Cry of the Ghost Wolf: Neverwinter NiChosen of Nendawen, Book III (37 page)

Jagun Ghen sat in the middle of the pact circle. His eyes were closed, though for once the harsh sunlight on his skin gave him no pain. His brothers had carved the circle in the stone where the altar had once stood, before his brothers hacked it up and threw it off the cliff.

The circle … how fitting. It was here that his first brother had come into the world. And it was here that he would take the next step to transcendence.

The bleak, rocky shelf on which he sat overlooked the bulk of the ruined fortress. And the battered wall behind him had once held elegant runes and symbols, all in praise of Torm, the Loyal Fury. All gone, torn away. Soon, these people would learn the meaning of true fury.

He could feel the growing power in the circle, like the
first trickles of water seeping through the cracks in the dam. Soon, he promised himself.

He could feel her. So close, he could almost taste her on the air.

A shudder passed through him.

His brothers felt it, too.

“What is it, lord?”

“She comes. At last.”

Now that they were back in her country, Hweilan took the lead. Something was happening in Highwatch. The steady beat in her mind had not grown any stronger, so she knew no danger was coming at them, but she could sense a change in the world around her. It was as if Jagun Ghen were thrashing in the middle of a dark pool, and Hweilan sat at the edge, feeling the ripples. But she didn’t know what it was. And so she strung her bow, put one of the
hrayeh-etched
arrows to the string, and donned her bone mask.

Hweilan led the hobgoblins along the saddle of the hill, taking the high paths. On the heights above and to their left lay the Damaran tombs where her father’s body rested. There, she found the path that snaked around the shoulder of the mountain and into the deeper woods. Throughout Narfell and the foothills, summer was well underway. The snows were melting, the pines had green buds, and the grasses were enjoying their few weeks of green. Damaran land had once been healthier than the woods where they had spent the night. But a blight had since settled in here. The pine and spruce had turned a sickly gray or brown, and many of the trees were shedding their needles. The moss on the barks had blackened and curled, giving off a foul reek when stepped on.

Hweilan could sense the tension in the hobgoblins. Vurgrim had a permanent sneer twisting his face and baring his sharp teeth. His one good ear stood out erect and twitched at every sound.

At the bend in the path where the trees thinned, Hweilan
stopped. The sight almost overwhelmed her. From here, they had an unobstructed view of Nar-sek Qu’istrade, the distant cliff walls, and Highwatch itself—the charred husk of Kistrad clinging to its feet. The last time she stood here, thousands of Nar filled the valley and flames ran through Kistrad. Now, there was not so much as a dog roaming the streets or even a wisp of smoke from a torch. The valley where large herds of horses and sheep had once roamed over the grass was barren, save for the remains of a few ragged tents. All was still, yet Hweilan could feel a will fixed upon her. Not the same as being watched exactly, but she knew she held Jagun Ghen’s attention, just as he held hers. He wasn’t deep in the fortress, as she might have expected, but on the heights above it where the Knights had once held their most sacred rites.

She turned and faced Vurgrim, who stared down at the landscape with his warriors. They had long known of and feared this place, but none of them had ever been so close.

“The others are in place?” she said.

“They should be,” said Vurgrim, still not looking up, “if Maaqua kept her word.”

Hweilan looked to Rhan, but his face was expressionless.

“This is where we part,” she said.

Vurgrim tore his gaze off the view and blinked at her. “Eh? What say you? We are
zugruuk
. We came to fight, not to walk you home.”

His warriors mumbled their agreement, but none shouted out. Something about the fortress before them seemed to demand quiet. But even Rhan looked at her with a disapproving scowl.

“You’ll get your fight,” said Hweilan. “But unless you do what I say, you’ll die fighting. Wouldn’t you rather enjoy a fine slaughter, then go back home as heroes?”

Vurgrim scowled, looked to his warriors, then said. “I’m listening.”

“That demon down there can sense me coming. Anyone going with me will have a big target painted on them.”

Vurgrim snorted. “We don’t fear that.”

“I know you won’t flinch when there’s killing to do. But we are going into a trap. Let me spring the trap, then—”

“We trap the trapper,” said Flet. He smiled. “I like it.”

Hweilan checked the position of the sun again. Just above the western peaks. Down in the valleys and the lower regions of the fortress, shadows were already lengthening.

She looked to Flet. “It’s time. Do it.”

Flet reached into one of his quivers and withdrew a long bundle, an arrow wrapped in tight lambskin. He broke the knots of string with his teeth and unwrapped it. It was like no arrow Hweilan had ever seen. The fletching was not feathers but the membrane from a bat’s wing, and they curved a full hand span down the length of the shaft. The arrow had no head, but instead a small jewel had been fixed there, and it sparkled with a light all its own.

“Eh? What’s that?” said Vurgrim, scowling. “What else is going on?”

“It’s the signal to attack,” said Hweilan. She looked at Flet. “Count to two hundred, then loose it.”

