Cry of the Ghost Wolf

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A section of the mud holding Elret exploded, sending mud and rocks and smoking roots splashing in the river. Her arm emerged from the gaping hole, and in it she held her staff, purple fire and sparks of light sizzling around its length.

Gleed spared Hweilan a glance, then said, “Hm” and flickered his fingers.

The mud closed around Elret again. A tree root slithered out of the soil, wrapping itself around Elret’s arm and tightening. A section of the root held her elbow while another part pressed down upon her forearm, bending the arm backward. Elret shrieked, equal parts fury and pain.

“Drop your plaything,” said Gleed.

Elret could not move her head, but her eyes searched out Buureg and the other disciples. “Help me, you cowards!”

But the other hobgoblins were just as bound as she.

Gleed made another motion with his fingers, and the tree root pressed harder.

Elret screamed, all pain now, and the arcane energies flickering around her staff began to fall all around her. But she kept her grip.

Gleed smiled at Hweilan. “This one has spirit.”

“I think she’s just mean.”

Elret screamed again.

“Drop your staff,” Hweilan told her, “or he will break your arm.”

“I’ll kill you both! I swear on my mother’s ashes! I-”

Hweilan shrugged. “Break it.”

Elret opened her mouth, but before she could say anything-

“Gleed!”

The voice was so frail and fraught with pain that Hweilan barely heard it.

Gleed looked to the tangle of vines holding the disciples and the litter. Taking a good look at it for the first time, his brow crinkled, but when his gaze fixed on the wrinkled face peeking out amid the leaves and vines, his eyes went wide.

“Maaqua?”

Her eyes were open, but by the way they looked every which way, Hweilan knew the old queen was blind.

“Gleed?” she said, her voice coming out more a croak. “Help … me.”

Gleed looked back to Elret. Sparks were still spouting out of her staff, but her eyes were fixed on her queen.

“Will you stop this foolishness?” said Gleed.

“You can help her?” said Elret.

“Not if you persist in keeping me from it. Now drop the stick.”

The arcane energies sputtered out, and the glow emanating from the staff died away. “I’ll stop-if you help her. But I keep the staff.”

Gleed waved as if shooing a gnat. The mud and roots holding Elret and Buureg fell away, and the vines holding the four disciples relaxed. Gleed rushed over to Maaqua, examining her for wounds. He looked up at the nearest of the disciples. “What happened to her?”

The disciple looked to Elret.

“Now, damn you!” said Gleed.

Hweilan walked over to look down on the queen while Elret gave Gleed a brief version of what had happened.

Gleed looked down at Maaqua. “You old fool. You never did know not to meddle in affairs beyond your skills.”

Maaqua’s eyes closed, but Hweilan thought she saw the faintest hint of a smile on her lips.

Gleed waved the disciples back. “Get back, all of you!”

He raised his staff, his free hand’s fingers weaving a pattern in the air as he muttered. The vines rose up again, holding Maaqua, but just enough to keep her from falling.

“What is this?” said Elret, raising her own staff.

“Be still, Elret!” said Buureg. “Can’t you see he’s helping her?”

The vines took on the vague form of a man-shaped, headless hulk. Maaqua was cradled in its arms like a sleeping child. Agile as a monkey, Gleed climbed up its legs and arms to rest on the shoulders, then pointed with his staff. The mass of vines lumbered off into the forest.

“Where’s he taking her?” said Elret.

Gleed did not turn back as he answered. “Hweilan will show you the way. But wash yourselves first. I won’t have you dripping mud all over my home!”

By the time Hweilan led four very sodden hobgoblins to where the river emptied into the lake, evening was settling over the lake, and they could see a fire burning on the nearby island.

“He lives in that?” said Buureg, taking in the sight of Gleed’s ramshackle tower. The thousands of bits of metal encasing it like scales on a fish reflected the fire burning on the island. “The vines are the only things keeping it from toppling into the lake.”

Hweilan felt strangely moved by the sight of the tower, her mind suddenly flooding with memories. Not all pleasant, but every one of them precious.

“It’s stronger than it looks,” said Hweilan.

Elret and the four other disciples were staring wide-eyed at the tower. Two of the disciples, whom Hweilan thought were the youngest by the lesser amount of runes and symbols stitched into their robes, looked unmistakably terrified.

