Authors: Ben Cassidy
Maklavir cocked his head. “Come again?”
“The ladder of green. The swan in ice. The riders in the night. The white stones.” Joseph scratched his beard. “It’s like she
knew
.”
“That’s impossible,” Maklavir said quickly. “There’s no way she could have known. She didn’t even know we were going to take her out of there—”
“And yet she was dressed and ready to leave before we entered the room,” Joseph said.
Maklavir’s mouth dropped open. He looked over at the beautiful redhead again. “You’re not suggesting—I mean, you’re not seriously saying that Kara—?”
“I don’t know,” Joseph said, and he meant it. He took off his battered hat and ran a hand though his dirty blonde hair. “But I admit, it gives me the chills.” He put his hat back on, huddling against the cold in his grimy greatcoat. “I think she’s able to see things which haven’t happened yet.”
Maklavir frowned. “How, exactly?”
Joseph shrugged. “I don’t know. They didn’t exactly cover this in seminary.” He stole a glance at Kara’s sleeping form again. “I think it might have something to do with the shards of the Soulbinder that are still inside her.”
Maklavir gave a low whistle. He thought for a moment, then looked sharply at Joseph. “She was saying something the first time we saw her, right after she came out of the coma. Something about fangs and fire—”
Joseph nodded somberly. “We thought it was just babbling. It might actually be…well, a kind of prophecy.” He searched for the word. “An oracle.”
Maklavir scratched the side of his neck and shook his head. “I don’t know, Joseph. It’s awfully farfetched, isn’t it?”
Joseph stepped out of the rowboat into the ice-cold water. He exhaled sharply at the sudden shock. “Farfetched or not, after what happened last night I think we should take it seriously.” He grabbed the boat and pulled it up against the shore.
Maklavir looked dourly up at the forest. “We’re not staying in the boat?”
Joseph shook his head as he climbed up onto the bank. “This is where we get out. I’ll push the boat off. Hopefully it will throw off the gendarmes, but we can’t stay on the river, especially in the daylight. It’s too exposed.”
Maklavir gave a glum nod. “I suppose.” He turned back towards Kara.
The red-headed girl was sitting up in the boat. She stared at nothing, her eyes dreamy and her expression strange. “Fangs in the east, shadow in the south.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
Maklavir pushed back his cap. The wilting feather barely bounced. “It still sounds like nonsense to me, Joseph.”
Joseph looked back at the dark woods. He wiped his face with the back of his sleeve. “Maybe. We can debate it later. For now let’s get moving.”
The two of them helped Kara out of the boat. The delirious girl didn’t resist, but didn’t interact with them either.
As soon as they were on the bank, Joseph kicked the rowboat back out into the current.
The boat bobbed on the ripples of water, and tumbled slowly downstream until it was out of sight.
“Hopefully we can find a farmhouse or barn nearby,” Joseph said as he climbed back up the bank. “Somewhere we can stay out of sight for awhile.”
“I suppose we’ll have to leave Valmingaard,” Maklavir said sadly. He shook his cape, then put it over Kara’s shoulders. “A pity. Even with everything that has happened, it has been good to finally be home again.”
Joseph put a hand on the diplomat’s shoulder.
“To find the key, to stop all three,” Kara murmured. She stared blankly off across the water. “Seek the raven lost in the sea.”
Maklavir shuddered. “Oracle or not, all this babbling of hers is unsettling to say the least. Fangs and fire? Ravens in the sea? It doesn’t make much sense at all.” He took Kara gently by the shoulders and led her up the bank.
“No,” Joseph agreed, “it doesn’t.” He followed them up the bank, scouting both sides of the river as he walked.
“I’d give anything to have her just
look
at us again,” Maklavir said.
Joseph didn’t answer. Some things hurt too much for him to say out loud. He moved up onto the top of the bank, and sniffed the wind.
“Not to be perpetually negative,” Maklavir said, “but we have no supplies whatsoever. Are we supposed to forage for nuts and berries?”
Joseph knelt down on the ground. He picked up a leaf and examined it.
Maklavir gave him a doubtful look. “I know you’re a master pathfinder, Joseph, but—”
Joseph plucked a piece of grass from the ground. He put it in his mouth, chewed on it a moment, then spat it out.
