Ghostwalker

Chapter 8

28 Tarsakh

Spirits of the dead ebbed and flowed around him, whispering of hunts long past and unfulfilled dreams, but Walker, as always, hardly listened. He sat legs crossed, staring into the blurry, bleak world of the spirits, and thought.

Two of his foes lay dead and two were alive. Indeed, the spirits of Drex and Torlic hovered around him, silently awaiting the completion of some unfinished business.

Walker's death had come at the ends of four weapons, and four hands had held those weapons.

At least, he thought so.

Dying had shattered his memories; he could remember hazy fragments about the murder and only flashes from before that. As far as Walker was concerned, his life began that night fifteen years ago. He fully remembered his attackers only when they spoke the words he could not forget, the words they had spoken that night long ago-

Instead of focusing fruitlessly on the past or on the future that inspired no interest, Walker thought about the present. Two men were dead and two were going to die. He knew Greyt was one of them, and he would soon know the other for certain. Drex had said Torlic's name, but the half-elf had not pointed him toward a third. Walker had to know, and he simply could not remember.

As though drawn to Walker's violent thoughts, Tarm appeared. His father had vanished before the fight with Torlic and had not reappeared since. Was he reproaching his son for his task of vengeance?

"I avenge us, father," said Walker, though he knew the spirit would not reply. "Why does this displease you? Is this not the justice you worshiped? What regret do you wish to express?"

Tarm was silent, as always. Not once in fifteen years had he answered his son's queries.

"Will you not speak to me?" Walker demanded. "Am I not your son?"

Silence.

A stray thought passed through his mind and became the focus of his attention. It was the face of a woman-the woman with auburn hair. Who was she? Why did she stick in his mind? What did she have to do with his task?

He turned to ask his father-in the hope that he might be able to decide for himself by hearing his own words-but Tarm vanished.

It could mean only one thing.

A sparrow that flickered in and out of the Ethereal world flapped down out of the sky. The blurry remnants of spirits flinched away, terrified. The tiny bird, as it landed on a fallen twig, did not seem to notice.

You did it again. It accused in its ghostly voice, which no mortal would have heard. Or, at least, no purely material listener.

Walker did not dispute the point. He had been waiting in the grove for Gylther'yel to return, and he had known what she would say.

Indeed, two nights past, he replied in the same ghostly tongue. The pale bird grew larger, its wings became arms, and its beaked face grew into smooth elf features. The dancer Torlic has joined the woodsman Drex in death. Lord Greyt knows they were not isolated attacks. He will quaver in terror.

He breathed out and allowed his body to return to the Material world. Vibrancy returned to his surroundings. The grass became green in place of dead gray, and the trees waved soft needles, not skeletal limbs. All around him, he saw soft life where before had lurked only death.

A dubious elf face awaited him. The ghost druid stood, a deep gray cloak wrapped around her bare golden flesh-Gylther'yel disdained excessive clothing when she ran or flew through the woods in wildshape. "Terror?" Gylther'yel said without mirth. "I hardly think two murders in the night will inspire terror."

Walker shrugged, as if to demonstrate that it did not truly matter.

Gylther'yel's face was impassive, but her eyes burned.

"You have not come here to upbraid me," he said. "There is something else."

A hint of a smile played on her golden face.

Walker narrowed his eyes. He knew enough to be wary when Gylther'yel was angered. "Where have you been these last days?" he asked carefully.

"Where you should have been," the druid said. "Watching over my woods."

Walker's brows furrowed. He knew of her spies-almost every bird and forest animal within miles. They watched for her, and she did little. Unless…

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"I have decided my student needs a lesson in inspiring terror," she said coldly. "Three miles east of here, hunters come for you." She held up a ragged piece of leather that bore the Whistling Stag sigil of Quaervarr. "I will teach them the penalty for trespassing into my woods."

"Who are they?" Walker asked, reaching for the cloth.

The sun elf shook her head. She dropped the torn bit to the ground. "I have spent the last fifteen years teaching you to avoid such irrelevant questions," Gylther'yel said.

