The SteelMaster of Indwallin, Book 2 of The Gods Within (11 page)

“Won’t do you no good though,” the innkeeper continued. “They say he went east from Elhiyne. By now he’s days from here.”

“Damn!” France swore. “Been a long time since me purse was that fat.” He slapped his mug down on the bar with a clang. “Fill us up again, and tell me about these caravans to Aud, and how some good swordsmen might hire on.”

Morgin’s mug was still half-full of the heavy brown beer and he had no desire for more. While the innkeeper poured the next round for his friends he picked up his mug and turned away from the bar, found an empty table in a dark corner, pulled up a chair and dropped into it with his back to the stone wall. Thankfully no one paid him any attention; unwashed and covered with leagues of trail dust, he was not at all out of place among the inn’s customers. And he was pleased none of his friends chose to join him. He wanted to be alone with no questions to answer, no decisions to make.

The brown, bitter beer turned out to be quite strong, especially on an empty stomach with road weary muscles. His eyelids grew heavy, so he leaned his chair back against the wall, rested his head against the rough stones and tried not to drift into sleep. His last conscious act was a precautionary one. Beneath the table where no one could see, he slid his sword out of its sheath and laid it across his knees with his hand resting on the hilt.

Chapter 6: Beware the Self-forged Blade

Almost as soon as Morddon left AnneRhianne at the overturned coach the rain began again with renewed vigor. It poured heavily through that day and well into the night, and not until sunrise of the following morning did it return to the slow steady drizzle he’d grown used to. By that time the trail had cooled and his tracking slowed to a crawl, and for the next four days he descended tenaciously upon each and every broken twig along the track, each hoof print, any spoor his eyes or nose or soul could detect. The course the Kulls followed meandered through the hilly forest, taking them further each day from the fields of battle that drew Morddon. Each day they met and joined other small groups of halfmen; their numbers swelled, and when finally he did catch up with them there were too many to be dealt with by simply slitting their throats under the cover of darkness. He followed them closely for a while.

Morgin grew uneasy on the trail of the Kulls, though he found it difficult to clearly identify the sensation, but the discomfort grew slowly throughout the day, until finally he could not deny that something strongly arcane was afoot. When the Kulls made camp that night Morddon decided to investigate, though because of their numbers he was heavily dependent upon the constant roar of the rain on the leaves of the forest to hide any sounds he might make, and Morgin’s shadowmagic to shield him from any alert Kull eyes.

As was Mortiss’ want—her demand actually—he left her untethered to wander at her will, though his intuition told him to leave her saddled. He could unsaddle her later if he discovered nothing unusual in the Kull camp.

Moving carefully on his feet, and still a good distance off, he noticed that the halfmen were unusually quiet. Closer yet, to his surprise no perimeter guards had been posted, nor did he see their string of horses, which should have been easily visible at that distance. Moving with extreme caution he entered the camp itself, and found it deserted.

“Damn!” he swore quietly. How could he have been so stupid as to let them slip away from him?

He circled the edge of the camp—it had hardly been used at all—looking for any telltale signs to indicate the direction they’d taken, but with all his skill as a tracker he found nothing. He circled the camp a second time, and again found nothing, no broken twigs or branches, no horse manure, no hoof prints. There had been at least twenty Kulls in the group, and that number could not slip away without leaving some sign of doing so. Twenty Kulls didn’t just simply vanish.

On impulse he turned for the first time to cross through the middle of the camp, but as he did so Morgin’s arcane senses rang one alarm after another, and the closer he came to the heart of the camp the more his soul recoiled from something that awaited him there unseen, until to preserve his own sanity he was forced to stop well short of the camp’s center. He could go no further, and at that distance his reaction was so strong he needed to back up several paces before he could even breathe again.

