wayeache, picking out each of his fellow travelers wrapped snuggly in their blankets. They’d had a small fire earlier, but Gunggari had let it die down to mere embers. Marrec lit the lamp. Elowen had found a store of lamp oil in one of the storage shelves, more than enough to last through several days of continuous burning should they need it.
The sound of a child crying dimly reached his ears. He stiffened, his eyes immediately shifting to Ash, but the girl slept soundly, her eyes and mouth closed. He could still hear the crying, unmistakably that of small child. Was it his curse to find orphans around every corner? Better check it out, he chided himself.
Before he exited, he shook the tattooed warrior, “Gunny, you awake?”
The Oslander opened one eye and used it to fix him with a baleful stare.
Marrec whispered, “I’m going out to check something. I heard some kid crying out in the. woods, just outside the waycache. Stay alert, I’ll be back in a minute if it’s nothing.”
Gunggari craned his head, listening, but the crying had stopped.
Marrec held the lamp up in one hand, held his spear Justlance in the other, and exited the cozy waycache into the darkness of the forest.
Pausing some feet beyond the large boulder, he scanned to the extent he was able, listening with all his attention. He heard a quiet sob off to the right.
He moved toward the sound, cautious and ready for a trap. What he found was an elven boy of not more than thirteen years, cringing from Marrec’s lamplight, hiding behind a great tree. He was dirty and his clothing was ripped. The boy’s eyes were wide with fear.
“What in Lurue’s great wilderness are you doing here?” asked Marrec.
The boy looked at him, then said something in a language Marrec didn’t know. Elvish, but strangely accented.
Looking around, the cleric couldn’t find any other evidence to explain how an elven boy could be hiding and crying outside the waycache.
“All right, let’s get you back to the others. Elowen will know where you come from, I wager.”
Sheathing his spear, he then held out a hand for the boy to take. “Come on, I’m not going to hurt you.”
The boy took Marrec’s hand and allowed himself to be lad into the waycache.
The waifs eyes were wide as he took in the group, most still sleeping, except for Gunggari and Elowen. Gunggari must have woken Elowen while Marrec was outside the hollow, he thought. Good, then he didn’t have to be the one…
“What are you doing?” yelled Elowen at Marrec.
As she yelled, she struggled for her weapon, which was snagged in her sleeping furs.
Taken off guard, Marrec stared dumbly. That’s when the elven boy gave voice to a horrible roar and leaped through the air toward Ash.
In a timeless instant, Marrec saw the boy bloat and elongate, his boy-shape melting away to reveal a gray- white hairy apelike thing. Its twisted limbs scrabbled through the air as they unfolded, and a dozen completely black eyes set all the way around its head glared in all directions.
Gunggari, closer to Ash than anyone else, managed to throw himself into the path of the creature, but the creature that smashed into the Oslander was at least four times the mass of a man. It bowled Gunggari over, sending man and dizheri flying.
Gunggari had offered enough distraction for Marrec to react, but he was too far from the beast. Marrec had sheathed his spear, and his goddess-granted spells seemed as distant as ever. He felt an unwelcome heat behind his eyes, as if in answer to his frustration.
Elowen, bringing up her sword, hissed, “An uthraki!”
The uthraki, its path clear, focused its attention on the just-waking Ash. Its eight foot height towered over the child. Marrec’s eyes began to burn. He felt the ache form a searing circuit from the back of his head to his eyes, and…
As if reaching up to pluck a fruit from a tree, Ash touched the advancing creature. A dim flash… and where once stood the uthraki, there was nothing, save perhaps motes of dust glittering in Marrec’s lamplight.
Silence descended on the hollow, as all eyes fell on little Ash. The girl seemed oblivious to the attention. She settled back into her furs.
Marrec released his pent-up breath, and with it the pain in his head dispersed, just as quickly. His oath remained intact. He gave silent thanks to Lurue, but the girl… what powers did she yet hide? No wonder she was so important to the goddess.
“She has more than just the hands of a healer,” commented Gunggari, saying aloud what all must were thinking.
Ususi, who had woken late but in time to note Ash’s spectacular destruction of the threatening beast, said nothing, but she watched the young girl closely.
Elowen said, “It is odd that the uthraki was so intent on Ash. Usually, they attack those they’ve duped, after they’ve led their intended victim into a secluded spot.”
Marrec realized that Elowen meant that it should have been Marrec who was attacked, while he was outside the hollow. Perhaps she was even rebuking him for falling victim to such a dupe. He felt the urge to defend his choice to investigate the sound of a crying childbut instead, he quietly accepted the blame.
‹S›-
The figure stepped forward, entering the stone circle while darkness yet reigned. One of his spies had perished. The spell that linked him to the shapechanger was severed. He cared not for the welfare of the uthrakiit was little more than a beast. It had served its purpose merely in giving warning through its death. Someone approached.
Gameliel woke his thralls. There were preparations to make, rot to culture, and spells to unsheathe. He wouldn’t allow the newest, most important outpost of the Rotting Man’s empire to fall back into the idle hands of idiot druids. He glanced at the dark shape that still hung impaled on one of the great stones, smirking.
The blightlord felt the weight of the Keystone’s cord around his neck. With it, Gameliel possessed the power of the Mucklestones. There was no place the Rotting Man and his most powerful servants could not penetrate at whim.
First, he had to prepare the ambush.
CHAPTER 9
When darkness failed, they broke camp.
Marrec thought the woods were too quiet. In forests to the west, he would have been able to identify the calls of over a dozen species of birds in as many seconds. Instead one crow cawed in the distance as they set out that morning, and for the next several hours he heard nothing more.
“Is the forest usually so…” began Marrec.
“Silent?” finished Elowen. “No.” She frowned. “Even yesterday, if you recall, all seemed well. Something’s changed.”
“It’s Gameliel,” spoke Ususi from behind them. She continued, “His influence may extend beyond the Mucklestones, and we are close to the circle. I begin to feel the stone shapes in my mind.”
“If we are close, we need to be cautious,” advised Gunggari, who rode abreast of Marrec and Elowen.
“Agreed,” nodded the elf hunter. She added in a tentative tone, “I worry about Briartan.”
Marrec said nothing. If Briartan were responsible for the Mucklestones, he doubted the man had come to any good with Gameliel’s arrival, or worse, Briartan had been co-opted. He’d seen similar things in the past. They’d find out what was really going on in just a few miles.
He said, “We need a plan, of course.”
Gunggari smiled and waited.
“First, let’s hear more about this Gameliel,” said Marrec. “What should we be prepared for? What does it mean when you say he is a blightlord?”
“The blightlords serve the goddess called Talona,” said Elowen. “They are corrupt priests who revel in rot and decay. Their plagues and blights have transformed the western reaches of the Rawlinswood into a foul green hell of
