The Dreaming Hunt (65 page)

“They're elemental shards,” he insisted. “They glow. I can
see
it.”

“Ahh. That explains it,” Raina replied. “I know nothing of elemental magic. What are elementally charged bits of stone doing in a place like this?”

He frowned. “They can mean only one thing. Elementals have been active in this area. They've either been in combat here and lost bits of their energy, or they've performed some sort of elemental magic in this place and these are the scattered remnants of it.”

Everyone looked around cautiously.

“I see an opening in the underbrush over that way,” Rynn supplied.

“In that direction the tracks proceed, as well,” Sha'Li offered.

By consensus, they moved off toward the open spot. But they hadn't gone more than a dozen yards when something fast moving flashed through the trees to their left. A twisting bolt of magic flew toward Eben, and the energy jangled through him painfully. But before it had reached his fingertips, healing magic hit him from behind.

Will took off running after the figure, and then suddenly, gobrats were darting at them from all directions. Excellent. The more that attacked them, the more that would die. Sha'Li took off after one, and Rynn took off after another. Raina raced after the paxan, and Rosana seemed bent on following Will.

Eben spied the were-rat and charged toward it. But where it had been aggressive and vicious before, this time it seemed less interested in making a violent stand. Eben had no such qualms, however, and attacked it aggressively. But then an exact replica of the beast he fought jumped out of the darkness.

Two of them?
Of course. The twins. He fell back as they swung their claws and snapped at him with those inhuman teeth. He concentrated his attacks on the less aggressive one while defending furiously against the better fighter of the two. Spotting the opening he'd been waiting for, Eben jumped forward as the first were-rat dropped his guard and plunged his silvered sword into the creature's belly. Eben put upward torque on the blade as he yanked it clear, broadening the stab wound into a gaping gash.

However, the move had opened up his right side to attack, and the second were-rat was on top of him so fast he barely had time to register piercing pain as those cursed teeth sank into the meat of his shoulder.

The bite wasn't particularly deep or painful. But in a few seconds, Eben began to feel somewhat nauseated. Well, hells. That was not good. He staggered back, bashing at the second were-rat with his mace. A downward chop of his sword at the rat's leg, and he forced the creature to stagger back himself, badly wounded.

The creature fumbled at a pouch and clumsily threw a gas globe at him, hissing in fury. The throw wasn't pretty, but at a range of only a few feet, the globe hit Eben's groin and broke, releasing a foul-smelling gas at him.

Something shimmered across his skin, and the gas dissipated harmlessly. Bless Rynn and his alchemical shield. A gobrat rushed toward him, squealing, and Eben was forced to back up. The were-rat paused to smear some sort of salve on his badly bleeding thigh wound, and Eben took the opportunity to turn and run.

Although it wasn't much of a run; it was more of a shambling jog. He really was starting to feel terrible. “Raina!” he called out weakly.

“Over here,” her voice came from off to his left. He veered that direction and saw Sha'Li engaged in a spitting contest with a gobrat. As he approached, she scored a direct hit in the creature's face, and it went down, screaming. She leaped on top of it just as something low and dark and fast moving rushed her at unbelievable speed.

“Look out, Sha'Li!” he yelled.

She rolled off her kill just in time to avoid being shredded by dozens of massive teeth as an alligator rushed her, jaws wide open. Instead, the creature plowed into the corpse of the gobrat. The jaws snapped shut with such power that the bite severed the gobrat in twain. Sha'Li scrambled backward, and Eben reached down to pull her to her feet.

“Terrible you look,” she declared.

“Poisoned,” he grunted.

“Incoming,” she replied, spinning around him to place her back against his. Metal schwinged off her claws as he stabbed down at the alligator, death-rolling with half the dead gobrat in its jaws.

He caught a lucky break, and his blade jabbed the alligator in the pale underskin of its throat, sliding straight through into its brain cavity. The beast died on the end of his sword. Eben yanked the blade free but was shocked at how weak he already had become.

Sha'Li swore behind him. “Were-rat inbound. Move.”

