Authors: Bruce R. Cordell
First, he had to prepare the ambush.
When darkness failed, they broke camp.
Marrec thought the woods were too quiet. In forests to the west, he would have been able to identify the calls of over a dozen species of birds in as many seconds. Instead one crow cawed in the distance as they set out that morning, and for the next several hours he heard nothing more.
“Is the forest usually so…” began Marrec.
“Silent?” finished Elowen. “No.” She frowned. “Even yesterday, if you recall, all seemed well. Something’s changed.”
“It’s Gameliel,” spoke Ususi from behind them. She continued, “His influence may extend beyond the Mucklestones, and we are close to the circle. I begin to feel the stone shapes in my mind.”
“If we are close, we need to be cautious,” advised Gunggari, who rode abreast of Marrec and Elowen.
“Agreed,” nodded the elf hunter. She added in a tentative tone, “I worry about Briartan.”
Marrec said nothing. If Briartan were responsible for the Mucklestones, he doubted the man had come to any good with Gameliel’s arrival, or worse, Briartan had been co-opted. He’d seen similar things in the past. They’d find out what was really going on in just a few miles.
He said, “We need a plan, of course.”
Gunggari smiled and waited.
“First, let’s hear more about this Gameliel,” said Marrec. “What should we be prepared for? What does it mean when you say he is a blightlord?”
“The blightlords serve the goddess called Talona,” said Elowen. “They are corrupt priests who revel in rot and decay. Their plagues and blights have transformed the western reaches of the Rawlinswood into a foul green hell of diseased monsters and deadly poisons. Gameliel is but one of three, that we know of. Always they seek to infect the healthy forests and lands nearby with the same sickness that is rapidly destroying the ancient Rawlinswood. Though they ultimately serve Talona, their direct master is the Rotting Man, the one who stands highest in Talona’s putrid grace.”
“What’re the other two called again?” wondered Marrec
“Anammelech and Damanda.”
All were quiet for a moment, absorbing Elowen’s words.
Marrec finally said, “Gunggari should sneak ahead and scout when we get a little closer, then report back. He’s good at that sort of thing.”
“I’m going with him,” stated Elowen. “I also know a thing or two about forest craft.”
“Great,” said Marrec. “We’ll proceed at a slower pace. Double back when you have the chance. Give a signal if you need help.”
“What signal?” wondered Elowen.
“If I can not reach my dizheri, I will yell for help,” said Gunggari.
Elowen smiled. She and Gunggari dismounted, then forged ahead, melting into the greenery.
They moved through the forest. Like leaves on a breeze, from the shadow of one tree to the next, Elowen and Gunggari closed on their goal.
Elowen called upon her stealthcraft, gratified to see that Gunggari knew at least as much as she. To many of her race, surreptitious forest travel came naturally. Elowen liked to keep her techniques in the forefront of her mind. She felt that by doing so, she was all the better at evading detection.
For instance, movement itself is a target indicator. The eye is drawn to movements, so a stationary target may be impossible to detect, and even a steadily but slowly moving target might go unnoticed. Quick, jerky movements are almost always seen, so her slow but silky movements from bole to trunk were deliberate. She didn’t give herself away by talking to Gunggari. Of course, she always stowed her equipment in a way that eliminated chance rattling.
Both she and the Oslander were already dressed appropriately for such movement. Neither openly carried anything reflective. Both wore colors designed to blend into the foliage in an attempt to obscure their silhouettes. A body’s outline, or even just the head and shoulders, are silhouettes that draw an intelligent eye; even if a watcher can’t identify what it sees immediately, the eye is unconsciously drawn, and recognition eventually percolates into consciousness. Camouflage helped.
The trees ahead of her were obviously not right. She held her right hand up and made a fist, a sign for Gunggari to pause. Taking a moment, she scanned the area, noticing the blighted trees and a gray, unhealthy looking fungus growing over trees, leavesthough there were few
enough of thoseand the ground. Beyond those she could make out a clear circular space bordered by weathered stones. She was seeing the edge of the Mucklestones.
Normally, the ring of trees surrounding the stones reached their branches out above the hollow bowl, entirely protecting it from the sky’s open gaze. But the surrounding trees, fungus-wounded and dying, had lost most of their leaves, and the sky was easily visible above.
