Ambrose watched him go, then closed the shop's shattered doors as best he could. Ogier and Kern would be back in a moment, to help him dispose of the bodies. There was no need for secrecy, but they wouldn't understand that. They did not know about Ambrose's pact with Azrael or his other, more terrible secrets. He would have to come up with some explanation for his actions tonight, a reason his infirmities seemed to vanish the moment the fight started and blood was spilled.
He glanced down at Markel's corpse and felt the fury well up inside him again. "This is your fault," Ambrose said through gritted teeth.
He snatched up one of the silver axes. With frenzied strokes he hacked at the body until it flew apart. When there was too little left of Markel to satisfy his rage, Ambrose started in on the elven politska. He did not stop until that corpse, too, had been reduced to gory lumps.
Fury spent, Ambrose paused to survey his work. He didn't even realize what he was doing as he slowly crushed the silver axe between his palms. The twisted blade cut into his fingers. He did not cry out, merely watched the blood spatter onto the floor.
As Ambrose turned away, the dark drops slithered across the warped boards to join his shadow.
Eight
The pursuit was hopeless. Ganelon realized that from the moment he began it. His aching leg left him little chance of keeping pace with Helain. The strangling character of the Sithican wilds left him even less chance of finding her should she abandon the road. Somehow, though, he managed to keep her in sight for several hours.
After her initial wild flight from Ambrose's place, Helain made her way more slowly through the foothills of the Misttop Mountains. She kept to the narrow but straight road that ran north to the Musarde River and eventually ended at the wide east-west trade route known as the Merchants' Slash. Bathed in the light of the strange new moon, torn nightgown fluttering behind her like broken wings, she seemed a phantom, a will o'wisp leading Ganelon in to peril. He half-expected her to vanish from before his eyes.
Shortly after they reached the Merchants' Slash, she did.
Helain only stayed on the hard-packed trade road long enough to cross it. Scorched earth edged the Slash on the north for its entire length, from the elven city of Har-Thelen to the border with Kartakass, one hundred and fifty miles to the east. Without a heartbeat's hesitation, Helain ventured into that wide band of blackened waste. From his position back on the Veidrava Road, Ganelon cursed. She was heading for the Fumewood.
Decades past, merchants slashed and burned the gap between the trade road and the stinking tangle of forest and mire that bordered it to the north. They'd hoped the buffer would make it more difficult for the Fumewood's denizens to ambush travelers and caravans. It didn't. The merchants maintained the buffer anyway, even after trade along the route diminished to a trickle. Effective or not, the band of scorched earth let them feel they were doing something to drive back the dark.
For just an instant, as he crossed the trade road, Ganelon took his eyes off Helain and peered anxiously at the Fumewood. And in that instant, she was gone.
When he saw that he had lost her, Ganelon stood for a moment and braced his hands against the pain lancing his sides. "Where are you?" he whispered between exhausted huffs. The cold night air transmuted each heaving breath into steam. Even the wisps seemed to taunt him; the white shapes lingered before his eyes for an instant-Helain in her flowing gown-before they, too, disappeared.
Fighting back despair, Ganelon tried to reason out the situation.
Helain couldn't have reached the tree line. She simply wasn't moving that quickly. There was nowhere for her to hide, nothing between the road and the forest large enough to conceal a house cat. She might have fallen into a ditch, but when Ganelon surveyed the landscape, he was stunned at how absolutely flat it appeared. The merchants had done a remarkable job driving back the wood and keeping the buffer clear. Ganelon couldn't imagine how anything could creep across that blasted waste and surprise someone on the road, though he knew such attacks were no rarity on the Slash.
Ganelon didn't call out. Helain wouldn't have answered him even if he did, and the noise would most certainly draw unwelcome attention from the Fumewood. Instead, he started across the buffer. As he stepped off the road, a prayer came to his lips. It was an old soldier's benison, one he'd never particularly liked. Somehow, though, it felt right now. "Fate favor me," he said. "Fear flee me."
Swirls of ash blew across the blasted ground, obscuring any trace of Helain's passing. Ganelon did his best to remember her position when she vanished. Once he'd decided on a spot, he found a particularly tall oak on the edge of the distant Fumewood and made it his target. Since there was no landmark in the buffer to guide him, walking straight toward the tree would keep him from wandering off course.
The buffer turned out to be just as flat and featureless as it had appeared from the road. The way was so level that Ganelon's gaze tended to fix upon the more obvious danger of the Fumewood. More than once he thought he saw shapes moving against the trees, fleet figures that carried some sort of pole weapon.
Kendralihd has vomited up her denizens for the night, Ganelon thought. The village lay at the heart of the Fumewood. The creatures that dwelled there were the results of some unholy experiment at Nedragaard Keep. "Render," they were called, gaunt little monstrosities with a penchant for thievery and a taste for human blood.
Ganelon shook his head. He had no idea where he'd learned about the kender, about Kendralihd. There were rumors of such creatures, campfire stories that told of vampires in the Fumewood, but the information he had was more like a military report, concise and detached.
Between his concern for Helain, the distraction of the sudden insight, and the looming menace of the Fumewood itself, Ganelon missed the small circle of darkness on the blackened ground before him. He stepped right over the hole and would have missed it entirely had his heel not sent a shower of dirt into the opening. The earth and small stones clattered noisily into the void, which made the young man whirl, ready for an attack.
When nothing sprang out at him, Ganelon crouched to examine the hole. It was the entrance to a narrow but expertly excavated tunnel. Not an entrance, he realized as he looked from the forest to the trade road, an exit. This was how the Fumewood's inhabitants managed to bypass the buffer. They used the tunnel-or tunnels-to cross beneath the open ground.
The hole had been hidden by a wooden cover disguised to blend with the surrounding blasted earth; if it hadn't slipped into the tunnel, Ganelon would have walked right over it. He looked back toward the road. He'd probably trodden over a half-dozen others already. A shudder gripped him. Suddenly, the Fumewood wasn't as far off as he'd thought.
He pushed that disconcerting thought aside and concentrated on his discovery. Scuff marks around the hole's perimeter and on the tunnel's lid told of a recent passing. Helain must have fallen into the hole; that would account for her sudden disappearance. Rather than climb back out, she'd simply plunged forward into the narrow, gradually sloping passage.
Ganelon climbed down into the dark. The creatures that had dug the tunnel had been smaller than men, but the way was just wide enough for him to proceed on hands and knees. He hesitated at the opening for a moment, wondering whether it would be best to leave the exit clear in case he needed to retreat in a hurry or replace the lid, so no other creatures would follow him into the tunnel. In the end, he decided to push the cover back into place. Should anything confront him underground, he'd have no chance to escape.
The tunnel's cramped quarters and lightless murk didn't bother Ganelon; his time in the pit at Veidrava had acclimatized him to those conditions. The smell most certainly did. Whatever creatures traveled in the tunnels did not wait to go aboveground to relieve themselves. Worse still, they seemed to devour their victims on the move, leaving behind gnawed bones and rotting flesh on their retreat to the Fumewood. That no rats or other scavengers ventured into the tunnels to claim these prizes did not escape Ganelon's notice, but he tried hard not to think about the reasons for their absence.