3
——— III ———
It was a strange, bewitching night, not one the twins would soon forget.
Long afterwards the memory of it would come to them—to Rinda as she swam in the waters near Corsea or sat in a Mongauli tower, to Remus as he lay between sheets of Parros silk. Perhaps even the warrior Guin recalled it somewhere in the depths of his heart. It was a night as mysterious as the holy night of birth. There they were, where not even the hardened mercenaries of the Marches patrol would think of staying after sundown, deep in the borderland woods with only their blazing campfire between them and the ghosts, ghouls, and demons that roamed the night.
Not that the three sitting around the fire seemed entirely out of place. The twins could easily have passed for naiades or dryads had they been wearing light white robes instead of their battered travel garb—so like spirits they were, with their frostcolored hair sparkling in the firelight, violet eyes that looked almost silver in the darkness, and long, slender arms and legs. Their companion seemed to have come from another world entirely—a warrior of heroic proportions with a dark rage burning in the eyes that peered out from his ferocious-looking leopard mask.
At Rinda’s suggestion, Guin had taken a black breastplate, iron gauntlets, and greaves from the corpse of the largest of the Gohran riders he had slain. He added to this a pair of high leather boots, strapped on the finest broadsword he could find, and hung a light but sturdy black cloak from his shoulders.
He did not take a helmet. Wearing one of the black helms of Gohra could have fatal consequences should they happen to encounter any of the barbarians or soldiers from one of the many lands that were at war with Gohra. Moreover, there was another, simpler reason—it was unlikely that any of the helms there would have fit over his giant features.
Rinda admitted to herself that, recovered from his exhaustion and with a full set of clothes, Guin cut quite a handsome figure. Even his strange leopard head seemed much less a horrifyingly wild thing. He was like a god, she thought—half-man, half-beast—a noble warrior infused with untold strength and an animal soul.
The three companions constantly supplied their bonfire with oily grasses and branches to maintain its strength. The steadily burning flames cast their orange light in an alluring pool of wavering radiance that made for quite a fantastic sight. The circle of firelight carved out a small but certain territory; inside was the travelers’ refuge, outside were the spirits and fiends to whom the black night of the Marches belonged.
The twins of Parros spread cloaks on the grass and sat themselves down. With their hands on their knees they huddled close together. Occasionally, they would shoot glances at the hostile darkness beyond the firelight’s reach; then they would turn their gaze toward their mysterious companion who sat hunched over, the firelight glinting on his giant frame. Reflected sparks from the fire danced like little devils across the metal fittings of his armor, emphasizing his strange features. He was the stuff of warriors’ nightmares.
In the darkness beyond, the shadows of things even darker writhed in vexation at the bold challenge of the campfire, outraged at this incursion into their territory. Even in the Marches, there was a clear borderline between the human and spirit worlds, and as long as people sat awake around a fire and it was clear that the rule of man was being upheld there, the spirits could not touch them. The Roodwood, a silent wilderness during the day, now teemed with unholy life, a swarm of ghostly things that did not walk the earth as men do; yet the flimsy boundary the three intruders had made with their circle of firelight kept them from harm.
But outside the hopelessly short range of the firelight, the forest-dwellers waited for a chance to do mischief. Rinda could hear the slithering sound of some giant thing sliding moistly through the underbrush, breathing in a ragged syuu-syukk, syuu-syukk. She could see the glinting eyes of shadowy things—several of them had gathered in the shallow darkness just beyond the reach of the light, making eerie noises that seemed to swish right past her ears. Once she heard the whoosh of giant wings as something took off, followed by the clamor of a desperate struggle; in the following quiet the horrifying snap-snap sound of bones crunching and the slurp of something drinking; then a flurry of commotion as the unseen predators quarreled over their prey.
Each time they heard a new noise, Rinda and Remus would huddle even closer and hold each other’s hands more tightly. For fifteen years they had lived as an inseparable pair—so inseparable that, if they were ever separated, each would feel incomplete, like the lost half of a broken whole. But when they were together, no matter what happened, they could always find the strength to make it through. Still, this was too cruel a place for the twins—mere children, neither of them having performed the rites—to spend a night.
Rinda could hardly bear to sit silently any longer, listening to the freakish, fearful noises in the night. “It… it’s really dark here, isn’t it? I mean, the fire’s not going out, right?” No sooner had the words left her mouth than she turned to Remus with a startled look on her face—
…the fire’s not going out, right?
…going out, right?
