Wrapping Up the Mummy's Mask

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

I know what you're thinking. "Another Mummy's Mask blog? We're totally in Iron Gods mode now! Show me robots, darn it!" And you're right. We released the final chapter of the Mummy's Mask Adventure Path a few months ago now, and this month are releasing the second chapter in its follow-up AP, Iron Gods. That's why now is the perfect time to release a bunch of art from Mummy's Mask. We now have the entire AP to go through in search of the best pieces of art to release to the public, either as potential desktop backgrounds, or to use in a publication or on a website using the Community Use Policy.

Here are some of my favorite images from Mummy's Mask (and a couple from People of the Sands). I have it on good authority that the holy symbols of all the gods in the Ancient Osirian pantheon will soon be added to the Community Use Package, otherwise I'd have included them here. So enjoy one last trip through the sands of Osirion!

Illustrations by Ekaterina Burmak and Florian Stitz

Illustrations by Johan Grenier, Vicky Yarova, and Damon Westenhofer

Illustrations by Johan Grenier and Jared Blando

Mark Moreland
Developer

Dune Runner

by Christopher Paul Carey

Chapter Four: The Mad Pharaoh

Jasilia tried to go back down the ladder, but it was too late. The giant skeleton on the wall top—crowned with a royal blue khepresh, holding a jewel-encrusted scepter of pure gold, and dressed like the pharaoh himself—reached out a massive bony hand and grabbed her by the wrist.

She felt herself lurch up into the air, her head spinning as she looked down at the army of skeletal soldiers swarming up the ladder beneath Nekhtep. A moment later she and the Risen Guard, who'd had no choice but to follow her up, were both standing before the regally dressed skeleton.

"This way, my honored guests." The towering creature whirled, his shendyt kilt swishing, and strode off with royal bearing, flanked by a dozen skeletal guards. Several other fetid warriors surrounded Jasilia and Nekhtep, prodding the captives with ancient-looking spears that were nonetheless still effective.

The wall walk led them to an enclosed ramp set in the stone, which they descended for some time, making countless turns along torchlit corridors until a weary dizziness overcame Jasilia. Finally, the steep passageway ended and the captives found themselves passing through a doorway into an elaborately furnished banquet hall. A great teakwood table stood at the spacious room's center, set with golden dinnerware and fancifully decorated ceramic plates that Jasilia recognized as dating from the late Apsu Dynasty. At the head of the table sat a gold-painted, throne-like chair, to one side of which sat a man—a living man—with his back turned to her. At hearing the entourage enter the hall, he turned, a wide smile breaking on a face that bore a remarkable likeness to those of the Ruby Prince and Jasilia herself.

"Ojan!" she cried.

The regal-looking skeleton grinned with a flap of moldering lip still attached to his lower jaw and motioned to the guards to stand down. At the signal, Jasilia ran forward and threw her arms around her brother, tears of joy welling in her eyes.

Ojan and his sister are alike in more than just appearance.

"Sit, O Heritors of Yafeha, and let us discuss business!" The rasping voice of Mekshir's skeletal lord carried an eerie cheeriness that raised the hairs on the back of Jasilia's neck.

She slid onto the wooden bench beside her brother and looked at him questioningly. "Heritors of Yafeha?"

The joy in Ojan's eyes disappeared. "Watch it," he whispered, eyeing the regal skeleton as he settled into the throne at the head of the table. "He's as mad as Nethys."

"What?" she whispered back.

"Just wait, you'll see."

Once Nekhtep had joined the others at the table, the skeletal lord clacked his bony hands together and addressed the ghastly soldiers who had gathered near a doorway on the far side of the hall. "Guards! Have the wait staff bring me and my guests the first course so that we may begin our negotiations." One of the skeletons marched out of the room while the others stood at attention.

The lord of Mekshir settled his hollow orbits on Jasilia. "Forgive me, my dear Hephre, for not introducing myself earlier. But perhaps you've recognized me already? Does High Theurgist Fentet-Pesu, the honorable royal governor of Thuvia, sound at all familiar to you? After all, your father, Pharaoh Yafeha I, tried to have me assassinated—by the hand of my own lover, no less!" Fentet-Pesu banged the pommel of his scepter against the tabletop, the finish of which Jasilia noticed was deeply pitted, as if Mekshir's lord had made a habit of striking the end of his baton there. Jasilia recalled from Anathepses's account how Xerbystes's soldiers had witnessed their undead captor bang his scepter in just such a manner.

"My name isn't—"

Ojan silenced her with a glare and a barely perceptible shake of his head.

"But of course my sister Hephre recognizes your most honorable lordship," Ojan said. "Don't you, sister?"

"Uh... well, of course." And in fact, she did recognize the name, though only from some musty scrolls she'd read in the royal library of Sothis. The last Osirian governor of what was then the province of Thuvia had indeed been assassinated by his lover, though if Yafeha I had been behind the act, that knowledge had been lost to history. The idea of such a conspiracy made a kind of sense, however, as the murder of Thuvia's governor had occurred in the final days of the Apsu Dynasty, just as Osirian power had begun to wane and the ancient province of Thuvia was abandoned. Perhaps Yafeha had wanted to tie up loose ends and eliminate a potential rival.

She was about to question Mekshir's lord about Yafeha's motives when suddenly the remnants of putrescent flesh on Fentet-Pesu's face took on what Jasilia could only interpret as a puzzled expression. "Hephre?" the skeleton rasped, tilting his skull as if he were trying to recall something. "But didn't Yafeha's daughter die from an asp's bite as a young child? You... you can't be her! You're all trying to trick me into—!" With no warning, Fentet-Pesu's entire frame began to shudder, his bony arms clattering on the tabletop as the seizure took hold. Then, as abruptly as it began, the shaking ceased.

"Ah, beautiful Hephre!" said Mekshir's lord, his tone once again cheerful. "Perhaps after you poison your father for me, I shall make you my queen and together we'll bring back Osirion's glory! Of course, I'm no fool. I'll have to hold your dear brother Tenshep hostage to make sure you go through with the assassination."

"Poison... my father?" Jasilia said. "You mean Yafeha?"

Nekhtep began to rise, looking like he meant to attack their mad host, but Jasilia kicked him under the table. The Risen Guard sat back down.

Ojan cleared his throat and addressed Fentet-Pesu. "We accept!" he proclaimed cheerfully. "My sister will poison our father, Yafeha I, and then you will marry Hephre and ascend to Osirion's throne. Done and done!" Ojan slapped down his hand as if to seal the agreement.

The skeletal lord rose and banged the pommel of his scepter against the deeply scored tabletop. "You dare refuse me?" he cried. "You dare say no to me?"

Ojan spread his hands in exasperation. "Here's me saying yes! Yes, and only yes. We'll do it! Won't we, sister?" He shot Jasilia a desperate look.

"Absolutely!" Jasilia exclaimed, turning back to Fentet-Pesu with an eager smile. "I'll poison my father and then we'll rule Osirion together. When do we start?"

"Nobody refuses the will of Pharaoh Fentet-Pesu and lives!" Mekshir's lord shrieked. Again, he banged his scepter. "Soldiers, lock them up until I can think of the most painful way for them to die! Now take them from my presence!"

The skeletal soldiers shambled across the room and roughly seized their lord's three guests. There was little to do but allow the soldiers to drag them away. It was clear to Jasilia now that Fentet-Pesu was as mad as a rabid jackal and there was no use in trying to reason with him.

After passing down a long hallway, Jasilia and her two companions were pushed through a towering doorway. The soldiers swung the massive stone door on its pivots, sealing their prisoners in a spacious chamber. From the jewels, gold coins, and other riches heaped in great piles across the room, Jasilia knew it could only be Mekshir's legendary treasure vault.

Ojan beat his first against the cold limestone door, then turned his back to it and sank to the ground in apparent defeat. "What did I tell you, Jas? Thuvia's honorable governor is hopelessly insane. He's going to kill us, no matter what we say or do."

Jasilia began pacing the chamber, heedless of the riches at her feet, her mind working furiously. There had to be a way out of their situation. She couldn't just give up.

She told herself that for the next hour as she strode back and forth across the room. Finally, with no solution having come to her, she lay down on a pile of coins and closed her eyes, exhausted.

∗ ∗ ∗

When Jasilia stirred to wakefulness an indefinable time later, she found Nekhtep kneeling beside her, his warm, calloused hand holding her own. She rose to an elbow, questioning Nekhtep with her eyes.

"It wasn't supposed to end this way." The normally stony Risen Guard countenance was gone from Nekhtep's face, replaced by one of deep sorrow.

"By Abadar's gavel, I don't care about the ending," she said, pulling her hand from his. "It's the middle I wanted. You know, the part with the living in it. Why couldn't we have had that?"

"I had to protect you."

"You what?"

"Damn it, Jasilia, I didn't die for the pharaoh! I died for you."

Jasilia sat up, her heart pounding. "Say again?"

"I couldn't tell you." Nekhtep looked away. "You're too stubborn. You'd have gotten yourself killed."

"I'm the stubborn one?" Then the echo of man's words finally reached her. "Gotten myself killed?" She rose to her feet, flushed with anger and confusion. "Spill it, Nekhtep. Now."

The Risen Guard stood and shrugged. "No reason to hold back anything now. The Ruby Prince explained to me in no uncertain terms that if we continued our relationship, he wouldn't just murder me—he'd kill you, too, to keep dishonor from the Forthbringers."

"He'd murder me," Jasilia said flatly.

Nekhtep nodded wearily. "I had to die under his knife, and in so doing bind myself to him and swear never again to speak of the matter or to show my feelings for you. In exchange, he would let you live."

"Oh, he'd let me live, would he?" A sharp laugh escaped Jasilia. "You idiot. But then, you never had an older brother, did you?"

Now it was Nekhtep's turn to be stunned. "What?"

Ojan, who couldn't help but overhear their conversation, snickered from the other side of the chamber. "Our brother would never harm Jas. We've broken every rule he's ever made for us—and trust me, we've broken some big ones—but has he touched us?"

Jasilia looked down at Nekhtep, her arms folded. "Don't you get it? I was never in any danger. You let my overprotective big brother bully you, plain and simple."

Nekhtep's eyes took on a faraway look, and then hardened as he fell to his knees on the mound of treasure. His fist slammed into the pile, coins and jewels flying.

Perhaps it was the sudden shock of Nekhtep's revelation—that the man had only turned away from her out of a misguided sense that he had to protect her—that jolted Jasilia's mind into a state of utter focus. As if everything was unfolding in slow motion, she watched as Nekhtep's fist again slammed down onto the pile of treasure, but this time, instead of gold coins and rubies flying into the air, she saw only sand. She could almost hear the mill of her mind grinding away at the problem.

"That's it!" she cried suddenly.

"I'm sorry." Nekhtep looked glumly up at her. "How could I have known...?"

"No, no, you big beautiful idiot!" Jasilia knelt down and kissed a surprised Nekhtep on the lips. "We can work out our mess of a relationship later." She rose and strode over to the great stone door. Sensing her excitement, Nekhtep and Ojan both got up and followed her.

Jasilia turned to Nekhtep. "When you hit the pile of treasure and sprayed coins everywhere, I had a thought: There has to be something triggering the khamsins that keep burying and unburying Mekshir over the centuries. Then I remembered the story I'd told you from Anathepses's Desert Empires. And how one of the party of Xerbystes's soldiers must have escaped."

"And?" Nekhtep asked.

She grinned back at him. "And now we test my theory." She began slapping the stone door with her palms and yelling at the top of her voice.

"I'll do it!" she cried. "I'll murder my father and help your lord become pharaoh!"

Ojan shook his head skeptically. "We've already tried that."

"And you don't think he's crazy enough to change his mind?" she said. "All I need is a moment in his presence. Just one moment."

Her brother shrugged. "I'm game," he said, and began yelling and beating his palms against the door as well. Nekhtep joined in, until at last the door swung forward on its pivots.

∗ ∗ ∗

Jasilia and her companions were back in the banquet hall, standing before the mad governor of ancient Thuvia, who sat on his throne at the table's head as if he had never left it since ordering their deaths.

"Welcome, dear Hephre and honorable Tenshep," the skeleton lord said with great cheer. "And..." He waved a bony hand dismissively at Nekhtep. "...whoever you are." Then the dark cavities of his eyes settled on Jasilia. "I have a proposition to make, O daughter of Yafeha. Before you dismiss it, hear me out. It involves poison, the death of your father, and the ransom of your brother..."