He took off running as best he could. Sha'Li, to her credit, stuck to his back despite his painfully slow pace. The were-rat closed with her, and she swore again. “My claws hurt it not,” she ground out.

“Take my sword. It's silvered.”

Sha'Li reached over her shoulder with an open fist, and he slapped the hilt of his weapon in it. Now without a blade to protect himself, he relied on his mace and dodging any blows that passed wide of the lizardman girl.

Will came into sight, hard-pressed by a huge alligator with a glowing red eye. A were-alligator? How were they to defeat that?

Raina was jumping around behind Will, blood running freely down her face from some sort of head wound, but she was pouring healing magic into Will practically continuously as he fought. Rosana was down, leaning crookedly against a tree, her right arm bending at a place it definitely should not. Broken. She vomited as he spotted her. Was she poisoned, as well?

Will's staff began to crackle with magic dancing down its length, and he jabbed it at the were-alligator desperately. A bolt of magic smashed into the creature, and it staggered back. In that momentary reprieve, Raina threw a bolt of magic at Will, a bolt of magic at Rosana, and a bolt of magic at Eben.

Eben was intensely grateful for the pain of her healing surging through him. But it wasn't enough. “I'm poisoned!” he called to her.

She responded by sending another blast of magic his way. This time, he felt immensely better as her magic purified his blood and cleared it of the poison flowing through it.

“Hit Rosana with one of those!” he called out.

Rynn came tearing into the clearing just then with a huge, four-legged beast on his heels. Gleaming tusks rose from the underjaw of a great, hairy snout. A muscular, bristled body on four short, sturdy legs announced the creature to be a boar. As it tossed its head and squealed in rage, Eben saw the red glint of its left eye.

“Switch,” Sha'Li bit out, still at his back. “And take the sword.”

He rotated left while she did the same, holding his right hand up over his right shoulder. His sword hilt smacked down into his palm. The turn brought him face-to-face with the were-rat once more. “You killed those children, and now I'll kill you,” he snarled at his foe.

Apparently, Rynn's charge had carried him across the clearing for he flashed into sight at the same instant Eben leaped forward on the attack. The two of them barreled into the were-rat from each side, sandwiching the beast in a punishing blow that caused bones to audibly crunch as they broke.

Wasting no time on niceties, Eben slashed the base of his blade across the creature's neck, slicing through tendon, muscle, and arteries in a killing blow.

Rynn spun away as Eben plunged his sword into the were-rat's heart for good measure. He looked up from the killing blow. Sha'Li and Rynn faced off against the were-boar while Raina tended to Rosana. Will sent bolt after bolt of magic down his staff into the were-alligator. It was clearly hurt by Will's magic, but it attacked, anyway, ignoring whatever wounds he gave it.

The reptile was easily twenty feet long, with longer-than-normal legs that moved almost like a human's. Its coloring was strange. Instead of the usual grayish green, this alligator's hide was pale green with almost golden undertones in the moonlight. Will swung his staff hard, catching the creature under the jaw hard enough to fling its entire head up and to the right toward Eben.

And that was when Eben saw the fine fretwork of russet brown markings covering its face.
Markings whose shape he recognized
.

Will used the alligator's momentary daze to gather a massive bolt of energy on his staff. The entire weapon glowed almost too brightly to look at.

“Will! No!” Eben shouted frantically. “That's Tarryn!”

Will glanced up at him, unholy fury glazing over his eyes, lost in the battle rage of the moment. He drew back his staff, preparatory to stabbing it into the were-gator in what would clearly be a deadly blow.

Eben lurched forward, shouting wordlessly in frustration and agony. Will was so lost in Bloodroot's rage that he was going to kill Tarryn. His friend. His childhood companion. His only link to the family he'd lost. Eben watched in horror as the staff started forward, deadly lightning flashing down its length.

And then, out of nowhere, a dark claw flashed across Will's throat. The staff dropped from his hands, and blood spouted from Will's severed jugular. Eben staggered to a halt as Will fell to his knees, a look of infinite surprise writ on his face. “Sha'Li?” he croaked. And then he pitched forward onto his face, dying.

“No!” Rosana screamed.

