“What’ve you there?” I asked.
“Some small payment for the damage they did us,” he said. He threw the bundle to the ground, and I saw the clothes were dark with blood.
“We should burn those,” cried Niall, looking up from where he cradled Caitlin in his arms. “Burn them all. I want nothing to do with them.”
“No,” said Nieve firmly. “Aron’s right. It’ll be hard enough rebuilding without burning good gear.”
“We should take what we can use from them and trade the rest for livestock to replace what they slew,” said Anya. “It’s what mother would have wanted.”
My eyes stung with tears as I remembered Mairead’s last words to me. “Your girleen is back, rest in peace.” I sent the thought out to dawn sky, hugging Anya close, and made a silent promise that our first daughter would be called Mairead. I looked over at Aron, squatting nearby scrubbing the blood from his hands with wet grass. And our first son will be Aron.
Aron looked up and saw me looking at him. He smiled a weary smile.
“How could you be sure they’d be here?” I asked, conscious of Anya’s eyes on us.
“You saw them, remember Padraig? You and Niall,” said Aron.
“That was a true vision then?”
“I have come to trust things seen that way,” Aron said slowly.
“How did you know it would work on us?”
“I didn’t, but there’s always a good chance that in any group of ten people you’ll find one with the sight. And we had two.”
I smiled for a moment at the thought that I possessed the legendary gift, but then remembered the warnings in the old tales: that the gift could grow so strong and the otherworld draw you in until you walked in both worlds at the one time and descended into madness. I thought of the guardian of the burials and shivered.
“Will I dream of ghosts and demons from now on then?” I asked.
“Nay, you’ll sleep sound enough,” Aron said and glanced momentarily at Anya. “But be careful about which mushrooms you eat.”
“You need not worry about that.” I grimaced as I recalled the foul brew he’d made us drink. “I think I’ll remember the taste for a very long time.”
The Vampire’s Lair
By Richard Writhen
The lone warrior’s silhouette stood out against the purple canopy of the night sky over southern Mestes as it slowly turned to black. She let her head fall back for a moment and simply marveled at it, the stars twinkling down upon her. Her name was Lesha. Her dark hair flew about in the evening’s breeze, and she raised one small hand to push it back behind her head.
A dark-skinned girl of average height, her upper body strength was far above average for her build. It had to be, to compete athletically with the other young people of the tribe, a strong people trained to be eternally ready for war. Her arms and hands were covered in elbow-length black gloves. She was also wearing a ragged brown jacket, a black leather bodice bound with rawhide and some artfully torn breeches, as well as some scuffed black boots that were her pride and joy.
When she turned around to face back the way that she had come, she saw that the steppe on which she stood appeared to be almost unnaturally level. All she could see were many flattened sheets of porous granite stone, stretching away to the horizon almost limitlessly. Their surface had been striated by many centuries worth of weathering, most of it long before she had been born, probably. There was no telling how long the bedrock itself had lain there. She tried to get a decent sense of her direction; off to her left was roughly the direction of northwest, she knew. The scarred side of Tamnir Mountain was a mute testament to that. But when she looked dead ahead, she saw it was a different story. She was still about fifteen yards from what appeared to be a foreboding forest, with a range of other mountains emerging over the top of its tree line.
Tamnir was the largest in a whole range, spread out like a row of sharp teeth emerging from the gum that was the topsoil. This is what you wanted, she told herself. Lesha had been the victor, after all. She had bested every young warrior in her tribe in a huge mock melee for this opportunity, both male and female. But now, when standing alone in the cold and facing the darkness, it all didn’t seem quite worth it. Suddenly, she wished she had brought some help.
But that was not the tribe’s way, even in the most ludicrous of circumstances. And truth be told, a strong air of malevolence hung over the darkened forest like a shroud. She shuddered involuntarily, whether from the cold or fear, she would not have been able to tell someone if anyone had indeed been there with her. Her breath appeared to steam in the cold air before her as she walked forward and reluctantly began to hack at the stiff, multitudinous branches with her machete.