Flet notched the strange arrow onto his bowstring, smiled, and said, “One …”

Hweilan crashed through the trees. No attempt at stealth. A scullion who’d never left the castle walls could have tracked her. But it didn’t matter. The warning call in her brain had intensified, no longer a steady beat so much as a constant vibration, a plucked harp string. When she shrugged out of her pack and hung it from a branch, she noticed that her hands were trembling.

She clenched her fists and closed her eyes. Every instinct in the human part of her brain told her to run away from the tide into which she was wading—that it meant not just death but something far worse. Something not meant for this world. A profanity against creation itself. However, another part of her, the part nourished by the blood of Nendawen and her own animal thirst for vengeance, spurred her on. Death lay before her, yes, but if she could die killing her enemy, she’d
do it a thousand times.

It was growing, gaining strength daily as it fed upon the life of this world. Soon there would be no stopping it. No stopping
him
. Hweilan had to force herself to think of the foulness around her as Jagun Ghen. It was so
other
from anything in this world, so much more like a force of nature than a person. But no question. There was a will and a mind behind this hunger. A cunning intelligence, ancient and cruel.

He does not know mercy or pity or remorse. Strike him all you like, and you are only going to rile him …
Ashiin’s words, spoken only a few days before she died.

And there was something else as well. Hweilan could feel it building under the warning hum in her mind. She could put no words to it, only feelings. It was like the scent of storm on the wind long before the clouds ran up the mountains. Different than the wrongness she felt coming out of Highwatch, but no less frightening.

“Enough,” she told herself, then stripped off every bit of equipment she didn’t need—cloak, belt, pouches. They would only slow her. She stood in the clothes Kesh Naan had given her, still missing the sleeve Kaad had torn off. Menduarthis’s knife was tucked in its sheath on her right boot, the red knife sacred to Nendawen at her waist. She slid back into her quiver, now too loose. She tightened the strap and adjusted it so the fletchings rode just behind her right shoulder. Within easy reach but not so close they’d gouge her neck if she had to move fast. She had crafted three leather loops on the strap that crossed her chest, and into these she tucked the sharpened stake carved with the
hrayeh
. She only had a score of arrows that would capture the baazuled spirits, and she had no idea how many were in Highwatch. Once the arrows ran out, she would have to use the stake. Eight other arrows, well-made but plain, rode in a separate section of the quiver.

She reached up to her hair. Still in a tight braid, some strands had come loose and were tickling her face in the breeze. She put a hand into the largest of the pouches and
found what she was looking for. A red silk scarf, two hands wide, that Menduarthis had given to her in the realm of Kunin Gatar. She wound it atop her head, knotting it in a sort of cap to keep her hair out of her eyes.

She looked up. Any time now.

There! A purple spark climbed into the sky. Flet’s arrow reached the top of its flight and hung there. Then just before it began its descent, the jewel exploded. Thunder rolled down the mountain, as whips of violet lightning shot across the sky, spiraling and sizzling. No sooner had the sound died than in the distance Hweilan heard the sound of war horns.

Hweilan retrieved her bow, fitted the bone mask on her face, and took off, her wolf at her heels.

Hweilan slowed when she saw the bones. Catching her breath, she realized she had been here before, too, at the back of the fortress. The day Highwatch fell, she had escaped from Jatara and her Creel thug, and she’d come upon the bodies of those fleeing Highwatch. Ravens and wolves had gnawed on them before the scavengers themselves had fled the area, and now all that was left of her people were a few bits of browned bones and tattered cloth.

For a moment she forgot her fear and cold fury gripped her instead. These had been good people. Her people. They deserved better than this.

The rear walls of Highwatch rose before her. Uncle stood a few paces beyond Hweilan, tail low but ears erect. Shadows lay thick in the windows high on the wall, but she could sense none of the baazuled nearby.

She glanced over her shoulder, up the forested mountainside. Rhan, Vurgrim, and the others had had more than enough time to do as she’d told them. Only half of the sun still peeked above the western mountains. Very soon, the shadows would begin to lengthen. And the torchless passages inside the fortress would be lit only by dying light creeping in through the windows. When Selûne rose full in the east,
Hweilan had to be in place.

Uncle felt it first, just an instant before Hweilan. The wolf snapped at the air and whirled.

Hweilan’s mind screamed a warning, and she raised the bow, pulling the feathers to her cheek. The
hrayeh
carved along the arrow shaft lit a bright green.

At the edge of the tree line, four small cyclones appeared, and then blew apart, showering Hweilan and the wolf in dirt and pine needles. Standing where the air had split were four figures—three men and a woman. The men were obviously Nar by their features, and each of them had a symbol carved into his forehead that leaked a fiery light. Baazuled. So close, Hweilan could taste them on the air.

The woman, however, was still alive—no demon had seized control of her. She wore dark woolens, and her thick cloak swirled in the wind. She held a staff above her head, and the jewel set in its crown gave off a sickly light, like that of an oil lamp seen through dirty glass.