Mortiss spluttered out a whinny, letting him know she stood in the shadows at the edge of the camp. She trotted forward, stopped beside him, made it quite clear she wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. For once they were in complete accord, so he took her reins and climbed quickly into the saddle, thinking he would return at sunrise to investigate further. But before he could turn her about she leapt forward, charging straight toward whatever lay at the center of the camp. He had a single instant in which to shout, “No!” then his senses twisted inside out, and a moment later his stomach followed, pain lanced through his head as if someone had driven a spike there and he passed out.

~~~

Morddon regained consciousness lying face down on the forest trail, sweating in the sticky, sultry, hot air. He rolled over, found Mortiss standing over him. “You damn stupid pile of bones and meat,” he growled as he struggled to his feet.

The rain had finally come to an end, though now a flood of sweat bathed him from head to foot. The sky had shifted to a deep orange red, streaked with wisps of gray black clouds; and the sun, through some trick of the atmosphere, had taken on a slight purplish tint. Everything seemed wrong.

He rubbed his temples, tried to recall what he’d felt just before passing out, remembered only the sensation of a shifting, changing power swirling all about him, and then it all slipped into place and his heart almost skipped a beat. “You idiot!” he snarled at Mortiss. “This is the netherworld. I’m not just walking through it with my soul, you’ve actually dragged my body here also. How can I find my way back without my body in the Mortal Plane to anchor me?”

She looked at him, snorted, turned her backside toward him and started walking up the trail. Trying to contain his anger he pulled himself to his feet, but his attention was drawn to the brush at the side of the trail, the horse momentarily forgotten. His eyes locked onto a freshly broken branch, and then another nearby. He’d found the Kulls’ trail.

Mortiss snorted at him.

“All right,” he snarled. “You found it, not me. I just hope you can find your way back.”

Morddon picked up the trail again. He moved with extreme caution because much of the forest growth was foreign to him. He quickly lost any sensation of time. The sun never moved from its spot in the sky, and he was forced to resort to the timing of his stomach, eating trail rations when it growled at him hungrily, resting for short periods when his eyes refused to remain open, and by that clock he estimated he followed the Kulls for another two days. But during that time he saw not one living creature in this nether forest of his dreams, though often he glimpsed something following him at the edge of his senses, something there and yet not there. There were several of them, and they swirled about him like the wind. Morgin identified them for him: shadowwraiths.

The morning of the third day in the netherworld the small forest trail he followed joined a much larger trail, almost a road. He turned up the road, still following the Kulls, staying close to the edge of the forest, ready to duck into the shadows there at the first hint of movement on the road.

He first became aware of the scent in the air on a subconscious level. As the day progressed his stomach fluttered and his abdomen tightened up with fear. He became almost physically ill, though the scent on the air was not an obnoxious or evil smell, just the smell of a particular kind of animal that for some unknown reason produced within him an overwhelming dread. Eventually he became so preoccupied with the growing strength of the scent, and trying to keep the food in his stomach, he almost missed the sound of distant hoof beats on the road, though Mortiss did not. She froze in the shadows at the edge of the forest, and instinctively Morgin drew a cloak of shadow about man and horse.

The patrol that passed by was made up of a large party of mounted soldiers, a mixture of Kulls and another kind of beast, the sight of which struck him like a physical blow and raised the hackles on the back of his neck. They were much like dogs, this beast that rode on the backs of horses. Their bodies had been warped into a grotesque imitation of man, the better to carry lances and shields and swords, and to wear armor and the raiments of war. As Morddon watched them pass his gut twisted with fear and his mind filled with visions of Binth, his face split by a war ax, and Eisla, pinned to a cross by these grotesque imitations of men who rode with Kulls as if they were their equals. Involuntarily he whispered a single word: jackal.

He soon found it necessary to duck regularly into the forest to avoid one patrol after another. A large encampment must be just over the next hill, and following the road, or even staying close to it, might bring disaster. He left the road completely, and though the going was difficult he avoided even the game trails in the forest, returning to them only after he had left the road far behind. He circled the hill carefully, trying to approach the encampment from the other side, hoping the uninterrupted forest there would not be well guarded. He also hoped that this deep within the netherworld the jackal hordes would not think to keep watch for marauding mortals.

His first glimpse of the camp was from a distant hill. Near its center a cluster of luxurious tents had been erected, and the single banner fluttering over them instantly drew his eyes. At the sight of that banner the horrifying death visions of Binth and Eisla arose again within his soul, and a name came to him from a distant past—Magwa, the Jackal Queen. The little boy in him wanted to run screaming into the forest, while the man within him fought to control the blindness of a rage that threatened to tear his soul apart.