After a few minutes, she paused, panting and squinting ahead. The mist and the trees both kept visibility low, but she could still see maybe twenty feet. The air was so good and cold that it hurt to breathe at all, and as she sniffed at it inquisitively, she detected a slight tang in it as if from a wood fire. Is someone burning the trees? But she couldn’t allow herself to give in to the worry.
The tribe’s leader himself had set her on this quest. He had been very specific. This task was hers and hers alone, and she would die before letting him or the tribe down. She would die trying first. The shadow things that came to their little village in the night once or twice a month every fall had come to the tribe’s territory for many years…snatching, stealing. Early on, it had just been the most minor things, like a few livestock, or semi-valuable items left outside. But in recent days the creatures had become so bold that they were now breaking into houses through the windows and taking the most valuable thing of all: the tribe’s children.
Lesha had heard appalling rumors about the shadows, that they were in fact no less than actual vampires as told of in the ancient legends. The tales painted them as parasites, leeches, beasts that somehow also walked on two legs, like men. Yet it seemed impossible to Lesha that such a thing could be true. She started to walk forward a few steps, then stopped dead. Well, might as well get on towards the mountain.
It’ll be just like hiking… but I hate caves. The grayish-white stone had ended, she now walked a dirt path strewn with dead, multi-colored leaves. One of the smaller mountains lay straight ahead behind a few of the massive pines. A huge cave yawned at its foot. The entrance must have been a hundred feet high, light brown trees with dark green foliage winding up the grassy sides of a cliff’s edifice.
The made her way carefully inside the cave and advanced for many yards before stopping again, at first, everything seemed peaceful. And then Lesha heard it: a wail, not too far in the distance…an infant crying. Almost screaming, in fact. Suddenly she remembered why she was there in the first place. Lesha squinted into the distance, the anger rising within her, seeming to travel from the pit of her stomach and up her spine to raise the hackles on the back of her neck.
Hopefully I’m not too late! Lesha thought. She walked up to the cave’s mouth, hesitantly. The cavern inside was not well lit. Lesha lowered her pack to the ground and rummaged within it until she found the torch that she’d brought with her. Drawing it forth, she set it down to search further for her tinder, then set about making the tool spring ablaze.
Once it had been fully lit, she held it aloft and found that the walls of the cavern were not all dark gray granite, but were suffused with another, strangely translucent stone which ran through it like the veins in an arm. She entered slowly. Several minutes later, as she was feeling her way along the wall, the path was suddenly gone. Just at the moment that she had begun to feel as though she were making some progress, the patch of ground directly under her feet parted in a gaping hole as if it were a great trap.
Lesha looked down, her eyes wide, her right foot hanging over the exposed pit for a few frantic seconds before she plummeted down into it. She had already put her full weight upon that foot in the normal process of walking. Her torch clattered to the dark stone of the cave as she dropped it in s
hock. Her hair flew up over her head as she fell.
Lesha half-expected to hit some solid ground, but alas, that was not to be. Instead, she fell into a massive pile of some slimy, thick substance and became lodged several feet into it. The starlight coming through the holes in the cavern ceiling was very meager, but when she recovered from being jarred, she turned her head to see myriad curving lines in the semi-darkness and sensed slow movement all around herself. She froze up at first. Snakes.
They were sliding smoothly around her legs, rolling over each other in their haste to get to the surface, hissing at her, their beady little eyes focused only on what was directly ahead of them. They began to curl around both of her arms, almost like bonds, but she was caught fast and somehow even began to sink in farther and farther.
Then one that was much larger than the others, almost a king among vipers, began to slither from the outskirts of the pile. She could still barely see, so she began to follow it by the sounds of its movement alone. It was emitting a louder version of the low, vibrant hissing, and as it went, an odd rattling noise from its tail sounded out like a death knell.
