Luthiel's Song: Dreams of the Ringed Vale Read online

  “I’m taking you to the Vyrl.”

  “You’ll take me to them?”

  “I will. I want to see them drain you with my own eyes. Then, I’m coming back for your sister.”

  Luthiel stood for long moments in shock. She hadn’t thought it would happen this way. Why not? The Vyrl were hungry—hungrier this year than ever before. In that moment she felt as though everything she’d endured had added up to nothing.

  I will die and so will she.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” he growled. “There’s a very bad storm coming and we should find shelter soon.”

  She nodded once, impassive. The world of dreams swirled around her. She turned her attention to the Stone. After two tries, she awoke from the world of dreams and shoved the Stone into her pouch. But she kept her knife out.

  The wolf stretched his legs out and lowered his body so that she could climb up.

  “Get on.”

  Grabbing the tuft behind his ear, she clambered onto his broad back. She’d barely seated herself when he bounded off and she was left holding on with only one hand. She almost dropped her knife and after three tries she managed to put it away. The second hand helped and she finally regained her balance.

  In only a few great bounds of the werewolf, the Vale of Mists suddenly loomed into view. It was all she could do to stay atop Othalas as she stared in horror.

  Into the Vale of Mists

  They came to a halt on a high precipice overlooking the Vale. Storm winds howled over the lip. A couple of raindrops stung Luthiel’s skin. Beneath a flashing sky, the Vale lay before her. It was all covered in roiling mist that rose and fell like waves driven by a hurricane. Even in the darkness between the lightning’s flash, she could see the mist. It was speckled by a thousand tiny green lights drifting within it. By this light, she could glimpse rock outcroppings, treetops, even the glitter of water before the next surge of mist swallowed it. In places, it spilled over the Vale’s rim. As she watched, a great swell climbed the cliff before her and in a moment she was covered by it.

  Within the mist, all sounds seemed sharper—the wind, the crash of thunder, the groaning of the trees. At the same time, Luthiel felt confined as though the mists were pressing in on her. The green lights flashed by her, moving as though pulled along by the tide of mist. One struck her arm and where it touched her, her skin tingled. The light wound around her arm in a spiral. Then, there was another light, and then another until, within moments, Luthiel was surrounded by a swarm of them. They swirled around her each brushing against her, each leaving behind that strange tingling sensation. Then, as suddenly as the lights appeared, they were gone. The mists had withdrawn, taking the firelights with it.

  “What are they?” Luthiel whispered.

  For a time, the great wolf was silent. Luthiel was beginning to think he would ignore her when he finally answered.

  “Once, they were like you but they stayed too long in the mists. Now they are only wanderers who have lost their way. Stripped of both form and memory they are doomed to roam the Vale living a wretched half-life—spirits that can no longer remember who they were or where they came from.”

  “How could such a thing happen?”

  “All who come to the Vale of Mists are changed. Some, lose only their bodies. Others lose everything. What happens depends on how well you know your true self. The lights you see are those who, in life, lost clear sight of themselves. When they came to the Vale, and the mists started to change them, they had no sight of themselves no vision of who they were or what they could become. So they became nothing more than the tiny lights you see. Now, they move from one impulse to the next, hardly remembering the last. Their old lives are no more than a half-remembered dream.”

  “But some remain unchanged.” It was more a statement than a question.

  “Only those who are in touch with the world of dreams.” Othalas looked over his shoulder at her. “Very rarely, a sorcerer is born who is aware of the source of his power. Those who are able to open a window to the dreaming world at the time the mists come upon them may pass through the Vale unharmed. It is very rare. But you know this already.”

  “I did not understand it the way you explained it.”

  “Words. What are they but shadows on a page or howling on the wind? They are as ever changing as the mists below us and it is just as easy to lose sense of yourself among them. I am older than most sorcerers so what I know may, indeed, be close to the truth. Magic, wyrd, words, dreams, they all come from the spirit. Within them lie both power and peril. For to misuse any is to warp your sense of self. To lie in words, or in magic, or in dreams—that is how you become lost. The lights you see, they were lost long before they came to the Vale.”

