Briardark, page 23
‘That shows her cunning,’ the scholar replied. He stared intently at the tapestry. ‘She did try to kill me, but the talisman thwarted her. But she finished the image.’ He pondered the problem a moment, then nodded to himself. ‘The thread looks the same, but there are differences in technique. Oh, so very clever of her. Another effort to throw me off the track by finishing my picture. See, she’s even used the same thread, but the weave is different.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘A different needle! It’s the needle she uses that works the spell.’
Samuel took the tapestry from Aaric and tossed it into the fire. ‘We’ll burn it and prevent her from doing any more harm. Maybe the templars won’t–’
Aaric shook his head as he watched the flames consume the cloth. ‘The needle’s the key. That’s why she took it away with her and left the tapestry. She can always start a new one so long as she has the needle.’
The scholar laid his hand on Samuel’s shoulder. ‘We have to find Cicely before she can hurt anyone else. She’s your daughter. Where would she go if she wanted to run away?’
Samuel’s heart groaned with the agony of his situation. Cicely was the only child left to him. Whatever she’d done, he still loved her. He couldn’t betray her.
‘It’s better if we find her than the templars of Nagash,’ Aaric reminded him, noting his hesitation.
The hunter slowly nodded, his eyes bright with emotion. ‘There’s only one place she’d go. One place where she knows almost no one would follow her.’ He watched as the flames consumed the tapestry, blotting out Emelda’s figure.
‘No one would dare follow her there,’ Samuel told the scholar. ‘No one except me.’
Cicely felt her heart hammering against her chest, but the blood pumping through it was cold. The chill of the grave was creeping into her again, just as her skin was losing its healthy colour. Rukh’s essence hadn’t sustained her for nearly as long as she’d hoped. It was Aaric’s accursed talismans. She was certain they’d done something to repulse the needle’s preservative magic.
‘You thought yourself so clever,’ she berated herself as she hurried through Hochmueller’s fields. ‘You should have worried that Rukh would come back.’ The forest was just ahead. She could lose herself in there. If her uncle denounced her now, it would avail him little. No one would go with him into Briardark to track her down. She was certain of that much. ‘Papa won’t help him, and there’s nobody else.’
She tried to take some measure of security from her father’s devotion, but Cicely wondered what would happen if the templars forced him to follow her. She shuddered to think of those deathly avengers on their gruesome steeds. She’d been afraid of Uncle Aaric, but she was terrified of the templars.
Even reaching the forest didn’t ease the thought of the templars in her mind. Briardark might offer refuge from the mortals of Felstein, but it would hold no fear for the undead hunters. Once they found her trail, Cicely knew they would follow it to the end. Her end.
Her eyes roved across the ground, seeking even the least sign of tracks. ‘I must find Verderghast.’ The outcast physician had been on the run for a long time. He’d certainly know a way to throw off pursuit, even from hunters like the templars.
More importantly, Cicely had to get answers from him about the onyx needle. Verderghast was her only hope. She needed the needle’s magic to keep herself from fading, from becoming naught but a wraith. The physician must know something of its sorcery, a way by which she could make use of those powers without killing.
‘My life is yours,’ the spectral voice said, goading her on, demanding she find the physician.
The grey mantle of Briardark closed in around Cicely. The trees with their drab trunks and barren branches reined her in on every side. The misty fog crawled through the boughs and settled like a shroud. Colour was blotted out, everything subdued beneath the forest’s cloak.
Cicely recognised the dismal surroundings only in an abstract way. To her afflicted senses, the forest became more vibrant the thicker the mists of Shyish engulfed it. She had no difficulty picking her way through the woods. The beasts of Briardark avoided her approach. She could hear them skittering away through the brambles or flying off through the trees.
‘Verderghast!’ she cried as she ran. Even in her chilled state, with the morbid taint overwhelming her senses, she felt dread when she recognised the rocky shelf along which Marden had tracked the wolf.
‘Verderghast!’ Cicely called again. ‘I need you!’
