“We will see,” Vedoran said. “If I return from this mission, and all goes as you say, then we will surely speak again.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Six days later, Ashok, Vedoran, Skagi, Cree, and Chanoch sat with their backs to a cluster of stunted kindling trees, which he’d learned were called Dark Needles by Ikemmu’s shadar-kai. Similarly, they had found no good use for the spiny trees but the fire.
The Dark Needles were covered in a fine film of white dust. When Ashok had passed through the portal outside the city gates and tasted the open air of the Shadowfell for the first time in a month, he’d thought it deliciously sweet. But for four days now, a dust storm had been ravaging the plain. When Chanoch had first sighted the roiling clouds bearing down on them from the west, they had tried to outrun the storm. When it had overtaken them at last, it had been an exhilarating moment for all. Ashok had reveled in the dust searing his skin, feeling alone in the sudden darkness, yet a part of the storm.
They had pressed on, traveling until they could see no landmarks and risked becoming hopelessly lost in the painful fog. The shelter they’d found under the kindling trees was paltry at best. White dust covered Ashok’s entire body. He could feel the grit in his mouth, his ears, and buried in the roots of his hair. Their food was soaked in dust, as well as their clothing and bed things. No fire could withstand the fierce wind, so their fingers were numb with cold, and their minds were slowly following.
For the fourth time that day Ashok drew his dagger from its sheath and laid it against his bare flesh. He wanted so badly to press down, to feel something other than the dust scratching his skin.
Vedoran had forbid them to cut themselves. They were weak enough, he said, from having to ration gritty water and eat stale biscuits instead of the fresh meat they’d planned on hunting. But Vedoran couldn’t see his companions in the dust storm. The only impressions they had of each other were the occasional bits of conversation shouted over the wind. At all other times, they were silent, waiting and praying for the storm to pass.
Ashok laid the dagger against his arm and contemplated the pain. Sometimes, it was enough just to imagine the sensation rather than to actually experience it. His imagination could make up a lot of ground, if he willed it.
But in the end, the whicker and snort from over his left shoulder stopped him. The nightmare, his reins tied to the kindling tree, was no more able to move around in the storm than they. The dust had dulled his mane to a faint blue glow, and his red eyes were the only thing clearly visible in the unnatural darkness.
Ashok would not cut himself. He would not make himself any weaker than he already was while he held the nightmare’s lead. Neimal had placed a compulsion on the beast to calm him, but Ashok knew such magic would only have a superficial effect on the nightmare’s nature.
The only reason he had not tried to win his freedom was a feeling Ashok had. He couldn’t explain it, but they were connected somehow, the nightmare and he, ever since the night the beast had first sent him dreams. The nightmare read his intentions, if not Ashok’s thoughts. The journey was important. The beast knew he would finally have the chance to kill and feast.
He felt one of the others nudge his arm and tensed. Cree was suddenly at his ear, shouting.
“We need to speak!” Cree yelled.
Cree pulled him forward, and Ashok saw the silhouettes of the others converging. Cree threw a blanket over their heads to block out some of the dust and wind. He heard the scrape of a sunrod against the ground, and bright light filled the confined space. Vedoran cupped and dimmed the glow with his palm.
They were five ghosts in the muted light. They’d improvised masks to cover their mouths and noses, but it hardly helped.
“We have to move on,” Skagi said. Ashok could see how the light carved deep hollows into the brothers’ faces. They fidgeted and plucked at the flapping edges of the blanket to hold it in place.
“We can’t risk moving now,” Vedoran said. “We stay here until the storm passes.”
“How long will that be?” Cree demanded. “We’ll lose a tenday if this keeps up.”
“Then we lose a tenday,” Vedoran said.
“That’s fine with us,” Skagi said. “And you can explain it to Uwan when we bring back the corpses of his missing people.”
“If we blunder off course in the storm we lose just as much time,” Ashok said.
“This isn’t a discussion,” Vedoran said, a warning in his black eyes. “We stay here and wait out the storm. Anyone who disagrees can keep his thoughts to himself.”
