The floating dust caused Huma to cough badly. He suddenly felt weak and nauseated, and it was a strain just to walk, much less hold his sword. In irritation, he threw the blade to the floor, raising even more aggravating dust. His armor was caked with the stuff, but he did not care. He was staggering now. The dust seemed everywhere, filling his eyes, nose, ears, and throat. He made it to the doorway and, with a sigh, slumped down and sat staring at the lifeless street. This, too, became much too tiring, and he decided that a nap would do much, much more good. The knight closed his eyes, and snores quickly followed.
Dark figures clad in long, enveloping cloaks and hoods seemed to form shadows around him. Their faces could not be seen beneath the deep hoods, and only one of them revealed hands. That one removed a small vial from his belt and uncorked it. With gentle care, he poured the contents on the floor. The contents, a reddish powder, reacted immediately with that which Huma had believed to be the dust of ages. The two hissed and steamed, canceling one another until nothing remained save the natural layer of gray powder that had accumulated through the years. The hooded figure resealed the bottle and turned toward the fallen knight He snapped his fingers, and four of his companions scurried over to take hold of Huma.
Within a minute, the room was empty. Had anyone looked inside, they would have seen no indication of recent entry. There was no sign of the knight and no sign of his shadowy captors.
A mocking howl cut through the bleak air of the ghost town.
Chapter 12
Voices hissed incomprehensibly. seemingly in some sort of debate. It took the groggy knight several seconds before he came to realize that it was he the voices were arguing over. He wished his eyes would work so that he could see who was so concerned with his welfare.
Another voice, somehow familiar, cut in, full of anger. “Why do you delay?”
“He is marked.”
“Of what concern is that, Skularis?”
The one called Skularis hissed at some offense in the question. “There is something amiss when a Knight of Solamnia bears such a mark.”
A second voice, more like the croak of some great bullfrog, snapped, “He would not understand, Nightmaster! This one on the ground is more one of us than him.”
The first speaker, the Nightmaster, tried again to explain. “We have agents among them. Powerful ones, indeed.” The other speaker croaked his agreement. Huma stirred a little. They seemed to think he bore some kind of important mark. All he had right now was a burning forehead.
“I am aware of what the mark means,” the familiar voice—where had he heard it?—said. “I am also aware that it is not going to kill him as I had originally thought. Excellent. He bears information I need. His very existence is important to me.”
“What would you have us do, then? We cannot do him harm, not if one of ours has marked him for protection.”
The evident outsider snarled, and Huma’s senses came alive as he recognized the sound. Only the dreadwolves made a sound like that.
Someone must have noticed the shifting of his body, for a gloved hand reached down and turned Huma’s head from left to right. The glove was quite rotten; it stank so badly that Huma instinctively pulled away from it. The one identified as Nightmaster chuckled obscenely.
“He is not one of us, but one of us has sought to protect him. This grows more and more interesting.”
“What shall we do?” the croaker asked.
“You must hide him, you wretched cadavers!” the outsider snarled. “Hide him until my servants can contact you! Has the plague taken your minds as well as your bodies?”
Huma’s eyes seemed willing to open at that point, just a crack.
Two figures resembling high mounds of moldy, stinking cloth stood conversing with—a dreadwolf. No one else. It took Huma’s fog-enshrouded mind several moments to realize that Galan Dracos—from his citadel far away somewhere—was using his unliving servant as his eyes, ears, and mouth in Ergoth.
That they were still somewhere in the ruins was only a guess. What little he could make out lent credence to that guess, for the room was filled with rubble and part of the ceiling was gone. Huma did not know how long he had been unconscious or how far they had dragged him.
Then the more menacing of the two ragged assailants lifted an arm, revealing a bony, scarred hand with the index finger pointed at the renegade’s messenger. “Have a care, mage. You have her blessing for now, but she is a fickle queen to those who fail her. You would do well to speak more civilly with those you need.”
The pale form of the dreadwolf bristled with barely contained fury as Dracos allowed his emotions to be transmitted through his servant. The smaller of the two hooded figures shuffled back, two blotchy hands held up in obvious fear.
The other, the Nightmaster, must have smiled, for his tone was full of mockery. “Your powers are fearsome to the fear-filled, but not to one who enjoys the protection of Morgion.”
Morgion! Huma was barely able to stifle the shock that leaped through his taut body. He was a prisoner of the cultists of Morgion, god of disease and decay!
“This is a foolish waste of time,” Dracos finally muttered.
“Agreed. Very well, mage. My brethren will keep this one for your lackeys, but only because it serves the Master’s goals to do so. Not because I fear your power.”
“Of course not.”
“But the mark—” said the croaker.
“There are times, brother, when we all must make sacrifices for the greater glory of Morgion.”
“And the Queen, of course,” added Dracos purposefully.
“And the Queen. Pity. I am still curious as to the reason for the mark.” Skularis put a hand to Huma’s forehead.
Huma reeled from the shock, feeling as if his very soul were being invaded. He cringed, but he had no room to maneuver away from the clawlike hand.
Quite suddenly, he was no longer in the ruins. A kaleidoscope of sights and sounds enveloped him. Huma felt no fright. A part of him knew this state was only in his mind, though he could not explain how this should calm him. Huma thought he could hear the sounds of horses riding into battle, the clank of armor, the cries of battle, and steel against steel. He saw a vision of three knights. Each wore a symbol of the knighthood: the crown, the sword, and the rose. They all wore visors, but Huma knew somehow the two in back could only be the twin gods Habbakuk and Kiri-Jolith. Two of the Solamnic Triumvirate—which meant that he who stood before them . . .
With a horrible abruptness, Huma was wrenched from that vision and returned to the real world once more. Had he not been gagged, he would have screamed, for the bony, disease-ridden hand pulled sharply away from him, seeming to take strips of his flesh as it did. Through blurred eyes, Huma could see the two cloth-enveloped figures staring down at him.
“I could not penetrate his mind. He is shielded through sheer willpower alone. Fascinating.”
“And the mark?” croaked the second.
“No longer there. It was too weak. He is too much a pawn of the prolonger of pain, that which fools call Life. He is not one of us—could never be one of us.”
From behind them, the voice of Dracos issued forth once more from the maw of the dreadwolf. “Then there can be no more hesitation.”
“None. He is yours when your servants come.” The cleric snapped his fingers. Huma’s eyes chose that moment to clear. Hooded figures emerged from the darkness, disease-wracked ghouls like the dead of a battlefield come back to some semblance of life.
“Take him to the catacombs. Bind him to the altar.”
“No sacrifices!”
Even Huma could not miss the curling of the cleric’s lip. “Have no fear, cur. He will be alive and well. It shall be interesting to see if you have better luck than I did.”