Shadowdance 05 - A Dance of Ghosts (27 page)

Good to know,
he thought, though that knowledge would benefit him for only moments more. Deborah pressed the attack, and it took all his skill to keep her at bay. At least the ache from the curse had subsided. Battle was a wonderful medicine, and he much preferred the pain from the cuts of blades over the insidious pulse deep in the center of his being.

Into the dirt Ghost dropped, and when he reemerged behind Deborah, she had already turned, blocking his slashes. She lunged toward him, her daggers a flurry of steel, and he blocked them with growing confidence. Her skill was great, but damn it, prior to fighting the Watcher, he’d never even considered someone could be greater than he, and it was time he remembered that.

Parrying aside one thrust, he stole the offensive, his feet a blur beneath him as he shifted closer and closer, giving her no break. Her defenses grew desperate, they both could tell, and then she inhaled deep.

“
Karak!
” came the cry, only this time Ghost denied it with every piece of his soul.

“No!” he screamed, swords crossed before him as the power rolled forth. “Not … this … time!”

His swords opened, and he pushed aside the attack as if it were just another blade. He saw the fear in Deborah’s eyes, that flash of doubt, and he knew the end had come. Into her chest his swords sank deep, and as the blood flowed, she looked up at him with a mixture of fury and confusion.

“No one…” she said as he pinned her to the dirt. “No one can … can resist…”

Ghost knelt down close, and he ripped off the wrappings that hid her face.

“I just did,” he said, kissing her forehead. “And I will again. My life is my own, precious. A shame you never felt the same about yours.”

To that she could say nothing, for her eyes had rolled back into her head, her movements merely the final twitchings of a dying body. Ghost pulled free his swords and looked about. All around him was a scene so bizarre he could only laugh. Dozens of soldiers had come in from outside the mansion, and they’d formed a circle around him and Deborah. How long had they been there, he wondered, watching their fight? He could only guess. It’d taken a knife-edged focus to defeat Deborah as well as keep all thoughts of Zusa from his mind.

“I mean no harm,” Ghost said to the soldiers about him. “I killed the invader, or have you not noticed?”

To the front pushed a man in fine silver armor, a yellow circle with wings upon the front of his tunic.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asked, his own sword drawn.

“This has nothing to do with you,” Ghost said. He saw where Zusa lay against the tree, Alyssa huddled over her, and then he pointed.

“Only her,” he said.

A shadow crossed over the man’s face.

“Get out,” he said.

“With pleasure.”

Ghost dropped into the dirt, the last sound he heard before the earth swallowed him that of the guards’ gasps. Like some strange worm, Ghost swam through the ground, focusing on exiting the compound. As he did, he felt a sensation building in his stomach, and with each passing second, it grew stronger. His speed slowed, and his otherworldly vision dimmed. For a panicked moment, he thought he’d be lost underground, forever entombed as the powers Karak had given him diminished.

And then the pain hit.

It was like a lightning bolt through his mind, a crystal-tipped spear ramming into his gut. He felt like he needed to breathe, yet couldn’t. Over and over, he saw Zusa in his mind, lying there, her life ready to be taken by the faceless woman, yet he’d stopped it. He’d
saved
her, and now he heard a deep voice chanting as if from some great distance.

Betrayed.

“No!” Ghost screamed, but it was only the whisper of a man long buried in a grave.

Betrayed.

“I was never your servant,” he said, clawing in an attempt to climb back to the surface. The pain heightened, and a multitude of colors swam across his vision. It was like razors cutting across his skin. His movements ceased, for he was unable to focus on anything, to move, to climb. A swirling vertigo overcame him, and he felt as if he were falling amid a great fire.

Fight it, Ghost knew he had to fight it, but how? Only one thing had worked before, and so he tried it out of desperation. He thought of Tarlak, and of how he would sneak into the wizard’s home. He filled his mind with images of the man’s death, by poison, razor wire, and blade. As the pounding in his skull faded, the thoughts grew soothing, his promises calming. Yes, he could kill the wizard, he told himself. The man was a nuisance, and his magic had left him horribly burned. Killing him was good. Killing him, he could do. Over and over he swore, and desperately, he tried to believe it.

