Yhelbruna slipped her mask back on and then raised her staff. In response, the fire leaped higher. Spilling snow, a rustling ran through the branches overhead as small spirits and fey oriented on her. Even the towering oaks and shadowtops seemed to lean over slightly for a better view, although in a purely physical sense, that was an illusion.
“Hail Akadi!” Yhelbruna said.
“Hail Akadi!” the other witches echoed.
“Hail to the Queen of Sky Home, the Lady of the Winds!”
“Hail to the Queen of Sky Home, the Lady of the Winds!”
“In her name …”
Hastily considering tactics, Nyevarra decided the contrapuntal structure of the summoning could work to her advantage. If she wanted to maintain her masquerade, she had no choice but to give the responses. But when Yhelbruna was speaking, she could do the same, so long as she whispered softly enough that no one would overhear.
“Night winds,” she breathed. “Winter winds. Tempests and plague winds. All you restless wanderers who harry mortals for sport. Whichever of you can hear my words, in the names of the Destroyer and the Mistress of Disease, attend me!”
By the time she finished that much of her invocation, murmuring it a phrase at a time as the ceremony allowed, the forces everyone was raising for one purpose or another had set the air in the vicinity moaning, howling, and gusting crazily. The branches overhead rattled constantly, and cloaks and robes flapped and fluttered. The bonfire whipped back and forth, while flecks of snow blew off the ground.
With magic well and fully roused, this contest had now become a race, and even though Yhelbruna had all the other witches aiding her, Nyevarra thought she had a fair chance of winning it. The hathrans were trying to find one particular spirit and draw it miles to the south, whereas Nyevarra was willing to settle for any wind of a suitable temperament, and thanks to her and the other durthans, there were already more of such entities lurking in the forest than there used to be.
Suddenly, freezing air brushed her mouth like a kiss. She might have cried out and recoiled if she still had a living woman’s susceptibility to cold. Then the same breeze insinuated itself inside her hood to play around her ear.
“ ‘Restless wanderers who harry mortals for sport,’ ” whispered a husky feminine voice. “Perhaps I should continue the sport with you.”
“I’m no mortal,” Nyevarra whispered back. “In fact, if I’m perceiving you clearly, you and I are somewhat alike.”
“You flatter yourself. No woman of flesh and blood, even cold flesh and stolen blood, can claim to be more than a feeble mockery of me.”
“A ‘feeble mockery’ who pulled you to me like a fish on a line. Now that you’re here, I’d prefer to speak in terms of friendship and barter, as befits a witch treating with a spirit. But I’m prepared to resort to torment and compulsion if necessary.”
Beneath her robes, cold air slid over her skin like the elemental was assessing for itself just what punishments and coercions she might be capable of. Then, caressing Nyevarra’s ear again, she asked, “What do you want?”
“Yhelbruna, there, aims to summon a wind. I want to give her one and then make her sorry she asked.”
The spirit hesitated. “I’ve heard of Yhelbruna.”
“Whatever you’ve heard, surely she too is ‘feeble’ compared to a princess of Sky Home.”
“You mock me, but you’re right. Still, if I kill someone humans consider mighty, what will you give in return?”
“Soon, my sisters and I will rule Rashemen. Then I’ll sacrifice someone to you at the start of every tenday for a year.”
“I want them big and strong,” the spirit replied. “No children and no sick, old codgers either.”
“Done.”
The elemental rose into the air, and perhaps as a way of announcing itself, descended again as a screaming whirlwind that spun bits of snow and broken twigs around and around. Assuming they’d accomplished their purpose, the witches stopped chanting. Nyevarra grinned to see that even Yhelbruna was taken in.
“We thank you for answering our call,” the senior hathran said. “It’s urgent that we discover-”
The spirit gathered itself into the hazy, transparent shape of a floating woman. Suddenly, the eyes in its blur of a face flared red, and it struck at Yhelbruna with its open hand. The harmless-looking slap triggered another shriek of wind.
Caught by surprise, Yhelbruna still almost managed to speak a word of warding. But the elemental’s blow caught her and slammed her backward.
