by James Lowder
For just an instant, as he crossed the trade road, Ganelon took his eyes off Helain and peered anxiously at the Fumewood. And in that instant, she was gone.
When he saw that he had lost her, Ganelon stood for a moment and braced his hands against the pain lancing his sides. "Where are you?" he whispered between exhausted huffs. The cold night air transmuted each heaving breath into steam. Even the wisps seemed to taunt him; the white shapes lingered before his eyes for an instant-Helain in her flowing gown-before they, too, disappeared.
Fighting back despair, Ganelon tried to reason out the situation.
Helain couldn't have reached the tree line. She simply wasn't moving that quickly. There was nowhere for her to hide, nothing between the road and the forest large enough to conceal a house cat. She might have fallen into a ditch, but when Ganelon surveyed the landscape, he was stunned at how absolutely flat it appeared. The merchants had done a remarkable job driving back the wood and keeping the buffer clear. Ganelon couldn't imagine how anything could creep across that blasted waste and surprise someone on the road, though he knew such attacks were no rarity on the Slash.
Ganelon didn't call out. Helain wouldn't have answered him even if he did, and the noise would most certainly draw unwelcome attention from the Fumewood. Instead, he started across the buffer. As he stepped off the road, a prayer came to his lips. It was an old soldier's benison, one he'd never particularly liked. Somehow, though, it felt right now. "Fate favor me," he said. "Fear flee me."
Swirls of ash blew across the blasted ground, obscuring any trace of Helain's passing. Ganelon did his best to remember her position when she vanished. Once he'd decided on a spot, he found a particularly tall oak on the edge of the distant Fumewood and made it his target. Since there was no landmark in the buffer to guide him, walking straight toward the tree would keep him from wandering off course.
The buffer turned out to be just as flat and featureless as it had appeared from the road. The way was so level that Ganelon's gaze tended to fix upon the more obvious danger of the Fumewood. More than once he thought he saw shapes moving against the trees, fleet figures that carried some sort of pole weapon.
Kendralihd has vomited up her denizens for the night, Ganelon thought. The village lay at the heart of the Fumewood. The creatures that dwelled there were the results of some unholy experiment at Nedragaard Keep. "Render," they were called, gaunt little monstrosities with a penchant for thievery and a taste for human blood.
Ganelon shook his head. He had no idea where he'd learned about the kender, about Kendralihd. There were rumors of such creatures, campfire stories that told of vampires in the Fumewood, but the information he had was more like a military report, concise and detached.
Between his concern for Helain, the distraction of the sudden insight, and the looming menace of the Fumewood itself, Ganelon missed the small circle of darkness on the blackened ground before him. He stepped right over the hole and would have missed it entirely had his heel not sent a shower of dirt into the opening. The earth and small stones clattered noisily into the void, which made the young man whirl, ready for an attack.
When nothing sprang out at him, Ganelon crouched to examine the hole. It was the entrance to a narrow but expertly excavated tunnel. Not an entrance, he realized as he looked from the forest to the trade road, an exit. This was how the Fumewood's inhabitants managed to bypass the buffer. They used the tunnel-or tunnels-to cross beneath the open ground.
The hole had been hidden by a wooden cover disguised to blend with the surrounding blasted earth; if it hadn't slipped into the tunnel, Ganelon would have walked right over it. He looked back toward the road. He'd probably trodden over a half-dozen others already. A shudder gripped him. Suddenly, the Fumewood wasn't as far off as he'd thought.
He pushed that disconcerting thought aside and concentrated on his discovery. Scuff marks around the hole's perimeter and on the tunnel's lid told of a recent passing. Helain must have fallen into the hole; that would account for her sudden disappearance. Rather than climb back out, she'd simply plunged forward into the narrow, gradually sloping passage.
