The Fighters: Ghostwalker

by Erik Scott Debie

  As the door was closing, Greyt's grin slipped into a considering frown.

  He saw right through Arya's act. Though it was probably true her father was looking for her, she was hardly the directionless runaway. So Silverymoon had sent some of her own to converse with Speaker Stonar. He vaguely remembered Stonar mentioning something about missing couriers.

  What was Taern Hornblade playing at? Or Lady Alustriel herself? Had they discovered the magical barrier? Or was this a battle at home? Could Stonar be raising support against the Lord Singer? Greyt didn't know the nature of Arya's visit, but he intended to find out.

  Hers was a tantalizing situation, and one that could be used to his advantage, if he could only decide how....

  "Unwise..." a voice whispered in his ear, but Greyt dis­missed it with a tsking sound.

  He beckoned to Claudir with a surreptitious wave.

  A pair of invisible eyes watched impartially.

  * * * *

  "You know your way out, I imagine," Claudir said in his stuffy voice. Arya nodded. The steward cleared his throat and went back into the sitting room, shutting the doors behind him.

  The knights were silent for a moment.

  "You almost gave it away," Derst said. "He may suspect our true intentions."

  "Hmm?" Arya wasn't paying attention.

  "You didn't tell him about the missing couriers," Bars observed. "Stonar never would have gone to Alustriel for help if Silverymoon had still been able to contact—"

  Arya perked up. "What?" she asked, feigning distraction. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

  Bars took the hint.

  Derst didn't.

  "You remember, the couriers?" he prompted. "The real reason we're here?"

  Arya slapped Derst lightly on the side of the head. "The real reason is to hide from father," she hissed. "There just happen to be two real reasons. Who told you about the couriers?"

  "The same person who told you," Derst replied indignantly, though he had the sense to keep his voice low. "Alus—Ow!" He shook his foot where Bars had stomped on it.

  "Let us adjourn, and go to dinner," Arya said, her voice at normal speaking volume. Then she added, in a terse whisper. "Where certain ears that do not need to hear certain things will not, right, Sir Goldtook?"

  Derst furrowed his brow but then shrugged. "Indeed, Lady Sir Venkyr," he said. "I am famished myself. I heard they were cooking some excellent venison at the Stag this eve. Shall we?" He put out his arm for Arya to take.

  "Famished, eh?" Bars asked. "That's what happens when you don't eat for a month and become a stick." He shoved Derst away and put out his thick arm for Arya to take.

  "Only because you ate all the month's rations, bulbous rothe," Derst pushed Bars aside and put his own arm back out.

  Arya threw her hands up with a sigh and stomped off toward the door by herself, leaving the two casting angry looks and flashing obscene gestures at one another. She threw open the door and almost stumbled into a frowning Meris.

  As it was, Arya barely avoided falling, but she still ran bodily into him. A package wrapped in water-stained leather fell to his feet. The two staggered for a breath, and Meris's strong hands grasped Arya by the shoulders. He righted her and pushed her away, none-too-gently, with a low growl.

  His frown disappeared when he caught sight of her face. "Cousin," Meris said, as though recognizing her for the first time. "Anya, wasn't it?" He scrutinized her closely. His former angry expression had become cool and calculating.

  There was an edge there—something about the gleam in his eye—that unnerved Arya more than any frown would have.

  "Arya, if it please you, Cousin Meris," the young woman said with an awkward bow.

  "Whatever it was," Meris said dismissively. He was eyeing her up and down.

  Arya stifled a twinge of irritation. "I'm sorry for startling you, sir," she said. Meris's eyes flickered back to her face. There was fire in those eyes. Arya did not care to think where they might have lingered before. "And for colliding with you."

  "Apology accepted," Meris said. "And I'm no knight, lass. I wouldn't address me by a title that matters nothing to me. I might take offense."

  Arya was appalled. The lady knight made it a point not to stand on ceremony, but Meris's complete discourtesy made her gape.

  Derst stepped up beside Arya. "Have a care how you address the good lady knight, Goodman," he said. His words were civil, but when spoken with that whiplike tongue they carried a thinly veiled threat. "She might take offense at your uncultured tongue."