Before Fentet-Pesu could go on with his all-too-familiar proposal, Jasilia jumped up onto the table and bolted across it, skidding to a halt just before the enthroned skeleton. So unexpected was her outburst that Fentet-Pesu merely gaped up at her, the fleshy piece of rot that was once his lower lip swinging beneath his exposed jawbone like a morbid pendulum.

While Mekshir's lord was thus frozen by surprise, Jasilia reached down and plucked the scepter from his skeletal hands. She twirled the ancient artifact over in her hand until she at last saw the triggering mechanism jutting from the back of the baton's head.

"Been nice chatting with you, Fentet-Pesu," she said. "Enjoy the next few hundred years of oblivion."

Jasilia smashed the scepter's head as hard as she could against Fentet-Pesu's skull, directing the blow so that it would engage the artifact's trigger. The crown flew from his head upon impact, and the skeletal lord screeched in rage.

Bitter cold ran up Jasilia's arm, until her hand felt as if it would shatter like ice. Reflexively, she dropped the scepter, which fell back into Fentet-Pesu's welcoming grasp. He thrust out his bony arms to grab her legs, but she was already jumping down from the table.

A howling, dusty wind swept into the chamber from both of its entrances, guttering the torches in the wall sconces.

Jasilia grabbed Nekhtep and her brother by the shoulders and shoved them toward the door through which they had first entered the hall. "Unless you want to wake up as a skeleton in a century or two—run!"

Her companions didn't need further coaxing. Jasilia joined them in barreling through the confused band of soldiers that stood before the doorway. Together, the three adventurers ran up the winding passage, hot dust and sand blowing into their faces. When they finally emerged onto the wall walk outside, they could barely see one another through the sandstorm's fury.

By now the storm had already blown away the gruesome ladders up which she and Nekhtep had climbed to enter the fortress. But the gale had already heaped up mounds of sand against the parapet. Though the drop to the ground was still precipitous, they might just survive the fall. There was nothing for it but to jump, which the three did, hand in hand.

Jasilia landed hard, and for several moments she lay there, stunned and unable to move. Then Nekhtep was pulling her to her feet and half-carrying her from the fortress.

She couldn't see Ojan anywhere in the black, roiling sands. Thankfully, the slow-witted undead of Mekshir hadn't thought to take her satchel from her. She reached into it and felt for her goggles. Even once she got them on, she was still practically blind.

Suddenly a hand reached out of the maelstrom and grabbed her own. She barely made out Ojan's form, but she knew he must be suffering worse than her, since he had no burnoose to protect his face from the suffocating winds. Bowing into the storm's fury, they ran from the fortress.

As they made their way into the desert, a familiar bleating came out of the dunes. Jasilia whistled through her teeth over the storm's deep roar, and Yamala trotted up to her side. The camel was spooked, but apparently glad enough to see her mistress that she obeyed Jasilia's command to let her and her two companions mount.

She felt a hand touch her arm, and instantly she could breathe normally again. Ojan, seated behind her and Nekhtep, must have cast a spell on each of them, including Yamala, who forged ahead with renewed strength.

Jasilia looked back into the khamsin, knowing the sands must be growing higher around the fortress with each minute that passed. She wondered how many decades or centuries would pass before Fenete-Pesu stirred beneath the heavy sands and reactivated his scepter, summoning a khamsin to unbury Mekshir once again.

Leaning back into Nekhtep's embrace, she realized she didn't care. It was time for her to break free of such pointless cycles in her own life. It was the future that mattered.

The gloriously messy and uncertain future, she thought, and smiled.

Coming Next Week: The long-awaited return of Salim in a sample chapter of James L. Sutter's The Redemption Engine!

Christopher Paul Carey is an Associate Editor at Paizo, and the coauthor of Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa with Hugo Award-winning author Philip José Farmer. His short fiction may be found in anthologies such as Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, The Worlds of Philip José Farmer, Tales of the Shadowmen, and The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files. He holds an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, and has edited numerous collections, anthologies, and novels. Visit Chris online at www.cpcarey.com and follow him on Twitter.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Dune Runner

by Christopher Paul Carey

Chapter Three: The Lost Fortress

With a cry, Nekhtep kicked his heels into the camel's sides and swung the beast toward the ghastly soldier on their left, charging down the dune's face. The move seemed to take the skeletal thing by surprise. Moldering flesh hanging in loose patches from its skull, the creature raised a longsword only to see the weapon driven out of its hands by a powerful blow from Nekhtep's khopesh. The Risen Guard's next swing lopped off the unliving soldier's head, which rolled down the dune's side, leaving behind shreds of rotting skin on the baking sand.

As Nekhtep swung the camel around to face the other soldiers, Jasilia pried herself free from his grasp and flung herself onto the sand. She tumbled down the dune's face, for a moment out of control. She thrust out a leg and dug a foot into the sand, sliding to a halt beneath a man-sized shadow.

A putrid stench wafted over her. She looked up to find a skeletal form looming, the desert sun glinting through the thing's partially exposed ribcage. Jasilia kicked with all her might, her boot heel slamming into the creature's shin. The thing stumbled and fell on top of her. She gagged on the nauseating smell even as her sword's point scraped along the unliving soldier's lacquered-leather breastplate and lodged somewhere in its bony neck.

The skeleton screeched like something out of a nightmare, its bony frame shuddering violently, and then was still.

Jasilia heaved the loose assemblage of bones and armor to one side and leapt to her feet. Another wailing skeleton was running at her, an ancient-looking axe of black iron raised over its head in two gauntleted hands. She turned a shoulder and hurled herself at the thing, her sword angled forward. The collision knocked the air from her lungs. It took a few moments to realize she had succeeded in thrusting her sword beneath the creature's jaw, completely skewering its skull.

She leapt to her feet, casting about for her next attacker, only to find Nekhtep hacking the sharp edge of his khopesh into the face of the last skeleton still standing. The thing fell at his feet.

Nekhtep brought the camel to Jasilia's side and made to dismount, but Yamala bleated when it neared the rotting corpse at her feet and refused to let him down. Nekhtep circled his mount around her, dark eyes filled with concern. Apparently satisfied that she was unhurt, he nodded for Jasilia to follow while he strutted Yamala some distance from the corpses and finally managed to bring the beast to a halt. Though Yamala's large brown eyes still seemed uneasy, she lowered to her knees and allowed Nekhtep to dismount.

"With any luck, no one saw what just happened." Nekhtep motioned to the dune that blocked their view of the bulwarked military garrison and the hordes of unliving soldiers that were digging it from the sands.

Panting from the exertion of battle, Jasilia scabbarded her sword and fell to her knees on the hot sand. "Those soldiers," she said, trying to regain her breath. "They—"

Not all skeletons are created equal

Nekhtep's stare cut off her words.

"What is it?" she asked.

The Risen Guard said nothing. Instead, he signaled for Yamala to rise and walked the camel to Jasilia's side. His face was solemn, almost mournful. "Wait here."

Jasilia did as instructed, eyeing the man quizzically as he passed her the reins.

Nekhtep walked back over to the corpses while Jasilia tried to soothe the skittish camel. She watched as Nekhtep knelt beside one of the skeletons and wrenched something free from its neck. Then he took a bag from the corpse's hip and shook out its contents, kneeling over the scattering of coins that had fallen onto the sand. A few moments later he was back at Jasilia's side, a silver medallion dangling from a chain that he held in his hand with a kerchief, as if he didn't want to defile the object with his touch.

Jasilia gasped, her stomach roiling with fear and sickness. The royal seal of the Forthbringers stamped upon the medallion's face.

"Don't worry, that's not Ojan back there," Nekhtep said as if reading her thoughts. "I'd thought it might be, but I was wrong. Here, take a look." He dropped the medallion and chain to the sand and thumbed a gold coin from the folds of his kerchief.

"Stamped in Thuvia over five thousand years ago, like all the rest in the thing's possession." Nekhtep twirled the coin and presented its face to Jasilia. "These soldiers lived—and died—during the reign of Yafeha I."

"My brother... None of those things is..." Jasilia began to choke up, then steeled her will and began again. "My brother isn't among the corpses, then?"

"No. But if this was the group that captured him and he isn't among them, it can mean only one of two things." Nekhtep left his statement hanging.

"That he's dead, or that they brought him there." Jasilia pointed through the dune that stood between them and Mekshir.

Nekhtep nodded. "I'm sorry. I should have insisted that we go to Shiman-Sekh for help. But I've never been able to say no to you."

Jasilia knelt on the scalding sand and began rifling through her sack. "You've never been able to say anything these past six months. But now's not the time to get sentimental, guardsman." She dug deeper into the bag. "Now where is it? Ah, here we go."

From the depths of her sack she pulled out a small bundle of crimson linen.

"What is it?" Nekhtep asked.

Jasilia smiled grimly up at him. "Our ticket into Mekshir. I hope."

∗ ∗ ∗

Jasilia drew Yamala close and whispered in her ear, then clapped the beast on the rear. Instantly, the camel took off, heading away from the fortress until she was lost from sight among the dunes.

With great care, Jasilia unwrapped the little bundle she had removed from her bag until she exposed the treasure swaddled within the cloth: a dried and neatly pressed desert rose shot with the colors of a spectacular Osirian sunset. She placed the flower on her open palm and began tracing the air with her other hand, outlining the archaic hieroglyph for Ra, the ancient sun god. As her hand continued to sketch the invisible character, she began to mutter in low tones the tongue of her long-dead ancestors. She was thankful she had forced herself to pause long enough at the outset of their journey to prepare the spell. The hope it gave her was faint, but she had to try.

She concentrated, forcing every thought from her mind. Just as she succeeded in losing herself in the antiquated words and phrasings, a flame roared up from the desert a half-dozen yards before her. A gust of hot air swept over her as the flame took on a fiery, snakelike form, vacillating in size from three to four feet tall as it undulated, coiling and uncoiling like an agitated asp.

"You've been practicing, I see." Nekhtep took a step back from the elemental being, as if unsure of her ability to keep it under her command.

Jasilia ignored him and addressed the fiery creature in Ancient Osiriani, her voice charged with regal authority. "I am the holy heir to Osirion's throne. Obey me, servitor."

The being's serpentine head lowered in obeisance.

She gave the creature its instructions while Nekhtep looked on in awed silence. She finished her behest by jabbing a finger to the northeast. A mouth formed out of the reddish-orange flames of the elemental's ophidian face, a smoldering tongue of fire flitting out of the orifice as if to taste her words. Then the thing sped off in the direction Jasilia had indicated, slithering along the scalding sands toward its goal.

"Now follow me and do exactly as I do," Jasilia said.

Nekhtep nodded curtly, and Jasilia took off into the dunes without looking back to see whether the Risen Guard was behind her. She knew Nekhtep would follow her to the ends of the earth—not because of any lingering sentiment, but because the pharaoh had commanded him to protect her at all costs. So be it. Anything that helped her save Ojan was good enough for her.

She ran on, drawing on many years of desert living to choose the best route through the dunes that would keep them from being seen. Nekhtep's bootfalls thudded softly in the sands behind her, his breaths becoming increasingly heavier. Though the guard was much stronger than she, the desert had taught her endurance, and Jasilia only felt barely winded by the time they emerged from a little valley of sand and found the fortress's western wall looming a couple hundred yards away.

All along the steep bank of sand rising up to Mekshir's half-buried walls, the undead soldiers had risen from their tasks and were shambling off to the east. High on the wall walks the soldiers were also moving to get a glimpse of the elemental burning its way across the sands below the eastern ramparts. Though the nearest skeletons were still but a few dozen yards away, Jasilia motioned for Nekhtep to follow. The spell would only buy them so much time.

They ran up the dune toward the western wall, leg muscles straining. When they reached the wall, they sprinted along it until they reached the southwestern corner.

Jasilia cursed softly when Nekhtep grabbed her by the arm and pushed her roughly behind him, holding her back as he peered around the corner. She struggled in his grip to no avail; he was simply too strong. But not too nimble, she thought, and drove her heel into the back of his knee.

Nekhtep thrust a hand against the wall's rough red stone to keep from falling, and Jasilia broke free from his grasp.