Beneath the dust, Skagi’s face reddened, but Cree laid a restraining hand on his arm before he could retort. The tension in the small space threatened to explode.
Behind them, the nightmare snorted and neighed. Distracted, Skagi looked at Ashok. “What’s wrong with the beast?” he said.
“It’s choking on dust,” Cree joked. But Ashok was listening. He held up a hand.
“Do you hear that?” he said.
“Hear what?” Vedoran said. “There’s nothing but the damn wind.”
Ashok waited, and eventually the sound came again: a deep rumble underlying the piercing wind. “It’s thunder,” he said. “The nightmare smells the rain. This storm’s about to be swallowed.”
Vedoran raised his mask and pulled out from their makeshift tent. He returned a breath later. “Ashok’s right,” he said. “I can smell it too. Put this blanket away,” he told Cree. “Be ready to move out.”
The thunder grew louder. They huddled under the shelter of the kindling trees, Ashok holding the nightmare’s reins. Lightning flashed, and for the first time in days, they had a view across the plain.
“Did you see that?” Chanoch cried.
“What was it?” Skagi shouted.
At that instant, a jagged bolt split the sky and poured into the trunk of the kindling tree. The electric charge threw all five of them to the ground, and the nightmare reared and fell on his side, screaming.
The rain came then, a driving torrent that turned the dust on their bodies to a pasty white mud. When Ashok could see past the lightning blindness and muck, the dust had cleared, revealing a path before them, and in the distance, a rising black mass. Shadows writhed at its edges, and the lightning seemed to spear from its heart.
“There,” Chanoch cried. “What is that?”
Ashok dipped his head back and caught the rain in his mouth. The water burned his throat. He spat on the ground.
“It’s the witch,” he said, wiping his mouth in disgust. “These storms are hers. She must have seen us coming.”
Lightning savaged the tree again, and the warriors scattered. Ashok grabbed the nightmare’s reins and heaved himself onto the beast’s back. He leaned forward so he could whisper in his ear.
“We need your flame,” he said. “Show the witch you aren’t afraid.”
The nightmare screamed into the darkness and fire raced up his mane. Ashok sat back from the heat. The nightmare whipped his tail and shot sparks into the air. The fire burned off the dust and the wet, sending steam clouds toward the sky. The beast paced forward and screamed again as if in challenge.
Vedoran and the others gathered close to the nightmare’s flanks. Lightning continued to play across the open plain before them, but the beast strained against the reins, eager to run into the storm.
“Let it go,” Vedoran instructed Ashok. “We march,” he told the others. “Stay close to the beast.”
Ashok eased his grip on the reins, and the nightmare obligingly sprang forward, his long strides forcing the other shadar-kai to run to keep pace. They moved toward the shadow mass.
“Come! Come and give us a kiss, witch!” Skagi cried out and raised his falchion to the sky.
“Tempus!” Chanoch yelled, his arms thrown wide.
Ashok could hear the others shrieking in wild abandon as they ran alongside the flames. Vedoran held his hand out to graze the fire and tilted his head back to let the burning rain kiss his
cheeks. Laughter rumbled from his chest, and the skin stretched taut across his face like a mask.
They passed a cluster of boulders and the remnants of a streambed. A lightning bolt struck the rocks, exploding stone. Ashok felt the stings as the tiny shards embedded in his flesh. He felt the nightmare’s body quiver, but the beast didn’t break stride.
Ashok’s eyes burned from the heat and the pain. He kept his legs tight around the nightmare’s flanks, half-expecting to be blown off by the lightning. He tried to see ahead of them in the rain, but instead of growing closer, the shadows appeared to be moving away.
Ashok wrapped the iron-shod reins around his knuckles and pulled. The nightmare screeched a protest and bucked his hindquarters in the air. Thrown forward, Ashok found his hands suddenly in the middle of a fire.
Cursing, he pulled back and almost lost his balance. Cree reached up to steady him. Ashok nodded his thanks and yanked on the reins.
The nightmare reared again, but he slowed, and the rest of the shadar-kai realized something was amiss.
