by T. H. Lain
Slow, insistent thuds resounded through the little room's weird acoustics. Mialee thought it sounded like a dozen drunks trying to open a tavern after closing time. Several of the boards nailed haphazardly over the round windows snapped, and gray, ragged, half-rotten arms clawed the air inside their sanctuary.
Mialee gritted her teeth, kicking a hollow-eyed rat off her boot with a snarl. The last living people in Silatham tensed for the inevitable intrusion of the walking dead. She held the wand overhead and sent a small missile blast into an unseen body at the end of one of the grasping hands. A scream and flash of flame outside the window testified that she hit her mark.
Zalyn finally moved. The little elf, her back to Mialee, raised the golden symbol of Ehlonna overhead. "Ehlonna hinue, mormhaor shan!" the tiny cleric bellowed in a booming, supernatural voice.
Metallic, gold-flecked, green energy shot in every direction from the holy icon. Mialee felt gentle coolness spread through her body in the hot, confined space.
Every rat in the room burst with a splatter of orange fire and hot gore. They flamed into cinders within seconds, leaving smoldering guts all over the room. An unholy chorus of hideous, rasping shrieks erupted around the tiny little house, and the mangled talons flailing into the room jerked back as one. Many of them, Mialee noted with disgust, left dripping strips of flesh hanging from jagged boards. Even a few clawed hands dropped to the floor and twitched momentarily before flaming out like the rats.
Zalyn turned and faced the wizard. She looked suddenly drawn and frail, and her breathing was heavy and erratic. Still, her eyes twinkled as she spoke.
"I've given you all a lot to take in. There is more, but the night has already gone on far too long. Ehlonna will give us her protection for a few more days. We all need rest. Tomorrow, we can discuss plans."
Mialee retrieved her charcoal and paper, which had fallen to the floor. She scribbled.
"Favrid?" Zalyn asked, and looked like her heart would break. "He knows the Buried One dare not kill him for a few more days. As I said, he has grown very stubborn in his old age. As long as Darji remains, I will know he lives. And as long as Favrid lives, there is hope. Think on that, child. One thing, though."
Mialee nodded.
Zalyn pointed to Mialee's pack, resting under the table. "I'd recommend you meditate, then take time to study and prepare yourself. We will rest, and soon, you will recover you words. You must."
A sober hush fell over their little band of survivors. The only sounds that reached Mialee's ears were of the crackling fire, the bawling of the terrified little girl, the distantly screaming zombies, and the reverberating thuds of Clayn and Soveliss pounding the barricade back into place with the butts of their swords.
Mialee sneezed twice into her spellbook and went into another coughing fit. Devis sat on the floor beside her, noodling around with a new ballad on his lute, and sympathized. Between the festering rat residues already buzzing with tiny flies, the days-old gore encrusting everyone's clothes, and the foul, but necessary, waste bucket in the corner, drawing breath in their little sanctuary was a dangerous adventure. Devis set aside the lute and opened his leather vest. Most of his under-tunic was still clean, at least relatively so. He shrugged and tore two wide strips from the bottom, tied one around his own nose and mouth—winced at how long it had been since he'd taken a bath—and offered the other to Mialee. She looked at the rag with distaste, but relented after she sneezed violently one more time.
"Thistle—" Mialee frowned, and said more slowly, "Thanks, garlic."
She sighed with a weak grin and tied the covering over her lower face. She shifted closer to him and placed a hand on his knee as she returned to her spellbook. Devis looked over her shoulder—he couldn't make out the details, but it looked like she was studying ways to make things disappear.
"It's always easier to surprise someone when they can't see you," Devis said.
Mialee looked up at him in mild irritation, and scooted a few inches away, turning the book's spine to the bard.
"All right, all right," Devis said, and resumed work on his new melody, plucking idly.
