Chapter One: Echoes of the Past

Rattling shutters and gaps between the wooden slats of walls allowed a faint breeze into the store. The establishment smelled of dust, mildew, and the acrid aroma of burning leaves that kept the ubiquitous mosquitoes and flies from riding the weather inside. It wasn't that much of a store, all in all; but then, it wasn't that much of a town, either.

The bulk of the voicesand there were always voices, despite the store's ramshackle appearancewafted from the counter opposite the door, and from the racks of meats and baked goods alongside. Ellithir allowed the locals to loiter, picking at the foods and paying for whatever they consumed, rather

than insisting they buy in bulk. Just another way to compete with the eateries and taverns in townall two of them. Even over the sounds of those voices, though, the willowy elf heard rickety floorboards beneath a hesitant tread, and the faint rustling and thumping of someone browsing idly through the aisles of various tools.

The visitor eventually emerged from the second aisle over, between haphazard coils of hempen rope and a portcullis of dangling rakes. Beneath a mop of unruly red hair, Khydol's face was morose. The gold-hued tunic he normally favored was hidden by a cloak and mantle of drab brownas was the holy pendant he usually wore exposed for all to see.

Gracefully, her own steps squeezing nary a squeak from the floorboards, Ellithir stepped from behind the other counterthe one where she normally tallied up purchasesand produced a three-legged stool for her guest.

"Thank you." Clearly a response born solely of instinct; his eyes hadn't even focused on her. Ellithir studied him further: the abnormal garb, the pensive gaze, the faintly pointed ears indicating that he shared a portion of her own racial heritage.

Studied him, and waited for him to come to it in his own time.

"It's done," he said finally.

She nodded. She'd expected as much. "And this troubles you?"

"It..." he shrugged. "Yes. Somewhat. It's just... a lot to take on."

"I know it is." She reached out, gripping his shoulder tight. "We've talked about this, Khydol. You're doing the right thing. Look at what else is happening over there! Hail, in this season? Wilting crops? If the gods are finally showing their wrath at those apostates, surely your anger is justified!" It was an old discussion, one they'd held half a dozen times before. Khydol agreed with her, she knew that; he just had to be reminded.

"And besides," Ellithir continued, jabbing a finger at the half-elf's unseen holy icon, "what else would she ask of you but vengeance?"

Reverentially, Khydol reached beneath the woolen mantle and withdrew the heavy pendant. There, worked into the silver, were the triple daggers of the Savored Sting: Calistria, mistress of lust, deception... and retribution.

"The goddess be praised," Khydol murmured, softly but sincerely. Across the store, the voices began to taper off as men and women glanced out the windows, saw the first streamers of smoke writhing from over the horizonand over the border.

"The goddess be praised," Ellithir echoed, her thin lips quirked in the faintest of smiles.

The ghosts of Marcov Draeven's past have taken their toll.

In some taverns, a brawl means something has gone very wrong, and it's time to yell for the watch.

In others, it just means that sailors are in port, or teamsters are between deliveries, and someone's imbibed a bit too freely.

And then there are those in which a brawl simply means "We're open."

The strangerone of manyslouched in a rickety chair, trying to absorb the last dregs of warmth from the hearth's dying embers, and watched with profound disinterest as the last of this evening's rowdies were hurled out the door by the husband-and-wife team of half-orc bouncers. The fight hadn't even been fun to watch; those killjoy bouncers had stepped in too early.

He couldn't be bothered to remember the tavern's name. The latest in an endless line, tracing a pathway of pain across the Inner Sea, it was nothing to him but another place to drink, and maybe

chase a few hours' slumber. It wasn't even a good place; that damn insect-repelling herbal smoke that had recently grown so popular throughout the River Kingdoms was giving him a headache.

Not that Marcov Draeven appeared any more special than the shabby ale hall. Grease-matted hair that might, if clean, have appeared a rich brown hung past his shoulders in ragged strings. Unshaven cheeks went beyond gaunt into sunken, and red-rimmed, deep-set eyes suggested many recent sleepless nights. An old and often-patched chain hauberk left rust stains on a tunic almost too dark to show them. Only his weapon, a monster of a hand-and-a-half sword, demonstrated any signs of care. It currently leaned against the wall, unscabbarded, like any old walking stick.

Any of the patrons who noticed him at alland if they did, it was only for that naked bladehad certainly dismissed him as just another sellsword, gone somewhat to seed, haunted by past years.

They had no idea how right they were.

To those potential observers, it would surely have seemed just another drunken mishap as fingers fumbled and lost their grip. They might have chuckled as the mug toppled and bounced across the floor, leaving tiny chips to mingle with the layers of broken crockery that served as the tavern's carpet.

Only Marcov himself knew that he'd placed the damn thing solidly on the table, that his hand was a good four or five inches away when it had suddenly gone skidding over the edge.

"Pharasma take you!" His low growl was surely inaudible to any nearby ears. "Leave me alone! Just one evening, damn you..."

His sword wobbled against the wall, threatening to tilt.

Spitting curses, Marcov stumbled a few steps from the chairnot drunk, entirely, but not precisely sober eitherand dropped to one knee, hand outstretched to retrieve the fallen tankard.

That lean brought him just near enough to the next table to overhear the conversation over the ambient cacophony. Which, he realized sourly, had been the entire point.

Their entire point.

"...third town in as many weeks!"

"Bandits, maybe? Been a rough harvest. Lots of folks goin' hungry over there."

"Bandits steal, ya idiot. Kill a few; rape some, maybe. What kinda bandits burn whole towns to the ground?"

"I dunno. Angry ones?"

"Idiot."

"Yer both idiots. It's divine vengeance, it is. Knew it was comin' to 'em sooner or later."

"No!" Marcov hissed as he rose, wayward flagon forgotten. "Not my business. Not my problem!"

The mug at his feet shattered as though crushed beneath an unseen heel. His sword against the wall, and the chair he'd so recently vacated, began to rock.

"No, gods damn you!" He already had a goal, had somewhere to be! Why wouldn't they just?

The chair toppled, one leg snapping loose. The embers in the fireplace burst upward, then extinguished themselves in a sizzling, sifting rain of ash.