Ganelon climbed down into the dark. The creatures that had dug the tunnel had been smaller than men, but the way was just wide enough for him to proceed on hands and knees. He hesitated at the opening for a moment, wondering whether it would be best to leave the exit clear in case he needed to retreat in a hurry or replace the lid, so no other creatures would follow him into the tunnel. In the end, he decided to push the cover back into place. Should anything confront him underground, he'd have no chance to escape.
The tunnel's cramped quarters and lightless murk didn't bother Ganelon; his time in the pit at Veidrava had acclimatized him to those conditions. The smell most certainly did. Whatever creatures traveled in the tunnels did not wait to go aboveground to relieve themselves. Worse still, they seemed to devour their victims on the move, leaving behind gnawed bones and rotting flesh on their retreat to the Fumewood. That no rats or other scavengers ventured into the tunnels to claim these prizes did not escape Ganelon's notice, but he tried hard not to think about the reasons for their absence.
Ganelon felt the tunnel open up occasionally to the left and right. These spurs confirmed his suspicion that the buffer was laced with a network of cramped tunnels. He could only hope that Helain hadn't strayed from this route, wherever it led. If she had, he might never find her. Still, whenever he came upon an intersection, Ganelon paused to listen for some hint of her position.
It was during one such pause that he first noticed the snuffling. Something farther back in the tunnels was testing the air. It made a sound like a hound following a scent. Ganelon recognized the noise, but it sounded weird enough for him to guess that it was no dog there in the dark.
He tried to fight the panic, tried to push forward. Every time he moved, though, he lost the sound of the tracker. When that happened, his imagination placed the thing at his heels. He could almost feel its unseen hands wrapping around his ankles, its jaws locking on his aching legs. The tunnel was too cramped for him to fight back. Even if he could get turned around to face the thing, he had no weapon. He'd left the shop without so much as a kitchen knife.
At an intersection he paused once more. The awful sound came from both directions, louder now and undercut with a throaty chuckling. They- whatever they might be-were closing in on him.
He scrambled forward. Each scrape or scuff of his passing sounded like a cannonade to him, or maybe it was just the thundering of his pulse in his ears. Something sharp pierced his hand. Ganelon yelped in pain and surprise, thinking that one of the things had gotten in front of him somehow. It was merely a jagged piece of bone. He tore it from his palm and hurried on.
By the time he spotted the circle of faint light up ahead, Ganelon could hear the sound of his pursuers even over his own clumsy flight. Their passing produced a steady hiss, as of something being dragged across the dirt. Worse still was the huff and snort of their breathing and the rumble of their obscene laughter. The growing din told of a dozen creatures, maybe more, sliding through the darkness behind him.
He expected them to fall upon him at any moment. His left leg was useless. It trailed behind him as if death had already claimed it, hampering his already maddeningly slow flight. Once something took hold of that limb, but Ganelon kicked it away with his right leg. The pursuing thing chuckled more loudly.
Ganelon could scarcely believe it when he scrabbled out of the tunnel and clambered up the steep ring of excavated earth that circled the entrance. He'd made it! He stood a chance in the open. There might be something close by he could use as a weapon. Perhaps the creatures wouldn't even follow him out of the hole.
That last hope was dashed almost as soon as it formed.
The light of the white moon was faint here, choked by the canopy of trees overhead, but it lit the entrance enough for Ganelon to get a clear look at his pursuers as they burst from the tunnel. Not for the last time that evening, the you
ng man wondered if all the nightmares in Sithicus had come alive somehow.
When the first bony hand emerged from the gloom, Ganelon rightfully mistook it for part of a giant bat. The three digits were thin and clawed, perched halfway along a larger limb webbed by a leathery membrane very much like a bat's wing. That semblance ended with the creature's head. It was bulbous, with the faceted eyes of an insect. Its mouth, too, was that of some monstrous bug. Its mandibles clacked open and closed, sucking in breath and expelling it as the horrible chuckling that had so unnerved Ganelon.
A second bat's wing snapped forward, bending at joints it should not possess, in ways that defied common sense. Still chuckling, the thing pulled itself up out of the tunnel. Its torso ended in a mass of short, writhing tentacles. Like the rest of its grotesque form, the squirming limbs were the sickly blue-white of a drowned man's flesh.
