by Jim Galford
Coming around the end of a large pillar that had fallen long ago, Oria slid to a stop and backpedalled when she saw another group of ghouls. This time, they stood guard at the very house she was trying to reach. The loose perimeter of ghouls around that solitary structure left little doubt that it was what they were protecting.
“We lost the house,” Oria told the elves with her. “We’ll need to signal to Norum’s troops when they get closer.”
“Things going sideways dealing with government troops…that’s new,” mumbled one of the male elves sarcastically, shaking his head. “What now? Do we leave or stay? I believe we can take out the ghouls, but only if this is all of them.”
“We need to stay,” Oria told them, glancing around the edge of the pillar again. “Fighting may not be the best use of our time, though.”
Now that Oria got a better look at what was happening at the house, she began to panic. Just having a group of eight ghouls guarding the hideout was bad enough, but she now saw that there were bodies being dragged in by zombies, something Oria had not expected to see in these lands. All of the bodies were well-dressed and some she saw were dressed more like the wizards that had trained her brother. Some actually were wizards she had met back at the tunnels.
“He’s found it,” whispered Oria, thumping her head against the stone. “He’s got the healing circle. Arturis is making more like himself. That’s the only reason he would bring wizards there.”
“Excuse me?” Lyra asked incredulously. “He took over the city pretty much by himself. What are we still doing here if there’s going to be more? We should be halfway to Old Fosrin by now.”
Oria looked around at the buildings closest to the house, searching for anything that could be collapsed onto it. There were a few candidates, but she had no means to do anything like that, even if she had the idea.
“We’ve got to destroy that place,” she warned Lyra and the others. “Even if we’re running afterward, that’s a priority. The circle has to fall. I will not leave that monster in control of the only healing circle in these lands.”
Though they scowled, the elves began drawing weapons and fitting strings to bows. They might be unsavory people, but Oria had to respect their dedication once a plan was in motion.
“Have you ever worked with explosives?” asked Lyra, pulling a bundle out of her backpack.
“Not really. I can set some clever traps, but I’ve never used anything like that.”
Setting the bundle on the ground, Lyra unwrapped a sealed wooden box. At one end was a wick that stuck out only slightly.
“Light it and run?” asked Oria, tapping the wick.
“Nope, it’s a decoy,” Lyra replied, grinning happily. “The wick doesn’t do anything. Light it if you think someone will try to disarm it. Otherwise, ignore that.”
Flipping the box over, Lyra pointed out a small round section of the box that was slightly raised from the rest.
“There’s a large spring in here,” Lyra went on. “The stuff that explodes…I don’t even know what it is. Bought it from someone not exactly willing to share his secrets. It works and works well. He claimed it was magical, but that might be a lie.”
Turning the round section with her palm, Lyra smiled as the box clicked loudly.
“It’s primed now,” she explained. “If you turn that panel halfway around, it’ll explode about a minute later, killing everything in a few feet around it. You don’t want to still be there when that happens. If you’re going to die anyway, throw the whole box down on the floor and it’ll go off. Try not to drop it by accident.”
Lyra shoved the box into Oria’s hands and then unslung a bow from her own back. She did a quick check of her sword, knives, and then counted the arrows in a small quiver at her side.
“We can clear the way in, but then you’re on your own. If you get back out, we’ll escort you somewhere safe,” the woman told Oria.
The five elves then took off, climbing the nearby walls and the fallen pillar to find strategic positions to fire from. In seconds, Oria could not pick out where any of them were anymore.
“Not the plan I was hoping for,” Oria told herself, nervously slinging the box under one arm.
After taking a slow, deep breath, Oria tried to steady herself. She had no idea what she was going to do, but also knew she could not exactly back out at this point.
Suddenly, there was the twang of a bowstring and a distant thump of an arrow striking flesh. Snarls and hisses echoed off the stones as the ghouls started running toward a nearby alley, even as more arrows pelted them from rooftops.
Oria just ran, not really thinking as she went. The ghouls that had guarded the front entrance of the house were all gone, though she could still see them nearby, crawling up the side of buildings after their prey. That left the house’s open gates the most direct route, despite the half dozen zombies slowly dragging fresh bodies into the house’s front yard.
Gagging at the smell as she darted around the zombies—who appeared totally unaware of her presence—Oria raced into the home’s courtyard.
Estin had warned her during their last visit about Sirella’s traps in the yard, but Oria saw that they had all been set off already. Broken zombies lay in several places, some burned as if by acid.
Going straight to the main room of the house, Oria saw bodies piled into neat stacks like kindling. The door to the basement was open and she heard noises from below. Arturis’ people were already downstairs.
Oria sniffed at the room, trying to get past the initial smell of decay and death. She could faintly make out Sirella’s people, though none of their bodies were in the piles that Oria could see, they might well have escaped.
Easing herself into the stairwell, Oria carefully took each step, bringing her padded feet down as softly as she could manage. It was painstakingly slow and her calf muscles began to cramp, but she would not hurry herself for fear of being overheard.