At last, the voices were gone, his sight returned, and with a gasp, he emerged from the ground in the open street just outside the Gemcroft mansion. Blood poured down from his body like rain, marking the place of his emergence. Ignoring the surprised cries of those around him, he ran, wanting to get as far away from a certain woman, whose name he’d not dare think, as fast as he possibly could.

M
arion smiled at Thren from the other side of the bed, her face glowing in the early-morning light that streamed through the stained glass of their room. Their blankets were bunched around her waist, revealing her full breasts and even fuller belly. Thren put a hand atop her belly, feeling the movement of the little life within.

“I say we name her Mary, after you,” Thren said, his fingertips circling Marion’s navel.

“Seems a bit prideful,” Marion said. “You’re the one wanting a legacy, not me.”

Thren laughed.

“Well, then, what name would you prefer?”

She shrugged.

“Mary is fine. And if it’s a boy?”

He kissed her lips.

“Aaron,” he said. “After my father.”

“I didn’t think you knew your father.”

Thren pressed his forehead to hers.

“He’s but a distant haze in my mind, but it doesn’t matter. He was my father, and it is only right to respect him.”

Marion winced once, then rubbed her belly, a sign Thren had long deciphered as their child turning in the womb fast enough to make her uncomfortable.

“Aaron it is,” she said, staring down at her stomach as if she could see through the layers of skin and right into the face of the life yet to be born. “Tiny little Aaron…”

Thren reached for her face, wishing to kiss her again, to feel her warmth against his body, but she was not there. He paused, confused, for he was in an empty bed. The room was dark. Whatever light had shone through the window moments ago was gone. Frowning, he slid naked off his bed and began to dress. When his breeches were tied, he strapped on his sword belt, then strode shirtless toward the door. Something, or someone, was outside his room. He knew it, deep down he knew it, though the knowledge disturbed him. Where had Marion gone? Why had the day vanished so quickly? Had he fallen asleep again?

He touched the doorknob, found it ice-cold. His frown deepened. With how hot the summer had been, even nightfall shouldn’t have cooled his house so well. Sensing a trap, he put one hand on the hilt of a short sword, then pushed open the door with the other. He rushed on through, meaning to attack whoever laid an ambush, but the scene was too bewildering for him to react beyond gaping.

“Hello, Thren,” said an older man, his hair gray, his skin starting to wrinkle. Around his neck was a silver chain decorated with the emblem of a lion, and it hung before his dark black robes. Instead of being inside his house’s hallway, they stood in a plain field with but a single tree in the distance. The sky was filled with stars, and slowly they moved across the horizon, as if locked in a dance that baffled his reeling mind.

“Who…” Thren asked, trying to make sense of things. The grass was cold and wet beneath his feet, and when he looked behind him, there was no sign of the doorway he’d just entered, only more fields stretching on for hundreds of miles, ending at a deep white fog.

“Come, now,” said the stranger. “You aren’t as slow as this. Where you are,
when
you are, should be easy enough to decipher.”

When? What did he mean by …

And then the past years came slamming into him. Marion’s murder, Grayson’s arrival in Veldaren, Randith’s death at the hands of Aaron … all of it, he remembered all of it, and in doing so, he knew where he must be.

“I’m dreaming,” he said. “But no normal dream. Who are you who would dare enter a man’s most private sanctuary?”

“A desperate man,” he said. “A man I believe you’ve come looking for. My name is Luther, and I am a priest of Karak.”

At the word
Karak
, it seemed the sky rumbled, and along the horizon, he watched a red line pierce the hills, signifying the rising of a blood-colored sun.

“Luther,” said Thren, and the name felt heavy on his tongue. “So, you’ve come where you think me vulnerable, is that true? Would you kill me in my sleep, where I have but thoughts and dreams to defend myself?”

Luther smiled, and it was strange, for he seemed so nonthreatening, just an aging man in the crossroads between his middle years and the elderly stage beyond. He still had all his hair, but his smile looked tired, his eyes heavy with many, many years of struggle.

“I’m not here to harm you,” he said. “Hard as it may be to believe, I’m here to help you.”

“Help me?” Thren swallowed, and he wished that the stars above him would vanish. He felt too exposed, a vulnerable speck atop a thousand miles of grass. Deeper grew the red horizon, and with it, he heard the sound of screams.

