Swordmage (17 page)

“This is the same type of barrow as the second one we saw i yesterday. Look, they’re both round, not too large, finished J with dressed stone, and they both have entrance stairways | near the middle of the mound.” Hamil glanced up at him. I “The Veruna men might be looking for barrows of that j type.” j

Geran nodded. “For that matter, this was the tomb of a] Lathanderian, and there was Lathander’s symbol on the? sarcophagus in the second barrow, too.” He pulled out the i pocket-journal and checked his notes on the remaining bar-j rows, then measured the weather with a quick glance at the 5 sky. “The next barrow on the list is another five miles or so. J If we hurry, we can visit it and still have a little time to move on to the next one before dark.” J

They headed south, angling indirectly back toward Hul-| burg across the open, trackless moorland to save time. For! the moment, no more mysterious black shadows dogged their 1 trail; perhaps whatever it was had given up the chase, if in fact] it had ever been pursuing them. Around noon they haltedj to make a quick lunch from the provisions they still had onj hand. The cloud cover had drifted far to the east, and the} wind was beginning to pick up. It might have been wiser toj rest their mounts a little more, but curiosity gripped Geran. j He wanted to see what the third barrow would tell them.

Another hour of riding brought them to the third barrow,

on the list. This one sat in a small hollow, not far from a tumble of old stones that once might have been a circle of menhirs. The instant Geran caught sight of the old burial mound, he grimaced and reined in his mount. Beside him, Hamil did the same. They exchanged glances, then slowly rode closer.

It was a circular mound, small, with sides of roughly dressed stone. Someone had excavated the old stairwell in the middle of the mound, leaving heaps of damp black earth and small stones to mark their digging. “Well, well,” Geran murmured. “Perhaps you were right, Hamil.”

“Best go inside and make sure,” the halfling replied. As before, they picketed their mounts then scrambled up on top of the low mound. Geran summoned his light spell again, and they descended into the mound. This one showed more signs of damage; several old doorways had been sealed with fieldstone and mortar by the mound’s builders, and the rubble of freshly broken rock showed that the intruders had knocked them apart with prybars and sledges.

They found the sarcophagus lying open, the bones it contained scattered haphazardly in the burial chamber. The stone lid of the crypt was lying to one side, broken into three pieces … but the sunrise emblem of Lathander was still intact on the largest piece. More of the Dethek runes graced the broken stone; Geran knelt beside it and ran his fingers over the engraved letters. “It says, ‘Sister Kestina Ellin,’ ” he read aloud. ” ‘Born Thentur, Year of the Keening Gale; died Thar, Year of Slaughter. She fell in battle against the Burning Fist horde.’”

“That makes three,” Hamil said quietly. “Your Mulmasterites are searching for a specific barrow. It’s the tomb of a Lathanderian. Do you want to check the fourth and fifth to be sure?”

“They’re on the way back home, so no reason not to,” Geran said. “But at this point, I’m inclined to agree, Hamil. I certainly wouldn’t wager against you.” He rocked back on his heels and looked around, frowning in thought. “This tomb

seems to have been plundered more aggressively than the last \ two,” he observed. “There’s a lot more damage here.”

“Perhaps there was treasure worth carrying away. Or maybe we’re looking at the work of two different gangs— one’s more careful, and the other more concerned with speed ‘; than with safety.” Hamil peeked into the room’s antechambers and shook his head. “Not much left in here now, that’s for certain.”

“It’s not a good idea to carry off barrow treasure anyway. I wouldn’t want to explain to Kara or my uncle how your pockets came to be stuffed with gold. They might not expect much of me, but I’m sure they expect at least that much.”

“Well, the Veruna men seem inclined to flout the harmach’s law. What about barrow gold they’ve already removed? If we take it from them, we can hardly be expected to put it back!”

“First we’d need to find the men who broke into this barrow. And I remind you, they might not be House Veruna.” Geran nodded at the stairs leading back out of the barrow. “Come on, Hamil. I’d like to see one more barrow to be sure of things.”

Eleven

The fourth barrow was only about two miles farther on, but it proved difficult to find. Geran and Hamil crisscrossed a low, fencelike ridge of old weathered tors pocked with crudely built fieldstone cairns for almost two hours before they finally found the right burial mound. Geran couldn’t imagine how anyone had noticed that it had been broken into, since it was - well off any track or footpath he could find. In any event, it was another round, dome-shaped one, as they’d come to expect.