Lesha began to contort, while the creatures coiled at all of her appendages. She could feel their lithe bodies tearing apart as she did, being smashed and bleeding on her as she made scant progress, the blood strangely cold on her legs. She struggled over to the pit’s wall but could not find a handhold of any kind in the dirt, at least not one that didn’t crumble immediately.
Screaming, Lesha finally made it over the edge just as she saw a large one loom over her, but it retracted just as quickly, seeing as she was out of its reach. Without preamble, she fell forward and collapsed for several minutes. When she had finally roused, she heard the distinct sound of dripping water somewhere. She was lying on her back with her limbs splayed at all angles, much like a rag doll, and was now in almost total darkness. Her irises quickly strained to adjust, but there was simply no light to be found, it had nothing to do with acuity. So, she got down onto her hands and knees.
Raising her head, Lesha saw a faint glimmer in the distance. She began to carefully crawl forward like an animal, turning the tunnel’s gradual corner, picking up water and mud on her hands and soaking her breeches to the knees. The light was so far off as to be no more than a small spot in her visual field. It was merely a glowing, a greenish-whiteness. Then she could make out the tunnel walls, and finally her own shadow just behind herself and slightly to her right. Then, the tunnel opened into another large cavern. At first, Lesha didn’t understand what she was seeing, but after several moments, she realized what it was, the cold hit her at about the same time.
It appeared to be a small lake. Thet same odd glow Lesha had seen first in the tunnel seemed to emanate from within it and yet, it seemed to be completely frozen over, as she could detect no motion of any kind. Lesha found herself kicking the heel of one boot out on the surface to check it for hardness. Better not, it may be unstable … But when she turned back around to find a way out of the cave back the way she’d come, she found nothing but a wall of solid stone.
The tunnel had closed, almost like a mouth. What the… Lesha stood there and simply stared at it for several moments, eventually feeling as if she might cry. Instead, she composed herself, turned and looked across the icy surface to find the far side. Sure enough, there were not one but a total of three darkened tunnel openings over there. Well then. Lesha got back onto her hands and knees and eased out onto the ice.
It was so cold that she immediately lifted one hand to see if it had stuck, but it hadn’t, so she put it back down and began to scuttle forward. At first, all was well. However, when she was about two-thirds of the way over it, she began to sense a problem, even before the glass-like ice had started to crack. The ice was thinning. She had no idea how she could know that, but instincts were what they were, and she stopped immediately after coming to the realization.
The fissures ran out around her like an instantaneous spider’s web, and the area of the lake’s surface directly beneath her partially gave way, submerging her limbs, lower body and belly in the water. Lesha responded by throwing the majority of her weight forward so as to avoid plunging into it completely, yet, somehow the jagged edges of the break were pointing upward, and they sliced straight through the cloth of her jacket and into her arms on both sides. Lesha began to scream uncontrollably, and as she felt herself sliding backward, she began to scrabble about with both hands for holds that weren’t there. There were only more shards of glassy, hard ice. It was almost plastic-like in its translucency, and her hands were quickly impaled as surely as her arms had been.
Unsure where to place her hands, one of the thinnest ones ran straight up her left index finger to the second joint. She began crying as well as bleeding. She withdrew hastily, the splatters of blood surrounding her and the break as she bled out from several wounds. She could feel shards jabbing into the sides of her abdomen. After a few moments of pure shock from the pain, she stopped screaming and began to pull herself forward as slowly and carefully as possible.
Lesha raised her head and looked. The other caves were about ten or fifteen yards away. She would never make it, especially not when she was losing so much blood. She pressed her forehead down against the ice and sighed. And then it all collapsed underneath her; Lesha was suddenly immersed in the glowing water. She stared upward through the water towards the roof of the cavern as she sank, in too much pain to even attempt to swim, the blood in the water soon swirled all around her, and it began to obscure her entire visual field.
