by Edwin McRae
It was only when Dayna’s stream of foul language slowed to a trickle of mild cursing, and Vari, with an exhausted sigh, pronounced the ranger fully restored, that the notifications started to roll in.
Congratulations!
You have defeated the Siren of the Lake.
XP reward per party member = 70 XP
Your Ethereal Flesh skill has increased to Tier 3.
Well done for casting this spell to escape the clutches of the Siren of the Lake!
Your Second Skin skill has increased to Tier 2.
Tier 2: The barrier will absorb up to 30 HP in damage from non-magical weapons.
You have completed the first stage of many in the Source of Corruption Quest.
XP reward per party member = 30 XP
Mark sat and surveyed the carnage he and his friends had caused. Vari joined him, sitting close enough that her left leg and arm were pressed against his.
“Mark?”
“Yes, Vari?”
“There are some more hot pools over there.” She pointed across the viscera-filled pool at their feet, at some steam rising in the distance. “Clean ones. I think you and I could do with a bath.”
Mark turned to Vari, looked into her wide, glinting eyes. Then he poked her in the thigh with his finger.
“Ow!” She rubbed her leg. “What was that for?”
“Just making sure you’re not a tentacle.”
Vari laughed, then took his hand, and led him over to the fresh pool. Even despite his post-battle exhaustion, Mark’s mind went into overdrive and anxiety fluttered in his belly. Did she really want to go there? Did he really want to go there? And where was ‘there’, exactly? Was it just a bath, a fun skinny dip or…
As if sensing his trepidation, Vari stopped and turned to face him. She looked up at him and offered him a small, coy smile as she undid his sword-belt and let it drop with a clatter to the ground. Hoping like hell he was reading the signs right, he undid the cord of her cloak and slid it from her shoulders. She nodded, her smile dimpling her dark chocolate cheeks, and started on the buckles of his armor.
Piece by piece, their garments fell until they stood naked together at the water’s edge. Then Vari took his hand in hers, and led him into the water. The cleansing warmth embraced them, just as they embraced each other. And as Vari pressed her lips to his, Mark’s fears melted away.
28
Vari and her friends passed the first ruin, the warped and hollow remains of a once-proud temple. Pitted, weather-worn statues festooned its crumbling hulk, naked men and women of idealized physique poised in various acts of heroism. Yet every face was smooth and featureless, devoid of even a mouth.
Vari found it deeply unnerving, and wondered if it was the work of the sculptor or a symptom of whatever apocalypse had befallen this place. Judging by the strangely sinuous warping of the temple’s architecture, Vari placed her bets on the latter, shivering as she thought of the appalling magic that must have swept through this city as it died.
It was around midday. The sun was cloaked in cloud. The wind whistled through the debased and decaying buildings. Dayna called a halt, dismounted and spent some time peering at the ground. Then she scooped up some dust in her palm and sniffed it, like a hunting hound tracing a scent.
“What’s wrong, Dayna?” asked Mark.
Vari could tell that he was as edgy as she was. And judging by his frequent beard-tugging, Braemar was feeling equally nervy.
Dayna pointed at various places on the ground as she spoke. “People, moving two and fro. It’s a kind of thoroughfare, although the tracks are quite old. No-one’s been through here in the last few days.”
“People? What sort of people?”
Dayna frowned as she knelt and looked more closely at a patch of dirt. “Yeah, I use the term people pretty loosely. Bare feet, and the weirdest fucking feet I’ve ever seen.”
“They probably live around here somewhere,” added Vari. “If they’re communal, there might even be a village of sorts.”
“Yeah, seems likely,” agreed Dayna.
“Then we should probably take a sneaky peek, see what we’re dealing with,” offered Mark. He turned to Vari and Braemar. “You guys up for that?”
Braemar nodded and Vari smiled her agreement, despite the anxiety scratching at the insides of her ribs. She’d heard vague stories from reiver soldiers about the types of savage ‘people’ who inhabited the Barrens. Whatever this village was, it wasn’t civilized. Far from it.