She clucked her tongue as if she were chiding a small child. "Now, now, we'll have none of that." She stepped around him and gazed along the southern wall. To the east she could see a tiny flame in the distance, scorching its way across the sand at great speed as the legion of unliving soldiers swarmed after it. The elemental was doing exactly as she had commanded, slithering in among the soldiers and then slithering quickly out, taunting them with its proximity. The fiery being from another plane sped along at almost twice the speed of the soldiers, zipping off after each brief penetration of their ranks and drawing them ever farther to the southeast.

She punched Nekhtep hard in the shoulder. "Now cut out the chivalry bit, all right?" Then she sprinted along the wall for the nearest ladder the undead had been using to clean sand from parapets.

When she reached it, she jumped up and began climbing, Nekhtep close at her heels. Only a short distance up, she lost her grip as she placed her hand upon a slick board. She managed to grab another board and cling to it, but found it was also wet to the touch.

A violent retch threatened to surge up as she realized the reason for the boards' slickness. Spongy patches of rotting flesh, bits of internal organs, and various bodily fluids spattered the ladder's wooden steps. She clamped her teeth together and tried to swallow back the rising bile, focusing her thoughts on her mission—to rescue her brother from the horrific things that inhabited the fortress—and resumed her climb.

Her hands filthy and her once-white burnoose now streaked with the detritus of undeath, she could finally see the rim of the wall walk just above. She pulled herself up, hand over hand, driven only by the thought of getting off the disgusting ladder as quickly as possible. When at last she reached her goal, she pulled her head up over the ledge—and gazed into the face of her worst nightmare.

"Welcome to Mekshir, O Holy Scion," the towering skeleton rasped. "Your brother and I have been expecting you."

Coming Next Week: Desperate ploys in Chapter Four of "Dune Runner"!

Christopher Paul Carey is an Associate Editor at Paizo, and the coauthor of Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa with Hugo Award-winning author Philip José Farmer. His short fiction may be found in anthologies such as Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, The Worlds of Philip José Farmer, Tales of the Shadowmen, and The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files. He holds an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, and has edited numerous collections, anthologies, and novels. Visit Chris online at www.cpcarey.com and follow him on Twitter.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Dune Runner

by Christopher Paul Carey

Chapter Two: Pursuit

Nekhtep looked down at Jasilia as they stood in the shadow of the great dune, his expression puzzled. "How could you know where they've taken Ojan? And who's 'they'?"

Even in her distress, Jasilia noted that Nekhtep had broken protocol and chosen not to use one of her twin brother's many formal titles.

She looked off into the east, tracing the trail of frost-laden sand until it disappeared among the dunes. "Have you ever heard of Mekshir?"

"Mekshir?" Nektep beetled his brow. "An ancient outpost or fortress or something, right?"

"That's the one."

"But Mekshir was supposed to have been buried by a khamsin thousands of years ago."

"Well, it looks like it got unburied."

Jasilia grabbed her brother's khopesh from the Risen Guard's hand and set off along the roughly three-foot-wide band of frost, ignoring Nekhtep's calls for her to stop.

A moment later, Nekhtep was beside her. A hand fell on her arm. "Jasilia."

She turned on him, her anger welling up. "What, Nekhtep? No 'O Heritor' or 'My Most Spectacular Pain-in-the-Ass Princess'? My brother—heir to my other royal brother, the all-powerful, know-it-all Ruby Prince—has been taken by undead, and now you want to take the time get personal?"

Nekhtep winced, and Jasilia immediately regretted her words.

"Look, I'm sorry," she said, "it's just—"

Jasilia doesn't give up easily.

Nekhtep threw down his heavy bag of armor and equipment. "Just tell me about Mekshir," he said, in that calm and reassuring voice she used to love. "You were about to explain who took him and how you know."

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

"It's the trail." She motioned to the strip of icy sand beside them. "Pick up your bag and let's get moving before it melts. We can talk on the way."

Nekhtep did as he was bade and they set off, footing their way between the dunes.

"I've read about the history of Mekshir in the royal library at Sothis." Jasilia panted her words as she proceeded at a brisk pace over the sand. "It was a military base guarding what was then a border of the Osirian province of Thuvia. A khamsin struck it toward the end of the Apsu Dynasty, and it was never formally heard from again."

"'Formally'?"

"Anathepses mentions two more accounts of Mekshir in his Desert Empires. The first was in –598 AR—" She made a mental calculation. "Two hundred and forty-three years after Mekshir was buried, if you want to be exact. Seems a caravan on its way to Eto came across a trail of frost on the sand just like this one. They sent off one of their scouts to follow it, and when he never came back, they sent off another. A few nights later, a band of undead attacked. The caravanners fought them off, but in the aftermath they found the two scouts among the fallen enemies, both rotting with the stench of the undead they'd become. The other attackers—skeletons with putrefying flesh still hanging from their bones—were all wearing military regalia, and their shields bore the ancient seal of Mekshir."

"And the other account?"

"According to Anathepses, it didn't end quite so well. Legend says a squad of Xerbystes I's army ran across Mekshir after a monstrous khamsin struck western Osirion and unburied it. The commander and his soldiers were captured by the fortress's undead sentries and brought before the skeletal lord that ruled over the place. The strange thing is, when the ruler interrogated the captives, he seemed to have no clue about the Keleshite interregnum. Banged his scepter in a blind rage whenever the commander mentioned it."

"You said it ended badly," Nekhtep said.

Jasilia nodded. "While Xerbystes's soldiers were holding court with the fortress's lord, another khamsin swept up out of nowhere and reburied Mekshir, along with the captive Keleshites."

Nekhtep laughed. "Then how did anyone learn of their story?"

"Anathepses doesn't say." When Nekhtep gave her a skeptical look, she said, "Look, you know how spotty the details are in these old histories. Presumably one of the party escaped."

The Risen Guard stopped walking and placed his hands on his hips, surveying the seemingly endless dune field from the top of the rise as sweat beaded down his brown cheeks.

"You're not going to like what I'm about to say," he said, "but hear me out. We're not going to get far without the camels. We should head west, follow the Junira north until we hit the caravan route. Then we can hitch a ride east to Shiman-Sekh and get aid from the Risen Guard contingent stationed there to mount a rescue mission. If we head out into the deep desert alone and the trail melts before—"

Jasilia cleared her throat and pointed to Nekhtep's left. The Risen Guard turned slowly to be greeted by the bleating of a camel strutting up the side of the dune, its reins dragging over the sand. When it reached the top, the great dromedary loped past Nekhtep and knelt down on all four legs directly before Jasilia.

"There, there, Yamala." She rubbed the beast's side. "I wasn't going to leave you behind." She leveled an accusatory gaze at Nekhtep. Then, taking up the reins, she swung a leg over the low point between the beast's shoulders and mounted bareback. "You coming?"

Nekhtep didn't look happy, but finally he spread his hands in surrender and got onto the beast behind Jasilia.

Jasilia felt herself shift back against Nekhtep's muscular form as the camel rose to its feet. For a brief moment she allowed herself to be comforted by the feel of her ex-lover's embrace. Then, as the camel swung them forward, she squirmed and tried to scoot forward out of his encircling arms. He only held on to her tighter.

"Don't get any ideas, Risen One," she said. "You gave up that option when you decided to die under the Ruby Prince's blade."

"For the record," he said, "I still think this is a bad idea. We've only got so much water."

"Then you'll die again, but this time for a worthy cause: trying to save the life of Osirion's royal heir."

"Or we'll all die and I'll lose you twice."

"Hey, you could have had me, remember? It didn't mean anything to me that you were a commoner. I agreed to flee the country with you, but you wouldn't have it."

"When I swore an oath to the pharaoh that our relationship was over, I had no idea he would show his 'compassion' by making me your bodyguard." Nekhtep's jaw tensed. "But I don't regret my decision to go under the blade."

"Why?" Jasilia's heart pounded.

"There were... other considerations."

"Like what?"

The only answer was the throaty roar of the camel as she guided it toward the trail of unearthly frost. Jasilia urged Yamala into a trot and they made their way east into the sun's ruthless gaze.

∗ ∗ ∗

Though the trail left by the undead lasted longer in the heat of the day than any mundane frost had a right to, by noon it had all but vanished. Within the next hour, it was gone completely. Still, Jasilia and Nekhtep pushed on to the east. They had followed the trail, threading through valleys of sand and climbing the faces of myriad dunes and down their precipitous slipfaces, long enough that Jasilia, with her long-practiced desert senses, had a rough estimate of their quarry's direction. Even so, they were heading into the deep desert, and she knew how far off course they might find themselves if they deviated even a tenth of a degree from their intended destination.

Nekhtep, for his part, had remained quiet since the outset of their journey. It was as if he had decided it was better to let Jasilia come to understand the futility of their quest on her own rather than press the matter. At least that was her best guess. Who knew what the man was thinking? It wasn't important anyway. All that mattered now was getting Ojan back.

Jasilia cursed. "We must be halfway to the Glazen Sheets by now!"

"Not even a quarter of the way, I'm afraid." Nekhtep shook his flask, his features creased with worry as the water sloshed hollowly within. "You know the old saying. 'A walk in the desert is worth four in Sothis.'"

Jasilia said nothing. She could feel the truth of the adage as the sand gave way beneath the camel's every step. She could feel it in the rise of every dune they climbed, in every slight detour they took through the valleys of sand. All of these things conspired to elongate the distance to their destination, wherever it might lie.

The hardship of desert travel was a lesson she had learned in her bones from an early age, when she and Ojan had been but rebellious children escaping into the sands to elude the ever-watchful eyes of their strict and ever-so-boring royal keepers. Dune runners, one of their tutors had once spat at the two twins, as if it were a curse. The intractable royal siblings had immediately seized on the epithet, pridefully signing their runaway notes with the sobriquet before each escape attempt, setting it in the royal case to give the title the proper respect: Give our regards to our brother, His Majesty the Pharaoh. Yours truly, The Dune Runners.

The memory brought a smile to her lips, and she mused on how little things had changed. Did not the Ruby Prince still forbid their research expeditions into the deep desert? Were not multiple squads of the Risen Guard at this very moment scouring the every crook and qanat across the land in search of the now-adult twins? Had not her older brother—knowing full well Jasilia and Ojan would stubbornly ignore his royal command not to leave Sothis and instead run off to pursue their insatiable inquiries into Osirion's past—assigned Nekhtep to be her ever-present bodyguard to ease his worries?

She licked her cracked lips, feeling the scant moisture upon them immediately evaporate into the dry air. As they paused to let Yamala catch her breath after cresting a steep dune, Jasilia looked back and noticed Nekhtep staring intently to the northeast. She turned to follow his gaze, a thrill of both exhilaration and fear running through her as her vision settled on the object of his interest.

Wavering in the heat perhaps two miles ahead, immense turreted bulwarks of reddish stone rose up, half buried, out of the steep and drifting sands. Figures made tiny by distance swarmed like ants between the crenellated wall walks, while droves other of small forms swathed the great rises of sand shrouding the lower portions of the massive structure. The latter figures seemed to be concentrated along the base of the walls, where great clouds of dust wafted on the wind as if kicked up by the workers' furious excavation of the fortress from the dunes. All told, the horde swarming the sands must have numbered at least a hundred, and that didn't account for any others that might reside within the walls.

"What was that you said about going to Shiman-Sekh to get reinforcements?"

In answer to her question, Nekhtep began to turn Yamala back around the way they had come. Even as he did so the strong winds shifted, buffeting them with a malodorous gale. It was a stench all too familiar to Jasilia—the fetor of the crypt.

Yamala reared back, bleating in terror and nearly throwing her riders to the scalding sands. Nekhtep's arm tightened viselike about Jasilia. She heard the sound of steel on leather as the Risen Guard drew his blade.

The patrol of undead soldiers came at them from all directions.

Coming Next Week: Mekshir revealed in Chapter Three of "Dune Runner"!

Christopher Paul Carey is an Associate Editor at Paizo, and the coauthor of Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa with Hugo Award-winning author Philip José Farmer. His short fiction may be found in anthologies such as Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, The Worlds of Philip José Farmer, Tales of the Shadowmen, and The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files. He holds an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, and has edited numerous collections, anthologies, and novels. Visit Chris online at www.cpcarey.com and follow him on Twitter.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Dune Runner

by Christopher Paul Carey

Chapter One: The Storm

Searing heat and abrasive, sand-laden winds burned the exposed patches of skin around Jasilia's stylized brass goggles. She slipped a hand beneath her tightly drawn burnoose and adjusted the scarf around raw cheeks, her other hand thrust up under the half-buried opening of the tomb's great stone lip so the wailing winds wouldn't sweep her away.

