Bruce Cordell: Lady of Poison

Each volodni they slew allowed the menacing twigblights to move closer through the crush. They didn’t have to get too close, thoughthe ones Marrec could make out were fifteen, maybe twenty feet high. Already some were leaning out over the volodnis, seeking to lash Marrec with claws of splintered wood.

Time for the bargainer to make good, Marrec decided. He screamed out, “Queen Abiding, answer to your final agreement. Aid me.”

The sky changed instantly, as if she had been waiting for the call, just out of sight. Where before was driving rain, lightning from the thundercloud, and the sick glow of the petrified forest, there was nothing but black. Tendrils of darkness reached down from that immensity, stabbing into the boggy ground like twisting roots, but more often spearing a blighted volodni or screeching twigblight. Darkness was upon them.

The queen had come.

The void continued to descend. The Rotting Man’s blighted forces cowered and screamed. They sought to escape, but the periphery was already void, so they ran back and forth. Vainly they crawled and clambered, packed into the narrowing space like swarming flies, wailing, calling upon the Talontyr for aid. Their cries were for naught. Some attempted to flee directly into one of the walls of advancing nothingness. In that shadow they found their end.

The lowering void contracted. Sight was taken from Marrec. All sound ceased. Even the sound of the cleric’s own heartbeat was denied him. Marrec wondered if perhaps he should have heeded Ususi’s warning about dealing with demons.

Hearing returned and sight, too. The wide lane was entirely clear of blighted volodnis and twigblights. Neither the blood, the sap, nor the bodies of those already slain, nor the surging mass who a minute earlier had been intent of overwhelming Marrec and his friends remained.

Of the void, only a blot of darkness persisted, almost lost in the rain-streaked night sky, visible only as an absence when lightning streaked.

The queen spoke. “It is finished. If we meet ever again, you shall discover the fate that has befallen your foes.” Then the void, too, was gone.

The crashing thunder echoed hollowly down the lane.

“Forward, then,” urged Marrec. His voice was hoarse, rough from the fear that had sleeted through him before the darkness lifted.

No one replied. Perhaps all were feeling an emotion similar to Marrec’s. The cleric’s relief was tempered with the knowledge that they had yet even to break the perimeter of the Close, and already he had used up the one resource he had thought to unleash on the Rotting Man himself.

It would have to be his petrifying gaze, then, should he get so far, he decided. What an awful surprise it was to him that he would at last come to rely on the evil aspect of himself that he had so long sought to forget and suppress.

Their footsteps clattered on the wet stone of the lane. The tops of the petrified trees towered over their heads as they approached, the branch tips lost in the lightning-rent clouds. Marrec sighted a space between two of the great trunks wide enough to pass two abreast and moved toward the cavity.

They were in. They walked a narrowing path of mud, mold, and mulch of long-dead leaves between two great boles, each as wide and tall as a cliff face. The rain couldn’t reach into the tight space, and the sound of the thunder above was muffled. The light on Marrec’s spear tip proved the only illumination.

“This is the perfect place for an ambush,” noted Gunggari.

Marrec had entertained the same thought, yet they continued ahead unmolested. After about twenty paces, the aperture between the trees reached its narrowest, forcing Marrec to walk sideways. He shuffled forward quickly, certain that an attack was imminent, but no. The passage between the trees began to widen again.

They were through. They stepped into the Court of the Rotting Man.

The Court of the Rotting Man was a great plain encircled by petrified cliffs that towered into the sky. In truth, from within, the ring of colossal petrified trees resembled a steep caldera or crater heralding some ancient catastrophe.

When the court was the Nentyarch’s Seat, the space within the ring of then-living trees had been green and filled with garden paths that wound through groves of flowers and fields of fruit trees, watered by carefully maintained brooks that passed around daisy fields and under quaint stone bridges.

With the coming of the Rotting Man, life had moldered and gone to rot. The paths were washed-out mud tracks, smelly and home to worms and stinging flies, the fruit trees bore only blots of poisonous putrescence, the brooks were dry, and the flowers long since dead. Great holes pockmarked the Court, throwing up great mounds of fresh, muddy earth in places, lending a cemetery feel to the entire space.

Carved back into the inner surfaces of the petrified trees were scores of doors, openings, and dark windows that hinted at chambers, halls, rooms, passages, and alcoves that could lie behind them. Catwalks connected passages from tree to tree. A veritable army could dwell therein: blighted volodnis, twigblights, blightlords, prisoners, slaves, and whatever other dreadful creatures the Rotting Man kept under his sway.

The center of the Court was where all eyes were drawn. In the Nentyarch’s day there had been a simple wooden structure built from specially grown and reverently harvested hardwoods. What had changed since the coming of the Talontyr? A great mist, seeping up from the rot and mound mud hills, obscured the center of the plain.

At least the overhanging and interwoven branches of the ring of petrified trees high above sheltered most of the court from the rain, though flashes of light, rolling booms, and the occasional fall of water continued to gain entry.

Elowen pointed the tip of Dymondheart at the central mass of fog. Only by moving forward, into the mist itself, could the cloaking fog be pierced and the center be revealed. They approached it, careful to keep away from mud that seemed too deep, or cavities in the ground from which the smell of rot issued too strongly. Unfortunately, they could not entirely avoid the stench of decay, but by luck, skill, or some other agency, nothing challenged them as they approached to the very edge of the mist.

Marrec plunged into the clammy whiteness, his companions arrayed about him, and Ash tucked safely among them. The stench of rot grew more intense within the mist, though perhaps the loss of sight merely intensified the other senses. They trudged forward, Marrec hoping that he was ready for anything. Again, nothing challenged their approach through the fog.

As they walked, Gunggari opened the satchel given him by the Nentyarch. He pulled forth four vials and distributed three of them to his friends, one apiece..

Marrec looked at his, “What’s this?” though he guessed what it might be.

“The last four vials within the Nentyarch’s satchel. I perceive that we are about to come face to face with our nemesis.”

“What do these do?” wondered Ususi.

Gunggari shrugged, said, “I do not knowthese last four were written with a label containing each of our names only. I inquired of the Nentyarch what these vials represented before our abrupt departure from Yeshelmaar. He indicated that each elixir was different, but each would provide a strength best suited to the needs of its named imbiber. I presume this vial, for instance,” Gunggari indicated the one he had retained for himself, “will grant me strength of arm.” He shrugged again, “But I do not know.”

Marrec palmed the vial in his left hand, retaining his grip upon Justlance in his right. His comrades made similar arrangements.

When at last the fog began to thin, the center was finally revealed.