Erik DeBie - Ghostwalker

"I only describe what I see," said Arya.

Walker inclined his head, which registered to Arya as a blur of light.

"Perhaps," he allowed. Then he stopped walking and clutched her hand. A wave of trepidation came from him, and Arya realized she had never known Walker to be afraid.

"What is the matter?" asked Arya, worried. She could see no attackers, no spirits at all. Even the trees seemed to have vanished.

"We have arrived."

30 Tarsakh

Pulling Arya with him, Walker stepped from the Shadow Fringe into the center of his grove and the Material. He quickly became aware of two things that had changed since his last visit. The three bodies of the Greyt family rangers were gone, and the body of an unknown woman lay entwined in vines not far to the north.

"Druid Clearwater?" asked Arya wonderingly. She ran toward her.

"No, wait!" Walker shouted, but it was too late to stop the knight.

Arya knelt beside Clearwater and felt at her throat. Even as Arya confirmed that the druid rested in a magical slumber, the vines that held the druid prisoner began to twitch and sway, as though with an eerie mind of their own. Arya gasped and scrambled back from the vines that reached, fingerlike, to ensnare her arms and legs. Despite her struggling, they caught her, pulled, and dragged her to her knees.

Walker sprang to her side, the shatterspike whistling through the air as he sliced low and then high, horizontally over Arya's head, severing two thick tendrils of vines that held the knight fast. Freed for a moment, Arya managed to draw her sword and hack away at a vine that had caught her left arm. After two swings, it ripped apart and whipped through the air like a snake, recoiling from the knight.

"Back!" Walker commanded, and Arya staggered away, leaving him next to the enwrapped Amra Clearwater.

The entangling vines did not attack the ghostwalker, however-almost as though he were not there. Instead, the vines coiled snugly around Clearwater's limp form, awaiting their next target.

"Are you amused, Gylther'yel?" he called, his voice rolling across the grove. "Are you watching us from hiding, awaiting the time to strike us down?"

There came no response. Arya looked at Walker, but he waved to the knight, reassuring her.

"Have you become a watcher once more, apart from the affairs of humans?" he asked.

The grove was silent.

"Or are you afraid?" he pressed. "Afraid to show yourself, because I remind you so keenly of your failure?"

The Ghostly Lady appeared, rising from the ground in a mist, her ghostly body as insubstantial as the spirits Walker saw every moment. Afraid? she asked, her voice sounding in Walker's mind. I fear nothing.

"I have left the ghostly realm," said Walker. "Face me upon the ground of mortals."

Why, when the two of us should be gods? Gylther'yel asked in reply. When Walker said nothing, she laughed. Very well. Then her form became substantial. Arya, who had never seen her, was stunned at her golden beauty in the fading sunlight.

"You pick a fitting time to come against me, Rhyn Greyt," she said in Elvish. "When the sun of life sets and Selune rises, bringing the night in her wake. The night is our ally, a friend to all of us who dwell in darkness."

"I have come to destroy you," Walker said in the Common tongue.

Gylther'yel merely laughed. "The prodigal son has lost his way, and returns with helpless dreams of violence," she replied in kind. "You have no inkling of my power."

"Nevertheless, I have come to sweep your perversion from the face of Faerun," said Walker, drawing his sword.

"My perversion?" asked Gylther'yel. Both humans could hear the anger in her voice, anger hidden carefully behind a mask of ice. "My perversion? Have you forgotten that it was I who taught you your own perverse powers? I who returned you to life when you should be dead? If anything, we share the same corruption."

She waved at Arya, where she stood at Walker's side with her sword and shield up, but Gylther'yel addressed Walker.

"You favor the living, though you and I belong in the cult of the dead. Rhyn, you disappoint me. I had thought your mind broader than that of a mere human."

"This is my choice," said Walker.

"You merely confirm my over-estimation of your intellect," said Gylther'yel. "Humans cannot choose. Lyetha could not choose between Dharan Greyt and Tarm Thardeyn until circumstance forced her hand. Dharan Greyt could not choose between weeping for the love he had lost and vengeance against the man-and the boy-who had stolen her, until I called to him fifteen years ago. Meris Wayfarer could not choose between fear of his father and vengeance, until I ordered him to slay his father… and you, his brother."

She laughed. "Even your little pet there, Arya Venkyr, cannot choose between justice and her heart." She turned her attention on the knight, who bristled at her words. "How do you justify yourself, Nightingale of Everlund, loving a man who espouses the very darkness and murder you deny? Walker, the avenger, the assassin? Vengeance is not justice, and Walker is nothing if not a vengeful god."

Arya's mouth moved, as though to argue with the ghost druid, but she found she could not. She turned her head, shamed.

Gylther'yel smiled. Then she turned back to Walker.

"And you cannot choose between loyalties," she said. "Loyalty to she who raised you from a child, and loyalty to she who would carry your child, she whom you love." The ghost druid spat the last word.

There it was. Walker knew the words to be true. His resolution wavered and faltered, stolen by the damning accusation. Desperately, Walker opened his mouth to argue.

"Do not attempt to deny it," she added, interrupting Walker's words. "I sense the conflict within you, the struggle to raise your blade. You cannot choose. You claim to dwell in darkness, Rhyn Greyt, you claim resolve and unwavering resolution, but you dwell in ambivalence only."

"You betrayed me," said Walker as he lifted the shatterspike and pointed it toward the ghost druid. His resolution had wavered, but now anger replaced it-a long-simmering rage that had been galvanized by the sound of his blood name. "I was your guardian-and you betrayed me. I have no choice but to-"

Gylther'yel laughed aloud. "And so you allow me to make your choice for you, once again," she said. "Young fool. You have never 'chosen,' all your life-all has been as I have directed, all as I have planned. I created your vengeance, so that you would wipe the truth away. I delayed you these fifteen years so that your foes would not recognize you as the boy they had killed and reveal the truth. The weak-willed Meris was the final test-of your abilities and your loyalties-and you have passed that test. I have made you my willing tool, my dark falcon, my hunting wolf, who claims independence and cannot sense the leash that binds him to me."

It sounded so preposterous-had not Gylther'yel been the one stopping his vengeance? Had not she tried to kill him with Meris, first in the forest, then in Quaervarr? But something inside Walker, something buried in the depths of his heart, knew-hoped-it to be true.

"Why? How could you do this to me?" asked Walker through clenched teeth.

Gylther'yel assumed a hurt expression.

"Everything I have done, I have done for love of you," she said. "To strengthen you. To raise the god of ghosts you have become, Son."

"Son?" asked Walker in complete astonishment. In his heart, though, he felt that she spoke the truth. Or, rather, he prayed with every fiber of his being that she spoke the truth.

The shatterspike shook in his trembling hand and he fell to his knees. The emotions he had kept long suppressed were surfacing with terrible force. Gylther'yel was right-even as she had betrayed him, he had known that his reins belonged to her. As he thought back to every argument, he realized that she had manipulated him into his course. Gylther'yel, the stern, distant mother, controlled his every action with an iron hand and velvet words.