him around a small stake. He was in a forest, still, but not the same one, as far as he could discern; for instead of the thick rows of pines, the trees about him now were mere skeletons, black and twisted and leafless.
Groans to either side of him made him glance about, to see many of his party, similarly seated and bound, in a neat line, which told him that these stakes had been purposely placed, that their captors, whoever they might be, were skilled at this.
'Where are the others?' he asked one soldier near him.
'They took them!' came the nervous, completely unsettled reply. Duke Tetrafel followed the sweating man's gaze to a pair of smallish, very slender creatures walking toward them. Flanking the duo came several of the walking dead.
Trying hard to ignore their horrid escorts, Tetrafel studied the pair carefully, their creamy white skin and penetrating blue eyes that seemed to glow with an inner sparkle. They wore dark-colored robes, the cowls back, and at times seemed to simply disappear into the landscape, except for their exposed heads. Tetrafel tried to sort things out. These weren't merely small humans, he knew, and that was confirmed as they neared and he noted their pointy ears and angular features.
'Touel'alfar? ' he asked, for he had heard some tales of the elves, mosdy children's fireside stories.
The two robed figures froze at the word, glancing at each other with obvious rage.
'Doc'alfar!' one of them said sharply. He strode over and hit Duke Tetrafel with a backhanded slap across the face that nearly left the mar unconscious. He could hardly believe that a creature so lithe and small hac hit him so damned hard!
By the time Tetrafel had recovered his senses, the two robed Doc'alfa) had selected their next victim, a woman seated several places to the Duke'i right. They motioned to her and turned away; and their unthinking, unques tioning servants moved to her, pulling her free of her bindings and hoisting her up. She cried pitifully, and her legs would not support her, but thai Hardly mattered to the zombies. They kept moving, holding her fast; and if she did not work her legs to keep up, they dragged her along.
'What are you doing with her? ' Duke Tetrafel demanded, and when the two robed Doc'alfar didn't even glance back, he turned to the soldier next to him. 'What are they to do with her? '
'To the bog with her,' the man replied grimly, 'Watch yer own fate, me Duke.'
Duke Tetrafel stared back into the fog, to the receding figures, seeming like ghosts now.
He saw the Doc'alfar pause and pour various liquids over the squirming woman, and then watched the zombies drag the woman to the side, and then up a small platform that he had not noticed before, for in the fog it had seemed like just another of the many twisted trees.
The zombies took her, screaming and sobbing, out to the end of the platform and held her there; and all of her wriggling and screaming and kicking did her no good at all.
The two Doc'alfar began chanting, one after another, their melodic voices filling the wind with sound, complementing each other perfectly. Gradually, their song blended together, until they were chanting in one voice. Others, unseen among the trees and in the fog, joined in, Tetrafel realized after a while; and the whole forest seemed to be singing.
What garish ritual is this? the Duke wondered. Was it religious?
And then, abruptly, all sound, even the woman's sobs, stopped, as if compelled by one of the Doc'alfar, the lithe creature thrusting his arms up into the night air, his voluminous sleeves falling back to show his white, slender arms. All the world seemed to pause, as if the creature had stopped time itself.
And then the zombies pushed the woman forward, and she screamed as she fell, breaking the spell.
Tetrafel could barely make her out through the shifting fog, buried to her waist in the bog, scrambling and crying; her movements only made her sink down even farther.
'Oh, help me!' she cried, sinking slowly, slowly. 'Help me. I don't want to die! I don't want to be one o' them zombies!'
It went on and on, for several agonizing minutes, the woman unable to get out and being dragged down, slowly, slowly. The Doc'alfar began their song again, a prayer of sacrifice, apparently, drowning the woman's shrill, horrified cries. Soon that song was the only noise carried on the wind.
When it was over, the Doc'alfar methodically headed back again, their zombies in tow, and despite the shouting protests, they selected another, a soldier this time; and all the man's vicious fighting proved to be of no avail as the zombies dragged him away.
Duke Tetrafel could hardly breathe! What horror had he stumbled upon, out here beyond civilization? He knew then, as they all did, that the woman's assessment of her fate was correct, that through some magical ceremony, he and all his party would be given to the bog, then returned to the Doc'alfar as unthinking, undead servants!
He thought of all his work, of all the glory, of his aspirations for immortality. Now he would find that immortality, but in no way he had ever wanted!
'They'll go off for a bit after the second,' the soldier next to him whispered harshly. 'Two at a time, they do, and then they're away for a bit.'
Tetrafel instinctively struggled with his bindings. 'Too tight,' he replied to the man, trying hard to keep his voice steady, to not cry out in fear.
'But I've got me post loose,' the man replied.
The chosen soldier went into the bog then. At first they heard nothing, the man apparently facing his death bravely, but then, as the thick, wet bog rose to his neck, he began to scream out in protest, and then to cry. And then… silence.
As the soldier beside the Duke had predicted, the Doc'alfar and their zombies disappeared soon after, melting into the fog.
The man gave a grunt and a great tug, and he fell over onto his side, his head right behind the seated Duke. Tetrafel strained his neck to glance back, wondering what good that movement might have done.
The soldier opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue-a tongue pierced by a stud set with a small gray stone.
'Magical,' the man explained, 'a gift from a friend, put in to put a spark in the ladies, if ye get me meaning.'
'What are you babbling about?' Duke Tetrafel replied rather loudly, and he glanced back as if he expected a host of zombies to rise up and throttle him.
'Ye might feel a bit of a charge, a spark,' the soldier explained. Before the Duke could even ask what the soldier was talking about, he did indeed feel a sharp sting on his wrist. He didn't protest, though, for he felt, too, that the rope holding him had loosened, the binding burned by the electric charge.
Tetrafel pulled his hands free and fell over the soldier, working furiously at the man's bindings. Then he was free, too, and the Duke moved to the next in line, a servant woman, who was crying wildly. He had just finished with her bindings and moved to the woman beside her when he realized that the song had begun again, and he turned back to see ghostly forms appearing in the fog.
With a cry of terror, Duke Tetrafel abandoned the woman and ran off into the night.
He heard the screams of those still tied, or of those who had just begun to flee and were not quick enough, as they got hauled down and dragged back.
A part of Tetrafel demanded that he go back, that he die with these men And women who had served so well beside him for these three years. A noble part of him screamed at him to face his fate bravely.
But he pictured the zombies, the horrid peat-covered undead, and he ran on. He wanted to go back, but he could not. His legs kept moving. He fell hard and scraped his face, but he scrambled right back up and ran on, into the fog.
Others were running in the fog-enshrouded forest, he knew; and pursuit was all about-the heavy dragging steps of the zombies and, even more dangerous, the nimble Doc'alfar, some running in the boughs above.
Duke Tetrafel ran until his legs ached and his breath would not come, and then, driven by the sheerest horror, he ran on and on and on. For all of his life, he ran. For his eternal soul, he ran.
The sun rose before his eyes, and still he ran, and he thought for a moment that it had all been only a terrible dream.
But he knew better, knew the truth. And Duke Timian Tetrafel of the Wilderlands, a nobleman of the court of King Danube Brock Ursal, a man who had planned to engrave his name in the histories of his people and upon some