…right?
…right?
The mocking sound of tree spirits echoing back her words filled the deep woods around them. The warrior Guin stiffened and sat upright. He didn’t like the undisguised malice he could hear in their voices, and he put his hand on the grip of his broadsword.
“Don’t worry, they’re just mocker imps. They can’t do anything to us,” said Rinda, glaring out into the darkness, then turning back to the fire as if to ignore them. She changed the subject. “No sleeping, Remus! If you nod off for even a second you’ll have nightmares, you know. Just pinch your knee if you start getting sleepy.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re far from it! This will be the second night we haven’t slept, and it’s going to be tough, but I know if we can just make it through until tomorrow…”
“Well you don’t know that, do you, Rinda Farseer? Nobody knows whether we’re going to see tomorrow or not,” her brother replied, sulking. Rinda fell silent and briefly considered not saying anything back to her brother, until she remembered the dark sounds that crawled in the silence, and decided she much preferred her brother’s complaints and the mockers.
“Tomorrow will come,” she said, proudly lifting her silver head. “I know it. Tomorrow will come, and everything will be better. I mean, no matter how bad it is, it has to be better than yesterday, when we had to spend the night in the vasya bushes where it hurt just to breathe. Or the day before, galloping along, hanging on to those saddles for dear life and crying and crying. Or the day before that—” Rinda bit her tongue and fell silent as a horrible scene from her memory floated before her eyes. She quickly put her hands to her mouth.
“Rinda…”
“It’s okay. I’m okay,” she said.“We’ll make it through this.” But the look she gave her brother was filled with worry.
“You two…” said the leopard-headed warrior. It seemed he was at last taking genuine interest in what was going on around him. “Why are you two wandering in this wood? What brought you to this place?”
‘Well, we were—”
“Quiet, Remus!” Rinda cut off her brother before turning to Guin. “Don’t you know who your friends are? You saved us, and we saved you, but still you don’t know?”
“I am no man’s friend.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
Rinda shivered slightly. The fire was still burning brightly; she shivered not because of the forest cold, but rather because she had felt something, the shadow of some giant creature that stirred the darkness with its passing.
“It’s so very dark here,” Rinda moaned. “And—can’t you hear that sound over there? That’s something gnawing on bones! It’s creepy!”
“Rinda’s a prophet—a seer,” Remus explained to the warrior, sounding a little proud. “She’s closer to the spirit world than me or other ordinary people. When we were born, the prophets of Parros foresaw that we would be two pearls—one an elixir, the other a treasure.”
Guin was silent.
“They told me it meant Rinda would be a great prophet and a sorceress, and I the sovereign of Parros.”
“Remus!” his sister said sharply, but Guin seemed to take an interest in what Remus was saying.
“Parros? Sovereign?”
“Yes, Parros! Even if you lost most of your memory, surely you still remember the Kingdom of Parros, pearl of the Middle Country?”
“The Kingdom… of Parros?”
“Yes, the Kingdom of Parros, ruled by His Holiness, Aldross the Third. But…” Rinda paused. “It is no more,” she said flatly, realizing it was foolish to speak evasively any longer. Both twins’ eyes welled with tears they had long held back; in their memory the image of the beautiful crystal spires of home blurred and ran, and once again they could see the horrible things they had been trying so hard to forget: towers burning and crumbling in the fires of war, people being cut down in the streets, everything falling, falling. “They torched the crystal tower, murdered the holy royal family, the king and the queen—who were granted their thrones by Janos Himself!—and all the crusaders of Parros, killed…” Rinda spoke softly, cursing the Gohrans. “I will not forget the blood that flowed under the blue moon, in the dragon year, not until the day I die.”
“Did I fight in that battle?” asked Guin, more concerned about his forgotten identity than her loss.
“I wouldn’t know,” said Rinda brusquely, “but there’s certainly no custom of putting leopard heads on prisoners in Parros, and I would think that someone trying to hide his face by putting on something like that would just end up attracting more attention. Now the Mongauli army of General Vlad, one of the archdukes of Gohra, is known to do all sorts of despicable things. But I’ve never heard of even them torturing or restraining a person in such an odd fashion.”
Rinda clicked her tongue, almost seeming upset that the act of entrapping someone in a leopard mask couldn’t be added to the list of the Archduke of Mongaul’s crimes.
“You know, I think this guy came from the Southlands,” said Remus.
