The Ghost King

 

SCOUTS' DISMAY



We cannot just wait here for them to assail us again at twilight!" a young wizard cried, and many others took up that refrain. "We do not even know if that will happen," reminded Ginance, an older woman, a priest of Cadderly's order who had been cataloging scrolls at Spirit Soaring since its earliest days. "We have never encountered such creatures as these ... these lumps of ugly flesh! We know not if they have an aversion to sunlight, or if they broke off the attack at dawn for strategic reasons."



"They left when the dawn's light showed in the east," the first protested. "That tells me we've a good place to start in our counterattack, and counter we must - aggressively."



"Aye!" several others shouted.



The discussion in the nave of Spirit Soaring had been going on for some time, and thus far Cadderly had remained quiet, gauging the demeanor of the room. Several wizards and priests, all of them visitors to the library, had been killed in the brutal assault of the previous night. Cadderly was glad to see that the remaining group, some seventy-five men and women, most highly trained and skilled in the arcane or divine arts, had not given in to despair after that unexpected battle. Their fighting spirit was more than evident, and that, Cadderly knew, would be an important factor if they were to sort through their predicament.



He focused again on Ginance, his friend and one of the wisest and most knowledgeable members of his clergy.



"We don't even know if Spirit Soaring is cleared of the beasts," she said, quieting the exuberance.



"None are out biting at us, the vicious creatures!" the first mage argued. Ginance seemed at a loss to overcome the tidal wave of shouts that followed, all calling for action beyond the confines of the cathedral.



"You presume that they're mindless, or at least stupid," Cadderly finally put in, and though he hadn't shouted the words, as soon as he started talking, the room went silent and all eyes focused his way.



The priest took a deep breath at that reminder, yet again, of his importance and reputation. He had built Spirit Soaring, and that was no small thing. Still, he remained unnerved by the reverence shown him, particularly given that many of his guests were far more seasoned in the art of warfare than he. One group of priests from Sundabar had spent years traversing the lower planes, battling demons and devils. Yet even they stared at him, hanging on his every word.



"You assume they ran away because they didn't like the sunlight, rather than for tactical reasons," Cadderly explained, carefully choosing his words. He shook his foolish nervousness away by reminding himself of his missing children, and the missing Bouldershoulder brothers. "And now you assume that if there were any more of the beasts still inside Spirit Soaring, they would rush right out ravenously instead of hiding away to strike at more opportune moments."



"And what do you believe, good Cadderly?" asked the same young wizard who had been so fiery and obstinate with Ginance. "Do we sit and fortify, to prepare for the next onslaught, or do we go out and find our enemies?"



"Both," Cadderly replied, and many heads, particularly the older veterans, nodded in agreement. "Many of you did not come here alone, but with trusted friends and associates, so I will leave it up to you to decide on the sizes and dispositions of battle groups. I would suggest both brawn and magic, and magic both divine and arcane. We don't know when this ... plague will end, or whether or not it will get worse, so we must do our best to cover all contingencies."



"I would suggest groups of no less than seven," said one of the older wizards.



They began talking amongst themselves again, which Cadderly thought best. Those men and women didn't need his guidance on the details. Ginance came over to him then, still troubled about the notion that Spirit Soaring might be hosting some uninvited guests.



"Are all of our brethren available after last night?" Cadderly asked her.



"Most. We have two score or so brothers ready to scour Spirit Soaring - unless you would have some go out with the others."



"Just a few," Cadderly decided. "Offer our more worldly brothers - those who have spent the most time gathering herbs that might be used medicinally, who best know the terrain surrounding the library - to the various scouting teams sorted out by our many guests. But let us keep most of our own inside Spirit Soaring, as they know best the many catacombs, tunnels, and antechambers. That is your task, of course."



Ginance took that great compliment with a bow. "Lady Danica would be most helpful, as would Ivan ..." She paused at the sour look Cadderly flashed her way.



"Danica will be out of Spirit Soaring within a short time," Cadderly explained. "Mostly in search of Ivan, who seems to be missing, and ..."



"They're safely in Carradoon," Ginance assured him. "All three, and Pikel, too."



"Let us hope," was all Cadderly could reply.

* * * * *



A short while later, Cadderly sat on the balcony of his private room, looking southeast, toward Carradoon. So many thoughts fought for his attention as he worried about his children, about Danica who had gone out to look for them and for the missing Ivan Bouldershoulder. He feared for his home, Spirit Soaring, and the implications its downfall might have on his order and more personally, upon him. The horde of unknown monsters that had come against them so violently and determinedly had done little true damage to the cathedral's structure, but Cadderly had felt the shatter of every window upon his own body, as if someone had flicked a finger hard against his skin. He was intimately bound to the place, and in ways that even he didn't truly yet understand.



So many worries, and not least among them, Cadderly Bonaduce worried about his god and the state of the world. He had gone there, to the Weave, and had found Deneir, he was sure. He had been granted spells the likes of which he had never before known.



It was Deneir, but it was not Deneir, as if the god was changing before his very eyes, as if Deneir, his god, the rock of philosophical thought that Cadderly had used as the foundation of his very existence, was becoming part of something else, something different, perhaps bigger ... and perhaps darker.