“Do you hear that?” asked Luther, and he joined him in watching the sunrise. “That sound is the wailing of those yet to die. But they will die. Their souls cry out in the void, for they know what comes for them. What I’ve tried to stop.”

The leaves atop the lone tree turned yellow, then black, and as they began to fall, Thren heard the softest of snaps from each and every one.

“Why are you here?” Thren asked.

“As I said, to help you. You seek to find me in the Stronghold, and I would have words with you. You won’t reach me, not through force, nor through stealth. The way is too well-guarded, the paladins too skilled in battle for you to overcome them all.” He took a step closer, and with each step, the world silently shook. “But there is a way. The Stronghold was built atop Ashhur’s fallen Sanctuary, its very construction meant to blaspheme and insult. Because of that, there are many secret ways, gaps between the walls, and places where the new could not fully destroy the old.”

“You mean to trick me,” said Thren. “You’d have me walk into a trap.”

The stars twinkled out one by one, the red growing across the skyline, streaks of yellow starting to poke beyond the hills. The fog that had hidden the horizon began to fade, revealing rows of snow-crested mountains, and with the light shining upon them, they seemed to shimmer as if their tips were made of gold.

“I only seek to spare your life,” said Luther. “I have need of you, if you would only trust me. On the northern wall of the Stronghold, twenty paces in from the eastern corner, you will find a patch where the grass does not grow as deep. Dig to reveal the door. From there, you must climb, always climb, never once descend. You will not like what you find otherwise. Come the top, you will find a false wall, and beyond that, you must follow the stairs to the highest floor of the Stronghold. My room is there, and I wait for you within.”

It seemed too easy, too good to be true. Thren pondered drawing his swords and stabbing the priest through the neck, to see if dying in a dream meant dying in the waking world, but when he moved to do so, his swords were gone. Glancing back up, he saw Luther smiling at him and shaking his head as if Thren were a disobedient child.

“You have no choice in this,” said the priest. “Come speak with me, Thren. Hear what I have to say.”

“You continue to treat me as if I am your puppet,” Thren said. “I will kill you for this, for everything you’ve done.”

“Perhaps you will,” said Luther. “But I forfeited my life long ago…”

The wind picked up, the stabbing spears of light reaching from horizon to horizon. The lone tree in the distance died, its branches collapsing as the earth swallowed it whole. Amid the rising sun, Luther smiled, his body fading away as a terrible rumble overwhelmed it all.

“Oh, and Thren,” shouted the priest to be heard over the noise. “Come alone.”

And then, the dreamworld was gone, the light breaking everything, and it was only when he gasped in a waking breath that Thren realized it was from the steady opening of his eyes.

“I don’t understand the need for secrecy,” Haern said as the three of them traversed the thick wheat fields that grew around the Stronghold. Thren led the way, with Delysia staying at Haern’s side. “Who was the contact that gave you the way inside?”

Thren kept his back to them, a barely visible specter in the deep night.

“It was a contact,” Thren said. “That’s all you need to know.”

Delysia grabbed Haern’s arm, slowing him down so she could brush his ear with her lips.

“He’s lying,” she whispered.

“Are you sure?”

He glanced at her, saw her nod. Taking in a deep breath, Haern let it out with a sigh and decided to press the issue later. The wheat in the fields was tall, but following Thren was easy enough. Several days before, he’d informed them of how he’d learned of a way inside, yet gave no more information beyond that. For all Haern knew, it’d be through another contact, a secret entrance, or a magical bird that would fly down and offer to carry them to the tallest tower in exchange for their souls.

“There it is,” Thren said, and he pointed. Casting aside his thoughts, Haern followed his father’s outstretched hand, and then he saw it: the Stronghold. Even at such a distance, over a mile away, it was an imposing building. In the moonlight, it was a thick, rectangular spire, its walls seeming to be of a black even purer than the darkness. From where they were, he could see faint dots of red and yellow, torches burning around the lower rings. If forced to guess how many floors the building had, Haern would venture at least fifteen. The entire structure had a proud feeling to it, a defiant fortress rising into the dark night sky. The only parts that looked simple and rustic were the stables attached to the side, wood pens covered by a thatched roof.