chapter 18
Through the velvet folds of the dream, grasping hands reached for him. He spun away, trying as he did so to discern their owner, but the phantom figure faded back from him like smoke before the wind. Alert for the next attack, he strove to bring the distorted milieu of the dream into focus, but focus was elusive as well; reality wavered and shuddered, but refused to converge. Angry now, he sought identity instead, and this at least came more readily. His name, he knew upon reflection, was Amric. He was warrior and warmaster, and he would not be denied. With identity came purpose, and he peeled at the intervening layers of the subconscious. Hazy at the forward fringe of his vision, the figure whirled and fled. His swords flashed into his hands, and he leapt in pursuit.
He sped after the darting shadow, racing through a realm of mist. Obstacles reared from the fog, forcing him to hurdle and dodge, and his quarry, seeming more familiar with the terrain, drew steadily away from him. He redoubled his efforts, but still the figure dwindled in the distance. Grinding his teeth in frustration, he pressed on. Sentinel shapes pressed forth from the mist, resolving into huge trees, and sunlight pierced the grey ceiling above to speckle the matted ground before him. A thick, verdant forest coalesced about him as he ran, and its appearance tugged at his memory. It bore a striking resemblance, he realized after a moment, to the sprawling woodlands surrounding Lyden where he had spent his youth among the Sil’ath, hunting and exploring.
The sights and smells slipped easily about him, familiar and comforting as a long-worn glove. It was like returning home, and he could see why he might have summoned these remembered environs in a dream, but the forest seemed determined to prove a hindrance to his progress. Every rock tilted beneath his boot heel, every upturned root caught at his passing foot, every wind-waved branch swayed into his path. At the same time, his quarry seemed to suffer no such difficulties, and even as he struggled past he wondered at how the land he loved could so favor another.
The shadow melted from sight far ahead, and Amric ran on, following on pure instinct. The towering trees whipped by as he ran, and several times he would have sworn they shifted somehow to shoulder him from his path. Twisting and darting, he wound his way among them, his fury undiminished.
He slid to a halt in a sunlit clearing, his skin prickling with warning. His eyes narrowed. He tightened his grips on the swords until the muscles of his arms stood corded in sharp relief, and he began a slow circuit of the clearing, moving with a panther’s stride. He reached his arrival point and stopped, frowning. Something was amiss here, he could feel it. He scanned the ring of trees and saw nothing out of place. His gaze fell then upon the grassy center of the clearing, and he froze. He saw his trampled path circumscribing the glade, except for one side where it veered gently inward, away from the perimeter. He had not meant to do that, and did not remember altering his path in that manner. He stalked toward it, and found himself abruptly at the edge of the clearing. He whirled and saw that he had swerved again, away from that spot.
Setting his jaw, he took slow steps in that direction, pausing after each stride to assess his progress. Resistance rose against him, as if he walked against a river’s steady current. He concentrated upon the forest ahead, refusing to allow his eyes to slide to either side. He thought at first he was looking at a portion of the forest draped in deepest shadow, and then it seemed that it must instead be a looming, amorphous wedge of rock. His mind struggled to fill the void in his perception. He growled to himself. Damn it all, but this was his forest, in his dream, and he would not be deceived. He concentrated, reaching for what he could not see, and like a parting veil it finally yielded its secrets to him in halting stages.
It was no natural structure, but a cottage or small house of some kind, nestled back amid the trees and sheltered in the lee of the hill behind it. He could not place the architecture, with its strange, almost delicate flowing lines, and yet somehow it struck him as oddly familiar. Revealed at last, it stood in solitude there at the edge of the glade, blending and not blending, as beautiful and out of place as a sparkling jewel lying in a field of grass. Before him was a door, hanging ajar in its graceful, high-peaked arch. A muffled noise echoed within, and Amric’s puzzlement and caution dissolved in the heat of remembered purpose. He shouldered the door aside and plunged into the cottage, one sword crossed before him and one held low and away.
The interior of the place was no less otherworldly, and the décor baffled his eye as he tried to place its origins. It was not from any of the western nations. Pakhrian then, or perhaps Illirian? Somewhere remote, certainly, but again he had an overwhelming sense from the instant he crossed the threshold that he should know this place. He had little time to ponder the matter, however; the figure he sought was ahead, crouching over something in a shadowed alcove with its back to him.
