Flent chuckled. “Justin. Quiet—here comes Nool.” The Drugaen slouched and summoned up a look of pure suffering on his face. He was actually quite convincing.
Nool’s voice was thick with frustration. “No, I n’ain’t got any more for her, Dujahn. What does she want with so many? This is the third one you’ve come for.”
“She doesn’t tell me the why. I follow orders. So do you, Nool.”
“Hold on a minute. I’ve gotta let the Zerite loose.” The key rattled in the lock and the corridor torches blazed inside. “Won’t let you have the Drugaen. I need him for shovel work. How’s he doing, priest?”
Exeres looked up at Nool and then over at the man in his shadow. He was a human, average size and build. Nool had mentioned his name, but Exeres had forgotten it already. There was nothing very remarkable about the fellow.
“She wouldn’t want a Drugaen. Their lives are too short.”
Exeres felt the stranger’s eyes go across his face and down to his boots.
After nodding to Nool, Exeres started down the cell-block and waited for the prison master to follow with the keys. The stranger had not stopped looking at him.
“I need someone young. Good health. The tide fever down here made the last two useless to her. What about him?”
Exeres’ stomach slowly clenched.
“You haven’t brought back any of the last three, Dujahn.”
The stranger continued to stare at Exeres. “I’d like that one.”
“I don’t have…”
“Do you remember Colonel Hallstoy?” the stranger asked in a quiet voice that Exeres barely heard.
Nool swallowed, his big chest heaving. “Take him. Take as many as you need.”
“Thank you. The Lady of Vale appreciates your obedience.”
The stranger walked up to Exeres. “Come with me, Zerite. You are needed elsewhere right now.”
“Who are you, sir?” Exeres asked, noting that the man wore no badge or token of his rank or position.
The stranger just smiled. “Just come with me.”
*
They passed through the thinning morning mists surrounding the fortress of Landmoor and entered the Shadows Wood north of the city. The Bandit army had settled inside the city itself, but the moors teemed with horsemen and riders—the Kiran Thall—who patrolled the lands in sweeping brigades of thundering hooves. Huge black spears with gold pennants formed and re-formed, ghosting through the mists as the horsemen rode.
Exeres followed the stranger through the trees and into the Woods. The rancid smell he had inhaled the previous night still lingered in the air, and Dujahn seemed to be heading towards the source of it. Exeres’ Shae senses revolted at the smell and he felt an icy fear congeal in his stomach. Vine maple and cedar trees loomed around them as they walked steadily deeper into the darkness of the forest.
The smell grew worse.
“Where are we going?” Exeres asked the stranger, still wondering who he was.
“We’re almost there. Patience, priest.”
The foulness in the air thickened. Exeres stopped, feeling a shudder go through his body. There was something about the spot, some remnant of spent magic that made gooseflesh down his arms.
“What’s wrong?” the stranger asked, turning.
“I just…I just felt something. This place is…wrong. Where are we?”
“We’re almost there.”
A network of sluices and gutters caked with mud crisscrossed throughout the swamp ahead, as if the Bandits had tried draining it. Wagon ruts sliced through the tangle of trees, weeds, and filth. Wilting linen cords wrapped like spider webs through the branches. The day had not even reached its apex, but the gloom of the forest belied it.
Further ahead, a pattering waterfall sounded through the screen of trees. Exeres swallowed, keeping pace with the stranger, feeling the mud cake on his boots. Before he saw the glimmering falls, he spotted the lone pavilion in the midst of the camp, its canvas shell as white as bleached bone.
There—the stink came from there.
The shushing of the waterfall drowned out the voices in the pavilion, but Exeres could hear someone talking. The voice made him cringe.
“There,” the stranger said, pointing to the pavilion.
Exeres breathed in Earth magic, feeding it into his strength. The magic was tainted, foul, but he drew it in, ready to use it to flee. His courage wilted before the power of such darkness and stench. Very few times in his life had he felt such true fear. He had trained all his life to learn the truth about nature. One fears what one does not understand. By diligent study and patience, one can unmask his fears and destroy them.
How trite it sounded.
Exeres wiped sweat from his forehead. The stranger glanced back at him and smirked. He did not appear bothered by the horrible stench at all.
“You’re part Shae, aren’t you? I saw your eye glowing in the dungeon.”
“I am.”
“Good. She’ll like that even more.” He walked ahead and pulled open the pavilion door.
Exeres nearly collapsed. His eyes stung and watered and he felt the grip on the Earth magic falter.
“You first,” Exeres said.