Authors: Bruce R. Cordell
The blightlord grinned, her teeth again prominent. She pointed at him. The insect mass swarming around her bulged, sending a filament of biting mosquitoes his way. Marrec expected that the insects, like their master, were vampiric.
The mosquitoes would suck him dry in seconds if he didn’t do something…
He called upon his secret heritage. He found it lurking just behind his eyes like a hound eager to be let out. Marrec complied, focusing his attention on the swarm as if a single entity. For a moment, he felt a connection between himself and the tiny points of hunger, but in the very instant the connection was made, it was transformed and snuffed out. A hail of tiny stones fell as one from the air, shattering into so much dust. Damanda’s insect aura was stripped from her with Marrec’s glance. A pain lanced Marrec’s eyes like before. A weakness suffused him; he knew that his ability to call on his deplorable heritage was depleted for now.
Despite the pain and the blood trickling from the corners of his eyes, Marrec smiled at Damanda.
Not so the blightlord. She yelled, “What’s this? A medusa posing as a human?”
A shadow occluded the doorwayUsusi. She appeared mid-spell and with a flourish, released a cascade of brilliant electrical arcs, stabbing full into Damanda and Gunggari’s foe. Both staggered and flailed, as the flesh smoked and boiled under the intense magical assault.
Damanda spoke, tiny sparks flashing across the gap of her opened mouth, “Lex! Stop gawking; kill the one you’ve immobilized.”
Marrec tried to get to Lex, the vampire mage standing next to Elowen, but Damanda, still smoking, was on him again. Gunggari grunted with a similar exertion, beating back his foe. They were both pinned.
In a fluid single motion, Lex extruded spindly white hands, claw tipped, from the folds of her black cloak, and grabbed Elowen as if to embrace her. Lex opened her mouth wide, creating a gap larger than any mere human could accomplish, and brought her head toward Elowen’s unprotected neck.
The vampire shuddered, pausing. “Huh,” grunted Lex, releasing her hold on Elowen. She bent her head to look down at her chest. From it protruded the broken end of a wooden branch, darkly slick with pooling blood.
Fallon stood behind Lex. It was he who had thrust the branch through the vampire’s chest.
Marrec blinkedFallon saved Elowen’s life.
Already shriveling and smoking, Lex turned and slashed Fallon with her razor sharp claws. In a spray of blood, both went down, Lex crumbling and Fallon grasping at his neck.
Marrec’s gaze, Ususi’s unexpected assault, Fallon’s betrayal, and Lex’s destruction was enough for the blightlord. She pulled a rolled parchment from her belt with one hand while reaching out to tap her last remaining follower with the other. She began uttering the arcane words inscribed upon the parchment in short, clipped breaths.
Marrec threw Justlance. The spear screamed through the empty air that a moment earlier contained its intended target. Damanda was gone, likely back to the court of the Rotting Man.
On the ground where he’d fallen, Fallon struggled, gasping. Marrec and Gunggari rushed across the chamber, Marrec to Ash’s side, Gunggari to kneel next to Fallon. Ususi stepped tentatively into the chamber, looking around suspiciously. Elowen, still standing stiffly, groaned and tried to move her arms. She managed to do so, if somewhat clumsily. The compulsion was apparently lifting.
“Are you ok, girl?” Marrec asked Ash, inspecting her for bruise, blemish, or other sign of poor treatment. Ash was unmarked. He hugged her close.
Gunggari inspected Fallon’s bleeding neck wound. He said, “Marrec, his wounds are beyond simple tending, and the Nentyarch’s satchel is empty of healing balms.”
Marrec knew that Gunggari, in speaking of his satchel, was actually asking if Marrec retained any healing grace. Marrec met his friend’s eyes, shaking his head. The cleric remembered seeing named vials in the satchel, one of which contained his own name, but none had contained Fallon’s name. Disengaging from Ash, he bent, too, at Fallon’s side.
Fallon looked up at Marrec, whispered, “I should never have taken the girl. I am sorry…” He stopped, coughing blood.
The unicorn warrior said, “It was a brave thing you did, just now. In the end, you chose right.”
Fallon, breathing shallowly, smiled then said, “I know.”
He breathed his last, a smile frozen on his unmoving lips.
Marrec gently closed the elfs staring eyes. “May Lurue grant you redemption.”