The sun elf grew and her face extended. She fell to all fours as her limbs shortened and she grew the sleek fur of a ghostly, golden fox. As her body shifted into that of the animal, Gylther'yel faded out of his physical sight and into the Ethereal.

The ghostly fox flashed him a fanged grin and bounded off into the trees, heading east. Walker turned to run after her, but then he remembered the discarded leather scrap.

Tentatively, for he knew the pain that this could bring, he stooped low and picked it up between gloved fingers. It was a ragged piece, torn from the hauberk of a suit of hunting leathers. Slowly, gently, Walker drew his black leather glove off, revealing a pale, long-fingered hand.

Hesitantly, he rested his fingers on the leather in his other hand and closed his eyes. Images flowed into him then, along with an emotional swell that blew the breath from his body. The psychic resonance of the piece carried whisperings of memories and visions, hopes and fears. He hated this power, which would manifest whenever his bare fingers touched something not his own, but it was necessary at times.

A round-faced woman, cheeks rosy from the morning chill… two little boys, playing at rangers and orcs with wooden swords…

Sweat dripped down Walker's forehead and his body burned with phantom pain, but he gritted his teeth and held on. The resonance was not strong, but it could overwhelm him if he lost control.

A soldier, not heroic but strong of heart…

The visions faded as Walker dropped the leather to the ground.

He dived into shadows, racing his mistress. Leaping along in the Shadow Fringe, Walker ran faster than any mere mortal could. Ghosts flitted past his peripheral vision and reached out imploring arms to slow him, but Walker was firm in his cause. He gripped the hilt of his shatterspike and prayed he would not need it.

The distance was not great, covered in almost no time through the shadows, but it was only by luck that he found the hunters. Under a darkening sky, with clouds rolling across the sun, the shadows were dissipating, but he could make it. Walker leaped to a shadow near a giant of a man he had fought before. Then he dispelled his shadowalk and stepped out within a sword's length of the captain.

"Leave these woods now," Walker warned.

" 'Ware!" Unddreth shouted. A mighty warhammer came around at Walker. "He's here!"

The ghostwalker ducked the swing and stepped inside Unddreth's reach. He grasped the hammer arm in both hands and stared into the genasi's eyes with the full weight of his gaze. "Fools," he said. "You must leave now."

Unddreth strained against the grip but could not break it. He puffed himself up as large as he could, refusing to be intimidated. Walker swore inwardly.

"Let the captain go!" came a shout from behind him.

A dozen guards were all around Walker, swords drawn and crossbows trained on his face.

Walker ignored the threat. "Leave now," he reiterated. "You do not understand."

Unddreth grimaced, his arms straining. "You are under arrest, by order of Lord Singer Dharan Greyt, by the power vested in me by the Silver Marches Confederation-" he rumbled.

"You must leave, or you will surely die," Walker replied. Clouds were gathering overhead and thunder rolled. "The Ghostly Lady is coming."

"A legend," Unddreth said. "In the name of High Lady Alustriel and the Silver Marches, I place you under arrest-"

Walker interrupted him again. "I see you are a good and honorable man. If you are concerned for the lives of your men, you will leave." Suddenly, the ground beneath Walker's feet became porous and soft, losing its consistency until it was as thin as quicksand.

"No," he rasped as he sank down. "Gylther'yel! No!"

One of the crossbowmen started and shot a bolt at him, which Walker instinctively batted aside with his steel bracer. "Men of Quaervarr, run-"

Before he could croak out more of the warning, the earth swallowed up his face and he could see and speak no more.

Then the heavens rained fire.

Trapped in a womb of dirt, Walker could barely move his limbs. He could only imagine what was transpiring above him. More than that, he could feel, rather than see, death. He would have taken on ghostly form and leaped up through the earth, but Gylther'yel had woven an ethereal net over him. She knew his powers only too well.

Thus, his options exhausted, Walker took a gulp of trapped air and began wriggling, then digging upward, hoping against hope he would arrive in time.