It had been nearly a day since Zalyn annihilated the swarming rats and sent the wightlings packing, for a while. Hound-Eye and Nialma played in one corner—the halfling would bark the name of an animal, and the little girl would pretend to be the animal. She was giggling, and Devis was gratified to see his old pal Hound-Eye had actually begun coming back from the dark place he'd inhabited since Takata's death at the bridge. The little girl particularly loved to play pretend rat, which seemed to disturb her mother and father, but the girl was giggling and laughing. Pell had opened up a bit, and Devis learned that the man was a scholar. He and his family had just returned to Silatham when the wightling rats struck the sleeping town. Now Pell's family was less than half the size it had been a week ago.
Humming over the idle notes, Devis's thoughts turned to something more pleasant. He regarded the elf woman beside him out of the corner of his eye.
Mialee confused the daylights out of him. Obviously, Devis had grown attached to her during the journey south, and thought that she just might have been feeling the same way. His instincts about such things were usually sharp. Then, the wight attacked and unexpectedly killed her and shattered him.
After Mialee's return to life, she and the bard joked with each other, shared a few awkward moments, but Devis sensed her mind was distant. It wasn't just the residual effect of Zalyris aphasia potion. Occasionally, as when she touched his knee and called him "garlic," he closed the distance, but she drew back as soon after.
As his fingers played over the strings, Devis speed-picked a progression of chords he had never played before, a collaboration of notes that created a sound entirely new, yet as familiar as a timeless hymn. The bard smiled beneath his ersatz facemask. The hook was exactly what the ballad needed. It just took time for such things to emerge from the jumble of random melodies in his fingers.
As the song's magic surrounded him with simple, twinkling lights that flitted about the room like fireflies, the wightlings seemed very far away, even as the corrupted, rotten victims of Silatham screamed and howled outside in the early morning. The air itself seemed to get cleaner, if only a little, an unanticipated side effect of the new spell song.
Zalyn's face was drawn and sallow, and her breath came in steady, pained wheezes. She leaned against Clayn, who had leaped to her side when she began wobbling. Devis saw that she clutched the golden symbol of Ehllona in tiny, white-knuckled hands. Acrid, foul-smelling rat-smoke drifted through the hot, cramped room.
The elder of Silatham had just turned back another wightling onslaught. There had been fewer rats but more humanoids, and something new, at least inside Silatham—vultures and wolves, dozens of them.
The barricade was badly damaged. Devis, Pell, Soveliss, and Mialee raced to pound the cracked and broken boards back into place.
"It seems," Zalyn said as Clayn helped her to a seat on the floor, "my usefulness is beginning to wane."
"Elder," Clayn began, "Holy Ehlonna will protect us. She must find a way to—"
"Ehlonna is not the problem, dear, brave Clayn," Zalyn said wearily as the ranger crouched beside her. Devis wished he could help the old woman with an uplifting poem, but dared not stop his efforts on the windows.
"Moradin," Clayn spat, "he betrayed us. Released the Buried One before the Mother was ready."
"No, if anything, Moradin has done more than his fair share. Do not speak ill of the Dwarffather, only his strength kept the Buried One in check while Ehlonna convalesced," Zalyn smirked.
"The problem is not with the gods, my boy," she said with resignation. "It's with me. I am dying."
Everyone in the room froze. Devis winced as a heavy, jagged chunk of table dropped painfully on his toe, but he bit back a yelp.
"Don't all of you look at me like that. I am well over eleven hundred years old. Even among elves, I am ancient. The effort of fighting back so many
of the Buried One's minions has forced me to draw on my own strength as much as the Mother's," Zalyn smiled weakly, though Devis saw pain in her eyes. "Ehlonna does not share her gifts with the world lightly, and she always asks for them back. Favrid and I have led very long lives with the Mother's help. We had to, for the sake of our cause. But," she coughed, a wheezing hack that filled the bard's gut with sickening certainty, "we always planned to enter Ehlonna's embrace together. I fear he may have to catch up with me."
"You cannot die, Elder," Clayn insisted. "We will find a way to bring you back. You are all that stands—"
"Of course she's not," Soveliss interjected. "Anyone can die, Clayn. And not everyone gets a second chance," the ranger said, eyeing his grandson and Mialee darkly.