Rinda thought for a moment. “Well, that might be the case and then again it might not,” she declared, as if to put the issue to rest for the moment. She was scanning the darkness around them, her nervousness growing. “When the bards would sing of spending a night in the Marches, gathered around a campfire, it used to sound so nice, so romantic. I don’t think I shall ever want to hear one of those phonies playing the kitara and chortling such nonsense again.”
“I believe,” said Guin, his voice rising abruptly as he looked into the sky, “that we are on the verge of a much greater adventure than merely warming ourselves around a campfire.” Around them in the darkness, things swished and scattered, startled by his sudden growling cry.
“What is it?”
“The wind is wet, and I smell rain. If a storm comes, our fire is done for.”
“How…” Rinda was at a loss. How could this warrior feel something that not even she, Rinda Farseer, could? The night air seemed no wetter than usual to her—unless he really did have the senses of a leopard?
But Rinda didn’t wonder long. She knew that, if a real storm was coming, they were in a great deal of trouble—and soon she too could smell the wetness blowing in the wind. She bit her lip and shivered as a premonition wracked her body. The fire danced and trembled in the rising wind; beyond it, Rinda could sense the things that lived in the darkness moving back and forth, flapping and fluttering as they went.
“Jarn the weaver of fate is a spiteful old fool!” the girl exclaimed, punching her little fist up at the sky as she cursed. “He could have just let us sleep, but no—he won’t even allow us to make it through one measly night, huddled around this fire. He must want very much to end our royal bloodline, that’s what I think.”
“Rinda, he’s got a hundred ears! He’ll hear you!” whispered Remus, hurriedly uttering a prayer of penance.
“I wouldn’t care if each of those hundred ears were as long as a torris hare’s, I really wouldn’t!” said Rinda, a note of challenge in her voice. But she bit her lip and fell silent when she saw the clouds hastening ominously across the sky, and the trees lurching back and forth as though in spasms of agony, and the countless crimson eyes all turning to look in her direction, watching and waiting.
The twins held tight to each other’s hands, wondering how they were going to get through this latest in a long series of calamities. The warrior Guin sat still with his shoulders hunched, glaring at the fire. He seemed either utterly unaware of, or utterly indifferent to, the approaching danger, so it surprised Remus and Rinda when he suddenly stood up and slapped the hilt of his broadsword.
“Careful! You’ll make the fire go—” began Rinda, but the look in Guin’s eyes made her break off. The warrior’s eyes were gleaming in the firelight, but it was a gleaming filled with darkness—so much like the eyes watching the three from beyond their circle of firelight that, for a second, Rinda thought he was one of those things come into the light to kill them.
“Run with me, girl child! Follow close if you want to live to see daybreak!“Guin’s voice was a howl. Quickly he swept down and picked up the longest stick from their pile, and after lighting it in the fire, thrust it upwards like a torch and ran off into the woods.
“Wait!”
In a flash, the twins shot to their feet and chased after the leopard-headed warrior, still holding hands. Guin was fast, but they managed to keep up with him.
An unseen force seemed to be guiding the leopard warrior, or perhaps it was the wildsense of a forest beast. Deftly, he dodged this way and that through trees that stood on all sides like eerie black skeletons, picking up a trail that had been lost for hundreds of years.
“Guin! Guin, please! Where are we going?” Remus called out, gasping for breath.
“Quiet! Save your strength!” Guin shouted back—then added quickly, “Stafolos Keep!”
“Rinda! Did you—” Remus began, but Rinda interrupted with a scream as a grass snake cut across their path. She quickly regained her composure, however, sensing that if she did not, she would surely perish.
“He’s right!” she gasped as they ran. “Either we take over the keep, or wander through these woods until we die! I bet he can do it, too!”
“I said no talking! If you would live, run! To Stafolos Keep!” shouted Guin.
“Guin!” Rinda yelled. “Guin, listen! The horses! The horses, Guin!”
“What?”
“That clearing where you fought the Gohran riders! If their mounts are still there—”
“Right!”
Guin glanced quickly to both sides, then abruptly shot off in a new direction, guided by the instinct of a beast.
“If some fiend hasn’t eaten those horses, we might just make it to Stafolos Keep before the storm!” Rinda panted, trying to ignore the pain in her legs, which were threatening to cramp any moment now. She was breathing hard, but every time it seemed like the torch in Guin’s hand was pulling farther away, she thought she could feel the breath of some strange and horrible thing on her neck, raising goose bumps on her skin, and she would run harder. Remus caught her by the hand and tried to drag her along, but that just ended up slowing both of them down.