Finally, his reaching fingers struck air and he hauled himself out of the hole in the ground.

The scene that greeted him was one of fury and devastation. Mist mingled with smoke in the glade, blurring his vision. The grasses and trees were singed as by an inferno, and the few standing guards were limping and pulling at icy shards embedded in their flesh. Several of the men were struggling against the limbs of trees, which had reached out to ensnare them. Ghosts of the dead and groans of the dying surrounded him.

Walker counted six living guardsmen, and the captain. Unddreth swiped his hammer at a pack of ghostly wolves that had encircled him, their eyes gleaming with malevolence. The rest of the men had been reduced to cinders or frozen into blackened statues. All killed… destroyed by nature's wrath.

As Walker watched, a bolt of lightning streaked out of the clouds and struck Unddreth directly, throwing him down. The genasi, dazed, struggled to beat off the wolves as they swarmed him. Even as he punched one aside, another wolf leaped atop him and grabbed his arm in its jaws.

Walker leaped to his defense, his sword slashing back and forth, cutting through ghost wolf after ghost wolf. Because of its enchantments, Walker's shatterspike existed in both the Material and Ethereal worlds, so its ghostly touch slew the shadowy creatures as though they were flesh. The wolves fell back, snarling. Shimmering shatterspike in hand, Walker stood over the fallen captain and threatened any wolf that came too close.

Gylther'yel appeared out of the mist, her gray robe making her golden skin appear luminous in the half-light. "This is foolish, Walker," she said with a mirthless smile. "Step aside and let my children do their work."

"Impossible," the ghostwalker said. Just then, the remaining soldiers stopped moaning, as though the pain of their wounds had vanished under the icy press of his will.

"Do not presume to test your powers on me," Gylther'yel warned. Her voice was soft but there was righteous fury in her eyes.

If Walker's resolute aura made him intimidating, Gylther'yel's presence could have slain ordinary men with its terror and majesty. Even Walker felt weak, but relief and encouragement flooded through him, assuring him that his was the right course. Not even pondering the source of such feelings, he stood firm against the ghost druid, his teacher.

"This is what I must do," Walker said. He slid his sword back into its scabbard. "These men have done nothing against you, or against your woods."

"They are humans. That is enough," Gylther'yel said. Her words were calm and her face was composed, but her eyes were seething. "They come into the forest that I love, they murder the animals that are my brothers and they rape the trees that are my sisters. They bring axes. They bring lances. They bring fire." The bright flame burning in her palm diminished, as though she had just realized she'd held it. Gylther'yel turned back to Walker. "They carry death with them, child. Never will I accept them. They are a disease, a blight, a hungry flame."

"Not all-" Walker started.

"All!" Gylther'yel hissed, and her soft voice held the fury of thunder. "I am pleased when you kill them, for you purify them. Death is the only purity they can hope for, the only purity any of them can know-it is far more than they deserve."

Walker was about to protest, but then a soldier rose up behind the druid, sword raised high as he advanced on the petite elf. Walker held up his hands to ward off the man, hoping the gesture came off as peaceful to Gylther'yel.

The sun elf held up a delicate hand of her own, as though in reply, and Walker felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Sure enough, vines snaked out of the ground and wrapped themselves around the soldier's legs and body. The man gawked as the vines completely entangled him and twisted the sword out of his hand. The small sun elf turned toward him with a smile on her face.

"An example," she said. Then, addressing the soldier directly, "Take freedom in death."

"Gylther'yel, no!" Walker rasped. He stepped forward, but the wolves nipped at him.

The druid spoke words of power and pointed one finger at the guardsman. The shadowy radiance surrounding her hand shot toward the man with an unholy scream, one that might have been nature herself. The man's eyes glazed over and he did just as she had commanded. The vines held up the corpse in a mocking parody of an erect stance.

The sun elf turned back toward Walker, but now there was the business end of a long sword in her face. Holding the hilt, a pace distant, was the ghostwalker himself.

"Let them go," he commanded. "Do not argue."