Damanda and Bonehammer fell from a height of over ten feet. Damanda corrected, landing on her feet with perfect grace, though Bonehammer stumbled and fell heavily onto a pile of crumbled brick.
She had panicked. She had used her emergency escape scroll, as unreliable as it was, when things turned sour. Luck was with them. Despite the scroll having been scribed by Lex years earlier, and Damanda’s only passing facility with the arts of wizardry, both she and Bonehammer made the uncertain transit and in’ full possession of their limbs.
Shafts of afternoon light bored into the chamber from two high punctures in the ceiling. Luckily, neither of them had appeared beneath those rough apertures. Damanda had picked the bastion of retreat the very moment Lex had
penned the scroll, of course. A fortified but empty building in the middle of the Dun Tharos ruins still above ground, it had seemed unlikely to fall into disrepair after having stood for so many centuries. It was near the Close but not in it, in case it was from the Rotting Man she had to use her escape. Despite the odds, in the intervening time the structure had moldered and fallen into further disrepair. That would teach her for choosing an above-ground retreat. Of course, she couldn’t repeat her mistake even if she wished. Lex had been destroyed by that prince of betrayal, Fallon.
Damanda roundly cursed the elf, envying the Rotting Man his way with words and ancient languages but making do with her own obscene vernacular. At least Lex had slashed the little bastard as she fell. Damanda knew lethal blows. She doubted she’d see Fallon again.
“What now, Damanda?” inquired Bonehammer, already back on his feet. With the light of day so close, the wounds given by that odd dark man with the strange war club were not mending as quickly as they should.
Damanda considered her minion’s question. She said, “The Talontyr once told me that the cleric and his band would bring the Child to him of their own accord. If that is true, we merely need to arrange an ambush of such magnitude that nothing can survive it; well, we want the girl to survive, of course.”
“Perhaps we should refrain from setting an ambush, if they’re going to come to the Rotting Man anyway.”
“I’d rather the Talontyr receive the girl from the hands of his trusted lieutenant.”
Bonehammer nodded; he was nothing if not a yes man to Damanda’s will.
While the sun remained above, they were trapped there in her emergency redoubt. On the one hand the building stood within sight of the Close itself. Once darkness fell, she’d raise an army. In a few hours, she’d gather hundreds of blighted volodnis, twigblights, and other
rot spawned creatures. She knew all the passages, all the ways that the Close could be accessed, both above and below ground. If the cleric pressed ahead with his fool’s errand, they’d be caught and flayed, there was no doubt in her mind.
First, a bit of rest. Activity during the day, even spared direct light, was taxing. Yes, a bit of a lie-down was called for, she decided. Soon, in just a few hours, the sun would dip below the horizon. Then her full powers would return. Her quarry was as good as in her grasp.
O—
Ash bent, touching the limp form of Fallon on the forehead. Where she touched, a glow lingered before suffusing the body. It seemed then to Marrec that Fallon’s motionless form sighed.
Ash said, “Redemption he has.”
Marrec turned quickly to the crouching girl. “Ash. Can you hear me?”
The girl rose, the look of compassion fading from her face, animation fleeing her body. In a moment, she looked as she always didunresponsive and uncaring.
Marrec was grateful for the small miracle that moved Fallon to save Elowen from the vampire’s bite. He murmured thanks to Lurue. He just wished the betraying hunter had decided to return to the light before he’d kidnapped the girl. Had it been so, perhaps all might now be different.
“Now what?” wondered Elowen.
“We continue to head toward the center of Dun Tharos and confront the Rotting Man. With Ash in our keeping, we may have some protection,” replied Marrec.
“Going overland will take daysyet I do not wish to return to Under-Tharos.”
“True,” said Marrec. He turned to the Oslander, “What do you think, Gunny?”
“Either route has its difficulties. Above ground we’ll likely run afoul of the Rotting Man’s forcessuch was the original reason we decided to approach from belowbut the subsurface route seems far more indirect and dangerous than we hoped. The path is not clear.”
“It is not,” agreed Marrec, sighing.
Gunggari continued, “If the blightlord had retreated physically rather than magically, I might have tracked her back to the center.” The Oslander shrugged.
Ususi held up one hand. “Hold on… that gives me an idea.”
The imaskari grasped the Keystone that she still wore around her neck. She brought it to her eye, then began scanning the chamber as if gazing through a looking glass.