Amric leapt forward, raising his blades to cut down this ghostly predator before it could complete its sinister objective. The figure spun to meet him with appalling speed, those grasping hands reaching for him once more––and Amric froze in shock. The figure was wholly human, and its features were his own.
The figure offered no resistance, and its features––his features––were settled into unfamiliar lines of sorrow and resignation. Determination flickered there, and his double took a sliding step to interpose his body before the alcove at his back, blocking Amric’s view. There was a dizzying moment as Amric was wrenched from his own body, and he saw as if through the eyes of his double. From there he beheld himself, a hard, frightening, vengeful man in dark leather and oiled mail, standing with wicked blades upraised to deal the killing blow. He saw his own face twisted into a mask of rage and hatred, with that mask cracked in places to reveal confusion. He reached out with open hands toward the other, not grasping or threatening at all, but rather beseeching. And hopeful, ever hopeful.
He watched suspicion cross the battle-hardened visage, watched the raptor gaze of the warrior dart from his face to his outstretched hands, and from there to the shadowed recess behind him. He could not tell if it was the light of comprehension he saw there, or merely the split second decision in battle of the warrior born, but either way the features closed like ironbound doors and walled away the last of his hope. Hatred and fury blazed in those grey eyes that were mirrors of his own, and the swords flashed toward him.
Amric’s eyes flared open and his fist tightened convulsively on the hilt of the sword lying at his side. He did not otherwise move or make a noise, but instead took shallow, controlled breaths as he drank in his surroundings. The chill night air of the desert washed over him in a questing breeze, and the lean trees of their elevated campsite swayed overhead. The dry whisper of rustling ferns and the slow bubbling of the spring-fed pool reached his ears, punctuated by the occasional grumbling snort from one of the horses.
Rolling his head slightly to the side, he could see Innikar standing watch near the downward trail. The Sil’ath warrior sat cross-legged on a flat rock with one sword bared across his knees; he was motionless except for the occasional swivel of his head. He kept glancing in one direction, and Amric tilted his head to follow the stare. Bellimar stood there, perched on the outer edge of the crown of rock like some great bird of prey, cloak wrapped tightly around him as he gazed down at the wasteland far below. From below, Amric thought, he must look like just another patch of midnight against the scowling peak of rock. He gave a grim smile; he wondered who was more discomfited by the nighttime watch arrangement, Innikar at discovering that the old man never needed to sleep, or Bellimar at Amric’s insistence that an additional person always keep watch with him. The vampire had given no sign that his word––or his self-control––could not be trusted, but even a relaxed tiger was still a tiger.
Amric let the tension drain from him, and he released his white-knuckled grip on the sword. With all quiet at the camp, his thoughts turned to the strange dream. For a fleeting instant upon awakening he had felt near to some burgeoning understanding of what he had seen, but now it escaped him. He struggled to recall the details, which only moments ago had seemed so vivid, before his conscious mind could bury them further. The pursuit over familiar ground, the elusive foe with his features, the alien and yet somehow familiar hidden structure, the jarring shift in perspective at the end; he turned it all over and over in his mind.
There were many troubling aspects to the dream, but most troubling to him were his own actions at the end, when he had clearly seen his quarry to be unarmed and reaching out to him, and yet he had still chosen to attack. He had slain many in battle, but he had never killed in cold blood, and the depth of the hatred marring his expression nagged at him. And what was striking down himself, in essence, meant to signify? Some unsatisfied hostility toward a blood-family he had never known? He had dwelled on such matters as a child, as was to be expected, but in all honesty he could not remember considering the subject for many years now.
He frowned and shook his head, chiding himself for a fool. The morrow would be draining enough without losing sleep to mull over some silly dream. The others were waiting on him to produce a strategy that would get them all safely to and from the hive with their rescued friends in tow, and he had no idea as of yet how he was going to manage that particular feat. He closed his eyes, firmly pushed the lingering remnants of the dream from his mind, and he began sifting once more through all he knew of the hive and the bleak terrain surrounding it.
An hour later, when Valkarr rose from his bedroll to relieve Innikar at watch, Amric was still lying awake as his mind chewed relentless circles around the problem.
