“I came back to say the way ahead is clear. No one lurks in the col, though there be Troll scat and other Ruptish dung and filth. The stench is quite strong, especially to Vex. And the city lies a bit beyond.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Not in the city. Just to within sight of it. Vex seems uneasy, but just why she cannot tell me. Whatever it is, it’s not Spaunen.”
“Well, then, if there’s nothing ahead in the way of Rucks and such, is there any need for stealth?”
“Not until you reach the city, and mayhap not even then.”
“What do you intend to do, Liss?”
“Find Pipper and tell him what I told you, then report back to the warband. Where are they, by the bye?”
Binkton gestured behind and growled, “About three hundred bloody paces back along the trace.”
“All right, then. I’ll see Pipper and then report to Aravan.”
“Tell Pip to meet me in the path. We’ll go on ahead to the city.”
Lissa frowned and started to say something, but Binkton said, “We’ll be all right.” And so she and Vex darted off toward the opposite side of the overgrown trail, while Binkton followed more slowly. When he reached the weedy way, he waited.
Some long moments later, Pipper appeared, uphill of where Binkton stood. Binkton trudged up to Pipper, and then together they went east through the dimness under the swaying forest canopy, a swirling wind below, a glum sky high above.
“And Binkton and Pipper?”
“They went on ahead, Captain,” said Lissa. “The trail is clear of Rupt: no ambushes, no squads, or lone assassins. I think it safe, though Vex senses something ominous about the city, yet what it might be she cannot say.”
“Sniff strange smell?” asked Nikolai.
“The fact the city be dead?” asked Wilfard, one of the cargo chiefs.
Lissa frowned and shook her head. “No. It’s more like the time we went ashore at that set of islands ringing ’round the blue hole. Vex just seems uneasy.”
Aravan turned to Brekk. “Remain alert, Armsmaster.”
Brekk grunted an assent.
Aravan then glanced at Aylis.
“My ‹sight› is invoked,” she said, without being asked.
“Then let us catch up to our wandering Waerlinga,” said Aravan.
“Would you have me try to overtake them ere they reach the city, Captain? Vex is quite swift.”
Aravan shook his head. “I deem they have enough caution to be the scouts they fancy themselves to be.”
With Pipper whistling snatches of a merry melody and singing a few words between, he and Binkton strolled out from under the jungle canopy to come to the edge of a forsaken place. Pipper’s tune came to an abrupt stop, and only the groan of the wind broke the stillness.
“Whoa,” said Binkton. “Would you look at that.”
Spread out before them lay the ruins of an abandoned city, with some buildings yet standing while others lay in shambles. Cracked pave made up the streets winding among dwellings and establishments and a temple or two, and all of the structures were made of stones of various hues. Vines twined among the rock and cascaded down the sides of walls, the leaves fluttering in the moaning wind as of green waterfalls tumbling. Here and there trees had taken hold and throughout the long eras had become huge, their massive roots snaking across the streets and diving into the earth, to fracture and tilt the pavement upward, splitting the stone with an inexorable, steadily increasing pressure as the trees had grown.
“Hoy, there,” said Pipper, pointing.
Dwarfing the other structures, in the near distance ahead in what appeared to be the city center stood five towers: a central one hemmed in by four.
“The middle one looks like Lady Aylis’s statuette,” said Binkton.
“Other way about,” said Pipper.
“What now?” asked Binkton.
“It’s the other way about,” said Pipper. “Lady Aylis’s statuette looks like the tower.”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“No, Bink, you said it just backwards.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
Bickering, in among the ruins they went, heading for the towers, while dark sky roiled above and the wind keened across stone and over walls and ’round corners, wailing as would a thousand ghosts lost in the cracks of time.
“Jade,” said Brekk. “This stone, all of it is jade.”
Aravan and Aylis, along with Lissa and the warband and sailors, had reached the edge of the ruins.
“The entire city is jade?” asked Lissa, even as she leaned forward and ran a hand along Vex’s neck, trying to soothe the vixen, who yet indicated that they should leave, even though she didn’t know why.