Maklavir stared at the man. “What in Zanthora are you doing?”
Joseph put a hand to the earth, closed his eyes for a moment, then stood abruptly. He pointed off to the right. “That way. A farm.”
Maklavir raised both his eyebrows. “You’ve got to be joking. You know there’s a farm in that direction by…eating grass?”
“No,” said Joseph easily. He pointed up in the sky. “By that smoke.”
Maklavir craned his neck around.
A thin trail of wood smoke rose into the early morning air, just above the nearby treeline.
When Maklavir looked back, Joseph was smiling.
“That’s not funny,” the diplomat said.
Joseph shrugged. “It was a little funny.” He clapped Maklavir on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s hope there’s a barn to go with that farmhouse.”
Maklavir smiled. “And some eggs, I hope.”
The farmhouse was a small one, adjacent to a dreary little collection of wheat fields. An old gray barn stood next to the main house. Fortunately, there was also a small, covered threshing floor on the other side of the nearest wheat field, near to the main barn but out of sight from the main house.
Joseph and Maklavir got the door open easily enough, and settled Kara down in one corner. Rats squeaked and skittered about in the gloom, their eyes glittering in the half-light. Dry wheat flax rustled under their feet.
“I doubt anyone will come out here,” Joseph said, glancing out the small wooden shutters of the threshing floor’s only window. “Not as long as we don’t make any noise.”
Maklavir folded his arms and sank miserably onto a pile of old lumber. “Perhaps because this is a dirty, dusty old hole in the ground that no one would enter unless they were forced to at gunpoint?”
Joseph closed the wooden shutter gently. “It’s not that bad. I grew up on a farm very similar to this, back in Calbraith. It has its own charm.”
“If by charm, you mean
disease-ridden vermin
, than I heartily agree.” Maklavir nodded at the darkness. “I’ve seen smaller dogs than the rats that are in here.”
Joseph rubbed his hands against the cold. He moved back towards the doors of the threshing floor. “Could be worse. They could be wolf-rats.”
“Well, someone certainly has his sense of humor back.” Maklavir rested his chin on his hand. “You seem oddly…
happy
. More than I’ve seen you in months.”
Joseph glanced out the threshing floor doors one last time, then closed them to a mere crack. “I suppose I am,” he admitted.
Maklavir grunted. “Why? If anything, our situation has actually gotten worse. Kara’s still lost to us, we’re being hunted as fugitives by Potemkin and his gendarmes, and now we’re stuck in a filthy hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere.
And
I’m starving. You’ll forgive me, old chap, but I don’t see much to be overly happy about.”
Joseph sighed. He pulled up an old bucket, turned it upside down and squatted on it. “I guess I feel hope for the first time in a long time.”
Maklavir gave a dark chuckle. “Hope? You have a strange sense of optimism, Joseph.” He looked sideways at Kara.
The girl was still staring off into space.
“Did we do the right thing?” Maklavir asked suddenly. His voice was low, almost a murmur. “She’s no better than she was in the coma. Maybe it would have been better if we…if we had—” He let the thought hang unfinished in the air.
Joseph stared at Kara too. He rubbed a thoughtful hand across his bearded face. “You said you took her to surgeons, right?”
Maklavir gave his friend a startled look. “Of course. The best I could find in Vorten. They all agreed. Taking out the remaining shards of the Soulbinder would likely kill her.”
“She’s dead already,” Joseph said quietly. He looked over at Maklavir. “At this point we have nothing to lose.”
Maklavir leaned forward. “Those shards are in deep, Joseph. Every surgeon I went to said the same thing. Trying to dig them out would be too dangerous. I couldn’t find a single one who would even attempt it.”
Joseph chewed on his lip. He stared down at the floor thoughtfully. “What if removing the shards…” he paused, hardly able to speak aloud what he was thinking, “what if removing them could heal Kara?
Really
heal her? Bring her back to normal?”
Maklavir peered intently at Joseph. “You think the shards are causing this weird dream state that she’s in?”
Joseph gave a slow nod. “I do.”