The camp contained about two hundred of the jackal warriors, with fifty or more Kulls among them. They’d cleared a large patch of ground near the pavilions at the center, then, like an arena, ringed it with logs to mark its boundaries. A post the size of a tree had been staked in the center of the empty arena. Nearer to the pavilions, though well outside the arena, there were a dozen more posts staked into the ground at regular intervals, and what appeared to be prisoners of some kind tied to them, though at that distance he couldn’t make out any details. Leaving Mortiss behind, he took his bow and quiver of arrows and moved in closer, hoping WindHollow would be among the prisoners.

Some sort of ruckus arose as he approached the edge of the encampment so he settled into a comfortable shadow to watch and wait. He’d managed to circle the camp completely, was now directly opposite the point where the road skirted the edge of the camp. A large crowd of jackals and Kulls were gathering near the road. Morddon finally got an unobstructed view of the prisoners staked to the posts outside the makeshift arena, and to his relief WindHollow was among them, his head bowed in shame, his shoulders slumped in defeat, his clothing torn and begrimed. Morddon watched him closely for some moments until he felt certain the boy was yet unhurt. And he wondered how he would ever get him out of there in broad daylight, since the sun never set in this netherlife he now dreamed.

A chorus of horns blared, announcing the arrival of someone important. Morddon turned his attention back to the crowd near the road, noticed a cloud of dust rising from the far side of the crowd in the vicinity of the road itself. From amidst the cloud of dust a banner emerged, bobbing up and down, clearly carried by a mounted soldier, though because of the crowd Morddon could see little of the rider himself. As the banner approached the crowd parted, and the jackal warriors howled out a cheer that broke up into choruses of yipping and barking. And then Morddon saw her: Magwa, riding into the midst of her warriors, wearing the revered royal collar of the jackal court, brandishing a feather the size of a sword as if it were the standard of her vanquished enemy.

Riding immediately behind her were her generals, old jackals with slumping backs and graying muzzles. Behind them came her kennel of consorts, young sleek warriors to warm the jackal queen’s nights. Next came attendants, ladies-in-waiting, handmaidens, servants, her warrior escort, and finally a gang of slaves pulling a large, wooden, flat-bed cart.

Morddon stopped breathing for a moment, for a griffin had been chained upon the flat boards of the cart. By her smaller size she was probably female, though each of her talons was easily the length of his arm, and she was small only in comparison to TarnThane and the other male griffins. A chain attached to the cart circled her neck, shortened enough so it forced her into a constantly undignified squat.

As the slaves pulled the cart through the crowd to the edge of the arena the jackal warriors spat on the griffin and threw rocks and mud at her. Clearly she had long suffered such abuse. Small cuts and gashes marred her flesh, and in spots her feathers had been ripped away. The fur of her lower body, the lioness part of her, was mottled and discolored with grime and mange, and Morddon felt great pity for her.

The abuse of the griffin ended quickly, probably an all too familiar exercise of which the jackals easily grew tired. Magwa took up residence in the pavilion flying her banner, and the camp was quite active for a time with the smells of cooked food drifting on the air. But after a few hours the activity slowed, then a retainer appeared outside the queen’s tent and hissed warnings at those nearby to be silent. Morddon huddled within one of Morgin’s shadows, and watched closely as the camp took on the aspects of night, with guards posted at the perimeter, and most of the warriors dozing near campfires, though the orange sun remained hot and high in the sky.

Morddon strung his bow carefully, and carrying it in his left hand, and a knife in his right, he relaxed and let Morgin’s instincts guide him through the shadows within the camp. Morgin was tense, for while the harsh, orange sun cast sharp and deep shadows, they did not flicker or move like those of a candle flame, and to dance among them required every bit of stealth at his command. Not until he finally stepped into the shadow of the griffin’s cart itself did he stop to rest.

“It is a curious thing,” the griffin whispered softly, confirming with the tone of her voice that she was female, “when shadows move of themselves. A curious thing indeed!”

Morddon froze while Morgin deepened the shadow about him. The griffin did not move so much as the breadth of a single feather, but her eyes held Morddon as if they were lances of royal light, and for the first time Morddon thought there might be some truth in a legend. He whispered a single question, “SheelThane?”

“You have the advantage of me,” the griffin whispered, though again she was careful not to move. “The centuries have been long, my white faced friend, and recently I had begun to doubt you would ever come.”

“You knew I was coming?” Morddon asked.

“Of course. You were sent to free me.”

Morddon shook his head. “I came to free the boy. The Benesh’ere. He’s small enough I can sneak him out of here, and get a good distance away before his absence is noticed. But you! There’s no sneaking you anywhere.”

A slave sleeping near the cart sat up rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Shut up, bird,” he growled softly. “We’re trying to get some sleep here.” And then to emphasize his point he threw a stone the size of a man’s fist at the griffin. It struck her above her left eye, opened a small wound that began to bleed.