“I followed a man’s name down here, but the name ‘Gremly’ is my current interest.”
“I don’t see why. Nothing good comes out of there. Don’t go in or you’ll bound to become part of the undead that guard it.”
“Undead guards?”
“That’s right. Everyone knows the dead watch over that misty place.”
“For what purpose?”
“Who knows, but they’ve been doing it all this time.”
“And people have seen these corpses or ghosts?”
“Seeing them means you’re soon to be dead yourself, so no one alive has seen them, but what proof do you need besides the people that always go missing? Beasts and men leave trails to follow. I personally believe it’s an ancient cult of vampires, though that wouldn’t quite explain what they do with the corpses they take.”
“Corpses have been taken?”
“Aye, and not just from our town, but half a dozen others to the south and a few in the north. Every few weeks or months a grave will be missing its occupant. Sometimes they’ve been dead ten days, sometimes ten years. As though our living aren’t enough for them, they have to defile our dead.”
She spoke a little longer, but about other topics that had less and less to do with Gremly.
I rented a room for a few days, giving Clarissa and I time to accrue more stories and rest up a bit before we began exploring the peripheries of the forest. What we heard more than anything else was how foggy the interior of the forest always was, no matter the time of day. Despite all the ghost stories, no one ever seemed to actually experience anything amiss. And since locals knew better, most people that ended up vanishing were either new arrivals looking to forage under the winding canopy or were adventure seekers wanting to make a name for themselves. Still, these were perhaps not as common as they once were. The stolen corpses really did seem like the most up-to-date piece of news.
When a clear sky and a half moon was rising one late evening, we headed for our first venture inside the forest itself. To keep from getting separated, I tied a thin rope to one of the strings that connected Aranath’s scabbard to my belt and tied the other end to Clarissa’s right wrist. We could separate as much as ten feet before the rope became too taut for comfort, but we usually stayed half as close as that. Knowing I couldn’t be too careful here, I had Aranath unsheathed the moment we were out of sight from other people.
Not including the sluggish air I had sensed thirty miles out, the first hundred yards of Gremly wasn’t anything special, though the wild shapes of the thin and distorted trees played with the imagination. The mist we heard about was forming around us, and anytime a big enough puff contacted our skin, it felt like a licked finger of an old woman stroking that exposed area. I used the blade to mark the trees as we went along, hoping not only to use them as a guide to head back, but also when we returned later.
Clarissa was the first to notice the almost complete absence of sound. I was trying so hard to see something, I hadn’t realized there was nothing to hear. No owl hooted on a creaking branch, no snake hissed as it slithered in the fallen leaves, and no trapped fly buzzed in a spider’s web. Clarissa couldn’t stand it after a while and started humming a song about a clumsy prince we had heard in the festival. I think she expected me to say something against it, since I was expecting much the same, but I never did.
“Interesting,” said Aranath about an hour into the excursion. “I wasn’t convinced at first, but now I know it’s no mere delusion. Something is disturbing your prana. It’s subtle, but it’s there. I cannot be certain what type of spell it is, but it’s safe to say that it’s affecting either the whole mind or a specific sense, likely in an attempt to disorient someone without their knowing it. As I do not see what else could be causing it, I’m going to assume the fog or something it’s concealing is to blame. But to think an entire forest is enchanted. Deep magic indeed… Stay still a moment and let me sense what it does in response…”
I did as he asked, telling Clarissa to stay still so that I could plan out our next move. For the next several minutes, I sensed Aranath sending a trace of his power into me, a power that felt a great deal like the kind he used to remove my mind rune.
The sword finally said, “It’s not the fog, or at least it’s not only the fog. I suspected as much. A spell meant to ward off invaders wouldn’t be very effective if it could simply be blown away. Wherever it comes from matters little. Walk slowly and I will be able to learn how to nullify the spell’s effectiveness.”
This was one of the few times I heard Aranath excited about something. Not only was he diverting himself with work, but with a new challenge. I don’t think Gremly had intrigued him until now.
His amusement helped ease my own nerves, but I was still glad when we left the damned place a few hours later. It was strange. Not once did I see or hear danger approach, not even the sense that I was being watched, but I had never before felt as though I was in greater risk of losing myself. I speculated that Clarissa’s vampire nature helped her cope better than if she were a human, which she said as much herself after we reentered our room. Informing her of what the dragon told me, I said that another night in the forest and we likely wouldn’t have to worry about suffering from the disorientation that others had experienced.
“So you’re corruption can sense the spell over Gremly?”
“Not my corruption, but the sword holding it back.”
“The sword? How is it letting you know these things?”
I sighed, knowing I shouldn’t have said my last sentence. “It’s not just enchanted. It’s connected to a summoned beast.”
She cocked her head. “So that’s the voice in your head?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because at first it wasn’t your business, and now it’s because I don’t want to lie to you.”
“Lie about what?”
“About exactly what summoned beast I have in my possession.”
“Why do you have to lie about that?”
“Because you might start thinking I’m something I’m not, or, gods forbid, other people more knowledgeable about history find out who it is I carry.”