And the howling began.

A single voice, at first. Then a dozen... three dozen... a hundred... more. Shrieks of terror, wails of

despair, screams of agony, sobs of grief. The final gasps of the dying, and the hopeless moans of the damned.

Nobody else heard themMarcov knew that all too well from prior experiencebut that didn't make them any less deafening to him! Once more he fell to his knees, hands clasped to his ears, eyes squeezed so tightly shut that flickers of color flashed across his lids.

"Stop it! Stop it! Leave me alone!"

The howling only grew louder. The sword fell, sliding across the hearth, quillons grating on brick. Crockery atop the surrounding tables began to shake and clatter.

Strong-willed, stubborn, and prideful was Marcov Draeven. Even in the face of the unnatural onslaught, the gale of angry souls, it took him nearly a full minute to bend.

"All right! All right, you bastards, enough!" The sellsword's hands dropped from his ears to the floor, where he crouched like a wounded animal. "Enough," he repeated, far more softly.

The howling stopped. The surrounding objects ceased their impossible dance. And Marcov opened his eyes.

The room around him had changed, and not just by the will of the dead. Chairs and tables lay strewn where patrons had bolted to their feet and retreated from the spectral maelstrom. Quite a few had fled, to judge by the gaping door (and, in a some instances, windows). Most of those who remained

stood, wide-eyed and sweating, pressed against the farthest walls, but a few edged forward, hands reaching for weapons.

Marcov slowly rose, stretched out his hand, and hissed something at his phantasmal retinue. The broad-bladed bastard sword flew from its spot by the hearth to land in his waiting palm with a muted slap.

The bravery rushed out of those few courageous souls, along with gasps and muted shrieks. They, too, fell back against the walls once more.

Marcov needed only a moment to find one of the men on whose conversation he had eavesdropped. "The towns you were talking aboutwhere are they?"

"I... That... Towns? Sir, I don't want any"

"Where. Are. They?"

"Touvette!" It was scarcely a squeak. "Eastern Touvette!"

A sharp nod, and then Marcov turned toward the shivering barkeep. "For the damages." He fumbled at his belt a moment before he found his coin purse, not due to any lingering intoxicationMarcov was quite sober nowbut because his possessions had a bad habit of never remaining precisely where he'd put them. Finally, he scooped out a handful of silver, which he casually dropped to the floor when the barkeep showed no interest in coming anywhere near him. Then, sword still unsheathed resting flat upon his shoulder, Marcov strode toward the stables.

The reinforced leather of Loursa's armor absorbed the stroke that would otherwise have split kidney and spine both. Still, she staggered a step across the churned and muddy field before spinning

around, whipping sweaty strands of hair from her face, and slamming the heavy stock of the crossbow against the brigand's jaw. Something crackedbone or wood, she wasn't certain, but the man collapsed. Loursa took that momentary respite to draw her own blade, catch a few deep breaths, and assess.

Kelbran hadn't been much better off than any of the other tiny communities scattered near Touvette's

easternmost borders. The unseasonable ice storms had ravaged the settlement's crops as badly as its neighbors'; its people were just as desperate, just as destitute. But when the invaders came, and the first of the villages fell, Kelbran had welcomed survivors, rather than turning them away to seek refuge elsewhere. It was a decision that Loursa and the other guards had questioned when Samrev first made it, but the old village reeve had been adamant. "We have no charities in Kelbran to provide such services, as the great cities do," he'd said, "but we can show charity all the same."

He'd had a practical motive as well, it turned out. When the invaders finally came to Kelbran, the sixth community to suffer their depredations, Loursa and the other guards had met them with a much

larger force than they'd anticipateda force made up partly of refugees who, though starved and exhausted, burned with the need to avenge their own lost homes. Nobody knew how these bandits had managed to avoid the military patrols that scoured Touvette's major roads, but for the first time, it looked as though they might not be unstoppable.

Still, Kelbran had paid the price; Loursa wasn't sure, but she might well be the only guard left, and at least a third of the townsfolk lay hacked and mutilated. The rest fought in groups, overwhelming bandits alone or in pairs, making up in numbers and ferocity what they lacked in equipment and training. Loursa again brushed sandy hair from her faceshe couldn't even remember when she'd lost her helmetand hefted her sword, ready to go and assist. As long as nothing else changed, victory was just a matter of

Everything disintegrated in a chorus of screams as the first of the dead shambled over the nearby knolls.

They weren't many, as compared to the townsfolk or bandits. But then, they didn't need to be. Dozens of villagers broke and ran. Those that remained stood rooted in shock, if only for an instant, and in that instant the invaders attacked with renewed vigor. The walking corpses had turned the tide in favor of their living allies before they'd even drawn near enough to strike.

The screaming only grew loudernot merely in pain or in panic, though both were plentiful enough, but in appalled recognition. Loursa's heart, already beating like a charging hound, climbed into her throat as she recognized many of these creatures as the dead citizens of other fallen towns.

The last few dozen survivors of Kelbran found themselves in a chaotic mass, their homes behind them,

bandits and the shambling dead to all other sides. Loursa squeezed the hilt of her sword, struggling to hold tight despite the patina of sweat, and prayed for a miracle. Any miracle.

Had she known what sort of miracle was coming, her prayers might have been a bit more specific.

Chapter Two: Worse Than the Disease

The faintest shower of sleet, scarcely more than an icy fog, began to fall over the battlefield that had been the town of Kelbran. Just another instance of the peculiar freezes and unnatural weather

afflicting eastern Touvette in recent months, but this timeas visibility grew cloudy and the churned muck of the earth thickenedit almost seemed a harbinger of the oncoming stranger.

They heard his approach before he appeared; citizens, bandits, corpsesall turned toward the clatter and splash of a warhorse thundering across the frost-kissed grass. Pounding in from the north, it grew louder, then louder still, until it was joined by the wordless cry of a warrior seeking blood.

