Ghostwalker

Chapter 20

30 Tarsakh

Walker's sword banged off a thick oak wall and clattered to the ground.

Lyetha looked up, startled, and Walker was on his knees before her. Having thrown his sword aside, he had pulled off his gloves and now clutched her face softly between his hands, though he knew without his power. Knew, but denied it, until…

Shuddering at his cold touch, Lyetha stared into his bright sapphire eyes.

Her eyes.

"Rhyn?" she asked, almost in a whisper. "Can-can it be?"

Lips trembling, unable to speak, Walker slowly nodded. He knew it was the truth.

Lyetha's arms slid around him and she held him fiercely.

"Oh, Rhyn!" she sobbed. "I never dared hope you were alive!"

The ghostwalker's eyes were almost soft. "Mother," he whispered.

His rasping voice, however, jarred him back to reality. Walker pulled his arms from around his mother and tore himself free with a cry. He half-crawled, half-fell backward, slamming into the alley wall, but he hardly felt the impact. Uncalled emotions flowed up in an overwhelming torrent. He clutched his arms around his head in a vain attempt to keep them in.

"Is this the secret you've kept from me all these years, Father?" cried Walker, as though it were a curse. "Is this what you could not tell me?"

As always, Tarm Thardeyn was silent. The spirit just stood there, watching, though when he looked upon Lyetha, his gaze was filled with love. Walker screamed soundlessly.

After a moment, a gentle hand touched his shoulder.

"What's wrong?" Lyetha asked.

He shrugged off her hand. Walker looked at her but found there was little anger in him. He turned his eyes to his bare hands, covered with scars and dirt as they were. They were the hands of a warrior, the hands of an avenger, the hands of a murderer.

"These hands are too bloody to touch yours," Walker rasped.

"What are you talking about?" Lyetha asked. She moved around in front of him and gazed at him. "We're together again. We can run from here, go to Silverymoon-beyond! We can leave here for-"

"You can suggest such a thing?" he asked. "After all I have done, all I have become… All he did to me?"

"We can leave him behind. This is finished for us."

"Not for me," Walker said, shaking his head. "Not after what he has done. Greyt made me who I am, and he is the last." He stood and turned away. "He will be the last."

"No! You can't kill him!" Lyetha protested, clutching the fringe of his cloak.

"Why?" he snapped as he rounded on her. "Why? He has taken everything from us, ruined our lives. Why cannot I kill him?"

"There is something you need to know about Dharan," Lyetha said. Walker watched her levelly, even as she struggled to get the words out. "You, ah… your-your ring."

"My ring?" He held up the wolf's head ring.

"The lone wolf is… it's Dharan's family crest…"

"I know. He put it on me just before he killed me, so I would live through their blows," said Walker. Slowly, purposefully, he wound strips of watchman tabard around his hands, so that he did not have to look at them any more. "So I would be in pain to the last, until he removed it, and its protections with it. He lost it that night, and I found it. His old ring, from his adventuring days." His gaze turned cold.

Lyetha opened her mouth to protest, but the words would not come.

"What is it?" Walker asked, anger in his voice.

"When Dharan was just a boy, he grew up on tales of heroes," Lyetha said. "He… he always wanted to become one himself, to… to impress me, when we were young… but he… he…" Her voice grew soft. "In all of his eagerness to be a hero, he forgot that a hero must sometimes give up his dreams in order to do what is right. For Dharan, self-sacrifice is simply not possible."

Walker was impassive.

"I loved him once… before I loved Tarm… and then… I… you…" Then she trailed off, unable to speak.

The spirit of Tarm looked tragic at that moment, as though she had slapped him. He clearly understood what she was saying.

Walker did not.

"Why does that matter?" he demanded.

Lyetha looked back at him with bleary eyes and managed a little smile. "I… I guess…" She looked down. "I guess 'tis easier to destroy than to create."

They were silent for a moment. Then Walker sniffed.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, it is."

With his toe, he flipped the sword off the ground into his hand. "Go home, Lyetha. I shall remember what you have said this day, and my vengeance will pass you by."