  Meris's smoldering eyes shot to the rapier-thin knight. His nose turned up. "Silence, boy," he said, even though Derst had clearly seen a couple more winters than had Meris. Greyt's son was probably about the same age as Arya. "Can't you see the wench and I were having a conversation?"

  All three started.

  Meris continued speaking to Derst. "Your face displeases me. Begone, before I have to show you out myself."

  "That is no way to talk to a knight," Bars growled. He looked at Derst and shrugged. "Well, I can see the argument, but he is a knight, after all, and that's no way to speak in front of a lady." Meris lifted his brow.

  "Aye, so apologize, orc-spawn," Derst snapped.

  Meris looked at him incredulously for a moment, blinked, and laid him low with a right hook. The thin knight staggered back, stunned. Bars lumbered in with a swinging left, but Meris ducked and slammed an elbow into the big man's great belly.

  Bars gave a great "Oof!" and staggered, bending over Meris, who had dropped low.

  Meris had his foot behind the big man's ankle and stood up abruptly, throwing Bars to the ground. Next to him, Arya had disappeared, and a charging Derst was in her place. The wiry knight threw a left hook feint, which Meris ignored, and a right fist thrust, which he ducked. Meris bent, put his shoulder into Derst's stomach, and threw the thin man over him.

  "Bastard," Derst gasped as he landed in a roll and reached for a knife.

  "You called?" Meris mocked. In response, the thin man's face scrunched.

  Bars rose, but Meris shoved him down with his left hand, keeping his eyes on the thin man. Meris's hand went to his sword hilt.

  There, it found the point of a long sword hovering at his groin.

  Putting his hands out wide, Meris slowly turned. Arya had drawn her sword and was standing just within slash­ing range.

  "Enough of this," she said. Her eyes were deadly. "Cousin, I was truly sorry to have offended you, but I take back my apology now."

  Meris rolled his eyes at the sword pointing at his belly and looked up at her with a sarcastic frown. "You can't be serious, Cousin," he said contemptuously. "You side with these fools? They are no better than stupid sheep, and that makes you no better than a shepherdess."

  "At least a shepherdess has some dignity," Arya snapped back. "Unlike you, Cousin."

  "Until one takes it from her," Meris said without miss­ing a beat. Ignoring Arya's sword, he wiped himself free of invisible dust and brushed past her. The two knights gave him angry stares as he strode away, his white cape swirling behind him, driven up by the haste of his walk.

  They watched him slam the inner door behind his heels.

  "Well," Derst said, wiping the blood from his nose. "At least you don't take after that side of the family, Arya."

  Under any other circumstances, Arya might have replied wryly that she wasn't even related to that side of the family, but the encounter with Meris had unnerved her.

  That cold hatred, pent up behind walls of calm...

  Arya had faced many enemies, but none who frightened her so. She saw through his every movement, heard the bitterness in his voice, and knew that he was utterly cold­blooded. Meris was the personification of the injustice the Knights in Silver stood against.

  "Arya?" a voice said behind her, startling her from her reverie. "Are you well?"

  "Aye?" She turned and looked into Bars's concerned eyes. As she did so, she realized with a
flash that passing such a judgment was unfair. She did not, after all, know Meris. Perhaps he was just temperamental, or abrasive. It hardly justified labeling him...

  "I'm sorry, you were saying?" she forced herself to ask.

  He smiled weakly. "Let us be gone," he said, rubbing his solid belly with a slight wince. "That bastard's hit made me stomach queasy. And when the demons stop playing in there, I'm going to be hungry."

  "You shouldn't have had so much wine, mayhap then you wouldn't whine so much," Derst quipped with a wry grin.

  "If we don't get moving, maybe I'll just have to eat you," Bars said.

  Arya smiled and was about to add to that, but Derst was already nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter 5

  26 Tarsakh

  Legs crossed and body stripped to the waist, Walker sat peacefully in the forest glade singing the last, bittersweet lines of a song. His ruined voice—like blood flowing through broken glass—mingled with the warm breezes blowing north.

