Death Angel's Shadow (23 page)

A bad deal all around, mused Kane, once more cursing the poor judgment that had led him to seek to hide among the rabble rather than strike out on his own. Still, under the circumstances he had been lucky enough to escape from the collapse of the conspiracy, not to mention to survive this ambush. He looked about him, the light of the newly risen full moon casting sufficient illumination for his exceptional night vision to see clearly.

Silent. Still. Death. Cold moonlight cast over a strange panorama of white shapes strewn carelessly, hopelessly across the dark ground. Not even a hint of wind to break this frozen tableau. Black trees casting shadows--can moonlight cast shadows?--dark shapes clutching, covering the fallen. Contorted young face--had death been so dear with that slash through his belly? Perhaps the one who was asking Kane some forgotten question when the attack came. Perhaps not. The moonlight gave an unreal illumination to the scene, and faces firm and real by sunlight now seemed hollow, fantastic. Kane was not certain even that the pain in his tormented body was real.

Where am I now? he wondered, forcing thoughts into the blur of his consciousness. Nearly out of the lands claimed to be holdings of Chrosanthe--a very isolated area of the kingdom. Chrosanthians avoided this forest region, and with that in mind the fugitives had sought to escape along this route. Another bad idea, Kane reflected. Jasseartion's vengeance had ignored his subjects' dislike for this particular corner of the realm, but then Talyvion's mercenaries had earned an especial hatred for themselves during the abortive coup d'étàt.

The trees shimmered crazily when Kane gained his feet. At least the cool night air soothed where the scourging sun had lent additional agony to each move. Can't stay here, Kane realized. The soldiers would return for their dead with morning--certainly to loot the corpses. Only nightfall and their dread of the region had kept them from this ritual.

The ghouls. That was it. Kane remembered that the Chrosanthians had fought an uncommonly vicious civil war some two centuries previous. This region had been exceptionally torn apart by the struggle, with the victorious faction relentlessly slaughtering the great lords together with their tenants. Jasseartion's ancestors' handiwork. The area had never been repopulated--several strange legends regarding the fate of those victors who had attempted to establish themselves upon the unburied bones of their luckless predecessors. And that ancient carnage had attracted packs of ghouls to the area--or perhaps made ghouls of the few starving survivors, Kane mused. Yes, every reason to get away from this place as quickly as possible. Damn! For a horse of any description!

Wearily Kane recovered his fallen sword and limped away among the white shapes patterned across the dark ground, his feet slipping occasionally upon still darker patches. Wincing, he tossed his head, but the blur would not leave his vision. A large rock beneath the trees was enticing, and Kane stumbled to its rest, half reclining as upon one of the many thrones that fortune had cast him over the years, and later stolen again from his embrace. Thoem! So many long years! Could any man bear their weight! For a moment a kaleidoscope of bitter memories tumbled through the pain of his mind, doomed centuries of wandering, an outcast from mankind.

Brooding at a time when flight should be his sole concern. Delirium. The nightscape wavered in cadence to the throbbing within his skull, a hoarse roaring that at times engulfed him altogether. And Kane knew he had been struck harder than he had earlier realized. A concussion maybe. Just beautiful! By daylight Jasseartion's soldiers would return to find him sitting here mindlessly raving of fallen, forgotten empires.

His throat was thick with thirst, and he wondered if he might find some wine somewhere among the slain. That was stupid; the mercenaries had had little enough water among them. Wine tastes very good though, especially the white wine they brew in Latroxia. Although many consider it too sour. And wine is good to bathe wounds in, due to the purifying natures of the engendered sting. Salt water reacts similarly, but is useless for drinking purposes. A pity the oceans didn't flow with wine. Many shipwrecked sailors would have applauded this innovation, although it would probably disturb the fish. Once I ate an octopus pickled in wine. Subtle taste, but on the whole an unfortunate meal.

An ocean of wine lifted Kane in its tentacled arms, bobbing him up and down rhythmically, while about him the corpses of these pickled sailors swirled atop the purple waves, and octopi crept from their seaweed lairs to reach out cautiously.

Sound. Sharp snap. Reflexes cutting through the delirium. Startled into a semblance of alertness, Kane's cold blue eyes searched the battleground suspiciously.