So, she looked down and immediately wished she hadn’t. The bottom was covered in mossy rock, and she was heading almost straight for a huge hole full of darkness. Lesha tried to scissor kick and swim away, but she just wasn’t fast enough because of the injuries. Suddenly, a rotting human hand reached out of the hole and grabbed her by one foot, pulling her into it. She screamed, huge air bubbles forming and rising towards the surface.
The vampire’s face came into view as she stared down through the almost unnaturally clear water. Its eyes appeared blinded, its hair was long and a combination of dark and gray. It had high cheekbones and a wrinkled forehead on a big skull.
Its long, forked tongue was out, and it lapped frantically through the water, trying to taste the suffuse blood she had spilled into it. She held on to each side of the hole weakly with her mutilated hands. They slipped, and all she could see then was the darkness, nothing more. With a powerful shove, she used both arms to vault upwards and began to swim as she went, finally finding the surface and shooting up through it. Most of the ice had already sunk below.
Lesha flopped over the side and back into the cavern like a beached fish, now bleeding, soaked, exhausted and terrified. Yet she picked herself up as quickly as she was able and kept going forward, grimacing as the sensation of freezing cold returned to her senses, and she began to realize her predicament. She would surely freeze to death if she didn’t find both cover and a fire soon.
Then, Lesha was in a forest, under a canopy of hundreds of fir tree branches. The ground was covered with needles, but moonlight shone through the apertures above her, so she could see well enough. The sound of the vampire’s heavy body surfacing in the pool many yards behind her was supremely loud in the forest’s relative stillness, water splashing onto the pine-covered floor. And when Lesha accidentally ran into another cavern in her frenzy, the starlight blotted out. But there were torches in sconces, two of them… and as if it’d been waiting for her the whole time, there was the child, swaddled in rags, lying on a flat embankment about twenty yards from the cavern’s entrance.
Everything became a blur. Time seemed to collapse in on itself as the adrenaline began to course through her bloodstream. Lesha snatched the baby up as it wailed and held it to her breast, turned and fled as fast as her legs could carry her. She heard the sounds of trees being clumsily felled, some plucked out at their roots as she flew back the way she had come, pounding down first the uneven cave
rn, then the needle-covered forest floor, and finally the wet slaps of the boots once she was back on the flat stone of the steppe.
Before she knew what was happening, Lesha saw her mother running towards her, coming down the path leading to their village. She was followed by the men, the elders, everyone. They were the people she’d known her whole life, which was why it was fitting that it would all end like this. It was almost as if she’d known it would. Her mother skidded to a stop just a couple of feet from her, terror in her eyes.
Lesha murmured her instructions, skipping any normal greeting she would have given the older woman. “I can’t stay. It’s all right, this is for the best.” She thought that she might cry for just a moment, but she managed to stay strong, for the child’s sake and for that of her mother. Handing the baby over as gently as possible under the circumstances, she mustered all her will, turned slowly around and began to walk towards the vampire. Then she saw it, sprinting towards her at top speed, its eyes so dead, yet also somehow so furious. Oh gods, it’s fast… she thought.
Abandoning all hope, Lesha began to run towards it as well, accelerating in waves as she went. Her blade was a blur in her right hand, swinging back and forth, catching the moonlight and bending it along the length. Suddenly she was screaming in terror and exhilaration, her mouth frothing. On some level, she registered that the beast was roaring too. And that was when they collided, under the light of the moon, with the trees standing present as mute witnesses.
Weathered Soul
By Jesse Teller
“Mighty and terrible Bluxho, Goddess of Storms, hear my prayer! It is I, your most faithful, here in this place, doing your will. Show me the face of my enemy! I will place your wrath upon his head!” Xaxar screamed over the howling wind. He lowered his gaze from the heavens to the twenty priests who surrounded him. Metal jewelry pierced their bodies and faces. They stood naked in the blistering cold, in a field outside a farming village whose name Xaxar did not know, praying in hallowed tongues. In one hand, they each held a book of prayers. In the other, they gripped lightning rods planted into the ground.
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