yanked him to her. The man was middle-aged, lean, with sun-weathered skin that spoke of a lifetime working outdoors. His simple homespun tunic further marked him as a farmer, probably come into town to buy supplies or sell some of his farm’s products. The man was obviously terrified, so much so that he didn’t seem to be aware that he’d been snagged and reeled in by a symbiont. As a battlefield commander, Lirra had dealt with frightened men and women on more than one occasion, and she used a strong, harsh tone to cut through the man’s fear.
“What’s wrong?” she snapped.
The wild look in the farmer’s eyes persisted, and she commanded the symbiont to give him a shake as she barked her question again. This time the man’s gaze cleared and his eyes focused on Lirra.
“Something awful has entered the town … they look human, but they’re not, they’re …” He shook his head. “I don’t know what they are, but they’re killing everyone they see, and nothing seems to stop them! Not swords, not magic … You have to let me go before they get here!”
The man struggled to pull free, and Lirra ordered the whip to release him.
During the few moments Lirra had questioned the farmer, the fleeing crowd had diminished, and there were only a handful of people running down the street. Lirra turned to Ranja to ask what she made of the sudden panic when a line of men, women, and children, more than a dozen in all, came into view. Before them stood a smattering of garrison soldiers-several of whom Lirra recognized as those that had been taunting the dwarves in the Wyvern’s Claw. The soldiers fought a retreating battle as they attempted to halt their enemies’ advance, but their efforts were to no avail. They hacked and slashed with their swords, but every wound they inflicted on their enemies refused to bleed and healed within seconds. A number of different races were represented in the advancing line- human, dwarven, halfing, half-elf-but they all shared a similar appearance. Their eyes were completely white, almost glowing, in fact, and the flesh of their faces was scarred and distorted, as if they’d all been through a fire some time before.
Lirra felt a strange recognition upon seeing their misshapen visages. They were aberrations of some sort, tainted by the corrupting influence of Xoriat. The tingling at the base of her skull and the nausea in her gut intensified, and she knew that the sensations were caused by the presence of these bizarre new aberrations.
As Lirra and Ranja watched, the white-eyed men and women made fast work of the soldiers, ripping off limbs and snapping necks without taking so much as a lasting cut from any of their blades. When the soldiers were dead, the white-eyes tossed them aside as if they were nothing more than broken toys that were no longer fit to play with, and the distorted creatures continued marching down the street toward Lirra and Ranja.
Lirra felt a clawed hand grasp her elbow.
“I don’t know about you,” Ranja said in a bestial voice, “but I’d rather not be standing in the middle of the street when those things get here. Let’s go!”
But Lirra resisted the shifter’s urging. She felt a compulsion to stand her ground and fight the oncoming creatures, even though she and Ranja were seriously outnumbered. At a guess there were a dozen of them, and given the way they rapidly healed their wounds, Lirra knew there was nothing either she or her shifter companion could do to stop them. Nevertheless, the feeling that she
Following close behind the advancing white-eyes, Elidyr saw her and waved cheerfully.
“There you are, my dear! My new friends and I have been looking all over town for you!”
Ranja leaned her mouth close to Lirra’s ear. “Remember the deal we made that I’d help you find your uncle? Well, there he is.”
“Yes,” Lirra said, tightening her grip on her sword. “Yes, he is.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Still no word?” Ksana asked.
Vaddon sat upon one of the logs arranged around their campfire, a mug of hot nestleberry tea in his hand. He looked up as the cleric approached and sat down next to him. A metal teapot sat at the edge of the fire, resting in a bed of coals, and Vaddon offered his old friend some, but she declined.
“I’ve already had two cups this morning,” she said. “More than that, and I get jittery.”
Vaddon smiled. “Given your usually placid nature, you being jittery is like another person being half asleep.”
Ksana smiled back. “How many campaigns have we been on together, Vaddon? How many times have we sat around campfires like this, waiting for news-for orders or intelligence-that would tell us it was finally time to act?”
“Too many times to count,” he said. There was a hint of warmth beneath his gruff tone. Ksana might not have been related to the Brochanns by blood, but she was as much a member of the family as if she had been. The bonds forged in battle among Karrnathi soldiers were as strong as any formed by familial relationship, and often stronger. Ksana had stood by Vaddon’s side, as a fellow soldier, advisor, and friend, for more years than he liked to think about. But there was no one he’d rather have by his side during trying times, with the exception of Lirra, and given that his daughter had become possessed by an aberration and had taken leave of her senses, the cleric’s presence was, as always, a great comfort to him.
The Outguard had set up camp on the outskirts of Geirrid, less than a mile from the city. Vaddon wanted to be near the town garrison in case he needed to call upon reinforcements, but he didn’t want to stay at the town’s barracks in order to avoid any of the other soldiers learning about the symbiont project and what had happened to Lirra and Elidyr. A dozen tents were pitched in a circle around the campfire, and about the same number of horses was tethered to stakes not far from camp. Sinnoch remained in his tent-indeed, the dolgaunt hadn’t left it since they’d made camp yesterday, and Vaddon had set Bergerron’s two warforged to stand guard. A half-dozen other soldiers, including Rhedyn and Osten, busied themselves with maintaining their weapons, caring for the horses, or running practice drills to keep in shape.
The rest of Vaddon’s people were out riding across the countryside in search of Elidyr and Lirra, all of them in possession of communication amulets containing psionic crystals. The amulets allowed the wearers to send and receive brief telepathic messages to each other, though the crystals only contained enough power for two or three exchanges before they burned out. Vaddon wore one of the amulets around his neck, and his crystal was larger than the others, allowing it to retain a charge longer. Elidyr had originally created the devices for the Outguard’s use, and the irony that his brother’s handiwork would now be used to track him down wasn’t lost on Vaddon. His own amulet had already seen a significant amount of use that morning.
“I’ve received some reports,” Vaddon said. Each time someone had contacted him, he’d felt a surge of hope that there would be news about Lirra, but he’d been disappointed every time. “None of our people have sighted either Lirra or Elidyr, but they have run across a number of abandoned farms-all of them in a more or less direct line between the lodge and Geirrid.”
“Do you think either Lirra or Elidyr had anything to do with it?”
“There’s no evidence to suggest that, but you know as well as I that coincidences are never to be trusted in a campaign. I’ve ordered a couple of our soldiers to ride to Geirrid and see what, if anything, they can learn there.”
“Do you think Lirra or Elidyr would head for the town?”
Vaddon shrugged. “Who’s to say what either of them will do now? My brother is clearly insane, and Lirra …” He paused and sighed deeply. “She may retain more of her sanity than Elidyr, but her fusion with the symbiont affected her mind as well, and every moment she remains bonded to the foul thing corrupts her further. It’s only a matter of time before she loses her mind as well.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain of that,” Ksana said softly. “Lirra is strong in body, mind, and spirit. If anyone is able to resist the corrupting influence of a symbiont, it will be her.”
Vaddon dearly wanted to believe that Ksana was right, that his daughter would be able to maintain her sense of self and not be overwhelmed by her symbiont. But it was precisely because he so badly wanted to believe it that he couldn’t allow himself to do so. Lirra was his daughter, and it was tearing him up inside that she had become corrupted in body and mind because the symbiont project had failed-a project
