Bear Knight, page 19
All three backed away from the den’s entrance, weapons ready, but no goblins came.
“Retreat,” Pedrig growled, “for now.”
The party followed the wolf’s blue tracks out of the tunnels. “We must return to the academy and report what we found,” Pedrig said as they ran, “and hope these creatures do not flee to a new den once they find their troll guard destroyed.” He shot a glance at Teegan. “Do you see now the value of treating your wound as soon as we could? Had you still been under the influence of the poison, you could not have struck so quickly. The iceblade’s song might have brought the whole horde out of their den.”
She nodded, struggling to keep pace with the wolf. “I get it. Don’t leave a dark wound to fester.”
“Just so, daughter of autumn. The results may be disastrous.”
36
KARA
TANELETHAR
GRENTON VILLAGE
After a great deal of complaining, the old man who’d accosted Kara and Tiran brought them to his village on the edge of the dead forest. Kara, supporting him with an arm under his, had calmed him some, but not enough to keep him from reminding them every few moments that their meddling had ruined his plans—his eternal plans.
“I could have joined that wanderer,” the old man said, referring to the creature. “Here I am, traipsing along with you sword-swishing imbeciles, when I could be happily beginning an eternal death. Where did you come from, anyway?”
Tiran told him the truth, and together, the two tried to convince him that perhaps becoming a mouth-gaping dead thing wandering forever in the fog was not the best of plans. “You would not have joined his kind,” Kara said. “Those creatures are dragon deceptions, corrupted matter like all the others. But there is another way to face your eternity.”
She tried to share the good news of the Rescuer, but the old man, Nole, wanted none of it. He declared Kara and Tiran to be young, upstart know-nothings, who should’ve stayed behind the Southern Overlord’s ludicrous barrier where they belonged.
He repeated a slightly jumbled version of the same sentiment as they reached his village. The state of the main thoroughfare sent a rush of cold through Kara. “It’s so much like Trader’s Knoll before I lost my brehnan. So much like the day the dragon passed over.”
“A dragon?” Nole said. “We should be so lucky. There are things worse than dragons here, girl. Better to be roasted alive than dragged into the depths of the Ghost Moor.”
According to Nole, Grenton had been a bustling spice town only months before, an important stop on the Westward Road between the coastal ranges and the Tarlan Plains. Those days were gone. Hardly a soul moved between the houses and shops, mostly cobbled together from green rocks and dead wood. An old woman hurried across the street, pulling a small child. Another elderly Grenton citizen appeared at a window for a beat, then threw his moth-eaten curtains closed.
“How quickly we’ve come to ruin without the strength of young backs.” Nole leaned upon Kara’s arm and gestured toward a shop with his crutch. Just enough paint remained on the sign over the door for Kara to make out the word Baker. “My sons were the first to go. They used to stoke the fires for our bread each morning before dawn. But I awoke one morning to a cold and empty house. Our friends said the boys had finally left me, but I knew better, and soon they did too.”
“Others began to disappear?” Tiran asked.
“Yes. At first, the wraiths took a few young harvesters who worked the forest herb rows. They vanished from the company longhouse. But a few dead were left behind, throats slashed. Then the wraiths came for the foreman’s daughter, then the foreman himself.”
“Wraiths?” The word gave Kara a shiver. A flash of the wanderer’s long claws appeared before her. “Is that another word for the wanderers?”
“Not the wanderers. They keep to the forest and have long been seen there at night. The harvesters believe their lanterns bless our root spices with flavor. No. Not the wanderers.” Nole turned his gaze to the far end of the town, where the fog thickened to muddle the houses. “I’m speaking of the moor wraiths. In life, House Suvor ruled with unnatural power, gifted by the dragons for being the first to swear allegiance. In death, that power persists, but they’ve long kept to their ancient capital, Tagamar, down in the canyon moor. No longer.”