Other hathrans raised their wands and talismans and cried the opening words of spells of slaying and banishment. Spinning, the spirit raked them with its burning crimson gaze, and they froze in terror.
Ideally, the breathdrinker should then have gone after Yhelbruna without another instant of delay. But, succumbing to its urges in a way any vampire would recognize, it grabbed one of the paralyzed women, tore her brazen mask off, and kissed her.
The hathran flailed, struggling to break free, but not for long. It took her attacker only a few heartbeats to suck all the breath from her lungs.
Its thirst assuaged, the breathdrinker whirled back toward Yhelbruna, and Nyevarra was glad to see that the latter lay motionless on her back in a snowdrift. Apparently that initial blow had landed hard.
Amid another howl of wind, the breathdrinker sprang in Yhelbruna’s direction. Some of the other hathrans cried words of power to protect their fallen sister.
But those hathrans lacked Nyevarra’s extensive experience in battle, and when, still whispering, she rattled off a spell to counter their efforts, she finished ahead of them. Terror jolted them and in some cases made them recoil from the breathdrinker, while even those whose wills were strong stumbled over their incantations. Nyevarra could feel their half-made magic dissolve.
But as the breathdrinker plunged down at Yhelbruna, the hathran’s eyes popped open. Yhelbruna spoke a word of power and jabbed her staff at her foe.
A streamer of snow leaped up from the ground and in the process hardened from powder into ice. Pointed and straight, its base frozen to the ground, it jutted upward at the perfect angle to catch the elemental.
Stabbed through the torso, the breathdrinker slid partway down the icicle spear. Screaming in the way a wind screams, it thrashed but seemed unable to free itself. An ordinary spike wouldn’t have impaled a creature made only of air and malice, but the magic infusing this one accomplished what mere solid matter couldn’t.
Yhelbruna scrambled back from her foe. Its misty arm stretching, the breathdrinker struck another howling, openhanded blow. But the hathran did something to ward herself-even Nyevarra couldn’t tell what, though she felt power surge at the living witch’s behest-and the blast of air simply failed to find its target.
Chanting, Yhelbruna spun her staff and then jabbed with it. Darts of emerald light leaped from the head to riddle the spirit’s form, blinking out of existence as they hurtled through.
With another shriek, the breathdrinker resumed its whirlwind form as snow spiraled up from the earth. The frozen spike shattered, freeing it, and it gathered itself into its transparent, red-eyed feminine form once more.
Yhelbruna started reciting another spell and shifting her staff back and forth in time to the cadence. The breathdrinker shot forward and slapped.
The witch sidestepped, and once again, the spirit’s blow didn’t quite connect. But it did tear the staff from Yhelbruna’s hands, and Nyevarra grinned because that ought to be good enough. It should ruin the spell the hathran was attempting to cast, and with the enraged breathdrinker right on top of her, she didn’t have time for a second try.
Except that the loss of the staff didn’t spoil the casting. Yhelbruna didn’t stumble over the incantation, and she moved her empty hands like a weaver working at a loom, improvising a conclusion to the pattern the rod had begun.
Snow exploded up around the breathdrinker and, in that same instant, hardened into an enormous hand of ice. The
clawed fingers grabbed the spirit and squeezed.
Shrieking, the breathdrinker became invisible. Perhaps that was an instinctive response, but the defense couldn’t help it when the hand already had it in its grasp.
Next, Nyevarra sensed the elemental trying to blow out through the cracks between the fingers, then seeking to become a whirlwind and shatter its prison, but the strength of Yhelbruna’s spell prevented either. The hand kept squeezing until the howling died, and the breathdrinker with it.
A hathran in a white unicorn mask hurried toward Yhelbruna. “Are you all right?” Mielikki’s servant asked.
“Yes.” Not even bothering to retrieve her staff, Yhelbruna strode past the other witch to the woman the spirit had drained of breath.
Kneeling, Yhelbruna held her hand in front of the fallen hathran’s nose and mouth and touched her fingertips to the side of her neck. Then she sighed and closed the corpse’s eyes. “Go to our mothers, Sister. Blessed be.”
