The Legend of Huma

by Richard Knaak

  Within a minute, the room was empty. Had anyone looked inside, they would have seen no indication of recent entry. There was no sign of the knight and no sign of his shadowy captors.

  A mocking howl cut through the bleak air of the ghost town.

  CHAPTER 12

  Voices hissed incomprehensibly, seemingly in some sort of debate. It took the groggy knight several seconds before he came to realize that it was he the voices were arguing over. He wished his eyes would work so that he could see who was so concerned with his welfare.

  Another voice, somehow familiar, cut in, full of anger. “Why do you delay?”

  “He is marked.”

  “Of what concern is that, Skularis?”

  The one called Skularis hissed at some offense in the question. “There is something amiss when a Knight of Solamnia bears such a mark.”

  A second voice, more like the croak of some great bullfrog, snapped, “He would not understand, Nightmaster!

  This one on the ground is more one of us than him.”

  The first speaker, the Nightmaster, tried again to explain. “We have agents among them. Powerful ones, indeed.” The other speaker croaked his agreement. Huma stirred a little. They seemed to think he bore some kind of important mark. All he had right now was a burning forehead.

  “I am aware of what the mark means,” the familiar voice—where had he heard it?—said. “I am also aware that it is not going to kill him as I had originally thought. Excellent. He bears information I need. His very existence is important to me.”

  “What would you have us do, then? We cannot do him harm, not if one of ours has marked him for protection.”

  The evident outsider snarled, and Huma’s senses came alive as he recognized the sound. Only the dreadwolves made a sound like that.

  Someone must have noticed the shifting of his body, for a gloved hand reached down and turned Huma’s head from left to right. The glove was quite rotten; it stank so badly that Huma instinctively pulled away from it. The one identified as Nightmaster chuckled obscenely.

  “He is not one of us, but one of us has sought to protect him. This grows more and more interesting.”

  “What shall we do?” the croaker asked.

  “You must hide him, you wretched cadavers!” the outsider snarled. “Hide him until my servants can contact you! Has the plague taken your minds as well as your bodies?”

  Huma’s eyes seemed willing to open at that point, just a crack.

  Two figures resembling high mounds of moldy, stinking cloth stood conversing with—a dreadwolf. No one else. It took Huma’s fog-enshrouded mind several moments to realize that Galan Dracos—from his citadel far away somewhere—was using his unliving servant as his eyes, ears, and mouth in Ergoth.

  That they were still somewhere in the ruins was only a guess. What little he could make out lent credence to that guess, for the room was filled with rubble and part of the ceiling was gone. Huma did not know how long he had been unconscious or how far they had dragged him.

  Then the more menacing of the two ragged assailants lifted an arm, revealing a bony, scarred hand with the index finger pointed at the renegade’s messenger. “Have a care, mage. You have her blessing for now, but she is a fickle queen to those who fail her. You would do well to speak more civilly with those you need.”

  The pale form of the dreadwolf bristled with barely contained fury as Dracos allowed his emotions to be transmitted through his servant. The smaller of the two hooded figures shuffled back, two blotchy hands held up in obvious fear.

  The other, the Nightmaster, must have smiled, for his tone was full of mockery. “Your powers are fearsome to the fear-filled, but not to one who enjoys the protection of Morgion.”

  Morgion! Huma was barely able to stifle the shock that leaped through his taut body. He was a prisoner of the cultists of Morgion, god of disease and decay!

  “This is a foolish waste of time,” Dracos finally muttered.

  “Agreed. Very well, mage. My brethren will keep this one for your lackeys, but only because it serves the Master’s goals to do so. Not because I fear your power.”

  “Of course not.”

  “But the mark—” said the croaker.

  “There are times, brother, when we all must make sacrifices for the greater glory of Morgion.”

  “And the Queen, of course,” added Dracos purposefully.

  “And the Queen. Pity. I am still curious as to the reason for the mark.” Skularis put a hand to Huma’s forehead.