Again cracked the sound, and Kane recognized it this time. It was a harsh, splintering snap such as an animal makes in crunching the marrow bones of its prey.

Now he could distinguish the ghoul. Crouched over its meat on the dark forest road, its dead-white body had resembled one of the corpses upon which it fed. And from the silent trees were slipping other pale, misshapen creatures, their stooped and twisted bodies a sick parody of the human form. So the legends had not lied.

Ghouls normally would not attack an armed man, Kane knew, but their numbers and his disabled state might prove too tempting. Besides, their hunger was apparent--ghouls abhor freshly killed flesh much the same as many men have little appetite for raw meat.

Carefully Kane limped back into the trees. The ghouls had interest only for the rich feast spread before them, hunger overruling their normal caution. A stone grated under his boot, and Kane froze to look about hurt apprehensively. A few pairs of dead, pale, almost luminous eyes stared in his direction, but none of the creatures seemed moved to investigate. Satisfied that he had not been detected, Kane slipped deeper into the shadows of the forest, and once the cover of trees and jutting rock outcrops shielded him altogether, he hurried away from this moonlit scene of horror.

It was Kane's intention to skirt the battlefield through the forest and then to pick up the mountain road once more. With luck he could put quite a few miles behind him by dawn, and during the daylight rest hidden within the forest. But the road twisted and meandered in a manner unknown to Kane--and as he wandered through the trees attempting to recover his trail, over his mind again crept tendrils of delirium, only momentarily pushed back by shock of immediate danger. An hour passed and Kane was not only utterly lost, but beyond caring as well.

Beneath his boots the earth pitched and yawed, but his sea-legs were up to treading any deck, and Kane strode recklessly into the storm, occasionally staggering against a mast for support. Then the trees whirled maddeningly about him, ensnared like himself in sonic cosmic vortex. Caves underneath the limestone shelves yawned at him, gaping caverns that snapped thunderously, some emitting rank, dismal breath. Under the staring eye of the moon danced thousands of colossal phantoms, tormenting the fool who stumbled through their eldritch circles. Long claws reached for his face, gnarled talons lashed out to knock him sprawling again and again. Faces of those long dead smirked at him from the blackness--sneering visages of ancient enemies, soft faces of old mistresses that abruptly grew stark with age. A spinning phantasmagoria of mocking smiles, and for half of them Kane could not even remember their names.

Eventually he found himself staggering through a rained village. At least it seemed so--these crumbling walls remained solid to his touch, while other figures of his tortured mind faded mistlike into the darkness. He smashed a fist against the stones and studied the pain. Yes, it must be real then. An abandoned village, with vine-covered stone walls still carrying, the charred signature of forgotten fire and pillage. All in ruins now--roofless dwellings, fallen walls--gutted structures whose gloomily gaping windows and doorways made them appear as monolithic skulls to Kane's fevered mind.

Desolation was all pervasive. Only the white shadow of half-hidden bones served evidence of former human habitation--at least Kane thought he could see these scattered relics discarded among the other debris. Had it not been for curious, narrow paths weaving through the rank underbrush, Kane would have believed no living creature had passed through this dismal artifact of ancient strife in many years.

Full moon silhouetted the deserted castle looming darkly upon the steep hill that overlooked its empty village. In that final battle the castle had fallen alongside the village which had paid it tribute in return for an inadequate protection. A fantastic mass of black stones piled against the moonlight, the crumbling fortress impressed Kane with an even more consuming sense of desolation than did these ruins which lay before its not quite unassailable height.

"There stands your funeral monument!" laughed Kane, pointing to the castle, and the empty windows winked agreement "By the gods, a truly epic tombstone! Right?" The overgrown walls nodded.

Sharp, knifing pain from his wounds: dull, numbing agony of fatigue. Too much. A bed of moss among toppled stones was too tempting. Gratefully Kane dropped onto its cushion. To hell with what's-his-name's soldiers. A short rest was paramount, and no one would find him here.