All of which left the brigands more than a little bewildered when the mounted figure appeared from the west, bursting through the flimsy curtain of sleet in absolute, almost phantasmal, silence. Dark of hair, dark of armor, he wielded a massive blade from atop a russet stallion that appeared to be all muscle and resentment. The man swung his sword with a walloping force that seemed beyond the ability of a normal man. Striking like steel lightning, his blade sliced through the mist, hewing down foes as the warhorse bulled ahead. Four of the bandits fell, life gushing into the soil, before the others could even guess at the unbound fury that faced them.

Loursa had no idea whom their savior might be, and for the moment, she wasn't about to question. Instead, with a cry, she led Kelbran's survivors in a renewed attack on their assailants.

"Loursa leads Kelbran's survivors against the enemy."

Even fighting for her life, she couldn't quite take her eyes off the stranger. Whoeverwhateverhe was, he was no more natural than the walking dead, and not merely for his abnormal strength. Blade and bludgeon veered at the last instant, sliding past rather than biting into his flesh or even the steel

protecting it. In his wake, men who had fallen to seemingly nonfatal wounds twitched, shuddered, and died all the same. He lashed out with his empty hand, as well as his sword, and those he struck fell screaming, limbs withered or skin split.

Perhaps of greater import than any of his eerie abilities was his utter lack of fear. Against one foe or a dozen, living or undead, his arm never wavered, his expression never changed. Where even the bravest of Loursa's companions hesitated to draw near the bandits' shambling allies, the newcomer mercilessly drove his mount to close, his blade filleting desiccated flesh from rotting bone.

When the last handful of surviving bandits fled into the falling sleet, the citizens of Kelbran gave a ragged cheer, Loursa loudest of them all.

Not the stranger. Apparently unsatisfied still, he wheeled his horse and charged after the raiders.

Loursa cringed as the din of slaughter and unanswered pleas sounded long after the lot of them had disappeared from sight.

The guard and her neighbors exchanged uncertain glances, then set about gathering the wounded. They'd been at it for perhaps five minutes when the horse reappeared at a walk. The rider dropped from the saddle, sword leaning on one shoulder. As he neared, Loursa could see that nothing about

him other than that sword seemed to be in any worthwhile shape, and that the sleet melting down his skin was probably the nearest he'd come to bathing in weeks.

"Draeven," he announced in a bored tone, as though common courtesies were a burden he could do without. "Marcov Draeven. Who commands here?"

Loursa shrugged. "I suppose I do, now. My name is Loursa"

"Fine." Draeven spun his blade, drove it point-first into the soil and left it standing. He stretched, arching his shoulders and craning his neck to one side. The resulting crack rivaled a small siege engine. "Anything to drink around here?"

"I'm sure we can find you something," Loursa said through clenched teeth. "I want to thank you for"

"Don't. I didn't do this for you, and I don't especially want to be here." Then, before she could reply further, he idly kicked an arm that had, until recently, been attached to a shambling corpse. "Walking dead. I never heard anything about your bandit problem being an undead problem."

"Neither had we. I think this is the first time thosethose things appeared. Maybe because Kelbran is the first town those bastards couldn't take on their own."

"Maybe." For the first time, his expression changed, sliding into a nasty grin. "Bet you're wishing about now that you hadn't booted all the clerics, aren't you?"

Mutters rippled through the citizens, and Loursa drew herself up rigid. "The churches turned on Touvette. They were a bad element. We've been better off since the General ousted them and set up the charities in their stead."

"Oh, yeah." The man allowed his gaze to fall heavily upon the moaning, crying wounded. "I can see that. They look much better off."

"I appreciate your help, Draeven," she said coldly, "but unless you've been granted a traveling pass, I

think maybe it's time you left. Or would you rather I escort you to the nearest judge and you can explain to him why you're not a spy and shouldn't hang?"

Draeven waved his hand dismissively. "Lost it in battle, I'm afraid. But I have a feeling you'll be

issuing me a new one shortly, Loursa. Otherwise, you'll never find out who's been launching these

attacks, and I won't be able to send him to the nearest convenient hell. I'm not leaving without an answer. Or that drink."

"You didn't leave anyone alive who could provide any answers!"

Again, Draeven offered that ugly, crooked smile. "That's not too much of an inconvenience, really."

After a brief and apparently perfunctory examination, the foreigner knelt beside a deceased bandit.

The man had fallen from a nasty slash through his ribs; Loursa grew more and more puzzled as Draeven prodded at the corpse's mouth and head. He looked for all the world like a gourmand examining a haunch of beef.

She grew more bewildered still when Draeven said, "All right, you bastards. Make yourselves useful

and get in there." Not only did it not make sense, but his head was twisted to one side while he spoke, as if he addressed neither the dead body nor Loursa herself, but some nonexistent entity between them.

Loursa staggered, unable to repress a startled breath, when the dead man's jaw creaked open of its own accord. Horrified gasps and angry murmurs ran through the gathered townsfolk. Loursa wondered briefly if some of them weren't actually planning to attack Draeven.

She listened with rapt attention as they talked, these two unnatural creatures. Draeven spoke under

his breath, his words intended for the corpse alone. The sounds that emerged from the body itself scarcely seemed to be words at all. Soft wheezes and croaking whispers, kneaded by dead lips into shapes that only vaguely resembled syllables, occasionally wafted to Loursa's ears, but she was too distant to make any sense of them. The sleet ceased falling, the wind stilled, and gradually the low drone of those voices became the world's only sound.

When Draeven finally concluded his "conversation" and stood, it was all Loursa could do not to either draw her sword or back away. Both urges were only strengthened when she realized that the man's hair, and the sleeves of his tunic, billowed in the unmoving air.

"You know Alvren?" he asked.

"Iwhat?"

Draeven sighed. "Alvren. Do. You. Know it?"

"It's a small hillside community," Loursa replied, now definitely leaning more toward the "draw her sword" option. "It's about fifteen miles north, on the border with Pitax."

"Good. Let's go."

"Why the hell you'd believe I'd go anywhere with you"

"Because," he drawled, "I need a local to guide me. And like it or not, you owe me for saving your hide." Then, just as she was drawing breath to retort: "And we want the same thing. At least, I assume so. You do want these raids to stop, right? I'm not giving you too much credit, there?"

