Gearspire: Advent

by Jeremiah Reinmiller

  Mysteries and questions hung around him like unseen flies in the crimson air; his mind buzzed so thick with them he almost heard it.

  What was to be believed? Had his father actually infiltrated Gearspire and then faced some dark torturous end? Had Lastrahn returned from Helador with black vengeance filing his heart?

  He wished those were the only questions. What had Judith almost done to them? And who was this mystery woman she mentioned who Lastrahn sought?

  Atop that, the Harvest Moon was only a few weeks away. It would bring with it the fall equinox, and a break in the Cinderveil. No one knew why the Praeters hadn’t rushed through during the spring equinox, but everyone was sure they would return to seek answers for Helador. It was only a matter of time. Kraczaw was already massing forces at Gearspire for just such an invasion.

  And if Lastrahn could find some way to cross all those hundreds of leagues in time, the champion would march them straight into all of it.

  Ryle’s stomach, the center of a battle between excitement, and fear turned over as he heard muffled voices inside the house. For all his training, he had leagues to go until he approached the stature of those within. He’d have to try a hex of a lot harder if he wanted to survive long enough to see this through and get his answers.

  When the footprints beneath your feet are bigger than your boots, it’s time to seek cover.

  “Amen to that, Mother,” he whispered to himself.

  CHAPTER 12

  Half a league south of Judith’s house, beneath a tangle of twisted limbs, Lastrahn waved Ryle forward. In the flat light following the sun’s departure the trees’ stark shapes were all the creepier. He grabbed a quick breath, blinked back exhaustion, and rode up next to the champion.

  “You did well back there. Kept your mouth shut, didn’t buckle, kept your thoughts to yourself. Not everyone can do that around her.” Their surroundings made the distorted tone of his voice through his mask all the more unsettling.

  Praise coming from Lastrahn felt more than a little weird. As long as it meant he could keep riding with him, he’d take it. “Thank you.”

  “You took your kenten back there,” he said.

  It was no surprise Lastrahn knew of the Professor’s method, but he didn’t think Lastrahn had known what the hex was happening.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “That’s a damn dangerous strategy, exposing yourself to her shit like that. The kenten dampens emotion, but opens your senses. If she’d reached you it would’ve overwhelmed any defense you threw up.”

  Ryle swallowed hard. He’d reacted. How close had he come to . . .

  They both ducked beneath a low hanging branch.

  “I don’t think she got through, Sir. My head just hurts.” Ryle wanted to ask his master how he felt. Lastrahn had looked almost dead back there. He restrained himself.

  “If that’s all, count yourself lucky. It’ll fade. It’s common after dealing with her.”

  A breeze like a dry voice whispered through the trees. Ryle shifted in his saddle. “What is she, Sir? A Praeter?”

  Lastrahn shot him a sideways look then shook his head.

  “She is a crone then?” Ryle said

  Lastrahn turned.

  “A crone? A witch?” Ryle’s words trailed off as his neck warmed beneath his jacket. “I mean, I’d heard . . .”

  Lastrahn burst out laughing, the sound short and rough through the mask.

  Heat shot up through Ryle’s face. He was glad for his mask’s concealment.

  “I said this wasn’t like the damn stories.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Lastrahn shook his head. “I’m not saying the old bag’s not a crone. She’s old, ancient, but that doesn’t describe her by half. She and her kind are something darker. More like spiders than people. Sitting in their webs, drawing things to them. Information. People. Secrets.”

  Ryle’s breath caught. “Them?”

  “She’s not the only one who craves power over the unknown. The world’s bigger than that.”

  Their horses rode on as the sky darkened.

  “Is that what she tried to do to us, Sir? To draw us in?”

  “She does what she does. It’s her nature. We won’t be the first or the last.”

  Lastrahn had known. He’d wanted Ryle outside, but Judith had forced his hand. Had Lastrahn been protecting Ryle or himself?

  He still remembered the empty look in Lastrahn’s eyes until he managed to take his kenten and speak. Empty eyes. Empty staring faces. Desolation. Despair. A web. Ryle thought he finally understood. “The people in Patton, they can’t leave, can they?”

