Ghostwalker - Erik Scott De Bie [125]
"You must be mistaken," Walker explained. "You glow brightly to me, a creature of life. I should not shine brightly, for I am a creature of shadow-I dwell always in darkness."
"I only describe what I see," said Arya.
Walker inclined his head, which registered to Arya as a blur of light.
"Perhaps," he allowed. Then he stopped walking and clutched her hand. A wave of trepidation came from him, and Arya realized she had never known Walker to be afraid.
"What is the matter?" asked Arya, worried. She could see no attackers, no spirits at all. Even the trees seemed to have vanished.
"We have arrived."
CHAPTER 24
30 Tarsakh
Pulling Arya with him, Walker stepped from the Shadow Fringe into the center of his grove and the Material. He quickly became aware of two things that had changed since his last visit. The three bodies of the Greyt family rangers were gone, and the body of an unknown woman lay entwined in vines not far to the north.
"Druid Clearwater?" asked Arya wonderingly. She ran toward her.
"No, wait!" Walker shouted, but it was too late to stop the knight.
Arya knelt beside Clearwater and felt at her throat. Even as Arya confirmed that the druid rested in a magical slumber, the vines that held the druid prisoner began to twitch and sway, as though with an eerie mind of their own. Arya gasped and scrambled back from the vines that reached, fingerlike, to ensnare her arms and legs. Despite her struggling, they caught her, pulled, and dragged her to her knees.
Walker sprang to her side, the shatterspike whistling through the air as he sliced low and then high, horizontally over Arya's head, severing two thick tendrils of vines that held the knight fast. Freed for a moment, Arya managed to draw her sword and hack away at a vine that had caught her left arm. After two swings, it ripped apart and whipped through the air like a snake, recoiling from the knight.
"Back!" Walker commanded, and Arya staggered away, leaving him next to the enwrapped Amra Clearwater.
The entangling vines did not attack the ghostwalker, however-almost as though he were not there. Instead, the vines coiled snugly around Clearwater's limp form, awaiting their next target.
"Are you amused, Gylther'yel?" he called, his voice rolling across the grove. "Are you watching us from hiding, awaiting the time to strike us down?"
There came no response. Arya looked at Walker, but he waved to the knight, reassuring her.
"Have you become a watcher once more, apart from the affairs of humans?" he asked.
The grove was silent.
"Or are you afraid?" he pressed. "Afraid to show yourself, because I remind you so keenly of your failure?"
The Ghostly Lady appeared, rising from the ground in a mist, her ghostly body as insubstantial as the spirits Walker saw every moment. Afraid? she asked, her voice sounding in Walker's mind. I fear nothing.
"I have left the ghostly realm," said Walker. "Face me upon the ground of mortals."
Why, when the two of us should be gods? Gylther'yel asked in reply. When Walker said nothing, she laughed. Very well. Then her form became substantial. Arya, who had never seen her, was stunned at her golden beauty in the fading sunlight.
"You pick a fitting time to come against me, Rhyn Greyt," she said in Elvish. "When the sun of life sets and Selune rises, bringing the night in her wake. The night is our ally, a friend to all of us who dwell in darkness."
"I have come to destroy you," Walker said in the Common tongue.
Gylther'yel merely laughed. "The prodigal son has lost his way, and returns with helpless dreams of violence," she replied in kind. "You have no inkling of my power."
"Nevertheless, I have come to sweep your perversion from the face of Faerun," said Walker, drawing his sword.
"My perversion?" asked Gylther'yel. Both humans could hear the anger in her voice, anger hidden carefully behind a mask of ice. "My perversion? Have you forgotten that it was I who taught you your own perverse powers? I who returned you to life when you should be dead? If anything, we share