Brey wiped a hand across her face, and looked at it for a moment. “I need to clean up,” she announced. Her matted hair swung like a wet mop as she turned around and walked away for a few paces. Then she seemed to dissolve. For a few moments, there was nothing in her place but a smoky cloud, and then the vapors coalesced into her form again, as Mordan had seen them do on the waterfront. That seemed like a long time ago. When she turned back, her hair, skin, and clothing were completely free of the red stain.
“A little trick I picked up,” she said, as the two mortals stared in amazement. “And didn’t your mothers ever tell you it’s rude to stare at a lady when she’s changing?” Neither of them had the strength to laugh.
For Mordan and Tarrel, cleaning up wasn’t so easy. They couldn’t waste the water they had brought with them, and Mordan insisted that any water they found in the Mournland was not to be trusted. So it was a foul and bespattered pair that trudged alongside the vampire woman as they continued on their way.
“What was that thing?” wondered Tarrel.
Mordan shook his head. “Never seen anything like it,” he said.
“I think it was made of blood,” Brey said, without looking back. “It certainly smelled like it.”
They walked a little further in silence, then Tarrel turned to Mordan again.
“So how well do you know Decker?” he asked.
“Well enough,” replied Mordan. “Why?”
“Do you think he’ll wait for us at Fort Zombie like he said?”
Mordan shrugged. “He’ll wait, but I don’t know how long. How long do you think we’ve been traveling?”
“At least a day,” answered Tarrel, “though it’s hard to tell without light and dark.”
“It took me a day and a half to reach the river after I escaped.” said Brey, “so we must be getting close.”
“Assuming it’s still there,” said Mordan, “and not wiped off the map—or moved to a different part of it.”
“I know what I’m doing,” replied Brey. “A lot has changed, but I’ve been recognizing things here and there. I’m pretty sure we’re on the right track.”
Mordan gave a noncommittal grunt. “I just hope you can get us back again,” he muttered.
The ground began to rise gently, and after a while they saw a rounded hilltop ahead, crowned with the ruins of a fort. Brey quickened her pace.
“I think this is it,” she said. Ignoring the protests of her companions, she broke into a run.
They struggled after her, and when they caught up, she was kneeling over a dead body. Many tales are told of the Mournland, mostly by those who have never been there. One of the most common reports is that the bodies of the fallen refuse to decay, and in this case it seemed that the stories were true. Although hideously wounded, the young man’s corpse looked as fresh as if he had died a minute ago.
“There!” cried Brey triumphantly, pointing to the dead man’s shoulder. His arm was almost severed, but there on his tunic, somehow clear of the dried blood, was a shoulder patch bearing the insignia of the Vedykar lancers: two crossed lances beneath a letter V, enclosed in a wreath.
Tarrel reached inside his coat and pulled out a cylindrical bundle wrapped in leather. Unrolling it, he selected a crystal lens from the array of tools inside and started to examine the body carefully.
“Anyone you know?” he asked.
Mordan shook his head. “Not the one I’m looking for,” he replied.
Brey stood a few paces away, looking up at the ruins. Mordan left Tarrel to his work and went to join her.
“Well,” he said quietly, “you can say ‘I told you so.’ “
“Of course,” Brey said, “I don’t know how much is left. Have you decided what you’re going to tell your family yet?”
Mordan looked at her narrowly.
“That’s my guess,” she went on. “Tarrel’s funding this trip by himself, so I doubt you have a rich client like he does. Yet you’ve spent months—maybe years—trying to track down these Vedykar Lancers. You’ve taken dangerous jobs in the Mournland to survive, and you’ve never given up. Got to be a relative if you ask me.” She paused, her face suddenly dropping. “Or a sweetheart,” she said, softly.
Mordan thought of his brother and chuckled bitterly. “It’s not a sweetheart,” he said. He turned back to Tarrel, who was getting back to his feet and stowing his tools.
“Not much to say,” said the inquisitive. “Violent death, extreme forces—just about every bone in his body is broken—and no sign the body’s been tampered with since it got here. If I had to guess, I’d say he hit the ground hard—maybe he fell from a great height, or maybe he was thrown a long way.”
Mordan jerked his head in the direction of the ruins.
“Like from way over there?” he asked.
Tarrel shrugged. “It’s possible,” he said. “Though it’s hard to tell when the evidence has been disturbed by a magical cataclysm.”
Chapter 12
The Fort
They climbed the hill to the fort. It had originally been a strong, square structure with battlemented walls linking its four towers. Now the walls were rent with gaping holes, and only one of the towers stood more than a few feet high.
Against one wall was a huge pile of corpses. They approached it carefully, half-expecting the bodies to rise up and attack, but nothing happened. There were all races and nationalities, thrown together in a heap by some unknown force. The only thing they had in common were round holes all over their bodies, as if they had been struck by a large number of heavy spears.
They picked their way across the rubble-strewn interior of the fort, toward one of the ruined towers. All that remained were a few courses of stone, blackened on the inside as if by fire.
“Here,” said Brey, pointing. At her feet, half-hidden by fallen stone, was a stone staircase leading down. She picked up a stone slab almost as big as she was, and tossed it aside.
Mordan and Tarrel put their shoulders to another block, pushing it out of the way. Within a few minutes, there was enough of an opening to squeeze through.
A sudden noise made them look up. Something was coming, and it sounded big. Mordan threw his elven cloak over himself, while Brey and Tarrel crouched behind a mound of rubble.
The thing was immense—almost as tall as the blood-creature that had attacked them, but hunched and massive. It looked something like a warforged—they had all seen the terrifying power of the huge, barely sentient warforged titans on the battlefields of the Last War—but it had a pair of three-fingered hands instead of the great axes and hammers with which those awesome killing machines were normally armed. Its segmented carapace was covered with spikes, and they knew at once where the piled corpses had come from. There were fresh bodies all over the thing, impaled like insects.
They watched as the great construct stumped over to the corpse pile. It began picking the corpses off its carapace, adding them to the heap. When the last body had been removed, the thing turned and marched off the way it had come. Creeping to the shelter of a broken wall, the three watched it until it was out of sight. Mordan looked at Brey.
“You didn’t tell us about that,” he said.
“I never saw it before,” Brey answered.
“Well,” said Tarrel, “I guess that’s how they got the raw materials for their necromantic research.”
Brey scowled into the distance. “One of the ways,” she said. “They needed living subjects to make vampires.”
“There’s something I don’t understand,” said Tarrel, standing up and taking in the ruins with a sweep of his arm. “This is—was—Cyre. What’s a Karrnathi research establishment doing here? Surely the Cyrans would have found it?”