An hour or so later, they found themselves perched atop the ruin of an ancient house, a once grand residence of some wealthy, long-dead family. The village below was an assortment of rough shelters and primitive constructions built into the nooks and crannies of the surrounding ruins. There were wooden cages too, a cold fire-pit, and plenty of bones lying about. Vari identified most of them as animal bones, including a complete horse skeleton not far from the pit. But there were a decent number of human bones as well.
“Cannibals,” Dayna whispered to the others, pointing out a couple of human skulls mounted over a crude doorway. One of them wore a spiked reiver helmet.
Vari shook her head. “Cannibals eat members of their own species. These creatures aren’t human.”
Dayna rolled her eyes. “Fine, reiver, if you want to get picky about it.”
She looked back at Mark and they shared a warm, conspiratorial smile. To Vari, it was a blessed moment of relief in these unsettling surrounds.
“Cannibals or not, where are they all?” whispered Braemar.
The druid was right. The village showed all of the usual signs of habitation, even a few animal-skin papooses in which parents must have carried their babies. Yet the place was completely empty.
Dayna pointed at a couple of collapsed shelters. “There are signs of struggle all over the place, but the footprints are the same. Same people, fighting each other.”
“An attack from another tribe?” wondered Vari.
Dayna nodded. “Could be.”
They found their answer on the far side of the village. An ancient cellar of some kind, partially open to the air thanks to the collapse of the building above it. Inside, bodies were laid out in orderly rows. Their skin was the colour of jaundice, paled in death. Mouths gaped, showing needle-sharp teeth. Their blank, black eyes stared without seeing, those that hadn’t been plucked from their sockets by scavengers, that is.
The corpses were either elderly or heartbreakingly young, apart from three cadavers that had been laid out near the back of the cellar. The first was a woman, decorated in feathers, skins and the skulls of small animals, her face and body painted with red and white clay. On either side of her, the men were similarly painted, although not so heavily decorated.
“A chieftain and her bodyguards,” concluded Vari as she pointed out the trio. “Judging by their wounds, these three put up fight. The others, they’ve been executed.”
“The able-bodied adults, they’re all gone. Apart from those three,” Mark observed.
“Maybe it was reivers,” spat Dayna as she glowered in Vari’s direction. “Took the rest of these poor fuckers as slaves.”
Vari shrugged off Dayna’s animosity as she knelt down by a pair of slaughtered children. Twins, identical in every way, with matching slits across each of their throats.
“Killing Barren-dwellers is not the revier way, believe me. And they wouldn’t leave the children.” She stroked her fingertips across the closest child’s staring eyes, closing his eyelids. “Any inquisitor worth his salt knows that a child raised in slavery is worth three broken adults.” She closed the second child’s eyes and then stood to survey the carnage. “ Something else did this.”
“I’d like to bury these people,” said Braemar somberly. “Least we can do for them.”
“Good idea,” agreed Mark.
Vari finished reciting a funeral prayer, one in her own language, as Braemar called down the stones and dirt upon the mass grave. When he was done, Dayna led the way
out of the village, following a trail she’d found while her companions were seeing to the burial.
“The adults,” she explained, “walking in single file, and alongside them, we’ve got two sets of boot prints.” She pointed at Vari’s boots, a smug little smile on her lips. “Reiver boots.”
Vari held Dayna’s disdainful glare for several long moments, not about to let the ranger cast her in the same light as a pair of mass murderers. Yes, she’d been taken from her people when she was just a little girl, and the inquisitors had tried their best to make her into a reiver. Through all the pain and preaching, insult and indoctrination, Vari had bowed and obeyed. She bided her time, earned their trust, and then deserted them at the first opportunity. Never had she allowed herself to think like a reiver, and she wasn’t about to let a judgemental bitch like Dayna change that now.