Buureg followed Hweilan’s gaze. “What is it?”

“The power …,” said one of the disciples, then seemed to forget the rest of her sentence.

Elret said, “The power coming off that place … it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. It … it …” She finally looked away, and the gaze she locked on Buureg looked almost pleading. “I don’t have the words.”

Buureg reached for his sword. “Is it dangerous?”

“Deadly,” said Hweilan. “But behave yourselves and you have nothing to worry about.”

Hweilan walked over to the extension of land that pointed into the lake like a crooked finger. The first of the night’s bats fluttered overhead as Hweilan spoke the words. Not an incantation, Gleed had said on the day he explained it to her. Think of it more like an invitation for it is a living thing you summon.

The water rippled before her, and a tangle of old flagstones, rock, waterweed, and massive tree roots twisted out of the water, forming a bridge to the island.

“Choose your steps carefully,” Hweilan said as she proceeded over the bridge. “The weeds are slippery.”

Buureg followed, but stopped when he saw that the others weren’t following. “What is it?”

Hweilan turned and saw that one of the disciples was shaking her head. “I can’t go out there. I won’t go out there. You can’t make me. It … it …”

“I told you,” said Hweilan, “you’ll be safe as long as you stay on your most courteous behavior. And I promise you: you don’t want to be in the woods after dark. That power you sense from the tower? It keeps the really nasty things away.”

Very reluctantly, the four hobgoblins made their way onto the bridge, Elret bringing up the rear. Hweilan waited and let them pass. The youngest was still trembling.

“Think of it like sleeping in the wolves’ den to keep the bears away,” Hweilan told her.

The hobgoblin looked up at her with wide eyes. “Look at it!” Her voice was scarcely above a whisper. “This is no wolf’s den. More like a dragon’s lair.”

Elret scowled at Hweilan as she passed.

The fire had attracted swarms of moths, but Gleed and Maaqua were nowhere to be found. Buureg stood near the fire, keeping a wary eye upward as bats swooped in to feast on the moths.

A kettle bubbled over the fire, and the smell coming from it made Hweilan’s stomach growl. She realized she had not eaten since the night before she’d fought Rhan. Gleed had even left a pile of wooden platters and spoons on a small rug near the fire.

“Where is the queen?” said Elret, staring at the tower.

“I’m sure Gleed is tending to her,” said Hweilan. “Eat.”

Hweilan shooed the moths off the topmost platter, then filled it from the kettle.

“What is it?” said Buureg.

“Stew,” said Hweilan.

He sniffed at it. “What’s in it?”

“Do you care?” Hweilan took her first bite. Rabbit, mixed with a few roots, vegetables, and that spice Gleed put in everything.

Buureg and the disciples watched Hweilan clear her platter, then go for more. When she showed no signs of falling over dead, they filled their own platters and settled around the fire.

Elret kept her back to them and watched the tower long into the night.

After finishing all the food, and cleaning the cauldron and platters in the lake, Buureg and the disciples lay down around the fire and went to sleep. The warchief slept in his armor, his arms curled around his sheathed sword like a child’s favorite blanket. Elret still stood, watching the tower.

Hweilan closed her eyes and wrestled with her thoughts. She did not sleep. Kaad had told her that gunhin sometimes kept one awake for days afterward, and she had drunk two doses in the past two days. But she was back in a place where she felt safe, with a full belly, so she felt relaxed and awake. She thought of the Damarans back at the Razor Heart fortress. She had no reason to think Buureg wouldn’t be true to his word. If Gleed was able to help Maaqua, Hweilan felt sure the hobgoblins would release her companions. And then …?

Her calling as the Hand of the Hunter had not changed. This ordeal with the Damarans and the Razor Heart had been a complication, a distraction, nothing else. Jagun Ghen was waiting for her at Highwatch. Until she sent him back to the Abyss or wherever Nendawen sent him, everything else was only a side trail. But after …

Hweilan needed to talk to Gleed.

