After a brief inspection of the perimeter of the circle, Cellester nodded and sat at the heart of the circle. Nyam had curled up like a child and was soon snoring, oblivious to the world.
Vaddi paced about like a cat, quietly examining the monoliths, though he could make nothing of their time-lost inscriptions. Even though he was on his feet, he felt his eyes drooping and had to force himself to stay awake.
How long he had been like this—minutes or an hour perhaps—before he heard the sounds from beyond the circle, he could not tell. It was neither wind nor sea that he heard. He went to the edge beside a stone and tried to peer into the pitch night, but it was impenetrable.
There! Soft susurrations. From several directions. Down among the tombs. The low bushes shifted, though they had not been stirred by the wind. Was that a low moan? An animal perhaps? But here, what could it be?
He called to Cellester. The cleric was on his feet instantly, sword catching the firelight, deflecting a brief shaft of it out into the darkness. But in that fleeting beam, a shape gathered itself—hunched, formed from the very dark, as though the earth had breathed out a fetid cloud that coalesced into substance.
4
Isle of the Undead
“Wake the peddler,” said Cellester, something like disgust masking his face.
“What comes?” whispered Vaddi, his voice almost lost.
“The inhabitants of the island. Its black gods alone know how many of them there are. I was a fool to agree to stay here. Wake the peddler!”
Vaddi jumped at the command, which had been almost snarled. His mind was filled with images of the tombs they had seen earlier. Countless scores of them. As he reached down to tug at Nyam’s robe, another thought occurred to him. Perhaps the peddler had deliberately led them here. How were they to know he would not benefit by presenting them to their enemies?
Nyam came awake slowly, yawning and scratching his beard, but when he saw the look on Vaddi’s face, he sprang up lithely, drawing his sword and staring out at the heaving darkness beyond the stones.
Vaddi and Nyam went to Cellester’s side. The cleric held aloft his right arm, and white tight shone from an amulet he held—too brilliant to look at. In his left hand he held his sword.
“Take a section of the circle!” Cellester called. “Slay within the stones, as you value your life and soul!”
They spread out, Vaddi’s heart hammering. He held his dirk before him. He was getting used to its bloody work. Then he saw what it was that closed in on the stone circle and his heart skipped a beat. In the white light that streamed from the cleric’s amulet, faces and hunched shapes thrust out of the night beyond. But such faces! Their skin was cracked and flaked, and their hair was matted and dried like weed. Eyes like huge stones gleamed with the light of madness, inner fires stoked by supernatural agencies. The graves had given up their dead, their undead, who trudged forward until they came to the very line of the stones.
One of them reached forward with rotting limbs, cerements hanging from them in strips, blazing eyes fixed on Vaddi as a snake fixes its victim. Vaddi made a swift pass with the dirk. It had been honed to a perfect sharpness by the Orien smiths in the hold and it went through both wrists of the creature as if passing through fabric. The rotted hands fell and the creature staggered. Vaddi saw with horror the dark, viscous blood dripping from the stumps, the fluid that fuelled these groping nightmares.
Light from Cellester’s amulet scorched all those that it touched and the stench of charred bones filled the night. For a while it kept the horrors at bay, but they gazed in slack-jawed, hungry silence at the trio in the stones like a pack of starving wolves, desperate to feed.
Dredged up from long burial underground on this isle, these were far worse than the undead that had amassed at Marazanath. Something was driving them on. Several scuttled forward, spider-like, only to burst into flames and crumble to ashes as the light from Cellester’s amulet engulfed them.
Behind the wall of undead something else was stirring, scarlet light flooding over the hilltop. It merged with the light from the cleric’s amulet, red seeping into white. As though draining his strength, the red light forced Cellester to lower his arm. He stumbled back, numbed.
Beside the embers of the small fire, in the very center of the stone circle, the three defenders stood back to back. They were completely surrounded, but the undead had, as one, ceased their forward movement. Instead they waited, their manic eyes fixed on their victims, their skeletal fingers flexing and unflexing. In the shadow-light it was impossible to guess how many there were, but Vaddi knew there were scores of them at least. It would be impossible to break through them.
As he glanced at the cleric, seeing the look of deep anguish on Cellester’s face. Vaddi felt something warm within his robes. He had almost forgotten the talisman. His fingers closed on it now, felt it shift against his breast. But before he could do more, the front ranks of the creatures opened and a solitary figure came through.
Vaddi was shocked by its appearance. Tall, dressed in dark leather, studded with silver, it was not like the other creatures but almost appeared to be a living man. His skin was pure white, as if leeched of blood, and in the scarlet eyes burned an intense vitality. His long white hair was swept back from the forehead down over his shoulders and beyond his belt. In his right hand he held a sword whose blade throbbed with scarlet light. When he smiled, his teeth were yellow, sharp as a rat’s.
“Well, such an intriguing combination of sailors,” he said, his voice harsh, his accent suggesting he was from the western lands beyond Thrane.
His sword swung slowly back and forth, marking out the three intruders, as if deciding which to impale first. Only then, with a deep shudder of revulsion and fury, Vaddi realised that this was the vampire who had brought down Marazanath and killed his father.
“Who are you to threaten us?” said Cellester.
The eyes of the swordsman flared. “A protector of the dead, and you are a defiler, treading as you do on this island. But since you are here, you are welcome to join my wards.”
“We have no business with you,” said Cellester.
“Perhaps not,” replied the swordsman, running a black-gloved hand along the blade of his weapon. “You are a cleric, I suspect. There is power in the amulet you wield, but it is no dragonshard. No match for the power in this.”
He pointed the blade at Cellester, who dropped to his knees, racked by sudden waves of pain.
“And you,” said the swordsman, swinging round to face Nyam, releasing Cellester momentarily from his pain. “What are you? A trader?”
“Me, lord? No, I am a simple traveller.”
“A grave-robber to boot, no doubt. Come to filch a few trinkets from this isle to barter back in Rookstack and beyond?”
“Not at all, lord!” said Nyam with well-practiced horror. “I have nothing but respect for the dead.”
“Oh, I am so glad to hear that,” said the swordsman. “You’ll have no regrets about joining them.”
Cellester had eased himself back to his feet, but he kept still, studying the massed dead as if looking for a weakness in their ranks.
The swordsman turned to Vaddi. He held up his blade so that its red light picked out the youth’s features clearly. “And you are … ?”
Vaddi felt those scarlet eyes boring into him, as if behind them was a deeper, more malign force. “Danath, son of Sigbard.”
The swordsman laughed, cutting Vaddi’s words short. “Come, come. Your rough garb is a thin disguise, especially to my eyes! Are you ashamed of your heritage? Have you so soon abandoned your family to their graves? No backward glances to the still-smouldering stones of Marazanath?”
Vaddi felt his anger rising up, his fingers tightening on the dirk. The swordsman glanced at it, but his feral smile widened.