David Drake - The Gods Return

He laughed again. "Wisdom!" he said. "But Hutton knows better now, eh?

He thought he'd return to his body in three days. He'd rule the waking world, he thought. Rule the waking world indeed! But you broke the spell and freed the ghoul when you cut Hutton's soul away from his body." Ilna held strands of yarn in her left hand. She could plait a pattern that would direct her next action. She wouldn't be able to see it, but she didn't need to see fabric to understand it more clearly than an educated person like Garric would gain from a long written description. On the other hand, there was another way which might provide more information still. "Master Usun," she said, "I want to get out of this cave before the ghoul or something worse comes back."

She coughed. "And if there's water that's safe to drink here," she added, "I'd like to find that even sooner." "We'll have to dispose of the ghoul in order to get out, but we'd want to do that anyway," said the little man with an enthusiasm Ilna didn't share. "The first thing we'll do is scout the territory. You say that he carried off Hutton's body?" "Yes," said Ilna, frowning as she considered the matter. "I don't think the light here is good enough for him to see my patterns clearly. If we can build a fire, though, I can hold him while you hamstring him with a dagger or whatever from the floor here." "A bold plan and a clever one, Ilna," Usun said, "but you're wrong about being able to hold the ghoul. You think he's a beast, do you not?" "Of course he's a beast," Ilna snapped. "I just watched him bite a man's face off. The fellow deserved to have his face eaten, but that doesn't make the thing that did it any less of an animal. And I've held other creatures, bigger ones, while Ch-ch… while my companions killed them." "The ghoul, as he now is…," Usun said quietly. He was standing upright with the long filament a shimmering coil in his right hand. "Was a wizard in a former age, Ilna. A very powerful wizard, and that age was longer ago than even I can count. He tried to defeat death through his art and thought he had, but…" He laughed. His glee had a cruel undertone, though Ilna didn't suppose she was one to complain about someone taking pleasure in the ill fortune of an enemy.

And the ghoul was certainly no friend of hers. "By trying to cheat death, he made himself a thing of death," Usun went on. "I wonder if he still thinks he won, eh? For thousands of years he's eaten the dead that are given to him, so that he won't come to the surface to hunt the living. He's not to be held by wizardry, Ilna. Not even by such great wizards as ourselves." Ilna scowled in disgust. "He's human, then?" she said, just to be sure. Usun hadn't said that in so many words, and it might make a difference. "He's as human as I am," Usun replied. He cackled again. "Oh, that's a fine joke, eh? But-" He looked up at Ilna. She didn't need to see his expression to be able to imagine it clearly. "The past doesn't matter, eh?" he said. "What matters is now, and we're going to hunt him down and end his little games, yes? Because he's in our way, and because we're great hunters, you and me." Ilna sniffed. She looked upward again. Though her eyes were adapting to the blue glow, she still couldn't see the roof of the cave. Nor would it have helped if she could. "Well, Ilna?" the little man said. "There are swords here. You can take one." "I don't have any use for a sword," Ilna said. She reached into the darkness and found the loose tangle of the rope she'd been lowered by. She coiled it in quick loops, each one precisely the size of all the others. "All right," she said. "I don't think we'd gain by waiting here and hoping that the stone rolls itself back, so we may as well hunt this ghoul."

"Oh, yes, thegreatest hunters!" said Usun. He trotted toward the source of the glow. Ilna followed taking one stride for three of his. *** Cashel blinked. They'd stepped from Dariada into a rocky canyon suffused with smoky yellow light. The air was hotter than what they'd left in the sunlit square, and sulfur bit the back of Cashel's throat with each breath. He stepped clear of the two women and spun the quarterstaff as he checked all directions. His butt caps trailed blue wizardlight, piercingly bright in this yellow dusk. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck were already prickling at the presence of wizardry. There were goats, which didn't matter. They were herded by things that weren't goats andsure weren't human. "Are those demons, Rasile?" Liane asked calmly. She'd slung her satchel behind her and held the knife ready in her hand. Cashel hawked up phlegm and spat toward a bristly growth that might be grass. Anything wet must be welcome in this place. Besides the maybe-grass, there were bushes that looked a little like the century plants he'd seen on Pandah before the Change, and there were full-sized trees farther up the cliffs. Those last were tall but spindly, and instead of leaves they had clumps of spines. "They think of themselves as human beings, Liane," the wizard said. "They would be as bad as demons if we could not protect ourselves, but the same is true of many of those you consider human beings. Or I do." The creatures had four legs with sharp hoofs, and the hands on their two arms had as many fingers as a sea anemone.

Their bodies seemed to be covered with horn like insects, but when Cashel stared at the nearest one, it flattened against the rock wall.

It was light gray when he first saw it, but squeezed onto the rock it took on a mottled yellowish pattern that made it hard to see even though he knew it was there. Hooting in high-pitched voices, a handful of the creatures came toward Cashel and his friends. They leaped over the rocks and bobbed their necks up and down. Each of them probably weighed as much as Liane, but their heads were small for the bodies and sort of wedge-shaped the way a possum's is. They didn't seem to have weapons; but there was a lot of them, if they knew what they were doing. "Tell me if something comes from the back!" he shouted to the women as he stepped between them and the little demons. Funny. The goats seemed normal enough, but Cashel had never seen anything that looked like the creatures tending them. He kept the quarterstaff spinning, but he was picking which of the creatures to strike first and who to pop next and next. You didn't go into a fight swinging wildly, not and expect to win; and Cashel always expected to win. The demons clacked to a halt well out of the quarterstaff's reach; their hooves on the rocks sounded like gravel spilling down the sloping face of the seawall at Barca's Hamlet. They even stopped hooting, though they whispered to each other and sometimes waved their hands. Had they just been bluffing when the charged? "We come as friends, People of the Valley," Rasile called. "We come as allies." "You come to prey on us!" shrilled the midmost of the group that'd rushed Cashel a moment ago. "The Lord preys on us daily!" another demon said. "You will join him and eat us all up!" Cashel could hear the words clear enough, though it sounded like the demons were whistling instead of speaking.

They didn't have lips that he could see. The goats, white-faced with dirty gray hides from the neck back, went on with their business of scraping a meal from this rocky waste. Cashel didn't like goats, but they seemed to make a living here and he'd never known a sheep that'd could've done it. He hacked again, though he didn't spit; he might need the moisture soon. The back of his throat felt like somebody'd taken a wood rasp to it. "We've come to free you from the Lord,"

Rasile said. "In exchange you will guide us to the tomb of the hero Gorand." Cashel took a quick glance and saw that Liane was keeping an eye on what was happening behind them. Nothing was, but he was glad for her doing that. He really wanted to keep his eyes on the nearest group. "You are lying to us, demon," the leader of the, well, demons said. "They are lying," said the other four in chorus. "They come to prey on us, like the Lord does." "Our race is at an end," the leader said. "No one can defeat the Lord." A descant of high voices keened, echoing faintly. All of the demons in the valley were howling like their children had died. There were more of them than Cashel had imagined at first; it was only when they moved that he could tell them from the rocks. "No one can defeat the Lord!" the leader repeated. "We will all be eaten by the Lord and these new demons come to plague us."