“Care to wager whether it’s a priest of Lathander in there?”

? Hamil asked. Geran just shook his head in reply.

Inside, they found that even less of the interior had survived intact than the third mound they’d visited. Geran

5 couldn’t be certain that it was a Lathanderian’s tomb at all,

? but the construction of the place was similar enough to the other mounds that it seemed to him that someone looking for tombs of a particular appearance might have included

. if just to be thorough. After sifting through the debris for an hour, they gave up and climbed back into the thicken—

feing dusk. A handsbreadth of ruddy orange remained on the

; western horizon, and the wind was picking up again, keen

|and shrill.

1 “You should’ve taken the bet,” said Hamil.

n

W, “If I had, you’d still be inside looking for proof that you’d

won,” Geran said. “As it was, that’s the last of our daylight.” ! He shivered; the night promised to be bitterly cold, and he I hadn’t seen any suitable shelters in quite some time. They Ś! could sleep in the barrow, which would be covered from the weather and reasonably defensible, but he didn’t see much that would fuel a fire nearby. Nor did he especially care to ) sleep in a burial mound. They hadn’t seen any restless spirits j yet, but the back of Geran’s neck prickled at the thought of i closing his eyes in the dank stone tomb. If that didn’t invite a ; haunting of some sort, he didn’t know what would.

Hamil glanced around the rocky hollow where the barrow stood, and he frowned. “I think I can hear something on the wind, Geran,” the halfling said quietly. “We need to be careful tonight.”

“I feel it too.” Geran turned in a circle, scanning the moor- -land around them. “Most of the time the Highfells aren’t that : bad when the sun goes down, but every now and then you get a night when dark things stir … this feels like it might be one.”

“Stay here, or find another spot to bed down?”

“I don’t want to stay here, but I can’t promise anything better.” The swordmage ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

“If this is a Lathanderian tomb, chances are good it’s ; warded against undead.”

“It could be—” Geran stopped and glanced toward the south. Hamil had given him an idea. “Wait, I think I know where we can spend the night. And we might find someone who can tell us something about Lathanderian tombs too. j There’s an old abbey five or six miles from here. It’s mostly in ruins, but some monks still live there.”

“Six miles? That’s going to be a long, cold ride,” Hamil said dubiously. “Can you find your way there in the dark?”

“I’m not Kara, but I’ll do my best.” Geran leaped down from the mound and gathered up his saddlebags. “If nothing else, we might find a better place to camp along the way.”

They’d left their horses saddled, since they hadn’t

expected to spend much time at the fourth barrow. The two companions quickly gathered their belongings, tightened the saddle straps, and mounted. Geran took a moment to mark his heading as best he could, then set off at a good trot, posting with his mount’s easy gait. It would be a hard ride, but if he didn’t get lost—or if the horse didn’t step in a hole in the dark—it would not be much more than an hour. He glanced back at Hamil, but the halfling’s big pony seemed to keep up well enough.

They jogged over the moors as the sunset faded to a dull red crescent limning the horizon to their right, and stars began to emerge from the retreating overcast. The wind grew stronger, hissing through the long grasses and moaning over the bare gray stone. Geran’s hands soon ached with cold, and he shivered inside his cloak. When they’d gone two miles or so, it had grown dark enough that he began to seriously worry about one of the horses missing a step, so he cast another light spell and set the dim blue globe bobbing a few feet in front of him.

“Anything within a mile of us will see that light, Geran!” Hamil called.

“I know, but I don’t want to risk the horses in the dark. It’ll be a long walk if one of them breaks a leg.” The horizon was no longer visible, and Geran couldn’t make out his landmarks any longer. He picked a dim star that he hoped was in the right direction and urged his horse onward. The jogging pace was beginning to wear on him, making his thighs and back ache.

Some subtle note in the wind changed, and the steady moaning took on a new tone. Cold, distant voices seemed to mutter and whisper in the wind, and Geran’s heart skipped a beat. “Barrow-spirits,” he said softly. Ghosts, wraiths, some sort of dreadful phantoms—whatever they were, they meant no good to the living. He and Hamil needed to get off the moor, or they’d soon find out exactly what was abroad on the night wind.

