“Well... good then,” I said. Unusual as it was, it felt good to win one now and then. After dressing we went our separate ways. She had been busy with the architect lately; overseeing the construction of the kitchens and living quarters. I spent the afternoon helping my father. He had been working to produce a serviceable portcullis for the gatehouse.
The day passed quickly and that evening I calmly got ready for my night out. I didn’t have anything resembling proper armor but I hardly needed it with my magical shields. Instead I wore dark hunting leathers, buckling my sword on over them. I also carried a staff.
The staff warrants special attention. After discovering the secret of permanently enchanting things I thought I would try to recreate something I had read about in Vestrius’ journal. The specific details regarding what sort of staves wizards carried long ago was lost, along with the art of enchanting. Still I was drawn to the idea and I decided to try and create something similar to the descriptions I had read in Vestrius’ journal.
Supposedly the ancients had used them to channel and focus their powers to greater effect. I had no idea how they accomplished it but I tried a few things of my own anyway. The first was to enchant the head of the staff so that it would hold any spell I put there indefinitely, sort of a flexible enchantment. I could light it and not worry about maintaining the spell. Potentially I could do other things as well, but that was all I had thought of so far. The second thing I had done was encircle the entire length with a sort of hollow shell of wards and runes. I found that if I channeled my strength along the shaft I could direct my power out to much greater distances, or focus it more powerfully at short range.
Honestly I hadn’t had a need to do either so far, but I had great hopes that it would prove useful eventually. Plus it looked pretty nifty. “I’m off to save the village honey!” I shouted toward our bedroom, hoping to provoke a laugh.
“Ok, be careful,” she yelled back calmly, not even bothering to step out and give me a good-bye kiss. Obviously she had resigned herself to the situation. I stepped outside, looking around and trying to decide which way to head first. Penny showed up a moment later, walking around from the other side of the house.
She was wearing a soft gambeson and a long chain shirt. She also carried a bow and a slender sword. “Um… Penny, what are you doing?” I inquired.
“I’m going out to hunt for evil-doers,” she answered casually.
“You’re not coming with me,” I said firmly. Once in a while a man just has to put his foot down.
“That’s fine, you go that way, I’ll work my way south.” The smile on her face was positively diabolical.
I rephrased myself, “No… I mean you’re staying here.”
“Nope,” she replied.
She was missing the subtleties of my argument so I decided to try something more direct, “Shibal” I said, using a spell that should put her soundly to sleep.
Penny held up the amulet I had made her a few months previously, “Forget about something?” I had made it to protect her from mental assaults such as she had endured previously… such as I had just attempted.
“Goddammit, you’re not going out there alone!”
“Fine, you can come with me, but try not to make noise, I don’t want to scare them off,” she answered. Her attitude was one of indifference.
“This isn’t your job Penny,” I said stubbornly.
“Like hell it’s not! You may be the damned Count, but I’m about to be your wife. If you are responsible then I’m in this just as deeply as you are. Now you can go your own way or we can go together… what’s it going to be?” she said with resolve. She could be really beautiful when she was determined, but don’t tell her that, she’s hard enough to deal with already.
In the end I let her come with me. There really wasn’t any alternative, other than tying her up, which I did briefly consider. We headed north of the village, since all the missing persons had lived on that side, and found a nice quiet spot in the forest. Once we got under the trees the darkness intensified; neither moon nor the stars could be seen.
“Oof!” Penny had just tripped over a root and almost went down in a sprawl. I stifled the urge to laugh. I could have provided light but I had the wonderful excuse that we were trying to avoid tipping off our quarry. My magesight gave me a distinct advantage in the dark.
“Stop it,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re laughing at me… I can tell,” she answered.
“I was just wondering how you’re going to see to shoot that bow if something happens.” It was so dark there weren’t even shadows. She declined to answer so I dropped the subject and we kept walking. Soon enough we had reached my spot.
It was a location without anything to recommend it. There was nothing particularly comfortable about it, but it was in a place where, by stretching my senses I could cover most of the area that had lost people. We sat down, back to back and I began to relax. The art of sensing a large area requires a lot of effort, but most of that goes into not tensing up. I had to calm myself and let my mind expand, feeling as much as I could around me.
The first hour was the worst, after that we both gave up thinking about our daily lives and it got easier. I wasn’t sure but Penny might have gone to sleep. There really wasn’t anything else for her to do, and nothing could sneak up on us as we were. I could feel a field mouse moving around half a mile away.
Another hour drew slowly by and I began to wonder if this would be a repeat of the previous night. My thoughts were drifting, but my mind was still alert. If anything had moved I would have felt it, but I had no idea what I was looking for… I would learn that later. Penny had begun snoring, which probably hid the sound of its approach. Even if she had been silent I’m not sure I would have noticed. It was very quiet.
The first indication things were not as they seemed was the sound of a twig snapping not five feet behind me. The sound would not have been so surprising, except I knew there was nothing there, no animals, no life at all. I came awake suddenly and then I felt it, an absolute emptiness. It was as if something had carved a void in the air behind me, a place where nothing existed.