Ganelon threw himself over the top of the embankment and rolled to the forest floor beyond. He couldn't stand; his leg wouldn't support the weight. He crawled into the scrub. Thorny branches tore at his face, but he didn't notice.
They were coming for him. Ganelon shut his eyes tight, but he could still hear them pulling themselves through the dead leaves carpeting the ground. Others took to the air, their leathery wings stirring the bushes and fanning him with cold night air. All the while, they huffed and cackled and clacked their mandibles together hungrily.
"Helain," Ganelon whispered, "I'm sorry."
The solid clank of something metallic right beside him made Ganelon wince. He braced for the blow, for the rending claws and tearing mouths, but they did not come. Instead, a horrible shriek filled the night. Ganelon looked up to find the creatures retreating. They darted into the trees or stumbled over each other to reach the safety of the tunnels. Slack-jawed and incredulous, the young man stared at the fleeing beasts.
"I believe this belongs to you," said a melodious, cultured voice.
Ganelon was too exhausted to be startled, so chilled by Death's proximity that he merely turned and gaped at the weird figure standing behind him. A flowing cloak obscured the man's form. His face was hidden behind a full mask that was itself partially lost in the shadow cast by a wide brimmed hat. Every stitch of his clothing was the same pale color, almost like the light of the new white moon.
"You frightened them off," Ganelon said.
The stranger nodded. When he did, Ganelon could smell the fragrance of flowers from the mask's long, hooked nose. Roses, he realized numbly. Of course.
"Why were they afraid of you?" the young man pressed.
"Because they are surprisingly bright for such hideous beasts," the stranger offered. He shifted the odd-looking mass of metal in his right hand; he balanced it against the ground and leaned on it like a walking stick. The contraption clanked again, this time more softly. "As I said, this belongs to you."
Ganelon studied the clutter of twisted rods and padded screws. It was some sort of leg brace. He'd seen miners wear similar ones at Veidrava, but never as elaborate as this. "Sorry, but you're mistaken." He rubbed his eyes, wiped away the blood from the scratches on his face. The shock was wearing off a little. "Did you see a woman come this way?" he asked as he crawled out of the scrub.
"Helain is safe," the stranger replied. He presented the brace yet again. "I hate to sound the pushy merchant, but I really do think this item is yours. It's the only reason I came."
Ganelon shoved the brace aside. "What do you know about Helain? Where is she?"
"Safe," the stranger replied, "or very nearly. The things in the Fumewood give the mad a wide berth. In a few days she'll have reached her destination."
"Which is?"
"A place you'd really do best to avoid."
"I'm supposed to take your word for that, I suppose," Ganelon snapped. "I don't believe a word of this."
The stranger shrugged and removed his mask. Ganelon had expected a scarred and hideous visage, but the man was handsome, preternaturally so. "What you believe is irrelevant to the truth of the matter, Ganelon. If you want to get Helain back, you need to recognize that fact."
"How do you know my name?" the young man asked. "No, never mind. I don't have time. Just tell me how to find her."
"No," the stranger said simply. "Not yet." Ganelon took a threatening step forward, but his left leg buckled beneath him. He pitched forward into the dirt.
As the young man lay there, the stranger let the brace drop to the ground right next to his head. "Put it on, then we'll talk."
The thing fit perfectly, as if it had been forged for him. But the scuffs and the spots of rust-no, of blood, Ganelon realized with a shudder- revealed the brace as older and hard used. More unsettling still, Ganelon's hands seemed to know how to adjust the elaborate system of screws and knobs that held the thing to his flesh. Yet if he concentrated on the task, tried to think about what he was doing, his fingers faltered.
"Don't worry," the stranger said as he watched Ganelon make the last of the alignments, then struggle to his feet. "You'll get used to it if you allow yourself to. The memory is there. It's just obscured by the nature of this place."