“Is it a trap?” Sariel whispered in the Sil’ath tongue.
Amric gave a slow shake of his head without glancing at her. They were lying prone, pressed to the stones like a coating of moss as they peered over the edge and onto the wasteland below.
“It is an unnecessary ruse,” Innikar replied in a low tone from the other side of Sariel. “If they knew we were here, they could have swarmed up even that narrow path and overwhelmed us by sheer force of numbers by now.”
“Still, the timing is suspect,” Sariel mused.
Innikar grunted assent. The trio fell silent, squinting into the gritty, biting wind blowing at them from the north. In the distance, the last of the cloth-wrapped black creatures were disappearing into that swirling haze of sand.
Innikar cleared his throat with an oblique glance toward Amric. “The old man was awake throughout the night,” he said.
“I know,” Amric responded.
“He said that he requires no sleep. Is he truly a…?”
“Yes. Is or was, and not even he knows which anymore.”
Innikar rested his chin on his fist and pondered that for a moment.
“Then,” put in Sariel, “he is likely telling the truth about the rest, about what he saw last night.”
“Yes, I believe him on that count as well.”
“I can think of only one destination to the north for them to march against in force,” Innikar said after a moment.
Amric met the Sil’ath warrior’s eyes with a grim nod: Keldrin’s Landing. A veritable army of the creatures had swept over the wasteland in the hours since dawn’s first light, issuing forth from the hive in determined batches ranging in size from a handful to as many as twenty. The sun hung directly overhead now, struggling to pierce the tempestuous haze, and he estimated that more than three hundred of the strange creatures had passed within sight of their perch over the course of the morning. Even more troubling was Bellimar’s report after a long night’s vigil that the exodus had been going for many hours before daybreak, such that they had seen only the trailing portion of it, and the lesser portion at that. The creatures all seemed to be headed due north, and there was not much in that direction to offer as a target save the city itself. If indeed their path went so far, then Keldrin’s Landing was likely in for a concerted attack, and that assault could come as early as nightfall.
“We cannot know the minds of such alien creatures,” Amric said. “They might be abandoning one nest to create another elsewhere. We should not draw conclusions until we see inside this hive for ourselves.”
Sariel nodded, her expression tight. Amric placed a hand on her arm and smiled gently.
“You are right to think the city is in jeopardy,” he said. “It is still the most likely explanation. But there is little we can do from here. We cannot get ahead of that ragged army of fiends in time to warn the city’s people. There are now far too many foes between here and there, and even though a good horse can outrun those things for a time, they never seem to tire.” It was true; they had seen it before, and every group that had burst forth from the hive that morning had traveled at a dead run, soundless and unflagging, until disappearing over the horizon.
“You misunderstand,” she said. “I am indeed concerned for Keldrin’s Landing and its people, but I am troubled by something else as well. The creatures bore no captives in their departure.”
“Yes, I noted that as well.”
Sariel turned a stony gaze upon him. “This implies that sufficient forces remain behind to restrain the captives,” she said. “Or that the captives no longer require restraining.”
Amric’s jaw clenched. “We shall know which is the case soon enough.”
He narrowed his gaze against the stinging wind. The black creatures were lost to view, leaving the rippling dunes as unblemished as a vast, crumpled sheet of canvas. He lowered his head and slithered down and backward until he was safely out of sight from below, then sprang to his feet and padded to the other side of the grassy bowl, skirting the pool as he went. He slid into place beside Valkarr and looked down upon the wasteland from the southwestern edge of the tall crag’s crown of rock.
The hive was quiet, with nothing more than a black, yawning hole atop a massive dome of sand to reveal its presence. At first glance the structure could almost blend with the more natural landscape surrounding it, but its height and the odd uniformity of its conical shape soon exposed its subterfuge. Upon further observation, it became evident that this eerie monarch of the dunes was the only one among its brethren seemingly immune to the capricious, clawing wind that frayed the mounds around it. Here the wasteland shifted and remade itself continuously; only the hive remained unchanged.
Amric watched the hive for long, crawling minutes, and then made his decision. He sprang to his feet and strode for the horses, tethered and hooded against the blowing sand.
“Mount up, everyone,” he said.
