by Dorian Hart
Was it odd that her feeling of missing Pewter was greater than her grief over Mrs. Horn?
She set down her pen and looked to see what the others were doing.
Ernie and Morningstar had searched the kitchen behind the bar. The little monsters had been helping themselves to the food stores, but all of them had flown out to attack when fresh humans had showed up. Kibi and Tor were just coming down from the second floor.
“Two more bodies up there,” said Kibi morosely. “Both in the hallway, like they knew somethin’ was up but couldn’t escape in time. Also a dead flyin’ thing they squashed before it got ’em. Oughta bury ’em all, I suppose, like Dranko said.”
Aravia returned her notebook to her pack and wrinkled her nose. She felt badly for the dead patrons, she truly did, though like Mrs. Horn they immediately became objects of low priority once deceased.
“There could be more monsters,” warned Grey Wolf. “In the other buildings or still flying around outside. Whatever we do, we should stick together.”
At least Grey Wolf was still thinking straight. That was important. The boys would follow his lead, and things were still at a delicate balance after Mrs. Horn’s death. She’d need to look out for ways to keep the mission from falling apart.
Dranko said some sort of rites over the bodies of the dead. Aravia had been curious about Dranko’s channeling powers and was disappointed not to have witnessed them even aside from the tragic consequence of his failure. Divine magics were a different beast altogether from arcanism as the power came from Gods rather than the air. Today’s events had not disabused her of the belief that arcane magic was obviously superior, not being beholden to the changeable whims of supernatural beings.
Tor picked up one of the little furry corpses. “We killed monsters!” Then he blushed, probably realizing he shouldn’t be gloating at a time like this. “Little monsters, sure, but monsters,” he said more somberly. “Abernathy was right.”
Ernie approached her. His face was still a mess, dust and grime sticking to his tear-streaked cheeks. He tried to smile, but it didn’t work out very well. “Aravia, you gave me something to be positive about. You saved my life. Your magic is amazing.”
Yes, that was true. “That was minor arcanokinesis,” she explained. “My own compacted variant. Only a theory until just now, but it’s nice to see it verified. I think I can make it faster.”
“Er, yes…” said Ernie. His expression showed mild interest with little comprehension. When Serpicore had sent her into town on errands, she had seen that look on the face of everyone she chatted with. Alas, as much as she detested Serpicore’s inflexible teaching methods, he was the only person she had ever met who matched her scholarly acumen. (Except for Abernathy, presumably, but she wasn’t expecting a sit-down chat with him any time soon.)
Tor walked up to her and held out the body of the whatever-it-was. For some inexplicable reason she found it a charming gesture. “Aravia, do you know what this is?”
She had studied many disciplines, but monster-lore was not one of them. “I have no idea. But you should be proud of how you helped dispatch them.”
Tor’s face lit up at the compliment. “I was talking with Mrs. Horn on the journey here, and she said I ought to come up with a name for us. In the old stories, famous bands of heroes always had names.”
“Are we a famous band of heroes now?” asked Dranko bitterly. “Will they tell the saga of how we let an old woman get killed by a gopher-bug?”
Tor fell silent. He was a good person, brave and idealistic. Aravia wouldn’t deny that he was physically attractive, too; such a pity he was so hopelessly simpleminded. Not that most people she had met were up to her intellectual standards, but Tor was more like a puppy in the body of a man. Oh well.
“Speaking of those creatures,” she said, “I’m reasonably certain that flying carnivorous gopher-bugs are not indigenous to the Greatwood. Where did these things come from? Why did they attack Verdshane? It’s a near-certainty their presence here is related to Abernathy’s magical prison door.”
“And were we the first people to show up since the attack?” asked Morningstar. She was picking bits of chestnut fur from the flanges of her weapon. She hadn’t said much since Mrs. Horn’s death, but her eyes were damp and her jaw trembled.
“We don’t know how long ago it happened,” said Grey Wolf, “but the bodies look fairly fresh to me. Couldn’t have been more than a few days. But let’s say someone showed up since then, what would they have done? Probably either run away, or stayed to fight and ended up dead. Hells, some of these poor sots might have come in just like we did and gotten chewed to death for their trouble.”