Lyetha reached out to embrace Walker, but he stepped out of her reach.

"I am lost to you, Mother," he said. "I did not see the truth, and now it is too late. Forgive me for what I have done, and for what I must do."

The spirit of Tarm Thardeyn looked at him and cast a wistful glance at Lyetha, who could neither see him nor feel his loving caress.

Walker left his mother weeping in the alley and stepped out into the street toward the house of Lord Singer Dharan Greyt.

Murderous eyes, a war cry, a sword, and a flail were there to greet him.

"You've come back… so soon," said Greyt, startled but thinking fast.

"Surprised to see me, Father?" asked Meris, spinning the shatterspike so that it clicked against the fine oak of the desk. His hand axe lay imbedded in two volumes of Waterdhavian history that Greyt had left stacked there. " 'Tis no matter. I think we both know why I am here." Meris's voice was slurred, as though his tongue were swollen or he were in his cups.

Against his polished white leather, Meris's dusky features seemed especially exotic, and for a moment, Greyt had not recognized him as his son.

Coolly, the Lord Singer crossed to the sideboard and took two glasses, into which he poured the remainder of the elverquisst he carried.

"Talthaliel told me you would come," Greyt said. "That my son would come to kill me, but that he wouldn't defeat my mage."

"Did he?" Meris asked. He hefted the ghostly shatterspike and his hand axe. "Sorry, but he's indisposed at the moment. Outside. Fighting Rhyn-er, I mean Walker."

Eyes widening, Greyt tipped over the glass in surprise. He barely managed to throw his aging body out of the way to dodge Meris's thrust.

"Traitor elf!" he shouted as he whipped his golden rapier out of its scabbard and fell into a fencing stance almost as though it were second nature. His old muscles protested, but he was glad-for the first time-that he had continued sparring practice.

Standing a few paces away, Meris laughed and waved the shatterspike mockingly.

"Wonderful scheme, father," he said. "You were to become the hero of Quaervarr-a fifth time over? Gods! How much do you have to do? Has any level of brainless worship ever been enough for you? Who are you trying to convince-them, or yourself?"

"Bastard!" Greyt shrieked. He lunged at Meris.

The dusky scout casually parried his sword aside. "Indeed, but that's beside the point," replied Meris. "The point is, when I go outside next, they will all hear how I killed Walker, how I killed the renegade knights, and how I killed the 'mad Lord Singer.' I will be their hero, not you. You're just a murderer, and a mad one at that."

"You treacherous little bastard," spat Greyt.

"You keep calling me that. Sounds more like an insult to you than to me." Then he laughed. "Amazing how history repeats itself-this reminds me of fifteen years ago when you killed your own 'mad' father."

"You knew about that-you were with me the night Rhyn Thardeyn died, the night we murdered your grandfather and the others!" protested Greyt. "Rhyn-you killed him! You took the ring off, in your youthful ignorance-"

"No, Father," said Meris. "Purpose. I hated him and I wanted him dead. And I did it. Perhaps I didn't understand at the time, but I do now, and I don't regret it."

Greyt was horrified. He remembered that night, when he had taken Rhyn into the forest to frighten him, to chase him away. To have Lyetha to himself, to remove any reminder of Tarm Thardeyn, the priest he had killed years before. Meris had removed the healing ring before Greyt's scarring blow, and Greyt's wolf's head ring had been lost in the following argument.

And now… now he knew it had been no accident. Meris had been murderous even then.

"Foul creature!" he shouted. "How can Quaervarr accept you, once they know that you are just as great a monster as I?"

The Lord Singer thrust at his son again, but Meris was ready. He knocked the blow aside with his hand axe and lashed out with the shatterspike, tearing a neat red line down Greyt's left arm. The Lord Singer gasped and fell back, though he kept the golden rapier up.

"Correction, father," Meris said with a grin. "I am a greater monster than you will ever be. And, as for Quaervarr-well, who will believe you, a madman?"

"Spoiled brat, I am their hero!" Greyt asserted. "They will believe me, and my magic will persuade them even if they do not!"