Kara felt her mind stretching to believe his story, wanting to share his dread, even though she knew some other dragon mischief had robbed this town of its strong. She fought back the fear. “Have you seen these wraiths?”
“I’ve seen shadows in the mist at the edge of the moor now and again since childhood. And I saw them the same night the butcher was taken. Lived here our whole lives, him and I. So did our fathers and their fathers. Generations of our families yielded profit mere yards from an age-old evil. Should’ve known it’d come for us one day.”
“Nole,” Tiran said. “Your sehnan are gone—taken, as you say. But what of your wife?”
“Long departed. The madness took her years ago, growing worse until I couldn’t put a spoon in her mouth.” He drew his arm from Kara’s and hobbled backward, shaking his head. “I’ll not go like that. And I shan’t let those Suvoroth wraiths take me down into their putrid mud either.” He turned about and set off toward the forest, calling over his shoulder. “Take the Westward Road while you still can. Up ahead, at the crossroads. Center of town. The wraiths took the last of our young three nights ago. I’ll wager they’re thirsty for blood by now—your blood.”
“Nole!” Kara shouted.
Tiran touched her shoulder. “Let him go. We did all we could. We must shake this dust from our boots and carry on.”
“Do you think a wanderer will get him?”
“I doubt it. The dragons are crueler than that. They’ll let him chase his illusions in vain until he starves to death.”
They started once again down the main thoroughfare of Grenton. Kara could not say for sure why it frightened her so. “There are no wraiths, right?”
“Not as Nole described—at least, not that I know of. Our scouting missions revealed disappearances in towns all over Tanelethar. One village left alone, the next emptied of its young and strong. None of those affected were anywhere near this moor.” He let out a mirthless laugh. “These Grenton folks built a story around their own legends. But the truth is, orcs probably took them in the dark—same way they took your brehna and all the rest. Sounds like they killed some of the herb harvesters in the longhouse to stop them from crying out.”
“And if that’s true,” Kara said, “the orcs took them to the same place as Keir.”
“Which means we can track them through the moor to find him.”
The moor—the Ghost Moor, Nole had called it. Kara fixed her gaze on the greenish fog beyond the town center. Shifting figures within spread their arms to claim her. She closed her eyes tight, and when she opened them again, the figures were gone. She had faced orcs, goblins, a dragon, and now the wanderer. Why did a little mist frighten her so?
She had to save Keir. Hiding the fear from Tiran, she squared her shoulders. “Yeah, all right. Into the moor we go.”
THE PRISONER
TANELETHAR
The cuts ended hours ago, but the pain lingers. The dragon can see every fiber of my flesh. He knows how much my body can endure before giving in to the final death, and he takes me to the brink every time.
With heat, he seals my wounds, then leaves me until the time comes to start again. Rest, he says to my mind. There is sleep in those times, but no rest, only nightmares.
Footsteps. I hope for water and bread, but barkhides usually bring such things, and these are not human footsteps.
Stuttered. Quick. Claws scratching the floor. Goblins. Two of them.
The way I hang from these shackles, the goblins cannot reach high enough to feed me. They must be here for some other reason.
A shaft of light, quickly lost in a moving shadow, tells me the dragon has returned. He lands before his throne, and the goblins bow.
Report.
I hear the command in my head, and I see what he sees—a confusion of jerky scenes through yellowed and narrow vision. The dragon searches the fungal brains of both goblins at once. I work to separate them. The effort strains me, but it’s a good distraction from my wounds. What else have I to do with my last hours?
Yes. Two visions. Two reports. I see a dark mass emerging from a storm cloud. A ship of the air, held aloft by bulging silk. An item falls from it, and it soon disappears over a ridgetop.
From behind the corner of a house built of rocks and dead wood, I watch three figures enter an abandoned town—a young man and a young woman with an old grumbling patehpa on her arm. The vision shrinks back behind the corner as they approach, but through one goblin eye, I see their faces.
I see her.
