In Red Rune Canyon (3 page)

Still, panting, fingers aching, denying herself all but the briefest of rests, she struggled upward. Dawn found her atop the wall.

She peered down the other side and made out a scattering of ghoul bodies. But Eovath was nowhere to be seen—not from the ridge, and not when she completed a laborious descent.

Her jaw clenched as fury welled up inside her—an admittedly familiar sensation. But it was different, too, because this time she was angry with herself.

Borog had warned her and Eovath not to enter Red Rune Canyon, but she’d been certain she knew better. And here was the result of that brash overconfidence: her brother was lost. It made her want to scream, or pummel her own body.

She took a long, deep breath instead. Now was not the time for self-recrimination. She had to rescue Eovath before the demon had a chance to do whatever it intended to do to him.

She stooped beside the creek, scooped frigid water in her cupped hands, and slurped away the raw, parched feeling in her throat. Then she strode to retrieve her bow and quiver. Her path took her near one of the fallen ghouls, and the emaciated, gray-white thing startled her by hissing.

She drew her sword to kill it, then reconsidered. Last night, a ghoul had spoken. Maybe she could persuade this one to speak to her now.

As she approached it, she saw it was the same ghoul whose fingers she’d sliced off and whose leg she’d crippled. Then she caught her breath as she noticed the blue and green beadwork adorning its deerskin tunic and the two copper rings in the lobe of its pointed ear.

The undead thing was Dron—or what was left of him. Fighting him in the dark, Kagur hadn’t realized, but it was so.

Which meant there’d never been any hope of saving him. The realization brought another pang of self-disgust.

Pushing it out of her mind, she pointed her sword at the creature on the ground. “Do you know me?”

Squinting against the morning light even though little of it had as yet reached the floor of the canyon, Dron bared his fangs.

“Talk,” Kagur persisted. “I know you can. Or I’ll hurt you.”

“Know you,” the ghoul rasped. “Cut fingers. Cut knee.”

“Yes. But do you remember me from before that? From before you… changed?”

The ghoul hesitated. “Kagur.”

“That’s right, and you’re Dron. We hunted together. Tell me what happened to you.”

Dron hesitated. “Can’t. Master not like.”

The living Dron had been loquacious and clever. Repelled by the undead version’s ugly form and noxious reek, Kagur nonetheless felt a twinge of pity at his broken speech. His transformation had seemingly damaged his mind as well as warping his body.

But compassion wouldn’t get her what she needed, so she set it aside and jabbed at the raw, spongy stumps of Dron’s severed fingers with the point of her longsword. The ghoul hissed, snatched the maimed hand back, and covered it with his good one.

“‘Master’ isn’t here,” Kagur said. “The demon abandoned you because you were crippled and of no further use to it. I am here, and I swear by Gorum I’ll keep cutting pieces off you until you answer my questions.”

Dron hesitated. Then: “Killers come. Demon eyes kill some hunters. Make me… this. Other ghouls kill the rest. For meat.” The undead creature lowered his eyes. “Not want eat. But did.”

Kagur frowned. “So… every time there’s an attack, the demon turns one victim into a ghoul. That’s why there’s always a body missing. But what’s the point? What does the demon want with ghouls?”

Dron shook his head, apparently to indicate he didn’t actually know. But he did have an opinion: “Little demon. Wants be big demon.”

In other words, to be a leader like Kagur’s father, or one of the Mammoth Lords who presided over the followings. To command a following, or even a single tribe, one needed followers.

East of the tundra was the Worldwound, a land teeming with demons. People said it was the wrongness of that place seeping through the earth that tainted Red Rune Canyon. Maybe “Master” hailed from the Worldwound and meant to return one day at the head of a war band of undead warriors.

Kagur caught her breath as a ghastly possibility occurred to her. “What about Eovath, then? Is he gone because the demon changed him into a ghoul? You were here watching. Tell me!”

Dron shook his head. “Giant strong. Not change yet.” He smirked as though enjoying Kagur’s distress. “But Master make him weak. Ghouls drag him off. Master will change him.”

Him and me, Kagur realized. That was why the demon hadn’t just dropped her from on high. Eovath and she had both impressed it with their prowess, and it meant to add them both to the ranks of its followers to replace the undead they’d destroyed.

