Troy Denning - The Cerulean Storm

“Come on ahead,” Sadira called. She continued to kneel, holding one hand on the rope. “My spell is more than strong enough to hold both you and your beasts.”

The merchant stared at the scintillating patch and did not move.

“I’ll go across and show him it’s safe,” Caelum volunteered.

“No, I’ll go,” said Neeva. She checked her harness to make sure both of her steel short swords were readily accessible. “With buttresses slipping from their joining holes and gold scorpions disguising themselves as something else, there’s something strange here. The merchant might be part of it.”

The warrior stepped onto the bridge and started across. With each footfall, the road swayed slightly under her weight. Through the soles of her sandals, she felt a strange, pulsing heat rising off the shimmering surface, and she understood the merchant’s reluctance to lead his inixes onto the unstable road. Even if it would support the weight of his huge wagon, coaxing the skittish draft lizards over a hot, vibrating surface would not be easy.

After Neeva had taken a dozen paces, the merchant stepped onto his end of the shimmering bridge. The inixes kept their gazes focused straight ahead and pulled the heavy wagon with no sign of spooking. As each set of wheels settled onto the road, the pathway swayed and undulated beneath Neeva’s feet, making her feel as though she were standing on water. She continued forward, thinking it wiser to meet the stranger in the middle of the link.

The man kept his eyes on the road, hiding his face beneath the broad brim of his hat. He wore a striped robe of many bright colors, though its vibrance was dulled by a gray coating of road dust. His gloves were worn and black, as were his belt and boots. The inixes behind him had silver-gray hides, which served to reinforce Neeva’s fear that this was a trap. Usually, the beasts were covered with a mottled assortment of scales ranging from rusty red to murky brown, hues that camouflaged the beasts in the rocky wastelands of Athas.

Neeva stopped at the halfway point. “Hail, trader,” she called. “Have you waited long?”

The man did not look up.

“Before you come farther, I’ll know the name of the man who wishes to pass over this bridge.” She rested her hands on the pommels of her twin swords.

The merchant continued forward, his hat shielding his eyes. Neeva drew her swords and stood ready to defend herself.

“Speak,” she ordered.

The man was now so close that she could see that his clothes were not covered with road dust, as she had thought earlier. They seemed immersed in a pale shadow, as if he were lurking in some back alley in the Elven Market. The same was true of the inixes, for Neeva could now see dim blotches of much-faded color on their hides.

“Stop and show yourself!” she demanded.

The merchant raised his arms to about chest height. Though he carried no weapon, Neeva took the gesture as a hostile one. She waited for the man to close within two steps, then raised both her short swords. The merchant threw his arms up to ward off the expected blows. She slipped one blade over his guard and slapped the hat away, baring his head.

The warrior gasped at what she saw. The man was a corpse, with a swollen tongue protruding from between his cracked lips and the hollow expression of death in his eyes. A gray pall covered his flesh, not in the fashion of his inherent color, but like a silken shroud clinging to his lifeless features.

“It’s a wraith!” Neeva yelled.

Having fought similar creatures during the war with Urik, the warrior knew instantly that she was in trouble. Wraiths had no bodies of their own. Instead, they took control of other beings, such as the corpse before her or the gold scorpion that had stung Rikus. She had even seen them animate marble statues.

The wraith launched itself at her, the corpse’s arms outstretched, and its filthy fingers slashing at her eyes. Neeva swung her second sword, twisting her whole body to increase the force of the blow. Her blade sank deep into the neck. There was a pop as the head came free, but the corpse’s momentum carried it forward. She caught the brunt of its charge on her shoulder, then dived away and rolled.

Neeva came up facing her companions. Sadira continued to kneel at the edge of the road, holding onto the rope to keep her spell activated. Caelum was just charging past the sorceress with a raised mace, while Rkard followed a few steps behind with Rikus’s sword clutched in both hands.

“Rkard, no!” she yelled.

Caelum’s crimson eyes went wide, and he spun around instantly, almost impaling himself on the Scourge as his son crashed into him. He swept Rkard off the ground and started back up the road.

A shiver rolled down Neeva’s spine as a pair of cold hands touched her neck. She raised a hand above her head and spun. As she came around, she brought her arm down and trapped her assailant’s wrists between her elbow and body.

Neeva found herself staring into a pair of sapphire eyes set into a face of ghostly gray shadow that sat upon the stump of the corpse’s severed neck. The wavering visage was that of a sneering man with a sharp chin, an arrowlike nose, and hollow cheeks.

The boy! it commanded. Although the wraith’s lips moved when it spoke, no sound came from them, and Neeva heard the words inside her head. Borys commands it!

Neeva’s mouth went dry as she realized that not only did her attacker resemble the creatures she had encountered during the war with Urik, it was one of them. Before their deaths a thousand years ago, the wraiths had served as knights in Borys’s campaign to eradicate the dwarven race. They had even fought at his side when he had used the Scourge to mortally wound the last king of the dwarves, Rkard. Now, having returned to their master’s service, they had come to destroy Rkard’s namesake and heir, her young son.

“This time, Rkard shall not fall!” Neeva yelled.

Still holding the corpse’s forearms trapped beneath her elbow, the warrior plunged the sword in her free hand into its stomach. The weapon sank deep and true, the tip driving up into the heart. Blood, cold and dark with death, oozed from the wound.

The dead thing simply raised its arms and clasped its hands around Neeva’s throat. The cold fingers sank deep into her flesh. Her temples began to pound, and she felt dizzy. Her vision narrowed to a tunnel, a hissing roar filled her ears, and her knees grew weak.

Leaving her second sword buried in her attacker, Neeva snaked her hand over one of his arms and under the other. She clasped her hands together around the pommel of her other weapon and pivoted. The motion sent the dead merchant swinging toward the side of the road, and the warrior used all her strength to pry the thing’s arms from her throat.

The corpse’s grip broke, and it soared away, tumbling over the edge of the road toward the red sands below. After the body hit, a gray shadow drifted away and began a slow rise back toward the road. The warrior watched the wraith long enough to be sure the thing would take many moments to reach her again, then turned her attention to a more immediate danger: the inixes.

The gray-mantled beasts were only a dozen steps away, scrambling forward as fast as they could pull the heavy wagon. Their eyes sparkled with gemlike light, one’s red and the other’s yellow, leaving little doubt in the warrior’s mind that the beasts were also controlled by wraiths.

Neeva turned and ran. Had the things been normal inixes, it would have been a simple matter for her to find a vulnerable spot and kill them both, even with her small sword. But, animated as they were by wraiths, the only way to stop them was by cutting their huge bodies to shreds or pushing them off the bridge, and she would need help to do either.