“Abernathy’s Company,” said Tor.
The others looked confused, but Aravia knew right away what Tor was talking about. “What do you say?” continued Tor, looking around. “It was one of the last things Mrs. Horn and I talked about, and I really think we ought to have a name. Anyone have a better one?”
“Who cares?” said Dranko exasperatedly. “Sure, fine, if it makes you happy.”
“I don’t know,” said Grey Wolf. “Abernathy’s not my favorite person in the world right now.”
“Then what about Horn’s Company?” Tor suggested. “To honor her memory.”
Aravia didn’t care much one way or the other, but it would help the group move past their grief and get on with the mission if they felt like they still had some connection with the recently departed.
“I like it,” she said. “Tor, that’s a beautiful idea.”
“Speaking of Abernathy,” said Morningstar, “let’s remember what Aravia said and not lose track of why we’re here.”
“Agreed,” said Aravia. “But our destination isn’t here, it’s the ruins to the north, remember? It’s already dark outside, but I can make us some magical lights.”
She tried to sound confident as she spoke, but avoided making eye contact with anyone. She was loath to admit it, but after casting her enhanced minor arcanokinesis Aravia wasn’t certain she could cast more spells today in a controlled fashion. Every spell took something out of a wizard, and only a full night’s rest replenished one’s energy reservoir. Though Tor immediately jumped to her side, raring to go, she was spared by Grey Wolf from having to test her readiness.
“We’ll wait until tomorrow,” he said flatly. “If there’s something dangerous out there, I want to be able to see it clearly.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Dranko. “My channeling didn’t work, but even the attempt took a lot out of me. I can barely stand up. Anyway, we can stay here tonight. It’s an inn, isn’t it? I’ll bet there are real beds upstairs.”
“True,” said Kibi. “If you don’t mind steppin’ over the corpses in the hallway.”
“We should move them outside then…shouldn’t we?” asked Ernie.
Aravia shuddered at the thought but reluctantly agreed. “We should if we intend to sleep here,” she said. “Corpses are vectors for disease, not to mention the stink.”
Horn’s Company spent the next half an hour hauling the eight bodies out to the woods behind the inn. It was a gruesome task despite the corpses being lightened by blood loss. All of them had suffered ugly, ragged bite wounds to the neck. Aravia and Dranko were spared the duty of lugging the cadavers; the others carried the dead, while the two of them kept a watch for gopher-bugs or anything else that might pose a threat. Once the bodies had been collected, they took turns with an old spade discovered behind the inn, digging shallow graves for the deceased.
“If some random traveler comes by right now,” said Dranko, as Grey Wolf turned a shovelful of earth over one of the corpses, “we’re going to have a hard time explaining this.”
But no one came along, and as the moon rose above the forest the company finished its grisly business.
Dranko bowed his head as he stood over Ysabel Horn’s grave.
“Delioch, I commend Mrs. Horn to the heavens,” he said. “None of us knew her very
well, but it was obvious she had a good soul and didn’t deserve to die like this. And I’m sorry I wasn’t a more worthy vessel for your divine inspiration. Give her a place of honor in the afterlife; she deserves it.”
* * *
Back at the Shadow Chaser, Aravia sat at one of the tables that wasn’t close to a dried pool of blood. Dranko headed behind the bar. “Hey now,” he said, seeing that she was watching him. “Since we cleared out their place of monsters, I’d say we deserve a drink on the house. And I’m really in the mood to get drunk.”
No one else was paying Dranko any mind; the others were distracted by their own conversations, or had gone upstairs to inspect and air out the bedrooms. Dranko grabbed a bottle from a shelf behind him. He was unsteady on his feet, and alcohol seemed a poor choice for someone in his condition. Was the mechanism by which channeling attempts drained life force similar to the one she herself experienced when casting spells?
Even as she thought these things, Dranko stumbled and leaned heavily against the bar, dropping the bottle. It thudded to the floor, and Dranko leaned down out of sight to pick it up. Five seconds later he hadn’t stood up again.
