Shadow Witch: Horror of the Dark Forest

by J. Thorn

  Rowan beat at the dread wolf’s snout with his free hand. He ignored the pain burning up his arm like a lit fuse. As the dread wolf’s fangs bit into Rowan’s flesh, the snout sprung open as though it was pried apart. The beast issued a gargled howl as the point of Thom’s sword emerged from its chest.

  Pulling the sword back through the dread wolf’s body, Thom swung the weapon horizontally, decapitating the beast.

  “Where did you learn to fight like that, lad?”

  Rowan drove a boot into the first dread wolf’s head and twisted the mace free. The weapon came loose with the sound of tearing sinew, similar to raw meat pulled off a bone. The innkeeper hoisted the mace and hurled himself toward another dread wolf.

  Except for Gavin and Rowan, the villagers could not repel the attack. The dread wolves massacred the town.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Thom saw Kereth Bowe torn in half by two dread wolves, their jaws ripping at his head and legs.

  Bran Allador was too late to save the blacksmith and unable to save himself. A beast standing four heads taller than the burly apprentice grasped Allador by the neck with its giant, clawed hand. It lifted him off the earth like a rag doll until the apprentice’s eyes were even with the beast’s. As Bran’s legs kicked, the dread wolf’s snout opened to reveal rows of razor-sharp fangs. The monster’s teeth tore into Bran’s neck, a tide of blood and flesh splattering on the ground.

  Thom bent over and wretched. Men fell everywhere—men he knew and cared for. The village was lost. The monsters of legends and nightmares destroyed them all.

  Thom felt the air ripple and begin to pull him forward, as though he were caught in a waterless ocean current. A pressure pushed against his ears and the sounds of battle became muted and muffled. A ball of flame burst down from the sky, exploding against a dread wolf. The beast howled as flames engulfed it. The fire spread across its fur like drought-stricken brush. A second ball of flame shot past his head, landing short of a dread wolf fleeing the road in confusion.

  Thom turned his head and saw the figure of a man atop the burning inn. He blinked, not believing his eyes or understanding how anyone could get onto the roof. Flames rose higher along the top of the inn, threatening to burn it all down. But when the fire moved closer to the figure, it appeared to fizzle and recede as though the man wore a cloak of ice water. The man above the inn raised his hands to the sky, billowing robes sliding down his arms. A hood concealed his face in a shroud of darkness.

  Marik.

  Flames burst from his hand and coalesced into an oval inferno. Marik thrust his hands forward and the ball of flame blasted toward the battle like an arrow shot from a bow. The four remaining dread wolves retreated, scrambling over bloody corpses to escape the raining fire.

  Amid the confusion, Thom spun in a circle. He did not see Rowan or Gavin. The dead villagers covered the road, while the beasts fled the raining fire into the northern fields.

  Night swallowed the village. Thom could no longer see the dread wolves, though he heard their howls fading through the fields. Low cries escaped the mortally wounded in the road, rolling forth like a dirge.

  A loud crack spun Thom around as the Fair Haven Inn buckled, split and collapsed in a fiery explosion. The flames along the roof swelled as they reached for the sky, the fire feeding off the wooden remnants of the second floor. The wall of heat knocked Thom backward, singeing his eyebrows.

  “Rowan. Where are you?”

  He toppled over more bodies, his eyes never leaving the burning destruction of the inn.

  Had Rowan been in the inn when it collapsed? What of Gavin? And Marik…

  He shivered thinking of the sorcerer, seeing again the balls of fire bursting out of Marik’s hands. At that moment, he might have believed Marik was capable of anything. But nobody could have survived the fire and the collapsing building. Not even the sorcerer.

  “Rowan. Can you hear me?”

  Thom tried to suppress the vision of his friend crumbling under the collapsing inferno, but it was all he could think about. His stomach lurched again and he struggled to prop himself up by his sword. The stench of burning bodies mixed with the dread wolves, the smell of dead animals and open graves.

  He picked his way through the carnage, stumbling over dead villagers, dodging pieces of the inn which burned atop their bodies.