I stood and whirled about, the darkness was absolute so my eyes were useless; yet I could feel the empty place with my extra senses. I reached for my sword but a hand grabbed my arm. It went through my shield as if it didn’t exist and when it touched me the world changed. Everything vanished... my sight was gone, and I could sense nothing but a vast void drawing me in. It was absorbing the light within me, and crushing the light from the world as well. A few moments longer and I would have been lost.
Something knocked me sideways, breaking the contact, and the world rushed back in at me. I could sense Penny there, grappling with something so black my mind could not reveal it, something that was sapping her energy. Her life force wavered in front of me, being drawn rapidly away, like a candle guttering in a strong wind.
“Lyet,” I spoke, conjuring a ball of light, and then I could see it. In the stark light I saw Penny struggling with Sadie Tanner. Ordinarily Penny would have easily overpowered the smaller girl, but now her strength was waning quickly. Whatever this thing was, it was a mockery of the girl we had known. It looked like Sadie, but the emptiness revealed by my magesight made it clear that she was nowhere within the creature we faced now.
“Sadie?” Penny exclaimed.
“I don’t know what that is… but it isn’t Sadie,” I yelled back, and then I continued in Lycian, “Stirret ni Pyrenn!” A line of fire lanced from my outstretched hand. I had learned to focus my power in such a way that it would burn a hole through the thing... yet my fire disappeared the moment it touched the thing.
Sadie, the thing, whatever it was… looked at me then, a hideous grin on its face. With a shove it threw Penny back six or seven feet, to strike a tree, and then it reached for the ball of light I had created. As it touched my spell the light vanished, winking out as suddenly as it had appeared. I felt
a sense of shock. This thing, whatever Sadie had become, consumed my magic as quickly as I had summoned it.
I drew my sword and lashed out at her even as the light disappeared. I hoped cold steel would do what magic could not. I felt the blade meet resistance and then it passed onward. Stepping back I conjured more light. My eyes were wide now; fear had replaced my confidence.
The new light showed a hideous scene; Sadie Tanner’s body lay in two parts upon the ground, both still moving, struggling to reach me. I tried another fire spell and it disappeared as quickly as the first. The moment my magic touched the grotesque thing on the ground the fire winked out of existence. “Penny! Are you ok?” I called.
“Yeah, I just hit my head,” she answered, sounding tired and disoriented.
I moved toward her, making a wide circle around the creature still writhing on the earth. “I think we found it,” I said. What an understatement… it had found us. A thought occurred to me and I checked my blade. To my relief the magic within it still glowed in my sight. Why hadn’t it been extinguished as well? This shit just keeps getting weirder, I thought.
I reached Penny and ran my hand over her, making sure she was still in one piece. As a precaution I examined the landscape around us with my mind, and this time I was looking for holes, empty places where nothing existed. Finding none I began to relax. “I think this is the only one,” I said to Penny.
“You don’t sound so sure of yourself,” she replied.
“I’m not. That thing walked up on us without me sensing anything.” I created several more globes of light, spacing them around us at a distance of ten yards each. We wouldn’t be surprised again, and then I started thinking.
I took a moment to methodically cut Sadie’s body into several more parts, separating arms and legs from the rest of her. There was very little blood, and what did seep forth from the severed pieces was thick and black, like old blood that has already begun to congeal. My sword still showed no sign of being affected by her ability to consume magic. I tried my staff as well, poking the torso, and its enchantments were unaffected as well, yet when I conjured a light globe near the body it went out like a lamp that had been doused. Maybe it has something to do with the structure of enchantments, I thought. To test my theory I set a light within the head of my staff, where it would be held by my variable enchantment, and then I touched the torso with it.
Nothing happened, the light persisted; whatever it was, it could eat magic, but not enchantments. I could only guess that the rigid structure that contained their magic also protected them from being absorbed like my normal spells had been.
Penny spoke up, “As interesting as this thing is, we can’t leave a bunch of twitching body parts lying around here.” I loved her pragmatic nature.
“Alright, I have an idea,” I replied. I gathered up some dead wood and leaves, piling them around the still moving body parts. Using my power I set the makeshift pyre ablaze, till the wood was burning brightly. The fire consumed the flesh that lay among the wood, and what magic couldn’t accomplish normal fire did. We continued to add fresh wood until there was nothing left of Sadie Tanner’s body. I learned an interesting lesson that night… it takes a lot of wood to burn a body completely to ash.
“What was it?” Penny asked while we watched, but I didn’t have an answer. With more questions than answers we headed back home, too tired to do more that night.
Chapter 2
The sun rose entirely too early. I wish I could have found the fellow who arranged that, he obviously had a poor sense of humor. Despite our late night Penny and I both woke not long after the sun came up. I think we were both anxious.
Sleep and some early morning thinking convinced me that there had to be more of those things out there. To begin with, Sadie hadn’t been like that before she disappeared, and something had to have taken her. If something similar had happened to the others that meant there were at least three more of those things out there… that we knew of. It was a chilling thought.