“What is it?” Vedoran demanded.
“It’s a trick,” Ashok said. “She wants us to think the shadows are her bog. Likely she’ll lead us off a cliff before she’ll show us the way into her domain. In this storm, we wouldn’t know any better until it was too late.”
Vedoran squinted into the darkness at the roiling shadows and the lightning all around. His jaw tightened. “You’re right,” he said. “Turn around.”
Ashok wheeled the nightmare and dug in with his thighs. The beast broke into a halting run, and the shadar-kai hurried to follow.
A deafening roar of thunder rolled across the plain. The nightmare screamed in answer, and so the shadar-kai screamed too and brandished their weapons as they charged away from the black storm. The rain pelted them, burned their skin, and slowed their steps in the mud.
The witch doesn’t realize what she’s done, Ashok thought as he listened to his pounding heart. She should never have stopped the dust storm. After their long journey, his soul was awake at last. The stone shards in his leg and the blisters on his hands were proof that he was still alive. They would come through the storm.
“Fly!” Ashok cried, and reached out to grasp the flames. “Fly and let us all burn!”
They emerged from the storm breathless and bleeding, on the verge of a vast swamp. The rain had stopped, and the air had a dense, saturated feeling. The bog itself seemed a quiet haven in the middle of the open plain, a paradise after the violent storms. There were only the faint sounds of bird and animal life penetrating the thick canopy of leaves, moss, and undergrowth.
Ashok slid off the nightmare’s back and took a breath to steady himself on his feet. The others were taking stock of their surroundings. Skagi rubbed the bark of one of the trees. It came off wet in his hand, and the smell of decay filled the air. “Looks pretty on top, but underneath everything’s dying,” he said. “We’ll find nothing to eat in there.”
“Assume everything is an illusion,” Vedoran said. He crouched to examine Ashok’s leg. “This needs to be seen to,” he said.
Ashok looked down at his leg and for the first time was able to see all the cuts, the half-melted shards embedded in his flesh. He bled from dozens of these small wounds, and where he didn’t the skin was blackened from burns. His hands were raw and throbbing from where the nightmare had thrown him into the fire.
The beast stood quietly beside him, his attention fixed on the bog like an enemy he wanted nothing more than to devour. The nightmare’s foul breath steamed the air, and he pawed the wet ground.
“Take this,” Vedoran said, pressing a small vial into Ashok’s hand. “We get two of these draughts apiece, no more.”
Vedoran handed the rest of the vials out to those that needed them. Chanoch bled from a gash above his eye, and Skagi’s green tattoos bore patches of black, but none of them were seriously wounded. Indeed all of them looked alive through the eyes in a way they hadn’t during the dust storm. The tension that had built up over their long journey had vanished.
Skagi and Vedoran compared burns and jested at their size. Vedoran laughed easily and accepted Skagi’s slap on the back when the shadar-kai accused him of running like a slug.
“Why did the storm stop?” Chanoch asked abruptly, stealing the good humor. “If she’d kept it up, she might have hacked us to pieces.”
“No, she wouldn’t have,” Ashok said.
“Once we saw through her ploy, she knew we’d get here,” Vedoran agreed. “She’s prepared her next offensive. She’s waiting for us now.”
“Where does she get all this power?” Cree asked. He stood on a raised hillock a few feet away. “I can’t see where the bog ends. It runs straight to the horizon.”
“It’s an illusion,” Ashok said. “Just like the shadows we were chasing. The bog exists in her mind.”
“Storms felt real enough,” Skagi complained. “I’ve got dust all down my throat and my godsdamn ears are ringing from that thunder.”
“Those storms were real,” Vedoran said. “I think … the witch just heightened our perceptions of them, made us think they were more dangerous and lasted longer than they actually did.” He looked at Ashok, who nodded agreement.
“So we have no idea how much true time has passed since we started our journey,” Cree said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Vedoran said. “We’ve reached the bog, and our mission lies ahead of us. But we can’t let the witch worm inside our minds again.”