My heart screams. I try to contain it, suppress it, but the dragon hears. He sees. He knows. This is why he let me watch!
The chaos of the two goblin brains returns. Clawed feet racing through trees and tunnels. Tittering, repetitive voices. Thoughts passing from creature to creature. None of it matters. She’s here, and his eye is upon her.
His thoughts question the goblins. Where is the ship?
The two have been carrying an iron block by its handles. They drop it on the floor with a heavy clank, and one replies aloud with a whiny, scratching voice. “The flying thing. The thing that flew. The storm flyer. It threw this device. Tossed it. Dropped it. And then we lost it in the Muddled Mountains. Lost it, we did. Not far from the bay. Lost it near the bay.”
That flying thing is a tool of the enemy, a ship to carry his forces. Find it.
“Hemlock Clan is searching now, m’lord. Searching. Searching. Watching the sky.”
Good. And the others?
The second creature answers. “Grenton, m’lord. The spice town. Spice town. They’re moving north toward the Ghost Moor, that wretched, cursed moor.”
Stay with them, but keep out of sight. Don’t touch them.
“But we can take them, m’lord. We can take them. Two, there are. Only two.”
I said, leave them be!
The red torches around us flare. The goblins cringe under the weight of the command.
Control is needed here, and your kind has none.
The dragon’s thoughts shift to fill my mind instead of the creatures’, and he speaks. “There is no need for my goblins to capture this pair. They are coming to me.”
The creatures hobble away, and orcs pass them on the torchlit path, bringing another prisoner. The dragon speaks to my captured brehna as he spoke to me.
“Go to him. See him.”
An orc presses a blade into my brehna’s hand.
We begin again.
37
KARA
NORTH OF GRENTON VILLAGE
Staring down at his compass, Tiran almost tumbled headlong over the cliff at the edge of the moor. The fog had enveloped them well before they reached the edge, and only by the Rescuer’s grace did Kara spot it soon enough to cry out and catch hold of his cloak.
He hung there, balanced on his heels for a long moment before she pulled him back. Tiran clutched his chest. “Thank you. The moor west of Sil Tymest was a patch of hills, and hills have no cliffs.”
“This one may yet be hilly too, but don’t forget, Nole mentioned that it lies within a canyon. We must get down there, but it could take hours to find the trail.”
“Roads shift over time, but not much—not the important ones. I’ll wager the Grenton crossroads marks the place where a path from the Suvor kingdom once met the Westward Road. In that case, the way down should be close.”
They picked their way along the cliff, unable to see more than ten paces through the fog. Kara had never found heights a bother before, but after Tiran’s near fall, she hated being close to the edge. She walked on the other side of him and looped two fingers through the belt of his manykit.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I don’t want you to fall.”
“I won’t.”
“Strange that you should make such a claim, given recent events.”
“Yes, but I know where the cliff is now.” Tiran sighed and pushed her hand away. “You’re acting strange—ever since the wanderer attacked.”
“I’m fine. Keep looking.”
He said no more about it, and neither did Kara. But she didn’t feel fine. Everything—the fog, the cliff, the very idea of the wraiths—everything filled her with dread. Was this part of the dragon’s attack on her mind? Was it a share of her brehna’s suffering under its evil talons?
“There,” Tiran said. “I see the road.”
Road was too strong a word. A narrow path led down along the cliff face, protected from the sheer drop by a rocky lip just high enough to trip the unwary and send them flying into a gray-green oblivion. Kara hugged the wall. “The air tastes of metal.”
“Yes,” Tiran said, a shadow ahead of her. “I thought the same.” He ran a finger across the rock face and turned it over to reveal a film of faint glittering green. “This is no ordinary fog, not like the low clouds of my home or Mer Nimbar. Hilly or not, I suspect what lies below is a bog. Tehpa used to say every bog has a smell of its own, and their mists hold all manner of strange vapors. He warned us never to enter a bog with no birds.”