“You don’t trust I could keep it secret?”
“I think I trust you with my life, but this is really something I don’t want to touch on, not until it can do me any good, anyway.”
“You trust me with your life?”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean we can have sex now?”
“No.”
“Aw, why not?”
“Because you’re still not quite at the point I need you to be.”
“What point?”
“Don’t worry, you’re close.”
“You’re just being annoying.”
“I don’t care.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The next night was spent inside the vaporous borders of Gremly, with Aranath requesting another night to definitively make certain he had familiarized himself to the spell’s eccentricities. When he finally believed he had, I felt prepared to begin exploring the verdant depths. Since the vampire couldn’t profit from the dragon’s power, we still kept the rope secured to one another.
It was quite a difference walking through the forest with Aranath at the helm. Sound seemed to return to the forest, and while it wasn’t as though birds sang with glee or herds of deer stamped nearby, I at least picked up the sporadic sounds of a beating bat’s wings and a mouse skipping into a shrub. Of course, all this did was make a nearly impossible goal into a foreboding one. The forest covered a huge area, and my guard still needed to be up for any corporeal enemy. Without having to worry as much about the enigmatic sway of the imperceptible spell, I was determined to spend the next few days in the forest and dare something to show itself.
The daylight did not alter the mood at all. The mist stayed dense and the tree tops held back most of the sunlight. I began to think that even if vampires
weren’t the ones behind everything, some had to have been benefitting from the sun’s lack of power here. For two days we walked deeper into the woodland, not seeing or sensing any threat around us. Our main trek remained a westward one, but with a zigzagging design to it, hoping that gave me my best chance at stumbling to anything suspicious. When we could, we also climbed a tree to better observe our surroundings. It was this very technique that produced something of note.
I was perched on a high branch that provided a view above the canopy. Clarissa watched with me on another, slightly lower, branch. For several minutes we waited to see if anything stirred under the ineffectual morning light peeking over the horizon. Then, in the middle of deciding whether I should head back down, I distinguished something a little different from everything else. It looked like a tendril of mist at first, but its color was a shade darker and it rose higher and faster than the hovering fog around it. I ogled it a little longer to make sure I was seeing it correctly, and once I confirmed that it must have been steam or smoke, we climbed down and headed in the northern direction it laid some thousand yards away.
Seven hundred yards closer and a small flock of sparrows fluttered away in front of us. They flew over our heads as fast as their diminutive wings could take them. We froze and stared intently to see if whatever spooked the birds would appear. Standing fifty feet away, a pair of twenty foot tall trees quivered. I expected the ground to rumble or a gust of wind to reach me as a result, but neither happened. Instead, the trees shook more and their bark creaked and groaned like an old man waking up on an even older bed. One of the trees curved its cylindrical body, revealing a kind of warped pair of stiff, hollow eyes ten feet up its gray trunk.
“A woodland sprite,” said Aranath. “Mostly mindless flora that help guard precious areas of forest in their natural realm. They can manipulate anything their long roots connect with, so watch every flank.”
Verifying the dragon’s warning, the ground under the tree facing us began to spasm. Then, like striking snakes, some vines dangling on the tree near me propelled toward my sword wielding arm. One of the vines curled around my elbow, but it alone wasn’t strong enough to prevent itself from snapping from a jerk of my arm. The ground under the other tree began stirring as well. Its attack came from beneath us. Tree roots sprang up from the dirt and wrapped itself around the rope, pulling it down that same instant. Before the rope dragged us down with it, I cut the link and told Clarissa to stay beside me. I backed away, pulling out two dragon stones at the same time. I threw them at one of the trees, but before they got halfway across, some vines knocked them out of the way.
“I guess trees can see pretty well,” I muttered. “Let’s try to get around them.”
An hour after some careful prodding, I discovered many more awakened sprites encircling the area. Almost all of them were grouped in pairs, if not trios. The entire forest seemed to be rasping and moaning as they tried grasping at us, but we found their range to be limited to about sixty or seventy feet. None also appeared to have been all that fooled by several tries of my illusion spell. Aranath speculated that they used their roots to sense vibrations, or lack of them, so they didn’t react to something that couldn’t affect its environment.
“Now what?” Clarissa asked.
“This place won’t be defeated subtly. My fire will work, but we need a way to make sure they just don’t slap the stones out of the way.”
After a minute thinking it over, Clarissa said, “Oh! What if we protect the fire stones in my water spell so that- Oh, I guess wet stones won’t ignite, will they?”
“Actually, I think you’re on to something. My fire stones should remain potent enough to burn even after being doused in water. Let’s test that now.”
As I took out a stone, I felt somewhat ashamed that the strategies I tried concocting didn’t bring in Clarissa’s abilities. I had to keep that in mind for future reference. Once I set the stone on the ground, she cast her water spell, creating a bubble of water around the rock. With the water still enclosing it, I set off the stone. The water burst in a hiss of steam, and while it didn’t last as long as a dry stone, the dragon fire still lasted long enough to melt the outside of the rock.