“I can lead with the nightmare,” Ashok offered. “The creature clearly isn’t afraid of the hag’s magic.”
Vedoran nodded. “Do it, but make sure you keep the beast from bolting,” he said. If we get separated, the hag will be that much stronger taking us on one at a time. The rest of you, weapons out and on the march.”
Cree jumped down from the hill, and the rest readied their blades. Ashok mounted the nightmare, whose mane once again shone a dull, heatless blue. He let the reins hang slack in his lap and unhooked his chain from his belt. Using his legs, he guided the nightmare into the bog.
The ground immediately turned spongy and slick. Mosquitoes and biting flies circled fetid pools of stagnant water. The air was so heavy that after a time Ashok’s hair was plastered to his skull.
The nightmare’s steps became sluggish and uneven, hampered by the sinking ground and the cloying heat. The beast flicked his tail often to combat the flies, and each time he did Ashok got slapped in the back with the stinging horsehair.
“Keep an eye out for predators,” Vedoran said. “Don’t fill your waterskins from any of the pools.”
“Not if I was dying of thirst,” Chanoch said, wrinkling his nose at the stench rising from the water. “Smells like corpse brine.”
As the day wore on, they found drier ground, but apart from the occasional bird cry or rustle in the undergrowth, they encountered no other living things save the insects. Grass, which before had been sparse and water-logged, grew in abundance in that part of the bog, and soon the nightmare waded in it. The green and brown tendrils came up to Ashok’s knees and the other warriors’ chests.
Vedoran halted them. “Skagi, take point,” he said, “and Chanoch with him. Cut us a path. I want to be able to see my feet. I’ll watch our backs. Cree, stay close to Ashok.”
They changed positions fluidly, without conversation, and soon the silence was filled with the sound of Skagi’s falchion and Chanoch’s greatsword scything the grass. Each time they sliced through the blades, the smell of rot grew worse, until Ashok put his mask up over his nose again.
Two hundred feet or so into the brush, the nightmare stopped dead. Ashok dug in with his knees, but the beast wouldn’t move. His ears pressed flat against his head, and he snorted a breath. Ashok felt the tension all down the nightmare’s body. Orange flame hovered at the roots of his mane.
“What’s wrong?” Vedoran asked.
“I don’t know,” Ashok said. “He senses something.”
“I hear it too,” Cree said. “That’s not your blade, brother?”
Skagi bobbed his weapon in the air to show it was not him who’d made the noise. Ashok heard it then too, and the rest of them tensed.
A scrape in the underbrush, moving fast and very low to the ground. Vedoran drew his sword and put his back to the nightmare. “Form up, make a circle now!” he cried.
They closed ranks around the nightmare. From his high vantage, Ashok tried to see what was swimming in the grass, but the disturbance moved too fast for him to track whether it was beast or man or hag.
Suddenly, there came an explosion of movement and cries ahead of them. The nightmare reared and screamed. A flock of ravens burst out of the underbrush-at least fifty of them-and swarmed the circle of shadar-kai.
“Stand fast!” Vedoran cried. He swung his blade overhand and took two of the birds out of the air.
Ashok grabbed the nightmare’s reins, as much to steady himself as to calm the beast. He swung the chain in a protective arc and tangled one of the large ravens. He dragged the chain in and grabbed the struggling bird. It snapped at his fingers with its black beak.
The bird’s feathers were like slippery wax. Ashok started to cast the vicious creature away, when suddenly its wings and body collapsed into a mass of feathers and bones. The body parts turned to writhing maggots in his hands.
Ashok cursed and hurled the vermin away. Skagi and Chanoch cut three more out of the air and got showered by the maggots. The rest of the birds flew away, until the raven cries were a distant echo.
“Everyone still got their eyes?” Skagi said.
“My eyes are safe, but not my appetite,” Chanoch said as he brushed the maggots off his armor and stomped on them. “Filth! Everything smells like death.”
“Calm down,” Vedoran said sharply. “Work your blades up front. We’re not stopping for a distraction. Ashok, move on.”
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