Morning light was soaking into the sky and the last of the bats were returning home when the door at the base of the tower opened. The old wood scraped on the mossy flagstones with a sound like dying cats, and the sleeping hobgoblins stumbled to their feet. Hweilan still had not slept. After bathing in the creek, she wandered the near woods, mulling her thoughts, bringing herself back to a sort of … peace. Back in the Feywild, back in her element, she was able to put herself at ease for the first time in … well, since she had left, she realized.

I’m home. The thought brought her no happiness. A calmness yes. She felt balanced here. But that was tinged with its own sadness, for all that she had lost to be here.

Gleed and Maaqua emerged, the hobgoblin queen leaning heavily on her staff and on Gleed for support. Her skin still had the look of wet parchment. Her arms shook, and she took small, careful steps.

Elret rushed forward to help her, but the queen waved her back with her staff.

“Back, girl.” Her voice was still raspy and weak, but much of the cold edge had returned to it. “I’m not dead yet.”

Chagrined, Elret stepped aside but hovered close as Gleed helped Maaqua settle beside the smoking ashes of the fire.

Gleed looked to Hweilan. “Stir the fire, would you?”

“No,” said Maaqua. “This one and I must speak. Kiir and Ogsut can do it.”

The two youngest disciples set to adding more sticks to the fire and stirring the embers.

“Do you need anything, my queen?” said Elret, who was standing just behind Maaqua.

“I need you to stop hovering over me. Sit and be silent.”

Elret scowled at Hweilan and sat just out of reach of the queen. Buureg kept a respectful distance but watched the proceedings with interest. Gleed sat to Maaqua’s right.

“You”-Maaqua pointed at Hweilan with a trembling hand-“you seem to have saved my life. So please tell me how in all the unholy Hells you are still alive.”

Hweilan looked to Gleed, who nodded. The fire now crackling again, Kiir and Ogsut looked on with great interest, as did the other hobgoblins. Hweilan told of the concoction Gleed had taught her that slowed the heart and breath just to the edge of death.

“You let Rhan defeat you?” said Buureg.

Hweilan shrugged. “He hit me harder than I’d hoped. But when I woke up, someone had left some gunhin for me.”

“Kaad.”

Hweilan said nothing.

“I’ll tie him in a sack and let the younglings beat him for a tenday.”

“You will not,” said Gleed. “Whoever this Kaad is, he has my thanks. He saved Hweilan’s life. And you are in my debt. I saved yours.”

Hweilan nodded. “Had Kaad not left the gunhin, I would be dead. As would you. Like it or not, Maaqua, you owe him. You owe him his freedom.”

Maaqua growled and spat into the fire.

“Elret says you were spying on Highwatch,” said Hweilan. “I take it you found something?”

Maaqua glared at her disciple. “Rather free with your tongue, eh?”

Elret blinked. “I-”

“Had she not told Hweilan,” said Gleed, “you’d now be dead. Or worse. You seem to owe a great many debts, Maaqua, and I know how you hate that.”

“Die in a dung heap, old toad!” said Maaqua. But then her eyes half-rolled in her head and she swayed.

Gleed had to catch the queen to keep her from falling into the fire. “I told you not to excite yourself, twisted old weed.”

Maaqua leaned against Gleed, but her eyes opened again. Hweilan saw something there that surprised her. Maaqua was afraid.

“You saw Jagun Ghen, didn’t you?” said Hweilan.

“Do not say his name!” said Maaqua, again sounding like nothing so much as a very tired, very old woman. “Not even here. Do not say it.”

The other hobgoblins, seeing their revered queen so stricken, looked like they might bolt at any moment. Buureg made the sign to ward off evil, and both of Elret’s hands tightened around her staff. The young disciple Kiir closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

“You’ve brought doom to my people, girl,” said Maaqua. “And maybe to the world.”

They sat in silence a moment, the hobgoblins staring into the fire.

“You captured me, as I remember,” said Hweilan. “I didn’t exactly come knocking on your door.”

“Do you know what he is, girl?” said Maaqua. “What he’ll do? You think he’s content just to bring more of his ‘brothers’ into Faerun? They are like worms feeding off the scraps of a dragon. If Ja-if he has his way, he could become a god. Our world is not like the others. His power is growing so fast. He’s gathering what he needs now. Time is running out. And there’s no one to oppose him.”

Hweilan said, “There’s me.”