"No." That single word was icier than all the fallen sleet.

"Then can we get moving already?"

Spitting curses, more than a few of which called upon or profaned gods her people no longer worshiped, Loursa stalked back into Kelbran to gather supplies.

The basement was pungent with soil and mildew, a stench utterly unconcealed by acrid fumes of

ceremonial incense. Walls of damp earth bulged, supported by a haphazard array of mold-covered wooden beams that sagged, exhausted, under the heavy load. An equally rickety staircase slouched up to a trapdoor that was the cellar's only exit.

Well, its only nonmagical exit.

The inhabitants of the chamber sat, crouched, or sprawled around the cellar's peculiar centerpiece: a

circular well of granite, sunk deep into the earth and filled to overflowing with filthy, stagnant water. A stone obelisk, rough-surfaced but perfectly cylindrical, rose from the precise center of the foul pool. Only if viewed from directly above would the peculiar monument appear as a representation of a staring, disembodied eye.

Ellithir leaned back from the edge and brushed a stray lock of hair behind a pointed ear. Over the

simple woolen tunic and leggings with which her customers in the store above were familiar, she now sported a voluminous black tabard, torn ragged around the hems. "Well, sisters." She waved idly at the images that were only now fading from the pool. "What do we make of this?"

"Death swaddles him." This from a figure hunched in the shadows across the dark water, a silhouette that might or might not have been human. Her voice was dull, monotonous, like a woman entranced. "An infant's blanket and a burial shroud, both at once. He walks with ghosts. They ride him, as a stallion newly broken."

"Yes, dear, I think we all got that." It was a third who spoke now, a long and lanky shape whose height and proportion, though generally humanoid, were clearly anything but human. "I could barely see the morsel, for all the phantom energies swirling about him. But I believe our sister's point was that we ought really to decide what to do about him."

"More or less what I meant, yes," Ellithir said. "We didn't plan for anyone like him, but we knew someone would interfere eventually." The coven had summoned a host of foul creatures through

a variety of spellssome far worse than the undead Khydol had raisedand set them loose along the highways of Touvette. They'd kept the General's knights nicely distracted from the bandits, but the coven knew well that their diversions couldn't last indefinitely.

"Do we call it done, then, dearie? Leave the cleric and his thugs to their fate? The bloodshed's already been heavier than we could have demanded. Perhaps we've accomplished enough for now."

"The priest's wrath rages hot, still," the other shadowed woman droned. "We can burn plenty more, before the conflagration dies."

Ellithir nodded. "I'll send a warning to Khydol, making sure he thinks the message came from some supposed survivor' of the Kelbran battle. He and the rest of Zarred's bandits should be more than enough for this newcomer, once they know he's coming."

The larger figure shifted, stretching. "And if they're not enough?"

"Mm. Can the two of you assist me in renewing the weather magics before you depart? Wouldn't do to have the punishment of the gods' suddenly let up."

"Those spells shouldn't require renewing until the day after tomorrow."

"No, but I intend to be busy for the next few days. Contingencies, in caseas you suggestKhydol and Zarred don't come through. One way or another, ghosts or no, it behooves us to ensure that this Draeven is just another corpse on the pile.

"The flesh is filth, my sisters," she concluded, her tone abruptly formal, ritualistic. "The world is pain. To see is to hate."

From the others, in unison, "And the Hag sees all."

Slipping, Marcov, you wretched fool. Should have known this was too easy...

Should have knownand would have known, only a few years ago, when his arm and eye were honed by a life behind the sword. Before the fury and frustration. Before the drink.

Before the ghosts.

They'd reached Alvren quickly enough, stopping only for a few hours to rest up after the battle at Kelbran. It proved an easy journey, over open fields with only the occasional rolling hill, and often across trails tramped flat by years of passing feet, human and animal alike.

And they'd taken every precaution. Marcov had learned much from the corpse he'd interrogated. He knew that the bandit leadernamed Zarredhad depopulated Alvren and taken it as a base camp for his band. He knew there were several dozen men left in that band, but Alvren should house only a fraction of them at any given time. He knew the band had been hired by someone to make these raids, though presumably only Zarred and his immediate lieutenants knew who.

What Marcov hadn't known, Loursa had. Familiar with the geography andthough he would never deign to admit itpossessed of a sharp sense of tactics, she'd planned a nighttime approach that kept them hidden behind Alvren's own houses and barns.

Between their swords and what advantages Marcov could squeeze from the souls who rode him, they'd cut down a trio of riders patrolling near the hill, and a pair of sentries at the edge of town.

They'd been so silent, in fact, that the choir of frogs and cricketsthose that had survived the recent freezehadn't been sufficiently disturbed to cease their calls.

So why, why, after battling a throng of bloody undead, was I too stupid to check for magical defenses?

It had erupted from the earth, a blast of thunderous force that shattered the night, nearly deafening

him even as it hurled him and Loursa from their feet. Soil and splinters rained around them, and the world seemed subtly tilted as Marcov struggled to rise.

Now, cursing himself for an idiot and the phantoms for dragging him into this mess, he finally staggered to his feet. One more abrupt lean almost sent him sprawling again, and then the earth righted itself enough for Marcov to see what he faced.

"Well... shit."

Chapter Three: An Array of Evils

Loursa moved to Draeven's side, limping, sword dragging point-first through the dirt. "I thought you said there'd only be a few of them!"

"I did," he said. "Didn't figure every last one of them would be up and armed at midnight, either."

Understanding pounded over Loursa thicker than the falling soil. "They knew we were coming."

"We did, at that." From the mass of ragged but uncomfortably well-armed brigands, two figures

advanced. Loursa knew instinctively that the one in the lead was the "Zarred" Draeven had mentioned. Steel breastplate over leather, an axe that looked like it had actually seen professional care, scars on top of scars... A bandit chief if ever there was one.

The other, the speaker, was a scarlet-haired half-elf who wore his chainmail awkwardly. His sleeves

shone gold in the brigands' torchlight, and his left hand fiddled absently with a silver pendant that dangled from his neck.

Zarred is a bandit chief if there ever was one.

"How?" Draeven demanded.