Gone was his waking plan to send the stealthiest among them on foot to the entrance of the hive in order to get an undetected glimpse inside. That plan had never satisfied him, but it was the best the situation had offered. The Sil’ath were renowned for their ability to fade like ghosts past enemy fortifications, and he and his warriors were some of the best among a race who excelled at such things, but the terrain offered precious little cover and he doubted even their odds of getting close enough against the swarm of activity around the hive. The circumstances had changed, however, and trap or not, coincidental timing or not, he would have that closer look at their enemy now.
The riders left the crag and picked their way down the treacherous trail. They rode instead of leading the horses, as the prospect of being thrown by a stumbling horse seemed preferable to being beneath one, tugging at its reins. Sariel rode with Amric on his bay gelding, and Innikar sat behind Valkarr on his blue dun. If they were forced to outrun an ambush, the horses would still offer far more speed over a short distance than being on foot, even with the extra weight. Amric’s mount lost its footing and began to slide, dropping its haunches and bracing all four hooves on the rocky path. The warrior’s stomach took a sickening plunge, but he kept a steady hand on the reins and the beast recovered.
When they reached the sands below, he exhaled slowly and wheeled about to await the others. He patted the bay’s shuddering neck and murmured into its flicking ear. He realized with a mild start that the horse had no name; he had not asked after any existing name when he bought it, and he had never given it one. He had not expected to spend so much time on horseback. The animal had a courageous heart, and he decided it deserved a good name as soon as one came to him.
It took the better part of an hour to reach the base of the hive. Looking up its sloping height, Amric was struck by the sheer size of the structure. He had known it was huge in comparison to the more ordinary mounds around it, but here, at its foot, it seemed to stab at the very sky. The surface was hard and unnaturally smooth. It was not the slickness of water-worn stone, or the polish of a cut gemstone, but rather an unbroken, unblemished expanse of sand somehow welded together into a curved surface as hard as granite. There was an abrasive tooth to it, such that even the iron-shod hooves of the horses were able to find purchase on its steep slope.
Amric scanned the rolling hills again, finding them still devoid of life. He motioned for the others to spread out, and then he took the lead up the slope. The incline proved too steep for the horses to make a direct ascent, but he was able to guide his bay gelding in a more gradual circuit of the thing, making a slow spiral to its peak. From its towering height, he was afforded a panoramic view of the surrounding desert, and he stopped more than once to survey the land. The swirling winds still limited sight distance, but nothing stirred in any direction aside from the shambling dunes themselves.
They reached the peak and found that the outer lip marked the outline of a broad crater with a gaping hole at its center. Descending from the edges of the maw were numerous crude stairways which appeared to be carved from the interior wall of the structure. They twisted away into the darkness far below. The entire thing was hollow, Amric realized; given its mammoth size, there was no telling how many more of the creatures might still be contained below.
Amric slid from his horse, and Valkarr did the same. They left the reins with the others and crept forward to the edge of the opening, crawling in silence for the last dozen paces. They peered over the rim, tilting their heads at an angle such that only the barest sliver of silhouette would show to any observers below.
It was afternoon and the sun was no longer at its zenith. Skewed now in the sky, it sent a slanted shaft of thick, muddled light into the hive to pool off center on the floor of the cavern far below. Thus it was that, as Amric’s eyes adjusted to the darkness inside, he was able to pick out details of the room’s perimeter there first.
The place was huge and circular, and far from deserted.
Scores of large openings were cut into the wall at ground level along the outside arc of the room, and hulking black creatures vanished into or emerged from their depths, moving with industrious speed. Amric noted that the floor of the place was well below the wasteland’s ground level. His jaw clenched as he wondered how far that network of tunnels extended beneath the desert. Not terribly far, he decided, or the mass exodus they had witnessed earlier need not have taken place above ground.
The creatures were larger than the humanoid forms he had seen from these fiends thus far, perhaps half again the height of a tall man, with elongated heads pulled in tight to their chests. They were heavyset, at least twice as broad at the shoulders as a man, and they moved with ponderous strength. Their arms were overlong, ending in strange appendages that were not hands, and several thick, sinuous tentacles sprouted from either side of a ridge of spikes that ran down their hunched backs. Even so, there were some obvious similarities; many of the creatures trailed the same strips of tattered cloth, and their flesh was the same dull black as the others had been. It was evident that they shared a common nature.