  “Rowan. Gavin.”

  The shrill howling continued out of the fields north of the village. It seemed to Thom the dread wolves moved closer. He assumed Gavin, Rowan and Marik were all dead. If the beasts returned, he would be killed like the rest of the villagers.

  A thin figure darted out of the shadows and ran past him, trying to flee from the spreading fire. Thom caught the man by the arm and spun him around. He recognized the beady eyes and hawk nose of Traiton Felcik, though the man’s face was concealed by black soot and streaks of blood.

  “Where do you run to, Felcik?” Thom asked. His eyes burned holes in the younger Felcik brother.

  “They’re all dead. I-I didn’t mean to—”

  “What didn’t you mean to do?”

  “She asked me to. One does not refuse her requests.”

  “You make no sense.”

  Thom shook Traiton by his shoulders. The fire spread outward from the inn, catching thatched homes to either side and engulfing the bodies at the edge of the road.

  “The old woman, the woman who speaks to me in my dreams.”

  In dreams?

  Thom’s heart stopped.

  With distant, haunted eyes, Traiton said, “She told me Marik served the Shadow and I must turn the village against him before the sorcerer destroyed us all. She said she would send help, soldiers, Thom. I did not know. How could I know she would send monsters?”

  “Where is Dain?”

  “Dain…” Traiton swallowed, his eyes trailing over the smoke-filled sky as though the answer drifted somewhere beyond the heavens.

  “Your brother. Where is Dain?”

  “Dain was to cause a distraction in the village so the soldiers could arrive unseen. He set fire to—”

  “To the inn?”

  Thom felt the blood rush to his face as he bit hard into his bottom lip.

  “Yes. To the inn.”

  “Where is your treacherous brother now?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “Where?”

  “Along the Mylan Road. He went to meet the others.” Traiton’s eyes drifted toward the baying from the northern fields. His lips continued to move after his voice went silent.

  Thom threw Traiton to the ground. The younger Felcik issued a yelp as his hand sunk through the chest cavity of William Menlo. He scrambled to his feet and ran into the darkness, putting ground between him and the howling that sounded closer still.

  Thom stood alone amid the carnage. The crackle and snap of burning, collapsing homes did not conceal the cries of the dread wolves. He did not want to look at the dead, fearing if he looked too closely, he would see Rowan or Gavin.

  The starry sky disappeared behind the cloud of smoke rising out of the village and spreading out in a gray, acrid blanket. He peered west along the main road, past the houses untouched by the blaze, beyond the Mylan Road and toward the western horizon. A plume of smoke drifted out of the west, like the ashen breath of an erupting volcano. It floated toward his house.

  The dread wolves were moving toward his house.

  He broke through the mass of dead and dying on the roadway, racing down the west road as fast as his legs would carry him. Thom heard the howling ahead to his right, as though the monsters were coming for his wife and daughters. His heart pounded. The thin sliver of a cobalt moon hung on the horizon above the twin peaks of the Wyvern Mountains. Endless black rolled out of the heavens as night erased memories of day.

  A shape sprung out of the roadside bramble to block his path. He drew his sword as he ran, intent on cutting through the attacker in a swift stroke. Nothing would slow him on his way to his family. But he pulled up, his m
outh hanging open.

  “You must take your family to Mylan, Thom Meeks. The king must know the Shadow has risen.”

  The man stepped toward Thom. The ambient light revealed his flowing robes.

  “Marik. How did you—”

  “Time is short,” Marik whispered. His voice sounded like rats crawling through tall grass. “I cannot hold them back for long.” Marik’s head turned toward the sound of the dread wolves approaching from the fields.

  “Your magic—”

  “Is all but extinguished on this night, I’m afraid. There is a finite amount of power upon which a sorcerer may draw in each cycle of the moon. It will be days before I am at full strength, if I am to survive tonight. If you understood magic half as well as swordplay, you would already know this. I will do my best to hold the beasts off a little longer.”