The half-elf shrugged. "Message from a friend."

"But"

"You stupid, Khydol?" This from Zarred. "Son of a bitch is stalling, is all. Let's just get it done, yeah?"

"Well, I'd have liked to know why this fellow's interfering, but I suppose it doesn't matter. Go ahead."

Zarred barked. Almost a dozen bandits raised crossbows. Loursa sucked in a deep breath, determined to at least die with dignity. Pity it had to be in this bastard's company.

And Draeven, after a moment of muttering to himself... laughed.

A chorus of low howls thickened the air around the condemned pair. Dirt kicked up and fallen twigs flew, yet not a single gust touched Loursa. Triggers clicked. A flock of bolts flew toward the pair and were just as swiftly hurled aside by the spectral forces. None even came close.

The bowmen recoiled, crying their dismay, but the half-elfKhydol, Zarred had called himadvanced. Shouting, he raised the pendant around his neck. Loursa could just make out its three-pronged engraving, and while she knew little about magic of any sort, she recognized a spell when she saw it.

Whatever power Khydol hoped to invoke, however, was just as swiftly lost. Draeven raised his own hand in a peculiar hooking gesture. The tenor of the howling changed, ever so faintly, and the amulet tore itself from the chain around the half-elf's neck and hurtled through the phantom gale into the foreigner's waiting grip.

Khydol gawped, apparently having been stripped of language skills along with his pendant. Not so for

Zarred. "Kill them!" thundered the bandit leader.

Loursa met the first of the attackers, blade clashing on blade. She allowed herself to be pushed back, retreating, watching as his strikes fell into a pattern common to the vicious but untrained. Strike, parry, step, strike, parry...

The guard from Kelbran delivered a short, swift kick, catching the bandit's ankle in midair with an audible crack. He'd barely begun to howl when her sword took him in the throat.

Loursa's withdrawal had taken her away from the man's companions, granting her an instant to catch

her breath. She shot a quick glance behind to see how her own unpleasant companion was holding up...

She nearly choked. Draeven was staggering, reeling from blows that skittered across his hauberk or rang from his blade. The blood of several shallow cuts ran down his arms, dripped from between his

fingers. He retreated before the enemy, worked to parry any weapon that came too close, but otherwise seemed lost in his own little world. The bulk of the gang was focused on him, Zarred included, and it was nothing more than simple geometryonly a few could reach him at any given timethat kept Draeven from being overwhelmed.

Another brigand, an ape of a man whose face was all beard and rotten teeth, demanded Loursa's undivided attention with his falling mace. His first blow numbed her arm from knuckles to elbow, nearly knocking the sword from her hand. A third attacker appeared from around the mace-wielder,

jabbing with a spear. Loursa spun aside, dropped an arm over the shaft and twisted. The weapon flew from the bandit's grip, but by then the big guy was closing again, mace blotting out the sun...

An unearthly screech, high-pitched and keening, echoed over the village. Loursa was startled enough,

but her foes seemed shocked into near paralysis; she disemboweled the nearer of the two bandits with a quick swipe before turning to see what had just occurred.

Draeven hung in the air a dozen feet above his opponents, slowly rotating in a phantom whirlwind Loursa could sense but not see or hear. His jaw gaped, distended almost to the point of breaking, yet the screamonly now beginning to fadewas not in his voice and seemed to come from around him as much as from within. Blood slid from his blade, painting an abstract pattern of spatters on the upturned faces of his foes.

Without warning, he dropped back into the bandits' midst, a blur of flashing steel and fists. As Loursa had witnessed back in Kelbran, ghostly arms seemed to guide Draeven's blade, driving it into organs. No matter the ferocity of the enemy that confronted him, he attacked with relentless resolve. Strokes that should have spilled his blood, even dismembered limbs, turned aside at the last moment, repelled by invisible forces. Brigands began to fall.

Screaming in rageand perhaps a touch of fearZarred burst from between his men, axe hurtling in an arc that might have split a healthy bole in a single blow. Draeven crouched, spinning, so that the heavy blade passed clear overhead. Halfway through the turn he rose, sword outstretched.

The bandit chieftain was fast. Instead of being spitted, Zarred yanked himself from the sword's path.

It didn't help. Draeven thrust out his empty hand, slapping it against Zarred's chest.

Spirits groaned. Zarred screamed. And then he... withered. The flesh of his arms and face shrank against the bone, his eyes dulled in sudden pain; even his hair seemed to go limp.

It wasn't lethal, whatever the foreigner had done. But the next time Draeven's hand-and-a-half came around, it plunged clean through Zarred's chest with no hint of resistance.

The remaining bandits fled so quickly their own horses might have had trouble keeping up. Khydol was gone as well, apparently having run after he'd lost his pendant.

This time, Draeven didn't bother to pursue the survivors. Instead, after looking about to ensure no more bandits remained, he wandered over to the nearest house, shoved the door open, and vanished inside.

Loursa followed. She found Draeven slumped in an old chair beside a scarred and food-stained table. He gulped deep breaths of airwhether from physical exhaustion or because of something else, she could not tell.

"Why did you let them beat on you like that?" It wasn't the question she wanted to ask; she was working up to that one.

Draeven shrugged. "I can hear the ghosts' thoughts in my mind, but they don't read mine. I have to explain what I'm asking of them. Sometimes takes longer than might be convenient."

"Who the hell are they? Draeven, what are you?"

Marcov hadn't planned on answering the questions. He never had before, and Loursa certainly wasn't the first to have asked. A curse was already squirming on his tongue.

It died unborn, smothered by a low moan deep in the recesses of his soula moan that only grew louder, more oppressive, the longer he kept silent.

"You have got to be kidding me!"

The moan became a shriek, nearly knocking him from the chair. The legs of the table began to vibrate.

"All right, all right!"

He steadied himself, only to notice Loursa staring at him. She looked as if she were trying desperately to figure out which of them had actually gone mad.

"Apparently," he growled, "they want me to tell you. No idea why, but I'm getting disgustingly used to that.

"I was a sellsword, and a damn good one. Did most of my work as part of a mercenary band, led by a

guy named Craddek. Real bastard, the kind whose own mother would travel a week out of her way to avoid. But then, so were the rest of us."

