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13 Rova 4709
Senara
Months after Petros tried to convince Halis and me to return to Ustalav, it looks like he’s finally going to get his way. Alas that he won’t see it. We’ve had another mysterious letter with Petros’s stamp on it, but it was from Kendra. Petros is dead. After all his years traversing dangerous lands, he died in some kind of freak accident near his home in Ravengro. Kendra mentioned a will, and the executor was insistent that all those named in it—including Halis and me—be present for its reading. We’ve come here to Senara to seek passage north as far as Logas, and from there we’ll take the Menador Road back up into Druma in the hopes of sailing the lake instead of traveling over land.
I guess Cheliax will have to wait for another time.
19 Abadius 4710
Ravengro
It looks like we’re stuck here a while. I’d hoped to stay just long enough to convince Kendra to get away from this dismal place and to claim anything Petros had seen fit to bequeath me. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy, especially in this awful corner of the world.
The night we arrived, Kendra told us Petros was killed when a gargoyle fell from a façade and crushed his skull. That would do it, I suppose.
We laid his body to rest the day after we arrived in Ravengro. I was taken aback that we’d learned of his death months ago, yet he still hadn’t been interred; they’d apparently just left him in his box near the temple of Pharasma and the frigid winter air took care of the rest. The acolytes at the temple told us it had been the will of the deceased that his family perform the rites, but whether or not that was true, I could hardly fault the gravediggers for being in no hurry to bend their spades in the frozen earth. From the temple proper, several men I’d not met before volunteered as pallbearers, and they bore the box up the hill. Most of those we passed traced the spiral of Pharasma on their breasts as we passed, but once we reached the gates of the boneyard a group of them greeted us with other gestures, the evil eye the most respectful among them. Clutching hoes and pitchforks and cudgels they barred our way.
“We don’t want no necromancer buried here!” said the lummox in charge, and his companions’ voices rose in a chorus against Petros being laid to rest among their loved ones. Kendra argued that she had arranged the burial with Father Grimboro, the prelate of the temple, but the lummox stood fast. One of the pallbearers, a big man with a strong jaw and what appeared to be an obsession with the gleam of his armor and gear, spoke in protest, but he was in no position to approach the blockade. Not being burdened with carrying Petros’s box, I stepped forward to have a word with him. I was all sympathy and concern, my posture that of every mourner in every funeral procession that ever passed our house in Caliphas. I assured him my brother Petros was no necromancer but a man of learning, a gentle soul who saw himself only as a part of all he’d met. While my performance was little more than an act to get the lummox and his lot out of our way, the thought of Petros’s humility despite his great accomplishments brought a genuine tear to my eye, and the lummox stood aside so we could lower his body into the hole the acolytes had chipped out of the rock-hard ground.
Once Petros was in the ground at last, a man calling himself Councilman Hearthmont directed Halis and me, along with three of the pallbearers, to a gazebo in the town square. The councilman eyed all of us with the wary gaze of every superstitious bumpkin in Ustalav, and he made no attempt to mask the way he stared at our elvish ears. He rushed through the formalities, eager to get the group of strangers out of his town, but he was an astute enough politician to carry out his duties with an appropriately solemn air. He read the will, which left most of his home and holdings to Kendra. There was, however, the sum of 100 platinum coins allotted to the rest of us, provided we fulfill Petros’s last request to continue his investigation of the burned-out rune prison at the edge of town. Hearthmont rolled up the parchment and tucked it into his coat, then dropped a heavy iron key on the top of a sturdy chest and took his leave.
Inside the chest, Petros’s journal sat atop several books we were asked to return to Lepistadt University when we sought our reward for completing Petros’s last request. The journal detailed years of his life afield in Golarion, Halis opened it and leafed through the last several pages, and found that Petros had circled several recent entries in red ochre. They were all about Harrowstone Prison and a group of necromancers called the Whispering Way (which, interestingly enough, is known to crush the skulls of those they slay so their corpses cannot be made by magic to reveal their secrets from beyond the grave). He also wrote of a cache of tools—secreted away in a false crypt in Ravengro’s boneyard—necessary to defeat whatever evil was festering in the charred shell of Harrowstone, and finally of his intention to claim the tools before returning to the prison the following day. That was his last entry, and it was dated the day before he died. So much for a freak accident. It wasn’t just gravity and Desna’s whim that did Petros in.
Among the other books Petros had left in the locked chest passed to us by Hearthmont was a purple-bound volume with a stylized scarab on its cover that concealed a well-crafted lock. I had to work hard to pick it, and once I got it open, it proved to be in some kind of code, which Halis and Kendra set about deciphering. Once they’d broken it some hours later, it turned out to be a manual for an organization called the Order of the Palentine Eye, but it’s not clear what bearing it might have on the matter at hand. As for the other two tomes in the box, Halis said he got a very uncomfortable feeling even to touch them, and Thormar proclaimed them evil at a mere glance. We’ve not delved further into them. Fortunately, there are plenty of other books in which to seek to illuminate what transpired in Petros’s last days. His house—Kendra’s house, now—was more a library than a living space, with even walls in the privy lined with laden bookshelves.
When we finished poring over the journal, Kendra shared what she knew of the prison and the necromancers with Halis and me and the others named in Petros’s will. I suppose each of the heirs of this errand bears mention, as it seems that in this suspicious and closed-minded little town, they are the allies Petros chose for us in undertaking what is shaping up to be no light task.
The one with the shiny armor and handsome profile is Thormar, who calls himself a champion of Iomedae. He seems a trustworthy sort, as he’s already made very clear that the goddess he serves is herself a champion of goodness and the rule of law. If it weren’t for a sort of pleasant aura he exudes, I might be skeptical of one so vocal about his own decency and his devotion to fairness and justice—I could see that being good cover for any number of shenanigans. Given what I know of necromancers and the other denizens of the dark places of my home country—for not all the ghost stories one hears in Ustalav are mere wives’ tales—Petros had made a good choice in adding Thormar to the group. My only concern is having a champion of good and law to contend with. I’ve known his kind before, and while I never have to worry about him cutting my purse, I do have to concern myself with how he might look at me cutting someone else’s.
There were two others who joined in our discussion of the task Petros had left to us and how to proceed, but they kept mostly to themselves and at times I almost forgot they were there. Although both were human, it didn’t seem to me that they were standoffish due to any superstition or prejudice against Halis and my “kind”. One of them, Asher, was clad in the vestments of priests of Pharasma (in fact, throughout the funeral I had thought he was merely an acolyte assisting with the burial, and was surprised to see him join us in the gazebo), and professed to be the keeper of the boneyard in another small town not far from Ravengro. It stands to reason that one who tends to the dead might be ill-at-ease among the living.
The other man called himself Krevkul. His manner was calm enough during the graveside rites, but he grew agitated back at the house after the reading of the will, which I took as a sign that he was disappointed that he’d been left a task instead of a pile of gold. When he lingered in the cold—and by cold I mean cold; there was no moving water anywhere save for the kettle over the constant fire in the hearth—to tend the horses while the rest of us kept the kettle company, I began to wonder if I had leapt to an unjust conclusion. When he did come inside it only long enough to join us for supper, and afterward I was shocked to see him leave the house to bed down in the barn. He says he much prefers to be outdoors. I like being outdoors too…but my fondness for it fades when I can no longer feel my face.
Alas, our investigation of Petros’s death kept me outside much longer than I’d have preferred. We’d been able to do a fair bit of research in Petros’s library, but missing pieces of information—and the need to let the townsfolk get to know us so they didn’t think we were in town to loot their families’ tombs—took us into the frozen avenues of Ravengro. Some of it wasn’t so bad. Alendro Grovin at the Unfurled Scroll was generous both with his own library and with the logs he tossed into his fireplace to make our studies more pleasant. Our discussion with Jorfa, the dwarven blacksmith whose very presence in this town raised some interesting questions, at least kept us close to the heat of her forge, and our attempts to gather information at the Laughing Demon tavern, were rewarded by its proprietor, Zokar, who warmed us with food and kindness. Other parts were less comfortable, and some interactions—including with a group of children who skipped rope to macabre rhymes that seemed related to five notorious criminals who died in the Harrowstone fire—chilled me from the inside out. The worst if it was having to walk all the way out to the banks of the icy river, where a “V” had been scrawled in blood on the monument to the guards who had given their lives to defend Harrowstone against its rioting prisoners. The appearance of the bloody letter was disturbing not only for its harkening to the Splatterman, one of the criminals the children had been singing about, but because the V reminded us of Versonia Hawkran, the warden’s wife who was inexplicably at the prison the night of the fire and died with the rest.
Awful as it was to be outside in the icy wind, our research revealed a good deal about the prison, including the Notorious Five, whose ranks included the Mosswater Marauder, a dwarf who killed his wife with a hammer then spent the rest of his days if freedom killing victims in search of a bone fragment to complete his dead wife’s shattered skull; the Lopper, who laid in wait for days stalking his prey before beheading them with a handaxe; Father Charlatan, who told “tricksy lies” to his victims; and the Piper of Illmarsh, whose use of stirges to drain his victims made all of our blood run cold when stirges appeared despite the crippling cold at the farmers’ market in the evening.
The information we gathered about the prison’s inmates was all the more concerning given Petros’s concerns about the involvement of the Whispering Way. Those necromancers dedicate their lives to pursuing immortality through undeath. Was it their hand that had stirred up the restless dead in the prison? It was becoming clear that if we wanted to discover how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, we would soon have to set foot into Harrowstone ourselves. Resolved as we are to unravel the mystery of our brother’s death, Halis and I are none too keen on entering that place. Still, since it seems inevitable, we want to prepare ourselves as best we can and fully exploit all our resources.
After spending a couple of days investigating Ravengro with the trio of humans, I became more convinced that Petros had been deliberate in his selection of the group. Each possessed knowledge and skills that complemented those of the others, though I’ve been less than forthcoming with my own, lest that be of concern to Thormar or anyone else. It seems we’ve been equipped with the tools we need, but that doesn’t mean we all agree on how to use them. Halis and I, for example, are quite keen on seeking the false crypt Petros mentioned in his journal. Unfortunately, some of our new companions disagree. As something of a shepherd of the dead, Asher bristles at the mere mention of the idea, refusing to have any part of the looting of a tomb and assuring us that Grimboro would take the same position. Thormar, of course, sided with Asher. Krevkul threw his vote in with Halis and me, but though we had a majority, we conceded to their wishes, unwilling to sour our relationship with our allies so quickly.
If we’re to get to the bottom of this mystery of necromancers and the evil dead, though, we’re going to have to get into that crypt. Petros was a stickler for detail and he was stingy with his ink; if he’d written that the contents of the false crypt would be necessary to take on whatever evil was brewing at the prison, there is no doubt in my mind that he was right. It looks like Krevkul and Halis and I are going to have to play the grave-robbing ghouls all these superstitious peasants think we are.
21 Abadius
The mood has been tense here in Ravengro, and we five heirs to Petros’s mystery have not been immune to the growing sense of dread. I must confess that at first I ignored the bad juju of this place thinking it merely my general loathing of Ustalav. As a lass, though, much as I longed to be somewhere—anywhere—other than Caliphas, the one exception was always Petros’s house. I loved my brother, but there was something about his adopted home that filled me with a species of dread even then, long before I had ever come to understand that some of the stories of dark places and dark creatures in Ustalav are more than stories after all.
And now it had grown worse. I’d felt it grow steadily so since the day we arrived, and even when I kept telling myself that I, an experienced woman of the world, was a fool to succumb to that child’s fear now, I knew it wasn’t so. It took one look at every passing face to know they felt it too. I saw my fear in their eyes, but more haunting was the hopelessness, the resignation that whatever skeleton was living in Ravengro’s closet, it would never rest in peace.
I suppose it didn’t help the humor of the townsfolk when another bloody letter was found scrawled on the memorial down by the riverside, prompting more murmured laments that The Splatterman was working from beyond the grave. Halis and I had spent most of the long days in the library at the Unfurling Scroll, and I’d read that The Splatterman was a professor from Caliphas named Hean Feramin. The professor’s research dealt was in a field called anthroponamy, which focuses on the power of a name to terrify and control. The letter was an “E” this time, which continues to validate our conjecture that this all has something to do with Versonia Harken, whose presence at the prison that night cannot be accounted for. We frightened mortals can only ponder what black incantation will take effect if the name is completed, for there is no saying what fell magic old Hean might have perfected since ducking the hand of Pharasma after the fire. What is sure is that whatever letter comes next, it has already accomplished its goal, for the folk of Ravengro are terrified. They look at each other—and, most disturbingly, at us—with distrust and suspicion. Worst of all, I’ve begun to question Petros’ ability to judge the companions he chose for Halis and me on this venture.
It’s not that I think this group lacks the will or skill to continue Petros’s investgation. Quite the contrary: as I’ve noted before, the individual talents complement those of the others, forming a well-rounded group…in theory. The unwelcome intrusion of this temple or that goddess, though, has made for a bumpy road. Case in point:
After the Zealots had presented a unified religious front against the very idea of investigating the crypt, I asked Krevkul to take a walk near the boneyard to see if he could see anything in the vicinity of the area described by Petros in his journal. Krevkul agreed to perform a reconnaissance of the graveyard, and entered the graveyard on his own, and almost came out among the ranks of the walking dead. Afterward, he’d stormed into Kendra’s place pale as milk, telling us of living corpses that attacked him in the cemetery. Asher had gone to the temple of Pharasma at once to sound the alarm, and together with a small army of acolytes, we descended on the boneyard.
For the record, when someone reports that he went into a graveyard and was then attacked by the remains of people who’d been buried there, it is not my first inclination to visit said burial place. However, if we were ever going to get an opportunity to poke around for the false crypt this was it, and if there were indeed skeletons and zombies about, at least we’d have our Zealots around. Even with Thormar and Asher and so many other blessed spirits about, my heart beat like a war drum as I moved along the narrow passage among the tombs. I expected a hand to burst out of the dirt below every marker, imagined every door of every crypt creaking open to allow its undead occupants to pursue my living flesh.
While Grinbro and his choir boys searched for signs of the living dead, Halis and I sought the false crypt. Fortunately, Petros had been clear about its location, for he had cut and replaced the lock so carefully that I almost missed it. It was there for the taking. Halis and I looked at each other uncertainly. We had our chance, but after Krevkul’s encounter, we couldn’t convince ourselves to explore the crypt alone. I called to Grinbro, who I almost took to be one of the Undead himself, and pointed out the lock that had been tampered with. As I’d gambled, he took my honesty as a sign of virtue and said we could search the crypt provided we allow him to review the contents discovered there.
Given the giant centipedes that squirmed out of the walls the moment we entered the crypt, I was glad we had Thormar and Asher along to slay them. Once the enormous bugs lay dead, though, I’d have preferred the two of them take their leave. The sarcophagus contained no body, but instead a number of items, just as Petros had promised in his journal. The cache included magical weapons for use against ghosts, as well as a spirit board and magical jars, several flasks and vials, and a number of scrolls. Petros had done well in directing us to the crypt. We had the tools to face whatever evil inhabited Harrowstone.
And then the Zealots gave them to the temple.
When we left Grinbro’s quarters empty-handed an hour after retrieving the cache, Halis and I were livid. Asher and Thormar insisted that had been the deal all along. I worked hard to keep my cool when we discovered that we’d been duped into donating the weapons Petros left for us to the temple of Pharasma. Fitting, I suppose, since we’ll be meeting the goddess soon enough if we go into the prison without them…which is exactly what Thormar is clamoring to do. Now we’re supposed to go as a group to the town hall for a meeting to decide if they’re even going to let us take that very stupid step. Except out of respect for my dead brother, I’d hope they vote us down and spare me the trouble of accompanying the Zealots to fight an undead foe without the weapons left to us by the dead man we’re trying to honor.
22 Abadius
It looks like we’re going into the prison after all. I like to think it was my wit and charm that persuaded the good people of Ravengro to give us the nod, but my case may have been helped by the attack of undead creatures that set the town hall ablaze. A concerted effort by a few of the more stalwart among those who’d attended the meeting—most notably Hearthmont, who’d struck me as sort of a dour character until he took charge of a bucket brigade—got the fire under control, and the Zealots drew upon their favor with the gods to put down the undead.
After the fire at the council chambers, the mood in town was even more somber than usual. As I’ve mentioned, A man had died in the blaze, and Zakaria, as he was called, left behind a widow and children who would be hard-pressed to keep their farm. The fire itself was only the latest in a series of bizarre and disturbing events that had plagued the town in the weeks since Petros’s death, but the blaze had burned away any doubt that we were dealing with more than odd coincidences and peasant superstition. The council and the town at large had hardly pronounced the words granting us authority to investigate Harrowstone when the lamps on the walls exploded in a spray of burning oil and flaming skulls floated through the windows. Once we had through valiant effort defeated the ghostly foes and extinguished the flames—I myself ignited my own clothing in an attempt to save the doomed Zakaria, and Thormar nearly perished in flame as he and Asher battled the haunted skulls—the consensus of the hall had become a mandate. We would depart for the prison the following day.
If anything good came of the fire, it is that the suspicious gaze with which the townsfolk have looked at us since our arrival is gone, replaced by the pleading look of the desperate in need of saving. I suppose it should come as no surprise that peasants in Ustalav would change their tune so quickly, but now that they see me as their hero and deliverer from evil, at least I no longer have to live in constant fear that someone is going to burn me for a witch.