As she rose again, the other witches clustered around. “What happened?” whined one of the younger ones.
“I don’t know,” Yhelbruna answered, and for once, a trace of distress compromised that steely voice. “I don’t understand why the wind was angry.”
If not for the need to keep up her impersonation, Nyevarra might have slumped and heaved a sigh of relief. It was regrettable that the breathdrinker hadn’t succeeded in putting an end to Yhelbruna, but if the hathran didn’t comprehend what had gone awry, then things were still under control.
“I don’t know why a number of things aren’t happening as they should or just seem off,” Yhelbruna continued, and already she was all cold strength once more. “But I’m going to find out.”
And left to her own devices, she just might. She could conceivably have figured it out this very night, or at least taken one step closer to the truth, if she and Nyevarra hadn’t ended up in the same circle, and no one could count on that kind of luck all the time.
Which meant Yhelbruna still needed to die. But Nyevarra hesitated to make a second attempt on the foul woman’s life herself. Loath as she was to admit it, the most formidable hathran of them all might survive again and in the process discern who was attacking her.
Unfortunately for Yhelbruna, though, Nyevarra saw an alternative.
Aoth reflected that if he’d wanted to clamber up and down mountains in the cold wind and the snow, he wouldn’t have become a griffon rider.
Still, it would have shamed him to grouse aloud. He had tattoos to warm him, stave off fatigue, and blunt hunger pangs. Orgurth didn’t, yet the green-skinned warrior wasn’t complaining.
The orc did grunt in surprise, though, when the trail they were following took them to the crest of a ridge where the snow bore a plenitude of tracks. A number of folk-or a number of somethings-had marched along the trail from south to north.
“Well,” said the orc, “I guess we’re not the only people in these wretched peaks. Maybe they’ll share their rations and their fire …” His voice trailed off as he registered something in Aoth’s expression. “But you’re thinking they won’t.”
“I’m thinking they won’t.” Aoth led Orgurth forward and pointed with his spear to something few folk would have spotted at a glance but that his fire-kissed eyes had noted immediately. “Look at this pair of tracks. The one boot looks like it had a big hole in it, and the other foot, the unshod one, might have been left by partly naked bone. What leaves prints like that?”
“Zombies.”
“Right. And this wasn’t the only one.” He stooped, picked up a decayed, frozen, broken-off toe, proffered it for the orc’s inspection, and tossed it away.
“So has Thay sent troops over the border,” Orgurth asked, “or are these more of the undead you fought at your Fortress of the Half-Demon?”
“The latter.” Aoth indicated deep marks shaped like cloven hooves and the clawed feet of reptiles as well as a tiny spitter of oil. “Constructs made these tracks. Lots of constructs. There may have been more of them traveling in the column than there were undead.
“And some of our enemies in the castle used constructs against us,” he continued. “As wizards go, I’m a poor student of history, but I believe those particular ghouls and such were reanimated Raumvirans.”
“So you and your friends didn’t really end the threat to Rashemen.”
“Apparently not.” That might conceivably mean Mario Bez hadn’t managed to steal the wild griffons after all. But it might also mean Cera, Jhesrhi, and Jet were in even more danger than Aoth had imagined.
“But I wonder,” he said, “what the undead are doing here. As far as I know, the Running Rocks are pretty much uninhabited. I suppose the creatures could be maneuvering to attack Immilmar. But with the dark maze at their disposal, they shouldn’t need to pop out so far to the east and drag their war band through this terrain to accomplish that.”
“Unless you want to look for a different path north,” Orgurth said, “we’re going to be following them. Maybe we’ll see for ourselves what they’re up to.”
Keeping an eye out for rearguards, foragers, and the like, they did travel in the enemy’s footsteps. And before the sun reached its zenith, they started to hear a crashing at regular intervals, the noise echoing from somewhere up ahead.
“That’s a siege engine,” said Aoth, and Orgurth nodded. During his time as a legionnaire, the orc too, had likely heard a catapult or the equivalent battering relentlessly at a gate or section of wall. The slow but steady beat was the giveaway.
