Off in the distance, an unearthly howl broke the eerie silence that engulfed the city.
“By the Silver Flame,” Brendis said, his voice quivering, “what was that?”
Kandler craned his neck around to where the sound had come from off behind them. The vacant buildings lining the wide street stared back at him blankly, their doors and windows void of life. He shot a look at Burch, but the shifter just shrugged.
“No animal I ever heard,” Burch said, sniffing at the air. “Nothing but death around here.”
The horses whickered nervously. Kandler kicked his along a little faster. “Let’s keep moving,” he said. “Whatever that was, I’d rather it didn’t catch up with us.”
“Indeed,” Sallah said, making the sign of the Flame by touching her forehead and drawing her fingers down to touch her heart with a flourish.
The horses’ hooves on the cobblestone street rang like a dozen crude bells, drowning out any sounds for a moment. Kandler remembered Metrol as a city always filled with noises, even in the dead of night, and the way the clatter of the hooves echoed along the street made him wonder if they could be heard anywhere in the city.
Something loosed another howl into the night, this time from somewhere off to the left.
Xalt, who had been trotting alongside the horses, slid to a halt. “It sounds like a wolf being turned inside out,” he said.
Kandler tried to ignore the image that leaped into his head. “Just keep moving,” he said. “We stay in one spot, they’ll get us for sure.”
“Do you know what’s making that noise?” Sallah said. “If so, don’t keep it to yourself. We must know whatever it is we face.”
Kandler frowned. “It’s the reason I haven’t been back to Metrol before.”
“Other than the whole of the Mournland between it and Mardakine,” Burch said.
“Other than that,” Kandler agreed, “but mostly it’s the ghostbeasts.”
The justicar reached down and pulled Xalt up to sit behind him. The horse was too scared by the noises to protest. The two riders would be too heavy for the beast to carry for long, but Kandler suspected it soon wouldn’t matter.
“What are these?” Sallah asked Kandler as he spurred his horse forward to lead the others ahead.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe no one does. Some say they’re the ghosts of the dead of Metrol. Others think they’re the remnants of whatever it was that murdered Cyre. They might be something else.”
“Less talk, more speed,” Burch said.
The shifter had naturally taken up the rearguard as the line of three horses trotted through the vacant city. As if to punctuate his words, a wail like the sound of a bear in mourning ripped through the night behind them. It was so loud it seemed like it echoed off the clouds, which now seemed so low that someone might be able to reach up and touch them from the top of Metrol’s highest towers.
These stone structures were nothing like the network of spires that covered Kandler’s hometown of Sharn, the legendary City of Towers, but their proximity to the blanket of mists made them seem as if they held up the sky.
The tallest of the towers—the Prime Pillar, as Kandler remembered—stabbed out of the cityscape before the riders as they cantered down from higher ground toward the docks on the Cyre River, the wide track of water that separated what had once been Cyre from the lands beyond. When Kandler had lived here, he had used the Pillar as a navigational point any time he’d gone wandering throughout the city. As long as he could see the Pillar, he always knew roughly where he was.
Another howl—more of a wail than a growl—erupted from just ahead and to the right. Kandler scanned the rooftops for any sign of whatever had made the noise.
There, silhouetted against the dark, blotted sky, something raced along the rooftops, trying to match the riders’ speed but failing. Kandler struggled to get a good look at it, but it was impossible. It was only outlines of strange shapes flickering in and out of view.
When the riders reached an intersection, Kandler plunged straight through it. As he did, he looked back to see the creature leap across the gap in the rooftops, and he finally saw it whole.
The thing’s arms and legs—two of each—splayed out as it crossed the space, framed for a moment between the two rooftops. It was shaped like a human, with a head, limbs, and torso all in the right places, but no person Kandler had ever seen looked so strange. He could see its grayish bones and muscles right through its skin, as if it were some strange golem made of random bits of flesh wrapped together in liquid glass. Strangest of all, the thing’s entire body—perhaps its translucent skin, maybe its spoiled-meat interior—glowed with an unearthly light.
The creature’s gray-green eyes, something akin to the color of the Mournland’s grass, fixed on Kandler with an unholy rage. As the thing landed on the next rooftop, continuing its relentless pursuit, it unleashed another wailing growl. The horse beneath Kandler’s legs bolted at the sound, bursting into a full-out gallop in a desperate effort to leave the horrible thing far behind.
6
Another howl pierced the Mournland night, closer this time, but this one came from ahead, not behind. Kandler bent low over the neck of his mount and spurred it on harder. Now that he knew what to look for, he spotted a glow limning the edge of a rooftop ahead on the left. Peering into the darkness below, he saw other glowing shapes moving across the roofs of the city.
Some sprinted like men. Others ran on all fours, more like wolves. One thing was clear, though. They were working together, speaking to each other somehow through their horrendous wails. Like a pack of hunting dogs, they quickly converged on their prey: the five riders on three horses, stampeding toward the shore of the Cyre River below.
“Can’t make it!” Burch shouted as he bounced along atop his horse. “River’s too far!”
As the only mount with a single rider, his beast champed at its bit, ready to charge into the lead. The shifter kept a tight hold on its reins with one hand, hauling the horse in behind the others. With his free hand, he reached for the crossbow strapped across his back.
Kandler knew the shifter was right. The ghostbeasts would catch them long before they reached safety. A roar right behind him told him that.
The justicar slung his blade from its scabbard. It was notched in three spots from his battle with Bastard, but he knew its edge could still bite. He’d had to pull it from where it was wedged into the floor of the arena in Construct, stabbed through one of the warforged leader’s arms.
He’d been the lucky one. Sallah’s sacred blade, a sword that burned with the power of the Silver Flame on command, had been destroyed in that same battle. She still carried a short knife with her, but it was a poor substitute.
Brendis had offered his sword to Sallah as a replacement, but she’d declined. “It was my blade,” she said. “I used it well, and I cannot take yours in its stead.”
“You used it to save my life,” Brendis pointed out.
Sallah had been unmoved.
Now, though, as Kandler glanced back at the woman urging her steed forward with all her might, he saw that she felt the lack of the blade. Brendis, thankfully, already had drawn his own sword. Silver flames crawled along the length of the blade like a living thing, hungry for righteous battle.