Mark stepped between them, hands raised. “Easy, you two, please. The past is the past. I’m neither Garlander nor reiver, yet here I am, standing in the middle of shitsville, dealing with monsters and mass graves, all in the name of keeping Garland safe.” He pointed at the tracks. “We need to focus on what happens next, and that means following those tracks and finding out what the fuck’s going on.”
Dayna shrugged and turned her attention back to the tracks, as much of an agreement as she was willing to offer. Mark then looked to Vari, his gaze softening, and mouthed the words “You okay?”
Vari felt herself relax. Yes, she was fine. She’d dealt with far worse than a few snide remarks from a stroppy ranger. Yet she appreciated Mark’s concern.
As Dayna ranged ahead, following the tracks, Vari pointed at the pair of reiver bootprints.
“What do you think? The commander from Citadel, and that bleach-haired sergeant of his?”
Mark flinched at the mention of the woman who’d so brutally slain him. Vari felt for him in that moment. He’d died several times in the short time she’d known him, and in rather horrifying ways. They weren’t pleasant memories for someone to be carrying around.
“Not sure,” Mark answered. “Wouldn’t they just head straight for reiver territory?”
Vari shook her head. “Not these two. This commander’s lost his command. If he returns without making up for that, he’ll be demoted and punished. He’ll never get a command again, either. Plenty of hungry young officers ready to take his place.”
“And the sergeant? Is she staying with him out of loyalty?”
“Doubtful. Revier soldiers don’t serve out of loyalty. It’s more about the steady pay...and fear of punishment by the inquisitors.”
“Carrot and stick, eh?”
The was a new one on Vari. “Huh?”
“Sorry. It’s a saying where I’m from. To get a donkey moving, you offer it a carrot or hit it with a stick.”
“What’s a donkey?”
“Like a small horse with big ears.”
“Why not hang the carrot from the stick with some string, and then walk ahead of the donkey, leading it.”
“Yeah. Maybe I should try that with Dayna.”
Vari laughed. “That might just work.”
The evening was closing in, the sky smeared red with the setting of the sun. Dayna brought them to a halt, her expression grim as she pointed at a gaping entranceway, a dark tunnel at the base of a cliff, its mouth framed by crumbling architecture.
“They’re in there.”
“All of them?” asked Mark.
“Whole fucking lot, reivers included.”
“Camping for the night?” wondered Braemar.
Dayna shrugged. “Only one way to find out.” She gestured at the ruin nearby, a blocky building perched atop an aqueduct that stretched off into the city. Water tumbled from the cliff above them, carried off by the aqueduct in a steady flow. “You lot camp up there. Looks like there’s walkways on either side of that aqueduct. Use them to escape if you have to.”
“You’re going in alone?” asked Vari. Despite her mixed feelings about Dayna, she still felt a surge of fear for the woman.
“Any of you got Tier 3 Stealth or Gloomsight?” asked Dayna defiantly.
Vari shook her head, as did Mark and Braemar.
“Didn’t think so. It’s going to be hard enough not to get myself stone-axed in the dark without one of you banging your nut on a stalactite and giving me away.”
Vari could tell from Dayna’s wide eyes, and the unconscious opening and closing of her bowstring hand, that Dayna’s bravado was skin deep. So Vari took two bottles from her pouch and held them out, neck first, for Dayna to take.
Dayna eyed the bottles for a suspicious moment. “Healing potions?”
Vari nodded. “Brewed them myself before we left Citadel.”
The ranger took the bottles and tucked them into her backpack. “Hope they don’t hurt as fucking much as your bone-fixing trick,” she said as she refastened the straps.
Vari added a wicked twist to her smile. “Just try not to break anything.”
“Except a couple of reiver skulls if they get in my way?”
“No-one I care to know, so be my guest.”
Braemar strode over to Dayna and caught her unawares in a bear hug. She stiffened and snarled at first, then relaxed a little, clearly not as uncomfortable as she wanted Braemar to think she was. He set her down and Dayna made a show of dusting off her leather armor.