Rynn landed a spinning, crunching kick to the side of the were-boar's head, and its legs collapsed out from under it. “Confine it,” the paxan ordered Raina tersely.

Raina jumped forward, throwing a tiny bit of healing at Will as she went, just enough to staunch the flow of blood from the gushing wound, but not enough to rouse him to consciousness. She threw the confining magic, which encased the creature from the neck down in a shell of magic. She moved to stand protectively over the were-boar. “I may have incapacitated this beast, but I will not let you kill it.”

Abrupt, total silence fell around them.

“Look down at the were-boar at your feet,” Rynn told Raina.

She did so and gasped. “Eben. Come here,” she said urgently.

He moved across the clearing, looked down at where the beast had fallen, and could not believe his eyes. Where the boar had lain just moments ago, a human now lay in its place confined inside a shell of magic. Raina quickly released the young man from the spell.

“Kendrick!” he cried.

His best friend and brother blinked up at him, looking disoriented. Eben knelt beside Kendrick to embrace him, but the young man pulled back sharply.

Ahh, no. Stars, no. His left eye was beginning to glow a brilliant red.

Kendrick rasped, “Go. Now. Quickly, before I kill you all.”

 

CHAPTER

32

Gabrielle smiled as her dwarven traveling companion grumbled yet again, this time about the lousy footing of the path they trod. He was a stout, one-legged miner of the kelnor variety, with a salty mouth and a saltier temperament. She had grown surprisingly fond of him in the short time they'd been on the road.

They'd had to wait for several weeks while the messenger Sasha had dispatched to Kel found and brought back to the citadel a dwarf who had apparently passed on a rather notable bit of ancient armor to their anonymous colleagues.

The dwarf, named Gunther Druumedar, had eventually been found in the company of other sympathizers with their cause and been brought with all due haste to the Heartland—a fact about which he still complained often. Although she was not quite sure if it was the journey itself or the haste with which he'd been forced to make it that irked him so.

Sasha had come along on their trip south and east out of the Heartland to Vierre. The expedition had been made with all the pomp and fuss that could be expected of a queen and an ambassador's wife traveling in state. There had been house servants, cooks, porters, and guards enough to make them look like an Imperial legion on the march. Gabrielle's exit from the Heartland had been quite a change after her incognito arrival with the Child of Fate, Dafydd, and his parents.

Once in Vierre, Gabrielle and Sasha went to meet a man by the name of Aran Rahor. At one time a Heart high patriarch, he'd given up that rank and accepted the lower White Heart rank of Serene to pursue his work with a species of creature called yeren. He was convinced the beasts were of significant enough intelligence to merit recognition as a sentient race by the Empire. The Forester's Guild, long a trader in valuable yeren hides, had opposed him every step of the way, and the matter was still unresolved.

Behind his back, most people called Rahor the Shaggy Father. Among some, it was a pejorative term referring to his unnatural closeness to the yeren. Among others, it was an homage to his unflagging work to get yeren recognized as a sentient race and protected from hunting.

An aging man himself, he'd proposed that his daughter, Mina, go with Gabrielle on her trek through yeren lands to ensure her safe passage. The daughter, also a White Heart member, apparently knew how to communicate with the yeren and also worked toward recognition of the creatures by the Empire.

Gabrielle said her farewells to Sasha on a sunny morning and set out from Vierre on the next leg of her journey. While Sasha returned to the Heartland with her entourage, Gabrielle, Gunther, a few porters and guards, and the White Heart initiate departed for the northeast and the high reaches of Groenn's Rest. Mina normally would have had a Royal Order of the Sun protector of some kind for such a journey. But instead, the young woman was accompanied by a gigantic, hairy beast who never left her side. Mina said his name was Kuango.

The red-brown yeren easily stood seven feet tall, with a big belly, long arms and a kind-looking, softly furred face. He made no sounds but used rudimentary sign language to communicate with Mina. The initiate said his throat had been injured when he was young, but did that mean most yeren
could
actually speak? At first, the creature had alarmed Gabrielle, but she'd already grown rather accustomed to his silent, hulking presence.