Paul Kemp: Realms of War

The shadows swarmed over her. Menace and cold chilled her. She screamed at their touch, felt it pulling the life from her flesh, turning her cold. She curled up, placed her hands over her stomach, over her child, and wished that she were somewhere safe, anywhere where she could raise her child in peace and light.

Brennus stared into his scrying lens. Shadows leaked from his flesh.

"Where did she go?" one of his homunculi asked, peering into the scrying lens.

The other sagged with disappointment. "They were going to kill her."

"What happened to the flowers?" said the first.

Brennus shook his head and watched the meadow for a few moments more. Every flower in the glade was black, wilted, dead, and the woman was gone.

The shadows wheeled about in frustration, then darted off.

Puzzled, Brennus cast a series of divinations through his scrying lens, thinking that perhaps the woman had turned invisible or otherwise masked her presence. But no, she was gone. He tried to refocus the eye of his lens on Varra, wherever she'd gone, but the lens showed only gray.

"How?" he said.

Both homunculi shrugged.

Brennus turned the scrying lens back on the meadow and studied it for a moment. He pulled the darkness around him, let his mind feel the correspondence with the darkness in the meadow, and transported himself there.

He materialized at the edge of the meadow. The dead flowers crunched under his boots. Were the flowers somehow involved in the woman's escape, or were they killed as a side effect of whatever magic the woman had used? A divination revealed the residuum of powerful magic, but he could not determine its nature. He attempted a magical trace to deter shy;mine where she might have fled, but the spell showed him nothing.

"Where are you, woman?"

He could not leave the question unanswered. He spent the next hour scouring the surrounding forest, the meadow, casting one divination after another. He found nothing until one of his minor spells showed the faint glow of-

"There is something buried there. Retrieve it."

His homunculi squealed, leaped from his shoulders, and fell over each in their effort to please him. Both tore through the dead flowers, the soft dirt, until they pulled something from the ground.

"Mine!"

"Mine!"

They pulled at the small, dirt-covered item-a chain perhaps, or a necklace.

"Enough," Brennus said, and took it from them.

The homunculi stuck their tongues out at each other.

Brennus saw that they had indeed unearthed a necklace, coated in the sediment of years, probably something dropped accidentally by some elf or traveler. He whispered the words to a minor cantrip to clean the piece, and when it lay exposed in his hand-a platinum necklace with a large jacinth charm-it chased from his mind all thoughts of Cale's woman.

"Pretty," one of his homunculi said, as it climbed back to its perch on his shoulder.

Shadows swirled around Brennus, his own personal Shadowstorm. He could hardly breathe. "It was my mother's."

He turned over the charm and saw there the inscription: For Alashar, my love.

"How did it get here?" the homunculi asked in unison. He closed his hand over the necklace. "I do not know." But discovering things was his gift.

The Year of Monstrous Appetites (-65 DR)

Weasel was going to die. And he was going to die sniffling.

He hated that.

He stared his hatred at the yellow pollen that drifted in lazy circles below him as he hung, face down, a quick-pace above the ground. The stinktrees were in bloom again, filling the air with a stench sharp as cat urine. He wished he had a hand free to grind into his itchy, weeping eyes. The pollen dusted his beardlocks and tickled his nose like flung pepper, clogging it with a constant, snuffling drip.

At least he couldn't smell the blood.

A hand grabbed his forelock and wrenched his head up. The Ghostwise cleric known only as "The Beast," his face blotched white with skull paint, inspected the magic-negating symbol painted on Weasel's forehead. The pelt of a dire wolf draped the cleric's head and shoulders; empty paws dangled against his scar-gnarled chest. Sweat trickled lines through the splashed blood that had congealed on his body.

The Beast gestured at the line of six trophy heads, impaled on stakes. "Your warriors have been winnowed. Malar has taken them."

Weasel almost laughed. His warriors? Weasel was a mere scout-the army's favorite boot-out boy. Barely a sword-slogger; nowhere near being a sergeant.

"'Taken' them, has he?" A dribble escaped one nostril; Weasel snuffled it back in, priming his nose for a shot. "Then he'd better give 'em back. The Stronghearts don't like thieves; if they catch Malar, they'll strip him and dip him."

He trumpeted air out his nostrils, sending a wad of snot flying at The Beast's blood-caked feet. It missed by more than a quick-step. Flies stirred lazily, then settled again.

The Beast's eyes narrowed. "Do not mock the Beastlord."

"Or what?" Weasel sneezed. Snuffled. He twisted to get a look at the thongs that stretched from his wrists and ankles. They held him suspended at the center of a ring of human-high, claw-shaped stones. His hands and feet felt hot and numb; the raw leather thongs had dried tight. "No, wait. Don't tell me. I'll be strung up in the jungle and left to dry, right?" He rolled his eyes. "No, silly me-you've already done that."

He snorted out another wad of snot; this time, it landed next to The Beast's broken-nailed toes.

The Beast shifted his foot aside. He squatted down, one hand still tight around Weasel's forelock. His fingertips bulged, nails turning to claws. His breath was rank, like a dog's. "Take a good long look at your warriors," he breathed. "Tonight, you'll join them. This is the evening of the High Hunt-the only reason you are still alive. Tonight, we hunt."

"'We?'" Weasel sneezed. "Why, I'm flattered. But if it's just the same to you, I won't stick around for supper."

The Beast bared file-point teeth in a snarl. He stood, releasing Weasel's forelock. "Try to please Malar; give us a good chase."

Weasel flipped the forelock out of his eyes. "How much of a head start should I give you?"

The Beast roared with laughter. Leaves quivered; a bird screeched and flew away with a burst of orange wings. "Well spoken! A jest worthy of the Trickster!"

"Cut me down, and I'll dig up a sapling for you."

The Beast laughed again-even he, it seemed, knew the tale of Kaldair and the Toppled Tree.

It was Weasel's favorite tale, the one that had always earned him a seat at the Stronghearts' ale tables. Kaldair the Trickster, disguised as a halfling, had challenged Vaprak, god of ogres, to remove a tree from the ground without tearing its roots. Vaprak had torn out one mighty ebon tree after another, damaging them all; Kaldair had dug the tiniest of saplings out of the ground. As a result of Kaldair's victory, the ogres had been banished to the Toadsquat Mountains ever after.

The Beast drew one of his bone-handled daggers from a wrist sheath. "You're strong, for a spriggan." Serrated steel winked red in the ruddy sunlight as dusk settled deeper upon the jungle. "Let's see how strong." The Beast stepped over a taut-stretched thong and walked to Weasel's feet. He teased the tip of the blade along the rough sole.

Weasel braced himself for the slice and the aching rush of blood that would follow. Steel flashed. Weasel involuntarily bucked..

The thong holding his left ankle parted with a snap, and his foot thudded against the ground. Tingling fire streaked into his toes as sensation returned.

The Beast moved to his other leg. "Survive the night. ." slice, twang, thud "and I'll spare your life-I swear it, by Malar's blood." He moved to Weasel's right hand. "But if my Hunt runs you to ground before the sun has risen…"