I FASHIONED FOR them such clothes as I could from the Faded’s filthy garments. I stripped my own tunic to the waist, leaving only the skirt below my belt, trying to give them all a little dignity. But that left me with a more complicated problem. What to do with them?
A dozen children sat around me on the ground. Grappling with the same isolation, the same bitterness I felt. There was nothing I could do except ward them from danger as they worked their way through it. Some of them wept, but others simply curled in on themselves, as if seeking from their own arms embraces they were now starved off. They should never have fallen here. Their souls deserved starlight and joy—by Beor, they were children! And yet, here they were, in Hell with me.
Or, adrift in the Way Between Worlds. I considered what Father Iainov said, that this was a place of rest, but that it had been infected. I wondered what he would advise. I thought I knew.
“I have to take you back,” I said, standing. “We can’t stay here.”
“Do you feel it, too?” said Ebin. He had adopted the group as his own, and now they looked to him instinctively.
“Yes,” I said, looking to each of them in turn. “Ever since I awakened. But it’s worse here.”
“Then you came here for a reason, Cinderborn.”
I worked over my words slowly. Ebin looked at me not as a boy, but as a young man. He had come to some sort of grips with the pain, with the alienation. Perhaps he felt the others looking to him. Nodding, I said, “I seek the Tomb of Romulor. I was told it contains…power.”
They shared looks amongst themselves. “The old cemetery,” said one of them. The others nodded, hollow eyes searching unhappy memories.
“We can lead you.”
“No,” I said, rejecting that. “It isn’t safe. I know a place you can go. Safe. Home.”
At that, I saw hope in their eyes. Longing. I wondered how many others were starved for the songs of their mothers, or the laughter of their fathers. How long had they wandered blindly among the black trees, searching in vain for what they would never find? Did they Fade as so many others had?
They must, I thought with grim horror. Perhaps that was why there was such a pall over the forest. How many had awakened and faded to ash beneath these bleak boughs?
“We can’t stay here. We’ll just become like them,” he said, pointing at the Faded that lay below the trees where I’d dragged them off a ways. “We must come with you,” Ebin said, “and then you can take us to…that place.”
“The Stone of the Vigilant,” I told him. “They care for children.” A rustle of relief. I looked at the two slain Faded. As lifeless and dead as stones. How soon until they sank into the ground itself? “Very well. Do you know the way?”
They pointed as one. I wiped my hand across my face, hating myself for thrusting them further into danger. But I had no choice. Param was with the Wolf… and in the mean time, how many more were being preyed on? And if Father Iainov was right… Harald the Wolf may have some source of godsblood. I needed a way to combat him. To save Param, and stop whatever madness was unfolding at the heart of the forest.
So they led, and I followed.
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THE CEMETERY WAS built on a hill that overlooked the forest. It broke up through the dark canopy like the top of some giant’s skull. If it weren’t for the hundreds of graves that studded the hillside, it might have been perfectly smooth. Near the crown were three dark pillars.
“That’s the tomb,” said Ebin. We’d come all the way to the edge of the trees. Alain’s Flame shone over us, but they huddled near the center of it, as if afraid to be sent back to the shadow.
“How did you know it was here?”
The children offered no quick answer, but I waited, and eventually one said, “Many lost ones come from here. They are the worst…”
“It’s a bad place,” said another.
“I stayed away,” said Ebin. “My mother would not have wanted me to play there.”
If these trees, if the ruins I’d stumbled across, were memories of another life, I wondered what horrors had happened on that stony hill. A place of sacrifice, perhaps. I remembered rumors of such, though I could tie neither face nor name to it.
“Stay here,” I said, shouldering Bloodfang.
“Wait,” said one. A girl, perhaps no more than four summers. She held my hand with both her own, her pale fingers gripping my own gray, shriveled digits. She peered up at me with big eyes. “Can you leave the light?”
Against my better judgment I did, fearing all the while it might attract unwanted eyes. “Keep your eyes open,” I told them, and went to climb the hill.
A shallow stairway formed of broken, uneven steps cut a winding track up the side of the hill. It threaded between clumps of graves, at the feet of which grew long, dry-looking grasses and barbed little vines.
I’d walked passed dozens of the headstones, each of them jutting like a mangled tooth, before one of them caught my eye. I paused long enough to lean down and stare at it. It was wide, and only about waist high. There were words graven on its face, and at the very top a man’s face. Perhaps the face of the deceased, I thought. I’d heard the tombs of kings were carved with their likeness.
I was leaning over to read the text on the tombstone when I realized it was staring back at me.
The eyes of the strange face at the top of the headstone were open. It blinked, as if incredulous. And then it spoke: “Kill me,” the thing said.
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I recoiled with a shout, bringing Bloodfang up defensively. It didn’t move. Of course not. It was a head-stone, half-buried in the ground.
“What are you?”
“Suffering,” it answered. More of them were waking now. “Please. Make it end!”
I got a look at the text on the face of the stone now. “NEDRAN GOLTH,” I read aloud. “Graverobber. Thief. Defiler.”
The face crumpled in anguish. “Please,” it begged. “I have suffered long enough. I apologize. I repent!”
“Who put you here?”
“Please, Romulus. I beg of you! I can take no more!”
“Romulor?” I looked around warily. That was the name of the tomb I sought.
But I got no more from old Nedran, the thief and defiler, for he was sobbing and lost in his own misery. The whole hillside was awakening. Moans drifted through the air, begging to be released. Pleading for mercy.
I ran, not knowing what else to do. Ran for the top of the hill and those three pillars. Four, I discovered, but one had fallen down and broken into the pieces. They stood like sentinels over the mouth of a staircase that spiraled down into the hill itself, like some surgeon’s augur seeking to bore through bone.