Beside her, what looked like an oversized scarab in human form gestured frantically at her to get below. Nekhtep the Constant, the Risen Guard assigned to protect her, lived up to both his duty and his honorary title, but the sight of him tore at her more fiercely than the khamsin's fury. She looked away, watching streaks of blue-tinged flame soar up over the desert and scorch the charcoal sky.

The ages-old struggle between the elemental chieftains would go on forever, it seemed. But then, wasn't that built into their natures? Fire consumed air and air fed fire—not unlike her and Nekhtep, each forever seared by the other's presence. Like the elemental forces of nature, there was no arguing it. After their indiscretions came to light, Nekhtep had chosen to end their relationship and die under the pharaoh's blade. A fortunate development, the Ruby Prince had remarked. Better than my sister disgracing herself by marrying a commoner.

The screaming sands drowned out her curse. It was just as well. She would rather Nekhtep not hear it.

A Risen Guard gives his life for the Pharaoh—and that's just the beginning

Jasilia turned from the storm and descended into the tomb. A few moments later, a heavy scraping of stone on stone grated above. The silence that followed was filled only by the ringing in her ears and the coughing fit that seized Nekhtep as dust and sand settled in the enclosed space. She knelt on the narrow ramp, removed a foot-long rod from her bag, and struck it against the rough stone at her feet. The tip blossomed with silvery light.

The glow revealed a steep, limestone-walled corridor barely wider than her shoulders, its ceiling crawling with hieroglyphs from a forgotten age. Keeping her weight on her heels, she shuffled downward while Nekhtep's half-plate scarab armor clanked and clattered behind her. After they had proceeded what Jasilia judged to be about thirty feet below the surface, the floor leveled. A pile of rubble strewn beneath a dark, yawning hole in the far wall marked the corridor's end.

"We'll be down here a while." She placed a boot heel on the uneven rocks to judge their stability. "Might as well make our stay useful."

"Let me go first, O Heritor." Nekhtep tried to sidle past Jasilia in the narrow corridor, but she held out an arm to block him.

"Not a chance. You know I always go first. Royal privilege."

"But the tomb may still be guarded—"

"You did read the inscriptions on the way down?"

Nekhtep looked sheepish beneath his beetle-headed helmet.

"Oh. Right. We really do need to get you back to school, Nekhtep. The glyphs indicate interment of one Sebti Heptna. Minor nobility. Probably could barely afford to construct the tomb, let alone an eternal protector."

She almost felt bad for needling him. After all, the glyphs were an unusual regional variant, and she could read only about a quarter of them herself. Besides, Nekhtep was doubtless more proficient in the ancient tongues of the region than most of the foreign "scholars" her older brother had crawling all over the country. But she couldn't help herself. Anything to get through that Risen Guard stoicism.

Nekhtep relented and stepped back, but he drew his khopesh from its wide leather scabbard.

She rolled her eyes, then climbed over the rubble into the darkness.

The passage led her through five feet of solid, jagged-edged rock before opening onto a shallow ledge running along the perimeter of a small chamber. Above the ledge, depictions of humanoid figures painted in burgundy and turquoise danced across high limestone walls in sunk relief. Funerary ceramics lay overturned and broken along the room's far side. A large chunk of the east wall showed only bare, uneven rock where the smooth stone had been chiseled out, presumably so the vandals could abscond with some treasure embedded in the stone.

Two sarcophagi—a massive one that doubtless once held Sebti Heptna's remains and another that appeared to be sized for a human infant or small child—lay in the chamber's center. The limestone covering of the smaller sarcophagus still lay in place and seemingly undamaged. The heavy stone lid of the larger sarcophagus was cracked and lay toppled to one side, and from her position on the ledge Jasilia could see that the inner coffin was missing.

But thank Abadar, the thieves had left behind the greatest treasure of all: a small, unassuming row of hieroglyphs cut into a plain limestone ribbon circling the chamber's uppermost reaches. Now if only she knew enough of the regional dialect to make sense of the glyphs.

Jasilia tossed her glowing rod to the basalt floor and hopped down to retrieve it.

"Come on in!"

She turned to find Nekhtep already emerging from the tunnel onto the ledge above her. The Risen Guard removed his helmet and proceeded to doff his armor. She snuck a look at the muscular form that emerged from the half-plate, though she winced when she saw the burns the khamsin sands had seared on that handsome face. Earlier on their journey she had teased him for carrying along the heavy, suffocating armor. Now she saw that it had saved his life. She would never forgive herself if she got him killed.

Again.

A sick feeling crept into Jasilia's stomach. "You're sure Ojan made it to the eastern tomb?"

Nekhtep nodded down to her. "He signaled to me that he'd be fine, and to get you below. Then he led the camels down with him. I waited long enough to see that he'd sealed himself up."

She sighed with relief. "Then there's nothing we can do but wait out the storm."

While Nekhtep extricated himself from his armor, Jasilia walked to the south wall, removed a decorative torch from an ancient stone sconce jutting from the ledge, and affixed her glowing rod in its place. She took a field-book and stylus from her bag and knelt down, craning her neck as she began to transcribe the glyphs from the limestone ribbon above. She heard Nekhtep jump down into the chamber, trying her best to ignore him as he made a circuit of the tomb, presumably to verify with his own senses that nothing in the chamber presented a threat to his royal charge.

"Early Second Age?" Nekhtep asked.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jasilia could see him examining the glyphs on the child-sized sarcophagus's stone casing.

"No," she said. "Khamos's tip was wrong this time. The tomb is Late Apsu, or maybe Middle Osezis Period. See the Pahmet influence in the murals? Definitely not as early as Khamos claimed. But that's what I get for trusting a ghoul."

Stone grated, followed by a loud thunk. She looked up to see Nekhtep dusting himself off, the covering of the smaller sarcophagus lying off-kilter. Jasilia cursed. "At least watch that you don't damage the inscription."

Now Nekhtep was leaning into the sarcophagus and probing its bottom with the point of his khopesh. Jasilia tried to concentrate on transcribing the glyphs, translating what she could as she sketched the archaic symbols. She felt she was on the verge of deciphering the meaning of a particularly troublesome glyph when an eruption of Nekhtep's clattering blade caused her to break the tip of her stylus.

"Stop it!" she snapped. "You're worse than a Pathfinder, compromising the site like that!"

The scraping of Nekhtep's khopesh ceased, but she could still hear him rustling about in the well of the sarcophagus. Jasilia threw her notebook and stylus to the dusty floor and stood, whirling to confront him.

"If you don't cut it out, I'll—"

An unearthly yowl filled the chamber. Nekhtep raised his arm out of the sarcophagus, and a small feline head—skull-like and with eyes that glowed red in the torchlight—emerged with it, the creature's sharp teeth clamped onto the man's leather armband.

Jasilia shook off a shiver fear and, drawing her short sword, ran toward Nekhtep. The man didn't wait for her, however, and his khopesh made short work of the ubashki. He held the undead cat aloft by a loose wrapping, coolly examining the creature as it spun slowly before him.

"Too poor for a guardian?" Nekhtep mused. "I guess the poor make due." He dropped the ubashki back into the coffin and rubbed his hands together as if trying to flick off the creature's filth.

"You call that a guardian?" Jasilia slid her sword back into its leather sheath. "When it's my time to kick off, I'll find myself a proper protector to have strangled and stand vigil over my tomb, not a harmless little housecat." She looked Nekhtep up and down, as if appraising his value.

Nekhtep's expression was as still as the limestone walls. "Dying once for you wasn't enough?"

Jasilia heard her own breath catch in the silence of the tomb.

She straightened and walked across the chamber with feigned aplomb. "In any case," she continued, picking up her field-book from the dusty floor and tracing over a glyph with the half-broken tip of her stylus, "at least the looters who came before us were smart enough not to disturb that sarcophagus. Now can you stay put and let me get back to my transcription?"

It was dark enough in the tomb that she might have imagined Nekhtep's smirk.

∗ ∗ ∗

When they estimated that morning had come, Nekhtep heaved aside the great stone slab that sealed the tomb. After unburying themselves from the deluge of sand that fell down into the passage, Jasilia and Nekhtep emerged into a world that looked very different from that of the day before. Morning's golden rays skimmed through small valleys of sand, dappling the seemingly unending field of dunes that had risen up overnight. That the barren plains of the Glazen Sheets lay a mere few days' journey to the east only made the sudden appearance of the great sand mountains that much more astonishing.

Jasilia looked about the site, her anxiety mounting. Where was the entrance to the other tomb in which Ojan had sealed himself to escape the khamsin's wrath? She tried to orient herself by the sun's position in relation to the tomb opening they had just exited.

Her stomach turned. The other tomb had been to the southwest, just about where an immense wall of sand now rose from the rolling scape—a mound so high she and Nekhtep could never hope to unbury it by themselves.

She took off across the sands and ran up the dune's convex rise, her leg muscles straining as the sand gave way beneath each desperate step. When at last she reached the crest of the dune, she looked down its leeward side. Some twenty feet below, an arcing shadow darkened the bottom of the slipface, but not enough that she couldn't see the black opening at the base and a rectangular block of limestone cast aside next to the hole. A whitish trail, perhaps a vein of salt unearthed by the storm, ran from the edge of the hole and snaked eastward, disappearing into a valley of sand. A few yards from the opening lay the bloody corpses of two of her party's three camels.

A moment later, Nekhtep was beside her, looking down over the dune's crest. Then they were both heeling their way down the slipface into the dune's cool shadow, sand sloughing from the great mound with each footfall.

When they reached the base, Jasilia entered the hole and scampered down the tomb's steep entryway, the scuffing tread of Nekhtep's boots following close behind. As the dim light from the surface fell away, she removed another rod from her bag and struck it on the floor, bathing the narrow corridor in an ashen glow.

The passage opened onto a tomb much plainer in design than the one in which she and Nepkhtep had spent the night. Bare stone walls enclosed the small chamber, in the center of which lay an open sarcophagus, doubtless plundered of its meager treasures in some lost age. Three dromedary saddles sat stacked against one wall alongside Ojan's supply pack.

But the tomb's architecture and her party's equipment weren't what grabbed Jasilia's attention. No, it was the stink of undeath that assaulted the confining chamber, and the two humanoid forms that lay unmoving before the sarcophagus. One had been decapitated, by the swing of a khopesh if she judged correctly. The other had been cleaved nearly in two at the waist.

She knelt to examine the severed head and wrinkled her nose.

"The flesh is still rotting," she said.

Nekhtep began examining the chamber and disappeared behind the sarcophagus. When he rose, he held a finely crafted khopesh in his hand.

"Ojan's," Jasilia breathed.

She stood, feeling the blood draining from her face. "No. It can't be that."

"What?" Nekhtep said. "Can't be what?"

But Jasilia was already bolting back up the passageway on her way to the surface. When she emerged, she fell to her knees beside the whitish trail leading from the mouth of the tomb and scooped some of the substance into her hand. Instead of the dry grit of salt or some other mineral, she felt only cold.

Nekhtep came up out of the tomb entrance and stood over her.

"What is it?"

Jasilia rose and sieved the mix of melting frost and sand through her fingers and onto Nekhtep's open palm.

"I know where they've taken Ojan."

Coming Next Week: Death in the desert in Chapter Two of "Dune Runner"!

Christopher Paul Carey is an Associate Editor at Paizo, and the coauthor of Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa with Hugo Award-winning author Philip José Farmer. His short fiction may be found in anthologies such as Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, The Worlds of Philip José Farmer, Tales of the Shadowmen, and The Avenger: The Justice, Inc. Files. He holds an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, and has edited numerous collections, anthologies, and novels. Visit Chris online at www.cpcarey.com and follow him on Twitter.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Best Served Cold

by Ari Marmell

Chapter Four: Revenge Is a Dish...

Marcov spotted the modest hut to which the priest had directed him, spent a moment invoking the haunting spirits, and broke into a sprint. He leaped, hurling his whole weight against the shuttered window nearest the front door. Wood burst inward, splinters flying—all in utter silence, for the ghosts of that long-dead village had spread their intangible substances through the surrounding air, muting all sound.