She hurried along the rocky shelf. Now she was near the place where Marden had died. The site where she’d been corrupted by the dire wolf’s bite.
‘Verderghast!’ she yelled, listening to her voice echoing through the trees. She slumped to her knees, despair overcoming her. She’d heard her father speak of how vast Briardark was. The physician could be anywhere… if he hadn’t left the forest altogether.
‘Verderghast!’ Cicely shouted, this time with a note of futility in her cry.
‘I am here,’ a cold voice answered from the shadows.
Cicely recognised the physician’s voice, but far from bringing relief, it only magnified her dread.
‘Be careful what you look for,’ Verderghast said from the darkness. ‘You just might find it.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The gloom of Briardark coiled around the two men like a great serpent, cold and crushing. Samuel could feel his lungs compressed by the oppressive atmosphere, the stifling chill of the fog he drew into himself with each breath. Even for the beasthunter, who’d braved the forest many times, fear pulsed through his veins. He could only imagine how much more pronounced the effect was on Aaric.
‘She went this way,’ Samuel stated when they reached a split in the path. ‘Cicely must’ve been in a panic. Her tracks are easy to follow.’ Agony brewed inside his heart when he reflected the terror his daughter must be in. ‘She knows enough of woodcraft to do better than this,’ he added, pointing at an almost perfectly defined footprint. ‘I’m not saying she could throw me off the trail, but she could make me work to keep up.’
Aaric frowned and gave Samuel a warning look. ‘If she is careless, it also means she’s desperate. Capable of anything to defend herself.’
‘I’ll not believe that,’ Samuel retorted. He pushed his way through the bushes, pursuing the trail left by his daughter. ‘She wouldn’t do anything to knowingly hurt me.’ He paused and brandished the talisman he wore. ‘Besides, aren’t we protected from her spell?’
‘From that spell,’ Aaric emphasised. ‘The dark magic that sustains her and draws off the essence of her victims. But she may have learned other spells, powers against which the talismans will offer no protection. I say again, we must be careful.’
Samuel offered no reply, but stormed ahead. He almost hoped he would lose Aaric in Briardark’s labyrinth. The scholar was speaking of Cicely as if she were just any witch to be hunted and destroyed without compunction. But she was still his daughter. Whatever she’d done, whatever had to be done, he couldn’t resign himself to that end. She had to be stopped somehow, but certainly not like that. Not the way Aaric intended, to kill her the moment they found her lest she cast a spell against them.
The hunter knew almost every inch of Briardark, some places better than others. It was this vague familiarity with everything the men passed that numbed Samuel’s mind to exactly where they were headed. When he spotted the rocky shelf, it came as something of a shock. This landscape was burned into his brain. It was the trail Cicely and Marden had taken when tracking the wolf.
Samuel froze as a cascade of memories rushed over him. He knew now where Cicely was going. She was headed back to the place where it had all started. The spot where Marden died and she was bitten. The site of the tragedy that destroyed Samuel’s family.
‘Is something wrong?’ Aaric asked, catching up to the hunter. ‘Have you lost the trail?’
The only reply Samuel made was a slow shake of his head. He was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to answer Aaric’s questions. His eyes darted to the rocky shelf, following it into the fog. Some two hundred yards ahead would be the clearing where the wolf had set upon his children. The place where he’d found the body of his son. The place where he now expected to find his daughter.
It was wrong! All of it! Samuel clenched his fists in silent rage. Sigmar, Nagash, whatever capricious gods were looking down on him, there had to be a limit to the misery he was expected to endure.
Samuel glanced aside at Aaric. The man was a scholar, erudite and bookish. He wasn’t a woodsman. A tracker. He was dependent on Samuel finding Cicely’s trail and following it. He’d certainly seen some of the more obvious signs, but that could work in Samuel’s favour now. Because he’d shown the trail to the scholar, Aaric would suspect nothing now when he turned away from it.
‘She took to the rocks,’ Samuel said. ‘The signs will be harder to spot now.’
‘But you can still follow them?’ Aaric asked, worried.
