Bloodwalk (21 page)

In the center of the circular room lay a pool of placid water, a divining pool drained and filled daily by the savants. Most were aware that the pool was filled only as a formality, as it had not been used in years. Unlike her predecessors, Sameska did not approve of anyone displaying their powers in her presence, despite the Council of the Hidden Circle’s long-held traditions.

The whole of the room was topped in a dome, a smaller version of that in the primary sanctuary. Its walls were carved with thousands of concentric circular patterns like ripples in a rainstorm. Their similarity to the unceasing storms outside was not lost on anyone in attendance.

Sameska sat in the polished oak chair at the head of the circle and glowered disapprovingly at her lessers. The twenty remaining oracles sat before their leader, avoiding her stare and deciding how best to continue their controversial inquiry into the fate of the other towns along the Qurth’s border. In light of the edict against Brookhollow’s resistance, none knew how to suggest that perhaps they could request aid from outside allies.

Sameska had all but accused them of blasphemy.

One young woman finally spoke, staring at her hands and attempting to resolve the situation calmly.

“We do not doubt you, High Oracle, or the words of Savras…”

“Questions of this nature are the very soul of doubt, are they not?”

The high oracle’s voice had risen. Her eyes darted from one young woman to the next, seeking dissidence among them, alert to whispers and accusing eyes. Sameska had slept only fitfully since the evening of her chilling prophecy. Her nightmares had become amplified by her own fears. Her adamancy to stay the course, though, had been bolstered. There was no other way, in her mind, no doubt whatsoever—none that she might share with these rivals, in any case.

These girls are little better than Dreslya in hiding their obvious contempt and jealousy, she thought. What do they know of prophecy? Of true divination?

She stared through the door as if it were transparent, knowing that the statue still stood, stained with blood and tainted by death. She imagined its single eye upon her, the eye of Savras, dimmed in red and unblinking.

“Forgive us, High Oracle,” another said, “we are afraid and our own spells have shown us nothing. Anything within the borders of the forest is invisible to us. We seek your sight and wisdom in these trying times, nothing more.”

All stared at Sameska’s back nervously. She had turned around completely in her chair, staring at the closed doors while wringing her hands and mumbling incoherently.

The words flitted through her mind, weaving between her thoughts and imagined horrors until she realized she had actually heard them. She spun back around, narrowing her eyes at them, wondering if they had heard her, seen what she’d seen beyond the door. She felt it still—Savras’s lidless gaze on her back—and she shuddered.

“What to say?” she whispered to herself, staring at their frightened and confused faces. Her mind teetered on the edge of inspiration, chasing the spark of her own reasoning through the fog of numerous thoughts that assailed her weary consciousness. She stretched herself straighter in her chair, grasping its arms and clawing absently at the smooth wood.

“Pardon, High Oracle?” the same woman asked quietly, a note of pity creeping into her voice.

Sameska held her breath, tensing as the answer revealed itself to her.

“The ruins of Jhareat,” she said finally, formulating her words carefully so as not to reveal more than she felt prudent. “Beyond the edges of the Qurth, deep in the forest, lies Jhareat and its single tower. Do you remember its tale?”

Several in the room were visibly relieved by the high oracle’s suddenly lucid voice as they recalled the story. It was a tale that most of them had heard as children, first gazing upon the walls of the Hidden Circle’s sanctuary. A few nodded, sagelike, while most listened attentively, curious as to the nature of Sameska’s obscure reference.

“All the oracles who came before us divined the history of this realm—the land, the forest, and the ruins that lay scattered across the fields and buried in the grip of the Qurth. The legends that they discovered decorate the walls of our sanctuary as reminders of history and how tenuous our survival is in this land if we lack foresight.

“Evil ruled within the walls of Jhareat in ancient times, during the days of the Shoon Dynasties.”

She stood, looking down at them, almost smiling as she dangled her secrets before their blind eyes. She knew they would hear but a comforting tale while she held the truth in her grip, having seen that tower and the dark forces gathered around it. She did not trust their willful youth and would not see her prophecy disobeyed by brash actions and unthinking fear.