The only good news was that no one else had been taken, though I felt sure that there would have been, if we hadn’t encountered the creature first. Penny and I discussed what had happened but neither of us could understand it. In the end we decided to keep it to ourselves to avoid a panic.
I wrote two letters, one to the Duke of Lancaster, detailing everything that had happened, the second I addressed to Dorian. I hoped he would be free to come stay with us for a while, if magic wasn’t effective against this new creature his sword would certainly be more useful. After that I went looking to see if I could find a farmer or someone heading toward Lancaster.
As things worked out there wasn’t anyone planning a trip that day, but I ran across Joe McDaniel and he offered to go if it was urgent. Joe was a transplant from Gododdin, the neighboring kingdom. He didn’t talk much about his past, or his reasons for leaving, but I gathered it must involve the change in government there.
Technically Gododdin wasn’t a kingdom anymore. The royal family had been thoroughly exterminated some time before I was born and the country was now a theocracy, controlled by a cult known as the Children of Mal’goroth. Joe had never had anything good to say about them.
“I don’t mind going for ya Lord Cameron,” he told me, “I was planning to go in a few days anyway, to order a new cask of ale.” Joe was working to build a tavern, the first Washbrook had ever seen. At the moment it consisted of a few benches scattered around his house where he sold beer in the evenings. Being a beer enthusiast myself I had thoroughly supported his efforts.
“Thanks Joe,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. Once he had gone I began walking toward my father’s smithy. Someday soon I was going to have to start hiring a staff of some sort, such as regular messengers. It was quickly becoming apparent that I could no longer do everything myself anymore.
“You looked troubled son,” my father commented after I came in. He was a quiet man, which might be why he was so perceptive.
“There was trouble last night,” I explained, and then I told him what had occurred the previous evening. I also described the creature’s effect on my magic. Dad didn’t have any magical talent of his own but he was very intelligent and I had come to appreciate his advice when I had been testing different ways to enchant things.
My story alarmed him, but you would have had to know him to tell. He had always been a difficult man to read. Rather than spend his time talking about his worries, he moved on to practical matters. “Looks like we have a lot of work to do,” he said and then he walked over and drew out the stack of sheets he used when he was planning a design for something.
Naturally I was curious. “You’ve already got an idea?”
“You said when it touched you everything went black right?” he replied.
“Yes.”
“But… Penny was still able to fight it,” he reminded me.
Damn! I hadn’t thought of that. The merest touch had rendered me insensible, but although it had been steadily drawing her life out she had retained the ability to struggle.
He went on, “And it wasn’t able to draw the magic out of your enchantments, like the sword.”
At last it came clear to me. “The amulet! It must have protected her mind even while the creature was sucking the life out of her.” That thought had a lot of implications; it meant I had a way to protect people, at least partially. Penny’s amulet wouldn’t have saved her life, but people would be much more difficult to prey upon if they weren’t immediately paralyzed at the first touch of these creatures.
“Not just the amulet Mordecai, you could enchant your clothes, or armor, to more fully protect yourself. Anything to keep them from touching you,” he replied.
“There’s no way I could enchant enough armor or whatnot for everyone in the village, it would take years!” I argued, for the thought was daunting.
“Not them! For you boy! If something happens to you, none of us will be able to protect ourselves.” He gave me a look that spoke
volumes, “You’ve got to start thinking like a lord and less like a footman, you’re important now.”
I didn’t completely agree with him on that, but in any case there was no way we could afford to produce armor for everyone. Besides, no one could work, farm, cook or anything else while wearing armor all day. The idea was ludicrous, but I still wouldn’t give up on the idea that we could do something for them. “Alright, I agree with you to a point, but we’ve still got to do something for the people.”
“If I could make enough amulets...”
“You did that in silver and I’m not really set up for that sort of thing, not if you plan to make dozens,” he responded.
“It doesn’t have to be silver; we could do them in iron.”
“That makes it easier, still it will take quite a bit of time, and the shape of it was very intricate. Could you change the shape?” Royce asked.
“Only if we engraved it instead, the symbols are the important part. When I made Penny’s I made the entire pendant from the symbols before I infused it,” I replied. I knew my father didn’t have the right tools to do intricate engraving.
“Hah! I have it,” he exclaimed. My hopes went up, for when my father set his mind to something he always found a way.
“What?” I asked.
“If you can borrow Penny’s amulet, we’ll make a mold, then we can cast as many as we need. How long does it take for you to do your magicking?” Royce waved his hands around comically while swaying side to side as he said this.
I gave him a hard stare, but inwardly he had me smiling, “Not long, maybe half an hour each if they’re already formed.” After that we got busy, though I had to do some talking to get Penny’s necklace away from her, she seemed to think I planned to take advantage of her. I had no clue where she would have gotten an idea like that.
Dad set things up and assured me he would have the molds ready in another day or two, after that he would be able to make them faster than I could enchant them. I worried it might not be soon enough.