Gylther'yel looked up the blade at Walker's face as though the weapon were not there.

"You care for these defilers?" she asked. "Have I not taught you better than this, these fifteen years?"

"I learn slowly, perhaps," replied Walker. He did not lower the shatterspike. "Let these men go free, or I shall leave instead."

Gylther'yel had no reply, except to widen her eyes, just for an instant.

Silence reigned as the two, mentor and student, standing apart, engaged in a contest of wills. The ghostwalker, with his determination and resolve, faced down his teacher, who had taught him everything he knew. The silent battle raged for some time. The only sound was the dazed captain's panting.

Then the sun elf closed her eyes and looked away, down ever so slightly. Walker nodded and lowered the sword.

"Go," Walker said to Unddreth and the remaining guards. "And never return."

They all looked at one another. Though neither the elf nor the ghostwalker had made anything more than the slightest of movements, all present in the grove knew they had witnessed a tremendous struggle, surpassing even the devastating druidic magic that had been arrayed against them. The soldiers stood, gathered up their arms and equipment, and moved to the bodies of their companions. They hesitated when Gylther'yel cast them a baleful look.

"Tell them to leave the dead for the earth," Gylther'yel ordered Walker.

The ghostwalker's cloak swirled in the wind, but Walker made no other move. The sun elf's lip twitched but she said no more.

They waited as the soldiers gathered their dead and wounded, slinging the former over their shoulders and helping the latter stagger back to Quaervarr. Unddreth gave Walker a deep, measuring gaze as the Quaervarr soldiers left the clearing-a gaze filled with respect-but the ghostwalker's eyes were fixed on the petite yet imposing sun elf before him. They waited until the soldiers were far away.

Gylther'yel assumed her ghostly wildshape once more, this time taking the shape of a nimble, golden doe. Then she stared at the ghostwalker levelly with a gaze that told Walker, in no uncertain terms, that he would regret his decision.

Soon he was left alone with his thoughts, his doubts, and the spirits. Ghosts flitted about, most of them of creatures long passed and a few the mournful souls of the soldiers who had died that day. Walker could not see them-he had not tapped into his ghostsight, wanting to do this battle as a mortal man-but he could feel them. They begged for his reassurance, his guidance. It was something he could never give.

As always, the sadness came to him, intensified now that it seemed he had rejected the one being, his teacher, who could understand his power and his curse. This was the first time he had threatened Gylther'yel and it was the first time he had opposed her wishes directly.

He knew things could never be the same with her again.

Pulling his cloak tightly around himself, Walker began the long trek back to Gylther'yel's grove and imagined the reception he would find there.

The thing that displeased Greyt the most-and it was possibly the only thing that truly displeased him at the moment-was that he could not compose while inebriated, and he was definitely in his cups that evening. The three empty bottles of Tethyrian and Amnian wine surrounding him attested to that.

The loss of musical talent could be justified, though, for this was a time of celebration.

He had just received word that Unddreth had met with great unpleasantness in the Moonwood, and while the thickheaded captain continued to deny it, rumors were spreading through the town like wildfire that the mysterious Walker had killed half a dozen soldiers and wounded as many. Greyt suspected something more sinister was at work, for he knew what guarded the west Moonwood.

The common citizen, though, knew nothing of the Ghostly Lady; she was but a child's story. Walker, on the other hand, seemed real enough. With every retelling, his story became more extravagant, and now the man in black seemed to be guilty of at least two score murders and was thought by many wise citizens to have destroyed the Black Blood and perhaps Silverymoon single-handedly.

Greyt's mind was cloudy with drink, but he felt in his gut that this was exactly what he needed-an outside threat to distract the people and make them examine their security-one that was not the Black Blood, despite how useful the cult had been. After all, Jarthon and his beasts, before those damned adventurers had driven them out, could be dismissed easily as frenzied savages who picked victims at random.

But a murderer on the loose-a cold-blooded, methodical, unstoppable killer-during Stonar's absence would upset the balance, and Greyt could make it swing in his direction.