As she neared the bottom step, she began to see more clearly by a light in the lower room that there were blood trails leading from the steps. Judging by scent, the bodies were being dragged down there. That removed any doubt she had that Arturis had found the circle itself. He would have no other reason to be down there.
Oria leaned slowly around the edge of the wall, peeking into the study where the secret entrance to the caves had been. Though nothing had changed in the study itself, the hidden panel on the east wall was open and Oria watched a zombie disappear into its hallway, carrying a woman’s body.
Vaguely, Oria wondered how Arturis had found the hidden room without rummaging around, but it was not the time to really worry about that.
Sliding around the lip of the wall, Oria moved up to the beginning of the cave. From farther down the hallway, she could hear movement and soft-spoken words of magic. The voice was unmistakably Arturis. She took another step into the stone hall and realized that a shallow grave lay near the entrance to the study, as though a corpse had been dug up.
Heart beating wildly, Oria put her hand on the box Lyra had given her. She planted her palm on the small round panel and twisted, feeling the spring engage and begin vibrating slightly.
“Who’s there?” called out Arturis, making Oria freeze. “Undead, come here immediately.”
Knowing she had mere seconds before Arturis knew it was not one of his walking corpses, Oria shoved the box into the doorframe and began running for the stairs.
Oria ran as hard as she could down the paneled hallway, grabbing the beam that supported the basement walls, and swung around the corner without having to slow down. As she navigated the sharp turn and made it onto the first steps, she ran fully into three zombies stumbling down the stairs, one dragging a corpse with it.
There was a brief moment when even the walking corpses seemed surprised at Oria. Then it was gone and broken jaws opened in groaning desire, all three creatures reaching for her, their previous orders forgotten. Their snarls were louder than Oria remembered, amplified by the na
rrow confines.
Somewhere behind Oria, she could hear boots running in the stone hallway. Time was running out and not just with the trap.
Using the narrow staircase to her advantage, Oria kicked the knee of the first zombie, causing it to buckle. The creature was too slow and stupid to catch itself and it fell in a heap at her feet, still trying to grab at her.
Oria rushed up the stairs, drawing her knives and slashing wildly at the hands and occasionally mouths of the two zombies in her path, pushing past them as best she could. When she did manage to get past, one grabbed onto her cloak, nearly yanking her off her feet as she choked.
Using her knife, Oria hacked off the clasp of the cloak, causing the zombie to overbalance and fall backward down the steps into its companions.
Oria looked back down as she ran, just in time to see Arturis come around the corner and trip over the zombies. With an angry cry, the Turessian slammed into the steps face first, having to push aside his reaching zombies to attempt to regain his feet.
The three creatures clawed at him as much as the air, slowing Arturis and giving Oria a few precious seconds to reach the top of the staircase.
Practically throwing herself through the doorway, Oria could hear Arturis pounding up the stairs behind her. As she entered the room, one of the elves she had traveled there with was waiting alongside the door.
The instant Oria was through the frame, the elf reached over and touched the air where the door would be if it were closed. The air shimmered briefly and then solidified just as Arturis slammed into it.
“You think I cannot bring this down?” the Turessian bellowed, leaning to one side to see the elf. “Both of you will—”
An explosion below shook the whole house and filled the staircase with smoke and debris, flinging Arturis against the stairwell wall. Then, the smoke darkened enough that Oria could no longer see the other side of the barrier.
“We need to go before he gets back up,” the elf told Oria, grabbing her arm and hurrying her outside.
As they went, Oria was stunned to find all of the ghouls lying in twisted poses on the ground outside the house, with arrows protruding from them. Most appeared to have been slashed at by small weapons and in the courtyard, a half dozen zombies had been destroyed in similar fashion.
“Second building on the left,” the man told her, turning to head a different direction. “See you soon.”
Oria went where she was told, though she felt dazed. Her heart had been pounding so long that she was not sure she would be able to stay on her feet much longer, but the need to escape overrode that dizziness.
She ran to the building indicated, finding another abandoned structure that was heavily damaged from the original coming of the mists to Corraith a year earlier. Slipping through the doorway, Oria found that the inside was in little better shape, with bits of the ceiling crumbling even at her light steps. Whatever had once been in the place was long gone, though.
“End of the hall, take a left,” came Lyra’s voice from somewhere ahead.
Oria looked around at the floor, trying to spot any indication that someone had come through before her, but the dust and debris appeared untouched. That, she told herself, was a trick she dearly wanted to learn.
She followed the voice, navigating around several sections of the building that she was not sure would survive her passing. Finally, she came into a smaller room at the bottom of a crumbling staircase, where a group of elves waited for her.
Sitting as though they belonged in the room, the five elves that Oria had come with were now accompanied by Sirella, who was grinning broadly. The woman was seated directly across from Lyra and looked as though she had been in the middle of talking when Oria had arrived.
“You know each other?” Oria asked in surprise, looking from Sirella to Lyra. “Or is this just a ‘we survived’ celebration?”