  Lastrahn’s silence was his answer.

  “Can’t we help them?”

  “You can’t help those that are already lost,” Lastrahn said, and fell silent again.

  The answer still felt wrong in Ryle’s guts, but he’d felt something else. He’d felt Judith in his mind. His head still throbbed from her intrusion. He didn’t know if he could face her again. Even for those people. The thought shook him.

  Go on, run away. Kilgren’s words drifted up from the past, filling his head. Memories of the bastard had tormented him for years, but now he had a lead. One way or another he was going to close door on him and his madness.

  Ryle squeezed the reins in his gloved hands until Grey shook her head in protest, rousing him, and he realized he’d been pulling her head tight. Ryle forced his hands open and patted her neck in apology. “Did you get what you needed, Sir?”

  “We’ll find out, but not tonight.”

  Lastrahn pulled closer until their boots touched. Ryle had to control Grey to keep her from shying away from the charger. Before he could ask what his master was doing, Lastrahn ducked his head close. “Keep your eyes forward and keeping riding.” His voice was low and tight.

  “Sir?”

  “Those people in Patton aren’t the only ones who have to escape her web.” His eyes darted up and back again.

  After a confused moment, Ryle glanced up at the trees overhead. The new moon played along their limbs, lighting the leaves swaying in a breeze. Leaves on limbs that were bare before.

  Ryle stared closer, blinking against the dark. Something blinked back. His heart pounded and he pinched his lips shut inside his mask.

  Cold hex.

  Eyes filled the trees. Hundreds of them. Tiny, gleaming, and moving. They ran along the limbs above them tracking their path. Silent, scuttling.

  Ryle’s skin tightened everywhere.

  “Trust your head, not your heart. And whatever you do, don’t stop riding.” Lastrahn angled his charger away again, and the small distance between them suddenly felt like a gulf in the dark.

  Ryle did his best to keep his eyes on Grey’s ears, or the ground ahead. On anything but the trees where small motions tugged at his vision. The eyes were beside them, above them, and ahead. Their scuttling forms encroached on their path like a broken black tunnel.

  Ryle’s breaths filled his ears, but he still heard a thousand legs on a thousand branches in the dark. The sound filled the forest around them. He could already picture their tiny feet moving, gripping, and tearing.

  Lastrahn rode on, his posture unchanged, his features concealed. Ryle gritted his teeth and focused ahead. How much further did they have to ride through these blasted trees? It hadn’t taken them more than half an hour to reach the crone. Had it? It felt impossible they hadn’t yet returned to the plain. There was no way to know. He couldn’t see more than a dozen paces ahead with the shadows, skeletal trunks, and the stinking mist.

  Fresh dung.

  A thick, curling fog had once again risen without preamble to conceal the forest floor. Grey’s hoof falls sounded distant and muted. If there had ever been a path, it was long lost now. The forest was a wall of stark, indecipherable trunks.

  Something moved in the mists. Ryle’s eyes darted down before he could stop them. To his left, just below the writhing surface, something dark and damp, crawled.

&nb
sp; Ryle’s stomach curled up.

  It wasn’t alone, a second shape moved ahead against the base of a tree. For a moment the mists thinned. He strained to see through his goggles, but the fog swept back in, hiding the shape from view. “Sir?”

  “Keep riding.”

  Had he imagined some tension in the champion’s voice then?

  Slow minutes ground by. Grey’s hooves stamped out a plodding rhythm. Ryle’s legs and back ached from the tension. His chest felt like ropes bound it. Scuttling filled the air above his head where branches nearly brushed his hair. Crawling shapes covered the earth below.

  Ryle’s bones itched. Sweat ran along the edges of his mask. He could smell his own breath and it smelled like Judith’s strange tea.

  A moan clawed its way through the trees at their backs. Ryle jumped and his spine felt like it would snap. The sound drew out, low and heavy and angry.

  Lastrahn did look back this time. His face showed no expression, but his hand tightened on his reins.

  “Sir?”

  “Ride!” The champion spurred his charger forward.

  Grey needed no urging and leapt after the bigger horse. Ryle barely hung on.

  The moan rose another octave, growing louder, closer.