Once we’d had a drink with Zokar to wash the taste of ash out of our mouths, we’d walked Asher to the temple. Before he went inside, I implored him to ask an audience with Grimbro to ask the use of the cache of weapons we’d found in the false crypt then turned over to the priest. Petros had been convinced the weapons would be necessary to our success at the prison, and we’d all seen firsthand how difficult it had been to defend against the undead with mundane weapons. The rest of us had returned to the Lorrimor house for the night, and when Asher joined us in the morning he told us Grimbro had graciously conceded to allow us to use what we’d discovered in the first place.
We spent the rest of the morning acquiring supplies, then left town via the temple, where Grimbro handed over what we’d found in the graveyard. We slid enchanted arrows into quivers, tucked scrolls into leathern cases, secured flasks of blessed water and vials of healing brew into belt pouches. Halis took up the divining board and the magical flasks he said would allow us to capture undead creatures and harness their negative energy as a weapon. Armed with the tools Petros had prescribed and in the company Petros himself had selected, we set out for Harrowstone Prison.
It took us only an hour to reach the prison, but the walk seemed eternal. The sky was clear and a watery stand-in for the sun made a vain attempt to thaw the frigid landscape, but not even the blazing furnace that heats Katapesh itself could break the chill that holds Ustalav in its eternal grasp. The coat and sweaters I’d borrowed from Kendra kept most of me warm enough, but I thought the skin would crack off my very cheeks every time the breeze gusted off the waters of Lake Encarthan. I can’t begin to imagine how Asher managed to make the trip wearing nothing more than the robes his brethren wear within the temple. Perhaps his faith keeps the elements at bay, but he does, I suppose, have a sort of frigid quality about him in any case.
The great gates of Harrowstone hung on their hinges, banging a broken cadence in the wind. The twenty-foot walls loomed over us, dark and decayed, and it felt as though a thousand eyes peered down at us from the towers at lengths along the barrier. Krevkul kept his own eyes on the ground, searching for signs of recent passage, but he met Thormar’s questioning gaze with a shake of his head. Thormar drew his sword from his scabbard, muttered something to Iomedae and crossed the threshold. I saw him shudder ever so slightly as he passed the gates as though a chill had surged through his body, but he did not hesitate. I fitted an arrow to my bowstring and followed with the rest.
A dilapidated manor house stood just inside the gate and we started toward it, intent on a systematic search of the grounds. Standing before it, Halis made a show of examining the walls and framing, then pronounced it safe. At his word, Thormar resumed the lead and we fell in after him…all but Halis, who remained outside the door as a sentry. The floor creaked at my every step, and it fairly screamed under the Thormar in his heavy armor. The groaning protests of his passage cried up the walls and then the whole room lurched and the ceiling let out a rumbling belch before caving in. Krevkul and Asher dove clear of the falling ceiling, but one of the beams snapped just over me and crashed down on my skull. A bright flash filled my head and hot blood cascaded down my face as the stout beam drove me to the floor, and then Thormar’s hand closed on my arm and hauled me back to my feet. With his shield held over me he guided me to the door and pushed me out of the collapsing manor house, dizzy but aware enough to remind Halis that his skill as an engineer had not improved since Molthune.
I tried to take a step but stumbled and sat down hard on the cold earth. My vision swam and my eyes stung, and my head throbbed with every beat of my pounding heart. Asher stepped close to me, his hands passing over the wound, and I felt the comforting surge of his healing energy. He helped me to my feet and I took stock of myself. My head still ached, but it was faraway now, and the wound in my scalp had closed. I wiped the blood out of my eyes with the sleeve of Kendra’s sweater, nodded my thanks to Asher, and took up my bow again. The feeling that we were being watched had not abated, and I wasn’t about to be caught off-guard when whatever was lurking within these walls decided to do more than look.
Krevkul spied a staircase leading up the wall to the catwalk, and as soon as Thormar had fixed his glance on it he started toward it. The moment he started up we heard the chittering of rats in the tower, and the glimmer of tiny red eyes appeared in the pocked wall. Thormar continued undeterred, but once he’d stepped onto the upper landing the rats exploded out of the tower and seemed to consume him. As Thormar staggered back toward us, all I could see was a mass of rodents clinging to his clothing and armor, their pointy teeth sinking into any exposed skin. Thormar batted with his sword, and though his stab skewered one rat and sent it falling dead into the courtyard, it did nothing to stop their swarming attack. He lurched down the stairs two at a time and as he did the rats fell off him, scampering back as one toward the tower. Halis convinced Thormar to bait them out again, and Thormar reluctantly agreed. As soon as the rats had emerged, Halis rattled off some of his weird words and cast his hands forward and a wild flash of color burst from his fingertips to consume the wriggling rodents. Alas, when the brilliant display faded the rats were aggressive as ever and continued toward Thormar.
At that point I hurled a flask of lamp oil and it shattered amid the rats. Thormar threw another, and Krevkul sent a spark flying from his flint to ignite it. The stench of burning hair and the squeal of dying rats filled the air and the rest sought shelter in the tower, but we stayed on the offensive. I tore a scrap from my scarf and made wicks for two more flasks. Once they’d soaked up some oil Krevkul lit them and I tossed them into the midst of the rats, killing more and scattering the rest. With the vermin in confusion, we mounted the stairs to the wall.
Even after the fiery assault we’d made to gain the top of the stairs, the tower was still filled with rats, so we elected to bypass their lair, skirting along the catwalk toward the next tower. Apart from some debris and dust from its fallen roof it was empty, as was the one that sat atop the gate. The fight with the rats hadn’t been completely in vain, though. From the elevated position we had a better vantage to observe the prison grounds, including a large, still pond that covered the eastern section of the yard. Krevkul and I could also see something moving on the balcony on the west side of the prison. It was too far away to distinguish what was there, but I felt no doubt that it was watching us, taking our measure. My stomach twisted into a knot as I recalled something said in passing by Lufgo, the father of one of the little girls we’d befriended in town. He’d said the executioner still patrolled the western balcony, and at the time I’d thought it the silly ramblings of a bumpkin. Now, though….
We retraced our steps toward the stairs, but the rats had regrouped by that point. Asher lowered a rope and we descended to the yard, then crossed toward the prison proper. Just as we neared the front of the main building, the gate, which had all along banged out a staccato rhythm as it swayed open and shut in the wind, fell silent. I turned about to see a figure in armor. Given that none of the many surprises we’ve had since arriving in Ravengro have been pleasant ones, I wasted no time in pointing out the newcomer to the others and pointing an arrow at the newcomer. We had the drop on him so Thormar hailed him and the man approached. When he got closer, I noted features not unlike my own: here was another half-breed elf. Unlike mine, though, his elven traits hardly would have been discernible but to other elves, so much had he favored his human parentage. He wore a full beard and his hair erupted in ringlets where it escaped from a leather band, and no pureblood elf has ever possessed such sturdy musculature. Although his scale mail looked new, he was no debutante; scars marred his hands and face, including a puckered crescent moon arcing over his right cheek.
When he reached us he said he had come in search of Thormar, Halis and Kelanna. He showed a letter in Petros’s hand requesting a man called Grimgold’s presence at the reading of the will, claiming he had been delayed in his travels and had only just arrived. Still, there was no way to know if the man holding the letter was the same man to whom it had been addressed. I never heard Petros mention a Grimgold, but then again, I’d never heard him talk of Thormar, Krevkul or Asher either. In Grimgold’s case, at least, that made some sense; he said he’d never even met Petros, but that my half-brother had apparently purchased Grimgold’s freedom from slavery. The armored man before us could have made up the story on the spot, for all I knew, but it seemed like the kind of thing Petros would do. When Thormar suggested that this Grimgold be allowed to join us, I didn’t protest—-it would be good to have another strong arm among us—-but I didn’t take my eye off him, either. With this new addition to my--what? Companions? Friends? Cohorts for now, I suppose—-we advanced toward the prison proper.
Once he’d gained the wall, Krevkul motioned us forward. Rampant weeds and the ivy crawling the walls had been cut away at the bottom, and a line of runes ran from one corner of the building to the other. They were written in blood. Halis and Thormar leaned in close to examine the script. I backed away. Even when Halis’s spells have come through for us, I’ve never been particularly fond of wizardry, and the crimson figures scrawling the base of the wall had my hackles up. Thormar retreated just behind me after proclaiming the runes to be part of some kind of ritual mating abjuration magic with necromancy, He didn’t have to work hard to convince me it was evil. After reading the runes, Halis said it contained powerful magic used to remove a spirit from the premises, and that a name was mentioned repeatedly in the runes: Lyvar Hawkran.
The warden. Why were necromancers trying to banish the warden? Thormar ventured that perhaps his ghost yet guarded the prison and stood in the way of whatever plans the dark wizards have in mind, and it had to be banished. If that was the case, at least we had one thing in common with the Whispering Way: a desire to get rid of ghosts.
While Krevkul, Halis and Thormar trotted off to look for more runes, Asher and I stayed behind with Grimgold. The priest and I exchanged a nervous glance; neither one of us felt at ease with the newcomer. When Asher moved over to check out a pile of rubble, I put my back against the wall and watched for threats far and near. Asher reached down and with a grunt turned a large chunk of rock toward me. It was a fallen gargoyle, and spatters of dried blood assured us we were looking at the gargoyle that had supposedly crushed Petros. Looking around at splotches of my brother’s blood, Asher reported the stains to be inconsistent with a single blow. He’d been bludgeoned repeatedly, but it had been arranged to look like an accident. More evidence of the Splatterman’s hand, or at least someone trying to make us think so.
The scouting party returned and we all moved along the western side of the prison. Krevkul and I had both seen something moving on the balcony, and given what we expected to find in there, we didn’t want anything following us into the prison. Steep stairs climbed upward, but we couldn’t see the landing. Thormar set his boot on the bottom step and started up. The others followed. Grimgold untied the thong on the sack he carried and uncoiled from it a heavy chain with an iron ball at each end, wrapped a length deliberately around each hand, and started one of the balls swinging in an ever-increasing tempo. I gave him a wide berth, staying behind the newcomer in the interest of keeping an eye on him as well as letting him position his chain and armored frame between me and whatever it was I’d seen up there.
The moment Thormar’s foot touched the balcony, the frigid air coalesced into a pair of ghostly arms bringing a scythe to bear. I waited for the rest of the figure to appear but it never did. What I could see was more like smoke than substance, and I might have thought it a trick of light and imagination had I not heard the blade whistle through the air and the soft tic! as it sliced Thormar’s tabard. Grimgold dropped an elbow and his hand swung low, the chain coiling around the handle of the scythe until the ball snapped against the blade. Grimgold yanked the chain and I waited for the weapon to follow, but it instead faded for a moment before reappearing unharmed.
While Asher and Krevkul joined the fray, Halis and I stayed out of their way. I had my bow in hand but was loath to loose an arrow through the swirling tangle of limbs between me and my target. I slung my bow back over my shoulder and yanked the healing draught from a pouch should a sip become necessary. Halis flattened himself against the wall and mumbled magic. I joined him there to have a closer look at the door set into it. It came as no surprise to find one of the prison’s outer doors to be beyond stout, with a lock that even after fifty years looked imposing.
Behind me Krevkul waded in with his earth-breaker, the huge hammer faring no better than Grimgold’s chain until a massive overhead swing connected and one of the phantom arms jerked to one side. As though angered by the blow, the blade sliced down through furs and leather to find living flesh. Krevkul shook it off and, having seen that the thing could indeed be harmed, attacked with renewed vigor. The hammer crashed into the blade and with a flat ring a chunk broke away and dissipated. The phantom arms responded by turning the scythe toward Thormar, who had waded in close to strike with his sword, but neither attack found its mark. Grimgold exploited the distraction and smashed his ball and chain into it again, this time hard enough to splinter the handle. Krevkul completed the assault, his earth-breaker connecting with such force as to make the blade waver. Still the scythe attacked, its blade finding Krevkul again to send a cascade of blood to join the countless gallons shed on this balcony.
Following the scent of blood, a stirge appeared in the air beyond Halis. I called to alert the others and Thormar interposed, but until it landed on him, I didn’t notice how big it was. It perched on his shoulder, nigh as big as a halfling, and jabbed at him with its spear-like proboscis. It pierced his armor but the paladin batted it away with his sword before it could attach itself and make a raisin of him.
Thormar was on his own with the stirge. Grimgold and Krevkul had their hands full with the scythe. Asher focused his attention on healing the combatants, but even with the gravedigger’s magical ministrations, Krevkul fell under a savage blow. Grimgold straddled the fallen body and fought on while Asher hurried forward to drag Krevkul out of the fray. Asher had no sooner accomplished this task when the scythe struck him and he collapsed atop Krevkul.
With the healer unconscious and bleeding out, I had no choice but to wade into the danger zone. I thumbed the stopper out of the flask and poured its contents directly over the gash the scythe had opened in his thigh. The wound closed, but Asher did not come to. On the periphery of my vision, I saw Halis performing the same service for Krevkul.
Grimgold formed the only barrier between the deadly scythe and the rest of us. At one point the blade took a swipe at me, but I managed to duck before it took my head off. I felt the rush of air where it passed and then saw Grimgold’s chain coil around the disembodied weapon like a serpent. The iron balls crashed together, smashing the blade between them. It wavered, flickered, vanished.
Meanwhile, Thormar still struggled with the stirge. It had landed on him again, and his movements had become slow, languid. When it set itself to drink his blood, Thormar jabbed weakly at it, the tip of his blade piercing the engorged creature’s belly. It burst in a gout of blood. Thormar fell to the ground with it, as though the sight of his own blood had caused him to faint.
We brought Asher around with another flask of healing brew, and he set about tending the others with means magical and mundane. Amid the flat odor of dirt that always accompanies his great healing bursts, he exhausted his spells before all the fighters’ wounds had closed. He’d expended his divine favor and we’d used half our bottled healing and we hadn’t even entered the prison yet. With no real choice in the matter, we slunk back to town to rest and re-supply. Shamed as I felt walking here so soon after we’d left, tails between our legs and the worse for wear, I was glad to get away from the prison. Part of that, I suppose, had to do with not wanting to get my head lopped off or my veins sucked dry.
But it isn’t just that…
When I leaned in close to check out the lock on that door, I’d felt…something. It raised the hairs at the nape of my neck and sent a chill south from there, and for all the stock I place in Halis’s thesis that fell wizardry is afoot, I knew in that moment that there was something more, something trapped and pulsing with dark emotion. I could feel it, and had the unsettling certainty that it could feel me as well. Someone--perhaps the Whispering Way itself--had scrawled the bloody banishment runes we’d found, but I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d left behind.
We returned to Harrowstone early the next morning. Our attempts to buy more healing brews from the temple had failed, as Grimbro reported that his order had exhausted their supply treating victims of the fire. Jominda sold us a couple flasks of the stuff, but for the most part we’d have to rely on Asher, who’d spent the time in town praying to Pharasma. After what I’d felt at the prison, I didn’t think that a bad idea at all.
Now that there were no longer a bloated stirge and an animated scythe to contend with on the balcony I was free to have a real go at the door. While the others stood sentry I laid out the tools I’d pocketed from a master lawbreaker named Gant in Sevenarches. He’d made the picks himself, countless hours in a pesh haze bending, shaping, perfecting. I’d liked Gant, sure, but I’d slept with him to get a crack at his kit, and there were a lot of shady rotters out there who would have done a lot worse to get their hands on his tools. I leaned in for a closer look at the keyhole and…
Welcome back.
Cold air whistled through the lock to splash over my face. No, not air…breath. Old, bad breath.
The words I heard, though, had not come on that stinking exhalation. They—
I’ve no need for crude speech. It’s so much quieter this way…and we don’t have to worry about them hearing us.
—were in my head.
And such lovely thoughts you have. It doesn’t strike me that pesh-head Gant got off so badly in that deal.
I started at that and my fingers released the pick I was holding. It clanged to the stones at my feet. I whirled about. Asher’s face snapped toward me and he fixed me with his icy stare. I could feel Thormar’s gaze on me as well.
“What’s up?” said Halis.
“I, uh, it…I can’t do it. Sorry. It’s just…really hard. I think we’re gonna have to go through the front.”
“No need for apology, m’lady,” said Thormar. “I’m glad to see at least that the prison’s locks are sound.”
I nodded lamely. Halis said nothing; he knew not to press. He started after Krevkul and Thormar down the stairs. As I fell in next to my brother I noticed Asher stepping in behind me, letting Grimgold bring up the rear. It was no longer the newcomer the gravedigger’s eyes were on.
“So what was that?” Halis whispered.
“What was what?”
“You know what.”
No, I didn’t. I had no idea what that was, and I was quite comfortable with the idea of forgetting all about it. “This place just creeps me out.”
Halis nodded and said nothing more. We’d rounded the corner of the daunting edifice and the main doors yawned before us. Massive doors hung on huge, bent hinges. Had they remained in place, we’d have had to return to Ravengro, because I sure as death wasn’t going to go back to the door on the balcony. The wind howled through the gate and burrowed into my clothing; tiny flecks of snow and ice pelted my face. All that seemed infinitely more appealing than going into the prison, but Thormar forged ahead and I followed, wondering what Petros had gotten me into.
