whirl back and trample him provoked him into action. He rolled out of the bushes and into the road, now illuminated in the subtle blaze of faerie fire. He frantically searched around him for stampeding hooves, but Tasha rampaged in another direction. The thought struck Van Richten that she might bolt back to Rivalis and leave him stranded, so he crawled stupidly toward her, still unsure of his feet.
The mists suddenly parted, and a bolt of horror shot through him — Dr. Van Richten abruptly drew up on his knees and threw his hands to his mouth.
Even as Tasha ferociously pitched herself into the air, a swarm of short, pudgy humanoids leapt and clung to her! The lunatic horse squirmed and kicked furiously, yet the little fiends only vaulted in greater numbers. Beneath Tasha's piteous screeching, a babble of clicks and hisses passed between the diabolical villains as they hopped along the ground, fearless of her hooves, and flung themselves upon her. They hung from her legs and shoulders and haunches by their teeth, their stumpy, digitless limbs twitching as she vainly sought to shake them off. The miserable beast began to sway and founder, until at last her forelegs folded. She buckled to the ground with a rough heave, and the horde swept over her.
Van Richten clutched at his heart and cried 'Tasha!' in spite of himself. In response, a half dozen of the unnatural creatures turned and looked at him, kneeling in the middle of the mist-swirled road.
With gigantic, bulbous eyes creased by slitted pupils, they gazed at the man. Noses did not protrude between those bulging orbs; their mouths were nothing more than holes from which tubular black tongues spat, lizardlike, and their horrid faces were sewn with cruel stitches into hooded body suits of heavy cloth. They were constructs, the doctor perceived through his haze of terror; grotesque manikins infused with the baleful life-force of some malevolent power. He shook uncontrollably under their glassy examination. Both repulsed and fascinated, Van Richten gaped into the raptorial eyes of the dolly abominations, and they in turn regarded him stonily.
The sinister fabrications began to hop toward him.
'Think, Van Richten, think!' the man sputtered, falling back to his posterior and crawling away, crablike. The little creatures fanned out and toddled closer, chattering to one another with short clicks and pops of their spitting tongues. As the nearest doll-beast bobbed on its stumpy legs and prepared to leap, Van Richten clawed at the cold dirt behind him, his will teetering. Then by chance his hand fell upon the torch. Instantly his fingertips recognized the object, and renewed hope spurred him to motion.
Gigantic eyes like theirs were obviously designed for perfect darkness. If he could light a fire. .
The doctor rolled to his knees and scrambled to his feet, seizing the pole as he rose; the length of the shaft slid through his grasp until the knot of rags butted against his fist. With a clumsy pivot, he turned to face his foes and shoved his fingers into the pocket that housed his spark block. The bobbing predator sprang like a flea, landed face-first upon Van Richten's lower leg, and thrust its mouth against him. To his horror, he felt a spiny point wriggle and probe its way through the thick cloth of his trousers, seeking the meat of his calf. The intruder found a soft spot and thrust inward, sending Van Richten into a frenzied dance, yelping and kicking his distressed limb outward, each snap of his knee growing more forceful than the last. Finally, with a pop the tiny creature dislodged and tumbled into the bushes.
A second assailant bobbed frenetically and lunged at Van Richten, but he swatted it aside before its tongue could impale him. Two more leapt, but he snarled and swung the base of his staff, connecting with one in midair and sending it end over end in the opposite direction; the other he grabbed by the hood and flung into the woods. Now the man no longer waited for his enemies' advance, but charged into their moon faces, kicking one on the run and sweeping his weapon across the shoulders of two more. At the end of the charge, he spun and faced them again — this time with the spark block in his hand. He lowered the torch head, raised the block, and squinted against the imminent burst of sparks.
Without warning, an impact from behind sent Van Richten sprawling to his face; the rest of the pack had interrupted its repast upon poor Tasha to bring him down. They tackled the human with surprising force and sent him forward, his arms outstretched before him. A feeble streak of crackling flint embers arced through the air, but none of them caught on the torch. The doctor struck the ground heavily, and the shock of the blow bounced the spark block from his fingers. Tiny bodies stormed like rabid vermin across Van Richten's back, and a dozen fleshy drills rent his clothing and bit into him.