A trio of animated skeletons—Marcov guessed they'd been chosen over fleshier undead so as to cut down on the stench—lurched and staggered from across the room. Bone fingers wrapped around cheap swords, or curled into tearing claws. The clacking and clicking probably would have been disturbing, if he could hear any of it.

Marcov spun, sweeping the legs from under the nearest corpse. Bastard sword held high, he parried a stroke from the second, then brought the heavy pommel of the weapon down in a diagonal arc. The skeleton's collarbone shattered, causing the undead to stagger and nearly topple.

With a quick yank on the thing's opposite shoulder, Marcov removed "nearly" from the equation. The animated bones fell atop the first skeleton, pinning it down just as it tried to rise. Marcov reversed his grip and plunged the blade through both rib cages and deep into the wooden floor. Neither skeleton would be getting up anytime soon.

The third and final guardian was just clever enough to lunge, taking advantage of the intruder's newly disarmed state. It seemed a good idea, right up until Marcov pounded the thing into a heap of splintered bone with a small end table that had been standing in a corner.

A few additional swings took care of the two pinned to the floor. Marcov retrieved his sword and continued, still wrapped in silence.

Doubtless the skeletons had been intended to scare away any potential intruders, and delay an attacker long enough for Khydol to prepare. Except Khydol hadn't heard a peep.

The cleric stood in the next room beside a makeshift shrine to Calistria, surrounded by rickety shelves of mementos—crockery, books, children's toys, candlesticks—presumably lost by those displaced during the General's purge of clerics from Touvette. The tome he'd been perusing fell open to the floor, its pages crumpling, as Marcov appeared in the doorway.

The half-elf's eyes widened at the sight of the unnaturally stealthy intruder. He raised holy symbol wrought of pewter and began to intone a prayer to his goddess.

Sorry, Marcov mouthed around a vicious grin, then raised his blade and advanced at a saunter.

He was halfway through cleaning his blade when the silence lapsed and the room abruptly filled with the whisper of cloth on steel. A moment later, he heard the faint crunching of someone climbing in through the broken shutters.

"Marcov?"

"Next room!" he called back. "You're a little late, Loursa."

"Khydol's dead?" Her footsteps, drawing nearer the open doorway, weren't quite loud enough to mask the peculiar tone of her question.

"Dead as Aroden. Figured I'd ask him a couple of—"

It was pure luck that saved him. Had Loursa arrived before the ghosts had dismissed the unnatural hush, or had his struggle with the skeletons not scattered so many chips of wood and bone, she'd have been on him with no warning at all.

As it was, Marcov heard the sudden rush across the debris and was able to hurl himself aside. The blow that would otherwise have punched through his hauberk and into his back instead left only a fiery trail of blood and pain across his ribs.

"What the hell? Loursa—"

The guard kept coming, her blade thrusting as fiercely as it had against the bandits. Marcov, wincing at every blow, found himself barely able to parry despite his heavier sword.

For a moment there was only steel on steel and shuffling feet. Marcov retreated as far as Khydol's body, then leaped over it, putting a bit of distance between him and his traitorous opponent.

"So what is it, then?" he growled. "Just waiting until you didn't need me anymore to get rid of me?"

"Something like that," she told him softly.

He mumbled briefly under his breath. Then, "Lovely show of gratitude, Loursa."

Again she came at him, teeth bared in a feral snarl.

Marcov clenched his left fist. Wisps of shadow, phantom limbs invisible to mortal senses, swirled.

Khydol's body floated up into Loursa's path just as she made to step over it.

Marcov lunged, burning with betrayed fury. Flesh and bone parted, and his former companion deflated with a soft sigh before sliding from the tip of his blade. For an instant, Khydol's floating body held Loursa upright, then both corpses thumped awkwardly to the floor.

He'd actually grown comfortable, letting someone fight at his side again. Should've known better. Stupid, stupid...

Again he cleaned his sword, then leaned it aside and knelt over the bodies. He began to call upon the surrounding spirits, prepared to ask them to revive Khydol's memories long enough to get some answers...

And paused. His gaze flickered to Loursa's slackened face, a bitter spring of pain bubbling unexpectedly to the surface of his anger.

When his hand came down, he felt the ghosts moving, but it wasn't into the body of the priest he directed them.

Loursa's jaw twitched. Her unfocused eyes turned toward him.

"Why did you try to kill me?" He cursed himself for the plaintive tone he couldn't quite banish.

"Ellithir... tells me... you want to harm her, as... you have so many others. I... have to... kill you first."

"Who's Ellithir?"

"My dearest... friend."

A horrible suspicion began to crawl on millipede legs up Marcov's spine. "How long have you known her?"

"Few hours."

"Then why are you such dear friends?"

"Words. She speaks... strange, pretty words."

The brutal simplicity of the dead. Marcov rose, staggered backward until he thumped against the nearest shelves. Several dishes and other trophies fell, shattering around his feet. He didn't notice.

Loursa hadn't liked him; he'd known that from the beginning, and hadn't cared. But she'd fought beside him. She hadn't betrayed him, not intentionally. Marcov knew magic when he heard it.

And he'd killed her for it.

Marcov rubbed at his forehead and looked back at the corpse, but it was once again an empty, lifeless husk.

"I'm sorry." His voice was oddly hoarse, the words dusty from years of disuse.

Marcov slung his blade over his shoulder and stalked out into the street, his rage growing hot once more. Someone in this town knew who Ellithir was, and Marcov felt more than ready to make whoever it was tell him.

∗ ∗ ∗

A few customers wandered the aisles of the general store when Marcov arrived. For several minutes, as he pulled goods aside and hunted for hidden secrets, the patrons stared at him in confusion. When one of them confronted him, asking what he thought he was doing, the gaunt foreigner was only too happy to let his ghosts toss a few objects around the room until he'd sent everyone into panicked flight.

It took some doing, and nearly ten more minutes; that damn mosquito-repelling herbal smoke, which seemed to be everywhere he went in the River Kingdoms lately, had given him a right headache by the time he was through.

Finally, however, with the spirits subtly guiding him when he got too far off track, he located the hidden trapdoor behind the counter.

He was forced to duck, walking at almost a crouch down the upper portion of the stairs, until he was deep enough below the ceiling to stand straight.

The chamber was earth and soil, barely supported by sagging beams of wood. A stone-rimmed pool sat within, a granite pillar protruding from its center. Both the stink of acrid incense and a faint glow that was the cellar's only illumination spilled from a pair of braziers. Marcov saw no one else here, heard no one, but a lifetime's instincts screamed of lurking danger. Again, he began whispering to the ghosts, asking them to guide his strikes, to warn him of attack, to—

The shadows at the chamber's far end shifted and lightened, revealing a slender silhouette. A voice hissed something only vaguely like words, and Marcov's sword began to glow. He heard skin sizzle even before he felt the searing pain, and threw the weapon aside with a startled shout. It scraped the edge of the pool, settling point-first in the water. Steam hissed upward to join the clouds of incense.

Marcov ran, and not an instant too soon. A thunderous crash shook the chamber, centered where he'd been standing. Dirt fell from the ceiling and water sloshed over the edges of the font. The burst of noise hit him like a physical blow, staggering him, making his ears ring; he could only imagine how much worse it might have been had he suffered the brunt.

Another three paces and Marcov jumped for the low ceiling. A brilliant beam of light flashed beneath him, so close he could feel the heat of its passing. Had gravity taken its normal course, his leap would not have stopped him from plummeting into the path of the ray.

He felt a phantom current wrap around his fingers and feet, holding him to the ceiling. Hanging upside down above the pool like a humanoid spider, he began scurrying sideways.

The darkened figure emerged somewhat from the gloom, revealing a golden-haired elf whose features might have been deemed soft, had they not been twisted in a rictus of anger and hate.

"Ellithir, I presume?"

She grunted an affirmation. "And you would be Draeven. You're a damned nuisance, you know that?"

"So I've been told. What's this all about?"

Ellithir didn't answer, but the flicker of her eyes toward the granite pillar was all the confirmation Marcov needed. He knew a shrine when he saw one, even if he didn't recognize the deity.

Ellithir conjures an abhorrent infestation.

"So, this is a religious thing. Just not Calistrian."

He was stalling, and he knew that she knew he was stalling, but still she answered. "Khydol was useful, as was his faith." She shrugged. "His grudge was genuine. I just... encouraged him to expand his horizons."

"To what end? All this bloodshed and suffering... For what?"

"Bloodshed and suffering is the end, Draeven! We—"

Ellithir flung out her hand in the midst of speaking, clearly hoping to catch him unprepared.

Marcov hurled himself forward and leaped from the ceiling, wondering what fell invocation he'd avoided. Even as he landed, his sword flew from the pool into his waiting grasp, cool to the touch once more. He swung.

The sword crashed into a glimmering aura that sprang into life around the elf, the blade stopping inches from her skin.

Again, Ellithir screeched something that was only vaguely a language. This time Marcov recognized a word—or perhaps a name?—repeated from her first incantation: Gyronna.

The elf's right eye bulged, suddenly bloodshot and grossly swollen, as if pushed partly from her skull by the rage and magic within her. She slapped a hand against his armored chest.

Agony drove him to his knees. Worse than any wound, any illness he'd endured, it felt as though something ate away at him from within.

Then something wriggled, a wet and flaccid tickle that brushed the inside of his ribs and burrowed toward his gut, and he realized that was precisely what was happening. It was all he could do not to retch, then to scream his horror until his mind was gone.

"Idiot!" Ellithir kicked him in the face, sending him sprawling. "We are a plague! We are as the worms consuming your flesh! You haven't stopped me. Even if you'd killed me, you could never—"

The murdered souls that haunted Marcov could do nothing against the unnatural parasites that riddled him. But as they'd guided his limbs before, granting him strength, so did the spirits enable him to act now—more slowly and feebly than he would have preferred, but far more effectively than Ellithir could have anticipated. He stumbled upward.

Again, the glimmering aura prevented a killing stroke.

"Remember how you fought," Marcov whispered, coughing, to the spirits surrounding him. "Remember the men who swept over you, over your families, your children. Remember how you fought..."

Wisps of nothingness swirled, blended, assumed substance and form—until a plain longsword, chipped and battered and vaguely transparent, hung behind the elven cleric.

Ellithir gasped as the blade plunged between her shoulders, unhindered by her aura. She staggered forward, this time into Marcov's waiting grip.

A simple touch was all it took. Flesh split, blood flowed, muscles burst beneath the ghosts' fury.

Ellithir fell, first to her knees, then to one side. Ever thirsty, the earthen floor drank the growing pool of blood around her.

Marcov, too, collapsed once more, panting, shuddering in pain. "A drink and a whore if I live through this," he mumbled, though whether to himself or the spirits was unclear. "Not necessarily in that order."

"Cel—celebrating?" Ellithir's words emerged as a burbling, blood-soaked cough. "Don't. We—we are everywhere. The River Kingdoms belong to us! The flesh is filth. The world is pain. To see is to hate. And the Hag... the Hag sees..."

A final rattle, a pinkish froth, and Ellithir was gone.

Moments later, the agony of the worms began to fade, and Marcov nearly wept in relief. He felt as though he'd just swum the Inner Sea while suckling a mewling vampire, but the worst of the pain was gone.

Then, with the image of Loursa's dead face floating before his mind's eye, he realized he was wrong. It was only the physical pain that had ebbed.

Groaning, he dragged himself upright, leaning on his sword like an old man's cane. His gaze flickered first to the strange stone shrine, then to the dead priestess at his feet.

He thought of Ellithir's dying words—of cults like this spread throughout the River Kingdoms—and the spirits stirred within him.

Just this once, maybe he wouldn't mind the job that lay ahead.

Coming Next Week: The past returns to haunt a group of retired adventurers in the first chapter of Josh Vogt's "The Weeping Blade."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His fiction includes the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the Iron Kingdoms novel In Thunder Forged, among others. For more information, see his website at mousferatu.com.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Best Served Cold

by Ari Marmell

Chapter Three: An Array of Evils

Loursa moved to Draeven's side, limping, sword dragging point-first through the dirt. "I thought you said there'd only be a few of them!"

"I did," he said. "Didn't figure every last one of them would be up and armed at midnight, either."

Understanding pounded over Loursa thicker than the falling soil. "They knew we were coming."