She swallowed. “No. That won’t happen because I won’t let it. Now, you ghouls ambushed Eovath and me without Master’s permission. Why was that?”

“Told you. Hungry. Too many ghouls, not enough meat.”

“Hm.” She took stock and decided she was nearly out of questions. “Where is Master holding Eovath prisoner?”

“Cave. Probably.”

“You’re going to take me there.” It ought to be quicker and surer than trying to track the other ghouls, especially since, by all accounts, the blighted land called Red Rune Canyon was actually a confusing tangle of several interconnecting gorges.

Dron flinched. “No! Tell you the way!”

“And then what could I do about it if it turned out you told me wrong? I need you with me so I can kill you if you try to betray me.”

“Can’t walk!”

“I can fix that.”

Kagur trotted back around the bend, slung her bow and quiver over her shoulders, but left her pack where it sat lest it slow her down. She then planted her foot atop the head of one of Eovath’s javelins and pulled up on the shaft until the steel point snapped away from it.

When she returned to Dron, she tossed him the length of seasoned ash. “Your crutch,” she said.

Fangs bared, the ghoul struggled up with the aid of the prop. “Can’t do this!”

“You can,” Kagur said, “or I’ll finish you off here and now.”

Hobbling, the ghoul turned and led her toward the deeper recesses of the canyon. Alternately watching him for signs of treachery and scanning her surroundings from other dangers, Kagur unbuckled her belt pouch by touch, fished out the last few half-squashed bearberries, and popped them into her mouth.

As more and more sunlight reached the canyon floor, Dron made a steadily increasing effort to keep to the shade. Sometimes, even though raising his maimed hand made his face twist with pain, he used it to shield his eyes.

“I take it,” Kagur said, “that ghouls generally hole up during the day.”

Dron grunted.

“Does that mean all your fellows will be resting in the same cave where the demon is holding Eovath?”

The ghoul hesitated, as though pondering whether he dared lie or might gain any benefit from doing so. At length, he said, “No. Slaves not rest where Master rests. Might touch Master’s things. Might eat Master’s prisoner.”

If that was true—and to Kagur’s ears, it sounded true—it might be a bit of good fortune. Maybe she could at least make her way to Eovath without fighting any more living corpses.

That was assuming the demon wasn’t leading its minions against her at this very moment, but she doubted such was the case. The fiend had taken Eovath first because it deemed a frost giant the greater prize. At the moment, it probably wanted to concentrate on turning him undead, not hunting down the human who remained at liberty. It would assume tonight was time enough for that.

Scowling, Kagur vowed to prove that this time, it was the demon that was underestimating its foe.

As the morning wore on, she and Dron began to encounter the unnatural features that figured in campfire tales of Red Rune Canyon. Patches of the walls had turned the hue of blood or obsidian black. In some places, the discolorations had cracked open, and bubbling crimson sludge oozed forth like pus from infected wounds, stinking of sulfur.

At another spot, the creek took on a rusty hue, and the vague suggestion of anguished faces formed and dissolved in the flow. Glimpsing them made Kagur’s skin crawl, yet she felt an urge to go on peering, a sense that if she could only make them out clearly, she’d learn something she urgently needed to know.

But she also realized that fascination was irrational and the result of some malign influence. She jerked her head up and spotted a pallid something moving partway up the left wall.

A ghoul perched on a ledge with an outcropping above it for shade, an upward jut of stone at the edge of the drop providing cover like a parapet. Kagur could only see the top of it, and wouldn’t have been able to discern anything at all if it hadn’t straightened up to blow the curling ram’s horn bugle it was raising to its lips.

She snatched an arrow from her quiver, drew, and loosed all in an instant. There was no time to aim properly. Luck was with her, though, and the shaft still punched into the ghoul’s head. The creature lost its grip on the ram’s horn and flopped back out of sight. The trumpet fell banging and bouncing down the wall.

Kagur waited a moment to see if the ghoul would reappear. When it didn’t, she pivoted and aimed a second arrow at Dron’s face. Her guide flinched.

“You said,” Kagur gritted, “ghouls hide in their lairs when the sun is up. You didn’t say there would still be lookouts posted along the way.”