  Trees rushed past in a terrifying blur. Ryle could barely see beyond Grey’s head as she plunged ahead. The mist was an opaque sea around her legs, every hazard invisible until they crashed through it. Branches slapped him across the head. Only his mask and goggles saved his face. He kept his hands on the reins and pressed his body lower, his cheek along Grey’s neck.

  Grey was tense, straining. Her sides heaved against his legs. Ryle pressed himself closer, unable to comfort her or think beyond the next moment.

  Beside him, Lastrahn hunkered low in his saddle. His huge charger drove forward with the fury of a storm. The champion’s face, striped by bands of moonlight, was anything but calm.

  Just hang on. Just keep riding. Panting filled Ryle’s ears, but it wasn’t his own.

  The tone was deeper, drier, and came from behind. From over his shoulder. Was that wind that ruffled his hair? That cooled the back of his neck?

  Grasping motion tore at the corner of his vision and his head whipped around on its own. A pale, sexless, eyeless face filled his sight, its skin like dirty porcelain. There was no neck, only a hint of twisting body trailing behind. But its dark hair was long and jointed. Each strand as thick as a finger, stretched out insectile-like to grasp limbs and tree trunks in rapid succession.

  Ryle rocked upon Grey’s back, unable to think or move. Then the creature’s thin, cracked lips parted, revealing a mouthful of gnashing pincers, and it lunged forward, its hair grasping.

  Ryle screamed inside his mask and jerked away as jointed limbs scratched across his face, his hair, his jacket. Grey shuddered beneath him, and side-stepped away from the monstrosity. For a moment he teetered, on the verge of crashing to the milky ground, but his wild, sweating fingers found purchase and he hauled himself back into the saddle.

  The creature kept pace, clawing its way forward. In the twisting mass of its horror, something sparkled, something silver and dangling and precious.

  Fear burned through Ryle. He grabbed Grey’s reins.

  “Ryle!” Lastrahn’s voice struck like a blow, made him pause. “Look at me!”

  As if on rusty gears Ryle’s head came around.

  Lastrahn’s goggles were up on his head. His cheeks were wet. His eyes gleamed but they sank into Ryle like spears. “Use your head!”

  “Casyne,” Ryle mumbled, feeling woozy.

  “And shut your damn mouth! It’s luring you.”

  “I can’t leave her pendant behind!”

  “You’re not leaving anything!” Lastrahn slapped his own chest once, then again.

  Ryle’s hand copied him, pressed against his jacket. The familiar hard shape hung where it always did beneath the material. Icy claws pulled free of his heart. Ryle took a shuddering breath, and looked over his shoulder.

  The creature rushed after them, gnashing its mouthful of pincers. The spark of silver was gone.

  “Is it real?” he screamed at Lastrahn.

  “It doesn’t matter,” the champion said. “Just keep riding. You can’t stop it.”

  Ryle nodded weakly and Lastrahn nodded back, eyes still on his face, steadying him.

  That’s when Lastrahn’s horse stumbled.

  A loud crack mixed with the charger’s panicked scream as it bucked forward, and then Grey was rushing past.

  Ryle wanted to keep riding, every sane part of his brain demanded it. Behind them wooden, staccato impacts filled the night.

  Muck. He hauled back on Grey’s reins, and she protested but slowed. He turned in the saddle, panic burning up his spine.

  Lastrahn’s charger had been well trained. He’d crashed to his knees but hadn’t gone down. The horse thrashed hard, digging his way up and forward. Through sheer force of will the champion had kept his seat. He reared back, trying to help his horse’s efforts.

  The screaming pale shape charged in on them. Its lips peeled back, spindly legs snapping from tree to tree in a dark blur.

  Ryle’s heart shrunk in his chest. He felt numb and slow as the horror rushed for the champion’s back. With shaking hands Ryle jerked Grey around.

  Lastrahn gasped a warning to keep going as his horse found its feet. But he couldn’t see what closed on him. He couldn’t react in time.

  Ryle laid his heels in, sending Grey back the way they’d come.

  “No!” Lastrahn shouted.

  Ryle ignored him and focused all his attention on staying in his saddle as Grey’s hooves churned up the misty ground. Four paces separated them.

