David Wise - Tales of Ravenloft

Annoyance pushed aside George's fear of the banshee's powers. "I'm not Jozell," he declared.

The banshee said nothing. The wind continued to howl at his back. "I'll bet I don't even look anything like this Jozell, whoever he is."

"Jozell murdered my baby," the Sad One moaned.

"But I'm not him," the ranger insisted.

"You've stolen my baby," the Sad One argued. The wind howled louder. "This baby is not yours. "George unbuttoned the top of his jerkin so the baby's face peeked out. "He's not drow. He doesn't look anything like you."

"He's mine. The Vistana left him for me."

"Well, I'm not giving him to you. You'll only murder him like all the others."

"I never harmed them. They just died."

"They just died?" George asked, disbelieving, but then he understood. "You're undead. You can't nurture some-, thing alive. You can't give the baby what he needs."

"As long as he lives, he is mine," the banshee wailed, and the wind wailed with her.

"I am not giving him to you so that he can starve to death," George snapped.

"Come nightfall, my keen will destroy you," the banshee cried.

"Then it most certainly will kill the baby. You've already paralyzed him with fear," George retorted.

The banshee was silent.

"You don't want a dead human baby," George pointed out. "And it's not me you want to kill; it's Jozell."

"Yes," the Sad One whispered. "Jozell must die for what he did to me and my baby."

"But I'm not Jozell," George reminded her. "Let me leave here, and I won't bother you ever again."

The Sad One drifted down toward George. She stared intently at the baby. "That is not my child," she hissed. "Jozell murdered my child, and he must pay. "She spun about and flew off toward the mountain. The wind died down.

Gently, George urged Perseus to turn about. The horse took a few tentative steps away from the banshee's kingdom, then, sensing a last chance, it galloped off at reckless speed.

Some hours'distance from the banshee's lair, George's right hand began to throb. Like a bug emerging from a chrysalis, his fingers began sprouting from the hand that the Sad One had maimed. The baby's legs grew back, too. George could not recall ever feeling so relieved in his life. That night, though, he dreamed he was begging in the streets of Darken with the baby beside him, his hand again a stump, while the baby had eight hairy spider legs. He woke up covered in sweat and had to check both his hand and the baby's legs to assure himself the dream was false.

The baby would not suck, paralyzed as it was, and George began to fear for the child's health. The next day he rode Perseus hard until he finally came to a church. The priest laid his hands over the baby's head and prayed. Within a minute the baby was howling and shrieking. The priest fed him with goat's milk, which he sucked down with vigor. Then he slept with exhaustion, and George slept beside him. That night, George dreamed of the banshee tossing his baby down the mine shaft onto the piles of skeletons of other babies. He woke shivering and could not sleep again until he'd lit a candle and watched the child breathe.

The dreams returned each night.

Three days later, he stood before Soldest's wife and told her all that he had learned about the baby from the Vistana Aliza. The girl looked down in shame for her husband's crimes, but she met the ranger's gaze steadily when he asked if she loved the child, and she assured him that she did.

George handed the baby over to the girl. The child was quiet in her arms, but when she set him down to pour him a bottle, he wailed until she picked him up again.

George did not speak of the banshee or her kingdom. He just said, "Your child suffered much, Lady Soldest. I ask only that you never make me regret returning him to you. I will visit when I can, to be sure he is well. When he is old enough, tell him I will always be his friend."

"I will never make you regret his return; you will always be welcome, and my son will know you are his friend," Soldest's wife assured him.

George Weathermay travels far and wide hunting evil, and many people think him fearless. Only a fearless man, they say, could survive the banshee wail of the Sad One. It is true that powers great and dark, powers beyond his ken, hold little terror for the ranger. There are everyday things, though, that stab his heart with an icy chill — seeing a master strike a young apprentice, seeing a child begging in the streets, seeing an infant's coffin, hearing a baby wail. . especially hearing a baby wail.

Then he dreams of the mad drow spirit grieving for her lost baby and of all the babies others had left for her to claim.

When George Weathermay has these dreams, he visits Darkon to check on the son of Soldest. The baby is always well; he thrives in the care of Soldest's wife. Still, George Weathermay visits Darkon often, because the world is full of wailing babies.

The only name he had ever known was Urik von Kharkov, and for a fleeting, exultant moment, he thought he had at long last gained his freedom.

In that moment he felt the life-force drain from Dakovny's body in distant Karg. He felt the grating of the stake against bone as Dakovny struggled to wrest it from his chest, felt even, for an excruciating instant, the driven blade that separated head from convulsing torso.

But in the next moment, as the flood of pain and exultation faded to a trickle, he realized that Dakovny's hateful power had not been lifted. It remained, smothering Von Kharkov's mind like a poisonous cloud, paralyzing his body until —

He screamed, more a snarl of the Beast he dared not summon than any sound that could emerge from his human throat.

But even as he screamed, he realized there was a difference, a vital difference. Yes, Dakovny's power remained, gripping him as tightly as ever it had, but there was no longer a mind behind that power. That had vanished with Dakovny's decapitation. The chain still bound him, but there was no hand to hold that chain. Not yet. Not until the one who was destroying Dakovny could complete that destruction, make it irreversible. Only then could he turn his full attention to his new slave.

With a strength born of desperation, Von Kharkov lurched into a stumbling run, forcing those grisly scenes in distant Karg into the background, demanding that his eyes, normally far keener than those of most of his other doomed brethren, focus instead on the world that surrounded him here, the dark and narrow streets of Neblus.

When finally his vision cleared, he was nearing the graveyard that marked the far end of the tiny village. He could even see — or imagined he could see — the crumbling stones that marked the graves of the parents he had never known.

A sudden longing to spend a few final moments with them, to bid them one last farewell, was almost overwhelming, but he dared not pause for even a moment, no matter how much the sudden ache in his heart goaded him. His only hope — if hope indeed existed for what he had long ago become — lay in wasting not a second. Eyes were everywhere, looking out from behind every drawn shutter, riding every invisible current of air, concealed in every natural and unnatural shadow, and any of the creatures lurking behind those eyes could become a pawn of that other creature back in Karg as soon as it turned its full attention to him. Von Kharkov could only lurch on as the forlorn shadows of the graveyard slid past, the tendrils of fog that drifted among the stones a tantalizing reminder of his still-distant goal.

Beyond the graveyard, there were no roads, no paths. Only the River Tempe cut through the shadowed landscape, and even its dank waters grew more sluggish, as if reluctant to complete their journey into —

Into what?