“One man. One man brought about the downfall of that terrible city. Savras sends us one man as well and asks only for our patience.” Her scholarly tone disappeared, overcome by her earlier anger. “Think carefully on this before you question and doubt me again!”

She turned and left them, closing the doors behind her and ending all debate.

Standing in the alcove to the sanctuary, she listened for their voices and their whispers. Silence.

Turning her attention from the door, she gazed at the dark curtain that hung between her and the altar of Savras beyond. In her mind’s eye she could see him, standing there in stone robes. She raised a hand to move the curtain aside and stopped. Her fingertips brushed lightly at the cloth, but fear held her in place. A chill such as only a god might inspire in the faithful kept her from moving for many heartbeats before she finally entered the sanctuary.

Talmen eyed his followers warily, studying their control of the creatures they had summoned from the Lower Planes. His senior acolytes had successfully gathered a small troop of malebranche devils, enticing them with promises of blood and destruction. The hulking brutes, four in all, shook their great horned heads and stamped the ground, gnashing their fangs and roaring in voices culled from the deepest nightmares of living men. The ground shook as they pounded the dirt with massive clawed fists in anticipation of the promised carnage.

The malefactor smiled at their ferocity. In their own realm, the malebranche served as shock troops and soldiers, but on Faerűn they were nothing less than living engines of war, towering above their foes. Turning back to the less capable of his wizard-priests, he watched with concern as five of them began the final ritual of their summoning.

Within their circle raged a dozen abyssal ghouls, thrashing and howling against the magical constraints of the arcane perimeter drawn on the ground. Undead were, as a rule, much easier to call and command, but these half-mad creatures were a test of will for even the more experienced Gargauthans. Talmen paid close attention to the efforts of the five as they sealed the controlling spell and made ready to release the bonds of the inscribed circle.

Already he could see that minor mistakes had been made, but he took no steps to interfere. Those who survived would be stronger and wiser for the experience.

In unison the five broke the circle, chanting the last of their binding and taking hold of the symbols of Gargauth about their necks, a gesture of control to denote themselves as the masters of the ghouls. The majority of the creatures stood still, swaying in an almost trancelike manner, with their unnaturally long fingers dragging the ground. Glowing white eyes looked blindly upon their summoners. They hungrily lashed long, whiplike tongues around their gaunt faces, the ends of the purplish tentacles trailing off into a dark mist.

One of the five acolytes, sensing something wrong, held his symbol higher and repeated the infernal language of command. The three ghouls before him shook their heads and tensed, crouched and growling, digging furrows into the dirt and mud as they leaned back on birdlike legs. Their blind eyes rolled and they sniffed at the air, smelling his fear. The priest’s voice cracked as he desperately repeated the command again.

The change in his tone incensed the ghouls. They jumped, howling, and pounced on his screaming form, burying the misty ends of their proboscis tongues in his head and torso. His screams filled the clearing as they drank his mind and raked at his unarmored body, tearing his robes and flesh to bloody shreds.

Talmen casually glanced at all who stood nearby, including the four who had been successful in their summonings, making sure that all saw the consequences of failure. Once the man’s screams faded, Talmen stepped forward and raised his own symbol, chanting a spell of command far beyond the ability of the fallen priest. The ghouls immediately took notice, turning their bald heads and dead eyes on this new voice, but continued to feed on the body, their smoky tongues reaching past mere flesh and bone to suck at the very marrow of the man’s identity.

In the grating tones of an abyssal language, Talmen conferred command of the ghouls to the surviving four. The priests’ masks hid faces of disgust as the creatures shambled away from the mess they had made of their meal. From the shoulders down, the man was unrecognizable as having been human, yet his neck and head were untouched. His unmasked face conveyed all too well the horror of his last moments.

Looking up to Morgynn’s darkened window, Talmen wondered if she’d witnessed or enjoyed the spectacle. His scrying upon her had been unsuccessful of late, but this he attributed to the growing power of the storm that surrounded the tower. Part of the genius of Morgynn’s ideas included an obscuring spell that foiled all attempts to scry upon Jhareat or even the surrounding forest. The dense magic around the tower was barely contained. He could sense the design of the Weave bending to accommodate the dense net of spells being laid to summon and control the tempest.