For an instant, Samuel hesitated. ‘I can follow them,’ he said, his decision made. He started Aaric across the rocky shelf, away from the clearing.
Away from Cicely.
‘Where are you?’ Cicely’s voice echoed through the trees. She heard Verderghast reply from the darkness and hurried towards the sound. Just as each time before, when she reached the spot, he wasn’t there.
‘I need your help,’ Cicely called to the shadows.
‘Help,’ Verderghast’s voice called back to her. Doubt seized her in its talons. Was the voice merely an echo? Was she simply imagining it sounded like the physician? In her desperation, was she just hearing what she wanted to hear?
Crazy or not, Cicely plunged ahead. There was nothing else to do. She couldn’t go back to Felstein. She had to find Verderghast.
Cicely cried his name again. This time, however, the response that reached her ears was from behind rather than ahead. Not the phantom voice of the physician but the sound of something moving through the brambles.
Instantly she crouched beside the gnarled trunk of an old oak. Cicely had learned enough woodcraft from her father to know that the noise wasn’t that of some animal. It was something on two feet. Perhaps more than one individual. She almost wished she was hearing ghouls creeping after her. At least then the ordeal of trying to preserve her life would be lifted.
The bleak reassurance evaporated when Cicely considered a far more likely solution for the footsteps – someone from Felstein was pursuing her. Uncle Aaric with his protective talisman and his unwavering conviction. Or perhaps it was the ghastly templars Thayer had summoned, undead avengers stalking her through Briardark.
The futility of trying to elude pursuit sapped Cicely’s stamina. She stumbled through the forest, her gait awkward and uneven. What sense was there in trying to hide her tracks? Her enemies would find her. Then the needle wouldn’t matter. She’d be executed before she could replenish herself by magic. Perhaps that would be an end to it. Perhaps then she wouldn’t fade until she was naught but a fleshless wraith.
‘Come to me,’ Verderghast’s voice beckoned, inspiring just enough hope in Cicely’s flagging spirit to push her onwards. The physician was close by. Relief might be just a few steps away. How bitter it would be to give up when salvation might be so near.
Cicely pushed her way through the brambles. To her horror she found that the branches were scratching her skin but she couldn’t feel them. Her affliction was asserting itself again, exhausting the vitality she’d stolen from Rukh. Aaric’s talismans had disrupted the enchantment, consuming the gains she’d made. Soon enough it would all be too late.
‘This way,’ Verderghast called.
Cicely forced her way through the bushes and found herself in a clearing. To one side was a rocky shelf she remembered only too well. Her path had brought her in a wide circle, doubling back to the clearing where they’d fought the wolf.
The familiarity of the scene was made complete by the lupine shape that trotted out from the fog. The dire wolf was more decayed than when she’d last seen it, its head denuded so that it was entirely skeletal. The hide along its sides hung from its exposed ribs in loose strips. The tail had fallen away entirely. Without fur to cover them, the claws on the creature’s toes looked like an eagle’s talons. The fangs in the lipless jaws gleamed like daggers.
At first it seemed to Cicely that the sockets in the wolf’s skull were entirely devoid of awareness, for the menacing glow was absent now. She could feel the undead thing watching her, but she couldn’t see it. Not until she appreciated the unnatural depth of the darkness where its eyes should have been. It was the reverse of light, a darkness that flared and rippled like a black flame. An un-light of indescribable malevolence.
Cicely held her breath, eyes riveted on the dire wolf. ‘Why didn’t you bring a weapon?’ she groaned, though she wondered what good any weapon would do against a beast that couldn’t die. Her body tensed as the undead creature stepped further into the clearing, every instinct alive with the urge to flee. She knew that to run now would only provoke the monster into pursuit. The longer she kept still, the longer it would delay its attack.
Yet the wolf paid her no attention. She could sense its horrible animosity, but as it had once before, it ignored her now. It kept itself angled towards the rocky shelf, its dark eyes alert as it stared into the forest. The sounds she’d heard had come from that direction. It was that realisation that made her understand. The wolf wasn’t here for her, but rather her pursuers.