Just as the nearby trees were host to the life-sapping fungus, the very stones that gave the place their name were scarred with innumerable patches of growth, staining them with gray slime and obscuring the nature runes etched into the stone.
There, too, was Briartan. Elowen gave out a gasp before she could rein in her reaction. Her old friend was staked to one of the Mucklestones, spread-eagle, an iron spike driven through the palms of both hands. His head lolled down on his chest, and he didn’t move. His left leg was missing, amputated. Blood stains spattered his clothing.
“Briartan!” whispered Elowen, unable to stop herself.
Something else moved within the bowl. Many somethings, but from her current position, the recessed nature of the bowl hid what moved, or how many potential foes lurked within.
Defiant, Elowen moved. She motioned for Gunggari to accompany her but didn’t wait to see what action the Oslander would take. All her attention was on Briartan. She needed to see if he was still alive, despite his awful state.
Defying her stealthcraft, she darted up to Briartan. The druid was staked up on an exterior face of one of the great stones. She reached up and felt for a pulse on the man’s neck. A slight staccato beat, but it was, oh, so faint.
“We’ve been spotted,” hissed Gunggari.
She glanced into the bowl. Gunggari was right.
<&Ś <§?
Marrec didn’t know what to do with Ash, he realized too late. He debated leaving her back with Ususi, but according to Elowen, the woman was a skilled mage, and they could use her talents against the Blightlord, if indeed Gameliel was found in the center of the Mucklestones. Besides, he doubted Ususi would hang backshe was out for Gameliel’s blood.
Gunggari’s dizheri blared forth, penetrating clearly even through the thick forest growth. It was a call for aid.
Marrec realized the time for worrying was over. He whipped Henri’s lead around the bole of the nearest tree and tied it with a loose knot. He had tied Elowen and Gunggari’s horses on the same bole when they had departed. Ash sat her mount without comment.
He fixed the girl with a look and said, “Ash, stay here. We’ll be back. You’ll be all right.”
The girl looked at him, unconcerned. Now that he had seen her defend herself against the uthraki, some of the anxiety he felt about escorting such a small child into danger was reduced.
Ususi used the time Marrec was dealing with Ash to charge ahead on her horse, heading toward the dizheri’s call. Marrec cursed and spurred his own horse in pursuit.
Marrec goaded his steed to the maximum pace it was willing to take through the forest, which was too fast for his own comfort, he realized only after the fact. Tree trunks and low branches whizzed by, and a jump over a fallen log almost sent him tumbling off the back of the horse. The retreating, snaking hem of Ususi’s cloak led him on, elusively remaining just out of reach.
Then everything opened up, as he flashed past two standing stones, one on either side, and into a wide circle bounded by rune-etched obelisks. At the last, Ususi held back, allowing Marrec to charge into the bowl by himself. He cursed again when he saw what was waiting.
At least ten gangrenous rot fiends occupied the
outskirts of the bowl, concentrated to Marrec’s left; he saw they were engaging Gunggari and Elowen. His attention was consumed by the man who stood at the center of the ring at its deepest point It was Gameliel. It had to be.
The blightlord wore dark gray plate armor, etched with runes that appeared to pulsate and overlap each other occasionally, and from which seeped an oily, black fluid. He wore reddish gauntlets and a helm constructed of the same blood-hued alloy. In one hand he seemed to clutch a halberd-shaped hole in the air leading into utter blackness. Marrec felt he could feel cold bleeding from it, even from where he heeled his mount to stand several yards away.
Gameliel the blightlord stood in a puddle of ooze that was constantly being replenished from the blightlord’s armor. Small tendrils of ooze snaked up away from the shallow pool at the bowl’s center, touching many of the flat stones ringing the space.
“You picked the wrong day to visit the Mucklestones, friend,” came the blightlord’s rasping voice.
“You picked…”
Interrupting Marrec’s witty response came Ususi’s strident yell, “You’ve contaminated the portal system You’ve wrecked the stones!”
She had to shout over the clamor of fighting between the volodnis, Elowen, and Gunggari. Marrec could barely see either the elf hunter or the Oslander. Their fight continued outside the ring and was screened from the cleric’s view by the press of rot fiends, but he could hear Gunggari’s dizheri singing to itself as the tattooed soldier swung it against the swarming volodnis.