It was no good. Rinda stumbled and emitted a quick yelp as she fell to the ground—when suddenly she felt herself being lifted lightly into the air.
“Guin! No! Put me down!”
“Hold the torch steady! Unless you want to be eaten,” Guin howled in reply. “If the vampire vines come down, use the torch on them—just don’t let it go out!”
And the leopard-man ran weaving through the trees toward the clearing.
It was as though the darkness had bared its fangs at them. Whichever way they turned, countless crimson eyes glinted from the deep pools of shadow under the trees, and the night air was stirring, filled with the pulsing life of things that were not alive. The clouds drifting across the sky moved faster, and the companions’ last, unreliable ally, the moon, vanished, the bluish-white light of the goddess Aeris simply blotted from the sky.
“Girl child!” howled Guin, stopping abruptly. “This is the place? You are sure?”
“I… I think so, but then…”
“Lift up the torch!”
Rinda was used to ordering people around and having her orders followed. To be issued an order, and in such a brusque manner—that was new to her. But there was something in the leopard-headed warrior’s voice that made her listen, whether or not she wished to, and so Rinda did as she was told. Steeling herself, cringing in anticipation of a sight of strewn bodies and carnage everywhere, she thrust the torch out toward the clearing.
Remus gave a quiet gasp of surprise from where he stood clinging to Guin.
“They’re gone! All gone!”
In the wavering light that spilled from their torch into the clearing, they could see the two vasya bushes with branches broken here and there where the riders had ripped them apart looking for their quarry. Beside them on the ground were the black helmets, a broken broadsword, and blood stains from the battle before. This was certainly the clearing where the riders had chased down the twins, where Guin had saved them.
But where the corpses of the fallen riders should have been, there was nothing. The man that Guin had crushed with his hands, the man he had beheaded with a single swing of his broadsword—all were gone. There were no horses tied between the trees, either, poking their noses into the grass or scratching the ground with their hooves in worried impatience.
“Guin?” said Rinda in a dry whisper.
“They were eaten,” said the warrior, his voice a solemn growl.
“But Guin, what could—”
“Ghouls, wolves, giant adders, maybe something else.”
“Oh!”
Rinda shut her eyes, and with her free hand, she grabbed onto Guin’s leopard pelt as hard as she could. She felt as though some horror might emerge from the darkness any moment; but at the same time, she was starting to feel that, here with her arm around Guin’s neck and her cheek pressed to the soft fur of his mane, they would be safe no matter what came.
Guin, standing with the girl perched lightly on his shoulder, assessed their situation in the blink of an eye. They had lost the horses, and it was still a formidable journey to Stafolos Keep. The distance wasn’t actually too great, but he wouldn’t have bet on their chances of reaching the fortress before the storm hit, and no warrior, no matter how courageous, wanted to weather a storm in the Marches. Even in the Marches, there were rules that governed the ways of spirits and men, that laid down a clear line separating them. The storm would suspend those rules.
The winds began to howl and rage, and the trees groaned and creaked. Then the three heard a fearful sound, like a woman’s wail, trailing off into the distance—a sobbing shaitan, or a mountain wolf.
“Guin…” Remus’s voice quavered. “There’s something—”
“I know. They are come.”
The darkness grew thicker, slowly drawing in around them. It was a wet, unpleasant mixture of murk and shadow and the only thing holding it at bay was the pitifully dim light of their torch, which now only barely succeeded at carving out a small patch of light from the darkness.
“Boy child,” said Guin in a low growl, “get behind me, hold on to the belt beneath my cloak and move as I do. Girl child, hold tight onto my neck. I am of flesh and blood; I am a living man. As long as I fight, they will not harm you.”
“But if the storm comes—”
“Then we shall beg for Jarn’s pity.”
Rinda, shaking, gripped the leopard mane as tightly as she could. While she had no idea what kind of past this man had buried in the valley of his lost memory, he seemed experienced in the world, and he had managed to survive thus far while wandering alone and wounded in the Marches. That experience, and his sword, were all the twins of Parros had to rely on now.
The wind began to howl even louder. In the darkness, the three could feel the things hiding between the trees surrounding them, hateful eyes watching for any sign of weakness.
Then suddenly something approached with terrible swiftness, and Rinda screamed.