All this he absorbed in the first few instants of observation, and then a cluster of activity at the heart of the chamber drew his eye. He focused upon the shadowy movement there. The uncertain light from above was not the only illumination, he realized with a chill. Murky pools of some green, viscous liquid shimmered in an array around the upraised center of the room, like sinister spokes radiating from the axle of some great wheel. The fluid gave off a spectral light that bathed the cavern from the underside in a subdued greenish hue. Unidentifiable objects were floating half submerged in those pools. The dark, hulking shapes moved tirelessly between the pools, using both their limbs and their tentacles to push the objects below the surface, or to roll them in the fluid over and over, as if they were basting meat on a spit.
The center of the chamber rose like a cone in a smaller scale imitation of the outer shell of the hive. Even dwarfed as it was by the rest of the hollow structure, it was still quite large, as Amric noted when he saw one of the black creatures scurry up the side of it. His eyes traveled to the peak of the cone, positioned directly below its larger counterpart above, and he squinted, trying to discern the movement he saw there.
Then the details of the grisly scene emerged from the gloom, and the blood congealed in his veins. A sharp, strained intake of breath at his side told him that Valkarr was seeing the same thing.
A towering creature jutted from the opening in the cone. Only its grotesque torso was visible above the stone, but that upper portion alone was twice the height of a man. It was the same obsidian hue as the other creatures, but it appeared to be covered by the overlapping plates of a thick carapace. It had an elongated, triangular head and a broad, protruding, under-slung jaw. Unlike the others, it had eyes that were not black within black, but instead glowed the same luminous green as the pools.
As Amric watched, one of the hulking creatures hurried up the cone with a squirming bundle enfolded tightly in its thick arms and tentacles. The monstrosity reached out with its four long, many-jointed limbs to accept the offering, and Amric saw in speechless horror that the prize was a half-naked man. The hapless fellow seemed barely conscious, but he thrashed and managed a thin scream as the huge thing raised him to its mouth. Amric tensed in futile rage, certain the man was to be consumed alive, but what followed proved far worse.
The monster’s huge jaws flared open and separated, revealing features beneath that were almost human in shape, if not in color. Full, curved lips that were uncomfortably female in appearance parted to reveal rows of gleaming fangs. The thing brought their faces together, but rather than tear into his flesh, it pressed its wicked mouth to his in a revolting parody of a kiss. The splayed appendages of its jaw closed upon the man’s head, wrapping around it to hold him fast. Its spine arched backward and its chest swelled, and Amric realized it was inhaling deeply, as if drawing the breath from the lungs of its victim. The struggling man stiffened and convulsed, his eyes bulging and fixed upon nothing. The color drained from his exposed flesh, and he grew paler and paler until he reached a ghostly white hue that was striking against the darkness. The creature’s glowing green eyes brightened, and an eerie purr of pleasure reverberated throughout the cavern.
Then, without breaking contact, the monster began to exhale. The man’s body shook and shuddered as his flesh darkened. Black tendrils writhed along the skin, spreading from his head down his arms and torso and to his lower limbs. Amric’s stomach turned. It was like watching a vessel being filled with dark, noxious liquid. The exhale lasted impossibly long, like a single slow pump of some massive bellows. When it ceased, the man had gone limp and his flesh was a deep, dull and uniform black from head to toe.
The monster severed its kiss, and began to spin the body. From somewhere in its gaping maw it produced a thick, sticky cord of some pale material, which it wound about the still form with each circuit. In seconds the body was wrapped so completely that not even a hint of black flesh showed through.
The jointed arms released the cocooned form to be caught in the waiting arms of the servant creature. The latter turned without hesitation and bore this new burden down the slope and away. It lumbered to one of the green pools and slid the stiff figure into the viscous liquid, pushing it carefully beneath the surface.
From its encasing throne at the center of the chamber, the huge monstrosity turned to look expectantly into the shadows. Amric followed its imperious gaze to see a handful of men huddled together in that direction, beyond the pools. One of the heavyset creatures approached, and its tentacles snaked out to grasp another victim. It lifted the thrashing fellow from the ground and caged him within its iron arms, and then wheeled back toward the center at a shambling run.