“That’s quite a flame,” she said.
“It can burn down half this forest if we’re not careful. Let’s find the best clearing we can so we don’t have to worry about running from a forest fire.”
We ultimately found a pair of sprites surrounded by only a relative handful of regular trees. I summoned ten dragon stones, which Clarissa then wrapped around with a ball of water. She breathed in and out a few times before firing her sphere of water at the first sprite. As before, vines and roots whipped at the threat, some with sufficient force to knock away several stones out of the watery barrier, but not all. The instant the projectile crashed into the sprite, I triggered my spell. The exploding steam made it difficult to see what happened, but a red flame glowing behind the fading haze soon made it clear that the plan was a success.
As the dragon fire spread, a disturbing moaning came from the dying sprite. Its bark popped and the ground beneath it shivered until the crackling of the fire became the only discernible sound. With some regret, Clarissa fired off the second water sphere. A few minutes after that and we freely slinked past the charred trunks of the dead sprites. There was of course the chance more sprites lied deeper in, so we continued to move with the heightened attentiveness we had been carrying the last few days. However, except for the sprites we already knew of, no others made themselves known.
What did appear a hundred and fifty yards later was what initially looked like a pile of black boulders, but what turned out to be the collapsed corner tower of a small fort. This buckled left half appeared to be sunken into the ground itself, as though it were in a mire, though the ground here was as firm as anywhere else in the forest. The right half appeared less debilitated, though the top of its squared tower was overgrown with vines and curtains of moss dangling from every crack. The tower stuck up for fifty feet, but every tree nearby dwarfed it. Just behind the visible part of the fort stood a particularly tall tree, which likely sprouted from a courtyard the rubble now hid. At the lowermost portion of the intact tower was a large wooden door. I wanted nothing more than to burst in, but reason reined me in.
We circled the fort, finding that the other corner towers and the walls they connected to were nothing more than an unmovable ruin. I couldn’t tell where the steam or smoke originated from, but it couldn’t have been far off. For a while Clarissa and I watched for any signs of movement or traps, but there eventually came a point when there was nothing left to do but open that door.
We inched our way to the seemingly dead structure. I tapped Aranath on the soil ahead of me, making sure no rune was hidden there. I finally tapped him into the thick door itself. Only the magic of sound echoed back. I slowly pushed open the heavy door. The metal fasteners squeaked and a mustiness escaped from the inside. Nothing else reacted to the opening access. The tower’s empty innards were swathed in darkness and looked no bigger than a large room of a small house. The obvious way to go was a staircase that hugged the wall. A somewhat less obvious way was a trapdoor at the far corner of the room.
Once we found that the stairway led to nothing but dusty rooms, I hovered over the trapdoor and grabbed its metal latch.
Before I started lifting it, I said, in the quietest whisper possible, “I’ll go down first. Don’t follow me until you hear some commotion.”
The crack created when I lifted the flap half an inch high revealed a sharp light streaking out the opening. Luckily, the hinges were discreet as I wanted them to be. I opened the flap completely, allowing me to see the sturdy ladder leading down to a stony floor. I waited by the admittance for several moments, taking in the odd mixture of smells that stemmed from the underground level. Every whiff I sucked in either gave me the impression that I was in a garden of blossoming lilacs or standing over a rotting corpse. I then heard humming
, though whoever was producing it couldn’t carry a tune very well. It sounded far away enough for me to begin climbing down the ladder, which I did with equally parts speed and stealth.
The basement I entered was larger than I anticipated, and would have been larger still were it not for the wall of black stone that came from the sunken side of the fort. The ladder was near the middle of the room, and all of the light came from four runes etched on the ceiling. Shelves filled with scrolls and books lined up against every wall. There were also a dozen tables of different sizes strewn about. As well as being topped with texts of some kind, they had dozens of vials and flasks chaotically scattered about on them.
Two doors were closed, but an open one led down to a dark hallway, which did not have the benefit of light runes lining the ceiling. Alongside one of the walls were a pair of beds. One had a petite young girl with short brown hair sleeping on her side. The other I assumed belonged to the man sitting with his back to me. He was topped with shaggy red hair and wore a long green tunic.
With the nimblest steps I had ever taken, I made my way to the seated figure. Aranath was at the ready in one hand and I clutched an explosive stone in the other. The bad humming continued unabated as the skinny figure jotted down something in a hefty tome with a small quill pen. The oblivious writer never paused to breathe or look about himself. A light rune shining directly above him bent my shadow away from him. I let the stone to fall so that I could grab his frayed hair. At the same instant, I slipped my blade against his throat. The cold steel pressing against his damp skin made him yelp, stirring the girl awake.
When her groggy eyes saw what was happening, she jumped out of bed and shrieked out, “No! Don’t hurt him!”
Unware that running toward me was not a good idea, I had to say, “Stay back, girl. The way this works is that no one does anything foolish and just maybe no one gets hurt.”
Her feet stopped, but her words still rushed at me, exclaiming, “Please! Rathmore hasn’t hurt anyone!”
The Lone Dragon Knight Page 20