, for shy;give …" A bolt of lightning split the sky with a crack and coursed down straight onto the head of the kneeling general. Smoke leaked from his helmet, and his eyes stared vacantly upward. Then a second bolt struck where the first one had, and Dominic fell backward, his skin crisping inside his metal shell. A third bolt hit, and a fourth, and a fifth, shattering the sky with thunder and light and causing the little metal figure to dance, prone on the ground.
When the smoke finally cleared, a charred skeleton leered out from the General of Arrabar's helmet, and his metal armor was twisted beyond recognition of having ever belonged to Ilmater.
"Look!" said Maze, pointing to the entrance to the citadel. Standing in the doorway, wand still extended, was Kalmia. A wisp of smoke trailed from the tip of the twisted ivory. Jaeriko's wand. Thais looked up, his heavy gaze hanging on the woman in the door.
"Seize her," commanded Thais. He gestured to two of his men. The soldiers charged forward, one taking hold of her arms and the other relieving her of her wand. She did not struggle, but stared at the smoking body of her former master with hunger burning in her eyes. Thais watched his men take her.
Then two coins flashed into Thais's hands. Kneeling, he placed one in each blackened eye socket of the dead general.
"Good-bye, my friend," Thais said, and he stood. "You strived to starve out the darkness in you, but in the end, it consumed you instead." Thais shook his head and looked up from the grinning corpse. "A poor death for the last paladin of Ilmater."
Jaeriko stared at Kalmia.
"Oh, Kalmia," Jaeriko said. The woman had said she couldn't even use it for self defense. Had that all been a lie? Kalmia fixed her with a look that chilled her to the bone.
"You saw what he did to his son," Kalmia said. She lowered her gaze to the ghoulish corpses that littered the ground, then looked up again, resolution steeling her eyes. "If Reth intended on killing him, you two would have done it before we met. I could not risk him escaping justice."
Jaeriko stared at Kalmia as the soldiers bound the herbalist's hands behind her and led her off in the direction of the soldiers' caravans. The herbalist held her gaze, looking over her shoulder, until they could no longer see each other through the weave of the forest. A tug on her arm tore her attention away from the path the soldiers had taken.
"Never empathize with the enemy," Maze said softly. She pushed a pouch filled with coins into Jaeriko's hand. "Your half of the fee."
"Right," Jaeriko said. Maze looked at her for a moment, then put an arm around her shoulder and began guiding her back through the woods.
"Come on. Let's go home."
The first night on the road, the General of Reth let Kalmia go. He told her that under law he could not sanction her actions, but that he had long understood war-and justice-to be above the law. Then a strange cast had come over his storm gray eyes and he told her he was sorry to hear of her brother.
That strange look almost made her confess everything. If there was anyone who would understand her actions, surely it was he. But her fear of him kept her words in check, and she mumbled her thanks and left, heading straight back for the crumbling citadel cradled deep in the Chondalwood.
Morning had come and gone by the time she arrived back at the citadel, but she did not stop walking until she arrived at the door at the top of the white tower. Removing the shiny brass key from her pocket, she unlocked the door and stepped back. The door crashed open and the pale form of the ghoul she had trapped in the boy's bedroom scrambled toward her. Its yellow nails were filed sharp from clawing at the wood, and its body was ragged from pounding against the door, but it was ani shy;mate, which was more than could be said for its fellows.
When it reached her it halted and stood too still in front of her. Then its nostrils-ragged tears in its sunken flesh-flexed. Starting with her feet, it snuffled up the length of her, pausing longest at her neck, behind her ear, where it tasted the scent of her hair without touching her. Her skin crawled, but she held still, searching its dead eyes when she could see them for some sign of the paladin's taint. She found the ghoul's eyes empty. It was free-uncontrolled by man or god.
The General of Reth must have finally managed with magic what she hadn't been able to with herbs and cured the paladin's son. Purging Talona's plague from the boy's body broke the Lady's bargain. Had he not, the ghoul she faced would still be clawing to get to his fallen master's side, as per his last orders. Orders she had prevented him from carrying out.
"Brother," Kalmia whispered. She reached her hands out but did not touch him. The ghoul regarded her, expressionless as always. Talona had warned her it would be this way. Her hands fell to her side. It was still worth it to extract her revenge. "Come with me." She could never forgive the General of Arrabar for what he had done. But neither could she destroy what he had created. Instead, she would make for herself a new life-one that included her dead sibling. "We're going home."
BLACK ARROW
Bruce R. Cordell
11 Tarsakh, the Year of the Dawndance (1095 DR)
Sarshel
Dear Madam Feor,
I have heard an account of the Last Battle for Sarshel's Wall, and of the valor of Jotharam Feor in particular, whose deeds proved instrumental in Sarshel's victory. I regret to inform you your son died bravely in the line of duty.
I know how devastating these brutal words must be that bear news of a loss so overwhelming. But know that I and reunited Impiltur itself thank you for your son's precious service.
May Tyr, Torm, and Ilmater assuage the grief of your mourning, leaving only cherished memories of your son. May they grant you solemn dignity and peace in return for your costly sacrifice given unasked, a sacrifice that preserved Sarshel against its enemies, and which may yet conclude the Kingless Years.
Yours, sincerely and respectfully,
Imphras Heltharn
A pulverized stone crunched beneath Jotharam Feor's boot as he trudged across gouged and broken ground.
Jotharam's eyes danced with anticipation. His gaze swept past the battered, chipped wall that encircled the city of Sarshel, his home. The adolescent looked without really seeing the earth scarred with months of encamped armies, swift conflicts, and spell-ignited conflagrations. Having never witnessed mass graves before, the mounds of earth dotting the far sward held no meaning for him.
Jotharam's mind was on the war, certainly. When was it not? Since the hobgoblin hor
de emerged from the Giantspire Mountains, anarchy had ruled the city. The goblinoid armies had overrun all the surrounding lands, but failed to sack Sarshel. Instead, they laid siege.
Only soldiers ventured beyond Sarshel's protective bastions.
But here I stride, thought Jotharam, not a soldier sworn but wearing a hauberk anyway!
He even carried a sword from the Sarshel Armory in a battered sheath. He walked beyond the wall as if on picket duty. As if he were, in truth, sworn to protect all that lay within the heavy walls.
Jotharam patted the messenger's bag slung over his right shoulder. The bag was the reason he wandered beyond the wall. It bulged with orders for the perimeter guards of the north bunker.
The adolescent grinned into the day's failing glow. The sun paused on the ragged edges of the Earthspurs as if to regard him alone. Jotharam pulled the borrowed sword from the scabbard on his belt and whirled it in the golden light. He imagined cutting down scores of desperate hobgoblin raiders.
"My blade will not be sheathed until it finds an invader's heart," he boasted. "Your days are numbered now that I have taken the field!"
Finally taken the field, he mentally appended.
His friends had been allowed to fight and defend Sarshel. Not he. It wasn't fear that prevented him from defending the city, nor any particular lack of skill. It was his mother.
A woman of noble birth and connections, his mother asked the city's soldiery to disallow his application, even when Sarshel was desperate to fill the dwindling regiments. They had obliged her request.
His fingers tightened on the hilt as he thought of his friends, who had become decorated and respected defenders while he remained safely at home with his mother.
And now the war was nearly won, without him.
Imphras, the great war captain, had come to Sarshel's rescue. Imphras was here, and with him, his legion of loyal warriors, archers, and war wizards. The man was a living legend. Tavern talk had it the force Imphras commanded had never seen defeat on the field of battle.