"I'd never have guessed," Loursa said dryly.

Marcov ignored her. "It was back in early '08. We hit a town called... Shit, I don't remember what it

was called. Not sure I ever knew, come to think of it. Few miles east of Saringallow, down in Isger. No war, no part of any contract. Just something we did occasionally between jobs to keep the purses full and the urges sated."

He grinned without humor as Loursa gasped and stepped back. "Not all that worldly, are you, m'lady'? Most who earn a living with steel? Not much different than the men we killed earlier. They're just the bad guys when it's your home they're hitting."

A long silence, then. Marcov, despite his fatigue, rose from the chair and began to pace. "Things got out of hand this time," he said finally. "Peasants fought back harder than we expected. Killed a couple of the boys before we subdued them. Craddek was pissed, and the rest of us not much calmer.

"We killed them. All of them. The whole town was muddy with the mess, and when we were done, there wasn't a man, woman, or child left breathing."

The color drained from Loursa's cheeks.

"The thing of it is," he continued, "being dead didn't keep them from being angry. Really, really angry.

"I don't know why they picked me out of everybody there. Maybe it was random. Maybe I killed someone special. Hell, maybe it's 'cause I was born in Ustalav; we've got a whole culture built on ghost stories. Damned if I know, and they're not talking."

He stopped at the table, leaned on his knuckles. "I remember a howl, like a hurricane, and then screams... Countless screams, echoing forever. When I woke up, Craddek and the others were long goneand I had myself a new band of traveling companions.

"I haven't lived my own life in years. They're with me constantly, Loursa. Every minute of every day, every second of every dream. They don't speak, unless it's through the bodies of the dead, but they're not shy about letting me know what they want me to do. They'll help me accomplish my assignments'you've seen them manifest their powersbut they don't evertake no for an answer.

"I wasn't in the River Kingdoms for you people. I was in Daggermark, trying to find Craddek. Keep

hoping that if I can find him and the others, kill them, just maybe the damned ghosts'll be satisfied. You want to know why I showed up here? Why I give a tarnished copper about a few towns in Touvette? Because they do. Not the first time they've gotten me involved in this sort of crap, either. Guess it reminds them of, well, them."

He looked up into his companion's face, pale as the dead of whom he spoke, and wondered briefly

what his own looked like. He'd never told the story before, couldn't even begin to separate and identify the emotions it stirred up now.

"That's who I am, Loursa. That's what I am. So you want to stand there looking horrified at me? Or shall we discuss what we can do to keep any more of Touvette's peasantry from joining the ghosts themselves?"

"I'm terribly sorry, Master... what did you say your name was?"

"Oh, you got me," Marcov said. "I deliberately didn't mention it earlier, but you've tripped me up with your clever ruse. How did I let you outsmart me like that?"

The priest's scowl deepened the already severe crags of his aged face. "Whatever. I'm afraid I haven't the slightest idea who you're"

"Must we? Half-elf. Goes by the name Khydol. Priest of Calistria."

It had been easy enough to figure out that much in the aftermath of yesterday's struggle at Alvren. Even if Zarred's corpse hadn't told them as much, the holy symbol etched into the stolen pendant was blatant enough.

Calistria, goddess ofamong other thingsretribution. So yeah, made sense that one of her priests might seek revenge on Touvette for the expulsion of the churches, especially if he or those he cared for were among the displaced. Loursa, given her attitudes toward religion in general, had been quick to accept that explanation.

Marcov was less convinced. He'd known a few Calistrians, back in his mercenary days. They could be savage when wronged, sure, but slaughtering whole villages of peasantsthat seemed a little hard, even for them. And he still couldn't help but wonder who'd warned Khydol that he and Loursa were coming.

Conflicted and uncertainZarred knew only what he'd been paid to do, not whythey'd followed the dead bandit chief's directions to Khydol's home, a ramshackle town just across the border in Pitax. Once there, they couldn't split up fast enough for Loursa's tastes. Marcov almost smiled at her eagerness to seek out Khydol through the town's social gatherings, while he took the religious tack.

It's almost as if my story made her dislike me or something.

Now Marcov stood in a slope-roofed wooden structure built more like a northern feast hall than a church. Still, it was a sight one would never see in neighboring Touvette. Rows of kneeling cushions and blocks on which to sit faced a generic shrine over which draped an array of altar cloths, each embroidered with the symbol of a different god.

It was the town's only center of worship. Marcov knew it, and the priest knew Marcov knew it.

"There's zero chance," Marcov concluded, "that you don't know a fellow priest in a flyspeck like this one. So can we just skip all the denials?"

"Yes, I know Khydol," the priest admitted, tone as stiff as his back. "We forbade him from leading prayers here. He was stirring up trouble, preaching violence against Touvette."

"Decided to do more than preach it, holy man."

"Maybe so. But I'll still" They both paused as a village matron strode through the door and knelt beside the shrine. "Still not deliver him to a thug like you!" the old man continued, his voice lowered.

Now Marcov did smile. "Sure you will."

"If you think you can intimidate me into"

"Khydol is responsible for the destruction of half a dozen villages in Touvette, and the deaths of hundreds. You live near the border; you must know how the General's knights respond to those who threaten their people."

"We're safe here," the priest insisted, though his face had blanched. "King Irovetti"

"Irovetti," Marcov interrupted, "is desperate for people to take Pitax seriously as a kingdom, rather than a den of thieves and beggars. If he were told that a nothing little community like yours was

harboring an enemy of Touvette, at about the same time the General's men showed up looking for a little payback, you think he wouldn't grant them permission to do what they want with the criminals'?"

The clergyman's jaw sagged; his hands visibly shook.

"Khydol dies either way, priest. Only question is, you want everyone else here to go with him?"

"Can I help you, miss?"

Loursa gave a tired smile as she allowed the door to swing shut behind her. "Hope so. I'm looking for a man by the name of Khydol. People tell me he frequents your establishment."

"He certainly does," Ellithir said, her grin equally friendly. "Why don't you come in, and I'll see what I can tell you."