Slowly, each step more cautious than the last, Cicely moved past the dire wolf. It barely turned its head as she walked away from it. Once she was past the beast, she heard Verderghast’s voice once more.
‘No, it will not harm you,’ the assuring words rasped from the shadows. ‘But you must hurry, for there are others in Briardark who would.’
A flicker of doubt tugged at Cicely. Why didn’t Verderghast reveal himself? Why this game of leading her by his voice? She sensed a sinister purpose in the physician’s actions. She glanced back at the dire wolf. Its presence was too convenient. She’d thought it ignored her because of her affliction, but what if it did so because it had been told to leave her alone? What if Verderghast had gained some kind of control over the beast?
What if it had always been under his control?
The questions plagued Cicely, but so too did the horror of her situation. What choice did she have?
‘My life is yours,’ the phantom hissed in her ear. Strange yet familiar, she almost felt she could grasp who it was, but its identity once again slipped away.
Goaded on by the spectral presence, Cicely followed Verderghast’s voice into the shadows once more.
Samuel led Aaric further away from Cicely’s trail. If he could delay the scholar long enough, maybe his daughter would get away. He’d thought long and hard about what he was going to do, weighing the consequences. There was only one choice that offered Cicely a chance to survive. For him, it was the only choice he could make.
‘I know how difficult this must be for you,’ Aaric told him. ‘Hunting your own daughter. But it has to be done.’
‘This is the only way,’ came the hunter’s curt reply. Samuel made a show of searching for signs of a trail that didn’t exist.
Aaric, it seemed, was growing anxious. It made him loquacious. ‘It’s what’s best for her. She can’t be saved, but we can extend her mercy. Make her passing quick.’
Samuel grimaced and shook his head. ‘I need to concentrate on finding her trail.’ He was relieved when Aaric stopped talking. He didn’t need the scholar’s words adding to his guilt… or his fear.
In the silence that followed, Samuel caught the distant sounds of someone moving through the forest. For an instant he feared it was Cicely, that she’d turned in this direction rather than deeper into the forest. Then he noted that there were two sets of footsteps, and his fear was magnified tenfold. The templars! It could only be the undead sent by the temple of Nagash. By what occult means they’d been drawn to the forest he couldn’t say. All he knew was that they were heading away from Samuel and Aaric, towards the clearing where Marden had died. They were on Cicely’s trail, and they didn’t have him there to lead them astray.
Aaric’s face was alert when Samuel turned towards him. The scholar might not be a woodsman, but he’d heard the sounds too. ‘You tried to lead me on a false track,’ he accused. ‘Don’t you understand, if she’s left alone, Cicely will kill again. She has to be stopped.’
The scholar started towards the distant footsteps. Samuel at once realised the mistake Aaric had made. He thought the sounds belonged to Cicely. He caught Aaric by the shoulder and spun him around.
‘That isn’t her,’ Samuel insisted, desperation in his tone. He didn’t know what the templars would do to Aaric if he stumbled on them in the dark, but he couldn’t imagine it would be anything good. ‘Those are the principatuum. Listen. There are two sets of steps.’
Aaric did listen, and when he spoke again, he was contrite. ‘Those must be the templars,’ he agreed. ‘Now it’s even more important that we find Cicely.’ He gave Samuel a reassuring smile. ‘I was wrong to accuse you. At least the undead are looking in the wrong direction.’
Samuel felt as though a hot knife were probing his gut. ‘You weren’t wrong,’ he said, dashing back the way they’d come. ‘The templars are following her tracks. If they should find her first…’
The two men rushed back through the forest. Samuel was thankful he’d made such a show of looking for the false trail. The tactic had retarded their progress, leaving them with less ground to cover now that they had to backtrack. But would it still be too great a distance? That fear hammered at his mind. He thought of the one hope Aaric had tried to console him with. A quick and merciful death. Something Cicely wouldn’t receive if the templars reached her first.