  A horrendous shriek pierced the air as the creature dove for Lastrahn. Ryle’s blood churned. Lastrahn’s eyes widened.

  Ryle’s lips were dry, his mouth sticky in his mask, but he croaked, “Down!”

  The monstrosity’s many limbs reached for Lastrahn. The champion ducked at the last moment. Ryle had no time to think. He slammed his fist into the creature’s where its right eye should’ve been. The thing crashed back through branches with a scream.

  Ryle lost sight of it as Grey staggered into the charger and came to a rough stop amidst snorts and whinnies from both horses. His left hand throbbed.

  Lastrahn shot upright, eyes blazing, but Ryle was already pulling Grey around. She spun freely this time, more than ready to be away. He knew exactly how she felt. His heart battered the inside of his chest. His breaths were ragged gasps.

  “We have to go—” A shrieking frenzy of thrashing limbs crashed into Ryle’s back. Grey screamed and reared. The cold ground smashed the air from his lungs before he knew he was falling.

  Horses’ hooves churned the dirt and leaves around Ryle. Damp fog poured over his face. He smelled rot through his mask.

  The creature pounced upon him. Its pale face consumed his world. Its mouth was wide and sharp. The skin where he’d hit it was cracked, flaking. Something squirmed and writhed behind its face. Cloth ripped as its limbs tore into his jacket, dragging him closer to its snapping maw.

  Ryle barely got his hands up to shove the face away. Pain stabbed into his arms and neck. The creature’s scream punched through his ears like hot daggers, and the sickly sweet stench of rotting death poured over him. He tried to scream back but found his lungs empty.

  “Dammit!” Lastrahn cursed above him.

  The horses were wild, stomping, but he couldn’t see them through the thick fog. A hoof smashed down beside Ryle’s head, and he gasped, trying to scramble away while the creature struggled to tear his face off his skull. He attempted to kick the thing away but his left leg was stuck. He kicked again, but couldn’t break free.

  The creature slipped closer. Every snap of its jaws washed fetid air across Ryle’s face. His arms strained to keep it at bay. Then his free leg was seized tight. More dark shapes moved under the mists where he now lay. He wanted to scream, but his l
ungs still ached, and his pulse rattled in his throat and arms. His face felt sticky from sweat or blood, or both.

  The limbs closed around his neck and head. Pressure wrapped around his hips. His arms collapsed beneath the creature’s assault.

  “Get, the hell, off,” Lastrahn growled and a gloved hand latched onto the back of the creature. It jerked up, screaming.

  The pressure lessened, but the pain increased as its limbs cut into Ryle’s neck, trying to hang on to him. He got enough air to cry out, then freed his right arm and slammed a fist into the side of its head? Body? He didn’t know, but it crunched and he hit it again.

  Before Ryle could strike a third time, a hard wet strength entangled his right arm and sucked it to the ground. Panic boiled through him, and he tried to thrash but found it impossible. He was nearly immobile and the creature still writhed and snapped atop him. Only Lastrahn’s strength held it back.

  Ryle cursed as he made the only desperate move remaining. His left hand dropped to his belt and found the dagger.

  He jerked it free with a snarl and slashed at the creature. The dagger did better than his fist had. Shrieks of pain and outrage exploded from the beast. High and sharp like broken glass scraping old bones. He severed the limbs that had wrapped around his neck and sucked in cool air.

  With a shout, Lastrahn dragged the creature off him. Something grasped for Ryle’s arm. He cut at it until it withdrew, then he slashed through the twisted appendage pinning his right arm. The ground shuddered under him as his arm came free. Then his whole body was loose.

  Gasping and panting, Ryle scrambled up, using Grey’s harness to find his feet. Halfway there, Lastrahn grabbed his jacket and hauled him up the rest of the way.

  Weak and disoriented, he tried to sag there and get his bearings, but Lastrahn was having none of it. “Get back in the damn saddle. Now!”

  Ryle needed a moment to breathe. He found the dagger’s sheath and angrily shoved the weapon away.

  An enraged cry rolled through the woods and everything shook with it. The air, the trees, the fog, the ground itself.