Meris shrugged. "Then I guess I'll have to ensure that you don't live to persuade them."

With that, the wild scout charged in, launching a reckless offensive with his two weapons whirling, and Greyt pumped his arms, desperately fending off the attacks.

Outside, in Quaervarr's main plaza, where the crowd had dispersed in terror at the battle unfolding, Walker struggled with his own attacker.

Attackers, actually, for there were two: the raging barbarian Bilgren, his gyrspike whirling like a zephyr of blade and flail, and a dark-robed mage floating far above, weaving threads of magic into deadly bolts of fire and lightning. Walker prayed Lyetha had fled, so at least he would have only his own safety to worry about.

It would be quite enough.

"Ye escaped me once, with the aid o' thy little fox," spat Bilgren, his mouth foaming in his rage. "Not again-this time, ye're mine. All mine!"

"Romantic," mused Walker. He realized with a start that it was something Arya might have muttered in this situation. The thought brought a twinge of anger. He had to get to her!

Walker parried blows from the gyrspike, swatting away the flail like a ball and slapping the blade wide so that it would not find his flesh, all the while dodging bolts of power the mage rained down upon him.

Bellowing, Bilgren swept the flail at Walker's legs, but the ghostwalker leaped over the blow, kicked off Bilgren's chest and rolled away, just in time to evade a bolt of lightning that slammed into the earth between them. Momentarily stunned by the blast, Bilgren staggered back, howling like a wounded animal.

"Talthaliel, watch where ye be aiming, ye lout!" shouted the big man.

Walker seized the opportunity to hurl two of the daggers from his belt at the barbarian. Bilgren caught one with the shaft of his gyrspike, but the other buried itself to the hilt in his thick stomach. The hulking man took one look at the tiny fang in his flesh and roared, more in anger than in pain. He ignored the blood that began to leak down his rothe hide armor.

Meanwhile, Talthaliel completed another spell and sent down a volley of magical bolts. Rolling, Walker dodged to the side, but the projectiles veered even as they were about to meet the ground and struck him instead, slamming into him with incredible force. Walker gritted his teeth but kept moving.

Bilgren was back, running at Walker with the gyrspike spinning over his head. The ghostwalker ran as well, toward a bakery at the edge of the plaza, keeping the distance equal between himself and Bilgren. As he ran, he tossed two daggers up at the wizard, but Talthaliel waved them aside like irritating gnats.

Walker did not have to look to know that Bilgren was almost upon him. Running full out toward the wall, Walker leaped, kicked off the log wall at chest height, and flew backward. Bilgren's flail exploded into the wall, sending a shower of wood chips flying, just missing Walker's toes. The ghostwalker flipped over the barbarian's head, landed behind him, and slashed Bilgren across the back.

The cut might have been deeper but for the thick rothe hide. The guard's sword was too dull to penetrate fully, but it was enough to drive the barbarian deeper into his berserker frenzy.

The gyrspike came around in a withering slash, as though it possessed a mind of its own. Walker ducked the high flail and parried the sword blade, but the force of Bilgren's swing spun him around. Disoriented for a moment, he managed to duck the flail coming from behind him, and threw himself into a tumble to avoid a burning ray, which cut a precise line along the ground where his head had been a breath before.

He turned back to Bilgren and had to twist to the left as the gyrspike sword swept up. The flail followed it, and Walker twisted to the right to avoid it. Plying his skill with the curious weapon, Bilgren ducked forward and brought the gyrspike spinning over his shoulders. Walker ducked to avoid being beheaded, and parried the flail as it swept lower. The chain wrapped around his sword, and Bilgren howled in joy, ripping it from Walker's hand. The blade skittered among a pile of crates.

Walker did not, however, stand shocked as the barbarian disarmed him. Slipping a dagger into his hand, he thrust with all his strength, stabbing the tiny blade deep into Bilgren's thigh. The barbarian roared in pain and kicked Walker's midsection, sending him tumbling away. His flying body splintered the crates and he slammed against the store wall, only to slump down.