A second, smaller set of doors stood opposite the entrance, these hanging open as well. I readied my bow even as I doubted its effectiveness on the inhabitants of the prison. With a prayer Asher set Thormar’s sword aglow. The paladin held it before him, seized his icon with his other fist, and marched through the door. Grimgold followed. They’d taken only a few steps when the shadows swept forward on cold air, twisting into faces of anger and agony. As the rush of darkness flowed past us, the door before us slammed firmly into place, separating us from Grimgold and Thormar.
My companions and I exchanged nervous glances. We were relatively safe, and had only the choking dust and mold to contend with. But what of the two who’d been trapped inside? Asher yanked on the handle to no avail; the lock had clicked into place. I stepped forward and knelt before the door. Peering at the keyhole, a chill ran through me and my hands fumbled when I took out Gant’s tools, but no voice came this time. My fingers steadied and I thought I got the lock but the door held fast. Krevkul gripped his earth-breaker in both hands, but just as he wound up to swing, the doors collapsed on their hinges and were as they had been. Thormar and Grimgold stood calmly on the other side, and beckoned us join them.
Had a hard time with that lock too, hmmm? Gooseflesh rose on my arms. You’re not much of a breaklock, are you?
“I never—” The others looked at me expectantly. “Uh, never would have expected to see the inside of a prison.”
“I should hope not,” said Thormar. Asher squinted at me. Could he hear it too?
No, just you, Kelanna. Gulp. Nice recovery, by the way. I doubt the paladin would look too kindly on communing with the dead, and the way the priest’s looking at you I’d say he’s not long from pouring a flask of blessed water over your head.
For the record, I’d just about gotten to the point of screaming as the icy voice spoke in my head. I held my tongue only for fear of what the Zealots would do to try to get it out if they knew. I clamped my jaw shut and focused my thoughts into a question: Why me?
Cold laughter. Is that rhetorical? I can touch you all, feel what drives you. For your Zealots, it is adherence to a code of law and morality. They are rigid. In you I sense more…flexibility.
A blush painted my cheeks and I pulled my scarf up around my face to conceal it. I ducked into one of the open doorways along the hall, as much to regain my composure as to have a look around. And who…what are you?
I have long been a resident of this place. A lucky constable found me drunk and brought me here.
Why?
I’d been something of a burglar. I could teach you a thing or two about opening a lock. Gant gave you good picks, but you don’t need them.
My mind began to form a question but before it could Thormar called me forward to check out the door to the warden’s office. As I walked forward the voice continued. Listen how he orders you around. The Zealots have used you from the start. Without your skills, they would be nowhere.
Didn’t you just say I’m not much of a lockbreaker?
Laughter again, this time almost mirthful. True, true. But while the priest prayed and the paladin pointed his sword at the prison, you sacrificed your days reading old tomes to learn the secrets of this place. You made the locals cooperative, sympathetic. You found the false crypt. How have the zealots thanked you? By making you beg for the treasures that were rightfully your own.
I shook my head, trying to clear it. Grimgold took it as a sign the door was clear and opened it. It swung inward into a room blanketed in dust and old parchment. Grimgold pronounced the room clear and I followed him in, moving toward a mahogany desk. From there I glimpsed a small safe in an alcove. Before I could move that way, though, the flutter of leathery wings erupted from the corridor outside. Grimgold stepped into the doorway and I could see several stirges flapping around him.
Perhaps it’s the Piper.
Chills again.
They’ve got this. Why not have a look at the safe? Perhaps Gant’s picks will work for you this time.
There was no way I was going to run across the room and start trying to pick the safe while the others fought stirges. There were, however a few drawers in the desk that bore investigation, and it wasn’t really a good idea to shoot an arrow into the melee outside. I opened the top drawer then the others, but found nothing. I glanced over to see Krevkul knock a stirge to the ground with a crushing overhead swing that almost took off Asher’s nose.
A shame he missed.
You’re mad.
You’re right. He is the healer, after all.
The voice was distracting me. I abandoned my search of the desk to help the others. “Grimgold! Turn around!” I called when I saw a stirge attach itself to his wrist, hoping to stab the creature while it was immobile. When Grimgold turned, I jabbed it with my dagger and a gout of blood shot out. Grimgold batted at the same one and it fell to the floor, where I ended it with a stomp. The others were having a rough time of it until Halis sprayed flame from his fingertips and scorched the stirges, narrowly missing Grimgold, who still blocked the doorway. He and the others batted down the stirges that had survived the fire, and soon the hall was quiet.
I wasted no more time waiting to check out the safe. Thormar and Krevkul guarded the hallway and Grimgold remained at the door. Halis came in beside me to watch, and Asher took up a spot in the corner behind us.
Always watching you, isn’t he? Perhaps the priest has other interests than digging graves.
That’s disgusting. I probed the locking mechanism with a wire, trying to get a feel for the lock. Any novelty I’d felt at having the voice in my head had worn off. It felt as though the cold voice had chilled my blood.
Perhaps third time’s a charm? If only you had stolen Gant’s talent along with his tools.
This is not helping. I felt myself mouth the words. Halis didn’t seem to notice. I leaned closer to the lock.
My apologies. Allow me to redeem myself. Use the long one with the coil at the tip. Go on.
I looked among my tools and found the pick he meant. It was cold to the touch. When I slid it into the lock, I understood the mechanism as clearly as if I had made it myself. I pushed it up and in, twisted it, turned it slowly downward. The tumblers tumbled. I pushed the latch down and the door popped open. A sheaf of papers lay at the top, which Halis seized and began to pore over. A wooden rack of flasks stood in the back over a tattered sack of gold coins.
Well done. I knew you were an apt pupil. And you’ve so much more to learn. But first I will allow you to do the thing for which you require no instruction.
And what’s that?
False modesty is a bother. You know your skill at legerdemain. You opened the safe. What’s inside is yours.
After the fiasco with the items we’d found in the false crypt, I didn’t need a disembodied voice speaking into my mind to convince me to pocket a couple of the flasks before the others took stock. Halis was close next to me, blocking Asher’s view into the safe. Knowing my brother would approve, I slid two flasks between the layers of my clothing.
What about the sack? Goading.
It’s all moldy. I could never carry it.
You have an empty sack in your pack. Transfer the coin.
I had the sack in hand before I could protest. It was the only sound idea, after all, but I still wouldn’t be able to hoist a sack of what had to be five hundred coins, let alone on the sly. I shoveled coins from the old bag to the new one.
Just a fistful, then. Consider it a service charge.
They'll see.
Where’s that faith you have in your skill? Let me see you work your magic.
Just a fistful. I grabbed the coins up and thrust them toward my sleeve. At that moment my thoughts filled with a clear image of a woman, frozen, dying. I jumped, spilling coins as I pushed them into my sleeve.
Halis lifted his eyes from the document he was perusing. “You’re losing your touch.”
I couldn’t focus. My mind remained on the vision that had visited me, the woman’s pleading eyes rimmed in ice as her skin blackened and flaked off. The laughter that came this time was the laughter of a madman, full, hearty and tinged with something unspeakable. I told you I was a burglar, but not what I burgled.
What— I managed, dread pushing me toward panic.
Lives, of course. I took them with magic, and now I’m taking yours. Praise Pharasma!
A hand closed around the back of my neck and I heard Asher’s voice in my ear, but it sounded far away. He accused me and I defended myself and I raved and ranted when the party gathered around to see what the ruckus had been about, but even my own voice seemed small, distant. I had no clear notion of what I said; I spoke more to prove to myself that I was alive and that my life hadn’t been stolen. As we walked away from the warden’s office, Asher still fuming over my breach of trust, I relaxed. It had all been some strange hallucination, perhaps brought on by breathing mold spores. I’d heard such things could happen.
I was relieved that during my tirade I hadn’t said anything about the voice, since it only would have alarmed the others unnecessarily. It had seemed so real, especially in that moment when Asher seized me and I sniffed that odor of gravedirt and the chill of death had filled me to the point where I thought the madness had infected me…but then it was gone, the voice was gone and with it the madness and the fear and even the cold didn’t seem so unbearable.
24 Abadius
I could feel the weight of Asher’s eyes on me even after the treasures from the safe were well out of my grasp. He’d claimed no concern for the coin I’d tried to filch, instead crying that my breach of trust undermined the strength of our “party”. When I questioned the existence of such a thing, Thormar’s face sagged and he’d admonished me for a mincer of words. No matter what I called it, we were bound together by our awful errand. I suppose I should be happier for it. Thormar wielded a good sword and I’d more than once been the beneficiary of his shield, and without Asher’s healing we’d all have gone to his goddess’ judgment by now.
From the warden’s office we moved through damp stone corridors to the east wing. The air stank of mildew and rot and smoke, and as we passed the front doors and heard the moan of the wind in the parapets the desire seized me to bolt for the yard. It wasn’t fear that made me want to escape; it was a deep, primal need to be free. The angry, grave-smelling cleric stood between me and the door. I timed his step, counting down until my moment, then—
“M’lady, would you please have a look at this door?”
I froze. Asher’s eyes narrowed.
“M’lady?” Thormar repeated.
“Aye,” I sighed and made my way forward.
This door, unlike the others, was of iron and in good repair, and it was locked. A wave of vague fear washed over me as I reached for my picks, but before I’d gotten the pouch open Thormar decided we should investigate the open door farther along before returning to the locked one. My hand dropped to my side and I couldn’t recall for the life of me what had set me on edge.
The door was still on its hinges, but had no lock. I stepped aside as Thormar pulled it open, the warped wood scraping the stone floor. By the light Asher had placed on the paladin’s sword I saw a long hall strewn with the rotting remains of benches and tables. At the far end the light glinted off metal bars. While Krevkul and Grim stood sentry at the two exit doors, Halis and I searched the room with the Zealots. Behind the bars at the far end was a raised stage. Nothing stood on it, but when Thormar approached the bars I saw him shiver and his breath puff out in a white plume. Hugging his arms around his torso he backed away. I could hear his teeth chattering.
“C-C-C-”
“Cold?”
“Y-Y-Y-”
“Yes?” I would have played this game a little longer, but something caught my eye. It might have been a trick of the light, but I could’ve sworn I saw a table move. Just a bit, but a bit was more than enough to send me backing away. It was a table, for goddess’ sake. The others looked at me as I backpedaled, but my eyes were fixed on the table.
“What?” asked Halis.
“The table. I think it moved.” The others followed my gaze. Nothing happened.
“Perhaps a shadow?” Asher’s condescending tone stung, especially as I stared unblinking at the table while it behaved just as a table should. I’d opened my mouth to concede the point when it moved again.
“There! Did you see it?” I said, pointing.
“I did!” said Halis. With the gravedigger against me, it was good to have my brother on my side.
Thormar took us at our word. He sheathed his longsword and approached the table. He reached toward it, and just as his fingers touched the wood the table leapt into the air, executing a complete flip before crashing to the floor. Behind me, I heard the clank and whir of Grim’s chain. Before he could dash it to bits, Halis held up a hand.
“It’s a haunt. I can question it!” He slipped the darkwood box out of his pack, laid the spirit board on another table and set the brass planchette on its surface.
“What are you gonna do with that?” asked Asher, sullen as always.
“Questioning it! We can learn from it.”
“Spirits lie,” said Asher.
“And I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this kind of ritual,” added Thormar.
Halis and I were forced to remind the Zealots yet again that Petros himself had argued the necessity of these tools, and in the end they permitted Halis to set his fingers on the planchette. The planchette jumped at once, pulling Halis’s hands in figures-of-eight around the board. After tracing the pattern for nearly a minute, the planchette stopped as abruptly as it had started. “Who is performing the rituals?” asked Halis.
The planchette streaked to the upper right corner of the board, stopping over the word NO.
Halis looked up, his eyes meeting each of ours in turn before returning to the board. “Who are you?”
The planchette moved again, looping lazily around the board, pausing for a moment over the letters “M-A-N-Y” before falling still.
“Many,” said Thormar, proving to all that he was a man of letters.
Meanwhile Halis had made up his mind that a haunt was at hand. He folded up the board and replaced it in the box, taking out one of the glass cylinders instead. “I’m going to try to siphon it. Thormar, try to make it manifest again.”
Thormar, whose arms were still wrapped tight around his chest, puffed himself up and strode toward the bars. I expected to see his frosty breath at any moment, but the chill did not come. “Nothing. I feel nothing out of the ordinary.” We walked every inch of the room, but the haunt had gone. Reluctantly, Halis put away the untested siphon.
From there we moved into what had been a barracks or training area before the fire destroyed it. What remained of the walls was scorched black, but most of it had tumbled into the pond on the east side of the prison. In the center of the floor a square hole opened on darkness. Thormar thrust his blade into the opening, revealing a cavernous room below, gutted by fire and full of dark water that had dripped down the shaft. It was there that Warden Hawkran and his guards had made their stand against the prisoners before igniting the blaze that condemned them all to death…or undeath. If we were to get to the bottom of the mystery of Harrowstone, we would first have to get to the bottom level. Alas, there was no safe way down.
Through the next door we found the furnace room. The furnace itself stood in one corner, nothing more than a hulk of rust, but the room was oddly warm. Almost as soon as I’d noticed that it got hotter. I looked to the furnace and it shimmered with heat, and for an instant I saw a face, tortured and full of rage, before the air exploded in flames. They consumed me and I fell to the floor, clothing and hair alight. I heard Asher call out to his goddess as Grim’s chain crashed into the rusted furnace. Somewhere, far away, I heard someone say my name and I felt hands on me, mercifully cool on my scorched skin, but the pain vanquished the soothing cold and all I knew was agony as the world flickered around me.
When I came to, Asher hovered over me. My skin no longer burned as though my very heart had ignited. The pain remained, but distant and fading. Despite our confrontation in the office, Asher had used his magic to bring me back from a place I hope never to revisit. I nodded my thanks and accepted his hand up off the floor. Nearby, Halis stood with a cylinder in his hand, only now roiling green gas filled it. He’d finally gotten his chance to use the siphon, and it had worked. According to Halis, the essence he’d trapped could be used as a weapon, but that remained to be seen.
After being scorched nearly to death, I was in no good state to enter the next room only to be attacked by some kind of air spirit. Panic seized me and I ran from the room into darkness and cowered against the first wall I found. After a few moments panic loosed its grip and I realized I was cowering behind the furnace that had just belched fire at me, all alone. I unslung my bow and hurried back to my friends, but what I saw there did little to assuage my fear. Objects flew through the air and the others ducked or batted at them. Krevkul’s face was bleeding freely where he’d been struck. Grim, whose chain had started to glow a pale blue, swung wildly for a target, but found none. Asher cried out that he’d spotted the thing and Halis fired an arrow to where the gravedigger indicated. An unearthly scream sounded in the room, then bits of junk streaked toward Halis. A bottle shattered against his shoulder and he stumbled backward when a pair of rusty scissors pierced his thigh. “The ghostslayer!” he cried. “Use the ghostslayer!”
Thormar, never one to shy away from the opportunity to battle evil, waded in, sword high over his head as he prepared to strike. When he brought the blade down, though, his elbow bent double until his forearm slammed into his chest. Thormar’s eyes went wide as his own hand dragged the blade across his throat, and I averted mine when the blood gushed out. Asher called out a prayer and I thought Thormar’s wounds would close, but instead I heard that shriek again as his spell struck our foe. I oriented on the sound and loosed a ghost-slayer arrow as Halis had advised. Another scream of pain announced that my shot had scored, then, as Asher completed another spell, the pitch of the cry rose an octave and I felt a sharp vibration in my breastbone before it fell silent.
The room had been an infirmary, and good thing. In it we found salvageable healing supplies, with which we treated the wounded and bolstered our own stores. Once Asher had seen to the wounded we returned to the metal door we’d left behind, hoping it too would contain items useful to our endeavor. I knelt before the door and took out my
(Gant’s)
tools and set to work. The door was sturdy and the lock a good one, but I could do no wrong. Every tool I chose was the right one and within minutes the door stood open.
The room beyond contained several long tables, all covered with various and sundry items. To each item, a name label had been affixed; the room had served to store the prisoners’ property. We searched for the Notorious Five, but their names were conspicuously absent. There was little of interest in the room, save a medallion someone had earned for bravery in the Shining Crusade, which found its way into my pouch, and a stick that looked like a chicken leg, which Halis claimed. Once he’d looked it over, he aimed it at Grim and uttered a word. His skin, which had had a grey tinge since the fight with the stirges in the warden’s office, blossomed with color, and his eyes cleared. He nodded his thanks to Halis and joined Thormar in the lead to explore the main corridor of the building.
Upon opening the first door he encountered Thormar was at once set upon by a large spider. Grimgold, who’d recovered his strength in addition to his color, let fly the meteor hammer, splattering the spider on the floor. As it died, its kin filled the doorway, one skittering along the ceiling as the others crawled along the walls and floor. Thormar slashed with his sword, and while he didn’t cut his own throat this time, the attack was about as successful; his sword flew free of his hand and clanged down in the room they’d come from. The poor paladin has had one misadventure after another since he arrived in Ravengro, as though the evil we’re here to thwart has targeted the champion of good. Fortunately, the rest of us laid into the spiders until they all lay dead and Thormar only had to face their webs when he went to retrieve his beloved sword. Once we’d cleared away the spider silk, Asher almost smiled when we realized we stood in a chapel dedicated to Pharasma. The gravedigger uttered a prayer at the altar before rifling the cabinets that flanked it, where he discovered a wand of healing in addition to more flasks and a scroll of divine magic.
