Storm of Prophecy: Book 1, Dark Awakening (45 page)

Just outside the city, on a main road leading north, they stopped once more to have the seer try to extend his awareness and find their prey. To Stacy, it appeared as though he were trying harder, looking further, out of necessity and from a silent pressure exuded by the others who had already witnessed him fail and jeopardize the success of the mission. After several long moments, he finally came out of his trance.

“I saw…”-he shook his head-“…nevermind, it won’t help us.”

The mage with the seeds looked at him hard and stressed each word. “What. Did. You. See?”

“If he went north, he went too far, I didn’t see him. Only a vision.”

“What was in it?” The cerebist woman asked.

“Nothing…” he let out a small breath while averting his gaze, “…it was stupid.”

“Just tell us,” Stacy insisted.

“I saw myself.”

“What?” The mage asked sharply.

“I saw myself trying to run back this way, only I couldn’t get any closer. I think it means that if I go that way, I won’t be returning for quite some time.”

“That has to be where he went,” Stacy concluded. “We should follow this road.”

“Now wait just a minute,” the Elf protested. “What if the boy is wrong again? There could be nothing down there. It could just feel like it’s taking forever on the way back, or it could be like something from a dream, or maybe he doesn’t want to go back. It’s been a long night. I say we just admit the obvious to ourselves-that we lost him-and go home.”

Stacy eyed him with a frown. “Do you really want to return and tell everyone that we let the Grandmaster’s assassin fool us and escape.” She was almost certain this was the right direction. “Especially when we still had a chance to find him again?”

The plant mage with the scar across his jaw looked from one of them to the other, considering. “Let’s run,”-he turned and pointed-“all the way past the edge of those farms. Then we’ll go down it for a few more hours and have our seer take another look around.” It was quite a distance. Stacy was not looking forward to it but still wanted to see if she was right. “If he doesn’t detect anything, we’ll turn back.”

At first, things went quickly and they covered a lot of ground. Then it became too exhausting and everyone was becoming too winded to keep up such a quick pace. Vincent’s two guards reduced their speed so they wouldn’t leave the others behind. Stacy’s lungs burned and she was covered in sweat. After they slowed, they walked on for several hours in the dark.

The moon and the stars shone down on them, and the landscape had changed. They had at last left behind the city and any of its outlying farms. In its place all around them was wild grassland with a scattering of a few pine trees.

Later on, it became a road through a forest at night, a dark road in which the shadows danced between thin shafts of moonlight. The sweet, fresh smell of evergreen needles filled the air. The Elf produced a small flame that led the way, much as Rick had the other time, only he complained much more about how this wasn’t going to work and that they should just go home. Their leader, the man with the scar, silenced him by repeating that they couldn’t return without first making a reasonable effort. Failing to even attempt this would be the same as if they had let him go, and would destroy their credibility within the keep forever.

Once again, they had their seer project himself toward places unseen, and painstakingly waited for him to reveal what he could. After a time, the Elf in red robes became impatient. “I told you this was a waste of time.”

“
Wait!” The seer burst out suddenly. Stacy’s head darted toward him along with everyone else’s. “I see something moving.” He then corrected it to, “or at least something has been. Several plants are swaying from being disturbed.”

“
Follow it,” The botanical mage ordered. The young man remained still, scrunching his eyes while trying to do as told.

“You can see that well when it’s this dark?” The cerebist woman asked.

“The vision sees many things,” he replied quickly with his eyes closed.

“Yeah, just not always what we want,” the Elf remarked snidely.

A moment later, the seer spoke again. “It’s getting too far away, my view is fading, we have to get closer.”

“Come on, let’s hurry,” the plant mage said.

They ran a good distance down the road and had him try again. His breathing was still ragged from the run while he stood with his eyes closed. Several more moments passed while he probed ahead. “It’s Clyde!”

“Are you sure?” The Elf asked skeptically.

“Yes! It has to be!”

“Then let’s stay on him,” the botanical mage asserted.

With that, they continued down the road, stopping periodically to check on his progress. They were all cautious, yet the mood of the company had changed. The cerebist woman and the Elf made idle conversation while the seer strolled dutifully along, anxious to not let the others down. The mood of their leader, the botanical mage also seemed to improve. To pass the time, he talked with his friend and made a few jokes that Stacy didn’t pay enough attention to. The man with the iron rod still wore the strange seeds, laughed with him, and made some comment, then the mage would tell him something wasn’t the worst of it and go on from there.

Among them, Stacy was perhaps the most reserved, even more so than the seer. She kept her eyes peeled and stared hard into the dark woods that surrounded them, looking for any sign of movement, barely hearing the others talking. This was only a scouting mission, yet she knew that danger awaited. Their foe was clever and had already proven it once this night. After what she had been through before, she simply couldn’t let herself go the way they had. The way they were.

“Would you all be quiet!” She nearly shouted when she could stand it no more. “We shouldn’t underestimate Clyde. Look what happened the last time. Did it ever occur to you that he might try something else on us and that he’s just waiting for us to become overconfident? How do we know this road isn’t being watched?”

Her words sobered them up and they remained silent once again. She was glad because it allowed her to listen for any sounds that might reveal a presence. A few moments later, she quietly called for the others to stop and asked the seer to check on him again. He did and was able to verify Clyde’s position, quite some distance north off the road, having left it after it made an abrupt turn west.

It was a long night. After going north and leaving the road to pursue him into the forested wilderness, they walked for miles. They went around thick stands of spruce, firs, and underbrush of every kind. The Elf’s small flame was the only thing that kept them from tripping when they stepped over logs, around rocks, and tried to avoid having their clothes snagged by greedy branches. Or stepping in deer droppings.