Later, well past midday, yet another impact triggered cries of excitement. Whatever barrier the undead had been assailing, it had just fallen.
As the sun disappeared behind the peaks to the west and the western sky turned red, Aoth reluctantly concluded that he and Orgurth weren’t likely to lay eyes on the battle before nightfall, and it would be stupid to push on after. They’d do better to focus on looking for a sheltered spot to camp, fuel for a fire, and something to eat.
Then, however, the trail curved around a mountainside to a place where a slope ran down to the long, broad saddle connecting the peak they were on to the one adjacent. Slipping and sliding, the undead and constructs had descended onto the ridge and taken up positions threatening the other mountain, or, more specifically, the cave mouths among the crags.
Granite panels or plugs sealed all the openings but one, and although Aoth had no difficulty recognizing the gates for what they were, they blended so well with the surrounding stone that he was impressed the undead had spotted them. They had, though, and over the course of the day, smashed one of the barriers to pieces.
Maybe hoping to undertake emergency repairs, men in masks appeared in the cave mouth. Undead archers drew their bows, and wizards lifted their wands and staves. A barrage of arrows and ragged shadow drove the defenders back.
“What do you see?” Orgurth asked. The action was too far away for even an orc to make out anything much with the light failing.
“Things I don’t understand,” Aoth replied. “I judged from the different styles of weapons, armor, and magic at the Fortress of the Half-Demon that my comrades and I were fighting a mixed force of reanimated Rashemi, Nars, and Raumvirans. The band below us is all Raumvirans.”
Orgurth shrugged. “Maybe after your victory, Raumvirans are all that are left.”
“I guess it’s possible. But here’s what’s really strange. The defenders up there in the caves are men in masks. Male hathrans. Except there’s no such thing.”
“That you’ve heard of.”
“Right. That I’ve heard of.” For a moment, Aoth felt profoundly tired of this backward land and its secrets.
“Well, whoever and whatever they are, what do we do now?”
Aoth wanted to say they’d keep heading north. He was as eager as ever to reach the Fortress of the Half-Demon, and with the undead down on the saddle conducting their siege, the way lay open.
But was that the right move?
He was n
o healer to aid in Jet’s recovery. Vandar and even Dai Shan were already venturing into the dark maze at regular intervals to search for Cera and Jhesrhi. If Aoth did reach the ruin, it would only be after tendays of travel, and once there, what was he likely to accomplish?
But suppose he took a hand in the confrontation fate had placed before him. He’d be doing what he’d promised the Wychlaran and the Iron Lord he’d do and in the process might uncover some genuine answers at last. And if the masked men were some sort of hathran, they might have magic to speed him on his way.
“We’re going to help break the siege,” he said, “and hope the folk in the caves make it worth our while.”
The berserker of the Owlbear Lodge scowled and jumped up from the bench. His thoughts sluggish with ale and firewine, Mario Bez tried to puzzle out how he might have given offense, then realized he’d already forgotten what he’d just said.
He also realized he didn’t care. He supposed the barbarians had been friendly to invite men of the Storm of Vengeance into their hall to drink with them, but as far as he was concerned, this oaf was being friendlier still by offering him the chance to vent his frustration with all things Rashemi.
He rose in his turn, and other men on both sides leaped up as well. Hands reached for sword hilts and axe handles, and, starting to invoke the rage that was their gift, berserkers gave the unmistakable cry, half hoot and half roar, of their totem animal.
The imminence of a general melee jolted Bez’s thinking into a belated clarity. Once someone spilled blood, there’d be no stopping it; he and his crewmen were outnumbered, and even had it been otherwise, he had nothing to gain and much to lose by falling out with his hosts.
“Stop!” he bellowed. “This is between this lad and me!” Then he removed his rapier and main gauche and laid them on the table amid the tankards, goblets, pitchers, and bottles.
The fellow he’d evidently insulted-a typical Rashemi warrior, dark-haired, scarred, burly, and of no more than medium height-set his hand-axe and dirk aside as well. Then the two of them moved to a clear space while other people turned to watch.
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