“Dranko?” When he didn’t answer, she dashed to the bar, hoping that he had merely passed out and fearful that a heretofore undiscovered gopher-bug was chomping on his neck. But it was neither. Dranko was on his hands and knees, his head cocked, listening.
“The whiskey’s draining into somewhere,” he said. “You can hear it. And look.” He pointed to where a pool of spilled alcohol was collecting in a narrow crack between two floorboards and draining out of sight. But more than that, the crack continued around to form a fat rectangle in the floor.
“It’s a trap door,” she said. “And that bit of rope there is the handle.”
Dranko tugged on the loop of rope that stuck out from one floorboard, and the trapdoor came up about a quarter-inch, then stopped. “Locked.”
“From below,” added Aravia. “Which means someone is down there, right now.”
Still lifting the trapdoor, Dranko leaned down and put his mouth to the gap. “Hello down there! Exterminators here! We dealt with your vermin problem, so that’ll be ten talons fifty.”
“What are you doing?” Aravia made herself sound shocked, but was privately encouraged that Dranko had recovered enough to crack wise.
“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Dranko. “Whoever’s down there is hiding from the gopher-bugs. I’m letting them know it’s safe to come out now.”
“I suppose that’s likely. Let’s at least get the others over here before I shatter the lock. Just in case.”
She looked up to find the rest of the group drifting toward them anyway, no doubt curious as to what was going on behind the bar. Aravia cracked her knuckles and prepared to cast. “Dranko,” she asked, “how sturdy a lock would you say that feels like?”
Dranko pulled on the rope handle one more time. “Pretty sturdy. Why?”
“Just wondering.” Aravia had been itching to try her own improved variant of minor lockbreaker, a spell she had been calling Aravia’s lockbuster in her head. She had nearly cast it in Abernathy’s tower, and again to get into the Greenhouse, but both times she had been thwarted. Finally, here was a chance for a proper field test! Aravia twirled her fingers and uttered the words of Aravia’s lockbuster. Alas that Master Serpicore was not there to see it; he had never let her try it in his own home.
The trapdoor burst its hinges in a violent explosion, sending up a shower of wooden shards. Dranko cursed and slapped his face as a splinter lodged in his cheek. From somewhere below came the sound of scattered metal pieces clanging on stone.
“Dammit, Aravia!” Dranko barked. “There’s someone down there, remember? You could have just dropped a metal bar on their head. Let’s not kill anyone else today, okay?”
She had held the long “a” syllables of the chant for a hair too long, which combined with the motion of her left ring finger to impart too much kinetic energy to the target. Probably a result of her fatigue. She would fix that next time. “Sorry.”
Tor reached down for the rope handle. “I’ll go first.” He lifted the wooden hatch. Aravia looked around him and down into the darkness. Instinctively she cast heatless light on a mug, but this time exhaustion disturbed her execution too much, and the mug glowed brightly for only a second before collapsing into a heap of gray glass pebbles.
Maybe no more casting today.
Ernie brought over a lantern, which illuminated a steep stone staircase leading to a tiny storeroom. On the floor down below was the outline of a person, either asleep or dead. The foul smell of human waste drifted up.
“Careful!” said Ernie, as Tor descended. “There could be more gopher-bugs down there.”
When Tor returned up the stairs, he had the body over his shoulder. He set her down on the bar, and Aravia saw he had rescued a middle-aged woman wearing a stained apron over homespun work clothes. She was barely breathing, and her features were gaunt, with sunken eyes and cracked, dry skin.
Dranko moved to examine her. “Dehydrated, I think. Probably barricaded herself down there when the monsters flew in and hasn’t had anything to drink in days.” Aravia grabbed a jug of water from a shelf behind the bar and handed it to Dranko, who in turn dribbled some drops into the woman’s mouth. “When someone’s incredibly thirsty, you don’t just give them a huge glass of water. You have to let them sip just a little bit at a time.”
The woman reflexively swallowed the proffered water but didn’t regain consciousness.