Asher proposed that we rest a while in the chapel, but Thormar insisted we try the last few doors in the corridor. About a minute after leaving the room, I’d begun to suspect I’d have been better off siding with Asher. I’d hardly walked into the next chamber when the door slammed shut, separating Thormar and Grim and me from the others just as the floor began to sort of slither. My first thought—Snakes!—was mercifully wrong, but what I saw instead wasn’t much better. The ropes and chains on the floor wriggled and squirmed and from among them rose two sets of rusty manacles, dancing like cobras, metallic jaws clacking open and closed. One of them struck at me but Grim interposed his meteor hammer. He whipped a length of his own chain around the tails of the manacles, holding it in place until the ball at the other end smashed into the restraint itself, rending it asunder. While Asher and Krevkul pounded on the door, Thormar waded into the fray and I backed into the corner. The other set of manacles darted this way and that, attacking and evading, while the paladin’s longsword slashed and Grim’s chain swung in whirring arcs, and at any moment the others were going to break down the door to join the fight. I was best out of the way. Thormar’s sword rang against the manacles and I saw him wince as his blade got the worst of the blow. His attack occupied the animated manacles long enough for Grim to knock them to the floor. As they struck, the ropes ceased wriggling and the door fell open. Eager as I was to let Asher know I’d changed my mind about resting in the chapel, I was at a loss for words when I saw him stumble in, covered head to toe in beetles.
Grim dropped his chain to the floor and swung his pack off his shoulder, pulling from it three flasks of lamp oil. I snatched a bit of rope off the floor and slid the makeshift wick into one of the flasks, and Thormar fumbled out a flint and steel and struck it alight. When Asher managed to flail away most of the bugs Grim raised the flask to toss it at the regrouping swarm, but some oil had sloshed out and it slipped from his grip and broke on the floor at his feet. With Grim’s flaming boots igniting the ropes on the floor and smoke rising all around us, Halis finally joined the party. He held his hand out, palm-up, and at his word a glistening orb coalesced above it. He snatched it from the air and lobbed it at the swarm, and with a pop and sizzle the acid burned through most of them. The rest fell back into formation and Thormar ran into a corner as they approached, leaving Asher and me to hurl our own flasks of oil at the beetles to vanquish them.
I was quite pleased to get out of that room, but instead of returning to the chapel, we forged ahead, and door number two led into yet another animated trap. This time it was a branding iron from a brazier that leapt across the room to be beaten down. When it clanged to the floor no more enemies appeared, but I was still loath to linger there; despite the barred windows that opened to the outside, the room still reeked of the burnt flesh of branded prisoners.
When Thormar called me forward to examine the next door I sighed at the repetition of this routine, but when I stood before it I realized it was anything but. Unlike the other doors in the corridor, this one looked well-used and maintained. Even so, I saw no sign of traps and stepped aside so Thormar could open it. The inside was also clean and tidy and somehow didn’t seem as ancient as the rest of the prison. The only exception to the neatness of the room was a pile of cloth scraps on the floor, from which a skeletal arm jutted. An instant later chill air rose from the floor, blue mist shimmering into the shape of a woman. Growing up in Ustalav, I’d heard a lot of old wives’ tales. The apparition before me was hardly the image I’d always conjured in my mind’s eye when the crones spoke of lingering spirits, but as I stared at her, I felt with a certainty I hadn’t when the table had flipped or when the furnace had belched flame that I was in the presence of a ghost. Still, I felt no fear and was relieved to see that Thormar and even Asher the Pharasmite saw no threat. Once Thormar had asked who she was and she told her tale, I understood why.
The ghost of Vesorianna Hawkran finally answered the question of what she had been doing at the prison the night of the fire. As though in a trance, she related the details of the last hours of her life: her concern at her husband’s failure to come home; her alarm at the unguarded prison gates; her urgent conference with the other guards in the training room. From them she’d learned that her husband and other guards were in the cell blocks below, locked in a desperate standoff with prisoners led by the most notorious among them. Their tale sparked her own desperation to have her husband back safe. Ignoring the guards’ warning that to lower the lift would be to give the prisoners below a way out, she lunged toward it and released the catch before the guards could stop her. The spindle spun out of control, paying out rope ever faster until the lift hit bottom with a sickening crunch. She struggled free and peered down the shaft, seeing to her horror that the falling lift had crushed the warden. An instant later prisoners surged into view, rigging the lift to climb out. The guards pulled at her again, but this time she didn’t resist. They hauled her to this room and locked her in, where, not long after, she died after smoke filled the chamber. She was far from the only one to perish, but she was alone, separated from the ranks of angry spirits trapped elsewhere in the prison. Still, she knew with certainty that even in death, her husband had maintained vigilance over his charges…until recently. The blue lady recounted events of a night not long ago, when a man had come to the prison alone, only to be bludgeoned to death by black-robed figures. From the window of her eternal cell, she watched as they arranged the body to make it look like an accident, then undertook an elaborate ritual that left her with the dreadful certainty that her husband’s spirit was gone, banished even as Petros’s own spirit left his body. Even as Lyvar Hawkran at last left his duty, Vesorianna had taken it up in his stead.
With Vesorianna’s story following so closely the events as we had pieced them together, we appealed to her for more help. She told us that since the warden’s banishment she had struggled to keep the restless dead at bay but she was weakening. She told us that in the past week it had gotten worse; every few days she’d felt a terrible blow to her energy, and said she would be able to offer little assistance, but by telling us that had helped to fill in another piece of the puzzle: the timing of the blows coincided with the letters scrawled on the monument on the riverbank. When we told her, she nodded as though that felt right and warned us that if her name could be completed her spirit, too, would lose control over the undead inmates of the prison, and they’d be free to roam the countryside. She told us that to control them we had to subdue the Notorious Five, and when we asked how we could stop them she told us that each had confiscated property in the storage room, and that those items had each been imbued with a piece of the owners’ souls. She said the items would be a boon in vanquishing them but that their use would be dangerous. She also told us that another object belonging to the warden himself would be essential to rid the prison of their influence. When she could tell us no more we thanked her—thanked Vesorianna, a ghost—for her help and returned to the property room to look for the tools of the Five.
When we’d finished scouring the tables to no avail Grim proposed that we search the walls for secret doors. We’d done so before but found nothing, but given what Vesorianna had told us, we gave it another go and this time we uncovered the catch to a sliding panel. The recess behind it contained five items, each tethered to a name label: a hand-axe encrusted with blood, property of V. Saetressle; a smith’s hammer, property of I. Onyxcudgel; a moldy spellbook, property of H. Feramin; a tangle of a dozen holy symbols, property of S. Corvin; a tarnished flute, property of Illmarsh.
I wanted that flute. I’d dabbled at the instrument since I was a child, and the swirling tarnish told me it was pure silver. I stepped forward to claim it. If the Zealots were going to give me grief for taking treasure on the sly, I would take what I wanted in plain view of the gods and everyone. Before I could wrap my fingers around the flute, though, Thormar and Halis intervened. Both of their mouths moved as they muttered prayers and magic, and I saw Halis nod knowingly as Thormar frowned. Halis pronounced the hand-axe magical; Thormar named it evil. They said the other items were neither, so I reached in and grabbed the flute. An odd sensation swept through me, as though the flute’s touch chilled my blood, and then it was gone.
“Remember what the warden’s wife said,” cautioned Thormar. “Boon and bane.”
I nodded, at first humoring him, then in real agreement. With the flute in hand, I confirmed it to be pure silver as I’d suspected and of excellent craftsmanship to boot, but there was something about the cold weight of the thing that made me uneasy. Despite that I had to fight the urge to raise the dusty, tarnished flute to my lips there and then.
Meanwhile, Halis leafed through the pages of the spellbook. The others were handling the other items with more caution: Thormar lifted each with his hand shrouded in a sack, guarding the holy symbols in a pouch before handing the hammer over to Krevkul. Grimgold took on the burden of the evil, enchanted axe; he left it wrapped in burlap and slid the whole parcel into his pack.
Armed with the tools we hoped would be more boon than bane in the fight against the Five, we debated our course of action. Asher lobbied for rest in Pharasma’s chapel, but the rest of us argued that a return to town was the better option. We’d exhausted our supply of oil, and we needed a readier source of fire than flint and steel if we came up against any more rats or bugs. Asher saw the wisdom in that and we left the prison for Ravengro. On the way to town we discussed what we would and wouldn’t tell the townsfolk, who had become even more terrified and suspicious when we’d returned the last time and told them the stories of ghosts were true. The Zealots insisted that we keep Grimbro informed, but agreed that we would be tight-lipped about our findings with everyone else.
After we’d left Asher at his temple, the rest of us visited Jominda the apothecary for sulfur preparations and oil. Thormar and Grim stood outside the door as Halis and I entered to make our purchases. As usual, Sheriff Benjin Kaylor was in the shop, investigating whatever suspicions he held about Jominda.
“What have you discovered so far at the prison?” asked the sheriff.
“Very little,” I answered. He narrowed his lawman’s eyes but I opened mine wide, inviting. “Except dust.”
“What do you need the oil and tinder-twigs for then?”
“Rats and spiders, mostly. The old place is literally crawling with them. I gave a shudder and the smile I’d favored him with melted into a grimace. “Disgusting.”
“I see,” he said, and I saw that he didn’t. His gaze softened, and the barest trace of a smile passed across his lips.
“Well, Sheriff,” I said, laying my hand on his breast, it’s been a pleasure, but we’ve many errands before we return to the prison to tidy up.”
“Be careful with those spiders.”
“Oh, we will, we will,” I said. Halis and I took our leave. The sheriff followed us out and saw Thormar and Grim waiting.
“Ah, Sheriff,” said Thormar. “I was hoping to find you to report on our findings.”
I shot Thormar an icy glance but he paid it no mind. As he began to recount the story, I stalked off. “I’m off to the general store. Lots to do, no time to chit-chat.” I’d hoped Thormar would taste the venom I spit with those last words, but if he did, he gave no sign, and Grim dashed my hopes that Thormar would follow by escorting me himself.
When Thormar rejoined us, I wasted no time in hauling him into a corner and giving him an earful for diverting from the plan and telling the sheriff what we’d found. He responded with his usual claptrap about his word and promises and honesty and honor. I walked off in disgust. Like Asher, he’d expressed more concern about the breach of trust than the gold I’d tried to filch. What was this, then? We had a plan!
I was glad to get back to Kendra’s cottage. Heated as I was about Thormar’s wagging tongue, the cold was paralyzing and the wind lashed my skin. I planted myself in front of the fire under a heap of blankets. As I shivered there, Kendra emerged from her room.
“Well?” she asked.
I said nothing, knowing whatever blanks I left, Thormar would fill in anyway. I was surprised when he related only fragments, leaving out everything we’d learned from Vesorianna about her father’s murder. Asher added only that he remained suspicious about the cause of death after investigating the scene. I was both impressed by their subtlety and sorry for their lies, especially as the hopeful light faded from Kendra’s eyes. My niece’s father, my brother, had been murdered, and the ones Petros had summoned to continue his investigation and avenge his death were apparently no use at all.
It was Grim who dispelled that notion. “We talked to a ghost,” he blurted.
Kendra looked at Grim, then to Thormar for confirmation. When he nodded, her jaw dropped and her face paled a shade. “A ghost?”
“Aye,” said Grim. “That of the warden’s wife, Vesorianna. She claimed to have witnessed the murder of your father at the hands of men robed in black.”
Kendra’s gaze shot to Thormar. “Is that true?”
“I…I…” stuttered Thormar, whose misadventures continued.
“Auntie, is it true?”
I turned my face toward hers, and saw in it such desperation that all hope of maintaining the charade evaporated. “Aye, that’s what the ghost said.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she snapped at no one in particular.
“It was a ghost, and ghosts lie,” I said, trying to justify our own fib. “Isn’t that right, Asher? Isn’t that what Grimbro said?”
“The undead have been known to lie.”
“And so have the living!” Kendra said. “What more haven’t you told me?”
With nothing left to lose we told her the rest: the banishment of the warden; the involvement of the Notorious Five; our suspicions of the Whispering Way being at the bottom of it all. She nodded as she took it all in, as though it all made sense, but when we asked if she had observed any suspicious behavior among the townsfolk, she had no answer. When she could extract no more information from us she returned to her bedchamber and closed the door. Ashamed, I wrapped myself once again in blankets before the fire, gazing at the flames until I nodded off.
When I woke in the morning, it was to Thormar arguing with Kendra. She was dressed in traveling garb and intended to return to the prison with us to hear the ghost’s tale for herself. Thormar warned her of the many dangers of the place, and Asher told her that his resources as a healer would be strained and he couldn’t assure her safety or survival. For my part, I felt strange trying to dissuade her; although I’m her aunt, she’s older than me by a good few years. Instead, I asked why she wanted to go with us.
“Revenge.”
“Fine,” said I, and it was Thormar’s turn to shoot a cold look when I didn’t try to talk Kendra out of it. If it had been Halis who’d been murdered, I’d certainly seek vengeance, and besides, Kendra’d had a good teacher in her studies of magic. I hoped she had studied well. One by one, the others stopped trying to convince Kendra, whose mind was made up. Finally, Thormar conceded and we were on our way.
Once we were back inside Harrowstone we wasted no time in returning to Vesorianna’s chamber, where the blue lady again appeared and corroborated what Kendra had already gotten out of us. My niece questioned the ghost about the agents of her father’s death, and once she had heard that the robed figures had marched off toward the town after killing him, she thanked Vesorianna for the information and the rest of us for escorting her to the prison then announced her intention to go home. Thormar told her we would walk her back to town, but she would have none of it. Thormar stood watch from the gates as she walked down the hill and vanished in the distance, then chastised the rest of us for allowing her to leave alone. We reminded the paladin of the urgency of our errand, and that seemed to placate him. We filed back inside.
We’d opened every door on the ground floor and it was time to explore another level. Knowing the descending staircase was blocked and believing the Notorious Five would inhabit the tunnels below, we decided instead to clear the upper level. We climbed a spiral staircase to emerge into another dusty corridor. I saw no sign of danger in the passage, but even so, the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention, and a chill surged through me. When something pounded on the wall in front of me, I lost my nerve and I could see from the ashen look on Asher’s face that he felt the same. We both backed down the stairs post-haste. The others remained, but I felt no guilt for leaving them to face whatever foe lay beyond that wall; there was only fear, thick and dark. I followed Asher to his temple, where we both stood, breathing heavily and saying nothing.
After a few moments in the temple, the consecrated place seemed to steady Asher, and I composed myself as well. We looked at each other, this time with guilt in our eyes, then left the safety of the chapel to redeem ourselves in the eyes of our companions. As soon as I had gained the landing, I heard the strains of a dark melody played on a flute, dirge-like and compelling, accompanied by the flap of leathery wings. We all looked at one another, comprehension dawning on our faces: the Piper of Illmarsh was near. Stirges burst into the hallway and I retreated behind Krevkul and Asher. The gravedigger and the ranger defended against the bloodsuckers even as sounds of combat erupted from the corridor beyond, where Thormar and Grim had gone in search of other foes. All the while, the ghostly strains of the piper’s song echoed in the corridor. The sound brought to mind the Piper’s flute, and again the desire to play it seized me. I yanked it from my pouch and set it to my lips and…
…cold, so cold. The silver’s chill dives down my throat to freeze my heart and the warm blood flees. It leaks out my eyes, my ears, my nose and mouth. It pours through the skin of my neck, runs down into my smallclothes. It patters to the floor, the drops beating a vague rhythm to the melody I play. I have never played better, and it matters little if all my blood flees my body, for my song is beautiful, heart-rending. Even the stirges listen as I play, I can feel them, their tiny minds falling under my control. The Piper appears before me, his visage wrought of darkness, his eyes red as the blood that pours from my own, his flute at the black maw of his mouth. His song falters, then resumes. His efforts are folly. His notes are weak, his melody choppy under my own flowing one. It matters not if my mortal body drains itself; my melody will make me immortal. There has never been, never can be, another to compare. Not even the Piper. His melody stops, starts, stops, and though he tries time and again to play along, it is futile and I can feel his essence fading, fading…winking out. My song has vanquished him; he is gone, eclipsed, he never existed…nothing has ever existed, there is only my song, there is only the melody I play that sets the very gods to dancing.
The jealous gravedigger tries to claim the flute for his own, but I spin away from his attempt to snatch it from me, and when he tries again I swing an elbow into his temple. This is my swan song. Let the gravedigger bury my shriveled body. My song will live on as long as…
Asher slapped again at the flute and this time it clanged to the floor. I followed it, landing in a puddle of my own blood. Dim awareness trickled back into my mind as the flow of blood stopped and I scented gravedirt and felt Asher’s healing touch. My eyes fell on the flute, lying in the blood it had drained, but the need to play it had abandoned me. I grabbed instead one of my vials of healing brew and quaffed it at a draught, and the warm liquid banished the chill from my limbs and calmed the frantic beating of my heart. The flute took the vial’s place in my pouch. I’d lost the desire to give my life to music. Still, some traveling minstrel might leap at the opportunity to purchase such a lovely instrument….