  Thom started to run again, but Marik grasped him by the arm. The grip of the sorcerer’s lithe hand was stronger than Gavin’s or Rowan’s. Thom shivered as Marik pulled him closer. He had no choice but to stare into the shroud of black under the sorcerer’s hood.

  Marik leaned forward and Thom smelled wood smoke and ashes, the dying scent of the Fair Haven Inn.

  “Under no circumstances are you to leave the Mylan Road.”

  “But—”

  “Listen.” The sorcerer moved so close he was nothing but a shadow, a piece of night fallen from the sky. “The northern forest is alive again. It is her realm, the one who speaks to you in your dreams.”

  “This is nonsense—”

  “The Shadow has awakened and with it the witch of the northern forest. You have spoken to her before in the world of dreams and she knows of you now. But you must never speak your name to her, for then you will belong to her.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Names are of great importance, Thom Meeks. They hold more magic than any sorcerer could hope to wield in a lifetime. They define who we are and who we will become. But their magic may be turned against us.”

  “It’s just a name—”

  “All of your fears and desires are forever linked to the names of those you have encountered. A spoken name by a witch holds more power than all the grimoires in the world. But it is not enough for her to read a name on parchment or hear it spoken by a simple acquaintance. The name must be willingly given by you or your closest family. Remember what I said. Do not deviate from the path. Stay on the Mylan Road. And keep your names hidden.”

  Thom started to reply, until he felt the night breeze fresh against his face. Marik was gone, vanished into the dark. Thom heard the howling of the dread wolves coming closer. As he ran toward home, he prayed his footfalls on the soil would not be heard.

  Chapter 10

  Sitting in the front window of the Meeks’ home, twin candles punctured the veil of night like cat’s eyes. As Thom arrived, he saw the door stood ajar and felt the hair stand on the back of his neck. The door swung all the way open and Kira held a wood ax, their four daughters cowering behind her.

  Kira opened her mouth to say something when the howl of a dread wolf rose out of the field from a few hundred paces away.

  “Thom, what is it?” she asked. A sheen of tears covered Kira’s eyes. It looked like the water from a deep, dark well.

  “It’s a monster, Daddy. I hear a monster coming,” Delia said, sobbing into her mother’s stomach.

  “There are no monsters,” Kira said, but the trembling of her limbs belied the conviction of her words.

  “We must go at once,” Thom said. He put his arm around his daughters and all but pulled them through the doorway.

  “I should gather my belongings, my memories,” Krea said. The fifteen-year-old seemed to have vanished inside of herself. She stumbled about, picking up random items and clutching them to her chest.

  “There is no time. Come with me and whatever you see or hear, you must not make a sound.”

  Sarra’s eyes glazed over and tears ran in thin streams down her cheeks. She shared a look with her mother before grasping Delia’s hand. Kira and the four girls followed Thom away from the house.

  As they moved down the worn path toward the black, misshapen trees standing against the smoke-streaked sky, Jasmine saw Krea looking back. She turned her head, following Krea’s eyes to the old house, which became smaller with each step. The girl kept looking over her shoulder as though the next glance might erase the destruction. They passed between the oaks and the little house disappeared from view. All five of the women peered into the night through the blurry film of tears.

  They turned east on the main road with the Wyvern Mountains looming behind them like slumbering dragons. The road was never visible more than ten paces ahead, where the gloom dipped down from the sky to swallow it whole. As they pushed eastward, the shadows stirred and brambles grew as barrier segments to their sides. The cruel thorns were like the razor talons of a shadowed predator.

  Where Droman Meadows once stood, a volatile orange inferno ascended out of the horizon as though the gates of hell had opened. Kira’s heart sank lower at the sight of the village engulfed in flames. But she knew the impious source of the distant howling caused the fire.

  Something in the bramble rustled ahead and thorny branches snapped like green kindling in a bonfire. One of the girls screamed and the fiery horizon disappeared behind a monstrous shape blocking the road. Kira threw her arms out to her sides to save her daughters from running into the gargantuan shadow. It almost seemed to her as if a distorted tree grew in the middle of the main road. It appeared to move its branches, its trunk covered with black, bristled hair. Twin yellow ovals burned back at her. Kira realized it was the beast’s eyes as her mouth turned to cotton and her heart raced until she thought she might faint.