"We did, at that." From the mass of ragged but uncomfortably well-armed brigands, two figures advanced. Loursa knew instinctively that the one in the lead was the "Zarred" Draeven had mentioned. Steel breastplate over leather, an axe that looked like it had actually seen professional care, scars on top of scars... A bandit chief if ever there was one.

The other, the speaker, was a scarlet-haired half-elf who wore his chainmail awkwardly. His sleeves shone gold in the brigands' torchlight, and his left hand fiddled absently with a silver pendant that dangled from his neck.

Zarred is a bandit chief if there ever was one.

"How?" Draeven demanded.

The half-elf shrugged. "Message from a friend."

"But—"

"You stupid, Khydol?" This from Zarred. "Son of a bitch is stalling, is all. Let's just get it done, yeah?"

"Well, I'd have liked to know why this fellow's interfering, but I suppose it doesn't matter. Go ahead."

Zarred barked. Almost a dozen bandits raised crossbows. Loursa sucked in a deep breath, determined to at least die with dignity. Pity it had to be in this bastard's company.

And Draeven, after a moment of muttering to himself... laughed.

A chorus of low howls thickened the air around the condemned pair. Dirt kicked up and fallen twigs flew, yet not a single gust touched Loursa. Triggers clicked. A flock of bolts flew toward the pair and were just as swiftly hurled aside by the spectral forces. None even came close.

The bowmen recoiled, crying their dismay, but the half-elf—Khydol, Zarred had called him—advanced. Shouting, he raised the pendant around his neck. Loursa could just make out its three-pronged engraving, and while she knew little about magic of any sort, she recognized a spell when she saw it.

Whatever power Khydol hoped to invoke, however, was just as swiftly lost. Draeven raised his own hand in a peculiar hooking gesture. The tenor of the howling changed, ever so faintly, and the amulet tore itself from the chain around the half-elf's neck and hurtled through the phantom gale into the foreigner's waiting grip.

Khydol gawped, apparently having been stripped of language skills along with his pendant. Not so for Zarred. "Kill them!" thundered the bandit leader.

Loursa met the first of the attackers, blade clashing on blade. She allowed herself to be pushed back, retreating, watching as his strikes fell into a pattern common to the vicious but untrained. Strike, parry, step, strike, parry...

The guard from Kelbran delivered a short, swift kick, catching the bandit's ankle in midair with an audible crack. He'd barely begun to howl when her sword took him in the throat.

Loursa's withdrawal had taken her away from the man's companions, granting her an instant to catch her breath. She shot a quick glance behind to see how her own unpleasant companion was holding up...

She nearly choked. Draeven was staggering, reeling from blows that skittered across his hauberk or rang from his blade. The blood of several shallow cuts ran down his arms, dripped from between his fingers. He retreated before the enemy, worked to parry any weapon that came too close, but otherwise seemed lost in his own little world. The bulk of the gang was focused on him, Zarred included, and it was nothing more than simple geometry—only a few could reach him at any given time—that kept Draeven from being overwhelmed.

Another brigand, an ape of a man whose face was all beard and rotten teeth, demanded Loursa's undivided attention with his falling mace. His first blow numbed her arm from knuckles to elbow, nearly knocking the sword from her hand. A third attacker appeared from around the mace-wielder, jabbing with a spear. Loursa spun aside, dropped an arm over the shaft and twisted. The weapon flew from the bandit's grip, but by then the big guy was closing again, mace blotting out the sun...

An unearthly screech, high-pitched and keening, echoed over the village. Loursa was startled enough, but her foes seemed shocked into near paralysis; she disemboweled the nearer of the two bandits with a quick swipe before turning to see what had just occurred.

Draeven hung in the air a dozen feet above his opponents, slowly rotating in a phantom whirlwind Loursa could sense but not see or hear. His jaw gaped, distended almost to the point of breaking, yet the scream—only now beginning to fade—was not in his voice and seemed to come from around him as much as from within. Blood slid from his blade, painting an abstract pattern of spatters on the upturned faces of his foes.

Without warning, he dropped back into the bandits' midst, a blur of flashing steel and fists. As Loursa had witnessed back in Kelbran, ghostly arms seemed to guide Draeven's blade, driving it into organs. No matter the ferocity of the enemy that confronted him, he attacked with relentless resolve. Strokes that should have spilled his blood, even dismembered limbs, turned aside at the last moment, repelled by invisible forces. Brigands began to fall.

Screaming in rage—and perhaps a touch of fear—Zarred burst from between his men, axe hurtling in an arc that might have split a healthy bole in a single blow. Draeven crouched, spinning, so that the heavy blade passed clear overhead. Halfway through the turn he rose, sword outstretched.

The bandit chieftain was fast. Instead of being spitted, Zarred yanked himself from the sword's path.

It didn't help. Draeven thrust out his empty hand, slapping it against Zarred's chest.

Spirits groaned. Zarred screamed. And then he... withered. The flesh of his arms and face shrank against the bone, his eyes dulled in sudden pain; even his hair seemed to go limp.

It wasn't lethal, whatever the foreigner had done. But the next time Draeven's hand-and-a-half came around, it plunged clean through Zarred's chest with no hint of resistance.

The remaining bandits fled so quickly their own horses might have had trouble keeping up. Khydol was gone as well, apparently having run after he'd lost his pendant.

This time, Draeven didn't bother to pursue the survivors. Instead, after looking about to ensure no more bandits remained, he wandered over to the nearest house, shoved the door open, and vanished inside.

Loursa followed. She found Draeven slumped in an old chair beside a scarred and food-stained table. He gulped deep breaths of air—whether from physical exhaustion or because of something else, she could not tell.

"Why did you let them beat on you like that?" It wasn't the question she wanted to ask; she was working up to that one.

Draeven shrugged. "I can hear the ghosts' thoughts in my mind, but they don't read mine. I have to explain what I'm asking of them. Sometimes takes longer than might be convenient."

"Who the hell are they? Draeven, what are you?"

∗ ∗ ∗

Marcov hadn't planned on answering the questions. He never had before, and Loursa certainly wasn't the first to have asked. A curse was already squirming on his tongue.

It died unborn, smothered by a low moan deep in the recesses of his soul—a moan that only grew louder, more oppressive, the longer he kept silent.

"You have got to be kidding me!"

The moan became a shriek, nearly knocking him from the chair. The legs of the table began to vibrate.

"All right, all right!"

He steadied himself, only to notice Loursa staring at him. She looked as if she were trying desperately to figure out which of them had actually gone mad.

"Apparently," he growled, "they want me to tell you. No idea why, but I'm getting disgustingly used to that.

"I was a sellsword, and a damn good one. Did most of my work as part of a mercenary band, led by a guy named Craddek. Real bastard, the kind whose own mother would travel a week out of her way to avoid. But then, so were the rest of us."

"I'd never have guessed," Loursa said dryly.

Marcov ignored her. "It was back in early '08. We hit a town called... Shit, I don't remember what it was called. Not sure I ever knew, come to think of it. Few miles east of Saringallow, down in Isger. No war, no part of any contract. Just something we did occasionally between jobs to keep the purses full and the urges sated."

He grinned without humor as Loursa gasped and stepped back. "Not all that worldly, are you, ‘m'lady'? Most who earn a living with steel? Not much different than the men we killed earlier. They're just the bad guys when it's your home they're hitting."

A long silence, then. Marcov, despite his fatigue, rose from the chair and began to pace. "Things got out of hand this time," he said finally. "Peasants fought back harder than we expected. Killed a couple of the boys before we subdued them. Craddek was pissed, and the rest of us not much calmer.

"We killed them. All of them. The whole town was muddy with the mess, and when we were done, there wasn't a man, woman, or child left breathing."

The color drained from Loursa's cheeks.

"The thing of it is," he continued, "being dead didn't keep them from being angry. Really, really angry.

"I don't know why they picked me out of everybody there. Maybe it was random. Maybe I killed someone special. Hell, maybe it's 'cause I was born in Ustalav; we've got a whole culture built on ghost stories. Damned if I know, and they're not talking."

He stopped at the table, leaned on his knuckles. "I remember a howl, like a hurricane, and then screams... Countless screams, echoing forever. When I woke up, Craddek and the others were long gone—and I had myself a new band of traveling companions.

"I haven't lived my own life in years. They're with me constantly, Loursa. Every minute of every day, every second of every dream. They don't speak, unless it's through the bodies of the dead, but they're not shy about letting me know what they want me to do. They'll help me accomplish my ‘assignments'—you've seen them manifest their powers—but they don't ever take no for an answer.

"I wasn't in the River Kingdoms for you people. I was in Daggermark, trying to find Craddek. Keep hoping that if I can find him and the others, kill them, just maybe the damned ghosts'll be satisfied. You want to know why I showed up here? Why I give a tarnished copper about a few towns in Touvette? Because they do. Not the first time they've gotten me involved in this sort of crap, either. Guess it reminds them of, well, them."

He looked up into his companion's face, pale as the dead of whom he spoke, and wondered briefly what his own looked like. He'd never told the story before, couldn't even begin to separate and identify the emotions it stirred up now.

"That's who I am, Loursa. That's what I am. So you want to stand there looking horrified at me? Or shall we discuss what we can do to keep any more of Touvette's peasantry from joining the ghosts themselves?"

∗ ∗ ∗

"I'm terribly sorry, Master... what did you say your name was?"

"Oh, you got me," Marcov said. "I deliberately didn't mention it earlier, but you've tripped me up with your clever ruse. How did I let you outsmart me like that?"

The priest's scowl deepened the already severe crags of his aged face. "Whatever. I'm afraid I haven't the slightest idea who you're—"

"Must we? Half-elf. Goes by the name Khydol. Priest of Calistria."

It had been easy enough to figure out that much in the aftermath of yesterday's struggle at Alvren. Even if Zarred's corpse hadn't told them as much, the holy symbol etched into the stolen pendant was blatant enough.

Calistria, goddess of—among other things—retribution. So yeah, made sense that one of her priests might seek revenge on Touvette for the expulsion of the churches, especially if he or those he cared for were among the displaced. Loursa, given her attitudes toward religion in general, had been quick to accept that explanation.

Marcov was less convinced. He'd known a few Calistrians, back in his mercenary days. They could be savage when wronged, sure, but slaughtering whole villages of peasants—that seemed a little hard, even for them. And he still couldn't help but wonder who'd warned Khydol that he and Loursa were coming.

Conflicted and uncertain—Zarred knew only what he'd been paid to do, not why—they'd followed the dead bandit chief's directions to Khydol's home, a ramshackle town just across the border in Pitax. Once there, they couldn't split up fast enough for Loursa's tastes. Marcov almost smiled at her eagerness to seek out Khydol through the town's social gatherings, while he took the religious tack.

It's almost as if my story made her dislike me or something.

Now Marcov stood in a slope-roofed wooden structure built more like a northern feast hall than a church. Still, it was a sight one would never see in neighboring Touvette. Rows of kneeling cushions and blocks on which to sit faced a generic shrine over which draped an array of altar cloths, each embroidered with the symbol of a different god.

It was the town's only center of worship. Marcov knew it, and the priest knew Marcov knew it.

"There's zero chance," Marcov concluded, "that you don't know a fellow priest in a flyspeck like this one. So can we just skip all the denials?"

"Yes, I know Khydol," the priest admitted, tone as stiff as his back. "We forbade him from leading prayers here. He was stirring up trouble, preaching violence against Touvette."

"Decided to do more than preach it, holy man."

"Maybe so. But I'll still—" They both paused as a village matron strode through the door and knelt beside the shrine. "Still not deliver him to a thug like you!" the old man continued, his voice lowered.

Now Marcov did smile. "Sure you will."

"If you think you can intimidate me into—"

"Khydol is responsible for the destruction of half a dozen villages in Touvette, and the deaths of hundreds. You live near the border; you must know how the General's knights respond to those who threaten their people."

"We're safe here," the priest insisted, though his face had blanched. "King Irovetti—"

"Irovetti," Marcov interrupted, "is desperate for people to take Pitax seriously as a kingdom, rather than a den of thieves and beggars. If he were told that a nothing little community like yours was harboring an enemy of Touvette, at about the same time the General's men showed up looking for a little payback, you think he wouldn't grant them permission to do what they want with the ‘criminals'?"

The clergyman's jaw sagged; his hands visibly shook.