24 Abadius, Later
While the others investigated the cell block, I sat in my own blood, my thoughts in grey disarray. Even from within my pouch the flute sang to me, its music drowning out clear thought. The melody dipped and surged, taking me with it to soaring heights. Were I to put the flute to my lips and give voice to it, they would all listen rapt. The Piper was no man of vision. Who would command mere stirges when its sweet music exerted power over life and death?
The stink of the blood congealing all around me reminded me that playing the flute had its cost. It stayed in my pouch as I joined my companions. When we arrived in Ravengro I knew for better or worse that Petros’ summons had thrown my lot in with the others in his will. Since then I’ve been trying to understand this forced relationship. In some moments I’ve felt real companionship beyond the need to accomplish the task Petros gave us; at others I’ve found myself laughing at their misadventures and wondering what my brother could have been thinking to team me up with the likes of Thormar and Asher. Petros always did see far, though, and the utility of the Zealots, like that of the others, had proved itself time and again in seeing us through the prison alive.
As far as Asher goes, though, I still can’t put a finger on what it is that binds us. I feel him evaluating my every action, as though he were Pharasma herself come to judge me ere I reach the Boneyard. He leaves no doubt that his priorities are goddess and temple, yet I must confess his own loyalty has been greater than my own. Even after saying I betrayed him and the others by helping myself to the coin in the safe, he’s watched over me, and I don’t just mean to keep me from trying something like that again. He’s kept me safe and alive, and he was the only one there when fear gripped us both in the infirmary and we fled. As we’d stood in Pharasma’s chapel I’d felt something more than relief. While he muttered quiet prayers I’d felt connected to the gravedigger in a way I’d never even felt connected to my brother, something far below the surface, running cool through my veins and in my lungs, and the smell of gravedirt remained in my nostrils even when Asher wasn’t around.
Scattered and shattered bones were all that was left of the skeletons that had fought to the Piper’s tune. The dank cells contained little more than mold and dust and a pair of buckets to get food in and out...except a scrap of fabric beneath a moldy straw mattress, and it looked to be in good condition. Petros himself had a cloak that looked as though it had just come from the furrier, though he’d found it at the bottom of a collapsed well, shrouding the long-decayed bones of its wearer. Only magical enchantment, he’d told me, could keep fabric intact in such conditions, and indeed when Petros donned it I could scarcely see him at all, though he stood just before me. I wonder what ever became of that cloak.
Sure I’d found a similar treasure I stepped into the cell, and that was all it took to prove me right about the magic but wrong about the treasure. The fabric exploded from the straw, canvas whipping madly, heavy brass buckles swinging on long, thick straps. Thormar stepped between me and the straitjacket and I scrambled out of the close confines of the cell. A second flapping jacket erupted from a cell down the block, and while Thormar ducked and dodged to avoid being entangled in the straitjacket, I set an arrow to my bowstring and loosed at the newcomer. The arrow stuck in the canvas, followed by another as Krevkul’s bow twanged beside me. Though we made a pincushion of it, the straitjacket was in our midst within seconds. This time, it was Grim who took my place as I backed out of the way of the buckles. His dagger flashed just as canvas arms wrapped around Asher, and the shredded cloth fell to the floor.
With the immediate threat thwarted I looked over to see how Thormar was faring and was alarmed to see the straitjacket had become part of his livery. His mouth hung open in a silent scream as the straps tightened around his torso; his face had gone blue. He pawed at the buckles as the straps fought to thread their way through, but he was nearly out of breath. Just when I thought he would collapse his fingers closed on one of the straps and he found the leverage to wrench himself free. He threw the jacket to the floor, where Halis and Krevkul and Grim stilled it with spells and blades.
Hoping not to find any more animated straitjackets, we continued to search the cells of the upper floor. Grimgold had taken a set of lockpicks from the property room, and though they were inferior to
(Gant’s)
mine, he managed to pop a few locks under my tutelage. When he’d told me he wanted to give it a try I’d thought it a jest, but for all the power in those big hands, he had a light touch on the tumblers. Perhaps there is more to this other half-blood than it would seem.
Our search led us to the front end of the prison, where huge stone pillars served as the only barrier to the outside. The air rushed through the opening, and cold as it was, I was glad for a breath of it before we entered the last cell of the wing. This one was larger than the others, and when Grim and Thormar moved in to explore, I only peeked inside. Something about the cell unsettled me. A skeleton lay on the floor, weighted chains tangled among the bones. Each of the cylindrical weights bore a holy symbol, and when Thormar compared those on the weights to the ones he’d found tangled together in the property room, each one matched. It seemed we’d found Sefic Corvin. As punishment for impersonating a holy man to carry out his ill deeds, the warden had weighted Father Charlatan down with the burden of each cheated god’s vengeance.
The flute had been (dare I say it?) instrumental in defeating the Piper, so we reasoned that Thormar would have to find a way to wield the symbols against the false priest. He systematically touched each of the symbols in the tangle to those on the weights, hoping for some evidence of effect. After he’d touched his own goddess’ symbol to its counterpart, Thormar shook his head violently.
“My goddess is displeased. I cannot continue with this faithless charade.”
Asher took up the task, but as soon as he connected the pentagrams of Asmodeus he reeled and barely managed to turn his head before vomiting into the straw. Thormar reclaimed the holy symbols, but reluctantly.
“He’s a charlatan,” Halis counseled. “Tricksy lies, remember? He’s trying to make you think this is a bad idea.”
“Aye,” I put in. “Even if the Charlatan’s faith was a farce, yours is not! Remember your faith!”
Thormar hemmed and hawed.
“Faith!”
The paladin resumed the task and it put his faith to the test. As Iomedae herself--to whom Thormar uttered constant prayers--can bear witness, his faith held strong even after I’d lost faith in my own suggestion that he continue. Touching Gozreh’s leaves threw Thormar across the room and blinded Halis temporarily. When I helped my brother from the room, he told me the reactions had to do with each deity, and, as though in corroboration, Thormar leveled Asher with a barroom brawler’s haymaker when he clinked Caidin’s tankards. He touched each in turn, but if he had destroyed Father Charlatan’s spirit in the process, there was no evidence. Taking a different tack, Thormar took the jumble of symbols in his hand and placed them as one against the skull.
Bright light flashed in the room, dazzling me. When I could see again, everyone but Halis and me lay on the floor. My heart dropped into my stomach to see all of them sprawled there, but my feet moved of their own accord. I got to Asher’s side and fished the healing wand from his belt. I’d had a try at using it before to no result, but this time the wand made my hand tingle when I enclosed it in my fingers. When I touched it to Asher energy surged through me, as though the wand had focused my own life force to aid Asher. His eyes fluttered open and he looked at me, then at the others on the floor. I handed him the wand but he replaced it in his pouch, using smelling salts instead to revive the others.
If the holy symbols we’d found in the property room indeed held some power over Father Charlatan, we were damned if we could figure how to activate it. One by one the others emerged from the cell to join Halis.
And then others joined us.
They seemed to rise out of the floor, rotten bits of long-dead bodies congealing into crude forms oozing malevolent intent. I whirled to face them…
Darkness comes quick as fingers damping a candle. Cold tightens about me but that is all there is, just cold and dark and awful loneliness and…
Light grows, distant and pale at first, then firing into the full radiance of dawn. Soon the whole world is aglow. When I see her she is gorgeous, glowing, thin as a blade but pulsing with bright power. She approaches and I await the touch of her warmth...but it never comes.
“Kelanna,” she intones. “Your friends are all dead. Only you could I save. You are reborn, child of the dawn.”
Dead? If the Lady says it’s so,then perhaps...but all of them? Even Halis? Why, then, do I still feel him?
The glow wavers and I can make out her features, beautiful as the sunrise itself. She is garbed all in light, and round her neck she wears the icon of her faithful.
Why would a goddess need a symbol of herself?
“To express unity with those who would worship me. Trust in me, Kelanna.”
“Trust in a charlatan? Never. You are no goddess. You are a lie.”
The light pales again and the image of beauty falters for a moment, then it is whole again.
“Why would you say such a thing, Kelanna?”
“Because you are no goddess. You are Sefic Corvin, Father Charlatan, and you would have my soul and those of my companions.”
The dawn dims and before she can respond I hear the ring of arms far away, the crash of steel on brittle bone. “Kelanna, why do you lack faith in the Dawnflower?”
“Dawnflower? Hardly. You are but a weed. I have felt your kind, Charlatan. The Piper was in me too.”
His guise as goddess collapses. In her place stands a withered corpse in tattered robes, hunched under the weight of chains. “Who hasn’t been in you, harlot?”
“Feeble at best, Charlatan. At least the Piper made me bleed for it. You are nothing, a faithless coward in the mantle of a holy man. A wonder anyone fell for your shams. Run along now, Charlatan, and face the judgment of those you have maligned.”
The light fades, fades...then explodes. The world vanishes in its splendor.
“M’lady, are you all right?”
When light returned it was the bluish glow of Thormar’s sword. He and Asher knelt over me, their icons dangling before me, their faces dark with concern.
“He’s gone,” Thormar said. “Father Charlatan is gone.”
I smiled. “You don’t say.”
25 Abadius (?)
What does it matter? Days blur together in here anyway. That was precisely the reason I never wanted to go to prison in the first place. So what in weird Abyss am I doing here, when no door bars my way? Why, when I stood at the threshold, cold fresh freedom on my face, did I turn back and retrace the passages I’d taken in my flight from the soul-wilting screams of long-dead skulls?
With the defeat of Sefic Corvin, we’d cleansed the upper level of Harrowstone of its undead denizens. Our celebration of this victory consisted of grim nods and Asher’s ministrations. When I’d tried to sit up after the false priest vanished, I’d been unable to; my ribs ached and it hurt to breathe. Asher opened my jerkin to reveal bruised indentations where a chain had coiled like a serpent about me. The others recounted the events that had transpired during my conversation with the Charlatan: the chains around Corvin’s body had snaked around my ankles at the instant the corpses congealed into something like life, and while the others battled the plasmic monstrosities the chains coiled tight about my torso. Thormar said the knot of holy symbols had filled him with righteous power in the fight to liberate my body, but even so they’d been hard-pressed to defeat the malignant spirit that held it. My tunic was wet with holy water they’d splashed on a bodiless foe and the air was thick with the flat earthy odor of Asher’s magic. He looked into my eyes and I tried to focus on him but his mouth was a blur as he muttered his prayers and then the grave scent filled my nostrils and I sucked it deep into my lungs and when I exhaled the pain escaped with my stale breath.
As soon as I was on my feet we descended the stairs and returned to Ravengro. There’d been some argument as to the wisdom of returning to town so quickly; after all, we’d left it only a couple of hours before. In the end, those in favor of returning had prevailed, so we endured another hour in the icy chill on the walk back. As it turned out, the cold stroll was the highlight of the trip. The townsfolk were less than thrilled to see us, apparently wondering how we could be battling evil at the prison if we spent twenty-two hours of our day in town. Asher, as agreed, had gone to his temple to report to Father Grimbro, and despite Halis’ and my misgivings about the man, Thormar insisted on apprising Sheriff Kaylor of our exploits. Krevkul accompanied the paladin while I returned with Halis and Grim to Kendra’s cottage.
Kendra was not there. Halis gave me a sour look--he’d sided with Thormar that we should escort our niece back to town while I agreed with Kendra that she could take care of herself--but I remained unconcerned. She’d let it be known that she intended to ferret out the perpetrators of her father’s death, and it seemed to me unlikely that she could learn in a couple of hours what six of us had failed to discover in a week. Halis stomped off to one of the bedrooms and I laid a fire in the hearth, stripped off my musty leather jerkin and damp tunic, and buried myself in blankets before the fireplace.
Just as I was on the edge of sleep Thormar and Krevkul returned. “Where’s Kendra?” asked the paladin.
“Not here,” I said from my cocoon.
Thormar was alarmed. “Has she been here?”
“No. Not since we got here. She’s probably out looking for shadow wizards.”
Thormar wore the expression of a worried governess. “We should have accompanied her from Harrowstone.”
“She’s a grown woman,” I assured him, “and the most skilled caster in Ravengro with Petros dead. She’ll be fine.”
“We must look for her,” he insisted. “I would feel responsible if any ill has befallen her.”
I sat up, the furs falling from my shoulders. Thormar’s eyes dropped momentarily to my breasts before he remembered himself. I took my time concealing them. “Thormar, not every damsel is in distress. The only woman you should be concerning yourself with is Vesorianna. You know as well as I that time is precious. We dare not tarry.”
Thormar frowned. Whatever leverage I’d hoped to gain from his peek at my teats had failed to move him. “Have you no concern for your niece?”
“Kendra has made her choice and I wish her well, but we cannot afford to delay in our duty to rid Harrowstone of the remaining three. If the Splatterman succeeds in banishing Vesorianna the shades of Harrowstone will no longer be bound by its walls. Do you want to be responsible for that?” That seemed to give him pause. I pressed my advantage. “Did you ask Kaylor if any more letters have appeared on the monument?”
“We did not find the sheriff.”
“If I’m right, they’re coming every third day,” said Krevkul. “The next should come tonight.”
“In that case, I will seek him at the monument. Perhaps he knows something of Kendra’s whereabouts.” Thormar hurried out the door. Krevkul looked at me, shrugged, and followed.
Kendra returned not five minutes after they’d gone. I told her we’d banished another of the Five and she told me she’d turned up no leads in her investigation. “Where are the others?” she asked.
“Asher is at his temple. Thormar took Krevkul to look for you.”
Kendra rolled her eyes and went off to her room.
I’d just gotten to doze again when I started to a noise at the door. I opened my eyes as Grimgold pulled it open to stand face-to-face with Petros. I told myself I was still asleep and dreaming, but knew it was a lie. His robe was a burial shroud and one side of his face was caved in. He reeked of rot. Grim slammed the door.
“Wh-What was that?” I stammered.
Grim looked pale. “I--”
“It was Petros,” Halis said from behind me, his voice flat and cold as my own. “Or whatever’s become of him.” The oaken door shivered as the Petros-thing pounded on it with fists and feet. My brother’s once-rich voice grunted displeasure at the barrier.
Grim retrieved his chain from the floor near his bedroll. His left hand coaxed it into whirring circles while the right reached for the latch. He glanced at Halis then at me. My bow had replaced the furs gathered at my shoulder and Grim’s gaze, like Thormar’s, lingered before he turned back to the door. Alas, there was no time for games now. Grimgold yanked the door open. The Petros-thing stumbled through and Grim swung the ball round to slam into its back, but despite its meaty thud the blow did little to slow the corpse’s advance. I took bead on my brother’s eye. There was no sign of the life that once lit that eye, nothing of the glimmer when he was scheming, let alone the jubilant blaze when he’d scored. His jaw dangled askew and the skin lay loose and leathery over his nose. Still, the face was familiar, loved, and I kept my fingers curled around my bowstring. Fortunately, Halis was unburdened by such sentimentality. His lips moved to make his spell as he stepped forward, and fire blossomed in his hands. Their farewell embrace left Petros’ death shroud afire. Halis stepped back and Grimgold shoved the blazing body outside to burn. As soon as he’d closed the door again I collapsed into my covers and wept.
I awoke to excited talk in the room. Thormar and Krevkul had returned, telling a similar tale to our own: they too had fought walking dead when they’d visited the town square. By the time they’d put them down and finally found Sheriff Kaylor at the monument, folk were again looking at them with suspicion instead of hope. Despite Kaylor’s guards, who had surveilled the area through the night, an O had appeared in blood on the monument. The Splatterman was one step closer to banishing Vesorianna. I thanked the gods she had a long name.
In the morning, while the others readied themselves to depart, Halis pulled me into his bedchamber. He reached into a pocket and produced a tiny model cottage.
“What’s that?”
“I found it on Petros’ body. It’s enchanted with powerful magic.” His voice was flat, with no hint of the excitement he usually had when he found magical toys. He gnawed his lower lip and his fingers fidgeted with his prize. “Look.” He presented the cottage base-up. Written there were the letters H-A-L-I.
“Dear gods.”
“Don’t tell the others. I don’t know what it does.”
“But it has your name on it. Most of it, anyway.”
“So does this.” He took from his rucksack the spellbook we’d found in the property room. The Splatterman’s spellbook. He leafed through the pages. His name adorned nearly all of them.
“You’ve got to get rid of that.”
Halis looked at me as though I’d gone mad. “Get rid of it? Pray tell, how did you vanquish the Piper?”
I planted a hand on my hip. “It’s not the same.”
“It is the same. And it doesn’t matter. I’m keeping the book.” Halis replaced it in his pack and cinched it shut. “Come on. It’s time to go.”
At the prison we returned to Vesorianna’s chamber to see if she’d felt the effects of the new letter. We found her image changed: she now wore a skirt of chain mail; a knot of holy symbols hung at her neck; and a flute dangled from her belt.
“The defeat of the two has strengthened me, but the name spell is taking its toll. The other three can do little while I remain within these walls, but if they complete the name…”
“That will not happen,” Thormar said in his best orator’s voice, and within a few minutes we stood above the shaft in the guard room, staring into darkness below. Krevkul tied off the rope but the paladin went first. He’d lowered himself just below the floor when the rope jiggled then went slack. The “Oh!” he uttered as he fell was more like surprise at discovering a rat in the pantry than the prospect of falling into the dark unknown, and a moment later came the splash. “I’m all right!” came his triumphant voice from below. After Thormar’s fall Krevkul took the time to knot the rope, making it much easier to cling to, and a good thing: Asher too slipped, but the knots and Krevkul’s quick hand kept him from falling. Soon we all stood on the lower landing.