  A chilly brook swirled and danced by his feet, flowing from a waterfall that poured over a fallen shadowtop. The sun was setting, painting the forest canopy with emerald light and seeming to set the reddish bark of the firs afire. The snow had melted from the trees already, and not just because of the druidic charm that kept the grove warm. Spring was approaching, and while the snow would not completely disappear until the summer months, the air was warm.

  Walker hardly noticed. He did not see the beauty either, for his eyes did not see the world around him.

  The shadowy world he walked in his mind was one of ghosts. Colors were so dim that the world seemed painted in shades of gray, and outlines were indistinct. It was difficult for even an experienced ghostwalker to judge where the ground ended and the trees began. A normal mortal would be completely lost, disoriented, and terrified. On the border of material existence, he walked slowly, taking his time and watching. He saw memories of the past as easily as the present. At times, he could not even tell them apart.

  He lay on his back, blood spurting from his mouth with every labored breath. Laughing faces... cruel faces hovered above him. Some faces he recognized, and some he did not.

  Walker remembered his first visits to the ghost world, when he had been young—one of the first memories he could recall. He had been terrified and had shone so brightly that he had been swarmed with ghosts. His guide had warned him it would happen, but that had not been preparation enough. He would never forget his terror.

  Since then, his glow had dulled, even as the shock of entry faded. Now, Walker was coolly accustomed to the bleak landscape of the Ethereal and the Shadow beyond it. It was dark, true, but the ghost world had never held evil: only peace, and his task.

  Face calm as it blurred in the Ethereal, Walker took a taste of the peace that surrounded him. Today, almost fifteen years after his first visit, the ghost world was more familiar to him than the living world.

  He sensed a presence and turned. A hulking warrior raised its axe to slash at him.

  Drex spat upon him. His woodsman's axe gleamed. His growl was that of a beast.

  Walker shook his head. Drex was dead. A glimpse of his spirit, that was all he saw.

  Ghosts hovered all around him, spirits of those who had passed away: rangers, humanoid creatures who had wandered into the forest and died, and adventurers slain by the forest's dangers. The souls, barely aware and wandering, were the remnants of humans and all those races akin to them—orcs, goblins, and even dwarves. Some spirits, pleasant and danc­ing around, were those of elves and the fey, rare and joyous things that took comfort in their perpetual, ethereal exis­tence. Many were servants of the Seldarine, but a few tragic ones, the only ones to whom Walker paid any mind, wandered around, unsure of their purpose and without a patron.

  The strength of a spirit's passion dictated the vibrancy of its shade, and some seemed truly alive before him. He could only tell they were dead because they lacked the telltale glow of life. Some—the younger and more confused spirits—reached out supplicating hands to him, begging for help, reassurance, or comfort, but Walker did not reply.

  There was only one spirit who never talked to him, and Walker only spoke to that one.

  "Father," he said softly. "Tarm, my father."

  As if in reply, the spirit of the middle-aged man turned to him. Dark, wavy hair fell to his shoulders and soft brown eyes peered at Walker. Tarm was dressed as he had died, in the priestly vestments of Tyr, the deity of justice he had served. As always, the spirit was silent, allowing Walker to speak to himself, to allow his thoughts to reflect back in his own ears.

  "Father, I have slain one of them, one of our murderers," said Walker. "Justice has been done at long last."

  Tarm's spirit only looked at him with that same sad expression. Then, as though unhappy with Walker, the spirit turned away and disappeared into the trees.

  Walker might have felt wounded, except that he knew this feeling all too well. His father never approved of the deaths he inflicted, even those that were necessary. He was always there, except when Walker killed. At those times, Tarm would leave to walk on his invisible path, toward what, the ghostwalker did not know.

  Walker turned back to the spirits crowding around him, begging for his attention. Another memory came then, unbid­den—a flash of the past Walker could not decipher. A spectral laugh, that of the shadows themselves.