  “And what of you? You were once an elf—were you not?”

  The great wolf chuckled. “Yes, but that is no matter. There are other things than mists to lose yourself to in the Vale. Things with a taste for blood that care nothing of whether you know truth or not. That is where you’re going. So you needn’t concern yourself with me.”

  “But how did you remain yourself even though you were changed?”

  The wolf growled this time and, for a while, Luthiel waited as the storm grew about them. Finally the great wolf answered.

  “To survive, you have only to know yourself. But to go on unchanged, that takes more. It takes being in touch with the world of dreams. I was not. So I became only how I saw myself but not how I was intended to be.”

  With that, Othalas clambered onto the first step of the stairway that descended into the Vale of Mists. In two flights, the mists were all around her again and the green flames returned, swirling around her like a robe of dancing light. Soon the mist around her was suffused with a bright green glow as more and more of the ghostly fires gathered near her. She wondered why they were drawn to her and not the wolf—whom they seemed to take no notice of.

  About halfway down the stair, lightning flashed through the mists and with a dull roar the skies opened up. It was only a few moments before both Luthiel and the black wolf were drenched. Luthiel pulled up the hood of her cloak and hung a wind charm from a braid of her hair. It helped some, but the downpour was so great she doubted that even a wreath of wind charms about her head would have stopped it. The wind whipped at them and, more than once, Othalas was forced to crouch to avoid being ripped from the ledge.

  By the time they made it to the floor of the Vale, small hailstones were falling amongst the raindrops. The wind had risen to a howl and the trees about her swayed back and forth—branches snapping in the gale. To Luthiel, it sounded like a hundred wolf voices crying out in the deep dark of winter. The sound swelled, then dipped, then sustained a high pitch before dropping again into a growl. She trembled, remembering her dream of only a few days before.

  A large piece of hail fell among the small ones, pelting Luthiel on her back. She screamed in pain and surprise. A second hailstone exploded in a shower of fragments beside them.

  Othalas moved into the woods, but their way was no easier among the trees. They were slashed by branches ripped from the straining trees and once, a tree, rotted with age, snapped in half before them and fell across their path.

  “We cannot go further in this storm!” Luthiel yelled. “Don’t you know of any shelter nearby?”

  The wolf growled. “None that is less perilous than this storm!”

  “Surely, some cave in the cliff face–”

  “There is but one cave in the Vale of Mists that is near! But I would not go there unless there was no other choice!”

  Luthiel shielded her face from a flying branch with her upraised arm. “It will do us no good to be beat to death out here by hailstones or crushed under a falling tree!”

  But the werewolf only growled and pressed onward.

  Soon, the small hailstones had turned into balls of ice the size of hammer heads and Luthiel was forced to hold her wind charm above her head in order to keep from being battered by the massiv
e chunks of ice. Even so, her legs and knees were struck many times. Othalas fared worse and after a few minutes of harsh punishment he suddenly turned with a loud growl she could barely hear over the storm.

  “This storm will be the death of us!” he roared. “But there is only one place where we can find shelter nearby! That way may prove even more dangerous!”

  “Anything is better than being beaten to death!” Luthiel yelled.

  “Some deaths are worse than others! But, for once, I agree with you!”

  Othalas bounded through the falling ice, sprinting across a forest floor carpeted with shattered tree limbs and fallen trunks. Luthiel noticed that his back was bloody from the heavy pelting and counted herself fortunate for the glancing blows she’d suffered. Still, her legs were raw, bruised and bleeding in a number of places before they reached the gaping mouth of a cave in one of the Vale’s cliff walls.

  The Cave of

  Painted Shadows

  Othalas padded just far enough into the darkness to shelter them from the falling ice. But he didn’t go far enough to find shelter from the wind.

  “Stay here,” he growled as she clambered off his back. His voice was hushed and she could barely hear it against the cacophony of the storm outside.