Agony sliced through him like blistering-hot wires, wrenching a scream from his astonished lips as a host of wriggling intruders burrowed and squirmed under his skin. Still he crawled forward, scratching at the dust as still more tiny monsters piled on and pierced him with their dagger-tongues. Desperately he swept his arms back and forth over the ground, until finally his searching fingers fell upon the spark block. As his thumb fumbled for the file, his other hand drew the rag knot closer. The mounting torment on his back began to unhinge his mind. His extremities numbed as his head began to swim. His thumb slipped clumsily across the steel file, and the tool flipped over in his hand.
A jabbing probe lanced his spine and spasmed inward, eliciting a sharp, involuntary arching of his punctured back. Every muscle in his body locked, and he clenched the spark block in his palm, squeezing the file tight against the flint, then snapped his fingers wide. The steel strip scraped across the stony block as he freed it, sending up a fountain of light.
The probing tubes within Van Richten's torso hesitated. He gasped with hope, then clutched and released the spark block again. A bright shower of kindled stone skittered across his palm and the torch beside it. Blisters swelled on his skin as the sparks found soft flesh, but he began to pump the firemaker zealously, generating a dazzling display of light bursts. Soon the burning welts on his hand supplanted the torture on his back, and he realized that the invaders had fled his body. Still he raked at the flint until at last the linen torch flared to life. Van Richten climbed drunkenly to his knees, planted the tip of the staff in the road, and pulled himself to his feet. His smoky torch sent up a dirty ribbon of soot and cast a yellowish glow over the bushes around him, jittering with scurrying foes. He stared dazedly after the movement until the pounding in his ears subsided. Slowly the internal cacophony diminished, only to be replaced by a grating snuffle behind him.
Van Richten weakly turned about and squinted through the torch light, only to crumble back to his knees and groan hopelessly at the approaching faces of two walking dead men!
“He who braves the Darkon night indeed sees wondrous things before he dies,' Van Richten moaned. The zombies waxy skin sagged from the bone beneath their eyes, puckering about the neck and cracking at the folds. Their splintered teeth were clogged with dirt beneath wide-cleft, blackened lips. Brittle hair tangled in wiry chaos atop their seeping heads, sometimes bordering upon an encrusted patch of sloughed-off scalp, and rotten clothing clung pointlessly to meatless bones wrapped in torn, leathery skin.
'Whatever you are,' he pleaded, 'I beg of you. Raise me to living death if you must, but leave me the will to avenge myself upon the Vistani. . '
The dead men halted and hovered silently over him, radiating frigid oblivion, then spoke, moving their lips in unison. 'I am the voice of Lord Azalin,' they croaked through moldering vocal cords.
The Wizard-King! Here? 'L–Lord Azalin?' stammered the man.
The king was a powerful wizard, but to detect the plight of a subject at the very borders of his domain, let alone come to the rescue, was astounding. He must have used his magic to animate the dead men and make them perform his will.
'Identify yourself,' the dead ordered monotonously.
'I am Rudolph van Richten.'
Another corpse joined the pair from behind — this one a female, with her throat torn open. 'I know you,' claimed all their flayed lips together, some with a hiss, others with a croak. 'You are a physician of Rivalis.'
'Yes, Lord Azalin. Thank the gods you are here!' exclaimed Van Richten, fighting down the rush of bile in his mouth at the sight of scrolling eyes and air-dried bones.
'Do not rejoice, Van Richten. There is no mercy for those who defy curfew. Only one thing stays your death: curiosity. What are the Vistani to you?' Another zombie shuffled up and joined the chorus. Van Richten stared dumbly at the ribboned stumps of its fingers, worn away from digging free of the earth.
'Speak! What are the Vistani to you?' they all asked in sepulchral tones.
The man's gaze sank to the ground as the story formed in his head. 'They came yesterday, to my house in Rivalis, and demanded that I treat one of their tribe: Radovan Radanavich — that man there. 'Van Richten pointed a trembling finger at the raven-haired Vistana, who lay in a heap beside Tasha's scored, crimsoned haunches. 'But he was too sick. I couldn't save him.'
Van Richten's throat constricted as the memories focused. 'He was the son of their leader. She accused me