“At least this part of it is,” replied Brekk.
“But not all green,” objected Nikolai.
“Jade comes in many colors,” said Aylis. “Green, yellow, white, grey, black, orange, and even in pale violet.”
Brekk nodded his agreement.
“Speak of green,” said Nikolai, pointing.
“The tower,” breathed Lissa.
“I suspect that’s where we will find Binkton and Pipper,” said Aravan. He looked at Lissa and said, “Take point.”
As the Pysk and reluctant fox trotted ahead, Brekk gestured left and right, and Dwarves moved to flanking positions, and all set out, war hammers, crossbows, bows, or falchions in hand, though Aravan bore a spear.
With the moaning wind whipping his shoulder-length hair about his face, “It has no door,” said Pipper, as he and Binkton finished circling the midmost tower, central to four others close-set in a square, there in the heart of the city plaza.
“No doors, Pip? You noticed, eh?” said Binkton. Then he grinned and added, “Well spotted, bucco.”
Pipper looked up at the smooth, virtually seamless stone. “Wull, then, how does anyone ever get inside?”
“Mayhap they weren’t meant to,” said Binkton.
Pipper stroked his fingers across the pale green, almost translucent surface. “I don’t even think our climbing gear will be of any use.”
“I told you it would just be extra weight,” said Binkton smugly.
Pipper looked at an adjacent tower. “That one has a door.-Say, maybe there’s a secret passage from that to this.”
Binkton sighed and said, “Let’s just wait for-Oh, here comes Liss now.”
“There you are,” said Lissa. “I don’t think the captain is very pleased that you didn’t wait.”
“Oops,” said Pipper, glancing at Binkton.
“Well, that’s all water under the bridge now,” said Binkton. He looked back in the direction Lissa had come. “Where is the captain?”
“He and the others are on their way,” said Lissa, gesturing hindward.
Vex whined.
Lissa petted the fox along the neck. “It’ll be all right, Vex.”
“What’s the matter with her?” asked Pipper.
“As I told you back along the trail,” replied Lissa, “there’s something about the city that seems to bother her.”
“Perhaps she scents something we cannot smell,” said Pipper.
“No, it’s not an odor,” said Lissa. “But something else that she cannot make me understand.”
Pipper looked about as if seeking hidden foes, and Binkton said, “Perhaps it’s this blasted wind, shrieking among the stone as it is. That or the darkness in the middle of the day. I mean, we’re in for a storm, and Vex knows it.”
“Arm hair,” blurted Pipper.
“What in the world-” began Binkton, but Pipper said, “What I mean is, sometimes when a storm is coming, the hairs on my arms stand straight up. Then there is a flash and a boom, and lightning streaks the sky.”
Binkton turned toward Pipper. “And what does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, Vex is hair all over, and-”
“I don’t think that’s it, Pip,” said Lissa
.
“Oh,” said Pipper, then added, “Why don’t we wait here till the others arrive?”
Lissa turned the vixen. “I’ll tell the captain where you are.”
As Pysk and fox trotted away, Pipper and Binkton sat down on blocks of dark green jade, Pipper again looking about for. . what? He did not know.
Amid the warband and sailors, Lissa and Aylis and Aravan entered the city square. At Aravan’s side, Brekk growled, “There they are,” gesturing toward the buccen, even as Pipper stood and began trotting toward the group, while Binkton followed at a more leisurely pace.
In that very same moment, as Aravan’s stone of warding grew icily chill, Aylis looked up at the pale green central tower and gasped in alarm. “Aravan, something, a thing dark to my ‹sight›, just flashed into-”
Before she finished saying what she ‹saw›, a great blast of aethyric energy exploded out through the openings high above, and, shielding her eyes, Aylis jerked her face to the side, just as a vast cloud of darkness boiled out from the top of the tower and swooped down toward them. “Chakka shok, Chakka c-” called Brekk, even as Aylis cried, “Oh, Adon, it’s not ali-” and Aravan hefted his spear, shouting, “ ’Ware-”
And then the darkness clenched them all-all Dwarves, all sailors, Aravan, Aylis, Lissa, Vex, and, at the far edge, Pipper.