Marrec furrowed his brows. “Surely the Mucklestones do not reach so far?”
Ususi said, “They do not, but listen. The Keystone is a tool designed for use with the Mucklestones, true, yet it is also sensitive to all magic associated with portals and transport. Perhaps the magic used by Damanda to escape left a seam in space, as such spells often do, though they always fade quickly. I might be able to locate the seam using the Keystone… and there it is!” the wizard crowed.
“What good is that to us?” wondered Marrec.
-
When they appeared, Marrec and the others did not fall ten feet like Damanda and Bonehammer. Despite utilizing a raw, poorly executed, and fading seam in reality, Ususi had the Keystone. With its power, she grasped the unraveling threads of Damanda’s escape, wove a new portal, and transported the group into an echoing warehouse with nary a bump.
Marrec blinkedslanting shafts of daylight betokened approaching twilight, but it was still brighter
than where they had just stood. The cleric slowly turned, scanning the area for Damanda and her hulking henchman. As he looked, he kept one of Ash’s hands firmly in his left hand. In his right hand was Justlance.
Loose brick rubble covered the floor, piled in untidy heaps in some places. Dust covered all. Gaps in one wall revealed a ruined cityscape, tumble-down and covered in forest growth. Ususi had thought that the endpoint of Damanda’s escape lay near the center of Rawlinswood. The mage was correct. They must be somewhere within Dun Tharos, in one of thousands individual ruins that made up what remained of the ancient Nar city.
Where was Damanda?
If she was in truth cursed with vampirism, she wouldn’t enjoy standing there, indirectly illuminated by fading daylight. Perhaps farther back, where the ceiling allowed through less light?
Marrec pointed to the rear of the building, lost in shadow, where a slender stone door stood closed. Gunggari caught his gesture and nodded. Marrec released Ash’s hand. He looked down at the girl and said, “Stay here.” Ash studied the middle distance. With his free hand he unstrapped his shield from his back.
The cleric and the Oslander approached the door. Elowen was not far behind, her blade still shimmering with its exposure to the sun it loved. Ususi hung back.
Without losing time to doubt, Marrec heaved open the stone door. It fell backward, unsecured to the lintel, generating a terrific rolling boom as it struck the ground. Beyond was a tiny chamber without exits, no more than fifteen feet on a side. The light from Justlance’s tip revealed two forms lying upon the ground, side by side, arms crossed across chests, eyes closed.
One reclining figure was Damanda, the other Bonehammer.
Before he could get his sinews to respond or cough out a warning, the eyes of both the sleepers shuttered open.
Damanda jerked upright like the arm of a catapult, without the intervening need to lever herself up as a living creature might. Her arms shot forward as her form moved to vertical, catching Marrec in the chest. That supernatural shove bowled him back through the narrow entry and out into the brick-strewn warehouse. A brick cut him above the eye and another across his forearm.
Marrec gained his feet, cursing his slowness. He heard Gunggari yell, then a clash of arms. Elowen called out the Nentyarch’s name, as she so often did when fighting. Ususi stood to the side of the doorway, not committing to entering, but chanting and waving in the midst of casting a spell.
The cleric charged back into the room. Bonehammer, lurking by the door, caught him on the side with his great weaponMarrec barely caught the blow on his shield, though his arm nearly went numb with the effort. He was forced to step back a pace. Had the vampires fought that hard a few hours ago, Marrec doubted he and his friends would have survived. Something was different. As his shield glinted in a stray beam of sunlight, Marrec realized what it could bethe vampires were trappedthe only place to run was either outside the building into direct sunlight or there into the main warehouse where a stray beam like the one that’d just fallen across his shield would have more serious consequences on vampiric flesh.
He yelled, “Gunny, herd them out this wayinto the sunlight.”
Ususi unleashed a spray of magical bolts that traced wildly arcing trajectories through the air. Many of the bolts found their mark in Damanda’s flesh. The vampire was undeterred in her fight with Gunggari and Elowen, but she spared a smoldering glance for the wizard in the doorway. Ususi screamed, threw her hands before her eyes, and fell back.
Marrec hoped that glance wouldn’t prove to be trouble
later. He knew about the domineering gaze of vampires.
Elowen growled, “I’ll keep this one pinnedhelp Marrec with that other, one.” Gunggari danced back, his warclub landing a parting shot to Damanda’s head, which was absorbed with a grunt of pain.