“You’re a creature of Chaos? The god?”
“A spawn of Chaos, born in the deepest Abyss. I am death and power, and I am now all alone in this town. My brethren left after we fed too much on the people here. We fed on them all, and their babies and pets and those who came looking for them. When no one was left, my brethren moved on, but I stayed. I feed now on those few who from time to time happen to pass by.”
“You killed… everybody in this town!”
“That was a long time ago. We fed on their memories, and when they had no more memories they had no futures. They became nothing years and years and years ago,” the creature replied in Rig’s voice.
“They ceased to exist.”
“Worse than murder.”
“They left their trappings behind. Pathetic clothing and belongings to mark their brief existence.”
“Filthy undead!” Fiona struggled against the grip of her evil image, but her body would not respond.
She tried to grab her other knife, but her fingers would no longer cooperate.
“I am death and power,” the Fiona-image repeated in Rig’s voice. “I am hunger, and I must be sated.”
The Fiona-image leaned forward, eyes blinding, lips parting, motes of light sparkling.
“No!” the true Fiona said defiantly. “You’ll not succeed!” But she felt powerless, already defeated.
“Please, no.”
The mirror-image of Fiona gently cupped the female Knight’s head in its hands, leaned closer, and kissed her.
The air suddenly had turned cold, and Dhamon could see his frosted breath. He dropped the scrolls he’d been examining and wheeled around, seeing nothing alarming but hearing something that he at first thought sounded oddly like the coo of a morning dove. He listened more closely, realizing it was the soft and distant laughter of a woman. He knew the woman’s voice.
Feril? Was it Feril? His eyes flew wide and his pulse quickened. Feril was the first and only woman he had truly loved, a Kagonesti from Southern Ergoth who had been one of the few who survived the curse of his companionship. She had sensibly left him long ago. He’d not seen Feril for some time, but his love for her was still strong.
“Feril.” The word was a hopeful whisper.
The laughter turned into brittle giggles, the voice changing, metamorphosing, but still achingly familiar as Feril. In his excitement he didn’t notice that the room was growing ever cooler as the voice rippling with laughter drifted closer.
“Feril?” Please by all the vanished gods let it be her, he thought.
The giggle persisted, but now he understood a few words—Dhamon, lover, hold me, miss you. No, he was wrong, it was not Feril, he had been tricked. But it was someone else he loved.
“Riki?” It could be her. The voice was thin and pleasant and sounded somewhat elven.
Lover. Lover. Lover, Dhamon heard.
“Riki.” He was certain now that it was the half-elf. Relief flooded his emotions. He needed to talk to Riki, had desperately wanted to talk so he could set some things straight, make sure she was all right and well cared for. Had she delivered the child yet? Was it all right? His child! No. She couldn’t have, he thought, not yet. The time was too soon. It would be soon, several days maybe, a week, no more than a month.
Lover. Lover. Lover.
Yes, Riki often had called him that, when they were together. Lover.
“Riki, where are you? Riki, it’s me, Dhamon! I’m in here, Riki!” After he called her name, however, he chastised himself. Though the half-elf—even after she’d married—had followed Dhamon numerous times, she could not have followed him through the Qualinesti Forest and across the sea to here… wherever here was. It simply was not possible. Or was it?
The laughter and lyrical words were definitely Riki’s.
“Impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible, Dhamon. I am here, and I have missed you so. Have you missed me, too?”
The voice and the laughter swelled in volume, and the air grew colder still. Cold like at the well and on the steps to the inn where he’d left Ragh. Cold as harshest winter.
All at once Dhamon sensed a presence within the cold, and in that instant the laughter changed again, taking on a manly tone that at first sounded similar to Maldred, then quickly became dark and menacing and completely unfamiliar. Inhuman. Dhamon knew the voice was meant to scare him. Instead, it only served to anger him. The voice was not Feril, and it was not Rikali.
His hand instinctively dropped to his side, his fingers folding around air. The sword! He’d dropped it in the sea during the storm.
How could he be so stupid as to forget he was weaponless? Was he affected by the drugged oil in the lamp? Was that making him hallucinate? They were all weaponless. Where were Ragh and Fiona?
“Fiona!” Where was she? A moment’s concentration, and he remembered that the Solamnic Knight had wandered away from him at the well when she went off in search of a bucket. And Ragh! The draconian was at the abandoned inn.
In a strange town with no signs of life, why had he allowed his two companions to go off on their own? It wasn’t safe, especially with the whole area cursed by sinkholes. It wasn’t like him to be so inattentive and careless. A former Dark Knight, he usually knew to keep his command together. What in the Dark Queen’s memory was wrong with him? Was he under some kind of spell?
“Fiona! Ragh!”
“It was my doing, Dhamon Grimwulf. With only a suggestion, I lured your companions away from you. Separated, you are far easier to deal with.”
Dhamon turned, looking for the voice, and somehow not expecting to see a person. A spawn perhaps.
The spirit of the fortune teller who once owned this shop. Some magical creature. There! A shadow spilled out from under the table, running across the floor, pooling like oil a few feet away. Smoky tendrils rose from it, twisting and thickening, and finally forming an image that vaguely looked like the lizardmen that had populated the black dragon’s swamp. But unlike the lizardmen, this image had glowing yellow-white eyes and misshapen horns sprouting from the top of its head. Dhamon doubted that was the creature’s true form, but it was sufficiently hideous to unsettle even him.
The creature opened its crocodilian snout, and a thin tendril-tongue whipped out and struck at the air inches from his face. When Dhamon didn’t flinch, the tendril retreated into a mouth that was shimmering and changing and receding to mold a human visage. In a few moments, the creature took on the aspects of Feril, the Kagonesti elf, then a pregnant Rikali, then Maldred, and finally the slain mariner Rig.
“Who or what are you?” Dhamon demanded, uncowed.
“A creature of Chaos,” the thing replied evenly, its breath creating snow that twinkled and fell, melting in the pool of black that remained on the floor coursing around its feet.
“Undead.”
“Perhaps,” the creature said in Rig’s voice, liking the rich accent of the dead Ergothian. “Undead, living, I have known no other existence. The people of this town called me a Chaos wight.”
“All the townspeople you killed.”
“Your companion…” The Rig-creature paused, head cocking as if searching for the right words, wispy tongue snaking out of its mouth and circling its lips. “Your woman companion… Fiona… she accused me of the same. In fact, she—”