Maklavir took in a hissing breath through his teeth. “That’s a huge leap, Joseph. If you’re wrong—”
“Look at her, Maklavir,” Joseph said sharply. He pointed to the insensate girl. “It’s like she’s sleepwalking. No eye contact, she can’t hear us or speak to us. There’s nothing of—” He felt himself begin to choke up, but swallowed the emotion down. “There’s nothing of Kara left. We have nothing to lose.”
Maklavir looked long and hard at Kara. “I told you already. None of the surgeons would risk performing an operation like that. Not here in Vorten, anyways. I sent messengers up to Varnost, before it was besieged. There was no better reply from the surgeons there as well, and some of them are the best in the country.”
“I know,” Joseph said.
“So what’s your plan?” Maklavir said.
Joseph looked over at his friend, his face pale but determined. “I’m going to find a surgeon. One who will perform the operation.”
Maklavir rubbed his forehead. “And how exactly are you going to do that, old boy?”
Joseph stared at Kara, a pale husk of the woman he remembered. “However I can,” he whispered.
Chapter 13
It didn’t seem fair, really. It wasn’t even a full moon.
The werewolf sprang forward, its slavering mouth open, eyes burning in the darkness. The claws on its hands were as long as daggers. It let out a fearsome roar that shook the walls of the cavern. The sound and the sight of such an abomination would have paralyzed nearly any ordinary man with terror.
Kendril wasn’t an ordinary man.
He leapt forward, swords swept up to attack, his heart beating fast and his body acting with a mind of its own.
What he was seeing was impossible. Werewolves were just legends and myths, not reality.
But Kendril had seen pagan gods clothed in human flesh, had seen the fire of the Void itself and had faced down earthly creatures that most people would be horrified to know even existed.
A man turning into a werewolf right before his eyes seemed somehow less astonishing.
Kendril yelled. He swiped both his swords at the beast in front of him.
The werewolf barreled forward like a fully-laden ox cart. The long claws gleamed in the dim light.
Kendril felt his swords rake across the beast’s arms. It was as if he had slashed the blades across a stone wall.
In a move so fast that Kendril could barely register what was happening, the werewolf’s arm smashed into his side.
The blow felt as if a tree trunk had crashed into him. Kendril felt himself lifted bodily into the air and thrown across the chamber. He landed hard on the stone floor and rolled for several more yards until he ended in a heap near the chamber’s exit.
The werewolf threw back his head and bellowed in triumph.
Kendril scrambled to his feet, biting down the pain that pulsed through his bruised body. He could feel blood running down past his ear. His right leg felt almost broken, but it held firm under his weight as he stood.
There were no burning slashes from the claws. The beast must have hit Kendril with the flat of its paw and arm. Lucky. If the claws had gotten him he would have been split open.
One of Kendril’s swords lay across the chamber where it had fallen out of his grip. The other was somehow still clutched in his hand.
Kendril glanced quickly around the chamber, breathing hard.
Bronwyn and Tomas were both lying still and unconscious on the ground.
Just him and the werewolf, then.
The beast turned towards him, growling menacingly. It tensed as if it was getting ready to spring across the distance.
Kendril licked his lip, tasting his own blood.
Then he turned and ran.
Not the most courageous of strategies, surely, but sometimes discretion was the better part of valor. Even for a Ghostwalker.
The werewolf roared in the chamber behind him. The creature was angry, robbed of its prey.
Kendril kept running. He pulled out one of his pistols and reloaded it as he went.
Could one pistol shot even stop the monstrosity behind him? Somehow Kendril doubted it.
He emerged out into the massive main chamber of the sea cave. The smell of salt and dried kelp assaulted his nose in full. At the other end of the cavern was the bright flickering of the bonfire. Kendril headed towards it.
There was a crash behind him. Kendril stole a look over his shoulder.
The werewolf was coming after him, running on all fours across the wet cave floor. It roared.
Kendril’s booted foot caught on a twist in the rock floor. He staggered and almost fell, but managed to keep his feet. He cursed, then splashed through a wide tide pool.
The werewolf leapt onto a nearby slab of rock. It glared down at Kendril as he ran, then threw back its head and howled.
Kendril couldn’t outrun it. On all fours the monster was lightning fast, and the sea cave was too wide for him to make it to the bonfire before the werewolf caught him first.
That left the pistol. Every precious second counted. Kendril had to load the shot, ram down the paper cartridge, prime the pan….