  Huma reeled from the shock, feeling as if his very soul were being invaded. He cringed, but he had no room to maneuver away from the clawlike hand.

  Quite suddenly, he was no longer in the ruins. A kaleidoscope of sights and sounds enveloped him. Huma felt no fright. A part of him knew this state was only in his mind, though he could not explain how this should calm him. Huma thought he could hear the sounds of horses riding into battle, the clank of armor, the cries of battle, and steel against steel. He saw a vision of three knights. Each wore a symbol of the knighthood: the crown, the sword, and the rose. They all wore visors, but Huma knew somehow the two in back could only be the twin gods Habbakuk and Kiri-Jolith. Two of the Solamnic Triumvirate—which meant that he who stood before them …

  With a horrible abruptness, Huma was wrenched from that vision and returned to the real world once more. Had he not been gagged, he would have screamed, for the bony, disease-ridden hand pulled sharply away from him, seeming to take strips of his flesh as it did. Through blurred eyes, Huma could see the two cloth-enveloped figures staring down at him.

  “I could not penetrate his mind. He is shielded through sheer willpower alone. Fascinating.”

  “And the mark?” croaked the second.

  “No longer there. It was too weak. He is too much a pawn of the prolonger of pain, that which fools call Life. He is not one of us—could never be one of us.”

  From behind them, the voice of Dracos issued forth once more from the maw of the dreadwolf. “Then there can be no more hesitation.”

  “None. He is yours when your servants come.” The cleric snapped his fingers. Huma’s eyes chose that moment to clear. Hooded figures emerged from the darkness, disease-wracked ghouls like the dead of a battlefield come back to some semblance of life.

  “Take him to the catacombs. Bind him to the altar.”

  “No sacrifices!”

  Even Huma could not miss the curling of the cleric’s lip. “Have no fear, cur. He will be alive and well. It shall be interesting to see if you have better luck than I did.”

  Dracos had no reply for that, or at least the dreadwolf repeated no message. Huma struggled, but his bonds, held together. Four of the cloaked figures grabbed him roughly and lifted. Their combined odor was nearly overwhelming.

  He had hoped to get some idea where they were and where they were going, but his view was obscured by the moth-eaten sleeve of one of his bearers. He suspected that they still were quite close to the building where he had foolishly fallen victim to one of the cult’s traps. Huma knew something of the followers of Morgion. They were expert at keeping their plots and membership secret. That they were taking him to the catacombs meant that they lived beneath Caergoth itself, a frightening revelation. Small wonder no trace of the origins of the plague could be found. It was not from something within or near the city, but beneath it.

  A breeze wafted some of the stench from his nostrils. Huma assumed that they must have stepped from one of the ruined buildings back into the night. He sought desperately for some plan of escape, suspecting that the catacombs would be virtually impossible to traverse. But he was tightly bound and gagged, and his situation seemed hopeless now.

  The group had traveled a short distance from the building when Huma heard what appeared to be the hoot of a night bird. The ragged figures came to an abrupt halt as they belatedly realized what Huma had recognized instantly.

  There was a hiss as something hurtled through the air and then one of Huma
’s bearers went down, an arrow in his chest. The knight had time to brace himself as the others lost their grip on him and he fell to the ground face up.

  Then it was pandemonium as brilliant light left the hooded figures with nowhere to hide. Well-placed arrows took down two more before the cultists could get their bearings. The one called Skularis ran past Huma’s field of vision. He was foregoing the honors of command for the safety of fleeing. It was a short-lived flight, however; not one, but three arrows caught him in the back. The Nightmaster wobbled like a mad puppet and collapsed in a heap.

  Armored figures were now rushing out even as the light dimmed. Of the cloaked villains—there had been more than a dozen, Huma was shocked to realize—only four were still standing. They lacked any substantial weapons, and the first soldiers to wade into the combat made the mistake of believing themselves safe from harm. That mistake was made evident when one of the dark clerics pulled forth a small pouch and threw it at the nearest armored figure. Huma could hear the man’s scream and the shocked cries of other soldiers as all the ravages of the plague seemed to occur within the space of seconds.