Sliding from the darkness, flying directly toward them, was a thing with no arms, no legs, not even a body! It was a flying head, a hateful ghoul, swift, cold, and as pallid as chalk. Its bared fangs gnashed, lusting for warm blood and living flesh, and the ghastly spheres of its eyes reflected nothing as they roved. It flew through the air, trailing its spinal cord like a long stringy tail, lunged at the warrior and sought to sink its teeth into Rinda.
“Ahh!” Rinda slipped down Guin’s shoulder. Guin hunched over to settle her firmly on his back, then grabbed the torch with his free hand and swung it at the ghoul.
The thing screeched out a deranged laugh and the air filled with the vile smell of dead flesh burning. Its scorched eye oozing pus, the flying head sailed away, mocking them with its laughter as it disappeared into the darkness.
“A ghoul,” said Guin, switching the torch to his left hand and drawing his broadsword.
“But that was just a head!”
“Taken from one of the riders no doubt. They normally don’t attack the living, but this one has grown bold. It must have feasted on the horses,” Guin explained calmly—then all at once he was shouting.“It comes again!”
The ghoul had returned. The light of the torch shone on its clacking teeth and glistened off the charred skin on the side of its face. And then, they could see beyond it—
“Fiends!” shouted Guin, half cursing, half in warning. Out of the darkness behind the flying head came one, then two, then a dozen horrible things that once had been men. The riders had returned.
It was a macabre procession. One walked without a head. Another was split into two equal halves from neck to waist, the blood long since spilled onto the forest floor. A severed arm walked on lifeless fingers, following after a body that a great blunt weapon had beaten into a cruel caricature of the human form. The terrible spirit-denizen of the woods had animated these eerily familiar figures, the very black riders of Gohra that Guin had fought. Stalking among them was the hulking shape of their captain, his head grotesquely twisted around to look backwards for all eternity, white bone showing where his throat should have been. Behind him came the horses, naught left but their skeletons, drifting along like pale white shadows.
Between the storm-bent trees they came, creatures spawned of hell, writhing pale harbingers of misfortune. All were incomplete in some way, lacking eyes to see, or ears to hear—none could have had the full complement of five senses. Yet they needed them not: other forces guided them. They stirred in utter silence, and from them came rippling waves of a hideous craving, an eternal starvation that ate away at their accursed bodies, a hunger that would not be sated no matter how much dead flesh they consumed. Their cold burning desire was so strong it was tangible. Driven by an insatiable appetite, they attacked.
Guin let loose a beastly howl, and the air around him shook with the force of it. Swinging the great sword, he cut down ghouls left and right, the well-honed blade splitting heads in half, freeing twisted necks from torsos, slashing through the skeletal horses as if cutting through butter; all the while he spun agilely to protect the flaming torch in his left hand. That torch was their last hope for survival and their enemies knew that all too well. Many of the ghouls were purposely seeking to dart past the blade to get at it. And so Guin danced, cutting down the creatures every time he turned. For their part, they kept shuffling forward with no regard for self-preservation, making his task a relatively easy one, though no more pleasant for that.
But then—
“Arragh!” Guin roared. “Accursed corpse eaters!” There was a reason the ghouls made no efforts to protect themselves—for each time his sword cut through a neck or sliced a torso sideways in half, the pieces would drop to the ground and draw back a short distance, oozing viscous goop but showing no other sign of discomfort. Then they would turn and attack again, now two or three ghastly assailants where once there had been only one.
“Guin!” Rinda screamed in fear, holding on to the warrior for dear life as he dodged back and forth. A severed arm had come looping crazily through the air and, avoiding both torch and sword, had latched on to Rinda’s exposed shoulder. With a cry of disgust, she tried to pry off the cold fingers, but the arm clung fast to her warm skin like some horrible leech.
“Get off me! Get off!”
Hearing Rinda’s screams, Guin switched the broadsword and torch to opposite hands in one swift motion, using his right hand to thrust the torch at the arm grabbing the girl. There was the horrible sound of flesh burning and blistering, and a moment later the arm dropped off its prey and fell into the bushes below. Rinda’s arm was swollen and red where the thing had latched on, as if it had been trying to suck the life from her.
“Children! “Guin yelled to the twins as he continued slashing away ineffectively at the ever-advancing creatures. “Children, you must fight! I will count to three! Then I shall grab those branches there—you will take them and use them as torches! If you want to see the dawn, don’t let the fire die!”
“All right, Guin!”
“Ready? One—two—three!”