And they fell to their knees and toppled sideways and began to scream in unendurable agony.
Yet within that seethe of anguish, though engulfed in unbearable pain as he lay upon the tiles, Aravan managed to reach out and take Aylis’s hand ere the torment o’erwhelmed him.
And even as Binkton ran toward fallen Pipper, to his Warrow sight he saw dreadful roiling within the darkness, and it seemed as if a monstrous twist of blackness descended upon one of the sailors, and the man screamed and screamed and writhed as if the life were being sucked out of him, and the darkness itself grew.
Binkton reached for Pipper-“Ahh!” he yelled in pain-as his hand entered the shadow. He jerked back. Yet Pipper shrieked in anguish. And, gritting his teeth, Binkton reached into the shade again. Screaming in dire hurt, still Binkton grabbed Pipper’s ankle, and gripping tightly and bawling, he fell backward while yet hanging on. Jerking, hauling, he dragged Pipper free of the thing . And then he sat sobbing, as Humans and Dwarves and a Pysk and her fox and a Seeress and an Elf thrashed in torment beyond bearing.
And the twist of blackness within rose up from the sailor and moved to another, the one left behind unmoving. And once again it coiled about its victim and began sucking away his life essence.
Binkton grabbed Pipper and began shaking him. “Come on, Pip. Come on. It’s killing them all.”
Pipper groggily opened his eyes-“Wha-wha-?”-and then snapped awake. “What is it?”
Binkton jerked Pipper about. “Look! Oh, Adon, look!”
“Oh, oh, oh no, oh no,” cried Pipper. He got to his feet and started toward the fallen. But Binkton grabbed him and hauled him back, shouting, “We can’t go into the darkness! It’s deadly!”
“Deadly?”
“It had you, Pip. It had you. Watch, watch the thing inside.”
Pipper turned and looked and cried out, “Oh, Elwydd, what is it? Adon! Adon! It’s killing them, killing them!”
“What’ll we do, Pip? What’ll we do?”
The knot of darkness released a now-dead sailor, and it descended upon a Dwarf.
“We can’t let this go on,” shouted Pipper. “What is it? Where did it come from?”
Binkton slued about, and his Warrow vision followed a dark, twisted, ropy strand of the thing back up to the top of the central tower. “There!” he cried. “Pip, it’s from there.”
“We’ve got to get to the top,” cried Pipper. “Perhaps we can somehow stop it.”
“But how? There is no door,” shouted Binkton above the wail of a strengthening wind and the screams of agony.
Pipper whipped the pack off his back and dragged out the rope and grapnel. “It’s too high,” wailed Binkton.
“We’re going to the other tower,” shouted Pipper, “the one with the door.”
The twist inside the darkness moved from the Dwarf to another sailor and embraced the man, and again began sucking away the life. Yet at the same time, lo! Kalor, a descendent of Brega, Bekki’s son, stirred upon the tiles, and, screaming in pain, levered himself up to one knee. And he took his war hammer in hand and, yelling in agony, he swung at the knot of blackness, but the hammer passed through without effect. And the thing turned upon its assailant and took all his essence from him.
Pipper and Binkton ran to the tower with the door. Binkton tried the handle. “Locked!” he spat, and reached for the wire in his belt.
And wind howled among the streets of the City of Jade, wailing about corners and screaming over walls and sobbing through broken windows.
The thing within the void now sucked upon another Dwarf, while all about the creature its victims-to-be shrieked, all unknowing, all unthinking, all unseeing. . unable to do ought but shrill.
“Hurry, Bink. Hurry!”
“Shut up, shut up!” snarled Binkton, and he bent the tip of the wire at a different angle and probed again.
Another Dwarf died ere Binkton succeeded. But at last the lock fell to his skills, and he and Pipper, grunting and shoving, managed to wedge the stone panel open.
They found the insides completely hollow, but for a spiral stair winding upward.