"Khydol dies either way, priest. Only question is, you want everyone else here to go with him?"

∗ ∗ ∗

"Can I help you, miss?"

Loursa gave a tired smile as she allowed the door to swing shut behind her. "Hope so. I'm looking for a man by the name of Khydol. People tell me he frequents your establishment."

"He certainly does," Ellithir said, her grin equally friendly. "Why don't you come in, and I'll see what I can tell you."

Coming Next Week: Deadly machinations and unforeseen encounters in the final chapter of Ari Marmell's "Best Served Cold."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His fiction includes the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the Iron Kingdoms novel In Thunder Forged, among others. For more information, see his website at mouseferatu.com.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Best Served Cold

by Ari Marmell

Chapter Two: Worse Than the Disease

The faintest shower of sleet, scarcely more than an icy fog, began to fall over the battlefield that had been the town of Kelbran. Just another instance of the peculiar freezes and unnatural weather afflicting eastern Touvette in recent months, but this time—as visibility grew cloudy and the churned muck of the earth thickened—it almost seemed a harbinger of the oncoming stranger.

They heard his approach before he appeared; citizens, bandits, corpses—all turned toward the clatter and splash of a warhorse thundering across the frost-kissed grass. Pounding in from the north, it grew louder, then louder still, until it was joined by the wordless cry of a warrior seeking blood.

All of which left the brigands more than a little bewildered when the mounted figure appeared from the west, bursting through the flimsy curtain of sleet in absolute, almost phantasmal, silence. Dark of hair, dark of armor, he wielded a massive blade from atop a russet stallion that appeared to be all muscle and resentment. The man swung his sword with a walloping force that seemed beyond the ability of a normal man. Striking like steel lightning, his blade sliced through the mist, hewing down foes as the warhorse bulled ahead. Four of the bandits fell, life gushing into the soil, before the others could even guess at the unbound fury that faced them.

Loursa had no idea whom their savior might be, and for the moment, she wasn't about to question. Instead, with a cry, she led Kelbran's survivors in a renewed attack on their assailants.

"Loursa leads Kelbran's survivors against the enemy."

Even fighting for her life, she couldn't quite take her eyes off the stranger. Whoever—whatever—he was, he was no more natural than the walking dead, and not merely for his abnormal strength. Blade and bludgeon veered at the last instant, sliding past rather than biting into his flesh or even the steel protecting it. In his wake, men who had fallen to seemingly nonfatal wounds twitched, shuddered, and died all the same. He lashed out with his empty hand, as well as his sword, and those he struck fell screaming, limbs withered or skin split.

Perhaps of greater import than any of his eerie abilities was his utter lack of fear. Against one foe or a dozen, living or undead, his arm never wavered, his expression never changed. Where even the bravest of Loursa's companions hesitated to draw near the bandits' shambling allies, the newcomer mercilessly drove his mount to close, his blade filleting desiccated flesh from rotting bone.

When the last handful of surviving bandits fled into the falling sleet, the citizens of Kelbran gave a ragged cheer, Loursa loudest of them all.

Not the stranger. Apparently unsatisfied still, he wheeled his horse and charged after the raiders. Loursa cringed as the din of slaughter and unanswered pleas sounded long after the lot of them had disappeared from sight.

The guard and her neighbors exchanged uncertain glances, then set about gathering the wounded. They'd been at it for perhaps five minutes when the horse reappeared at a walk. The rider dropped from the saddle, sword leaning on one shoulder. As he neared, Loursa could see that nothing about him other than that sword seemed to be in any worthwhile shape, and that the sleet melting down his skin was probably the nearest he'd come to bathing in weeks.

"Draeven," he announced in a bored tone, as though common courtesies were a burden he could do without. "Marcov Draeven. Who commands here?"

Loursa shrugged. "I suppose I do, now. My name is Loursa—"

"Fine." Draeven spun his blade, drove it point-first into the soil and left it standing. He stretched, arching his shoulders and craning his neck to one side. The resulting crack rivaled a small siege engine. "Anything to drink around here?"

"I'm sure we can find you something," Loursa said through clenched teeth. "I want to thank you for—"

"Don't. I didn't do this for you, and I don't especially want to be here." Then, before she could reply further, he idly kicked an arm that had, until recently, been attached to a shambling corpse. "Walking dead. I never heard anything about your bandit problem being an undead problem."

"Neither had we. I think this is the first time those—those things appeared. Maybe because Kelbran is the first town those bastards couldn't take on their own."

"Maybe." For the first time, his expression changed, sliding into a nasty grin. "Bet you're wishing about now that you hadn't booted all the clerics, aren't you?"

Mutters rippled through the citizens, and Loursa drew herself up rigid. "The churches turned on Touvette. They were a bad element. We've been better off since the General ousted them and set up the charities in their stead."

"Oh, yeah." The man allowed his gaze to fall heavily upon the moaning, crying wounded. "I can see that. They look much better off."

"I appreciate your help, Draeven," she said coldly, "but unless you've been granted a traveling pass, I think maybe it's time you left. Or would you rather I escort you to the nearest judge and you can explain to him why you're not a spy and shouldn't hang?"

Draeven waved his hand dismissively. "Lost it in battle, I'm afraid. But I have a feeling you'll be issuing me a new one shortly, Loursa. Otherwise, you'll never find out who's been launching these attacks, and I won't be able to send him to the nearest convenient hell. I'm not leaving without an answer. Or that drink."

"You didn't leave anyone alive who could provide any answers!"

Again, Draeven offered that ugly, crooked smile. "That's not too much of an inconvenience, really."

After a brief and apparently perfunctory examination, the foreigner knelt beside a deceased bandit. The man had fallen from a nasty slash through his ribs; Loursa grew more and more puzzled as Draeven prodded at the corpse's mouth and head. He looked for all the world like a gourmand examining a haunch of beef.

She grew more bewildered still when Draeven said, "All right, you bastards. Make yourselves useful and get in there." Not only did it not make sense, but his head was twisted to one side while he spoke, as if he addressed neither the dead body nor Loursa herself, but some nonexistent entity between them.

Loursa staggered, unable to repress a startled breath, when the dead man's jaw creaked open of its own accord. Horrified gasps and angry murmurs ran through the gathered townsfolk. Loursa wondered briefly if some of them weren't actually planning to attack Draeven.

She listened with rapt attention as they talked, these two unnatural creatures. Draeven spoke under his breath, his words intended for the corpse alone. The sounds that emerged from the body itself scarcely seemed to be words at all. Soft wheezes and croaking whispers, kneaded by dead lips into shapes that only vaguely resembled syllables, occasionally wafted to Loursa's ears, but she was too distant to make any sense of them. The sleet ceased falling, the wind stilled, and gradually the low drone of those voices became the world's only sound.

When Draeven finally concluded his "conversation" and stood, it was all Loursa could do not to either draw her sword or back away. Both urges were only strengthened when she realized that the man's hair, and the sleeves of his tunic, billowed in the unmoving air.

"You know Alvren?" he asked.

"I—what?"

Draeven sighed. "Alvren. Do. You. Know it?"

"It's a small hillside community," Loursa replied, now definitely leaning more toward the "draw her sword" option. "It's about fifteen miles north, on the border with Pitax."

"Good. Let's go."

"Why the hell you'd believe I'd go anywhere with you—"

"Because," he drawled, "I need a local to guide me. And like it or not, you owe me for saving your hide." Then, just as she was drawing breath to retort: "And we want the same thing. At least, I assume so. You do want these raids to stop, right? I'm not giving you too much credit, there?"

"No." That single word was icier than all the fallen sleet.

"Then can we get moving already?"

Spitting curses, more than a few of which called upon or profaned gods her people no longer worshiped, Loursa stalked back into Kelbran to gather supplies.

∗ ∗ ∗

The basement was pungent with soil and mildew, a stench utterly unconcealed by acrid fumes of ceremonial incense. Walls of damp earth bulged, supported by a haphazard array of mold-covered wooden beams that sagged, exhausted, under the heavy load. An equally rickety staircase slouched up to a trapdoor that was the cellar's only exit.

Well, its only nonmagical exit.

The inhabitants of the chamber sat, crouched, or sprawled around the cellar's peculiar centerpiece: a circular well of granite, sunk deep into the earth and filled to overflowing with filthy, stagnant water. A stone obelisk, rough-surfaced but perfectly cylindrical, rose from the precise center of the foul pool. Only if viewed from directly above would the peculiar monument appear as a representation of a staring, disembodied eye.

Ellithir leaned back from the edge and brushed a stray lock of hair behind a pointed ear. Over the simple woolen tunic and leggings with which her customers in the store above were familiar, she now sported a voluminous black tabard, torn ragged around the hems. "Well, sisters." She waved idly at the images that were only now fading from the pool. "What do we make of this?"

"Death swaddles him." This from a figure hunched in the shadows across the dark water, a silhouette that might or might not have been human. Her voice was dull, monotonous, like a woman entranced. "An infant's blanket and a burial shroud, both at once. He walks with ghosts. They ride him, as a stallion newly broken."

"Yes, dear, I think we all got that." It was a third who spoke now, a long and lanky shape whose height and proportion, though generally humanoid, were clearly anything but human. "I could barely see the morsel, for all the phantom energies swirling about him. But I believe our sister's point was that we ought really to decide what to do about him."

"More or less what I meant, yes," Ellithir said. "We didn't plan for anyone like him, but we knew someone would interfere eventually." The coven had summoned a host of foul creatures through a variety of spells—some far worse than the undead Khydol had raised—and set them loose along the highways of Touvette. They'd kept the General's knights nicely distracted from the bandits, but the coven knew well that their diversions couldn't last indefinitely.

"Do we call it done, then, dearie? Leave the cleric and his thugs to their fate? The bloodshed's already been heavier than we could have demanded. Perhaps we've accomplished enough for now."

"The priest's wrath rages hot, still," the other shadowed woman droned. "We can burn plenty more, before the conflagration dies."

Ellithir nodded. "I'll send a warning to Khydol, making sure he thinks the message came from some supposed ‘survivor' of the Kelbran battle. He and the rest of Zarred's bandits should be more than enough for this newcomer, once they know he's coming."

The larger figure shifted, stretching. "And if they're not enough?"

"Mm. Can the two of you assist me in renewing the weather magics before you depart? Wouldn't do to have the ‘punishment of the gods' suddenly let up."

"Those spells shouldn't require renewing until the day after tomorrow."

"No, but I intend to be busy for the next few days. Contingencies, in case—as you suggest—Khydol and Zarred don't come through. One way or another, ghosts or no, it behooves us to ensure that this Draeven is just another corpse on the pile.

"The flesh is filth, my sisters," she concluded, her tone abruptly formal, ritualistic. "The world is pain. To see is to hate."

From the others, in unison, "And the Hag sees all."

∗ ∗ ∗

Slipping, Marcov, you wretched fool. Should have known this was too easy...

Should have known—and would have known, only a few years ago, when his arm and eye were honed by a life behind the sword. Before the fury and frustration. Before the drink.

Before the ghosts.

They'd reached Alvren quickly enough, stopping only for a few hours to rest up after the battle at Kelbran. It proved an easy journey, over open fields with only the occasional rolling hill, and often across trails tramped flat by years of passing feet, human and animal alike.

And they'd taken every precaution. Marcov had learned much from the corpse he'd interrogated. He knew that the bandit leader—named Zarred—had depopulated Alvren and taken it as a base camp for his band. He knew there were several dozen men left in that band, but Alvren should house only a fraction of them at any given time. He knew the band had been hired by someone to make these raids, though presumably only Zarred and his immediate lieutenants knew who.

What Marcov hadn't known, Loursa had. Familiar with the geography and—though he would never deign to admit it—possessed of a sharp sense of tactics, she'd planned a nighttime approach that kept them hidden behind Alvren's own houses and barns.

Between their swords and what advantages Marcov could squeeze from the souls who rode him, they'd cut down a trio of riders patrolling near the hill, and a pair of sentries at the edge of town. They'd been so silent, in fact, that the choir of frogs and crickets—those that had survived the recent freeze—hadn't been sufficiently disturbed to cease their calls.

So why, why, after battling a throng of bloody undead, was I too stupid to check for magical defenses?

It had erupted from the earth, a blast of thunderous force that shattered the night, nearly deafening him even as it hurled him and Loursa from their feet. Soil and splinters rained around them, and the world seemed subtly tilted as Marcov struggled to rise.