On the count of three, Guin threw the torch into the air, then quickly bent and snatched up the branches. Immediately a disembodied head dripping foul humors and a blistered burnt torso closed in; but the leopard warrior, standing again, caught the precious flame before they could steal it. With the torch and branches safely in his left hand, Guin flicked the two fiends away with the sword in his right.
“Now! Light them!” he shouted, holding up the sticks. Rinda took them and lit them with the original torch, making two new torches.
“Remus—here!”
“Got it!”
Now there were three torches blazing brightly, forcing back the darkness. Yet the ghouls around them, driven by a demonic thirst, showed no sign of retreating. Grabbing tightly onto the warrior’s belt, Remus joined the fight, swinging his torch at the rotting corpse-fragments advancing upon them.
“Guin…” On Guin’s back, Rinda was holding up her new torch, but didn’t dare swing it. Her voice was shaky and full of fear.
“What?”
“A drop of rain—on my cheek.”
The storm was coming.
All around them, the ghouls were shuffling more quickly, a dark, gloomy kind of joy in their movements. They could hear the mocking laughter of coyotes in the distance, but the ghouls said nothing—their mouths gaping silently—though the expectant rapture with which they licked their decaying lips became a kind of ripple in the air, flowing over the three in hostile waves.
“Great Janos!” Rinda cried. “If the rain puts out our torches, the ghouls will eat us for sure!”
“Do not cast away hope, girl child!” said Guin, still fighting without sign of fatigue. Realizing that slashing at the fiends was a waste of time, he had changed his tactics, skewering them with the point of his broadsword and flinging them as far away as he could. “Fight, and hope! Are you not of the holy royal family of Parros?”
“Guin! My hand is nearly numb. I cannot hold on much longer.” Rinda’s voice was thick with despair. She was clutching on to Guin’s neck with all the strength she had left, but the weight of the torch in her other hand was too much; she felt as if she must drop it at any moment. Just then, Remus screamed. He had been helping Guin, bravely driving back the creatures with the burning stick, when some torso, already cut to ribbons, came flying in from above and swept his torch away.
Fat drops of rain were hitting their faces now, and the ghouls pressed in even harder, ecstatic in the worsening weather. A violent wind blew through Rinda’s hair, and Guin had to stop swinging his sword and draw back to protect his sputtering torch.
“Doal’s arse!” he roared. “I know I’ve made it through worse than this—I’m sure of it—”
“Guin! Look!” Rinda shouted. The strange ring of fear in her voice was so strong that, for a second, Guin forgot the danger they were in and turned to follow Rinda’s pointing torch with his eyes. He gave a low growl of unpleasant surprise at what he saw.
It was hard to believe. There from amidst the jagged trees came a full company of riders—their armor, cloaks, and helms so black that it seemed they had been formed out of the darkness itself. Even their horses wore black barding, with blinders on their eyes to keep them from startling. Hitting the horses’ necks with short leather whips to urge them forward, the riders steadily advanced in three ordered columns.
“A search party from the keep!” cried Rinda. “Oh, Janos! We are finished!”
“No, wait,” Guin muttered. The two eyes of his leopard head shone bright with a wild hope. “Just the opposite. This may be our only chance for survival—look, I think the riders and the ghouls have noticed each other!”
The horses reared and shied, refusing to go any further. None of the well-trained riders were thrown, but not a few gave shouts of fear and disgust when they saw the ghouls shuffling toward them. The fiends, rent, crushed, and cut into ribbons, squirmed like giant maggots from some pit of hell—their broken bodies growing ever more thirsty for living, unspoiled flesh.
“Look! The ghouls have found themselves a bigger meal than us,” Guin growled, his shoulders heaving with every breath.
“What were those riders thinking, on a night like this with a storm coming in?” asked Rinda. “They bear the crest of Stafolos Keep on their arms; you’d think they would be more wary of the Marches.”
“They’ve strayed too far, searching for their comrades who never came home,” said Guin.“If they were so unlucky as to have lost their way in the Roodwood when night fell, then the pixies’ trickery could have kept them going around in circles. But see there, they each have torches fixed to their saddles. These riders know what it means to wander in the Marches at night.”
“Guin, look!” shouted Remus, clutching on to the leopard warrior’s arm.
The clearing, once eerily silent, was now filled with horrified screams and the brutal sounds of battle. The riders of Gohra were accustomed to defending their land from the horrors of the Marches, and they had come prepared to face ghouls; but there were too many, for they had divided and multiplied like some fiend of Nospherus with each cut of Guin’s blade. The result was catastrophic for the riders, who were still in close formation without enough room to properly swing their swords when the horde of flesh-craving ghouls flew into their midst.
