Galen gave Therin a shocked look when he didn’t name Darzin, but he was the only one to do so.
“I understand, I’ll see what can be—” The priest stuttered to a stop a second time as he saw the ugly wound in the corpse’s chest. “I cannot—”
Teraeth handed him the necklace. “He was gaeshed. This contains all we have left of his soul. Will it be enough?”
The priest shook his head as he examined the necklace. “It would take a miracle.”
Tyentso smiled. “Aren’t you in luck?”
81: THE BORDERLANDS
The young man ran. He could remember nothing else. There was no memory before the running; no memory of what brought him to this place. No memory of who he was or what he had left behind.
He was a fragment of himself.
His existence drifted only in brief seconds of “now”—in the rabbit-like beat of his heart and his choking, struggling breath. In the tripping gait of his feet as they pulled through tangled nightshade and the sweat that ran down his moist brow. He at least knew why he ran, though that was no consolation.
He ran because there were dogs.
The grim, dark forest gave no shelter or warmth. The woods were freezing cold and murky, covered with a perpetual layer of ice and swampy muck from the unending drizzle of sleet. The ice shattered beneath his steps, sucking him down into the sticky mud, leaving an obvious track for any who would follow him. The winds howled, tearing at the branches of willows and yews that clutched at his clothing and hair with homicidal intent. The roots of trees, tangled poisoned black lotus, and deadly herbs tripped at him—while thorns and bramble formed unassailable walls to block his flight.
He didn’t know who he was, but he didn’t need to be told he was dead.
He still bore the injury: an ugly gaping hole in his chest where his heart should have been. In its place, he felt a profound sense of loss and isolation. There was a cold, numb realization: although he was in the Land of the Dead, he hadn’t the faintest clue where he was supposed to go. Nothing in these woods seemed friendly.
It was not truly a dead wood: there were slugs, worms, snakes, all manner of rats, hyenas, wolves, and worse. Ravens and owls mocked him from tree branches. Still other things he could not identify, and, indeed, prayed he would never be able to identify, slithered and crawled at the edge of his vision. These slipped into nearby streams or into an impenetrable shadow just before he might have seen their forms. Everything looked on the edge of starvation, as if none of the animals in this terri ble forest had seen a proper meal in all their lives. They all eyed him as if he might be the natural remedy to their ills.
Still, he was mostly concerned about the dogs.
He could hear the hounds call out to each other behind him. He didn’t know why he assumed they hunted him, but the cold sweat that broke out along his spine allowed for no argument. He knew their foul teeth would tear him apart when they caught up with him. When they did; not if.
He tired, his pace growing slower and more desperate. The trees cleared before him and he gasped in despair. The ground ended a few steps beyond, turning from marshland to the thick inky water of a stagnant lake. Those depths lost themselves in endless blackness that seemed more like thin tar than water.
A sick yellow mist snaked across the lake with sentient malice. As he watched, the water rippled and moved as an enormous serpentine shape rolled over in its depths. He looked around in horror, but save for the tiny eyes of feral creatures that watched him from the shadows, he was alone. There was no egress.
He was trapped.
* * *
The hounds ran into the clearing with a flash of searing fire and predatory joy.
They were not truly dogs. They looked as if they had once been people, before some fell power had warped their legs and arms, twisted their bodies, and sculpted them like wet clay. For all the sharp teeth and snapping jaws, their faces were human enough to be a recognizable horror. They bayed and growled and sniffed the air for their quarry, running down to the water’s edge and then circling in frustration.
One hound, too eager to continue the chase, waded into the black lake, barking and sniffing as if to track over the water itself. The water agitation increased, and the dog was pulled under the waves with a terrified yelp.
After that the dogs didn’t stray into the murky blackness, but barked from the shore.
The hunting party descended on the location of their hounds with a thunder of hooves. There were a dozen riders. None were human. Some had their hoods back, revealing the heads of animals, monsters, or sometimes animated skulls. Some hunters had animal horns and the obvious leader of the group was a black shadow with the antlers of some enormous stag. He had the same hideous glowing eyes as his dogs.
Their horses were terrifying too. Some of the equines were little better than animated corpses, the blood still falling from rotting flesh. Others were moving skeletons, with glowing spectral eyes and cold fire surrounding their hooves. There were horses with the hides of snakes and horses made from shadows and darkness; their supernatural origins were all too clear. Frost covered the ground as they passed by, and icicles formed at the ends of tree branches.
The master of the hunt waved his sword in frustration as he saw the tracks lead straight to the water’s edge. He screamed strange words that burned and hissed into the air then turned his shadow horse and galloped back into the forest. The others turned and followed him, with the hounds yapping to catch up.
The fugitive, grasping at thin branches in the highest portions of a sickly mangrove tree nearby, breathed his first breath after they had left. He didn’t know how long it would be before the hunt master realized he had been deceived and returned. To give weight to his worry, he heard the sound of hoof beats as he lowered himself.
He had no time to move back up the tree; he was trapped on a lower branch, with only the possibility that the shadows would still conceal him.
A straggler demon, wearing ornate metal armor and cloaked in long, flowing black, rode into the clearing. The hood of his cloak covered a more concealing helmet. In his right hand, the hunter held a long spear, and in the left hand he held the reins of his mount. He rode a magnificent creature, a giant stallion warhorse with a coal-black coat and hooves of burnished fire. The horse was elemental, full of burning energy and the inferno’s warmth, melting the frozen ground as it moved.