  A gleam of steel reflected the distant firelight, cutting through the gloom. The sword ripped horizontally across the monster’s chest as the girls screamed behind Thom. Blood splashed outward, sounding like a rock skipping across the surface of a pond. The beast roared. Its glowing eyes loomed at least four heads above his own and Thom realized the sword hadn’t slowed the dread wolf. An arm as thick as a heavy bough swung out of the gloom, striking his head. Thom’s vision flashed with light and he felt himself hurtling through the air as though in a dream. He crashed into the twins’ legs before the girls could scramble out of the way.

  His head swam in a mental fog and he could feel the night closing in. The pounding footfalls of the dread wolf approached. Thom heard the frantic screams of his wife and daughters. He caught a glimpse of the distant fire interrupted by the monstrosity stalking his family. He watched the beast’s arm rise into the sky with its wicked claws like knives. Those claws would sweep down and tear his body into strips of raw, bloody meat.

  “No.”

  He heard Kira scream and saw her hurl her body against the dread wolf. The monster swiped her aside like a bull flicking at a fly. She disappeared into the night sky, her cry choked in a sickening crunch as her body collided with the frozen ground twenty paces away. As the dread wolf turned its sights back to Thom, he plunged the sword upward into the beast’s soft underbelly.

  Thom ignored the curdling scream of the dread wolf as the tip of the sword poked out of the monster’s back. Then he ripped back on the hilt, pulling the blade free of the dread wolf’s torso and thrusting it upward through the beast’s neck.

  The dread wolf stopped howling. The quivering cries of the girls and the pitter-patter of dripping blood against the ground were the only sounds on the road. Feeling the monster’s weight shifting forward, Thom yanked the sword out of the dread wolf’s neck and rolled to the side before it could fall to the ground and crush him. The monster’s body hit the road with a thud.

  “Mother.”

  The girls ran into the dark before Thom could stop them. Through the northern fields came another shrill cry of a dread wolf, as if to illuminate the danger that still existed outside of Droman Meadows. Thom looked, sheathed the sword and ran in the direction
of the girls.

  His leg caught on a thick branch and he felt bramble thorns tear through his skin. He stumbled and found his balance, calling out for his wife but heard no reply. The faces of so many villagers flashed in his mind and he felt an oily nausea in his stomach. He thought of Rowan and Gavin. So many lost.

  He found his daughters circled around Kira’s crumpled form. She lay face down. As the girls sobbed, Thom knelt and turned Kira on to her back.

  “Kira?”

  Her eyes shot open and he saw her chest rise and fall with each breath.

  “Thank the good light,” he said.

  “Is the monster dead?” Kira asked.

  “Yes, thanks to you. But there are more.”

  Another howl cut through the night as if to punctuate Thom’s warning.

  “Can you move?”

  She raised herself onto her elbows with a wince, drew her legs up and exhaled. Thom thought of people thrown from wild horses who lost the ability to move their legs. Kira could still move. He took a deep breath.

  “I can travel. Help me to my feet.”

  She clasped her hand in his and Thom pulled her to standing. Their daughters converged on Kira, mobbing her with hugs.

  “We must move before we are seen again,” Thom said.

  Thom took them along the southern side of the main road, keeping the fractured barrier of leafless trees and thorn bushes between them and the path. As the expiring flames of the village ruins drew closer, his eyes centered on the smoldering wreckage of the Fair Haven Inn sprawled in a broken heap like a dead giant. Somewhere within the smoke and flame lay the lifeless bodies of his friends. A lump formed in his throat.

  He looked left and right. The monsters still hunted them. They would be hunkered down in the fields, hidden behind trees and waiting to tear his family apart with their hideous claws. And somewhere, too, crept the man he knew as Marik—the dark sorcerer who could read his dreams.