Lolling his head upon the stones, Kane breathed in fitful gasps, his mind trapped in a black delirium somewhere between waking and dreaming. After a while he saw the destroyed village return once more to its old state. Gutted ruins blossomed into busy shops and bright houses; the weed grown paths became wide streets. Throughout this reborn village hurried its townspeople, most of them occupied with their own business and paying no attention the stranger who reclined in their midst on a swaying litter of velvet.

But there were some who noticed the interloper. These few gathered about him and gazed at Kane with pale, hungry eyes. And even though Kane half realized that these were ghouls who surrounded him now, it mattered nothing.

Cautiously, like vultures fluttering down upon a dying lion, the ghouls slunk ever closer to Kane. Foul spittle hung from rotten yellow fangs as they reached with anxious paws for their indifferent prey.

"Back!" Her voice lashed them into fearful obedience. "All right, damn you! Get back, I said!" They tumbled backward before her anger.

For a fleeting instant full consciousness returned to Kane. In that dreadful interval he saw before him half a dozen pallid, twisted shapes cowering away from him, driven back by the awful fury of a girl whose strange beauty rivaled that of any his mind could recall.

Only for a startled second did he regain his senses; then came total oblivion. And as he sank into its welcome release, there echoed her joyous words: "This one shall be mine!"

"How many days exactly?"

The elderly servant meticulously added five drops of yellow fluid to the wine goblet before answering. "Oh, three days, four days, something like that." Gently he stirred the elixir, taking care not to spatter his extravagant livery. "What does it matter?"

Kane's temper seethed within him. "I really would like to know how long I've been unconscious," he said with great patience.

"Mmm?" The servant handed him the goblet. Kane's hand shook somewhat as he accepted it, and a few drops flicked upon the rich fur pelts that covered his bed. A slight frown lined his attendant's lean face. "How long indeed. That's original. Trust a fool to come up with a line like 'Where am I?' or 'How long have I been like this?' every damn time."

"Yeah, sure! That's another question I'd like answered," Kane growled, as be sipped the tonic. It burned his throat, without totally masking a nauseously sweet undertaste. Kane paused in alarm, then reflected that his hosts could easily have killed him while in coma, and he gulped the rest of the mixture. "The last thing I remember was..." He groped for memory. "I seem to remember lying in a ruined village in the moonlight. There were ghouls too. A pack of them closing in on me as I lay there. Someone scattered them just as I blacked out for keeps. A woman, I think."

The steward laughed dryly. "That must have been some knock on the head, stranger! You were down in the deserted village, true enough. But it was just a few mangy thieves that my mistress chased off when they found you. Lucky for you she and her men were late in returning from the hunt. Beat up as you were, you wouldn't have lasted the night in the open." He accepted the empty goblet and gingerly placed the delicate vessel on a silver tray.

Kane shrugged and sat up. The elixir was potent. Already his head felt clearer. "So where am I now?" he asked.

"Why in Altbur Keep!" laughed the steward. "Didn't you see the castle as you came up?"

"The only 'castle' I can recall passing near," mused I Kane with a frown, "was an empty heap of mossy stones atop the hill above the village."

"Heap of mossy stones?! Does this place really look like that to you, now?" The steward's airy gesture included the rich tapestries of the walls, the lavish furnishings of the room. "Well, I'll grant you maybe Altbur isn't as magnificent as in my ancestors' days, but still 'a heap of mossy stones'? Really!" He chuckled. "Jasseartion's boys must have really given you a knock on that thick skull!"

Kane's eyes flashed dangerously, but the servant only laughed again. "Oh, thought we couldn't guess who you were then? Seriously, how stupid do you take us to be! Sure we know about that ambush. Oh, don't get edgy now. We're no friends of Jasseartion--I promise you that! No sir, my mistress is surely no friend of that line of opportunistic bandits! Not quite! His ancestors ravaged this area, you know. No friends here, you can be certain! My mistress even took you under her protection out of spite. Just thank your gods that she didn't mistake you for one of Jasseartion's soldiers!"

"Who is your mistress? And when can I offer my gratitude for her protection?" Kane questioned.

"Her name is Naichoryss, if that means anything to you. And she'll accept your courtesy when the time comes. Until then just think about regaining your strength--although you seem to be doing that uncommonly fast, as it is." He stiffly recovered his tray and stepped for the door.