Darting past the blades to land on the riders’ breastplates, the ghouls crawled relentlessly upward, questing for unprotected flesh. The riders fell from their horses, screaming and clawing at the decaying flesh of their assailants, but the ghouls fastened themselves like leeches to the bare skin of the riders’ faces, suffocating their prey until the riders’ strength gave way and the monsters could feast undisturbed on the warm flesh.
Rinda gasped in horror and hid her face behind Guin’s shoulder. Several ghouls had grasped and sucked at the flesh of the screaming and struggling men until their faces caved in; then, lusting for more, they disappeared into their victims’ armor. Some riders jumped off their horses in a desperate attempt to save their fallen brothers in arms, but before they had gone more than a few paces they were already fighting to save their own lives.
“Guin—we have to save them!” Remus, the boy, had refused to cover his eyes like his sister Rinda, but now he was fighting back nausea as he stood trembling at Guin’s side.
“Foolish boy child,” replied Guin. “Are they not the enemy come to capture you? It’s our luck that the ghouls are so taken with them. Indeed, we should be trying to escape now—though I wouldn’t give us very good odds of living to see the morning if we ran into the depths of the forest now. If only the riders can hold out until the first rays of—”
Suddenly Guin interrupted himself with a howl so loud that Remus jumped back and screamed, and even Rinda shook.
“Guin?”
“I am a fool!”
“Guin! What is it? Guin?”
The warrior turned his leopard head skyward and cursed loudly. “How could I have forgotten about the corpse-eaters’ cursed nature—the very thing that created our peril in the first place! They eat the flesh of beasts and men, then take the bodies for their own. Once they possess the bodies of the new riders as well, and remember us, we are lost!”
“Guin-!”
“I cannot possibly stand against so many until the morning. Arrgh! Jarn and his wisdom!” shouted Guin, thrusting both of his powerful arms into the air in a gesture that seemed both prayer and curse. But he did not stand there long—suddenly, the leopard warrior was a blur of movement.
“Guin! Guin, what are you doing?” Rinda yelped in fear.
Guin shouted over his shoulder, “Children! Give me your torches!”
“What are you doing? You’ll start a brush fire! We’ll all burn!”
“Better than having the living blood sucked out of us by those ghouls!” the leopard-man exclaimed, ignoring Rinda’s warning and thrusting the torch he had snatched from her hand into the underbrush. “Now burn! Migel, god of fire, Dagon, god of wind, lend me your strength! Now burn, cursed forest, burn!”
The lush leaves and branches resisted Guin’s blazing assault for a while, but before long there was a faint crackling sound, followed by the orange glow of flames quickly spreading through the undergrowth.
A wave of panic rippled through the dark forest. Small birds that had been asleep in the tree branches burst forth from their roosts and grass snakes hissed as they slithered frantically away from the blaze. Panic spread among both the Gohran riders and their ghoulish foes.
Soon the fire lit a wide area, bringing false day to the clearing. In a few short moments, the rule of the night was turned on its head, and the horrible flesh-eating demons quaked and hurried to escape, leaving their still-living prey on the ground. The flames leapt higher and brighter still, scorching the sky, sending the ghouls dancing in circles in a mad flight for safety.
“Guin! The heat!”
“There’s no way out! It’s spreading too quickly!”
The twins of Parros yelled over the crackling of the flames. Guin stood unmoving as some great statue, his hand at his waist, his entire body bathed in the light of the brush fire. His cloak flowed out behind him, blown by the hot wind that rolled out from the flames. Standing there, a giant, surrounded by the whirling ghouls and the riders that had been transformed into living torches by the forest blaze, Guin was like a half-beast god, filled with a life force that shone clear and iron strong. Rinda’s voice caught in her mouth and she swallowed hard.
Surrounded by fire, the ghouls scattered and shriveled, screaming horrible things that were not words. Like the riders, they milled about helplessly, animated torches that did not burn out but instead shrank and melted away like ice thrown into a fire. Their screams of pain and curses drowned out even the crackling of the flames and the howling of the wind, and Rinda and Remus couldn’t but join them in screaming as the wildfire blew through their hair and singed their skin.
Then, Guin moved.
Where only a moment before he had stood like a carven monument to some deity, the leopard-headed warrior now leapt into action, scooping up one of the twins of Parros in each of his powerful arms.