  As always, though, Walker ignored their pleas. Many of the weaker spirits did not even see him as distinct—his life-force was so in touch with the ethereal. He was, as in material life, merely an observer, existing on the fringes of the world. He could not have accepted or met those pleas even had he tried and he could not fully join in the ghost world, because something held him back, something that was fiercely material and could only be satisfied in the world of the living.

  Vengeance.

  He had a thirst to punish those who had wronged him—who still wronged him. He lived for his revenge. It was his task, the task that was his only purpose. And when that task was done—

  Blurred memories—a laughing face, covered with his blood, looming over him. Drex... the warrior with the woodsman's axe. Other faces... other men, four others beside Drex. He did not know their names yet, but he would find out…

  A smile gleamed in the moonlight above him.

  No, that wasn't true. He did not have to find them all anew.

  That mocking smile. Those lips that had spoken such kind words leveled a curse at him instead as he lay panting for breath on the grass. "Now, let us teach him how to sing," it said.

  He knew one without seeing his face, the one he would kill last.

  The thought and sight of his ghostly enemy pulled him from the ghost world. Before he returned to his body, though, there was one more vision, just a flash.

  The boy... the boy with the dark eyes and ebony curls...

  There was something significant about that boy... there was pain in those eyes.

  No matter, though. Walker had to complete his vengeance— his thirst would permit no less. It was all that had driven him for as long as he could remember.

  Then Walker opened his eyes in the Material world.

  * * * *

  "Well met, my lady," Walker said in perfect Elvish.

  "Well met," a rich, sonorous voice replied in kind. There was a bit of laughter in its tone. "How did you know I was here?"

  "I am at peace," Walker said. "And I am always at peace when you are near." He looked.

  Standing before him was a diminutive woman with spar­kling gold skin and gleaming hair that flowed to her waist. Her eyes glittered a majestic hazel with crimson motes and her lips were brushed with the slightest touch of frost. Resplendent in her partial gown of leaves—leaf-shaped pieces of leather stitched in intricate patterns and wound around her slim frame in a manner as wild as it was beautiful—she crossed her arms over her breast and smiled.

  Gylther'yel, the Ghostly Lady of legend.

  She smiled thinly. "That do
es not mean I cannot attempt to catch you unawares," Gylther'yel said. "Your abilities grow stronger by the day."

  "Abilities you taught me."

  Gylther'yel accepted the compliment without a twitch.

  "You are not ready," she said. Walker felt a stab of irritation.

  "We have spoken of this before," he rasped, his tone flat in warning. "You tell me the same thing every year—that I am not ready."

  "I am not about to question your methods, or even your need for revenge," Gylther'yel said. "I only question your timing. Perhaps another year of training—"

  "My training is complete. I have struck the first blow," Walker said. "I have delivered my warning. My task is a matter of speed now, and I cannot stop."

  "I understand, but why now, of all seasons?" Gylther'yel asked, her voice tranquil. "The snows are falling away and the sun is returning, but Auril still holds sway. The winter is not over."

  "All the more fitting for my vengeance," said Walker. "Let them feel fear colder than the snows around them. I am at my strongest when a chill wind blows."

  "And I am at my weakest," Gylther'yel countered. Indeed, Walker knew that the ghost druid was most powerful with her fire magic. "The cold is anathema to my powers."

  "My deathday approaches—less than a tenday," Walker said. "It is a fitting time."

  She continued despite his reply. "You are my guardian, my champion—what if they were to follow you back here? I have not raised you to bring danger to my doorstep...."

  Walker smiled. "I did not realize you were so humorous, Gylther'yel," he rasped. Walker had watched the Ghostly Lady hurl fire and call down lightning to smite adventurers who strayed from the paths. He turned away. "Anyone foolish enough to challenge you deserves to feed the earth with his ashes."

  Gylther'yel did not nod, but a hint of a smile crossed her golden face. "Still, I warn you against allowing your vendetta to harm my woods." Her face grew stormy. "If you fight here, you will be on your own, and if you fall, so be it. I will not interfere with the will of nature—"

  "The strongest and fittest will survive, I know," Walker said. "But fear not. Even the fiercest wolf leads the wild boar away from its den—and family."