  “We could go a little deeper.”

  “Quiet! Deeper? Don’t you know where you are?”

  Luthiel shook her head.

  “This is the Cave of Painted Shadows!”

  Luthiel sat stunned for a moment and then whispered—“Why would you bring me here?”

  “It was the only shelter nearby. Would you rather we stayed in the storm and were beat to death?”

  But Luthiel was looking over her shoulder. She noticed, now, that the green lights—which were so thick about her moments earlier—had all gone and she was left alone with the werewolf in the dark of the cave. It was cold in the cave—much colder than the outside air—and against the harsh winds of the storm a chill breath seemed to push up from the depths. She trembled and averted her eyes afraid of what she might glimpse upon the wall.

  Instead she rummaged through her pack for a dry change of clothes. She found some beneath her second wind charm and quickly changed out of her soaked clothing. Even so, the chill of the cave seemed to be seeping into her with each passing moment.

  Othalas was lying on his side, staring out into the storm. His tongue lolled and his breaths came in rapid pants. For a while, she thought she would leave him to his misery. Hadn’t he threatened to take Leowin even after she was delivered to the Vyrl? Would she give aid to one of Leowin’s killers? In the end, she found herself unable to refuse him help and stepped closer to examine his back. About his shoulders, it was a bloody mess and with a few quick probes of her hands she found that two of his ribs were broken.

  “What are you doing?” he growled.

  “Tending to your hurts.”

  From her pack she pulled a clean cloth and some of Winowe’s ointment. She dabbed at the mangled flesh with a cloth, then smeared the salve liberally over his wounds before looking after her own. All the while, he lay there allowing her to tend to him. She wondered at this and at how, only hours before, this great beast was about have her for dinner.

  “This should help the pain and speed healing. I think two of your ribs are broken, so you should be careful about how you move.”

  “How do you know these things?” Othalas asked without moving from his side.

  “My foster mother is a healer.”

  Othalas grunted.

  Then she sat beside him, dabbing at the cuts and bruises that covered her legs and at those the spider had left on her chest. The storm was still howling not twenty feet away and, occasionally, she could hear a loud snap as another tree fell.

  The chill in the cave continued to grow and soon she was shivering all over. Othalas’ breath misted before his face. Laboriously, he turned his head toward her, fixing her with those great yellow eyes.

  “If the shadows come, will you face them?” he whispered.

  “I?” she asked and her voice quavered.

  The wolf nodded.

  She sat still for a while in the growing cold that seemed to be drawing about her like the fingers of a great cold hand.

  Othalas, afraid! Of course he is! And so should you be, Luthiel.

  “How many did the Vyrl kill here? You would know,” Luthiel asked the werewolf, laying a hand on his shoulder.

  “More than counting. They drove any they suspected of disloyalty here. Then the Vyrl summoned fell beasts from the depths—creatures of living flame called Malcor—who burned them with the fire of their bodies. The heat and light was so intense that it burned their shadows into the walls. It looks as though they were painted there by demons hands. Ever since, this place has been—dangerous.”

  “I’ve heard the stories,” Luthiel said. “Is it true that only Valkire has entered this place and returned?”

  “No. The Lord of the Dark Forest came once. But he and Valkire are the only two. Valkire came twice—once in life to try to still the restless shadows and once in death. His remains are buried here. The shadows—they jealously guard his grave.”

  “And all the others who came here?”

  “The shadows kill them, or worse, drive them into the depths of the cave. It is said there is a black hole like a wound in the air. The shadows push them through and they are never heard from again.”

  Luthiel sat there for a few moments watching her breath. Disquieted by Othalas’ story, she walked to the very edge of where the rain and hail were still falling and sat down. Othalas looked at her and, seeing the fear plain on her face, let out a long rasping laugh, then fell silent. The cold felt as though it were sinking into her bones so she pulled a blanket out of her pack and wrapped it about her.