Ganelon shook his head as if that might disperse the fog of confusion clouding his thoughts. It didn't. "Who are you?"
"You already know that, too," the stranger replied. "I'll give you a hint anyway."
He held out his gloved hands. The mask was gone. In its place he held a leather case, the same pale hue as his clothes. Even before the stranger let the case drop open like a well-read book, revealing the silver tools aligned so precisely within, Ganelon knew that he stood face to face with the Bloody Cobbler.
The Cobbler was a legend in Sithicus, a phantom who stalked through camp tales and bad dreams. He meted out rough justice to those who betrayed their callings. If the stories were to be believed, men and women who steadfastly refused to walk their intended paths through the world could expect a midnight visit from him. With his silver tools, he would slice the soles from their feet and use them to shod someone else, someone who only needed to be prompted back onto a road they truly wished to follow.
Bodies turned up now and then with parts of their feet missing, but it was easy for the skeptical to dismiss the damage as a scavenger's handiwork. When someone suddenly switched careers, answered a calling that had long beckoned him, no supernatural agency had to be involved. After all, never remembered the Cobbler's visit-though Ganelon realized now that the phantom could have visited them nonetheless.
"Your repair was a bit more complicated than I'd anticipated," the Cobbler offered. His eyes twinkled with a mischievousness Ganelon found disarming, despite the menace of the gore-flecked knives in the case. "I should have realized that some of the more serious debilities of the, er, donor would carry to you. The brace will allow you to walk your road with a surer gait." "Why?" the young man stammered. "Why choose you? Because a life of adventure was the destiny you desired," the Cobbler replied. "It was a life you deserved."
"No," Ganelon said. "Why do this at all? What are you?"
"That sort of curiosity could get you in trouble," the Cobbler said darkly. "It killed the man for whom that brace was first crafted."
"Tell me anyway. I have to understand at least that much to be able to go an."
A satisfied smile lit the Cobbler's face. "Just the attitude I'd expect from a traveler on your lonely road," he said. Brushing back his cloak, he settled against a tree. "The best way to explain my purpose is to tell you a little story. You've no doubt heard variations on this unpleasant epic before, but never the truth.
"Once," he began grandly, "a long time ago, there was a knight of great renown. The man was graced with an agile intelligence and a strength of limb that perfectly suited him for his role as a champion of virtue. He possessed wisdom enough to recognize his destiny." The Cobbler laughed, the mirth tainted with a surprisingly potent bitterness. "A blind man could have recognized this knight's destiny-to lead his land, perhaps even the entire world, into a new era ruled by th
e just. Of course, you know the identity of this fabled warrior. He is the father of this black place."
"Lord Soth," Ganelon offered tentatively.
"Just so," the Cobbler replied. "But this was in the days before he died for his sins, when a heart still beat within his chest. He was a good man then, who saw the road to glory stretched out endlessly before him and chose instead to tread the gutter alongside."
A burst of icy air swept from the moonshadow of a twisted oak. "That tale outstrips your talent as a storyteller," said the death knight as he stepped from the darkness. "It also takes far longer to tell than you have life to live."
Ganelon prostrated himself before Lord Soth. The Cobbler remained where he was, leaning idly against a tree. He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. "You never were a fair judge of talent," he said. "Just consider your success with seneschals."
"There is a difference between bravery and foolishness," Soth rumbled. "Let me teach it to you."
The death knight traced a glyph in the air, watched as it took fire and flew toward the Cobbler. But the magical symbol passed right through the man's pale form. It struck the tree, which began to shudder. Its branches curled, fingers clenching into a fist. A sound went up from the trunk like an agonized groan.
"I learned all the lessons you had to offer quite a long time ago," the Cobbler said. "If you let me bid my friend farewell, I will demonstrate how well I mastered them."
Soth moved between the Cobbler and Ganelon. "I will deal with this spy, too," he said, "and without the lenience I showed him when Azrael first brought him to me."