Chapter Four: Revenge Is a Dish...

Marcov spotted the modest hut to which the priest had directed him, spent a moment invoking the

haunting spirits, and broke into a sprint. He leaped, hurling his whole weight against the shuttered window nearest the front door. Wood burst inward, splinters flyingall in utter silence, for the ghosts of that long-dead village had spread their intangible substances through the surrounding air, muting all sound.

A trio of animated skeletonsMarcov guessed they'd been chosen over fleshier undead so as to cut down on the stenchlurched and staggered from across the room. Bone fingers wrapped around cheap swords, or curled into tearing claws. The clacking and clicking probably would have been disturbing, if he could hear any of it.

Marcov spun, sweeping the legs from under the nearest corpse. Bastard sword held high, he parried a

stroke from the second, then brought the heavy pommel of the weapon down in a diagonal arc. The skeleton's collarbone shattered, causing the undead to stagger and nearly topple.

With a quick yank on the thing's opposite shoulder, Marcov removed "nearly" from the equation. The animated bones fell atop the first skeleton, pinning it down just as it tried to rise. Marcov reversed his grip and plunged the blade through both rib cages and deep into the wooden floor. Neither skeleton would be getting up anytime soon.

The third and final guardian was just clever enough to lunge, taking advantage of the intruder's newly

disarmed state. It seemed a good idea, right up until Marcov pounded the thing into a heap of splintered bone with a small end table that had been standing in a corner.

A few additional swings took care of the two pinned to the floor. Marcov retrieved his sword and continued, still wrapped in silence.

Doubtless the skeletons had been intended to scare away any potential intruders, and delay an attacker long enough for Khydol to prepare. Except Khydol hadn't heard a peep.

The cleric stood in the next room beside a makeshift shrine to Calistria, surrounded by rickety shelves

of mementoscrockery, books, children's toys, candlestickspresumably lost by those displaced during the General's purge of clerics from Touvette. The tome he'd been perusing fell open to the floor, its pages crumpling, as Marcov appeared in the doorway.

The half-elf's eyes widened at the sight of the unnaturally stealthy intruder. He raised holy symbol wrought of pewter and began to intone a prayer to his goddess.

Sorry, Marcov mouthed around a vicious grin, then raised his blade and advanced at a saunter.

He was halfway through cleaning his blade when the silence lapsed and the room abruptly filled with

the whisper of cloth on steel. A moment later, he heard the faint crunching of someone climbing in through the broken shutters.

"Marcov?"

"Next room!" he called back. "You're a little late, Loursa."

"Khydol's dead?" Her footsteps, drawing nearer the open doorway, weren't quite loud enough to mask the peculiar tone of her question.

"Dead as Aroden. Figured I'd ask him a couple of"

It was pure luck that saved him. Had Loursa arrived before the ghosts had dismissed the unnatural hush, or had his struggle with the skeletons not scattered so many chips of wood and bone, she'd have been on him with no warning at all.

As it was, Marcov heard the sudden rush across the debris and was able to hurl himself aside. The blow that would otherwise have punched through his hauberk and into his back instead left only a fiery trail of blood and pain across his ribs.

"What the hell? Loursa"

The guard kept coming, her blade thrusting as fiercely as it had against the bandits. Marcov, wincing at every blow, found himself barely able to parry despite his heavier sword.

For a moment there was only steel on steel and shuffling feet. Marcov retreated as far as Khydol's body, then leaped over it, putting a bit of distance between him and his traitorous opponent.

"So what is it, then?" he growled. "Just waiting until you didn't need me anymore to get rid of me?"

"Something like that," she told him softly.

He mumbled briefly under his breath. Then, "Lovely show of gratitude, Loursa."

Again she came at him, teeth bared in a feral snarl.

Marcov clenched his left fist. Wisps of shadow, phantom limbs invisible to mortal senses, swirled.

Khydol's body floated up into Loursa's path just as she made to step over it.

Marcov lunged, burning with betrayed fury. Flesh and bone parted, and his former companion deflated with a soft sigh before sliding from the tip of his blade. For an instant, Khydol's floating body held Loursa upright, then both corpses thumped awkwardly to the floor.

He'd actually grown comfortable, letting someone fight at his side again. Should've known better. Stupid, stupid...

Again he cleaned his sword, then leaned it aside and knelt over the bodies. He began to call upon the surrounding spirits, prepared to ask them to revive Khydol's memories long enough to get some answers...

And paused. His gaze flickered to Loursa's slackened face, a bitter spring of pain bubbling unexpectedly to the surface of his anger.

When his hand came down, he felt the ghosts moving, but it wasn't into the body of the priest he directed them.

Loursa's jaw twitched. Her unfocused eyes turned toward him.

"Why did you try to kill me?" He cursed himself for the plaintive tone he couldn't quite banish.

"Ellithir... tells me... you want to harm her, as... you have so many others. I... have to... kill you first."

"Who's Ellithir?"

"My dearest... friend."

A horrible suspicion began to crawl on millipede legs up Marcov's spine. "How long have you known her?"

"Few hours."

"Then why are you such dear friends?"

"Words. She speaks... strange, pretty words."

The brutal simplicity of the dead. Marcov rose, staggered backward until he thumped against the nearest shelves. Several dishes and other trophies fell, shattering around his feet. He didn't notice.

Loursa hadn't liked him; he'd known that from the beginning, and hadn't cared. But she'd fought beside him. She hadn't betrayed him, not intentionally. Marcov knew magic when he heard it.

And he'd killed her for it.

Marcov rubbed at his forehead and looked back at the corpse, but it was once again an empty, lifeless husk.

"I'm sorry." His voice was oddly hoarse, the words dusty from years of disuse.

Marcov slung his blade over his shoulder and stalked out into the street, his rage growing hot once more. Someone in this town knew who Ellithir was, and Marcov felt more than ready to make whoever it was tell him.

A few customers wandered the aisles of the general store when Marcov arrived. For several minutes, as he pulled goods aside and hunted for hidden secrets, the patrons stared at him in confusion. When

one of them confronted him, asking what he thought he was doing, the gaunt foreigner was only too happy to let his ghosts toss a few objects around the room until he'd sent everyone into panicked flight.

