“L isten… I hear them baying. I’ll bet they’re after a deer right now!” Ulfgang woofed in excitement.
“Can we catch them?” Tam asked. He felt a keen buzz of excitement-after a week of arduous trekking, at last they had caught the spoor of the trouble that had drawn them to the Greens. This was different, unknown-and that very mystery seemed to cause a peculiar thrill. The song of the hounds was distant, yet piercingly eerie. As the chorus of wails rose and ululated he felt a distinct shiver run down his spine.
Deltan Columbine, too, looked flushed and excited. His eyes were bright, and there was no sign of the fatigue that had slowed him down on the first few days of their trek.
“I think they’re coming this way-Come on!” urged the dog, breaking into a trot.
Tam loped along behind. His body moving with natural grace, and it seemed that his mind was as clear, as keen and ready, as it had ever been in his life. In one hand he hoisted a stout stick, a shaft as big around as his wrist and slightly longer than his own height. He had carved it a couple of days earlier, when the pair had first entered the lofty forest and Ulfgang had casually mentioned that a pack of deer-mad dogs might not respond immediately to cool logic. Since then the staff had seemed to become a part of him, and now he set it on his shoulder as comfortably as if it were another limb.
Deltan, following just behind, carried a homemade bow and a cluster of arrows tipped with fire-hardened points of wood. Already he had shown a keen eye, enhancing their evening camps with dinners of rabbit, squirrel, and even a plump pheasant. Privately, however, Tamarwind doubted that the light missiles would prove much of a deterrent against anything larger.
Now they ran between huge tree trunks over a forest floor that was for the most part free of brush. They leaped a long, mossy log, then skirted a small pond, and now the sounds of the baying pack rang all around them like a bizarre, demented chorus. The music of the chase soared and swelled with the dogs’ frenzy.
Abruptly Ulfgang skidded to a halt. Tam and Deltan came to rest beside him, leaning against the trunk of a huge tree. They heard crashing footsteps, and then a wide-eyed stag leapt by, tongue flopping loosely as it hurled itself through desperate, lunging bounds.
“Now!” cried Ulf, leaping out from behind the tree. The white dog crouched, facing the deer’s pursuers, upper lip curled into a very forbidding snarl. Tam, his broad staff upraised, stepped to his companion’s side-and immediately felt a searing jab of fear.
At least a dozen large, snarling dogs came to an outraged halt. They bristled and snapped, infuriated at the interruption of their chase. The elf raised his staff as three of the dogs impetuously rushed forward. Deltan Columbine, next to the tree, shot an arrow that grazed a hairy flank, sending one of the animals darting back to the pack. Another veered away as Tamarwind swung the stout weapon, and the third, a large male, yelped in surprise as Ulf feinted a lunge to the left and then drove against the dog’s right. Tam saw a flash of white fangs, and then Ulfgang had buried his teeth in the loose wattle of the big dog’s throat.
The snarl turned to a yelp and the big dog twisted and fell while Ulf maintained his ferocious grip. Tam swung the staff and Deltan nocked another arrow as several other canines lunged. The animals backed off, and again the male yelped through the pressure of Ulf’s teeth.
Spitting in contempt, Ulf released the dog to slink back to its mates.
“Shame-shame on you all! You are shepherds!” Ulfgang bellowed, his voice a formidable roar. Aggressive tails lowered across the group, and Tam noticed several dogs of the pack exchanging clearly sheepish glances. But one of the other animals blustered, hair bristling on its neck as it growled and snapped. This was another big male, larger than Ulf by two or three hands, and it swaggered forward belligerently. Both eyes were bright, almost bloodshot with the intensity of the creature’s agitation.
“Don’t be a fool,” scolded the white dog. “Even if you bite, my friend will smash your brains in with his pole!”
Tam brandished the staff as the big dog eyed him appraisingly. Deltan Columbine drew back his bow and many of the other dogs gaped and huffed, nervously backing away. The leader barked several times, hackles raised, but then Tam detected a note of reluctant compliance as the creature lowered its head and bared its fangs in a drooling grin.
“What brings you here? Why have you abandoned the fields, left your responsibilities to chase deer?” demanded the white dog, clearly in command now.