Who would the frightened townsfolk run to but the Lord Singer, an adventurer himself, with contacts to be called in and experience in dealing with monsters and killers? Talthaliel's warnings that Walker was a wildcard to be watched seemed irrelevant.

There was still the matter of the Venkyr girl, however, and that was what plagued Greyt's mind now. Talthaliel's warning that the girl was clever and insightful set off bells in Greyt's head. He had to keep Arya away from this Walker. Their meeting-as Talthaliel had warned-would bring only bad consequences.

Just as he was pondering this, there was a knock at his ballroom door and Claudir stepped inside to announce that "Lady Arya Venkyr and her companions" waited without.

Intrigued, fighting the muddiness in his head, he waved for the steward to show her in.

"Uncle, I must protest," said the knight as she stormed in. Her appearance was stunning in her silvery armor, aided in no small part by the flush of anger. The other Knights in Silver who were her companions walked in as well, clad in their armor and bearing their weapons. So she had decided she could not come alone, eh? Greyt frowned.

"I went to speak to Captain Unddreth about his encounter in the Moonwood," Arya said, "and I was turned away-not by the Watch, but by your guards."

Greyt waved his hand through the air. "So?" he asked, his head rocking woozily.

"He's fairly tipsy," Derst observed quietly to Bars.

"Done in by Moradin's hammer," the paladin agreed.

Arya seemed not to notice. "I really must be able to continue my investigation into the disappearances of the couriers, and anything related to Walker could help to-"

"Didn't I tell you to leave that alone?" interrupted Greyt. He rose from his chair and pulled himself up to face her.

"He smells terrible," Bars murmured to the roguish knight.

"Like you did last night, after spilling that venison stew all over your tunic," replied Derst under his breath.

Brows arching, Bars gave an almost imperceptible nod.

Arya screwed up her face in distaste at Greyt's foul breath. "Excuse me, Uncle, but I am on an assignment from Silverymoon to investigate the disappearances-"

"What's this preoccupation with Walker all of a sudden?" asked Greyt, cutting her off. Arya's companions looked at each other. "It almost sounds like you're infatuated with him." Her mouth dropped open. "Ah yes, dark and mysterious… is he handsome? A thrilling lover?"

"Well, that was uncalled for," Derst said with a frown. "Aye, Bars… Bars?"

Though he did not speak, it was clear that Bars agreed, for he flushed, stepped forward, and dropped his hands to the maces at his belt.

Greyt saw this and his face skewed up in a crooked smile.

"Oh, a hero, eh?" He pushed his slim chest out and stepped right up to the hulking paladin, a man nearly twice his size. The Lord Singer stood a step higher, so their eyes were almost level.

Bars refused to back down before him, and Greyt laughed in his face. "The gallant knight stands to defend his beleaguered lady, the way all the stories and ballads tell; all flowery, all heroic… all lies."

"Take back what you said," Bars said. Greyt flashed a mocking smile in the paladin's face but did nothing of the sort. "I won't ask again."

"Very well," Greyt said with a shrug. "I take it back, then."

Bars gave him a long, measured look-one that the Lord Singer answered with a gaze of haughty disdain-and backed away. The Lord Singer grinned, put a finger to his forehead, and broke down in a laughing fit.

"Heroism," he cackled.

"Please, uncle," Arya said. "You are drunk."

"Yes, yes I am," the Lord Singer replied with a dazed smile.

Then he lunged forward and seized Arya before either of the other knights could react. He pulled her face to his and went for her lips.

He ended up on the ground clutching at his groin where Arya had kneed him.

"G-get away from me!" stammered Arya.

The Lord Singer, nearly unconscious from drink and pain, was in no position to argue. The three knights hurried out the door, Bars trying to convince Derst that it was all right because the knave was drunk, Arya casting her step-uncle warning glances, and Derst exclaiming at the top of his lungs that they had both taken leave of their senses. Meanwhile, Greyt, face flushed and brows knitted with fury, struggled to growl at them.

Arya Venkyr would regret this, step-niece or no.