Do you hear them? Hamil called silently.

Geran simply nodded in response. He felt something drawing closer and glanced quickly to either side. Nothing was there—but when he looked again at the path in front of him, a spectral figure seemed to hover in the air a short distance before him. It was the image of an ancient warrior, dressed in the simple mail hauberk and nasaled helm a warrior of five centuries past might have worn. His braided beard was gray and tattered, and his blank eyes shone with a pale green light.

“Thy doom is upon thee, mortal,” the ghost whispered. “Thou shalt sleep under cold stars this night, and never again the sun shall find thee.”

Geran’s horse tossed its head in panic, and icy dread seemed to rob the swordmage of his will. He stared at the apparition for a long, terrible moment. Then he tugged at the reins and turned his horse away from the dour spirit. He kicked his heels to the animal’s flanks, and with a shrill whinny of terror the black charger bolted off into the night. Geran leaned down low over its neck and let the animal run; he heard the hoofbeats of Hamil’s mount falling behind him. Finally he slowed the horse’s pace, and Hamil soon caught up.

“Don’t stop now!” the halfling said. “I think it’s following us!”

Geran kicked his mount back to speed and led Hamil over the moors. Whatever track they were following was long behind them, and he did not want to try to find it again. They came to a steep-sided gully that cut across their path, and Geran swore. He had to detour one way or the other around it. His sense of direction told him to veer left, but in that direction the terrain generally became more rugged as the land descended toward the Winterspear Vale. To the right they had a better chance of finding a place to cross, but he was afraid that would set them even farther off course. The swordmage grimaced and decided to head right first. They rode westward for several hundred yards, and the gully shallowed enough to cross. When they scrambled back up the

other side, Geran caught a glimpse of a dim yellow light far across the moor.

“Thank Tymora,” he breathed aloud. “I think that’s the abbey.”

“Good,” Hamil replied through chattering teeth.

The travelers picked up their pace, following the distant light. For a long time it seemed to recede before them, never growing brighter, but finally they began to make up the ground, and a sprawling heap of broken towers and grass-grown stone appeared atop a short, steep-sided hill. Faint light showed from a few shuttered windows and a lantern swinging in the wind. They crossed an old stone-flagged causeway and scrambled up onto the road, and Geran breathed a sigh of relief as they stretched out into an easy canter and hurried the last few hundred yards.

They rode up to the weatherbeaten door in the crumbling wall and dismounted. Geran found a pull-rope by the door and tugged on it. From somewhere inside he heard the flat clang of a small bell. Nothing happened for a while, and he rang the bell again. Then he heard the rasp of wood on wood, and a small port in the door opened. The eyes of an aged man gazed out at him.

“Yes?” the fellow asked. “Who are you, and what do you want at this hour when no honest folk are abroad?”

“I’m Geran Hulmaster; this is my companion Hamil Alderheart. I ask shelter for the night. And I’d like to speak with the Initiate Mother.”

The monk’s eyebrows rose. “Geran Hulmaster? What in the world are you doing out here tonight, lad? It’s the dark of the moon. Don’t you know who walks the Highfells on nights such as this?”

“I’d rather not find out. Can we come in?”

“Yes, yes, just a moment.” The port closed. Then a heavier timber slid somewhere out of sight, and the abbey gate opened. The old monk appeared in the doorway a lantern in his hand. “Come on, then. Hurry, lads, it’s not safe to linger outside the walls tonight.”

Geran and Hamil led their horses into the doorway, and found themselves standing in an old courtyard. The monk pushed the heavy door closed and slid the bar back in place before turning to face them again. “Welcome to Rosestone,” he said with a wry smile. “I know the abbey has seen better days, but you’re safe enough inside these walls. I’m Brother Erron. Here, let’s stable your mounts and get you something to eat.”

“Thank you, Brother Erron,” Geran murmured. He glanced around at the crumbling towers and the broken pavement of the courtyard, then followed the old monk to a stable that evidently had not seen a horse in quite some time. Still, it was better than spending the night outside. He could no longer hear the chill voices in the wind, which led him to guess that old priestly wardings likely kept the restless dead far from Rosestone Abbey.