A foot of water covered the stone floor and there was none of the dust of the upper levels. The remains of the elevator that crushed the warden lay nearby, surrounded by shattered bones. I had just begun to poke around in the rubble when I heard Thormar invoke Iomedae’s name. I turned to see skeletons rising from the floor, rusty scimitars and chains in their bony fingers. The skeletons converged on Asher as though trying to settle a debt with the gravedigger. They slashed and beat at him, and an ugly gash rent one of his arms. With the other he swung his mace, dashing one of the skeletons to bits of broken bone. Even as the bones clattered to the ground another of its kind lurched at Halis and he cried out as its scimitar found its mark. I turned to see blood belch from a deep wound in Halis’ belly. Having learned arrows were ineffectual against skeletons I drew one of the flasks of holy water from a pouch and hurled it at my brother’s assailant. The flask shattered and water gushed down its breastbone, smoke rising as liquid boiled over bone. The skeleton whirled to face me but before it could bring its scimitar to bear Krevkul smashed it to bits with his earth-breaker. While the ranger gave a similar treatment to the last of the skeletons, Asher muttered prayers over Halis, his hands knitting the flesh beneath the ripped tunic with divine energy.
My brother’s bleary eyes focused and he nodded thanks to the gravedigger. “Well then, shall we?” he said.
Thormar and Grim took the lead from the landing through its only door. When I neared the portal I saw that the floor beyond was dry, and upon it lay the skeletons of more of the fire’s victims. I’d no sooner realized the threat than they rose from the floor as one, loose bones clicking into place as though animated by some invisible puppeteer. I ducked behind the doorway and peered around the jamb as the skeletons--six or seven at the least-- advanced. As they clattered across the stones the bones went from white to grey then black. A moment later they’d surrounded Thormar and Grim in the doorway and Thormar was swinging his morning star and shouting that the bones were going to ignite. As he pronounced this smoke began to rise off the skeletons, and I was glad to have a wall between me and them. Halis and Krevkul also seemed quite content to remain behind cover if the bones burst into flame, but Asher surged forward, brandishing his icon as he shouted down these affronts to his Lady.
“Pharasma aid me!” he called. “Put these tormented souls to rest!” I waited for the blinding flash that would dash the skeletons into so many splinters, but it did not come. The skeletons held the doorway.
I saw Grim’s chain cut through the smoke and heard bone shatter even as Krevkul stepped forward with his hammer in hand. He’d hardly taken a step when the skeletons exploded into flame. A wave of heat drove me back behind the barrier, and the blazing wind carried the smell of burning cloth and flesh. When I dared look again I saw smoke curling from my companions’ livery, but they were still alive and fighting.
Though his shield was aflame and the skin of his face scorched, Asher stood stalwart against his foes. “Pharasma! I implore you! Use me as a vessel to send these restless dead to your judgment!” This time his icon flared with light and it felt as though the air had been sucked out of the room. Asher’s hands vibrated and soon his arms were shaking. His eyes rolled up into his head and his mouth fell open and then sound too vanished for an instant as Asher belched divine energy at the skeletons. They leaned back as though blown by a strong wind, shivering under the force. As one they threw their heads skyward and shrieked in agony, then crashed to the ground, naught more than the pile of bones they’d been.
It seemed a long while before anyone moved, and I’d begun to wonder if Asher had frozen time itself before he took a step into the room. A moment later Thormar stepped up beside him. “You grow strong in Pharasma’s favor. My thanks to you and your Lady.” He poked around the fallen bones, as though unconvinced of the reality of what Asher had done. I followed Halis into the chamber when Krevkul gave us room, and saw that Grim had been burned badly around his face and neck. Again, it was Asher’s favor with Pharasma that healed his burnt flesh. I looked at Asher as I entered. His eyes were still cold, but they were somehow...serene.
A sign on the door from which we’d entered labeled it “Hell’s Basement”, and a quick circuit of the room revealed three other corridors: “Reaper’s Hold”, “Nevermore” and “Oubliette”. In each of them, a pair of doors lay along the corridor before a lowered portcullis barred the way a few dozen paces in. When Grim examined the one in Reaper’s Hold, his hand upon its rusty bars caused the prison to erupt in a cacophony of anguished wails, and a sense of deep foreboding descended over me. I drew closer to Thormar and felt a little less afraid. Whatever else I could say about him, there’s something about the man that allays my fears, and were it not for the fact that he tends to rush into every fight, I’d be inclined to stick close to him more often. Now, with the shrieks of the undead still reverberating in my head, I followed him through one of the doors in Reaper’s Hold. Just as in the other corridor we’d investigated, the room beyond served as a guardroom. In the corner stood a winch for raising and lowering the barrier. The one in Nevermore had been in pretty bad repair, but the one in Reaper’s Hold looked serviceable enough. Even with Thormar’s calming influence, though, I felt deep dread even to be in the guardroom and soon could bear it no longer. I fled the room and crossed the hall toward another door. Thormar followed.
I didn’t even have to enter the room across the hall to fear it. Thormar moved in and I felt my resolve go with him. From the doorway I could see four skulls arranged on a table. When I looked closer I saw that each had been pieced together from broken fragments, and that some pieces were missing. An incomplete fifth skull, apparently assembled from bits of the others, rested near the others. I recognized the Mosswater Marauder’s handiwork from the descriptions I’d read of his crimes; he was still trying to rebuild his murdered wife’s skull. I looked up from the skulls when Grim stepped back suddenly, and I saw the shriveled body of a dwarf lying beyond. Weird light played over the dwarf then there he was like green vapor, standing over his own body, weeping, a hammer clutched in his hands. He looked up with vacant eyes and all at once the skulls were ablaze with phantom fire and bits of broken bone began to orbit them like satellites. Then the skulls started to scream.
The shrieking pierces my ears before I can clap my hands over them. The impulse strikes to draw my dagger and thrust it through my eardrums but even that could never block out the horrid sound. It is the choral wail of the Marauder’s bludgeoned victims, rivaled only by the sobbing lament of Onyxcudgel himself for his murdered wife. The screams coalesce into a palpable wave of malignant fear that bores through bone into brain and my own skull vibrates, shakes, my teeth clacking like castanets and my lips closing and parting like a baby looking for suck. Warm liquid trickles down my leg into my boot but there is no shame, only shrieking terror. The close confines of the corridor resound with the awful noise until there is nothing else. I wheel about, hands clamped around my head to keep my jaw from rattling apart. Krevkul pushes past me into the room while Halis eyes me but they are mute, distant. I leave the door behind. Halis lurches toward me but I shove past without a look back. Somewhere...somewhere there is a world beyond that hideous shrieking.
My feet carried me across the chamber in a straight line from Reaper’s Hold to Hell’s Basement and I splashed through water, sloshing about blindly. I could see nothing; all I knew was that the farther I could get from the skulls the better. Something brushed my face and the odor of hemp told me all I needed know. I wrapped my hands around the rope and shimmied up. The knots made the climb easier but I’ve no doubt I’d have found the strength had they not been there; had there been no rope at all I might have sprouted wings. If anything was more horrible than that screaming it was the idea of being trapped in the cell blocks of the prison-turned-tomb.
The shrieking, though diminished, still burrows into my mind like a tick. My thoughts focus long enough to realize I am alone in utter darkness, but I draw my dagger and thrill at the sight of the pale light emanating from the blade. I hold it before me, pausing only long enough to find the door, and then I am through it. I bear the dagger like a talisman to ward off the evils of the darkness: a missing flagstone here; the flashing red eyes of vermin there. A corridor, a door, another corridor and the shrieking is far behind me, but a memory. At last I round a bend and there it is: freedom.
I stood facing the open doorway. When we’d come into the prison, it had been clear and cold and the prying wind howled among the rat-haunted towers on the outer wall. Now I beheld a scene of idyllic winter: the gales had ceased; the sky had gone steely and fat snowflakes drifted down to add more layers to the white carpet covering the prison yard. A pair of geese nuzzled one another on the shore of the frozen pond. The snow had banished the coldest air and it felt almost warm. With icicles clinging to its eaves and its sagging roof blanketed in white, the collapsing manor house looked almost inviting. The gate stood open, and beyond and below the river wound like blue ribbon through its valley. All that was missing was the merry tinkle of sleigh bells.
And here we are again, back at that question: why didn’t I step out of the dismal, haunted confines of Harrowstone and into that scene of frozen beauty? It was the light. Not the flat light filtering through the dirty grey clouds but the light of my dagger, which I still held thrust before me.
All the white light of the snow is dingy and pale before the luminous radiance of my blade. It is soothing, glorious. What flame, what lamp, what blazing star could hope to shine so bright, so pure? It is the first light beheld by a newborn sliding from the womb; it is the light those on the cusp of death float toward. It lays bare truth and falsehood, good and evil, life and death.
And it illuminated the path, and mine lay along the same corridors I’d just quit. I took a last look at the winter wonderland then retreated into Harrowstone, guided by the light bestowed by Asher and the Lady of Graves.
Later...
Four down, one to go.
They’d put down the Mosswater Marauder by the time I met up with my friends on the lower landing. They’d had a rough go of it, to hear Thormar tell it. His insubstantial form had rendered their mundane weapons useless. They’d finally managed to dispel the haunt with holy water and Asher’s bursts of positive energy, but the victory had been hard-won, and to a man they looked bone-weary. I’d not been thrilled when Thormar asked me to return to help search the room Onyxcudgel’s shade had inhabited, but it proved to be a good thing: I discovered a hidden catch on one of the walls and once I’d popped it a door sprung open to reveal a space behind. Inside we found more flasks, which Halis identified as healing brews, as well as arms and armor. Thormar found a well-crafted longsword and laid aside his own to bear it; Asher selected a mace superior to the well-used one he’d carried, as well as a suit of fine chain mail. I helped myself to a studded leather brigantine as well as a length of enchanted rope. Halis instructed me in its use and I soon learned to command it to knot and unknot itself as well as to climb through the air toward any anchor I chose. I marveled that the key to salvation had been mere steps from the Marauder’s body, yet it had lain undiscovered and he had died like the rest. Armed with our new acquisitions we moved out of Reaper’s Hold toward Oubliette, the only corridor we hadn’t checked.
No not in there please no.
The voice was small and scared, and it scared me. To that point every word, every syllable pronounced by the voice that haunted me had rung with cold control. Hearing it plead shook my resolve and my step faltered as Thormar moved into the corridor, sword before him. The darkness lay thick ahead and even Pharasma’s luminescence on the paladin’s blade shone but dimly. Standing at the threshold I felt cold air roll over my feet. A chill ran up my spine and back down, sapping my warmth and leaving an overwhelming sense of loneliness in its wake.
Nay, lass, ‘tis more than loneliness. The voice in my mind had steadied somewhat, but it was still barely a whisper. Its conspiratorial confidence had evaporated, replaced by the concerned tone of worried kin. May a thousand demons devour the soul of the man who dreamed up the oubliette. Gods know they devoured mine when they threw me down that hole. Turn back, child. The darkness will have your mind.
Fearing I’d lost it already, I kicked my feet into motion again to hurry after the others. Lonely as the oubliette felt, I didn’t want to be left alone in the black tunnels where hundreds had been imprisoned in life and death. The voice fell to quiet whimpering. Rather than succumb to the dread it tried to spread in me I found courage in my defiance of the presence that had cowed me ever since It had first spoken to me. I found the others huddled around a closed door. When I stepped up to look it over, I noted with some dismay that the portcullis was up. Nothing barred the corridor to the oubliette. Cold fear and loneliness crept in again. Making sure the paladin stood between me and the yawning portal, I gave the door the once-over and made haste to back away.
Thormar laid hold of the latch and threw the door open. As he did flames licked out and I heard the sizzle of flesh beneath a cry that was more surprise than pain. The flames did what the paladin’s enchanted blade had failed to do, dispelling the thick darkness of the passageway. I ducked back to the cover of the doorway and when I peeked again I saw a headless skeleton, wreathed in flames and wielding an axe. It swung its axe in hard, fast arcs, making Thormar dance backward into the hall. The lack of a head didn’t seem to impair it; one of the blows caught Thormar in the chest, and only his thick armor prevented the axe from sundering his ribcage. Even so, the paladin stumbled with the force of the blow and fell forward to burn himself again on the blazing bones. Grim lashed out with his chain and Krevkul took aim with blunted arrows, but neither attack seemed to harm the flaming skeleton, which pressed into the corridor once Thormar had given it room. Its reaving axe caught the paladin again and blood spurted from his arm to steam on the hot blade. Halis took up a position on the other side of the doorway I occupied and flailed out a spell, but in his haste something went awry and Halis doubled over, retching. Heat washed over my face and I ducked back again, fingers fumbling with my pouch. I withdrew my last flask of holy water and clutched it to my breast in case it gained the doorway. Grim wound up and swung his chain again but the links slipped through his hands and it sailed clear to pile itself in the corner beyond the skeleton. Thormar leaned against the wall behind him, letting his sword fall to the floor. He laid a hand over the wound in his arm, muttering all the while to his goddess. Light emanated from his palm and for a moment the skin on his arm was translucent, then the light faded. He reached over his shoulder and yanked the handle of his morning star. Just as he brought it to bear the skeleton’s axe slashed at his torso, but Thormar sidestepped the attack and whipped the spiked ball around. Had the skeleton had a head it would have been knocked clean off; instead, the blow crashed into the stub of spine that jutted above its shoulders. The skeleton shuddered then quickly renewed its assault...but it had shuddered.
The blow seemed to topple the thing’s defenses, for Krevkul’s next arrow broke bits of bone from its ribcage and his follow-up shot smashed into the top of its spine, sending broken vertebrae flying into the wall behind. The damage did nothing to slow its assault, though; it continued to flail at Thormar, and its flaming bones scorched both him and Grimgold. Between me and them, Asher called out to Pharasma and threw his hands forward at our foe, but to little effect. Halis still stood with hands on knees, heaving. Thormar closed his wounds with his healing hands, but could hardly keep pace with the relentless assault of the headless skeleton. Still it swung, and still it blazed. It was time to damp the flames. When the axe arced toward Grimgold I rushed in, raising the flask and bringing it down hard and fast. The water sprayed the bones even as my momentum carried me into the flames. Pain flared in my hands and face but I’d hurt it too. The flames wavered and the fighters pressed their advantage. Thormar’s wide swing kept it off balance long enough for Grim to crush its spine with the chain he’d plucked from the floor. The skeleton went still, the flames flickering low and blue. I waited for them to wink out but they only went white. When I heard them emit a peculiar hiss my feet moved before my mind told them to and I leapt just as the bones exploded, peppering the others with blazing bone shards. My dive-roll carried me clear and I sprang to my feet. Only when I smelled the sour stench did I realize I’d rolled through Halis’s puke. Still, better regurgitated dry rations than the long splinter of charred rib that had pierced Thormar’s thigh.
As Asher treated that and the dozens of other wounds we’d suffered collectively, I picked around the rubble. Finally, I asked the question that had been wandering around in my head since the headless skeleton had appeared. “Was that the Lopper?”
“I hope so,” said Grim.
“I don’t think so,” said Thormar, bursting Grim’s bubble with my own. “It was too easy to hit him.”
“You call that easy?”
“The others had no form, no substance. This one put up a good defense, to be sure, but our blows landed. The others...our mundane weapons didn’t even touch them.”
“Aye,” said Asher. “Perhaps it’s one of his victims.”
I sighed, hoping they were wrong, knowing they weren’t. Much as I would have liked to walk out of the dark corridor once and for all there was nothing for it. We had to explore the oubliette. I held my dagger out to Asher, who infused it with Pharasma’s guiding light, and fell in among the others. After the portcullis the corridor turned right then ended at a door thirty feet farther along. Per routine I checked out the door. The sturdy lock might have kept out Gant himself had it been engaged, but the door stood ajar. I backed away and Thormar took my place.
The room beyond was empty, save for a grate dangling on a frayed rope from a rig on the ceiling. Below it a square pit yawned in the floor. The feeling of dreadful loneliness hit me again before I even moved into the chamber, my glowing dagger gripped like a talisman before me. I stepped forward to peer down into the oubliette itself, the deep hole where the worst of the worst were confined alone in the dark with only their growing madness to keep them company. The light played over rotting bones and glinting metal, but before I could have a closer look another light caught my eye, this one not the fair luminescence bestowed by the Lady of Graves, but a sickly green like rising swamp gas. It moved up through the floor, swirling and shifting until it resolved itself into the form of an axe-wielding man.
We’d found the Lopper.
His face was a rictus of unchecked insanity, eyes blazing wildly and teeth bared in a savage grin that expressed his joy at having some company at last. When he opened his mouth, though, it seemed conversation was not what he had in mind. A roar to chill the very bones filled the small room as the Lopper welcomed his visitors with broad swipes of his axe. His first swing came so suddenly that Grim could not avoid it, although he did manage to pivot so the blow struck his shoulder and not his exposed neck. Blood sprayed from the gash and hung like red mist in the air. Krevkul, utilizing the only weapon he had against the haunts, uncorked a flask and spattered the apparition with its contents. The holy water doused the ethereal form, causing it to waver into mist but even as it did Grim’s blood floated through the air to join it and the figure coalesced again. The Lopper was using his enemy’s blood to heal himself.