That surprised Devis, but he understood, he thought. His friend had lost his love and his children, and Zalyn had not been able to bring them back to life. Of course he resented the ones who returned. The bard sympathized, but hoped Soveliss would be able to overcome his bitterness soon. Devis missed Diir.
"He speaks the truth, ranger, and you know it," Hound-Eye said, looking away from little Nialma.
Zalyn said, "A soul must want to return from the beyond. Even a god cannot force a free spirit back to this world if it does not want to make the journey. My conscious mind keeps me fighting Ehlonna's call while I reside in this body, but once free of it, I fear that what I find beyond will be too much for this old soul to give up."
"Don't die, Elder," Nialma said.
"Little one, it is not something I can change. I wish there was some way you did not have to learn this, not at this age, but all things end." Zalyn grinned, and a gnomish twinkle appeared in her eyes. "But I will not leave you until you are safe. And when I am gone, Ehlonna will look after you, Nialma. I promise."
Devis pounded one last board into place and sniffed. For Nialma's sake as well as his own and everyone else's he hoped Zalyn's faith in Ehlonna was even half justified. The alternative was certain doom.
He heard a squawk from Darji and jumped. The little bird was back from her scouting mission, wriggling through one of the few openings left unblocked for ventilation. The raven still glowed with the soft, blue energy Zalyn had cast to keep Darji safe.
"I have word from Favrid, Elder," the little bird cawed. The raven chirped into Zalyn's ear while the elder nodded. The elf straightened, and some of her old strength seemed to return to her bent frame.
"Favrid is alive," Zalyn announced, "but restrained. I must think on this while I rest. This evening, we will speak further."
Zalyn promptly sat cross-legged, closed her eyes, and slipped into a state of meditation.
"Anyone have any dice?" Devis asked.
The day had been interminable. As the sunlight faded, making their little space even darker, Zalyn suddenly snapped out of her trance. Devis and Hound-Eye abandoned their efforts at teaching Nialma how to gamble, and they all gathered expectantly around the diminutive elf.
"Children, I apologize for leaving you," Zalyn said. "We have much to prepare for. The day of prophecy is close at hand."
"Says...you...banana," Mialee managed without looking up from her spellbook. She almost had the invisibility spell, she hoped. She wouldn't know until she tried, but it was the most useful spell she could think of that she could master in a short time.
"I admit," Zalyn croaked around another hacking cough, "I deceived you. But holy Ehlonna told me that she needed a millennium to recover, and I will not doubt her, capricious as she may be. We must act one thousand years to the day from that hour we sealed the Buried One beneath Morsilath. But Darji has just told me something chilling, something I needed time to cogitate on before I told the rest of you."
She composed herself, and Mialee and the others quietly shuffled around her to listen. For a split second, Mialee was reminded of the shambling movements of the walking dead. Even with a day of rest, the besieged group was showing signs of serious fatigue.
"What?" Hound-Eye blurted, shifting impatiently next to Nialma and her family.
"Just as we did not know of Cavadrec's transformation from elf to wight, we did not know that this day chosen by Ehlonna would allow Cavadrec to compound his betrayal."
"In Common?" Devis asked.
"Cavadrec has discovered a spell so terrible I am loath to describe it, but I must," Zalyn said sadly. "He has discovered a way to raise the bodies of all the fallen warriors buried at Morkeryth and turn them into a well-armed wightling army under his complete control."
"Why does he need a spell?" The bard pressed. "You said he used to do that all the time in the bad old days. He didn't need a special spell to do what he did to Silatham. You said he just sent in a bunch of rats."
"Never did he raise so many all at once, or such a pernicious group of corpses. Infectious wightlings are perfectly adequate to convert a living soul into the walking dead, but when I say the dead of Morkeryth, I speak of legends. The greatest of our elf heroes from the days before," Zalyn intoned. "Many of the most recent fell fighting his evil at our sides. Thousands upon thousands of Silatham rangers, dwarven battle clerics, human paladins lending the strength of their many gods, and the noble fighters of the Halfling Defense Corps." She eyed Hound-Eye knowingly, who nodded with a mix of horror and something like awe.