“Why not?”
“Because a lack of birds means the vapors may be poison.”
Kara listened for a few heartbeats. She heard nothing but the scuffing of their boots on the rocks and mud. “Tiran, there are no birds here.”
“I know.”
She waited for what might follow—a reassurance that there was no poison here, a caution to cover her mouth and nose with a rag—almost anything would have served, but Tiran said nothing else.
If Kara’s hands had not been trembling with the dread that plagued her, she might have flicked him in the back of the head. “Didn’t you say you wanted to join the Comforters’ Sphere?”
“Very much so. Why?”
“No reason.”
The path widened into the road they’d hoped for, allowing them to walk side by side. It slanted down, straight north into the moor, supported by manmade arches. And as they left the cliff wall behind, the mists lightened. This was poor consolation for Kara. The deeper she looked into the swirling vapors, the more she imagined—or saw—creatures waiting there. One of these shapes kept pace with them, the way the shape had followed them in the forest before the wanderer struck. This time, Tiran didn’t see it.
“You’re imagining things,” he said. “It’s only fog and fear.”
“I never said I was afraid.”
“You didn’t have to.”
The shapes multiplied, until Kara counted eight in total, gliding in and out of her gaze’s reach. What did they want?
The elevated road leveled, exchanging gravel for flagstone, and an instant later, a breath of wind stirred the fog. A pair of gargoyle faces emerged, larger than any orc she’d seen, with teeth bared.
“Tiran, look out!” Kara drew both whirlknives, snapped them open, and flung them with all her might. Both hit their marks in a dual flash of sparks, then clattered onto the road.
At the same time, Tiran drew his sword and advanced on one of the creatures, but pulled his swing short. “Kara, stop!”
He fell into laughter.
Kara thought, perhaps, the unknown poison in the vapors had taken hold of him, but when she arrived at his side, she saw the reason for his hysterics. She lowered the sword she’d drawn. “Statues.”
“A gate. I’d say these two were meant to welcome travelers to the home city of the Suvoroth—Tagamar, Nole called it. You had me going. You pulled me into your trepidation, and I almost chopped this fellow’s head off.”
“I am not afraid, Tiran.”
“You are.” He bent to the flagstones, smile turning sour. “And you’ve paid a price for it. Whatever gives the stone here its green color gives it strength too.” He showed her a whirlknife, broken. One of the weapon’s two blades had shattered, the pieces lost to the fog beyond the road’s gutter. A moment later, he found the other whirlknife. “This one looks the same. Two broken weapons, Kara. Quite a mishap.”
He didn’t have to tell her. Kara felt the loss in her gut as he placed them in her hands. “These knives are a loan of sorts, from the Rangers’ Sphere. What will I tell Silvana?”
“The truth. But I’ll stand with you as you do. I’ve never been among her favorites, anyway.”
“Thanks. But there’s no need if—”
Pain stabbed at her chest. Black scales. A blade wet with blood. A scream.
Kara dropped to a knee. “Keir.”
“Kara? What’s happening?”
“My brehna. Another vision. Strong. We’re getting closer.”
“Can you continue?”
“I think so.”
“You’re shaking,” Tiran said, helping her up.
She was. And no matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn’t stop it.
“Are you certain you can go on?”
“I must.”
“Then let’s make what haste we can.”
The gargoyle gate served as the entrance to a rod-straight road, raised high above the moor on supports made of the same gray-green stone as the statues. As they hurried along its expanse, the fog continued to lighten, until Kara could see buildings and more. Towers rose from the thick cloud covering the bottom—natural towers of rock and sod with low, twisted trees growing on their ledges and recesses. The bridge passed close to one, and Kara noticed stairwells and columned porticos. “Those rock formations are hollow. It looks as if the Suvoroth lived inside them. How strange.”
“Why is it strange?” Tiran asked. “Many in Keledan use caves for their cottages, even chapels.”