I put the miserable begging to my back without a second thought, and plunged into darkness. Down it went, turning in on itself until finally it vomited out onto a flat floor of muddy stones chocked with vines that drew back from my footsteps. I heard them crackling and popping, retreating from the light of my radiant chest wound and into the shadows.
I wished I had my torch now, but it lay forgotten, perhaps under the pile of rubble in the village where Param and I had been attacked by the bird-like monstrosity that called itself the deacon. I hunched under the low ceiling, guiding myself with one hand on the coarse stone above and walking in a crouch. This was not the ideal environment for a sword as long or heavy as Bloodfang.
But then, perhaps I didn’t have to walk here alone, after all.
I paused long enough to nick my thumb on the edge of the blade. I touched the radiant blood to the dog’s-head pommel, and offered up a little more of my warmth. The wolf within hte blade surged forward, and I heard as much as felt the tensing of shadows as it emerged from its ur-iron prison.
The air reeks of blasphemy. I caught the impressions of bared fangs, of diving lunges. Whether it was angry or simply uneasy, I could not tell.
“We’re looking for the tomb of Romulor,” I said. “Father Iainov said there was power there.”
Will it burn your hand? To that, I had no answer. But the wolf put its nose to the ground and began to walk back and forth. Death lies thick here. But there is another scent. Dark sorcery. It lies below us.
“Can you see your way forward?” By the limited light of my radiance, I could make out nothing more than the dimmest shapes. The walls were lined with vaguely rectangular slots, within which lay the unmistakable forms of the dead. Forgotten, long-ago faded. But I was treading where they rested, an interloper. Perhaps, I thought, remembering the poor creature that had been fused into the headstone, a grave robber. Had Father Iainov sent me to my death?
There is a way, Bloodfang said. But it lies in the dark. It loped off ahead, faster than I would have liked, given how blind I was. Yet, I could feel its presence. I followed that, and felt my way ahead, wriggling where the passage grew narrow, hunching lower where the ceiling sagged.
Bloodfang found a hole, around which were a number of unlit candles. Perhaps, once, it had been used to mark a sacred path into the depths. They were brittle now, I discovered as I picked one up. The wick crumbled into nothing when my fingertip brushed it.
I set the greatsword down on the ground and lowed my legs into the hole. I strained with both feet, probing to find the floor below me. I sank slowly, and the scrape of the coarse stone against my flesh made me miss the tunic I had torn into pieces to make a garment for the children.
Above, Bloodfang paced nervously.
Something brushed my ankle. I recoiled with a shout, kicking, and connected. Something snarled down there, a wet, gurgling sound. My legs flailed back and forth, but I was too far down to haul myself back up.
“Blind Beor!” I raged, tearing my nails on the stone as I scrabbled for purchase.
Whatever was down there got my ankle again, and I felt teeth sink into my calf. I roared and thrashed, but to no avail. Then I slipped.
I fell through darkness, but only for an instant. My back slammed painfully onto the stone floor below, and all the room seemed to go white with the pain of impact. I groaned, but it was the pain in my leg that brought me out of it. Whatever had my leg was tearing at my calf. I could see it by the light of my own blood smeared across the ghoul’s face. It snarled at me, bearing broken teeth in a face only vaguely human. The lips were too large, and the jaw protruded so far it formed nearly a muzzle. Its round, glowing eyes were close-set over a long, thin nose that ended in a heavy ball. I drew my leg back and kicked it squarely in that sorry face, sending it sprawling into the wall.
Kill! snarled Bloodfang. Move!
I rolled to the side as the wolf leaped down. It wasted no momentum, pouncing onto toward the blood-stained ghoul with a sharp bark. Its own jaws clamped down and I heard bone splinter. The ghoul screamed and vanished under the black wolf’s muscular bulk.
But it wasn’t alone. I heard the whisper-rasping feet of another form approaching. I rolled to my knees in time to find a sword plunging for my neck. I acted on instinct, catching the would-be killer by the wrists. It snarled at me, flapping its huge lips. The sword hung between us like a deadly promise.
I let the radiance burn, firing my muscles, and drove the ghoul backward, step by step. Panic rose in its piggish eyes when it crashed into the wall. I wrested the sword and turned it about in a flash, and leaned on the point. It plunged home, pinning the creature to the wall.
Bloodfang was falling back under the assault of a third ghoul that came swinging a broken sword. The wolf danced back, which brought it almost within reach of me. I dove for it, but something caught me, holding me back.
The ghoul I’d run through had me by the arm. Its thick fingers dug mercilessly into the soft flesh of my forearm, tearing the skin and letting the radiance run. I turned back long enough to hammer its face twice, three times with the side of my fist. It released me and hung limp from its gruesome perch.
Bloodfang ducked low under a wild swipe and lunged up, murderous jaws snapping at the third ghoul’s throat. It went down under the onslaught, and the black wolf finished its work with a brutal shake of its head.
The tomb was silent again, aside from my heavy breathing. My blood, and theirs, was splashed all over the floors and walls. It dripped still from my forearm, which I ended with a thought. I had gained little from them; the radiance I used to seal the cuts, and the blood I’d lost, left me no stronger than I had been.
Lucky. Lucky, stupid, lucky. I offered up a prayer of thanks to Beor, to Alain, to any god that might be watching.
These are no Faded, Bloodfang said, bringing my attention back to the dim hall. And the wolf was right. Kneeling beside two of the ghouls, I realized they were both dressed in the same black robes. No wonder they’d been so difficult to see. But there was something more: the arrangement and folds. They were ceremonial.
“They’re priests,” I said, unable to mask my shock.