Sirella and Lyra laughed until they descended into giggles. It was then that Oria realized the similar hue to their hair and build.
“Sisters,” Oria sighed, sitting down. “I’m not sure it’s a good thing to reunite you two, but it’s good to have an extra set of hands.”
“I thought my little sis was long dead,” Sirella told her. “The rest of these guys worked for me on and off over the last few years. They were the last people I expected to find while watching the hideout. Mostly, I’ve tried to keep the place hidden from these types of people.”
“These types?” Lyra demanded, laughing again. “You taught me everything I know.”
“Exactly! You’re crowding my style.”
A distant rumble and crack made Oria leap to her feet.
“We need to get out of here,” she told the group. “Arturis will be looking.”
“Yes,” Sirella told her, standing as well. “He will be. However, he’ll be looking at the gates, the hole in the wall, and every passage out of this town. The one place he won’t look is right in the middle of the city, which is where we are.”
Still trembling with the need to run, Oria surveyed the room, looking for any other way out if they were found. Aside from the door she came through, only the staircase held any promise.
“Let me show you something, Oria.”
Taking Oria by the hand, Sirella led her up the broken and in places lopsided stairs, circling around the building several times. At last, they came out onto a roof far above many of the nearby buildings, giving Oria her first good look at the area. Despite the lack of mountains or trees, she realized that the place was actually quite beautiful in its own desolate sort of way.
“Can you see it to the north?” asked Sirella, leaning on the stone edge of the wall. “Over there.”
Searching the horizon, Oria finally saw what the woman was indicating. About an hour’s walk north of the city was a long wall of mists, glowing faintly in the afternoon light. If she had never seen mists before, Oria would have thought it was a trick of the heat and light.
“They started moving this way in lurches, about four hours ago,” Sirella continued. “I doubt a horse at full stride could outrun it. They go moving the moment Arturis took over that circle.”
“It doesn’t appear to be moving now.”
Sirella pointed to a spot just a little west of where they had been looking. “See that hill? Watch it carefully.”
While Oria watched, the hill vanished into the mists. A second or two later, another hill vanished, followed by a set of stones that stuck out of the sand. The mists were definitely still moving.
“How long until they get here?” she asked the elven woman.
“If they keep this speed, probably middle of the night or near dawn. If they speed back up again, maybe three hours. Four at most.”
“Why aren’t you scared?”
Sirella smiled and shrugged. “My city’s broken, kid. A little mist won’t make it worse. If we’re lucky, it’ll even scare off the crazy dead guy. Besides, the mists change directions a lot. It’ll probably miss us completely.”
They watched the mists drifting toward them for a long time, until finally Sirella looked over at Oria and asked, “If we survive all this and get the city back, you need a job?”
“I’m not a thief.”
“No, but you work like one. Not everyone I hire is a thief.”
Oria finally looked away from the mists and up at Sirella.
“When we finish here, we’ll be leaving these lands,” she told the woman. “My family is going home. Dad has the maps and mom can find a way to get us through any terrain. I don’t care if it takes the rest of my life, I’ll see the mountains again. Then, I’ll finally feel like I can mourn my brother properly.”
Smiling, Sirella turned back to the horizon. “For a bunch of fuzzy savages from a crazy place where you get snow, you sure do think big. I liked that about your father and I like that about you. Job offer is always open if you change your mind.”
Through what was left of the day, the group passed the time in idle chatter, much of it focused a
round insane feats of thievery or skill that they had accomplished. Oria did not join in, preferring to sit on the steps, listening to the others and keeping an eye on the sky outside so that she did not lose track of the time.
When the sky finally began to dim, Oria gathered up the remains of a shattered chair and went back to the top of the building. Looking to the east, she searched for a little while until she saw the approaching mass of people that would be her parents and the army.
Digging through her pouches, Oria soon found the small bits of wood that her mother had given her. They had been soaked in something—Oria had no clue or interest in what—that she had been told would make them burn bright red.
The red flames were to be the warning for the army not to approach. A second set of sticks were in another pouch that would burn green, indicating that everything was wide open for the army to approach without fear and that Arturis was nowhere to be found. Lack of a fire was to let her parents know that she had either failed or that she had been unable to reach a safe location to set the fire, so they should only approach with caution.
Oria picked a spot in the middle of the roof, where the flames would not be easily visible from within the city. Piling up the broken pieces of furniture, she tossed the sticks onto the kindling. Taking out a flint and some steel, she was able to easily get the fire burning, the eerie red glow making everything around her look bizarre.
Going to the eastern edge of the roof, Oria sat down and waited. Once the fire was burned out and the army turned around, she would go back to her family. Maybe by then Phaesys would have calmed down and they could talk about what had happened like adults.
Chapter Fifteen
“Infiltration”
I had come to another of those moments in my life where I could no longer let myself believe that life would just continue idly on, unchanged. For all the stupid things I’d done, I had never attempted to invade a city.