By coincidence, he landed near his fallen sword, but Walker did not pause to thank the gods. He snapped mental commands at his aching body, forcing it to move after such a hit. Groaning, it did. He rose, wincing, scooped up the blade, and forced his legs to run from the rampaging barbarian, whose smash destroyed another crate.

Walker paid little attention to Bilgren as he continued to leap and dodge blasts, his cape slashed and cut by magic strikes, but he knew he could not keep it up forever. Every now and then he had to turn and parry, riposte, and flee again. If his two opponents kept pressing, not allowing Walker to land a solid blow, it was only a matter of…

The flail of Bilgren's gyrspike slammed into Walker's shoulder as he turned, sending him flying like a petulantly hurled doll.

The ghostwalker sailed through the air to crash into the statue of dancing nymphs that stood in the center of Quaervarr's plaza fountain. He slumped down into the water with a splash and fought against the spinning haze coming over his vision. Walker felt the water around him grow leaden and sluggish, spurred by Talthaliel's magic to freeze and trap him, even as he lay dazed within the pool.

"I'll grind thy bones an' tear thy flesh with me teeth!" Bilgren roared.

A spiked flail blotted out the sun as it swung up over his head.

Greyt spun right as the shatterspike hacked down, splintering a bookshelf and sending tomes sliding down onto him. He parried Meris's seeking axe on the other side and lashed out with his fist, catching the wild scout in the chest. Meris staggered back, but was quick to knock aside Greyt's riposte.

Backpedaling around the desk, Greyt warded off Meris's attacks with the golden blade. The Lord Singer was the greater swordsman, but Greyt was twice his son's age. How long would it be before Greyt tired and Meris's steel found his flesh?

The hand axe shot in again, and Greyt caught and pulled it wide. Too late, as the axe hooked and held his rapier blade down on the table, he saw the feint for what it was. The shatterspike came slashing in from the other side, and Greyt struggled to put a book in its path. The tome exploded as the steel struck it, sending illustrated pages floating everywhere.

"One of Volo's guides," cursed Greyt. He threw a second book in Meris's face, thwarting the next attack. "Not much more than pictures, but still worth coin-you'll pay for that!"

"I don't think I'll be interested-" said Meris as the sword flashed out again only for Greyt to swat it aside, "-in replacing the library. I was never much of a reader, after all."

Greyt scowled as he pressed the advantage back against Meris. Seizing a daggerlike letter opener he had left idle on the desk, he stabbed out with lightning quickness over the next parry, tearing open Meris's forearm. The youth cursed and slashed the shatterspike between them. Greyt blinked as he watched his favorite letter opener fall in two.

"Typical," said Greyt.

He lunged in, but Meris was ready. The scout sidestepped at the last instant, letting the rapier cut along between his arm and torso. Then Meris hooked the hand axe around Greyt's leg and yanked the Lord Singer from his feet, following the attack with a thrust, meaning to end the fight.

Greyt, though, was prepared. A blade sprouted from the bracer adorning his right arm, and he knocked the shatterspike aside with a scrape. Sparks flew, and he plunged the blade up into Meris's belly. The wild scout cursed and clutched at himself, bent over in pain. The hand axe fell to the ground and the shatterspike dipped. The Lord Singer swatted a blow across Meris's chin, sending the scout staggering back.

Then the Lord Singer stood, limping slightly from his bruised legs and backside. When Meris made no move to strike, Greyt straightened his collar and cuffs, holding the golden rapier between his legs. Supporting himself on the sword, Meris coughed and gagged. A trickle of blood ran from his mouth. Greyt smiled and walked toward him, stretching his arms and holding the rapier horizontally behind his head.

"Well, my boy," Greyt said. "It's been a good couple two and a half decades. I always admired your knack for promoting yourself higher in my esteem-and your dashing looks." He held up the golden rapier and inspected the tip. Giving it a snap, the metal vibrated back and forth. "I always saw such potential in you, but I see I was doomed to disappointment."