I hurled my own flask of holy water but it went wide, splashing harmlessly to the ground as I backed out of the fray. Thormar pressed forward to attack but the Lopper was faster; his blow crashed into Thormar’s chin with a sickening crack. The paladin’s mouth dropped open as the jawbone shattered. Before the Lopper could feed himself with the blood dripping from Thormar’s lips, Asher called on Pharasma’s grace to heal his wounded companions. The Lopper bellowed with rage as the flow of blood abated, then turned his attack on the gravedigger. His axe nicked Asher’s arm but the priest danced back quickly enough to avoid the brunt of the blow and threw his hands forward again. This time it was Pharasma’s judgment that surged from his fingertips, disrupting the Lopper’s form long enough for Thormar to wade in with his morning star. He whipped the spiked ball through the air and into the Lopper, but its grin only widened as the ball passed right through it.
Seeing the uselessness of his mundane weapon Grim took a step back and slipped his backpack from his shoulder. He let the chain drop from his grasp as he produced another weapon. A cold shiver ran through me as I recognized the Lopper’s axe. In Thormar’s hands the Marauder’s hammer had nearly done for Asher, and the Piper’s flute had damn near killed me all on its own. I hoped Grim fared better as he brought the evil, enchanted weapon to bear. I withdrew a healing brew from my pouch as a precaution then hatched a plan as I watched Asher direct Pharasma’s power against the Lopper. The same energy that healed the living harmed the undead, as evidenced by the way bits of the Lopper broke off and dissolved under Asher’s burst. I determined to make a weapon of the healing brew to see if it had the same effect. Alas, the battle shifted as I tossed the flask and it broke against Thormar’s greaves. The potion would have been better used on Grim’s wounds, as the Lopper drew blood from him again to heal the damage that had been inflicted on him. Grim met the attack with the Lopper’s own axe and when it slashed into the Lopper’s back the haunt whirled about, bringing the weapon’s ghostly twin against Grim. With the Lopper’s attention diverted, Thormar and the others stepped onto its flanks, but before they could strike the misty figure sank back into the floor.
It may have vanished, yet I was unconvinced that it had been vanquished. I spun around in quick circles, scanning the floor for signs of the Lopper, and saw mist like smoke drifting through the floor a few paces away. Even as I watched, blood flew from Asher’s wound to join the mist on the floor as the Lopper healed himself again. A moment later it fed off Grim, who began to teeter on the edge of the oubliette until Thormar steadied him. I still had one more healing draught in my pouch, but was loath to expend it on an untested hypothesis. It would be better used to heal the injured before their blood renewed our foe’s vigor.
Before I could move to administer it, though, the Lopper rose up again through the floor. Halis had been ready with holy water and splattered it over him, but the attack did little to slow the Lopper. With two quick slashes he opened deep cuts in Halis’s chest before Krevkul could intervene. As Halis staggered back the ranger stepped up and swung. His previous attacks with the great hammer had gone through the haunt as uselessly as Thormar’s morning star. Now, though, his earth-breaker emitted bright white light, courtesy of another of Asher’s spells. The hammer’s head thudded into the apparition as though it were solid and the Lopper roared in pain and anger. Seeing the effectiveness of the enchantment, Thormar thrust his morning star in Asher’s direction and the grave-digger prayed over the weapon. The paladin’s next attack provoked another unearthly howl from the Lopper. In a blind, mad rage now, he swung his axe in a blur and one flailing hack chopped deep into my thigh. As I stumbled back against the wall, I saw my blood move like a tiny cyclone through the air toward the Lopper before my companions closed around it.
The fight became a wild tangle of flesh and mist and blood. Somewhere amid the fray I heard Halis calling out a spell, the anguished roar of the Lopper, Thormar’s pleas to Iomedae. The melee broke apart and I saw Krevkul charging forward, hammer held high over his shoulders. He drove the Lopper back to the edge of the oubliette and I saw fear flicker through those mad eyes. The Lopper raised the phantom axe to strike at Krevkul, but before he could bring it down Grim plowed into the Lopper with his own weapon. The haunt’s mouth opened in a wide O but the roar that emerged sounded far away. The figure tottered on the edge of the pit and fell, and the mist dissipated in the black hole.
Without the Lopper’s mad roaring, the only sound in the room was the labored breath of my companions. We all traded glances and nods as we huffed and puffed. Thormar and Krevkul looked relieved, but the hard glint in Grimgold’s eyes made me wary. He still clutched the Lopper’s axe, his fingers caressing its handle. I urged him to put it away but he resisted until I made some rather alluring gestures that distracted his attention from his evil prize. I coaxed him with vague innuendo and suggestive glances until he tucked the axe into his pack.
Meanwhile, Asher made his rounds, closing wounds with skill and spell, but after the fierce fight even his efforts were unequal to the task. “We need to rest,” he said. “My healing spells are nearly exhausted.”
“As are mine,” said Thormar, who looked much the worse for wear.
Knowing I was down to a single healing brew, I could not argue. Asher still had the wand we’d found, but if the Splatterman proved as dangerous a foe as the Lopper, we would need all that and more. Still, with only one of the Notorious Five remaining, we agreed that a return to Ravengro would be ill-advised. Instead, we would rest in the chapel under Pharasma’s watchful eye. After retrieving an enchanted mace and magical stone from the oubliette, we climbed back up the rope to the ground floor and paid a visit to Vesorianna before heading to the chapel.
“Four down, and one to go,” Thormar reported when Vesorianna materialized over the heap of cloth and bone that once was her body. She now wore a chain hauberk and an axe hung on her belt with her other trophies.
“One to go, and the worst of them all,” she said, her voice grim. “You may rest safely here in my chamber. You will need it.”
26 Abadius: Five and Done
After a restful night in Vesorianna’s chamber, we descended to the lower level for what we hoped would be the last time. I felt a deep sense of relief that we wouldn’t be returning to the Oubliette, but the deep loathing I felt for that place was replaced by gnawing fear as we approached Reaper’s Hold. The shrieking skulls now lay in shards on the floor in the room where we’d encountered the Mosswater Marauder, but the guardroom opposite raised gooseflesh on my arms just to pass it. Thormar stepped in to work the winch to raise the portcullis, and a moment later a rusty squeal announced his success. Beyond we found a block of empty cells. Every door stood open but one, a stout oaken door in the southeast corner. I inspected it per routine then Thormar opened it to reveal a chamber of horrors.
In one corner stood an iron sarcophagus, decorated in graven images of screaming skulls. A rack of cruel-looking instruments lay against a wall, and the passage of time had not obliterated the blood that encrusted the blades and hooks and clamps they’d used to punish the wicked. The final torture victim lay on a table in the middle of the room, now reduced to bones shrouded in the tattered remnants of a guard’s uniform. Asher stepped closer to look at the body. Amid the bones of the pelvis he found a set of keys on a rusted iron ring; I shuddered at the thought of how they might have gotten there. Asher turned his attention to the skull. He pulled at the jawbone and it broke off, dropping a piece of shining metal onto the table. He held it up for all to see. It was a badge.
The warden’s badge.
“Is it Hawkran?” asked Thormar.
“I can’t say,” said Asher.
“Didn’t Vesorianna say she killed the warden with the elevator?” I asked.
“Aye, she did, but…”
“Whoever it was, he met a bad end. There’s only a couple of avenues those keys might have taken into his pelvis. And look there. And there.” Asher pointed at the bones of the fingers and toes, indicating the smooth edges where they had been severed.
“We should show the badge to Vesorianna,” said Halis.
“We’ll take the keys too,” I said, slipping the ring into a pouch in case we should find a need for them later. Meanwhile, Thormar had wandered toward the sarcophagus. I felt a chill when I noted that it now stood open, revealing long iron spikes within. I had heard of the iron maiden, but to look upon it now filled me with an echo of the pain and terror endured by those who had been enclosed within it. Thormar, though, did not seem to share my fear as he hurried toward it.
“Kendra!” he called as he rushed toward the gaping door. “Kendra!” The rest of us could only watch as he stepped close to the iron maiden and the door swung shut with him inside it. Grimgold and Krevkul moved up to pry it open. Thormar staggered out, his arms, legs and torso perforated with deep, bloodless holes that revealed the working organs beneath. Thormar’s breath was labored and his face looked pale. His lips moved in silent prayer. Asher wasted no time in calling upon Pharasma to heal the wounds, but though I felt the wash of energy and smelled grave dirt, the holes did not close.
“What in hell happened?” asked Halis.
“I..I...” muttered Thormar. “I thought I saw--”
“Kelanna!” cried Grim, who still stared at the iron maiden. “Kelanna!”
“What!” I yelled, realizing too late that he was not trying to get my attention. He moved toward the iron maiden and it closed on him.
“Damn it!” said Halis as he stepped up to help Krevkul liberate Grim. When they did he emerged looking much like Thormar: holes punctured most of his body, but there was no blood. He too appeared exhausted beyond telling; he leaned his elbows on his knees and sucked in breath. His hand still gripped the handle of the Lopper’s axe.
Grim raised his face to look at me. “I saw...you. You were in there and I…” The fingers of one hand probed the holes while the other hand caressed the axe. I looked into Grim’s eyes and was frightened by what I saw. They blazed with wild light the way the Lopper’s had. I retreated.
“Is there anything you can do for them?” asked Krevkul.
“It’s beyond my power,” Asher answered. “Perhaps Father Grimbro, but...I think they are not wounds. It is a curse.”
“What if we destroy the sarcophagus?” asked Halis. “Would that heal the wounds?”
“I don’t know. We can try.”
And try we did. Halis said the iron maiden had behaved like a haunt and he determined to use one of the remaining siphons to suck it up, but once he had everything in place he shook his head in chagrin. The haunt had to be active in order to capture it, he explained. Krevkul proposed that we might be able to make it manifest by approaching it, but Thormar dismissed that as too dangerous. I countered that we might be able to tie someone off to a rope, then pull him back when it opened so Halis could catch it. I hadn’t meant to volunteer, but once I realized that I was the smallest among us and therefore would be easiest to restrain, I wound up tied off to the enchanted rope, with Thormar and Krevkul holding the other end. I took a deep breath and nodded to Halis to make sure he was ready, then approached. Nothing happened. I pounded on it with my fist, to no result, then yanked it open on my own. I saw nothing inside--not Kendra, nor myself, nor even the spikes. It was totally empty. We made more attempts to draw out the haunt, but to no avail. Like the first one we’d encountered upstairs, this haunt had apparently taken its leave. That was fine with me.
It wasn’t to my liking, however, when Grimgold announced his intention to do the same. He complained of overwhelming fatigue and a general malaise, and said he would seek attention at the temple of Pharasma. Again, discussion ensued about escorting him back to town, but Grim was adamant. His eyes burned with something that made me shrink back, unwilling to stand in his way. I knew from his earlier advances that I might be able to sway him with my guiles, but the very thought of getting close enough to whisper promises of sweet reward made my blood run cold. In the end, he gathered up his belongings and started walking toward the rope we’d strung from the upper level. His beloved chain now lay forgotten in its sack. He had eyes only for the axe.
“Grimgold, it would be wise to leave the axe here. The Lopper is defeated, and his is a weapon of fell power.”
The look he gave Thormar froze my heart, and though I saw the struggle in Thormar himself, he too backed off to let Grimgold pass when he uttered his final argument: “Aye. Who would stand in my way when I wield it?”
Much as I wanted to keep my distance from Grim and the axe he clutched, the others thought it best to see him safely to the exit. We ascended once again, and once Grim had gone his way, we all exchanged heavy glances. Before we dropped back down to seek the Splatterman, we sought Vesorianna once again within her chamber. Thormar asked her thoughts on the wounds the iron maiden had inflicted, but she professed no understanding of the strange effects.
Asher stepped forward and showed her the badge we’d found in the skeleton’s mouth. Vesorianna’s aura brightened. “This is the item I spoke of, the one that will aid me in holding the spirits at bay. Where did you find it?” When Asher told her of the skeleton on the table, her cool blue glow wavered, then took on a reddish hue. The anger was plain on her face. “It was not him. Did I not tell you I saw him die when I dropped the elevator?”
None of us said a word. I know not what the others were thinking, but I do know none of that mattered. Whether or not it was Warden Hawkran who had endured cruel torture ere he died, Vesorianna would never believe it, and any attempt on our part to convince her otherwise would be at best futile, at worst detrimental to any assistance we hoped to get from her.
“You must return to face the final ghost. The Splatterman awaits.” She looked at Halis. “He waits for his spellbook. He waits for you.”
Thormar voiced a question we had discussed in private. “Would it be best to leave the spellbook here until he is defeated? If he were to get ahold of it…”
“Nay, servant of the Inheritor. You will need the spellbook to defeat him.” She turned to Asher. “May I have the badge?”
Asher looked doubtful. “What will happen to you once the Five are defeated?”
“I will remain to hold them in check.”
“But if they are vanquished...”
“You have damaged them, but they will return. The Piper is already back.” I felt a lump in my throat. “As has Father Charlatan. The others will follow, but as long as I remain, they cannot regain their full strength.”
I watched Asher carefully as he deliberated. I understood his dilemma. As one of Pharasma’s faithful, he was charged with sending the restless dead to the Lady’s judgment. Why would he make an exception for one? It came as a surprise when he held his hand out and relinquished the badge.
“Thank you. Now fare well in your final battle.”
Down below, we crossed to Nevermore, the final unexplored corridor. Only when we reached the guardroom in its entryway did I recall that the winch had been disabled. When we’d come that way before, Grim had made an attempt to raise the portcullis by brute strength alone, but it was far too heavy and the fire had melted the iron to the floor. Our only hope was to repair the winch. A careful examination revealed that some of its essential gears were missing, so we crossed back toward the Oubliette to see if we could harvest parts from there. The winch there was intact, and a surge of relief swept through me when I managed to disassemble it and take the necessary gears. Had I botched the job in Oubliette, Thormar surely would have insisted that we try the winch in Reaper’s Hold, and I wanted nothing more to do with that place. We returned to Nevermore and I rebuilt the winch. When Thormar leaned into it, the winch turned and the portcullis rose with an awful grinding of iron on stone. He lifted it as far as he could then locked the mechanism so we could pass through.
The fire had wreaked havoc on this wing. The doors on the empty cellars were black with soot and the chamber’s wooden supports were little more than pillars of cinders. The wall had collapsed in the far corner, and, as on the other side of the prison, water had pooled there. In the center of the room the water had filled in another pit similar to the one we’d found across the way in the oubliette. Thormar, Asher and Krevkul moved in to search the room while Halis and I remained at the portcullis. I heard Halis uttering incantations beside me, then he laid a hand on me. The spell filled me with a sense of well-being and banished the fear I felt of the evil oozing from the very walls of the chamber.
Just as Halis completed the same spell on himself, the walls oozed something else: blood. It trickled down from every crease and crack in the stone, and I watched with renewed horror as the running blood coalesced into letters. I heard Asher gasp as an A appeared, and Thormar cried out that he saw both a T and a K on the wall opposite.
Krevkul moved with his earth-breaker toward the place where his name had begun to write itself. An R had appeared next to the K, but one swing of his hammer obliterated both letters. The whole room shook with the impact. “Destroy the letters! It will banish the effects!” From behind the portcullis I nocked an arrow to my bowstring and let it fly at the S that had materialized next to the A. The arrow struck the letter and the blood leaked away, leaving only the initial letter.
Asher, who had been staring at the letters of his own name before I shot at them, pulled from his belt the silver war razor we’d found in the property room. He laid it on the floor next to the lip of the pit, then bowed his head in prayer. The razor began to glow with dull light, then set itself to spinning, brightening with every revolution. The light flared, blurred, then shook itself apart; it disintegrated into something like quicksilver and radiated outward to form a circle that encompassed most of the room.
Meanwhile, Krevkul continued to hammer at letters on the wall, but more appeared with every passing moment. Half of Thormar’s name had appeared as he struck a sunrod and dropped it into the oubliette, and the blood scrawled the first letter of Halis’ name when ducked under the portcullis. Another of my arrows obliterated the H just as Asher raised his hands and threw his divine energy at the walls to destroy those that remained. Green light flashed and the letters vanished, but before we could celebrate his triumph a low rumble came from the burnt pillars and the ceiling lurched. Timbers and stone debris fell from the walls and ceiling as those in the room scrambled for cover. Krevkul dived clear, narrowly avoiding being crushed by a falling pillar, but Thormar and Asher did not move quick enough, and stone and wood drove both to the ground. Krevkul got to his feet and helped the others to theirs, but before Asher could tend their wounds, an icy voice filled the chamber.
“Finally...you’re here. I’ve been waiting. And you’ve brought me my book.”
It’s him gods it’s him.
“I bent Hawkran and every other miserable soul in Harrowstone to my purpose. A pathetic lot like you’ll not stop me doing what I will.” His words shifted from Taldane to arcane gibberish and green fog crawled over the floor. Rats the size of cats emerged from the mist, red eyes blazing malevolence. Krevkul backstepped as the rats scampered forward to bite at him and Thormar stepped up to hack at the giant vermin.