The symbol Morgynn had burned into his arm still throbbed, in tune to the restless host in the forest, the bathor, the undead of Logfell. Morgynn doted on her creations, calling them her children. He shuddered and rubbed at the scar, returning to his tasks and muttering prayers to Gargauth for a swift victory and an end to the whole affair.

Time in the tower passed swiftly as Morgynn slumbered, tossing and turning in the throes of nightmares woven of old memory. Her skin was flushed by the swift current in her veins that had become agitated and heated as her dreams progressed, closer and closer, through battle and flame and darkness, to the chill of death. The dream, the memory, was relentless.

Darkness had become a vast landscape of bewildered faces, all meandering slowly toward a glittering spire of rock in the far distance. Lightning hung in her mind; the spell, not yet fully formed, clung to her thoughts. Kaeless was gone. The Well of Goorgian, the Sedras, the battle—all gone. She had no time to contemplate what had happened before powerful clawed hands gripped her shoulders and pulled her back into a swirling pit of crimson tornadoes. As she fell, a second landscape came into view, another sky she was falling through. Her back slammed into the surface, a ground that gave way like thick mud, knocking the breath from her lungs.

A red sky filled her vision as she sank in a black bog. A foul wind carried the scents of burning flesh and rot. She struggled to keep her head above the slime that had her in its grasp. Her limbs felt weak and sluggish, unable to fully obey her commands, her desire to pull free. Dark shapes flitted overhead and cavorted in the tempestuous sky. The silhouettes of what appeared to be giant mountains loomed in the distance.

Squirming in the strange bog were the wormlike forms of hideous creatures. Their pale skin was smooth and glistening as they flopped and splashed. Now and then, a head would emerge, bearing a humanoid face and smacking lips full of the dark ooze, gnashing toothless gums and wailing like a newborn infant.

Morgynn tried to scream as well, but her throat felt raw and she could manage only a weak croak. She freed one arm and reached outward, seeking something to hold onto. The flesh of her arm was loose and torn in several places. Her blood streamed into the thick, tarlike fluid and seemed to excite the wailing worms. She could feel them sliding against her body, biting her flesh and tasting her skin with cold tongues. Frantically she waved her arm and thrashed against the gnawing beasts, flexing fingers that were almost skinless as she clawed at the air. The soft beds of her fingernails lay exposed and the winds lashed across them, sending lances of fresh pain down her arms.

Loud voices roared and argued somewhere nearby. In the part of her mind that had not been lost to utter madness, she recognized their language with sickening horror. The unseen beasts argued in the language of demons, the tongue of the Abyss. They were fighting over the pleasure of owning her soul.

Fresh pain washed over her head as the memory of her mother’s last blow returned. The sensation played itself slowly, her skull fracturing, the mace exposing the fragile tissue beneath to the open air. Again and again she died, ignominiously, in the courtyard of Goorgian’s Well.

Moments stretched into years as, bit by bit, Morgynn lost hold of herself. Her flesh was dissolving in the muck, devoured by the maggoty things around her as it sloughed off. A fleeting realization that she was becoming one of them crossed her mind but was quickly forgotten as her eyelids drooped and a few teeth slipped away from her loosening gums.

The argument over her soul ended, and a night-skinned hag stood grinning with lion’s teeth nearby, heating a branding iron over a venting crack in the ground. Behind the hag stood a massive creature with red skin and burning eyes, enveloped in massive batlike wings like a deep red cloak. The fiend’s horned head nodded in approval as the hag held up the white-hot brand for his inspection.

Morgynn’s eyes rolled back, barely seeing the blurred colors of the bruised sky above. Her body had begun to shrink. Her legs were numb and she wondered briefly if they were still there. Madness beckoned in her mind with the long trembling claws of a mania from which there could be no escape. Hope for death was lost to her now—that bridge had been crossed. Only oblivion awaited beyond this hellish afterlife.