  The rumbling thunder and pounding hail continued unabated. Despite this racket, the chill of the cave, her fear, and the aching of her legs, she felt drowsiness creep over her. She didn’t realize how exhausted she was until she sat still for a moment. Her body ached with need of rest. She could just sit here with her eyes closed for a few minutes. She’d listen— yes that’s what she’d do—she’d keep her ears open while she rested her eyes. It wasn’t long until Luthiel’s breath steadied, her head fell to her knees and she was sound asleep.

  Beside her, Othalas, wracked with pain from his rapidly healing wounds, noticed she’d fallen asleep.

  “Hrrummmph!” he muttered. “I should just bite her head off and save me the trouble.”

  But for some reason, the werewolf didn’t bite her. Instead, he pulled his great body up beside her. His ribs were already mending. The healing was worse than the hurt and the fire of it burned through him as if he’d swallowed a mouthful of hot embers. But despite his pain, he felt a drowsiness fall over him. Soon his head nodded and his nose touched the ground. He jerked his head up with a start and blinked his eyes.

  How long had he dozed? He glanced around him. Were those shadows deeper down in the cave moving? No. It was just the dance of lightning. Soon the drowsiness was upon him again. If he just rested his head so—here on his paws—he’d close his eyes and let his sharp ears tell him of danger. It wasn’t long until Othalas’s breath steadied and he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Far off, in the depths of the cave something void of light stirred. It moved with a silence possessed only of ghosts for it had no flesh with which to brush the earth or kick a stone. Oh it could, if it concentrated enough, touch a thing. But it was easy as breath to the living for it to slip across or through solid things as though it were little more than smoke. It was drawn, as its kind are, to heat of living flesh—whose memory is only a bitter ache that for such a thing is distant kin to hunger. Quieter than the lightest breath of air, it began to chant an ancient spell of the grave. A spell of sleep—which to the living is a little death. Oh they wouldn’t hear. Oh no! Better chance would a man have of hearing the step of death itself. And so the song was called Footsteps of the
Little Death among the wraiths called Dimlock—which the shadow was.

  Aroused by the heat of life, other shadows moved beside it. In the cave. In their cave. In the cave bought by their pain, by the dust of their flesh blasted black upon the wall.

  They would kill. Kill so that no life would leave the body. Kill so that the spirit was trapped. For they were stranglers and by their murderous art both spirit and breath was trapped within the victim’s body. When the heads finally hung from wrung necks, they would bear the bodies down, down into the dark at the twisted end of the cave, to the black tear. Into that black hole they would cast the bodies. Then there was no hope for the spirits trapped within those horribly strangled bodies. For the tear was an opening to the Black Moon. Upon that dead world walked creatures who would consume the dead—body and spirit. Such was the Dimlock’s revenge against all living things that came to their cave. For Dimlock hated the living if only for the fact that they still knew the joy of life.

  By the sound of The Footsteps of the Little Death, Luthiel and Othalas slept. And all the while the shadows advanced. They crept until they could touch the wolf, swarmed over his chest and squeezed, waited for the next exhalation, and squeezed. Slowly the air was crushed from him. So too they came upon the elf and six shadowy hands clamped round her neck, crushing.

  Luthiel gasped for air. She was having a nightmare in which she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t wake up. She was paralyzed and she couldn’t breathe. Her neck was being twisted and she couldn’t breathe.

  The dark things craved nothing more than terror. It was their custom to wake their victims when the end was near to let them see. So it was with Luthiel. The chanting stopped and the weight of the dark spell lifted. And Luthiel, who could feel the life fading within her, struggled to wake.

  Her eyes fluttered open and she saw them, rank upon rank of white-eyed shadows. There were hundreds all around her, their cold hands pawing, pulling, crushing the life from her throat. She scrambled, fought to breathe, felt the terror well within her. She wanted to scream. But thrash and roll as she would the hands of shadow remained upon her—choking. She slashed at them with Hueron’s blade, but it only passed through them. The shadows pressed closer. Their pin-prick eyes seemed to mock her. Those horrible, cold eyes were growing dim and she knew, soon now, she would die.