Bloodwalk - James P. Davis [16]
Dark ships gathered on a reddened sea. The gentle shores near the peaceful town of Logfell suffered a tide of plague and terror. Sameska felt a distant connection to her screaming body, but could hear nothing and saw only the blood, felt the press of bodies against her invisible form as she became part of what was shown to her. Though she could not touch what was no longer physical, the emotions in that place were a tangible mesh of accusation and betrayal. An aching stress infected her, catching her up in its urgent rush and soundless clawing.
She watched lives fade away, replaced with something else, something driven by passionless need. Something dark that pulsed and burned, leaving her numb and disoriented. Her vision moved and she stood on the edge of a clearing, looking into a bowl-like depression in the forest.
The ground was covered in fragments of worked stone, the ruins of an ancient place that she knew without knowing as dim familiarity blended with vague memory. The once-large city existed here as an outline of fallen walls, grown over with thick vines and the old roots of trees. Its only significant feature was a single tower untouched by time or weather. Sameska knew she saw a place of legend and myth, a tale she'd been told as a child and a story some said was as old as the Qurth itself.
The ruins of Jhareat and the tower that survived its fall.
At its base was a woman in red, a stark contrast to the dark greens and heavy grays around her. Sameska was mesmerized by the woman's stare, though she felt naked and humbled under its scrutiny. Then she realized the woman was looking directly at her, or at least seemed to be. Something else was moving in the forest behind Sameska's hovering, spiritlike form.
A muted pulse hummed in the air around her, followed by palpable heat that she knew could only be a construct of her mind. She imagined her body, chilled on the cold stone floor in the rune circle. The pulse grew stronger and closer, pushing through the undergrowth, heedless of thorns and razor vines. Sameska could not see them, yet in great numbers they arrived, out of sight, unbreathing, joining her in the long gaze of the woman in red.
The heat became nearly unbearable, its aura twisting the atmosphere and distorting the faint light. The high oracle wanted to gasp for air but had no mouth, no lungs with which to breathe, and the scene began to dissolve. The rippling air became dark waves as the tower and the strange woman disappeared and Sameska found herself floating above the coastline again, above another little town.
The confusion and vertigo of a dream stole over her as she tried to focus, wanted to yell and scream at the far-away guards on the outer wall, warn them to run, to avoid what was coming. She knew that she was witnessing the present yet nothing could impede the progress of whatever danger crawled toward those gates under the cover of darkness.
CHAPTER FOUR
No warning came, no war-cry to alert the lazy guards, no marching drum to crush the morale of the few defenders there were in Targris. Arrows struck down the five guards watching the western gate. The first crucial moments of the attack passed in quiet peace.
In the streets, people were hurrying home. Merchants packed up their wares. Those quarantined with the blush slept fitfully, disturbed by terrible dreams and fevered delirium. Only a few saw the western gates open-only a few casually turned from mundane tasks to see what merchant caravan or traveling adventurer sought refuge for the night. What they saw froze them in their steps; terror overtook them as bestial creatures rushed forward, baring white fangs and jagged blades.
Those few witnesses ran and hid, too frightened even to scream out, to make themselves targets. The gnolls passed them by, unconcerned with the meek, determined to eliminate the strong. This strategy they were largely unfamiliar with, but their pack leader Gyusk had excelled in it.
The bodies of the guards atop the western