Clyde took them much further and deeper into the forest than she thought he would have. They trudged along wordlessly until she felt that it was time to observe him once more and asked the seer to do that. The young man leaned on his staff, his troubled, closed-eye visage revealed by the dim glow of the fire speck. Stacy watched him and waited.

Suddenly, he shook and convulsed where he stood. The others voiced concern and moved closer. At last he opened his eyes and let out a frightened breath, shaking as though to try to get whatever he saw off of himself.

Stacy couldn’t help feeling a tinge of fear creep over her. “What was it?”

The seer appeared quite disturbed. “Clyde…he’s not alone.” He looked and pointed at the Elf. “I think we should take his advice and just go home, I, I’m too young for this, I don’t know anything about how this magic works, I’m just…”

The botanical mage with the mustache and small beard gripped him by both shoulders. “Who was he with!”

The young seer appeared as though he didn’t know what to say. “I…I”

“
Who?” He repeated sternly.

He looked aside as though wanting to avoid their leader’s gaze. “…p-people,” he said at last, starting to shake. “People who are d-dead. I saw people who are dead!” The eyes of the man with the scar widened while he stared at him, and his hands let go. The seer stepped back, using his staff to keep his balance. His eyes glistened. “Slaughtered villagers. Men, women, and children, who are all dead!” He whined, “there’s too many of them!” He buried his face in anguish “…so many.” He looked like he wanted to turn away and run.

Even though it had healed over, Stacy’s hand found her neck where she had been bitten, rubbing it absentmindedly. “What about Clyde?” She still asked, not feeling the same shock as the others. “What was he doing? Where did he go? Was anyone else over there with him? Besides them?”

“I…I saw black hooded forms on top of horses. They were dead too.”

Stacy found this unusual at first. “You mean the horses?”

“And the riders.”

Her blood chilled and she struggled to think of why this might be. Her impression of the cult so far was that they raised the corpses of their victims to do their god’s bidding, not their mounts, and certainly not themselves. What was going on?

She quickly asked the seer another question. “Of the people wearing black robes, did you see any others that were not dead?”

“
No,” he answered fearfully, shaking his head, “Clyde was the only one not dead. The others…they had no flesh, only bone.” Stacy’s eyes widened.

The botanical mage saw her reaction and decided to draw upon her experience. “Is this different from before?”

“Yes,” she replied worriedly, continuing to stare while lost in thought.

He stood tall and straightened his clothing, letting out a breath. “Alright, let’s have our seer take another look, let’s have our cerebist give Master Anthony precise directions to them, and then we’ll find ourselves a reasonably concealed vantage point to wait for reinforcements to arrive.”

“What! Are you crazy!” The Elf protested. “We should stay right here!”

“I don’t want to go anywhere near them!” The seer added.

The mage seemed to understand their fears and came to put a reassuring hand on each shoulder. “Part of our job is to make sure that the masters at Gadrale Keep always know where evil like theirs is lurking,” he looked first at the seer, whom he could tell understood this part, and then to the Elf in red robes. “If this army begins to move, we must keep them within our seer’s non-symbolic range. Accurate monitoring of the enemy is what it means to scout.”

“I’m scared,” the young seer confessed.

“Then help us find a place to hide that’s close enough to watch them but far enough not to be found. Because we’re all scared.” He released their shoulders and turned to the cerebist woman perfunctorily. “Inform the masters.”

“Already done,” she said. He nodded.

As they trekked through the woods, the seer stopped often to survey the terrain surrounding their destination. At one point, he insisted that they go no further while he searched for the vantage point their leader desired. Once he found a location that he thought might work, he led them off course, now going north and somewhat to the east.

In the night’s darkness, they walked through thick groves and grassy meadows until at last the seer took them to a thicket close to the top of a rise. Though the area where he told them they could spy down from was surrounded by trees and thick bushes, he still scolded the pyromancer Elf to douse his small flame. Stacy didn’t see him but heard the man with the scar tell them all to lay flat.

She went slowly at first, holding up the hem of her dress and bending down to try to feel for the ground with her other hand. Her hand found pine needles which seemed soft and spread out enough, but when she tried to put any weight on them, a few laying at off angles poked her on the sides. She took a few steps and felt around again until she found a spot that was more suitable. The solid ground was painful on her knees and so she tried to set herself down quickly. As she lay down, the cold hard forest floor pressed firmly against her breasts in an uncomfortable way that prompted her to support herself on her forearms.

She heard whispers from the plant mage saying that they should inch forward so they could see past the cover. The seer refused, claiming he didn’t need to, and the other didn’t press the issue. Stacy tried not to ruin her dress and moved carefully to avoid getting it snagged on anything. She was about to go further past the next bush at the top of the rise when her eye caught a distant torch flicker from down the slope on the other side. It was really no more than a speck, as were the others.

Stacy peered cautiously down the vast and shallow rise to survey the scene below. What she saw in the beginning as one torch soon became many, her eyes gradually beginning to find others that were less conspicuous. The expanse was largely treeless except for a few to either side. Far downhill from where they were, on nearly flat terrain, there was in fact a number of undead she thought could pass for an army.

There were few torches, not all of the corpses carried them, yet she could make out enough that there must indeed be thousands assembled. They were in no way uniform either; there were figures in dresses, women; smaller forms, children among the masses; and some appeared elderly too. She noticed black forms atop horses in the distance, standing in a row. Strangely, there didn’t appear to be as many cult members as she would have expected. They must have gone somewhere else. Far off to the right, there was a farmhouse and a barn. The barn door faced her and she saw it swing open suddenly, and a figure she thought must be Clyde go in.