It seemed to Cadderly as if Deneir, in his attempt to unravel the mystery of the unraveling, was writing himself into the fabric of the Weave, or trying to write the Weave into the Metatext and taking himself with it in the process!



A flash of fire from a wooded valley to the east brought Cadderly back to the present. He stood up and walked to the railing, peering more intently into the distance. A few trees were on fire - one of the scouting wizards had enacted a fireball, or a priest had called down a column of flame, no doubt.



Which meant that they had encountered monsters.



Cadderly swept his gaze to the south, in line with distant Carradoon, off beyond the lower peaks. He could see the western bank of Impresk Lake on that clear day, and he tried to take some solace in the water's calm appearance.



He prayed that their near catastrophe was local to Spirit Soaring, that his children and Pikel had gone to Carradoon oblivious to the deadly horde that had come into the mountains behind them.



"Find them, Danica," he whispered to the late morning breezes.

* * * * *



She had gone out from Spirit Soaring first that day. Going alone allowed Danica to move more swiftly. Trained in stealth and speed, the woman quickly put the library far behind her, moving southeast down the packed-dirt road to Carradoon. She stayed just to the side of the open trail, moving through the brush with ease and speed.



Her hopes began to climb as the sun rose behind her, with no sign of monsters or destruction.



But then the smell of burned flesh filled her nostrils.



Cautious, but still moving with great speed, Danica ran to the top of an embankment beside the road, overlooking the scene of a recent battle: a ruined wagon and charred ground.



The Baldurian wizards.



She descended the steep decline, noting the piles of melted flesh and having no difficulty recognizing them as the remains of the same type of monsters that had assaulted Spirit Soaring the night before.



After a quick inspection revealed no human remains, Danica glanced back to the northwest, toward Spirit Soaring. Ivan had been out gathering wood the night those four had left, she recalled, and typically, the dwarf did so to the sides of the eastern road - the very road upon which she stood.



Danica's hopes for her friend began to sink. Had he encountered a similar shadowy horde? Had he seen the Baldurian wizards' fight and come down to aid them?



Neither scenario boded well. Ivan was as tough a fighter as Danica had ever known, capable and smart, but was out alone, and the sheer numbers that had come against Spirit Soaring, and had obviously hit the four mighty wizards on the road, could surely overwhelm anyone.



The woman took a deep, steadying breath, forcing herself not to jump to pessimistic conclusions regarding the wizards, Ivan, or the implications for her own children.



They were all capable, she reminded herself again, supremely so.



And there were no human or dwarf bodies that she could identify.



She began to look around more carefully for clues. Where had the monsters come from, and where had they gone?



She found a trail, a swath of dead trees and brown grass leading northward.



With a glance to the east, toward Carradoon, and a quick prayer for her children, Danica went hunting.

* * * * *



The blood on Ginance's face told Cadderly that his concern that some beasts hid within Spirit Soaring had been prudent.



"The catacombs crawl with the creatures," the woman explained. "We're clearing them room by room, crypt by crypt."



"Methodically," Cadderly observed.



Ginance nodded. "We leave no openings behind us. We will not be flanked."



Cadderly was glad to hear the confirmation, the reminder that the priests who had come to the call of Spirit Soaring over the last years were intelligent and studious. They were disciples of Deneir and of Gond, after all, two gods who demanded intelligence and reason as the cornerstones of faith.



Ginance held up her light tube, a combination of magic and mechanics using an unending spell of light and a tube of coated material to create a perpetual bulls-eye lantern. Every priest at Spirit Soaring had one, and with implements such as those, they could chase the darkness out of the deepest recesses.



"Leave nothing behind you," Cadderly said, and with a nod, Ginance took her leave.



Cadderly paced his small room, angry at his own inactivity, at the responsibilities that held him there. He should be with Danica, he told himself. But he shook that notion aside, knowing well that his wife could travel more swiftly, more stealthily, and more safely by herself. Then he thought he should be clearing the library with Ginance.



"No," he decided.



His place wasn't in the catacombs, but neither was it in his private quarters. He needed time to recuperate and mentally reset both his determination and his sense of calm before going back into the realm of the spiritual in his search to find Deneir.



No, not to find him, he realized, for he knew where his god had gone. Into the Metatext.



Perhaps for all time.



It fell on Cadderly to sort it out, and in doing so, to try to unravel the strange alterations of the divine spells that had come to him unbidden. But not just then.



Cadderly strapped on his weapon belt and refilled his dart bandolier before looping it over his shoulder and across his chest. He considered his spindle-disks, a pair of hard, fist-sized semicircular plates bound by a small rod, around which were wrapped the finest of elven cords. Cadderly could send the disks spinning to the end of their three-foot length and back again at great speed, and could alter the angle easily to strike like a snake at any foe. He wasn't certain how much effect the weapon might have on the malleable flesh of the strange invaders, but he put the weapons in his belt pouch anyway.



He started toward the door, passing the wall mirror as he went, and there he paused and considered himself and his purpose, and the most important duty before him, that of leadership.