I paid no attention to the rats. My focus narrowed to the noxious cloud roiling over the floor. Above it the shadows swirled with phantom light and a wave of cold air chased the warmth of life from the room. Dark energy raised the hairs on my neck and set my teeth on edge. Had it not been for the words Halis had spoken over me I think I would have wilted under the concentrated assault of all that hatred, but the spell emboldened me and I rushed forth. One of the rats bared its long teeth at me but shrank back when I passed, repelled by the enchantment. When I breached the entryway into the main chamber I turned to the source of the swamp light. Hovering over the floor, fingers dancing out a spell of his own, was
Him, it’s him, him who killed me.
the ghost of the Splatterman. From my quiver I drew the black arrow we’d found in the false crypt. My fingers trembled as I nocked the arrow to the string but when I drew it back my hand steadied. The crow’s-feather fletching brushed my cheek and I sighted down the ebon shaft.
End him end him now. He is a tyrant a killer a thief of minds. He used my own name to steal my self away, it was him I know it was him. The blood on the wall spelled out my name as it did to your friends and I knew what would happen when the last letter came but all I could do was watch it happen and I felt my mind go bit by bit by bit oh for gods’ sake end him.
Everything seemed to slow down around me and I was aware of everything: the mingled stinks of mold and damp and rot; the sickly pea-green light; rats skittering over stone as they attacked and retreated; the thudding whomp! of Krevkul’s mighty hammer and the wet squish of his targets; the whistle of Thormar’s blade through the air. Dust hung in the air, shifting this way and that on puffs of wind as weapons sailed past.
He is yours he is ours. Take him in the throat. Silence him forever.
On the periphery of my vision lay the glimmering line of Asher’s consecration, shimmering as it devoured the green glow oozing off the ghost. The silver light grew, radiating inward, and I basked in it. I felt the guiding hand of the Lady’s judgment brush my fingers from the bowstring and the black arrow blazed with silver light and streaked toward the Splatterman. The spell died on his lips as the arrow plunged into his throat, burying itself to the fletching. The green mist fled from the flood of quicksilver spreading from the point of impact. The shimmering wave splashed outward until Feramin’s ghostly form shone with it then it burst into droplets of quicksilver that sped outward to join Asher’s circle. My hair flew back from my face and the air rushed out of my lungs. The green light flickered, wavered, congealed. Silver crackled through it like lightning forking across the summer sky.
And then it was gone and the last sparks shot away and amid the swamp light black eyes burned with malignant anger. He raised a finger to point at me. “You will be first to die.” His hands flew up and he threw them in my direction and emerald fire bolted through the air. They struck me before I could even blink, let alone act. The missiles burned like ice burns and the chill spread through my blood into my very heart. Green light filled my head and I crashed into the wall behind me and for a moment everything went dark and quiet before the din of my own screams broke the stupor.
No! No! I shall be avenged ere you die, b%&$*! You’ll not scamper away in fear this time. I’ll watch the Splatterman die through your eyes. Pull yourself together.
The cold words were like a slap in the face. The word b~#~#! reverberated in my skull, dashing through fear and pain and leaving nothing but raw anger. I feasted on it and it radiated outward from my burning belly. My eyes snapped open and I saw my friends still battling the rats, their lips moving in mute shouts before sound too rushed back with a ring of metal on stone. Pain came next but I clung to awareness like a drowner to driftwood. My fingers slipped into the pouch on my belt until they closed on the flask I’d been holding in reserve, then peeled away the wax seal and twisted out the stopper. A bank of green fog passed across my eyes and I felt the darkness creep back amid the pain, but when the fragrance touched my nose my mouth filled with saliva and my mind bent itself to the sole task of tipping the healing draught to my lips. The bitter brew was sweet nectar and succor flowed with it down my throat. The fog lifted, leaving only wispy tatters, and color flowed back into the world.
Right. Now. Get to your feet.
The voice fed my anger. The potion had healed my wounds, but it was that echoing b@#!~! that kept me in the fight. I plucked my bow off the floor next to me then pushed my way up the wall and stood. On the other side of the chamber the Splatterman raised his hands again to summon arcane power and I winced, bracing myself for the impact, but it did not come. Instead, I heard the water in the oubliette roiling and looked to see pea soup fog erupting from the burst bubbles. A moment later a grey tentacle crept over the edge of the pit, followed by another, a third, a fourth. Krevkul nodded to Thormar and the paladin turned to face the emerging octopus. His sword sheared off one of the flailing tentacles as Krevkul smashed another rat. I turned back toward the Splatterman.
He was gone.
No! He’s still here. I can feel him.
As though in confirmation, a wash of green light caught my gaze and I turned to see the ghost drifting through the wall beyond the portcullis. Halis stood between me and the Splatterman. “Halis! Behind you!”
But Halis was already turning, calling out ancient words and tracing shapes in the air with his hands. When he lowered them again I felt no effect of the spell, but the Splatterman broke apart like mist in a breeze. Before the thrill of victory could register, though, the mist swirled and regained its form.
“You’ve got it,” Feramin said to Halis. I fitted another arrow to my string, but the Splatterman paid me no attention. His black eyes stared at my brother. Before the ghost could attack him, though, Asher called out to Pharasma from somewhere behind me and I felt the energy blow past. Halis’ hair stood on end but again it was the ghost that felt the brunt of the blast. The man-shape blew apart again before reforming. Feramin’s gaze went past my shoulder to the gravedigger, then the ghost melted into the wall again. Halis had gotten a reprieve. I whirled about in search of the Splatterman, but then I heard his voice, made ragged by the arrow I’d sent into his throat.
“Curse you, priest, and Pharasma too.” From where I was standing I couldn’t see the ghost, but I did see the fiery green bolts trail across the room to strike Asher. The gravedigger flew backward as though hit with a ram and slid across the floor, senseless. The Splatterman barked cruel laughter. “Oh, no, what now, now that your priest is dead?”
Thormar said nothing, but gave the ghost his answer anyway. He raced toward Asher where he lay, invoking the name of Iomedae as he moved. His hands took on a warm luminescence as he laid them on the fallen priest. Asher’s eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright with Pharasma’s name on his lips. I’d moved for a better vantage and saw fear on Feramin’s face when Asher threw his hands forward to hurl more of Pharasma’s might at the undead wizard.
Halis pressed another enchanted arrow into my hand. I bent my bow just as Asher’s burst blew the ghost apart, and when the swirling mist coalesced again I let fly. The arrow struck its target, but not to the same effect I’d had before. Though the arrow was enchanted, its magic was not as powerful, and it had been but a glancing shot. The ghost spared me nary a glance as he cast another spell. Further complicating our attempts to put down the ghost wizard, a giant spider appeared out of green vapor.
“I’ve got the spider!” called Krevkul. “Take the Splatterman!” Having finished the last of the fiendish rats, the ranger raised his earth-breaker and brought it down on the new foe. Soon it was naught more than a pile of goo and quivering legs.
Thormar meant to put an end to the summoned creatures by putting down the Splatterman once and for all. He flung his sword down and slid from his belt the mace we’d found behind the Marauder’s chamber. Clutching it in both fists he rushed toward the ghost. “Inheritor, guide my hands to smite this, your foe!” he bellowed, then swung the weapon like a forester felling a tree. The mace struck Feramin as though he were made of flesh and bone, and his body rocked to one side and crashed like the surf against the wall next to him. The mist splashed over the blood-damp stones and began to run down the wall before vaporizing again. When it regained Feramin’s shape the green glow was muted, like light at the bottom of a deep well, held together by malevolence alone.
“How dare you strike MEEEEE!” shrieked the ghost. The Splatterman had abandoned his spells now and attacked the paladin with the sheer brute force of his murderous rage. He drew his fist back like a brawler and drove it into Thormar’s chest. Instead of knocking him backward, though, the ghost’s hand continued through his breastbone. Thormar’s face went white and his mouth opened in a silent scream. The Splatterman released his heart with a savage cry. “NOW!” screamed Feramin, turning his arm to point at Halis. “I told you I want...THAT...BOOOOOK!”
I launched another arrow, but this time the shot went wide; the force of the ghost’s rage had rattled me. Halis, though, was not cowed. He too had shouldered his bow, and I saw the crow’s feathers against his cheek as he sighted down the twin of the arrow I’d used to draw first blood from the Splatterman. “The book is mine!” he yelled and released the string. I saw no shimmer of silver light, just the black blur as it sped toward its target. All the same, the point pierced Feramin’s forehead, spinning him about, and I saw the tip peeking out the back of the phantom skull. The ghost danced a strange, jerky step, arms flailing spasmodically, then the movements tapered off to a sort of jiggle before the green light broke apart again, floating outward then reversing direction to coalesce into a single spark that faded like a firefly’s lamp and died.
In the moments after the ghost of Hean Feramin winked out of existence, no one said a word. I’m not sure anyone even breathed. I don’t know what was going through the minds of the others, but for my part, I felt a wonderful sensation I can describe only through references to other niceties that bring sweet relief, for it felt like all of those things, all at once: slipping a heavy pack off my shoulders; a fire in the hearth and a cup of mulled wine on a cold night; stretching out on a bed after long travel; waking from a bad dream. There was only a sensation of well-being, unblemished by any taint until…
Well done. Perhaps you are not so worthless after all.
The anger came back. I focused it into a single thought. B*%$!, eh?
Now, now. Let’s not get all thin-skinned. And besides, if the shoe fits…
How dare you.
Ha! How dare you deny it? You were ready to steal from these so-called friends of yours when we met.
He had a point, but…That was before.
Before what?
Before...you. Whoever…whatever you are.
That’s sweet, lass. The voice was all sugar and sarcasm. I’ve never been in the business of saving souls before. Praise the gods!
“Praise the gods indeed!” I said, and only when my companions looked my way did I realize I had spoken, nay, yelled aloud. Halis looked at me with a mix of confusion and mirth as he tried to guess at my angle. Thormar fixed me with his gaze, then after a moment gave me a crisp nod and that charming smile of his. Asher was not so quick to accept my outburst as anything worthy of forgiving my past transgressions.
You see, even now the gravedigger judges you as false.
Perhaps he is right, I thought. And perhaps I will show him otherwise. No more words spoke in my mind, only gales of mocking laughter that gradually fell away to silence. Eager to distract myself from dwelling on the fact that I was not only hearing voices in my head but that I was chatting with them too, I joined the others in searching the chamber.
While I scoured the walls for secret passages, Halis stood at the edge of the oubliette, muttering arcane syllables as he peered into the water. He exchanged words with Krevkul, then the ranger dove into the pit. A few moments later he surface again, tossing a sword and a dagger onto the floor before hauling himself out. He handed Halis a silver ring. Halis held the ring up to his face and scrutinized it, all the while speaking magic, then he slipped it on his finger. He performed the same spells on the blades and pronounced them enchanted. Thormar claimed the longsword and insisted that Asher accept the enchanted mace. Halis offered me the dagger.
“It’s mithral. A rare metal.”
“I’ve heard of mithral, Halis.”
“And it’s magical.”
I took the dagger from him and yanked it from its sheath of rotted leather. The untarnished blade was light, perhaps half the weight of the one that now seemed to drag on my belt. I turned it over in my hand, feeling its exquisite balance. The metal had a faint luminescence, but I was unsatisfied. I turned to Asher. “Would you bestow the Lady’s light?” He obliged me, and soon the blade shone with a comforting glow.
The dagger lit my way as we retraced our steps through the lower level, collecting anything we thought of use or value and reclaiming items we had hidden away. Once we were satisfied that we’d gotten everything we climbed up the rope and returned to Vesorianna’s chamber. When the spirit rose from the heap of clothing, her visage was not that of the haunted widow struggling to carry on her husband’s duties, but instead a smiling woman without a care. The badge Asher had passed her burned with hot white light on her chest. “I am free!” she said, her voice full of triumph and relief.
I sensed Asher tense. “I thought you had to stay to keep the restless spirits in check.”
“No longer, thanks to you. The badge bolstered my strength, and when you banished the Splatterman you broke the last of the fell powers that had gripped this place. The prison has been cleansed. I am free.”
“Free to do what?”
“Free to go at last to Pharasma’s judgment.”
It was Asher’s turn to look relieved. “Fare thee well, then, lady.”
“Fare thee well then,” Thormar repeated. “With the service you have done for the Lady of Graves I doubt not that she will smile upon you.”
Vesorianna smiled but said nothing. She grew dimmer until the light of the badge eclipsed her. The badge flared and fell to the ground, where its blaze faded to the pastel blue of a low-burning candle. Halis picked it up and examined it, then thrust it in his pouch. Taking his cue we collected everything of worth as we’d done in the lower level, then made our way to the front doors. This time, instead of merely standing in fearful indecision, I stepped outside. We’d put an end to the haunting of Harrowstone, and even though there remained the matter of the dark wizards who’d killed Petros, my spirits were high. “I’ll be happy to put that place well behind me,” I said.
Aye. So will I.
1 Calistril: Addendum
On the way into town we stopped by the monument to see if the letters had vanished with the defeat of the Splatterman. It came as a shock to see VESO still scrawled in blood. The jolt surged through me, all the way out to my tingling fingers, then seemed to burn there at the mere thought of Feramin and his blazing missiles. The guards there seemed surprised to see us, and when Thormar made to wash the writing off with a cup of riverwater they warned him they’d already tried that. The paladin proceeded to rinse away the letters easily and the guards lost their grim demeanor. “It’s over,” Thormar said, puffing himself up. There was a time his fearless hero act might have pricked my nerves, but that was before I discovered it was no act. Let him have his moment.
The town was quiet when we reached it...quiet and calm. The sense of dread among the townsfolk had lifted, and after all my assorted grifts and misdeeds I took pride in having helped deliver them from evil. I suppose part of that was their newfound willingness to shower us with gifts. Mostly they were trinkets, but a few baubles caught my fancy and found their way onto my wrists, to the delight of the old man who’d brought them. Thormar wanted to refuse the gifts and had balked when I warned him that to refuse hospitality in Ustalav was not only offensive but well nigh impossible, but the look of pleasure on the old coot’s face convinced him.
The town council presented the reward they’d promised in a grand ceremony at the gazebo. I wouldn’t call it balmy, but the air was much warmer and pleasant sunshine flooded down. Most of the town turned out to see Hearthmont and his cohorts hand over the gold, but they had a long wait. Every member of the council had to say his or her piece, even if their piece was a mere echo of the one who’d just spoken. By the time they’d all declaimed and Hearthmont at last produced the loot, the sun was going down and the air had turned decidedly chilly, but even though the ceremony dragged on the collective mood kept my own spirits high.
That jubilant mood has not abated in the days since. Everywhere I’ve gone the townsfolk are quick to invite me to raise a glass with them. The little ones follow me everywhere, and there are more than a few of the grown-ups who do the same. Every joke I make is the height of humor, and I’ve noticed a couple of the maidens have cut their hair like mine. It’s a kick.
Asher too had reason to celebrate. For his services in Pharasma’s name Grimbro performed a ritual to raise Asher from acolyte to Spirit Guide. When the temple prelate bestowed upon Asher a new cowl befitting his rank, I could almost swear the gravedigger cracked a smile. I know I did, even if I was the only one in that grim brotherhood willing to wear my pleasure on my face. The work the servants of Pharasma do is solemn. Must the celebrations be the same? I made no effort to hide my pleasure. It mattered not at all that the temple had seen fit to elevate Asher in rank. No title would bespeak the deeds I’d witnessed as Asher faced what even Grimbro himself had been unwilling to...but Spirit Guide seemed somehow fitting. He had shown me the light.
Through all the jubilance, though, there remains the task of unmasking the dark wizards behind Petros’ death and making them answer for their crimes. Try as I have to remain alert to clues that might point in the direction of the perpetrators, I’ve learned nothing, not even juicy rumors. The consensus is that we travel to Lepistadt to meet Embreth Daramid, heir to the manual of the Order of the Palatine Eye, and Montagne Crowl, to whom Petros bequeathed the volumes on shadow wizardry. Perhaps one of them can shed light on what had led Petros to the prison the night he died. At the least, we can hope to claim from Daramid the hundred platinum coins promised to each of us for undertaking Petros’ final request.
Happily, Kendra has announced that she is going to accompany us to the university. She has been making arrangements to sell her cottage and has been giving away many of her possessions in the past few days. Even with the change in mood here in Ravengro I’m glad to see Kendra moving on. The world is a much bigger place than this tiny pockmark on County Canterwall. Beyond my well-wishing is the knowledge that Kendra like her father before her is learned in the arcane, and whether it happens before our arrival at Lepistadt or afterward, I’ve no doubt that we’ll find the trail of the wizards who killed Petros...if they don’t find us first. She’ll be a valuable asset, and the more the merrier. Especially with Grim gone.
When we got back to town he was nowhere to be found. Kendra said she’d not seen him, and ask as we did around the town, no one had any idea where he might have gotten to. Part of me hopes that any moment now he’ll come walking through the door and the rest of me fears the very same thing, because I’m not sure if the man I see will be the one who makes shameless advances at me or the weird shell of him that he’d become after he’d first swung the Lopper’s axe. I’ve heard folk whispering around town that the big half-breed lost his nerve and fled rather than face another ghost. I hope they’re right. For all their sakes.