“Not know! New! Watching for you!”

Kagur took a breath and let it out slowly. “Maybe. Anyway, you and I are going to keep an eye out for any more of them. You want to spot them before they spot us. Because—”

“If they give signal, you kill me!” Dron snarled. “Understand!”

As it turned out, they didn’t come across another sentry. Maybe the one watcher had been a casual afterthought. Perhaps the demon assumed the tangled layout of the gorges would be enough to keep Kagur wandering lost and confused until nightfall. As it might have, had she not pressed a guide into service.

The sun had passed its zenith when said guide halted and waved his maimed hand at the spot ahead where the gorge they were following forked into two. “Go right. See cave.”

“We’ll see it together.”

“Master say, ‘Kill,’ I kill. He say, I do—no matter what.”

Kagur frowned. She was reluctant to dispense with Dron’s assistance. But she also saw the sense in not taking him any farther if the demon could compel him to attack her even against his will. Maimed he might be, but he still had fangs and claws.

And if it was time to do without him, should she kill him? A ghoul was unnatural and the enemy of all that truly lived. Every such creature deserved destruction simply for being what it was, and even had it been otherwise, now that Dron was crippled, it might actually be merciful to grant him a fast and painless death.

But she couldn’t. Blacklions dealt honorably, even with the undead. “Go, then.” If it turned out he’d led her falsely, it would be easy enough to run him down.

She waited while Dron hobbled a little way back down the defile. Then she took a long breath and laid another arrow on her bow. She crept forward and peered around a slimy black-and red-striped outcropping into the right branch of the fork.

As Dron had promised, a cave mouth opened onto the stones and sand of the canyon floor and the creek flowing down the center. Unfortunately, another ghoul lookout, the female with the dangling amber necklace, squatted just inside the entrance. Squinting, the creature had a hood pulled up to shield its head from the sun, but appeared morose and uncomfortable anyway.

The demon must use the table to help it transform prisoners.

Kagur stepped out into the open, drew her arrow to her ear, and let it fly. At the same time, the ghoul spotted her and opened its fanged mouth to shout.

The hurtling arrow plunged into the ghoul’s chest. Its cry silenced before it began, the living corpse flopped backward and lay motionless.

Kagur peered about to see if the creature’s demise had gone undetected. Seemingly so. She prowled onward to the opening. There she exchanged her bow for her longsword, then skulked into the cave.

It wasn’t entirely dark inside. Not at first, anyway. The daylight coming in the entryway shined for a dozen strides before the passage doglegged, and not far beyond that point, greenish luminescence flickered from an opening in the left wall.

Stalking onward, Kagur found the opening led to a side chamber that evidently contained the demon’s treasures—or at least a sparse but exotic collection of possessions. A golden quill scratched letters in red on a parchment that somehow unwound more and more of itself without ever reaching an end or making a great pile of used paper. In a sluggishly moving painting, a bloody man and woman locked in a carnal embrace gnawed off and devoured pieces of one another’s flesh. The green light danced from an egg-sized gem wreathed in emerald flame and reflected from an oval looking glass floating in midair.

But there was no sign of Eovath. Kagur would have to venture deeper into the cave to find him.

She took a breath, steeling herself to do so. Then a notion came to her, and she turned back to contemplate the mirror anew.

Like any proper Kellid, she distrusted sorcery even when human beings rather than demons were the casters. And a looking glass that hovered in the air was about as plainly enchanted as any article could be. There was no telling what touching it might do. Yet if the demon tried to use its horrible, debilitating gaze on her again, it might just come in handy.

Gingerly, she took hold of the mirror’s golden frame and tugged. It moved it easily. When she tucked it under her arm, it made no effort to drift upward or pull away, acting no different from an ordinary object. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Then Eovath’s deep voice bellowed, and metal rattled and clashed.

Kagur nearly succumbed to the urge to race in the direction of the sound. But stealth and caution might still serve her brother better, and so she managed to hold herself to a fast stride rather than a sprint.

The light failed as she stalked deeper, until she was groping her way through utter darkness. But fortunately, that was only for a few steps. Then she rounded a bend, and a trace of new light tinged the murk up ahead.