"There ain't no 'Halfling Defense Corps,'" Hound-Eye said. "My kind look after themselves, but we don't go in for armies."
"Not anymore," Zalyn said. "The Corps' ranks were decimated a thousand years ago. This region was forever changed by Cavadrec's ravages, from the southern desert to the foul stench of Dogmar to your Tent City, my friend."
"What does . . . exact dandeli—date . . . have to do with anytrout?" Mialee said with effort.
"The thousand-year mark is the crux of the spell, as it is the length of time Ehlonna demanded. Cavadrec must carry out the incantations and mix the appropriate potions and poultices. That, I fear, is why he has taken Favrid and, Favrid tells me through his familiar, the reason my thirimin yet lives. Cavadrec lacks only one element to complete the spell and raise his army of darkness. The Buried One must drink the freshly-drawn blood of one living being who witnessed the fall of all those he wishes to raise."
Mialee gasped. "Feather," she whispered.
"Cavadrec was not aware, I believe, that he had two choices," she said, touching her fingertips to her breast. "My blood, too, would have worked. But he did not know I still lived. I have been hidden in the temple of the Protector for a long time, and we allowed the Buried One to believe I had died of old age." She smirked ironically, now she really was dying of old age.
"I suspect that playful Ehlonna has seen fit to make my contrived prophecy truth. I hope so, for if we fail, she will suffer the most of all," Zalyn replied. "Life will be replaced with living death. The world will fall under his sway, and the Hater of Life will reign supreme." She sounded more than a little like the crone prophet.
"Oh, just that," Devis cracked, but no one laughed. He grimaced, then asked, "So what must we do, Zalyn?"
"Clayn," Zalyn nodded at the ranger and pointed at a dusty, forgotten chest bigger than Hound-Eye, tucked far beneath the battered and broken wooden table.
"Certainly, Elder," Clayn said, and dragged the chest so that it sat before Zalyn. She whispered a short prayer and sprinkled a bit of some green powder on the trunk's heavy lock, which disappeared in a magical flash. The lid popped open of its own accord, and the others stood and gathered behind the cleric.
Mialee's jaw dropped. She didn't' recognize everything in the trunk—planes, was that a lute?—but it looked like a small treasure trove of scrolls, weapons, and artifacts.
"Not all components of our 'prophecy' were turned to stone and buried on the battlefield," Zalyn said with a gnomish giggle. "Some have been here, in my home, for safekeeping."
Mialee blinked. She hadn't realized they'd been hiding in the house her teacher had shared with his thirimin. Looking around now, though, she saw that the place
bore definite signs of Favrid's absentminded decorative style, if one could call it that.
"First," Zalyn said proudly, "is this lute." The little elf pulled the instrument from the jumble of objects. She turned and extended the elegantly engraved instrument, which looked worn with age, to Devis. "I hope you won't mind, Devis," she said with a grin.
Devis looked as if he'd seen a ghost. He goggled at the lute, but slowly held out his hands to take it. He slung the strap over one shoulder and picked a melancholy chord that rang throughout the room.
"Gunnivan," he whispered, gazing at the carvings in the golden wood.
"Yes, it was his," she said. "With this lute, Gunnivaris music helped us inspire Ehlonna herself to overcome her injuries and seal the Buried One in his prison. Tomorrow, you will use it to help me coax her into action with..." She rustled around amongst the objects, "this."
She held out an ancient scroll, which the bard accepted and unrolled. He gaped once more. Mialee guessed this was the bard's day for surprises.
"Gunnivan wrote this!" Devis gasped. The old bard had been dead for so many years, Devis thought he'd learned all of his mentor's secrets years ago.
"Indeed," Zalyn said, "with my help, and Favrid's. But I think you'll recognize the soul of the piece is his."