David Wise - Tales of Ravenloft

Sinking!

The cold wetness that surrounded his legs halfway up his thighs awoke him. He tried to step forward, but his motion only resulted in him sinking deeper into the bog. He struggled again, and sank deeper, before he realized that struggle was useless.

Jacqueline laughed evilly, loud enough to frighten the men from the town, who tried in vain to see — through an ever-thickening fog that now obscured their vision — what was happening. She stepped toward the musician, raised her hands to her chest, and her form quickly and smoothly changed into that of a rat. She squealed, the sound every bit as loud as her human laughter. Her rat form ran lightly over the scummy top of the bog; then she bit the outstretched arm of the piper until the instrument fell from his hand. She picked it up in her teeth and scurried back to the dry land surrounding the bog.

The piper screamed, but even that much exertion caused him to sink lower. He watched as the murky wetness climbed to his chest. Then he turned, expecting to see the rat, but looking at the beautiful woman again.

"I know a magical air myself," she said mirthfully," though I am certain I lack your skill. Care to hear it?"

She expected no answer and received none. She began to play, fingering the pipe as if she were a little girl with a new toy. There was no logic to the progression of the notes, no recognizable melody. Yet the notes provided the desired effect: the rats assembled at her feet.

The piper's eyes grew wide in terror, and his muscles contracted, causing him to sink to his shoulders in the clammy bog.

Jacqueline's improvisation changed slightly; higher notes emanated from the pipe now. The rats turned toward the piper. Then several hundred of them dashed into the bog. They swam, crawled, even fought each other in their overwhelming desire to find an unprotected part of the piper's hands, neck, head, and face to rip into with their razor-sharp incisors.

He screamed until his lungs could scream no more as the flesh was torn from him in tiny pieces. In his last moments of consciousness, he prayed he would mercifully sink, quickly and completely, into the bog.

Jacqueline turned to revel in the reactions of the men from the town, but in this she was cheated. They were already gone, having fled when the piper's screams ripped through the fog, and were in all likelihood already shivering in fear in their beds.

The next morning, in the relative safety of bright daylight, surrounded by guards, Burgomeister Nellak made his way to the bog to search f o r. . something. He did not really expect to find the mysterious woman — a wererat — but perhaps he would find. . something.

What he found was a sight that sickened him every bit as much as the occurrence the night before. There in the bog, the pipe pointed straight up out of the murky liquid. One of the guards reached over and attempted to pull it out, but it seemed stuck. The guard positioned himself better and pulled again with all his strength.

The burgomeister nearly retched when he realized the instrument was wedged between the clenched teeth of what was left of the piper's face.

He backed away from the grisly sight, and the guard let go. Suddenly, the air was fouled by an offensive, loathsome odor, and the vision of all those present was blurred for a few seconds by a flowing white mist. The odor passed quickly; yet the mist hovered over the river within a few yards of them.

Then a swarm of large rats charged up the riverbank toward the men. Horrified, they ran back toward town, the sound of loud, formidable, evil, female laughter echoing through their very souls.

The baby's shrieking stabbed into George's heart like a hot poker. He let himself burn with a murderous rage, knowing it was the only emotion that could stave off numbing cold fear.

Since he had begun tracking the old Vistana woman who had abducted the infant, the ranger had listened to the baby's distant wails, trying to gauge his plight. The first day the child seemed to be sobbing for the comfort of loving arms. The next day the sobs became howls of hunger, thirst, and discomfort, which continued through the night and into the following day. The third night, the fourth day, and last night, George hadn't heard a sound from the baby, although he knew he was still hot on the Vistana woman's heels. He hoped fervently that the old crone had finally given the child some nourishment, but he knew it was more likely that the baby had just grown exhausted and given up its futile crying.

This shrieking was a different sound, a terrifying sound. George didn't want to think about what the Vistana could be doing to the child; instead he wondered what kind of person would make a baby suffer so.

Less than a mile's travel after the baby had begun to shriek, the landscape started to change. The ground rose sharply and the lush forest thinned out suddenly, revealing the rubble-strewn slopes of a great mountain. The trees growing at the base of the mountain were stunted and twisted and leafless as if the wind ravaged them constantly, yet the air was still all about him, except of course for the cries of the baby. His horse Perseus began to whinny nervously and tried to shy back down the slope, a sign, George realized, that there was something unnatural about the mountain.

A strand of long black hair caught on a branch indicated to the ranger that the Vistana was climbing the slope. He looked upward at just the right moment and spied a flash of red and yellow through the gnarled tree branches — colors of the scarf the old Vistana woman wore on her head. She wasn't more than a mile ahead of him now. He had taxed all his skill and endurance in tracking her, fearful of speeding up, lest she use some wily Vistana trick to cover her trail, and fearful of slowing, lest she outrun him completely. Now, he felt, the time for careful tracking was passed. If he didn't hurry, the child could be dead by the time he reached his prey.

"Speed, Perseus," George whispered, nudging his mount into a trot, but Perseus reared up with a terrifying neigh and pawed at the air until George allowed it to turn about. The horse stood facing the wrong direction, shuddering, and the ranger knew that only the beast's training and love for its rider kept it from fleeing in full retreat. The horse was too sensible to face whatever lay up ahead and would have to be left behind. He dismounted and stroked the horse's neck.

Once the beast had calmed sufficiently, George rummaged through his saddlebags, shoving important gear into a backpack. With the baby's shrieking ringing in his ears, he began climbing the slope on foot as the sun touched the western horizon.

In the last rays cast by the setting sun, George spied the Vistana again. She halted before a great flat rock where she laid down the baby. Then she turned and headed back down the mountain slope.

George rushed forward, anxious to reach the rock before something or someone else discovered the baby. He lost sight of the Vistana and the baby as his path led through a denser patch of dead trees and the twilight descended around him. He hurried on, following the sound of the infant's frantic cries, forgetting caution completely, and not checking for signs of other crea- tures or humans who might lie in ambush.

He never saw the cudgel that swung down from an overhead tree branch and smacked him in the head.

When George regained consciousness, he was lying on his back, staked out on the ground like a sacrificial offering. The sky was gray with predawn light. He could hear the baby howling not far off, but the Vistana woman sat cross-legged beside him. Her raven-black hair framed a face lined with wrinkles, but George could see that once she had been a very striking woman. At the moment she was preoccupied laying out cards from a tarokka deck. George couldn't raise his head far enough to see the cards as they were flipped over, but it was obvious from her scowls and muttering that the old woman was not pleased with what she saw.