He looked fine in his white shirt and brown breeches, but he decided those weren't enough, especially since he looked very much like a young man, as young as his own children. With a smile, the not-so-young priest went to his wardrobe and took out his layered light blue traveling cloak and looped it over his shoulders. Then came his hat, also light blue, wide-brimmed and with a red band bearing the candle-over-eye emblem of Deneir set in gold on the front. A smooth walking stick, its top carved into the likeness of a ram's head, completed the look, and Cadderly took a moment to pause before the mirror again, and to reflect.



He looked so much like the young man who had first discovered the truth of his faith.



What a journey it had been! What adventure! In constructing Spirit Soaring, Cadderly had been forced into a moment of ultimate sacrifice. The creation magic had aged him, swiftly, continually, and greatly, to the point where all around him, even his beloved Danica, had thought he would surely perish for the effort. At the completion of the magnificent structure, Cadderly was prepared to die, and seemed about to. But that had been no more than a trial by Deneir, and the same magic that had wearied him then reinvigorated him after, reversing his aging to the strange point where he appeared and felt like a man of twenty once again, full of the strength and energy of youth, but with the wisdom of a weathered veteran more than twice his apparent age.



And he was being called again to the struggle, but Cadderly feared the implications were greater to the wider world even than the advent of the chaos curse.



He looked at himself in the mirror carefully, at the Chosen of Deneir, ready for battle and ready to reason his way through chaos.



In Spirit Soaring, Cadderly gained confidence. His god would not desert him, and he was surrounded by loyal friends and mighty allies.



Danica would find their children.



Spirit Soaring would prevail and they would lead the way to whatever might come when the time of magical turbulence sorted out. He had to believe that.



And he had to make sure that everyone around him knew that he believed it.



Cadderly went down to the main audience hall of the first floor and left the large double doors open wide, awaiting the return of the scouts.



He didn't have to wait for long. As Cadderly entered the hall under the arch from the stairwell, the first group of returning scouts stumbled into Spirit Soaring's front doors - half the group, at least. Four members had been left dead on the field.



Cadderly had barely taken his seat when a pair of his Deneirrath priests entered, flanking a young and burly visiting priest - surrounding and supporting him, with one trying to bandage the man's ripped and burned shield arm.



"They were everywhere," the scout explained to Cadderly. "We were attacked less than half a league from here. A wizard tried a fireball, but it blew up short and smoked my arm. A priest tried to heal me on the field, but his spell caused an injury instead - to himself. His whole chest burst open, and ... bah, we can't depend on any magic now!"



Cadderly nodded grimly through the recounting. "I saw the fight from my balcony, I believe. To the east ...?"



"North," the priest scout corrected. "North and west."



Those words stung Cadderly, for the fireball he had witnessed was opposite that direction. The priest's claim that "they were everywhere" reverberated in Cadderly's thoughts, and he tried hard to tell himself that his children were safe in Carradoon.



"Without reliable magic, our struggle will be more difficult," Cadderly said.



"Worse than you think," said one of the Spirit Soaring escorts, and he looked to the scout to elaborate.



"Four of our nine were slain," the man said. "But they didn't stay dead."



"Resurrection?" Cadderly asked.



"Undead," the man explained. "They got back up and started fighting again - this time against the rest of us."



"There was a priest or a wizard among the monsters' ranks?"



The man shrugged. "They fell, they died, they got back up."



Cadderly started to respond but bit it short, his eyes going wide. In the fight at Spirit Soaring the night before, at least fifteen men and women had been killed, and had been laid in a side room on the first level of the catacombs.



Cadderly leaped from his chair, alarm evident on his face.



"What is it?" the priest scout asked.



"Come along, all three," he said, scrambling toward the back of the room. He veered to a side door to corridors that would allow him to navigate the maze of the great library more quickly.

* * * * *



Danica picked her way carefully but quickly along the trail, staying just to the side of the swath of devastation. It ran anywhere from five to ten long strides across, with broken trees and torn turf along its center, as if some great creature had ambled through. She saw only patches of deadness along the edges - not complete decay as she found in the middle of the trail, but spotty areas where sections of trees seemingly had simply died - along both sides.



The monk was loath to walk across that swath, or even enter the area of deepest decay, but when she saw a print on an open patch of ground, she knew that she had to learn more. She held her breath as she approached, for she recognized it as a footprint indeed, a giant footprint, four-toed and with great claws, the impression of a dragon's foot.



Danica knelt low and inspected the area, taking particular interest in the grass. Not all of it was dead on the trail, but the nearer to the footprints, the more profound the devastation. She stood up and looked around at the standing trees along the sides, and envisioned a dragon walking through, crushing down any trees or shrubs in its path, occasionally flexing its wings, perhaps, which would have put them in contact with the bordering trees.



She focused on the dead patches of those trees, so stark in contrast with the vibrancy of the forest itself. Had the mere touch of the beast's wings killed them?



She looked again at the footprint, and at the profound absence of life in the vegetation immediately surrounding it.



A dragon, but a dragon that killed so profoundly with a mere touch?



Danica swallowed hard, realizing that the hunched, fleshy crawlers might be the least of their problems.