Bruce Cordell - Lady of Poison

“Yes, the time has come to face the Rotting Man, even here in his place of power,” Marrec told Gunggari, but loudly enough to address everyone. “With Ash at our side, I believe we have a chance.”

“One moment, though,” cautioned Gunggari. He looked over to Ususi. “What of her? She met the vampire’s gaze. She could be under the blightlord’s influence.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” barked Ususi.

“It’s not idiotic to enumerate our weaknesses prior to battle.”

Ususi responded, “No simple glance by a blightlord can suborn my mind; I am stronger willed than that. She merely caught me off guardhad I been any less strong, yes, she might have had me. What you perceived as weakness was in fact my fighting off her insidious instructions. I’m happy to note that I was successful.”

Gunggari studied the mage, no expression crossing his face. Marrec knew the Oslander well enough to interpret the look. Gunggari didn’t trust Ususi’s words.

Marrec shrugged. Before Lurue’s absence, he had access to spells that might have cleansed any taint potentially remaining from the vampire’s gaze. He said aloud, “She seems fine.”

That earned him a quick smile from Ususi. Of course, he mentally vowed to keep an eye on the mage, too.

“It is time to beard th’e Rotting Man in his lair,” said Marrec. “Everyone ready?”

Great plazas and wrecked temples devoted to demonic powers lay half-buried in the boggy forest that covered all. Stone, cracked and broken into numberless pebbles, littered the expanse, hinting at tumbled statuary, building facades, and other structures. Only ruinous heaps remained of what was once a grand avenue, overgrown with forest plants. There was an arch that still stood, but it looked upon an empty cinder, flooded with foul water. Stagnant pools floated a detritus of wreckage and age-old destruction, but despite the growth, the crumbled grandeur, and encroaching marsh, the outlines of a once-great city were clear, visible despite the lowering twilight.

Elowen took the lead, but Marrec paced at her side. She had once walked these very streets, before the Rotting Man took possession of the Nentyarch’s guardian fortress at the center of Dun-Tharos. Her knowledge allowed them to find a dry path over the half-drowned streets.

As they trudged along, alert to every shadow, Elowen volunteered, “The Nentyarchs ruled from the forest castle at the center for nearly six hundred years, preserving the Rawlinswood from the encroachment of human kingdoms that sometimes sought to loot the Nar conjuries.”

Marrec commented, his voice quiet, “A strange place to choose as a druid capitol.”

“Perhaps, but the Nentyarchs believed that the ruins of the old Nar capital remind us of humanity’s ability to wreak harm on nature. On the other hand, the forest that encompasses the city offers an example of what might be accomplished with patience, strength, and belief in the sanctity of nature.”

“Hmm.” Marrec didn’t know if the elf hunter offered wisdom or an excuse. Before he could formulate his thoughts into something more politic, his eye caught movement high above the trees.

“Say, what’s that?” Marrec pointed to a darkness growing in the sky. Light was fading too quickly to be the natural fall of night. It almost looked like…

“A thunderhead,” said Elowen. “The cloud is forming unnaturally quickly, and unless I’m turned around, it is above the Close.”

Lightning flashed within the boiling thunderhead, as it continued to grow and expand outward in all directions. The smell of rain, mixed with something foul, gusted across them.

Gunggari said, “The Rotting Man knows we are coming.”

Marrec couldn’t gainsay his friend’s conclusion.

They passed down a ruined street, dotted with pines and potholes, between gaping buildings missing doors, windows, and in many cases ceilings and even walls. Then they turned down a wide lane. Before them, not more than five hundred yards by Marrec’s estimate, was the Close.

It was as if the largest trees ever to grow naturally in the world were all gathered together in one place, trunk to trunk, in a great ring. From their perspective, and with the failing light, Marrec couldn’t know the diameter of that ring, but he guessed that the great trees encompassed a circle at least half a mile in diameter.

The great trees were bare of green leaves or needles, seemingly dead. Worse than dead, they were gray and stony, petrified. But they swayed in the rising wind as the thunderhead above began to make its presence known. Or was their movement controlled by some deeper malevolence?

“That bastard,” said Elowen, looking upon the petrified trees, a tear on her cheek.

With a flash of lightning and a crashing clap of thunder, a driving rain emerged from the belly of the black cloud. Marrec and his friends were instantly drenched in the water, which smelled stagnant.

The weakening light revealed that the great fortress of dead trees had a glow all its owna faint greenish phosphorescencenot the green of living things, no, but instead the essence of gangrene itselfgreenish black, pustulant, and pulsing. Thus, even with the arrival of night and through the mist produced by the driving rain, Marrec was able to see the forces that began to stream from the Close.

He had thought the great petrified trees were fused together, but there must have been enough space to navigate between them. Like cheese squeezed from a colander, lines of figures squirmed from between the trunks. The figures, once free of the Close, massed and moved down the lane toward Marrec and the others.

The cleric noticed that the ruined buildings on either side, too, were disgorging ungainly figures. There were hundreds of figures closing upon them at a dead run, with dozens more appearing each second.

Marrec took a pace forward. Gunggari stepped up to Marrec’s left, but a pace behind. Elowen remained to his right, also back a pace. Ususi remained directly behind Marrec, but with space enough between to shelter Ash. In that way, they encircled the girl.

As they rushing forms grew closer, Elowen said, “Volodnis. They’re all rot-touched, like those we fought in Lethyr.”

It was as Elowen said. A tide of blighted volodnis threatened to flow over them, and the rain continued to fall, cold and uncaring.

The blighted volodnis were worked up. They hissed, shouted, and stamped their feet. They broke upon the defenders like a tide, but Marrec held steady. Justlance’s tip became a silver flame in his hand like a thunderbolt, a veritable rod of death to every volodni who opposed him. Marrec slew them as fast as they approached. To his right, he saw Elowen make a similar impact with Dymondheart, save when she slew, the volodnis’ rotting bodies took flame with purifying fire. To his left, Gunggari laid about him, dispatching foes with his sap-spattered dizheri. Behind him, he could hear the continual chant of Ususi, bolts of magical fire laying volodnis lowsometimes one, sometimes several at once.

They advanced. Through the flashing lightning and implacable rain, the silhouette of the Close loomed larger.

They fought, they cursed, and they slew, and the tide continued to part, and a trail of the dead grew behind. Larger shadows begin to stir on the outskirts of the fight, which in a flashing dazzle of lightning were revealed as reinforcements for the enemytwigblights. Marrec realized that the Rotting Man must know the secret of their animation even without the aid of Anammelech.

The cleric shouted above the thunder, “We can’t fight both volodnis and twigblights and hope to win.”

Ever economical in wielding his dizheri, the Oslander took a moment to shrug, which became the initial move of a dramatic swing that laid two volodnis low.