Meris moaned, his tongue still thick. Greyt tapped Meris on the cheek with the rapier.

"What a shame-I see so much of that Amnian strumpet in you, too. Poor girl, killed by beasts in the woods. An 'accident.' " Something dawned on him and Greyt smiled. "Ah yes, thank you for reminding me-I had almost forgotten her fate."

Meris's only reply was to stifle a cough. Blood ran through his fingers.

Greyt grimaced. Meris was bleeding all over the carpet, creating stains that would take tendays to get out. No sense making Claudir do extra work.

He drew the rapier back.

I'll grind his bones an' tear his flesh with me teeth!

The words cut to Walker soul and, once there, made it hard and cold as ice. Screaming power filled his body, imbuing him with fifteen years of hatred and pain.

Walker leaped, stepped on the dagger in Bilgren's thigh, kicked off the one in his stomach, and flew over the barbarian's head, turning a forward somersault but flying backward, as though borne aloft on the wind of ghosts.

Barely nicking his trailing cloak, the flail came down and splashed into the water. There it stuck, much to Bilgren's surprise. The big man roared and strained, but he could not pull out the flail-the water had turned to ice around the spiked ball, thanks to Talthaliel's magic and Walker's timing.

Bilgren looked at the gyrspike in shock, then up at Walker, perched atop the fountain, his cloak billowing around him in the wind.

"Ye little rat, I'll be killin' ye!" slobbered the barbarian.

"And I'll be remembering you," said Walker, feeling at his chest. There was steel in his voice, and resolve shone so coldly from his eyes that Bilgren shivered despite himself.

As Bilgren strained to wrench the gyrspike free, Walker pounced, head over heels, his cloak flying. The chain on the flail snapped, Bilgren lurched forward, reversed, and brought the sword down as the ghostwalker landed behind him.

Walker parried the blow and threw Bilgren back as though the barbarian possessed all the strength of a child. Walker strolled a little ways away and beckoned the barbarian to attack. Bilgren slashed again, but again Walker parried, pushing the blade up and over, creating an opening for him to stick a third dagger in the barbarian's torso.

Bilgren blinked, his berserk fury shaken, then roared all the louder. With both hands on the gyrspike's handle, he slashed the blade at Walker as though it were a two-handed sword, but the ghostwalker dodged or parried each attack, slashing Bilgren slightly here and there, wearing him down. As the barbarian lost more and more blood, his fury increased to greater and greater heights. Regardless, though, of how much strength Bilgren gained from pumping adrenaline, Walker always slipped, snakelike, in and out of his reach, knocking the broken gyrspike aside with no more than a scratch on his cloak to show for it.

Finally, as Bilgren foamed and raved beyond the realm of sanity, Walker staggered back over a rock, bending down. The barbarian roared, thinking his triumph coming, and hammered his sword down, once, twice, then up on Walker's blade. The final blow tore the sword from Walker's hand and sent it flying away, and the ghostwalker spun to the right with the force.

Bilgren lifted his blade high, salivating at the thought of the death to come…

Then he blinked down at the long sword jammed through his ribs. Facing away, Walker had drawn his second sword from under his cloak during the turn, and jabbed it backward. Bilgren had never had a chance to parry.

The barbarian tried to bring the gyrspike down anyway, but his limbs would not obey his mind's commands. With agonizing slowness, he sank, limp, to the ground.

"Rest, peaceful as the grass in the meadow, my murderer," Walker whispered over his shoulder as he drew the sword out from between the barbarian's ribs. He recovered his throwing knives, wiped them on Bilgren's hide armor, and slid them into their sheathes.

Only one murderer left-one last haunting face that chilled him at night, one last sword to face, one last heart to still.

Then a sphere of cold energy crackled around him, and Walker froze.

The black-cloaked Talthaliel descended before Walker's eyes and smiled at him. Memories of pain and hatred fled from the ghostwalker, replaced by an oath for being distracted, and he realized that the one who killed him did not have to be one of his hated enemies.

"We meet, Spirit of Vengeance," said the moon elf. "For the first-and last-time."