Geran moved to intercept them without a moment’s thought. “Cuillen mhariel!” he snapped, automatically invoking the silversteel veil to protect himself in the coming fray. Silver streamers of mist took shape and began to flow around him-and Mirya as well, since she was close beside him. Then he leaped forward, thrusting his point straight at the breast of the first of the gravehounds as he spoke another sword spelclass="underline" “Reith arroch!” A brilliant white radiance flicked along the ebon blade as it found the gravehound’s chest in midleap. He shouldered the dying monster aside as it slammed into him, evading a snap of its jaws only by jumping back out of the way.
“What are these things?” Mirya cried out. Her crossbow sang behind him, knocking another of the creatures to the ground. It snapped at the bolt in its flank before scrambling to its feet again.
Geran fixed his eyes on the next creature rushing them. “Naerren,” he breathed, invoking a spell of hindrance that took the form of red-gold lashes streaking around the monster, steering it away from Mirya. Then he ran over to meet the one Mirya had shot as it started after again. Mirya yelped in panic and backed away as it snarled and snapped at her. Geran slashed at it with his sword and managed only a glancing blow from its bony shoulders. The things stank when he came too close; the air was filled with a foul rotting stench, and his stomach-none too steady for a while now-threatened to revolt entirely. He managed to drive it back with a flurry of wild cuts before turning back to the other he’d enmeshed with his hindering spell. The gravehound rushed at him and leaped for him. This time Geran’s thrust missed its mark, sinking into the creature’s thick shoulder instead of skewering its heart. The impact took him off his feet, and out of pure reflex he threw his arm behind him to break his fall. Instead, he jammed his stump against the ground and screamed as white-hot agony nearly overwhelmed him. Only the swirling silversteel warding saved his life, resisting the monster’s vicious fangs as it struggled to find his throat.
“Kythosa zurn!” From somewhere behind Geran’s head, Sarth’s powerful voice thundered in the ruins, and a barrage of golden force orbs hammered into the gravehound pinning him to the ground. The orbs blasted fist-sized wounds in the monster’s side, hurling it away from him. Geran rolled to his side and scrambled to his feet. Sarth and Hamil battled furiously against the rest of the pack, Hamil keeping close to Mirya to fend off the creatures darting and snapping at her, Sarth scouring the monsters with one spell after another. In another moment the gravehound pack broke and retreated-not before Mirya loosed another bolt at the fleeing creatures, bringing down one with a quarrel in its spine.
“Geran, Mirya, are you hurt?” Sarth asked urgently, descending to the ground.
“The one tore the hem of my skirt, but I’m all right,” Mirya replied.
Geran sheathed his sword and brushed himself off. “Not much more than my pride,” he answered. “It would have been much worse if you hadn’t returned when you did.” In fact, he was fairly sure that the gravehounds would have killed both him and Mirya. They wouldn’t have found me such easy prey if I’d been at my best, he thought angrily. He scowled in the shadows.
“Were those creatures of Rhovann’s?” Mirya asked.
“I doubt it. I’ve never known him to employ undead servants-he prefers to work with inanimate subjects.” Geran forced himself to set aside his frustration; there was no point in dwelling on the fact that he’d been caught and maimed. Will this poison me the way it poisoned Rhovann? he wondered. There would be all the time in the world for wishing otherwise later, but now he had things to do. “No, I would guess that the skeletal hounds are simply denizens of this place. We should keep moving before any more are drawn to us. The castle’s not far off.”
“I don’t care for the idea of marching up the causeway to the front gate,” Hamil remarked.
“Nor do I,” Geran answered-especially since he doubted that he’d be able to help much if it came to fighting their way in. He studied the towering shadow of Griffonwatch’s crag, crowned by its flickering curtains of violet light. The spires and battlements of the Hulmasters’ castle had a jagged, menacing look to them, stabbing up at the starless sky like a thicket of spears. The lower floors were lost in the gloom, but he could see flickers of light in the uppermost portions of the old castle. It struck him as likely that Rhovann would appropriate the safest and most comfortable part of the old fortress for his own use, and that meant the Harmach’s Tower or some part of the castle close by it. “But how to get in without being seen?” he mused aloud.
Mirya glanced at Sarth. “Can you fly us up to the top?” she asked him.
“Possibly, although I doubt I could bear Geran so high aloft. But I do not advise it.” Sarth pointed at the flickering aurora around the keep. “We would have to pass through the wardings there. If they were to incapacitate me or suppress my flying magic …”
Mirya shuddered at the thought. “Never you mind, then. We’re not meant to take wing anyway.”
“We’ll make for the postern gate,” Geran decided. “It’s easily overlooked, and Rhovann may not have paid it much attention. If we’re careful, any guards that Rhovann’s posted won’t notice us until we’re well inside the castle.”
Tugging at his baldric to seat his sword more comfortably, he led the way from the clearing by the Burned Bridge into the shadow of Rhovann’s castle.
TWENTY-SIX
15 Ches, the Year of Deep Water Drifting (1480 DR)
Geran and his small band met no more gravehounds or other undead as they made their way through the gloom of shadow-Hulburg. From time to time they heard strange rustlings in the dark alleys or the creaking of floorboards behind dark doors, and Geran felt unfriendly eyes upon them once or twice, but nothing emerged to trouble them. Near the square of the Harmach’s Foot they encountered a number of intact buildings-houses and workshops and storehouses-in more or less the same place that they would have been in the living Hulburg. The windows were dark, and no lights glimmered behind their shutters, but Geran sensed that the place was not as empty as it appeared.
Mirya must have sensed it too, since she drew closer to his side. “Who raised these buildings?” she whispered. “Does someone live here?”
“I think that no one built them. Each one’s here because someone put up a house or a workshop or a storehouse in Hulburg.”
“Do they just appear out of nothing here when someone builds them in our Hulburg? And why is each one wrong in some way?” Mirya pointed at a cooper’s workyard as they passed by. “That’s old Narath’s place, but his front door faces across the street, and there should be a fine old laspar tree in his yard.”
“That’s the nature of the Shadowfell. It’s a reflection in a broken mirror. What it shows isn’t the truth of things.”
“What of the people? I can feel them nearby. There isn’t a copy of me here, is there?”
“Souls wander here,” Sarth answered her. “Dreamers drift through briefly, and the dead linger here, sometimes for centuries, before they fade away to the godly dominions. Some know that they are bodiless phantasms, and have no true life in this place. Others do not perceive their incorporeity, and settle into the habits and places they have-or had-in the firmament we come from. And there are also those few who, like us, are here in body and soul at once. Most are travelers who don’t stay long, but a few make homes here for reasons of their own. I have never seen them, but I have heard of strange inns and gloomy towns where those who live in the shadows gather.”
Mirya shivered. “So the shades of the dead are what we feel around us?”
Geran drew close and took her hand in his. “We don’t perceive them because most are already fading from the world. Only the most determined-or most confused-would take a shape we might see.”