Bloodwalk - James P. Davis [41]
She looked to the distant ceiling, the floor of her chamber above, and remembered a time when she had been in another hole, looking up into the eyes of righteous barbarians. The Sedras had come to lay waste to all that she'd accomplished since leaving them. Her mother, brandishing mace and shield, summoned fires from that god of dawn and flame, Lathander.
She blinked, as best she could without true eyes or lids in her wraithlike form. Her vision adjusted back to the present shadows above, showing her old stone and the fine, spidery cracks of age. She looked down and floated toward the wall, melting through it and peering out its edge at the mumbling priest who drew smoking runes into the surface of the stone.
He could not see her. His eyes fluttered behind a mask of sinewy muscle and bone, lost in arcane mumbling and malignant prayers. She slunk downward and drifted along the ground beneath him like a stream of brackish water, barely a shadow among those cast by the glowing orbs of the wizard-priests.
She wished to avoid Talmen, keeping her secrets to herself. Taking the wraithform was less efficient than teleporting, but she enjoyed the sensation of weightlessness and the constant chill of its nature. The cold was as familiar and numbing as the windswept plains of her childhood.
Across the stones she flowed, under and through them, making her way to the forest and the pale trees Khaemil had told her about. She'd sensed them before and had thought of ignoring them, but her mind changed along with her mood. Their presence intrigued her more than their defiance made them a nuisance. A use could be found for such allies-their obvious fear of her made them perfect for service.
Well away from the eyes of the Gargauthans, and Talmen in particular, she glided past the first few trees, sliding through low-hanging limbs and clawlike branches. Tasting their bitter bark through her misty form, she sensed ancient magic still pulsing in the sap and roots. She envied the kind of power that had changed this once peaceful forest into a haven of monsters and perversions of nature.
A Calishite, she'd been told, had cursed the forest and the city of Qurth hundreds of years earlier during the Mage Purges of the Shoon Dynasty. That fallen wizard's spell had destroyed the cities now buried in the Qurth Forest. The forest's magic became centered on the city of Qurth, where the Calishite had been executed. The lingering potency of that magic clung like an invisible mist to everything around her. She swam in arcane currents that thrived and spread like a living creature, born of a mob's righteous vitriol and the Calishite's violent death.
Close to her destination, she stopped her vaporous travel and cancelled the spell, feeling well protected from prying eyes. She regretted ending the magic even as blood flooded her limbs and breast, an onslaught of beating warmth that blushed her skin for a moment as it returned. She stood on a thick carpet of dead leaves, dark green grass, and vines that flourished in the forest's interior.
Sprawling bushes of razorvine and bloodthorn surrounded her as she casually walked between their reaching tendrils. She brushed her hands across the tops of razorleaf bushes as she passed. Cousin to the razorvine, its leaves were hard and sharp, whipping against the flesh on stiff stems to open wounds that fed its thick, knotted root system. Bright yellow berries tempted the creatures of the forest to pass within reach. The addictive toxin in those berries assured the return of animals large enough to survive the wounds. Although scarred, some forest creatures