“I’ll stay up with our patient,” said Dranko. “The rest of you get some sleep. Someone should be on watch all the time, though, so I’ll wake one of you up in a few hours.”
Aravia wandered upstairs with the others and picked out a room. It must have belonged to one of the victims because there was a duffel in the corner and the bed was unmade. She sat on the bed and reflexively patted it, expecting Pewter to jump up beside her, then sagged as she remembered her cat hadn’t made the journey with her. Was Serpicore feeding him? Her old master had never liked Pewter, being so averse to the horrors of cat hair on his furniture that the gray feline had been confined to her own room at all times. When they returned to the Greenhouse, she’d have to press Abernathy harder about retrieving him.
The bed itself had a wool mattress, which was plenty good enough for Aravia given the rigors of the day, and though she thought she might stay up an extra hour taking additional notes on her spells, sleep swiftly claimed her.
* * *
The woman from the cellar was named Minya; she was the owner of the Shadow Chaser. Some color had returned to her face, but her eyes were still too deep in their sockets.
“What happened here?” Aravia asked her over breakfast. Ernie had made himself at home in the kitchen and had scrambled some eggs with onions and scallions from the root cellar.
Minya’s voice was cracked and tired. She twined her fingers together as she spoke. “I wish I knew. Happened three, maybe four days ago. Lost track, hidin’ out down there. Had a room full of customers, troupe of actors goin’ from Minok to Tal Killip, couple a’ carpenters from Tal Hae headin’ the other way. Middle of a sunny day, heard the strangest noise, little bit like a thunderclap, but not exactly. Quicker, sharper noise than that. Not natural soundin’. Noise came from them creepy haunted ruins, and everyone got quiet for a minute, but that was it, and we just chalked it up to bein’ thunder after all.”
“The ruins are haunted?” asked Grey Wolf. “By what?”
“Hells if I know,” said Minya. “I’m smart enough to stay away, and so’s everyone else in these parts.”
Dranko raised an eyebrow at that. “Then how do you know they’re haunted?”
“Never mind,” said Grey Wolf before Minya could answer. “What happened then?”
“Nothin’—for about half an hour,” said Minya. “Then we heard a buzzin’ like a swarm a’ bees, and those eyeball critters came flyin’ in through the windows
and landin’ on folks’ heads and necks. Everyone was screamin’ and runnin’ around, but the little monsters just started chewin’…chewin’ people’s…”
She stopped her narrative, grabbed Dranko’s mug, and took a deep drink before continuing. “I panicked, sorry to say it. Got myself right down in the cellar when I saw one o’ them things flying at me, heard it thump a few times on the door. Heard the…the yellin’ and runnin’ around of folks dyin’ and tryin’ to fight back. When the noise died down, I tried peekin’ out, but the air was full a’ them buzzin’ monsters, so I stayed put.
“Every few hours I’d take another look, but those things weren’t leavin’, and the noise of slidin’ back the bar attracted ’em and brought ’em buzzin’ right over, so I just settled down to wait. Should a’ grabbed a water jug on the way down, I guess. And that’s about it. Storeroom had some apples, but that was all the water I got.”
“You need to rest and to keep drinking,” said Dranko. He looked at his cup. “Water would be better, though.”
“You folks can stay as long as you like. You saved my life, no mistake about it. Don’t know how I’m going to repay that.”
Aravia was impatient to get to the important part of this conversation. A thunderclap from the woods where Abernathy’s monster-prison was located? Followed by an attack of unnatural creatures? She had learned to be highly skeptical of coincidence. “We won’t be staying long,” she said. “Tell us more about the ruins.”
“Oh. Well, I only been there once, when I was a girl. You go about a half mile north a’ here, you’ll start seein’ ’em. Used to be some great city out there hundreds a’ years ago, but not much is left now ’cept a bunch a’ crumbly walls. Didn’t stay long. The whole time I was explorin’, I had a feelin’ like I wasn’t supposed to be there, that somethin’ was watchin’ over my shoulder. And there weren’t much to see, so I only went the one time.”