“Come on,” shouted Pipper, and up they ran, turning, winding, ascending. At the very top they came to a jade trapdoor. And together and straining, with stone grating, they managed to lift it and throw it back.
They climbed onto a flat roof, a low parapet running about. They ran to the lip closest to the taller central tower; four openings could they see-the nearest fifty feet away.
“I can’t throw that far,” said Pipper.
“Give it to me,” said Binkton.
And as the wind howled, and darkness roiled in the sky, and a thing below sucked the life out from another Dwarf, Binkton whirled the grapnel at a short length of line, while Pipper held the far end, the rope coiled so as not to impede the flight.
Binkton threw.
The grapnel fell short.
Swiftly he recovered the line and hook, and whirled and threw again.
It clanked into the side of the tower and dropped.
Once again Binkton whirled and threw, and this time the hook flew through the opening.
Pipper pulled the line taut and looked about, and only a runoff slot at the far side did he see. “Oh, Adon, there’s nought to tie this end to.”
“Yes, there is,” shouted Binkton above the shriek of the wind. And he took the line and wrapped it about his waist thrice and lay down with his back to the roof and his feet against the parapet, the rope taut. He looked at Pipper and said, “I hope I can hold this.”
“Remember, Bink, your card, the one you drew for Lady Aylis, it was Strength.”
“Oh, Pip, the wind, it’s-”
“And mine was the Naif,” shouted Pipper, stepping to the parapet. “A decision to be made, and I’ve made it.”
And gauging the force of the swirling wind, Pipper stepped onto the line.
And as the rope took Pipper’s weight, Binkton grunted and gritted his teeth and held on with all his might, his legs trembling with the strain.
Across the line, sloping slightly upward, Pipper ran, praying to Elwydd and Adon that Uncle Arley’s training in the pines would see him through. Don’t place a foot wrong, don’t place a foot wrong, Pip! And the howling wind tore at him, as of a creature seeking to hurl him to his death on the jade stone far beneath.
And the swirl of darkness within the thing below moved on to another sailor. Just beyond writhed screaming Lissa, yowling Vex twisting at her side.
Pipper lost his balance just as he reached the arched opening, yet with a final lunge he managed to grasp the sill and pull himself in.
He jumped to the floo
r and looked about, and did not see the shadowy grey form slumped against the far wall, an astral being who had spent too much power loosing the deadly creature, a thing that had just finished sucking the life from a Human and now descended upon a Pysk.
But up above in the tall tower, Pipper could see an urn at rest on a high pedestal. Yet, what did that have to do with-? But then with his Warrow sight he saw the twisted rope of darkness extending from the footed vase and leading out and down to the plaza below.
As Pipper loaded a bullet into his sling, he did not see the astral form that struggled to its feet and limped to that same opening, nor did he hear the frantic aethyrial shout.
And the blackness below sucked up into a ball and flew toward the arched opening high above.
With a whirl and a snap, Pipper loosed the bullet, just as he was engulfed by darkness and hideous pain once again.
Yet the missile flew true, and it shattered the delicate, rune-marked vase, scattering the ashes of a deadly wraith.
And the howling wind whirled up those ashes and hurtled them out from the tower, scattering them wide, spinning the motes spiralling away like the long-dead dust they were, the wraith mewling even as its unnatural life bled away on the storm.
And Pipper fell unconscious, released from unbearable agony.
And even as an astral being fled toward a far-distant mountain fastness, the skies opened and a torrential rain thundered down and down on the long-lost City of Jade.
50
Escape
DARK DESIGNS
MID AUTUMN, 6E9
Nunde expended nearly every bit of the remainder of his essence just to reach his stronghold in the Grimwalls. It had been a close call, for he had spent too much of the stolen ‹life force› as well as his very own merely to release the wraith. He certainly had not retained enough ‹essence › to imprison the Shade again, and he knew that when the fiend had finished with Aravan and his band, he, himself, would be the next victim. Yet even as Nunde had been gathering his strength to flee back to his fortress, where he planned to slay many more Chun for their ‹fire›, enough to defeat the wraith, that fool of a Warrow had entered the sanctum of the jade tower.
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