The dogs started barking, all of them contributing to the din, and Ulfgang shouted for silence. Even so, the baying, howling, and yipping continued, until Tam was getting a headache from the noise. Finally the pack settled down, and the white dog turned to the big male. “You tell me, alone.”
The shepherd, voice already hoarse from the hunt, barked roughly for several minutes. When he concluded, panting, Ulfgang nodded his head grimly and turned to his elven companions.
“I couldn’t understand much,” he admitted. “But they claim there is something that drew them here to the Greens… that they were pulled to the chase by a force strange and compelling.”
“What thing is that?” Tam demanded, still trembling with the excitement of the confrontation.
“Magic, I fear,” Ulf replied. “Of what type, I don’t know. But more significantly, that big one-Red Eye-says that he can show us where we can find this power in the flesh.”
T wo days later Ulfgang, Deltan, and Tamarwind crouched on the lip of a ravine overlooking a small valley, a gorge twisting through the trackless depths of the Greens. The travelers lay in a fringe of brush, silent and unmoving. Their position commanded a clear view of the ground below. In a clearing on the valley floor hundreds of people-mostly elves, but with a few giants, goblins, and centaurs among them-had gathered.
The shepherd called Red Eye had led them close to this place, though an hour earlier the big dog had slunk away without explanation. Nor had Ulf asked for one-he told Tam that he, too, could sense the wrongness in this place, an invisible corruption that marred the trees, the ground, the very air itself.
Tamarwind still carried his staff, and he was disturbed to realize that he was very much afraid. Deltan Columbine was silent, clutching his bow and looking wide-eyed at the mob below them. Ulfgang seemed purposeful and grim. As he searched for this place, the white dog had trotted along with head and nose low, sniffing constantly, seeking some improper spoor, some signal of the magic that had so disrupted life in unchanging Argentian. The warning of the pack had stricken the white dog with visible force, and the change in Ulf’s mood had provided a sobering warning to Tam and Deltan.
And now they had come upon this bizarre gathering. Significantly, many of those gathered in the little clearing bore weapons-spears and staffs, a few with the bows and arrows such as an elven hunter might carry. In the center of the gathering a tall, bare stake jutted upward from a pile of kindling. Nearby was a canvas tent, and before that shelter dangled a white banner emblazoned with a red cross. The crowd was mostly silent and attentive, though they were joined by more and more people coming from the trails leading up and down the valley. Abruptly an audible gasp sounded from the assemblage, and all eyes went to the canvas shelter.
A human came out of the tent. His chest was covered by a stiff, silvery shirt. He was bearded, with long brown hair, and he carried a stout staff that was capped with the head of a hooded snake. When he raised his arms and the final murmurings in the assemblage stilled, it seemed to Tamarwind that even the birds and monkeys grew quiet, waiting, tense, afraid.
A scream echoed, startling and eerie. Tam saw a woman, a human druid to judge from her long black hair, dragged forward by two giants. She screamed again, and one of the brutes cuffed her across the face. The crowd murmured and shifted like a hungry being, awakened and thrilled by the prisoner’s suffering.
Stunned by the violence, Tamarwind watched in horror as the druid was tied to the post. She struggled in vain, moaning and sobbing as ropes were pulled tight against her flesh. A pair of goblins, cackling excitedly, carried torches forward and thrust the flaming brands into the kindling around the stake. Quickly the fire took hold, snapping hungrily through the wood, spewing upward in yellow and orange tongues. The druidess shrieked loudly as her gown caught fire, as black smoke swirled around her and the blaze grew fierce.
Appalled, Tam, Deltan, and Ulfgang watched the flames spark. The scout tried to imagine the pain the woman must be suffering, but his mind couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Fire consumed her garment and blackened her skin. Her shouts and cries climbed beyond the scale of anguish, a dolorous wail of pure agony as her flesh was consumed by the blaze. The unforgettable stench, like charred meat and offal, reached even to the nostrils of the three watchers above the valley. Tamarwind clenched his teeth, fighting against a surging wave of nausea.
And then the woman was no longer screaming. Her cries were muted moans, swiftly overwhelmed by the crackling fury of the conflagration.