“Come, children!” he howled, running back up the path in the direction from which they had come, evading the fire he had created.
The fire had become a conflagration, burning into the heavens and overwhelming night with a fierce red mimicry of day. Guin wove between and pushed aside the other fleeing denizens of the wood, running tirelessly until he found what he had been searching for: the Roodspring!
“This blaze should keep the nixies from any mischief,” the leopard-man growled as he plunged into the pool, not pausing to give the twins a chance to protest from their awkward position clutched beneath his arms. He kept going until even their heads were entirely underwater.
Tongues of flame sputtered and crackled at the edge of the spring, almost as though the fire were enraged at the narrow escape of its intended prey. The Roodwood had lain silent for thousands of years, nurturing dark life in its hollows—but it was silent no longer as the fire invaded the wood, raging as if covetous of the forest’s heart itself.
“–Children?”
Guin’s feline head, soaked and dripping, was the first to emerge from the water. “Children, do you still live?”
Two small heads, water pouring from platinum blond hair, emerged on either side of the giant leopard face. Rinda spit out a mouthful of water, her teeth chattering as she replied. “We’ve certainly been better, but yes, we’re alive.”
Guin looked around them. It was a wasteland. The destruction wrought by the fire and the signs of battle stretched around them on all sides.
The trees stood blackened and charred and the underbrush had been reduced to little more than ash. The burned swath was unbelievably wide, giving a clear view across the countless stooped skeletons of half-burned trunks.
Seeing no immediate sign of danger, Guin strode from the spring and then violently shook himself, spraying water all around him just like some great cat might after a swim.
After shaking his head to cast off the last few drops of water, Guin stretched out his hands to pull the twins up from the spring. Brother and sister clutched onto his arms as he lifted them out of the water, thoroughly soaked and bedraggled, teeth chattering with cold. Though they could barely stand, the children’s first act was to look at each other and hug.
Beyond the blackened husks of trees, they could faintly see the phantasmal bluish outline of a range of mountains. Over them—there!—came the first glint of brilliant sunlight. Dawn had come at last, and a welcome sight it was. And if perhaps it did not shine as brightly as it is said to have in the days of old, to the twins its blessed rays seemed to be full of an enchanting warmth.
“We… we made it! We’re alive! “whispered Rinda, still hugging her brother tight, her voice half disbelief, half pure joy. “The air is so sweet! And what a bright morning!”
“The storm saved us—and twice at that,“said Guin. “The wind spread the fire that rescued us from the flesh-eaters of the forest, and the rain put out that fire at just the right moment— or the spring water would have boiled, and we would have burned along with the ghouls and riders. It was a good bit of luck; we can’t count on being so fortunate in the future.”
“I wonder if anyone at Stafolos Keep saw the fire?”
“I don’t think they could have missed it, a blaze that big. And besides, they lost at least two squads of riders to it,“said Guin. “They will wait for the last patches of fire to burn out before sending a search party—by which time we should be long gone. But before that, you children need to dry off those clothes.” Guin wrung out his cloak as he talked, dripping water onto the ashy lip of the spring. “And we need to eat. Else we’ll not have the strength to evade any kind of search, head start or no. Thankfully, the largest oven in the Marches has just finished roasting a grand feast for us.”
“My!” Rinda stared indignantly at Guin for saying such a thing—but when she saw the leopard-headed warrior standing there, looking more than ever like the half-beast god Cirenos, his outlandish features golden yellow in the morning sun, she swallowed her objections, and joined him in looking through the ashes and tree husks for small beasts that might have been caught in the night’s blaze. After they saw Guin pick up his first catch and thrust it into his maw, savory-looking juices dripping from the meat, the twins lost any inhibitions they might have had and began searching and eating in earnest.
“So, what do we do now?” asked Rinda, licking her fingers with satisfaction after they had filled their stomachs, empty since yesterday, and shaken off the cold of the water.
“A good question,” replied Guin, shaking his head. “I must go in search of myself, that much is clear. I need to know who I am, why I wear this mask, and whatever this ‘Aurra’ is.”
“And us…?”
Rinda and Remus looked at each other. But before they could say anything else, the leopard-headed warrior’s rueful laughter cut them off.
“Regardless of what we want to do, the order of the day is survival. I can hear a few dozen pairs of hoofbeats coming this way—a welcome party from the keep. It would seem that our time for deliberations is limited indeed.”