Ahead, a clearing in the woods surrounded a bare hillock, mostly free of the night's snow. Upon the bald hill's crown was a woman. She was sheathed in black fabric and obsidian jewelry that pierced ears, nose, and eyebrows. Even in the full light of day, shadows curled and scampered around her like negative flames in a stiff wind. The darkness whispered, but the words were too faint for Kiril to make out.
The woman gestured to Kiril, inviting her into the open. Kiril accepted the challenge.
* * * * *
Gage saw Sathra of the Shadow Tongue appear on the bald hill. "Queen of Air, why doesn't she give it up?"
The crime lord of Laothkund apparently valued a prize as potent as the Blade Cerulean too much to allow it to slip away. Gage could understand that. But he wouldn't have guessed the woman would track them into the wilderness.
"Bitch of Dark Corners!" he hissed when he saw Kiril charge toward the slope. He'd told Kiril he'd already dispatched the crime lord . . . now she'd know he'd lied.
A branch snapped, then two more. Something lacking grace lumbered through the trees, heading directly for him.
He was running low on blades! Gage pulled a throwing knife from the felled attacker lying across the log, simultaneously drawing a dagger. He tensed, seeing a dark figure moving closer through the trees.
It was ... a man sustained by shadow. Not a man hiding in shadow, like the three who'd first attacked. No, this one was dead, but animated by tendrils of darkness that clawed and writhed across his body. It was someone he'd met before.
Stolsin, Grinder of Tribes. The Rashemi barbarian he'd killed in Sathra's lair. Back from the dead with a little push from Sathra's necromancy. The barbarian carried his maul, but dusk dripped from the gray stone cudgel as if it were dipped in ink. The tattoos scrawled across the man's flesh now writhed and twisted, as if ready to animate with tiny, nasty lives all their own.
Gage flipped the dagger, grasped it by the blade, and threw. His aim was true. The blade punched straight into Stolsin's left eye.
The beshadowed barbarian opened his mouth to yell or scream, but all that emerged was dripping night. He didn't cease his relentless march across the forest floor.
The thief jumped up onto the log, then ran along it to the great root ball that had come free when the tree crashed over in whatever wind or rain had ended its days.
Stolsin the Reanimated altered his trajectory like a lode-stone. He moved unerringly toward Gage. The thief grimaced with sudden realization; Sathra had used Stolsin's death to track him into the Yuirwood. When one person kills another, a terrible linkage forms—a linkage a skilled necromancer can follow. Finding him meant finding Kiril, and the sword Sathra apparently desired above all else.
On the other hand, all Stolsin sought was vengeance.
Gage transferred his dagger from gloved hand to bare.
"Today our linkage doubles, Stolsin, because I'm going to kill you again!" His demon gauntlet would win the day and defeat the walking corpse. He hoped. Although he did carry a few vials of alchemical acid particularly good at disrupting leather . . .
A dark pulse on the hill caught Gage's attention—black lightning from clear skies smote Kiril, once, twice, then again. The elf was hurled down the slope, a net of gibbering shadow entangling her thrashing limbs.
Stolsin swung his maul while Gage was distracted. Gage slipped back, but the blow caught him on the left shoulder. Agony seized his arm and the dagger dropped from his nerveless hand.
Gage lunged forward with his right hand, the demonic mouth on his gauntleted palm gaping. The revivified corpse backstepped, avoiding the slap. Gage overreached and stumbled to one knee. The maul whistled down, catching the thief on his left leg as he tried to roll clear.
Then he was back on his feet. He winced when he tried to put weight on the left leg. He had retrieved his short blade, this time firmly held in his gauntlet. The demon mumbled curses around the hilt. Gage ignored the vile suggestions.
His foe stood a good chance of flattening him with the maul if Gage moved inside its reach. It would be less risky if his left hand could properly grasp the dagger, but until feeling returned to it, he had to hold the blade right-handed to stay outside Stolsin's sweep. To bring his gauntlet to bear against Stolsin, he'd have to do so from a distance.
The reanimated barbarian groaned something, its swollen and dry tongue rasping ineffectually within its gaping mouth. Indecipherable.
"You have seen better days, my friend," Gage observed, wondering if he could bait a creature whose brain was probably maggot food. More inscrutable groans and grunts followed, with a swipe from the maul that nearly removed the thief's head.
Gage leaped up onto the log, then off again before the maul splintered down. The log broke into two pieces under the mighty blow.
When he'd defeated Stolsin last time, he'd been wielding Angul.
A slender thread of worry burrowed up to pierce Gage's confidence. The thing had already tagged him twice unanswered, and was forcing him to flee with an unholy energy born beyond the grave.
Another shuddering of the light behind the walking corpse let him know Kiril remained in the fight. Whether succeeding or failing, he didn't divide his attention to ascertain. Stolsin battered the log a few times with its maul, but even its damped brain recognized that smashing through the obstruction, as satisfying as such destruction might be, paled before the opportunity to pulp the thief. The creature made an awkward jump onto the log, crudely aping Gage's agile leap.
Gage swung his dagger in a wide arc, encountering resistance mid-swing. Stolsin's foot and lower calf parted from the rest of its body. The undead crashed sidewise onto the log, groaning as it impacted. It rolled off the other side.
Gage grinned and looked over to see where the monster had landed. The maul caught him on the side of the head.
* * * * *
Whispered exhortations sheathed in gloom poured from Sathra's outstretched fingers and enveloped Kiril and her blade. Within the midnight embrace, cold prickled Kiril's skin from a hundred wraithlike hands, growing from merely unpleasant to life-sucking agony in moments. The elf screamed. Where in the Hells was Angul's balm? Didn't she yet hold the blade? His flame was hardly visible in this tumbling dark, but his presence yet touched her consciousness.
"Help me, damn your blunt edges!"
The blade, dulled and cold, trembled at her words. Strength continued to pour from her exposed skin into the murmuring clutch of dead shades. Why wasn't he helping her?
"I'm dying, you rusted reject from a halfling's smithy! I—"
The sword trembled again, as if straining . . . then ignited with cerulean incandescence. He pulled power from a source that had always seemed inexhaustible. Whether that strength had its origin within Angul himself, or in some external font of moral power, Kiril had never before wondered. The sword was always equal to every task, capable of keeping its wielder alive no matter the threat.
Was Sathra's power of shadow inimical to Angul, or was he, after all these years, drawing to the end of his enchanted lifespan?
Angul's certainty sought to whelm in her once more, becoming the balm she'd fought to hold herself aloof from during the last decade. Her newfound doubt about the weapon's longevity transformed her usual sentiment of dread to relief. The blade was still up to its old tricks. She wanted—
No, she needed to ask Sathra about Nangulis! But that desire was washed away in Angul's all-encompassing belief that nothing he—and by extension his wielder—did required explanation.
The necromancer's shadowy influence burned away in blue celestial fire, revealing the light of day and a surprised-looking Sathra. Kiril stood up where the necromancer's last blast had flung her. She intoned Angul's words. "Suffer not abomination, nor she who gives up her soul to evil."