Now, cursing himself for an idiot and the phantoms for dragging him into this mess, he finally staggered to his feet. One more abrupt lean almost sent him sprawling again, and then the earth righted itself enough for Marcov to see what he faced.

"Well... shit."

Coming Next Week: The sins of the past revealed in Chapter Three of Ari Marmell's "Best Served Cold."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His fiction includes the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the Iron Kingdoms novel In Thunder Forged, among others. For more information, see his website at mouseferatu.com.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer

Best Served Cold

Ari Marmell

Chapter One: Echoes of the Past

Rattling shutters and gaps between the wooden slats of walls allowed a faint breeze into the store. The establishment smelled of dust, mildew, and the acrid aroma of burning leaves that kept the ubiquitous mosquitoes and flies from riding the weather inside. It wasn't that much of a store, all in all; but then, it wasn't that much of a town, either.

The bulk of the voices—and there were always voices, despite the store's ramshackle appearance—wafted from the counter opposite the door, and from the racks of meats and baked goods alongside. Ellithir allowed the locals to loiter, picking at the foods and paying for whatever they consumed, rather than insisting they buy in bulk. Just another way to compete with the eateries and taverns in town—all two of them. Even over the sounds of those voices, though, the willowy elf heard rickety floorboards beneath a hesitant tread, and the faint rustling and thumping of someone browsing idly through the aisles of various tools.

The visitor eventually emerged from the second aisle over, between haphazard coils of hempen rope and a portcullis of dangling rakes. Beneath a mop of unruly red hair, Khydol's face was morose. The gold-hued tunic he normally favored was hidden by a cloak and mantle of drab brown—as was the holy pendant he usually wore exposed for all to see.

Gracefully, her own steps squeezing nary a squeak from the floorboards, Ellithir stepped from behind the other counter—the one where she normally tallied up purchases—and produced a three-legged stool for her guest.

"Thank you." Clearly a response born solely of instinct; his eyes hadn't even focused on her. Ellithir studied him further: the abnormal garb, the pensive gaze, the faintly pointed ears indicating that he shared a portion of her own racial heritage.

Studied him, and waited for him to come to it in his own time.

"It's done," he said finally.

She nodded. She'd expected as much. "And this troubles you?"

"It..." he shrugged. "Yes. Somewhat. It's just... a lot to take on."

"I know it is." She reached out, gripping his shoulder tight. "We've talked about this, Khydol. You're doing the right thing. Look at what else is happening over there! Hail, in this season? Wilting crops? If the gods are finally showing their wrath at those apostates, surely your anger is justified!" It was an old discussion, one they'd held half a dozen times before. Khydol agreed with her, she knew that; he just had to be reminded.

"And besides," Ellithir continued, jabbing a finger at the half-elf's unseen holy icon, "what else would she ask of you but vengeance?"

Reverentially, Khydol reached beneath the woolen mantle and withdrew the heavy pendant. There, worked into the silver, were the triple daggers of the Savored Sting: Calistria, mistress of lust, deception... and retribution.

"The goddess be praised," Khydol murmured, softly but sincerely. Across the store, the voices began to taper off as men and women glanced out the windows, saw the first streamers of smoke writhing from over the horizon—and over the border.

"The goddess be praised," Ellithir echoed, her thin lips quirked in the faintest of smiles.

∗ ∗ ∗

The ghosts of Marcov Draeven's past have taken their toll.

In some taverns, a brawl means something has gone very wrong, and it's time to yell for the watch. In others, it just means that sailors are in port, or teamsters are between deliveries, and someone's imbibed a bit too freely.

And then there are those in which a brawl simply means "We're open."

The stranger—one of many—slouched in a rickety chair, trying to absorb the last dregs of warmth from the hearth's dying embers, and watched with profound disinterest as the last of this evening's rowdies were hurled out the door by the husband-and-wife team of half-orc bouncers. The fight hadn't even been fun to watch; those killjoy bouncers had stepped in too early.

He couldn't be bothered to remember the tavern's name. The latest in an endless line, tracing a pathway of pain across the Inner Sea, it was nothing to him but another place to drink, and maybe chase a few hours' slumber. It wasn't even a good place; that damn insect-repelling herbal smoke that had recently grown so popular throughout the River Kingdoms was giving him a headache.

Not that Marcov Draeven appeared any more special than the shabby ale hall. Grease-matted hair that might, if clean, have appeared a rich brown hung past his shoulders in ragged strings. Unshaven cheeks went beyond gaunt into sunken, and red-rimmed, deep-set eyes suggested many recent sleepless nights. An old and often-patched chain hauberk left rust stains on a tunic almost too dark to show them. Only his weapon, a monster of a hand-and-a-half sword, demonstrated any signs of care. It currently leaned against the wall, unscabbarded, like any old walking stick.

Any of the patrons who noticed him at all—and if they did, it was only for that naked blade—had certainly dismissed him as just another sellsword, gone somewhat to seed, haunted by past years.

They had no idea how right they were.

To those potential observers, it would surely have seemed just another drunken mishap as fingers fumbled and lost their grip. They might have chuckled as the mug toppled and bounced across the floor, leaving tiny chips to mingle with the layers of broken crockery that served as the tavern's carpet.

Only Marcov himself knew that he'd placed the damn thing solidly on the table, that his hand was a good four or five inches away when it had suddenly gone skidding over the edge.

"Pharasma take you!" His low growl was surely inaudible to any nearby ears. "Leave me alone! Just one evening, damn you..."

His sword wobbled against the wall, threatening to tilt.

Spitting curses, Marcov stumbled a few steps from the chair—not drunk, entirely, but not precisely sober either—and dropped to one knee, hand outstretched to retrieve the fallen tankard.

That lean brought him just near enough to the next table to overhear the conversation over the ambient cacophony. Which, he realized sourly, had been the entire point.

Their entire point.

"...third town in as many weeks!"

"Bandits, maybe? Been a rough harvest. Lots of folks goin' hungry over there."

"Bandits steal, ya idiot. Kill a few; rape some, maybe. What kinda bandits burn whole towns to the ground?"

"I dunno. Angry ones?"

"Idiot."

"Yer both idiots. It's divine vengeance, it is. Knew it was comin' to 'em sooner or later."

"No!" Marcov hissed as he rose, wayward flagon forgotten. "Not my business. Not my problem!"

The mug at his feet shattered as though crushed beneath an unseen heel. His sword against the wall, and the chair he'd so recently vacated, began to rock.

"No, gods damn you!" He already had a goal, had somewhere to be! Why wouldn't they just—?

The chair toppled, one leg snapping loose. The embers in the fireplace burst upward, then extinguished themselves in a sizzling, sifting rain of ash.

And the howling began.

A single voice, at first. Then a dozen... three dozen... a hundred... more. Shrieks of terror, wails of despair, screams of agony, sobs of grief. The final gasps of the dying, and the hopeless moans of the damned.

Nobody else heard them—Marcov knew that all too well from prior experience—but that didn't make them any less deafening to him! Once more he fell to his knees, hands clasped to his ears, eyes squeezed so tightly shut that flickers of color flashed across his lids.

"Stop it! Stop it! Leave me alone!"

The howling only grew louder. The sword fell, sliding across the hearth, quillons grating on brick. Crockery atop the surrounding tables began to shake and clatter.

Strong-willed, stubborn, and prideful was Marcov Draeven. Even in the face of the unnatural onslaught, the gale of angry souls, it took him nearly a full minute to bend.

"All right! All right, you bastards, enough!" The sellsword's hands dropped from his ears to the floor, where he crouched like a wounded animal. "Enough," he repeated, far more softly.

The howling stopped. The surrounding objects ceased their impossible dance. And Marcov opened his eyes.

The room around him had changed, and not just by the will of the dead. Chairs and tables lay strewn where patrons had bolted to their feet and retreated from the spectral maelstrom. Quite a few had fled, to judge by the gaping door (and, in a some instances, windows). Most of those who remained stood, wide-eyed and sweating, pressed against the farthest walls, but a few edged forward, hands reaching for weapons.

Marcov slowly rose, stretched out his hand, and hissed something at his phantasmal retinue. The broad-bladed bastard sword flew from its spot by the hearth to land in his waiting palm with a muted slap.

The bravery rushed out of those few courageous souls, along with gasps and muted shrieks. They, too, fell back against the walls once more.

Marcov needed only a moment to find one of the men on whose conversation he had eavesdropped. "The towns you were talking about—where are they?"

"I... That... Towns? Sir, I don't want any—"

"Where. Are. They?"

"Touvette!" It was scarcely a squeak. "Eastern Touvette!"

A sharp nod, and then Marcov turned toward the shivering barkeep. "For the damages." He fumbled at his belt a moment before he found his coin purse, not due to any lingering intoxication—Marcov was quite sober now—but because his possessions had a bad habit of never remaining precisely where he'd put them. Finally, he scooped out a handful of silver, which he casually dropped to the floor when the barkeep showed no interest in coming anywhere near him. Then, sword still unsheathed resting flat upon his shoulder, Marcov strode toward the stables.

∗ ∗ ∗

The reinforced leather of Loursa's armor absorbed the stroke that would otherwise have split kidney and spine both. Still, she staggered a step across the churned and muddy field before spinning around, whipping sweaty strands of hair from her face, and slamming the heavy stock of the crossbow against the brigand's jaw. Something cracked—bone or wood, she wasn't certain, but the man collapsed. Loursa took that momentary respite to draw her own blade, catch a few deep breaths, and assess.

Kelbran hadn't been much better off than any of the other tiny communities scattered near Touvette's easternmost borders. The unseasonable ice storms had ravaged the settlement's crops as badly as its neighbors'; its people were just as desperate, just as destitute. But when the invaders came, and the first of the villages fell, Kelbran had welcomed survivors, rather than turning them away to seek refuge elsewhere. It was a decision that Loursa and the other guards had questioned when Samrev first made it, but the old village reeve had been adamant. "We have no charities in Kelbran to provide such services, as the great cities do," he'd said, "but we can show charity all the same."

He'd had a practical motive as well, it turned out. When the invaders finally came to Kelbran, the sixth community to suffer their depredations, Loursa and the other guards had met them with a much larger force than they'd anticipated—a force made up partly of refugees who, though starved and exhausted, burned with the need to avenge their own lost homes. Nobody knew how these bandits had managed to avoid the military patrols that scoured Touvette's major roads, but for the first time, it looked as though they might not be unstoppable.

Still, Kelbran had paid the price; Loursa wasn't sure, but she might well be the only guard left, and at least a third of the townsfolk lay hacked and mutilated. The rest fought in groups, overwhelming bandits alone or in pairs, making up in numbers and ferocity what they lacked in equipment and training. Loursa again brushed sandy hair from her face—she couldn't even remember when she'd lost her helmet—and hefted her sword, ready to go and assist. As long as nothing else changed, victory was just a matter of—

Everything disintegrated in a chorus of screams as the first of the dead shambled over the nearby knolls.

They weren't many, as compared to the townsfolk or bandits. But then, they didn't need to be. Dozens of villagers broke and ran. Those that remained stood rooted in shock, if only for an instant, and in that instant the invaders attacked with renewed vigor. The walking corpses had turned the tide in favor of their living allies before they'd even drawn near enough to strike.

The screaming only grew louder—not merely in pain or in panic, though both were plentiful enough, but in appalled recognition. Loursa's heart, already beating like a charging hound, climbed into her throat as she recognized many of these creatures as the dead citizens of other fallen towns.

The last few dozen survivors of Kelbran found themselves in a chaotic mass, their homes behind them, bandits and the shambling dead to all other sides. Loursa squeezed the hilt of her sword, struggling to hold tight despite the patina of sweat, and prayed for a miracle. Any miracle.

Had she known what sort of miracle was coming, her prayers might have been a bit more specific.

Coming Next Week: A mysterious cult lurks in the shadows in Chapter Two of Ari Marmell's "Best Served Cold."

Ari Marmell is an author and game designer, and has written extensively for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, World of Darkness, and more. His fiction includes the independent dark fantasy novels The Conqueror's Shadow and The Warlord's Legacy, the young adult fantasy Thief's Covenant, and the Iron Kingdoms novel In Thunder Forged, among others. For more information, see his website at mousferatu.com.

Illustration by Damon Westenhofer