“On the contrary,” rasped Gameliel. “I haven’t wrecked them. I’ve rerouted the stones for my own use.”
Marrec, in turn, interrupted Ususi, “Call your rot fiends off and yield, or we’ll force you to succumb. If you yield willingly and answer my questions about the goddess Lurue…”
Ususi struck, interrupting his ultimatum. A rush of unintelligible words preceded her throwing motion. A bead of fire arced high over bowl then dropped toward the blightlord. Marrec sighed. He’d have to get his answers the hard way.
Gameliel glanced at the falling bead but was unruffled. Instead, he spewed a foul syllable. Even as Ususi’s fiery bead fell toward him, the oily sludge in which he stood inflated, as if it was a mammoth bubble of swamp gas on the surface of stagnant water. In a mere second it enclosed Gameliel in a transparent dome. The blightlord stood within, gesticulating and chanting.
The bead of fire detonated directly over the blightlord’s head. The rush of heat singed Marrec’s eyebrows, but when the flash faded, Gameliel was unharmed. The bubble was gone, and there was less ooze at the blightlord’s feet than before.
From the back of his horse, Marrec hurled Justlance at the blightlord. It sped unerringly at Gameliel, but a tendril of ooze rose up and flicked the spear away. Instead of the blightlord’s chest, it buried itself in a rune-etched stone, its shaft quivering.
Gameliel finished incanting. A flash of dark green heralded the sudden appearance of a monster no more than arm’s length from Ususi. The powerfully built creature stood taller than Ususi on her mount. She yelled in alarm and shrank back on her saddle. Marrec recognized the monstera forest troll, and a big one at that.
Already Gameliel was chanting away on another spell. Marrec knew a troll so close would challenge Ususi’s ability to defend herself, but the cleric judged that he had to deal with the blightlord first, or they might face even more trolls.
Time to use up another hoarded spell, Marrec decided. The slime shield had to be burned away.
He called on what grace was left to him, channeling a
searing beam of divine light, which he hurled as a spear at Gameliel’s heart.
Again the slime bubble rose up and absorbed the blast, or at least part of it. This time, a trickle of light played across the blightlord’s form. Gameliel cried out then cursed as he lost the weave of his spell.
The volodnis continued their attack on Gunggari and Elowen across a quarter span of the Mucklestones bowl, not Marrec’s concern right then.
What about… soot and coal!
His glance back revealed Ususi squirming in the troll’s grasp. With both hands clamped upon the wizard, the troll was attempting to pull her into two pieces.
Justlance appeared once more in Marrec’s hand, and in a single liquid movement he cast the spear directly into the troll’s back.
The green behemoth screamed, dropping Ususi. The woman scuttled backward on all fours, bloodied but still alive. The troll whirled, searching for its attacker an instant before fixing its hungry gaze on Marrec. It charged, its powerful arms raised high, its claws promising a lethal rain. Marrec spurred his horse, tried to get it to sidestep the charging monster, but his mount reared in a sudden panic, throwing the cleric to the ground. The fall jolted the wind from him.
“Whose plan was this, anyway?” Marrec muttered as he attempted to regain his feet, only to be bowled over by the troll. Its claws sought crevices in his armor but were only partially successful. A thread of pain pulsed on the side of Marrec’s face where one of the troll’s claws scored.
Again, Justlance shimmered back to his hand, giving the troll a moment’s pause. Armed again, his confidence ticked back up a notch. He used the spear’s shaft to quickly lever himself to his feet. The sour, rotten smell of the troll’s breath rolled over him, nearly a presence in and of itself, hardly less lethal than the monster.
Marrec groaned as he felt something touch him from
behind through his armor. The blightlord, untended, had gotten another nasty hex off, and he was the target. Whatever it was, it seemed to be growing below his armor second by second. It itched as if a colony of ants were running across his back. He yelped in surprise, or if truth be told, alarm.
A crack of thunder rode the heels of a crazy line of electric light that zagged past Marrec and struck Gameliel a grazing shot. Ususi was on her feet again, but her aim was a little off. The blightlord snarled with pain but dramatically clutched his empty fist, as if squeezing something. In response, pain blistered across Marrec’s body. The pain issued from the spot he’d seconds before felt the itching. As if pain were sprouting roots across his body, the agony grew.