  A familiar figure stepped before him and leaned down to test the bonds. “What a fool I was! I should have known …”

  The archers were taking over. By the time Avondale had finished cutting Huma’s bonds, the last of the cloaked menaces lay dead.

  “The dreadwolf? Did you get it?”

  “Dreadwolf?” Avondale scanned the area worriedly. “I have not seen it!”

  “My sword!” Huma’s weapon lay half-buried under one of the cultists. He tugged at it mindlessly, his only concern that the four-legged horror must be stopped. Somehow, impossibly, the creature had evaded the fighting and was escaping. Huma did not want the dreadwolf tracking him down again and transmitting to its master the knight’s location and activities.

  He heard Lord Avondale call after him, but he ignored him. He had to see the thing destroyed.

  A scrabbling of running feet alerted him. He followed the sound at full speed, only barely missing numerous holes and mounds that threatened to send him flying if he made a misstep. He did not think of the dangers.

  Huma leaped over the remains of a stone wall. The plague had not directly caused all the damage around him; the crazed riots and torching of plagued homes had done that.

  He landed on rubble. Suddenly, his foot slipped from beneath him and he was falling backward. By the strongest of efforts, he succeeded in keeping his grip on the sword. The errant foot twisted beneath him, and he gritted his teeth in pain.

  As he lay there, stunned, the fearsome visage thrust itself into his face. The long, yellowed fangs hovered near his throat, and the blood-red tongue flickered in and out of the massive jaws. The sightless eyes revealed only death to the trapped knight. The dreadwolf’s front claws pressed sharply into Huma’s chest.

  “Rather would I deprive the mage of his puppet friend!” The jaws closed in on the knight’s throat.

  Huma swung the blade hard against the dreadwolf. It was an awkward angle, and the cut he inflicted was negligible. But it did throw the beast off his chest.

  The dreadwolf rolled over once and landed on its feet. The crimson eyes glowed fiercely, and the thing’s lips curled back in hatred. Huma raised his sword high.

  Suddenly, the creature burst into flames. One second it had stood there, preparing to strike, the next it was a fireball. Huma looked on in amazement, and then noticed a new figure stepping out from behind the ruins of what had once been a fairly large inn.

  “Magius!”

  The mage quickly raised a finger to his lips and indicated the need for silence. He was thinner, and much of the vanity was gone from his manner. The once-brilliant gold sheen of his hair was now a miserable brown, and it was cut much shorter. Had it been burned away? Magius was also wearing something else Huma had not seen him dressed in since the early days of training—a crimson robe.

  “Come! I have laid a confusion spell on Lord Avondale’s men, but it will not be long before they realize which way you really ran!”

  “But—” Huma knew it was madness to follow his old friend again, but the bonds forged strong yesterday were just as powerful today.

  “Come!” Magius repeated urgently.

  Huma followed.

  They moved with astonishing speed through the town, eventually coming to the far southern end. Two horses awaited them there. Magius indicated that the more massive of the beasts was for the knight. Only when they were well on their way did Magius speak.

  “We must ride hard for some time. There is a Solamnic outpost to bypass.”

  “Outpost?” Somewhat unfamiliar with regions south of Solamnia, the news came as a great shock to Huma. Knights of Solamnia! In Ergoth!

  “Was that you who unleashed the light?”

  “Yes,” Magius replied. “I’ll explain in the morning, after I am sure we have lost whatever pursuit: the Ergothian no doubt has organized already!”

  Huma slowed the horse. “Why are we running from Lord Avondale?”

  The mage’s eyes flashed. “Are you blind? Do you think the Ergothian was aiding you out of the goodness of his soul?”

  Huma refrained from snapping back that, yes, he had come to trust the noble. Where was the crime in that?

