She hated traitors and couldn’t stop thinking of Grallik.
The former Gray Robe was everything she despised in one half-elf package. He would die, like the goblins he’d fled the mining camp with, but he wouldn’t die easily. Maybe she’d use the traitor Horace to keep Grallik alive with healing spells so she could prolong the half-elf’s agony. That thought brought a slight smile to her lips. Maybe she’d kill the pathetic Horace first in full view of Grallik. And maybe she’d have the wizard burned alive-according to her reports, fire was his specialty.
How could he have turned his back on the Dark Knights?
The Order was everything to Bera-her heart, the code she lived by, and the family she’d adopted since joining the ranks. The knighthood had been good to her, giving her a purpose in life, and she’d earned her status; not a single award or medal had been a gift. Early in her career, she’d entertained the notion of rising to head the entire knighthood, or at the least leading the knights that reported to Neraka. That was a goal she’d let slip away through the years, considering it too lofty and unrealistic; she’d not had the opportunities to distinguish herself in that way, and up until that moment her actual rank had been modest.
But her mission might catch the right people’s attention. Her superiors were livid over the goblins’ escape. They were rats, simple slave labor, but they had slapped the knighthood in its collective face by killing their overseers at the mining camp and by going unpunished and roaming free. For the honor of the Order, they had to be caught and made an example of.
And if-when-she was successful, the Order might reward her with a high advancement in rank. At her age she might not get such an opportunity again to achieve and impress.
“Tavor?”
The scout shook his head. “No landmarks yet, Commander. But from the map, I still believe we are headed in the correct direction. This forest is so vast, though, it is hard to read.”
“Read it regardless,” she said. “And read it quickly.”
“We’re getting close, I can tell.” Tavor pointed to a cluster of high bushes surrounding a grove of trees. “Purple robe locust is on this map,” he said, “and weeping bottlebrush.”
The former grew fifty feet tall or more and was covered with spectacular clusters of purple and pink flowers that hung like grapes. The latter was the height of a man and profusely dotted with scarlet flowers on which a swarm of hummingbirds feasted.
Bera nodded approvingly. “I am surprised you know so much about trees. That’s not in your record, Tavor.”
“Rare plants, I’m interested in. And I’ve noticed several since we’ve been in this forest. The purple robe were atypical trees when the map was penned more than three decades ago. Not many of them then, so rarer still perhaps now. And see the dry bed?”
Bera remembered that the bed had been marked on the map, with a notation that a thin, straight river had dried up overnight. The ground cover stopped at the edge, the bottom of the river bed looked like fish scales baked in the sun. Even after thirty years, nothing had dared to grow or flow there.
“Does the map say what happened to the river?”
“A battle between two Qualinesti sorcerers, and the river lost.” The scout shrugged and replaced the map among his belongings. “We’re very close, Commander. I’ll wager that if the goblins are on the bluff, they’ll hear us coming soon.”
“We do make a considerable racket, don’t we?” Bera motioned to Isaam then glanced up as a hawk shot from a tree with a piercing cry, darting to the north and following a small flock of black birds. “Maybe we shouldn’t make so much noise, eh? We should not spook our quarry. It would be a shame if they scattered and we didn’t get them all. Every last little stinking one.”
The sorcerer rubbed at the bridge of his nose and let out a low breath. He leaned his weight on his right foot then his left; he’d told Bera the previous night how much his ankles were aching.
“You can make us quiet, old friend?”
“Commander, I can make us as quiet as death,” Isaam said. The sorcerer’s eyes rolled back until they looked like solid white stones.
Bera had seen her old friend perform that trick before, though not involving hundreds of soldiers. She could tell that her scout, and even Zocci, seemed unnerved by Isaam’s eerie mien.
The sorcerer’s mouth twitched, and his fingers spread, looking like knobby bird’s feet. His shoulders shook once; the sleeves that had been rolled up came loose and fell down over his skeletal-thin arms.
“No noise from metal,” Isaam whispered. His voice sounded hollow. “No words from flesh. No sounds from life.” Wispy tendrils extended from his fingertips, bearing the appearance of smoke but being too dark and heavy for it. The tendrils thickened and swirled around the sorcerer then floated to the ground, the effect of the enchantment leaving his skin looking ashen. He spoke more, but Bera couldn’t hear him. He threw his head back and appeared to shout; again, nothing could be heard.
Next, the vapors swirled around Bera’s feet. She sucked in a breath, not wanting to inhale the dark magic as it rose and spun around her. The tendrils played along her face as if a lover caressed her then disappeared in the locks of her hair, only to reappear behind her, traveling down her back and wafting over to Zocci.
The process took quite some time, the black fog covering one Dark Knight after the other, sometimes encompassing three or four at one time. Isaam glided along with the spell, directing it and making sure no knight was left out, not even the prisoner Horace. The ashen complexion marked each man and woman who was touched by the strange magic.
Bera thought they looked like the newly dead, their color having just fled but their flesh looking still pliant and warm. The magic was almost too effective. She couldn’t hear herself breathe, nor could she hear the swish of Isaam’s robe as he strode toward her, still only the whites of his eyes showing. When he took his place in the line behind Zocci, he blinked and his eyes turned normal.
Bera thunked her fingers against her breastplate-soundless. She tried to hear any of her men-nothing. She saw the branches moving from the breeze she felt wafting across her face, but there wasn’t even the faintest accompanying sound. There were plenty of birds in the trees-crows with their beaks opening and closing, jays preening, sparrows flitting from one branch to the next. A small red-tailed hawk worked at a nest in a lofty spot. It was strange not being able to hear any of the birds’ activity.
She raised her arm and motioned the knights forward. Bera had practically memorized the most recent map her scout used, which he claimed was three decades old. They had newer maps of sections along the coast and to the north, but that was not where their quarry was hiding.
Why the Qualinesti Forest? she asked herself for the hundredth time. Why did the goblins come there when they would have been safer, and their journey shorter, had they joined up with the established goblin territory in Northern Ergoth? She intended to keep one alive just long enough to ask that question and sate her curiosity.
It was unnatural, walking in silence. She missed the clink-clank of armor, the labored breathing of Isaam, the snapping branches, and the birdsong. With so many birds, she should hear them. Could Isaam hear, although the rest of them couldn’t?
For nearly an hour, they followed a path her scout had found. Tavor stopped occasionally, bending and nudging the dirt, turning over fallen leaves, and inspecting fern fronds and low bushes. She wanted to ask him what he was looking for and decided she’d never know. When battle came she’d forget all of that, the boring part of the hunt.
Tavor motioned for everyone to stay still, and he slipped ahead. It looked as if he were taking care how he walked-force of habit, as he wasn’t thinking about the silence spell. When he disappeared from view, Zocci brushed his hand against Bera’s neck. She jumped but quickly regained her composure, not turning around and keeping her eyes focused on where Tavor had gone.