A white-hot fury rose in Amric, burning away the shreds of his paralyzing horror. He spread his hands to push himself to his feet, but his vision grew bright at the edges and a crippling dizziness washed over him. A sharp sense of vertigo struck him as he considered the fact that he was within mere inches of a plummet that would take him over a hundred feet to the unyielding floor of the cavern below. It was the same troubling spell of weakness that had plagued him within Stronghold, except there was no Essence Fount to blame here. He pushed it from his mind; it was a matter for another time. He pressed his cheek against the abrasive stone and sucked in a steadying breath through clenched teeth.
Valkarr’s head spun toward him, fixing him with a worried stare. Amric shook his head in frustration, the sweat beading on his forehead as he fought against the encroaching brilliant white light that threatened to steal his sight. The world around him shrank to a dull echo, enclosing him. With a guttural snarl and an effort of will, he hurled it back and surged to his feet. He stood there a moment, shaking and swaying as the blood roared in his ears. He glanced at the others, intending to make a reassuring gesture, and was surprised to see that they were all swaying as well. He blinked the sweat from his eyes as his vision and hearing returned, and he realized the dome was shuddering beneath their feet with a rumbling sound of thunder. As quickly as it had come, however, the ground tremor faded and was gone, leaving them all shaken.
Amric spun toward the crater just as the monstrosity below cast its baleful gaze upward. Alien green eyes fixed upon his silhouette standing stark against the roiling sky, and narrowed in malevolent regard.
He tensed, bracing himself for the rush of enraged minions that would come storming up the twisting stairs. The martial strategist in him insisted they should flee; he had too few warriors to hold so many exit ramps against the number of hulking creatures he had seen below. But the wolf in him had its fangs bared now, and had no intent of leaving those captives behind to their fates.
To his great surprise, however, the giant fiend in the chamber below did not order an assault. Instead, it turned to its minions and made curt motions with its long, jointed arms. The creatures withdrew in obedient silence, backing into the tunnels that honeycombed the perimeter of the cavern. The one which had been bearing forth a new captive simply peeled back its writhing tentacles and dumped the man unceremoniously to the ground before shambling from the room. The man lay where he fell, groaning but otherwise motionless.
The towering monster turned its gaze skyward once more. It spoke in a voice that was alien and yet decidedly female, a lilting and buzzing harmonic that grated at his ears.
“I had not thought to find your kind again on this world,” she said. “Not yet, at least.”
Amric exchanged a puzzled look with Valkarr. He did not know what response to make, so he made none. The creature tilted her savage head at him and writhed in her enclosure.
“Come ahead then, Adept,” she called with a note of impatience. “We have much to discuss.”
Adept? Amric did not recognize the appellation. He glanced back at Bellimar, but the old man was unmoving and expressionless, standing tall and straight with his cloak wrapped about him. The vampire’s eyes burned at him from beneath iron grey brows. The warrior looked to the others. He read anger and determination in the Sil’ath warriors; Sariel in particular appeared ready to leap from the edge at a moment’s suggestion. Halthak looked pale and uncertain, but his white-knuckled hands were steady upon his ironwood staff. Thalya had an arrow nocked to her bow and her veil drawn across her face, revealing nothing but her emerald eyes. Syth’s expression flickered between resolve when he looked at the hive entrance ahead and a protective concern when he glanced to Thalya at his side.
Amric returned his gaze to the pit below, studying the foul creature shifting in place as she glared up at him. He looked again at the prisoners, bent and huddled on the stone floor in that hellish cavern. He could not see any Sil’ath among them, but the distance and the poor light made it impossible to be certain. Regardless of race, they were mortal men, his kind. Soon to become her kind.
He spun on his heel and strode over to the group. He relayed in brief everything that he and Valkarr had seen in the void below. He described the towering creature and the numbers it commanded, and he watched their expressions tighten as he told of the captives and the horrifying transformation one had undergone before their eyes.
“So,” Sariel muttered. “It may not have been a trap before, but it is almost certainly one now.”
“Without a doubt,” Amric replied. His storm-grey eyes were cold and hard, holding an iron promise as they shifted back to the gaping maw in the crater that led into shadow below. “And I am going in anyway.”
A wolfish smile spread across Sariel’s face.