  “You told him that there was something in the mountains, didn’t you? You told him about the path!”

  “You’re babbling, Magius. I don’t even know about any path.”

  Magius grimaced, and Huma realized that the mage had let something slip. The spellcaster recovered quickly, though, and said, “You told him there is something in the mountains to the southwest that could bring victory against Takhisis. He is first and foremost an Ergothian noble, Huma. Ergothian nobles are noted for their willingness to do whatever they must in order to increase their own prestige and power. Think what you have told him. What a great prize it would be for him to deliver to his emperor. Think about how the emperor would reward the man who succeeded in bringing peace to Ansalon at long last. An Ergothian noble would kill for something as valuable as what we seek.”

  The words—or perhaps it was the tone—almost seemed hypnotic. Huma kept telling himself that Lord Avondale was a good man. Yet would his loyalty not be first to his emperor rather than to a wandering knight? He had offered Huma safe passage, but only if the knight first traveled with him. Huma shook the madness from his head. He was not sure anymore what was right or wrong, except that he wanted to find that mountain. He was now headed that direction, and it seemed pointless to turn back now.

  He did not notice the bitter smile that crept onto the worn face of the mage as the latter turned forward once more.

  With Magius guiding them, they rode a twisted path through the plains and wooded lands southwest of Caergoth.

  It was near dawn before the two finally came to a halt. Magius revealed a small, nearly hidden lake. They tied the horses near good grazing. The mage went to sleep shortly after—again without explaining things. Huma propped himself against a tree and sat staring out at the calm lake. He pondered the renegade mage who now wanted Huma as badly as he wanted Magius. Dracos.

  The dreadwolf had been reduced to ash, leaving Galan Dracos without his spy and blind to the doings of Huma and Magius, at least for the time being. With the war taking so much of his personal effort, the renegade magic-user had been forced to rely on his spies for too much. Huma suspected that Dracos knew at least as much as Huma did about what Magius sought, and perhaps more. Somewhere, sometime, there would be more spies—and Huma had no doubt that sooner or later Galan Dracos would temporarily turn from his many other tasks and personally endeavor to put an end to both his enemies and their quest.

  He picked up a small pebble and tossed it into the center of the lake—only to watch it come flying back out at him. Huma tried to stand, but his legs buckled. What had he walked into this time? he wondered angrily.

  Abruptly, a woman’s head popped up from the edge of the lake.
Though slightly green, it was very lovely. The eyes were narrow slits, as if the woman had just awakened. She had a tiny, pert nose and long, full lips. When she rose from the water, Huma saw that she was slim and long-legged, although she would not stand even as high as his shoulders. Her sole garment, a thin gown, was soaked and clung to every curve. A nymph. He had heard stories of them. They were said to be of the Age of Dreams, when there was no recorded history. Whether they were a race was debatable. They were very rarely seen.

  “Hello, manling.” Her voice was melodious, like a small forest bird’s. She smiled, and Huma’s face reddened. Still, attractive though she was, another female form, Gwyneth’s, superimposed itself on his imagination. He managed to get to his feet.

  “Hello.” It took him some time to build up the nerve to reply. The nymph disturbed him even as she attracted him. Such creatures, legend said, were not only playful, but deadly. More than one man had been lured to his demise, if there was any truth in the ancient tales. Huma’s hand stroked the pommel of his sword. Her kind was magical, and, despite his friendship with Magius, Huma still shared some of the knighthood’s distrust of sorcery.

  Huma looked down by his side and was surprised to find that Magius still slept. Huma suspected the sleep was no longer natural, and he shuddered.

  The nymph gave a surprised laugh. “I thought you were someone else,” she said. “I like you, too, though.”

  “Oh?” He tried his best to be casual, though his heart and mind were racing. “Why did you think I was someone else?” If others visited the lake, Huma did not wish to remain here long. Should they be anything like the nymph, Huma suspected he would stand no chance if it came to conflict. His hand involuntarily gripped the handle of his weapon.