Mark took a step forward, but Dayna fixed him with a cold glare. “Take one more step, warlock, and you’ll be talking around one of my arrow shafts.”
Mark raised his hands and stepped back. “Fine, fine. Just be careful then, okay?”
Dayna rolled her eyes. “Right, it’s pretty clear you all think I’m going to die in there, so thanks for the votes of confidence, fuckers.”
She turned on her heel and strode off towards the tunnel.
Mark couldn’t help himself. “If you don’t make it, can I have my sword back?” he called after her.
Dayna didn’t even break her stride as she raised her hand and gave him the three-fingered goat-breeding salute. Then she was gone, her diminutive form swallowed by the darkness.
29
The night was refreshingly cool after the hot day. A few of the villagers made the most of it, unloading a wagon-load of fresh fruit and vegetables by torchlight, stocking the fortress larders via one of Citadel’s secret passageways. This was their first full harvest, one made possible by Denniston’s daily “fast grow” spells.
It’d been a busy day for Denniston. The river nearby was up, thanks to snow melt, and Denniston had made the most of the fresh mountain water, getting another brew of pilsener under way. He’d learned long ago that the highland waters added a crisper, punchier edge to his beers, making his flatland brews taste a bit tame by comparison. They were still damned good, if he did say so himself, but nothing quite beat that underlying vibrance of mountain spring water.
He took another sip from his mug, savoring the balance of hoppiness and caramel he’d achieved with his red ale, enjoying the tingling sensation as his essence pool was replenished by the brew’s alchemical infusions. To Denniston’s mind, brewing and alchemy went hand in hand, a lesson he’d enthusiastically fermented in his apprentices over of the years.
He looked up at the stars, made ever more brilliant by the absence of the moon on this “new moon” evening. It was a fine view from up here on Citadel’s battlements, a place where a man could happily drink and think to his heart’s content.
Denniston glanced along the battlements toward the ranger leading tonight’s watch. A tall, lean woman by the name of Abigail. The other rangers just called her Gail on account of her ability to expel wind with remarkable volume and musicality. He shook his head, an amused smile hidden behind his white whiskers. Rangers seemed to build their identities on four stout pillars. Hunting, drinking, physical prowess and grossness. In fact, a ranger who could spit like a cobra, fart like thunder and swear like a poet was readily forgiven flaws in their other three pillars.
; Gail noticed his regard and nodded a greeting. Then she popped a pair of long fingers in her mouth and let off a sharp whistle. Her call was answered once, twice, thrice, as the rangers on the other walls let her know that all was well. Four rangers on duty, four off, getting some much needed rest in the quarters that the villagers had kindly built for them. Denniston sorely wished he could have summoned more, but there simply weren’t enough rangers to go around these days. Reiver raids were becoming more prevalent along the mountain passes, not to mention the more troubling incidents like the loss of Calder’s mine to monstrosities from the Barrens. And latter incidents were starting to outnumber the former. Had Denniston been of a brooding nature, he might have slipped into a gloom and doom forecast of the future. He took another sip. There was no point in frightening oneself silly by staring into the dark. The dawn always came, no matter how dark night was. Even on a moonless night like tonight.
And they had the warlock, of course. He looked up to where the jagged silhouettes of peaks blotted out the stars, and wondered how Mark and his companions were doing. Denniston had been to the edge of the Barrens himself, once. That was enough for him. The place gave him the screaming willies. Perhaps he’d simply read too many stories about the-
His thought was cut short by a grunt to his right and the wet, unmistakable sound of a heavy blade chopping through gristle and muscle. Denniston had grown up next door to a butchery, so was quite familiar with the damp crunch and slice of metal against flesh. Yet still the gorge rose to his throat as Gail’s tall frame crumbled under the repeated assault of axe blows. Her blood splattered across her assailants’ naked torsos, mottling their jaundiced skin with dots and streaks of arterial red.
“Denniston?” Citadel’s voice buzzed like a mosquito next to his ear.
“I see them, Citadel,” Denniston whispered back.