It took some doing, and nearly ten more minutes; that damn mosquito-repelling herbal smoke, which seemed to be everywhere he went in the River Kingdoms lately, had given him a right headache by the time he was through.

Finally, however, with the spirits subtly guiding him when he got too far off track, he located the hidden trapdoor behind the counter.

He was forced to duck, walking at almost a crouch down the upper portion of the stairs, until he was deep enough below the ceiling to stand straight.

The chamber was earth and soil, barely supported by sagging beams of wood. A stone-rimmed pool sat within, a granite pillar protruding from its center. Both the stink of acrid incense and a faint glow that was the cellar's only illumination spilled from a pair of braziers. Marcov saw no one else here, heard no one, but a lifetime's instincts screamed of lurking danger. Again, he began whispering to the ghosts, asking them to guide his strikes, to warn him of attack, to

The shadows at the chamber's far end shifted and lightened, revealing a slender silhouette. A voice hissed something only vaguely like words, and Marcov's sword began to glow. He heard skin sizzle even before he felt the searing pain, and threw the weapon aside with a startled shout. It scraped the

edge of the pool, settling point-first in the water. Steam hissed upward to join the clouds of incense.

Marcov ran, and not an instant too soon. A thunderous crash shook the chamber, centered where he'd

been standing. Dirt fell from the ceiling and water sloshed over the edges of the font. The burst of noise hit him like a physical blow, staggering him, making his ears ring; he could only imagine how much worse it might have been had he suffered the brunt.

Another three paces and Marcov jumped for the low ceiling. A brilliant beam of light flashed beneath him, so close he could feel the heat of its passing. Had gravity taken its normal course, his leap would not have stopped him from plummeting into the path of the ray.

He felt a phantom current wrap around his fingers and feet, holding him to the ceiling. Hanging upside down above the pool like a humanoid spider, he began scurrying sideways.

The darkened figure emerged somewhat from the gloom, revealing a golden-haired elf whose features might have been deemed soft, had they not been twisted in a rictus of anger and hate.

"Ellithir, I presume?"

She grunted an affirmation. "And you would be Draeven. You're a damned nuisance, you know that?"

"So I've been told. What's this all about?"

Ellithir didn't answer, but the flicker of her eyes toward the granite pillar was all the confirmation Marcov needed. He knew a shrine when he saw one, even if he didn't recognize the deity.

Ellithir conjures an abhorrent infestation.

"So, this is a religious thing. Just not Calistrian."

He was stalling, and he knew that she knew he was stalling, but still she answered. "Khydol was useful, as was his faith." She shrugged. "His grudge was genuine. I just... encouraged him to expand his horizons."

"To what end? All this bloodshed and suffering... For what?"

"Bloodshed and suffering is the end, Draeven! We"

Ellithir flung out her hand in the midst of speaking, clearly hoping to catch him unprepared.

Marcov hurled himself forward and leaped from the ceiling, wondering what fell invocation he'd avoided. Even as he landed, his sword flew from the pool into his waiting grasp, cool to the touch once more. He swung.

The sword crashed into a glimmering aura that sprang into life around the elf, the blade stopping inches from her skin.

Again, Ellithir screeched something that was only vaguely a language. This time Marcov recognized a wordor perhaps a name?repeated from her first incantation: Gyronna.

The elf's right eye bulged, suddenly bloodshot and grossly swollen, as if pushed partly from her skull by the rage and magic within her. She slapped a hand against his armored chest.

Agony drove him to his knees. Worse than any wound, any illness he'd endured, it felt as though something ate away at him from within.

Then something wriggled, a wet and flaccid tickle that brushed the inside of his ribs and burrowed toward his gut, and he realized that was precisely what was happening. It was all he could do not to retch, then to scream his horror until his mind was gone.

"Idiot!" Ellithir kicked him in the face, sending him sprawling. "We are a plague! We are as the worms consuming your flesh! You haven't stopped me. Even if you'd killed me, you could never"

The murdered souls that haunted Marcov could do nothing against the unnatural parasites that riddled him. But as they'd guided his limbs before, granting him strength, so did the spirits enable him to act nowmore slowly and feebly than he would have preferred, but far more effectively than Ellithir could have anticipated. He stumbled upward.

Again, the glimmering aura prevented a killing stroke.

"Remember how you fought," Marcov whispered, coughing, to the spirits surrounding him. "Remember the men who swept over you, over your families, your children. Remember how you fought..."

Wisps of nothingness swirled, blended, assumed substance and formuntil a plain longsword, chipped and battered and vaguely transparent, hung behind the elven cleric.

Ellithir gasped as the blade plunged between her shoulders, unhindered by her aura. She staggered forward, this time into Marcov's waiting grip.

A simple touch was all it took. Flesh split, blood flowed, muscles burst beneath the ghosts' fury.

Ellithir fell, first to her knees, then to one side. Ever thirsty, the earthen floor drank the growing pool of blood around her.

Marcov, too, collapsed once more, panting, shuddering in pain. "A drink and a whore if I live through

this," he mumbled, though whether to himself or the spirits was unclear. "Not necessarily in that order."

"Celcelebrating?" Ellithir's words emerged as a burbling, blood-soaked cough. "Don't. Wewe are everywhere. The River Kingdoms belong to us! The flesh is filth. The world is pain. To see is to hate. And the Hag... the Hag sees..."

A final rattle, a pinkish froth, and Ellithir was gone.

Moments later, the agony of the worms began to fade, and Marcov nearly wept in relief. He felt as though he'd just swum the Inner Sea while suckling a mewling vampire, but the worst of the pain was gone.

Then, with the image of Loursa's dead face floating before his mind's eye, he realized he was wrong. It was only the physical pain that had ebbed.

Groaning, he dragged himself upright, leaning on his sword like an old man's cane. His gaze flickered first to the strange stone shrine, then to the dead priestess at his feet.

He thought of Ellithir's dying wordsof cults like this spread throughout the River Kingdomsand the spirits stirred within him.

Just this once, maybe he wouldn't mind the job that lay ahead.