Chapter One: A Difference of Opinion

The wind blowing in Kagur’s face smelled of rot. She started running, and the soft earth, boggy with the coming of summer, sucked at her feet. Her five companions ran as well.

Eovath soon pulled ahead of everyone else. Like her, the blue-skinned frost giant was still growing, but he was already taller than any human tribe member, with longer legs and a longer stride.

He slowed down, though, when the several bodies on the ground came into view. It was too late to help them, and prudent to advance with caution in case their killers were still lurking about.

They didn’t seem to be, though, which left Kagur free to inspect the corpses. The shredded flesh, glazed eyes, and flies that buzzed up into the air at her approach forced her to swallow away the stinging taste of bile.

Her squeamishness made her scowl. Like any Kellid warrior, she’d seen violent death before, and only one of the dead folk here had been a Blacklion like Eovath and herself. But they’d all become friendly since setting forth to hunt from a gathering of half a dozen tribes.

Borog straightened up from his examination of one of the corpses. A member of the Eagleclaw tribe, he was the oldest surviving member of the hunting party, with deep lines etched in his sun-bronzed face, pouches under his dark eyes, and white hairs speckling a close-cropped black beard. “Like the others,” he said.

They’d all heard tales of other hunters encountering the same grisly end. They just hadn’t let it deter them from roaming the prairie themselves. No true Kellid allowed fear to rule her, and even had it been otherwise, a tribe that didn’t hunt wouldn’t eat.

“Not all the others,” Eovath said. His adolescent voice broke on the second word, but even then it was as deep as most men’s.

Borog frowned. “How so?”

“The way I heard it,” the frost giant said, “the first band of hunters fell dead without a mark on them. It was the latter ones that were torn apart.”

The Eagleclaw warrior snorted. “And what does that tell you? That the first incident was something different than the slaughters that have happened since.”

“Maybe not,” Kagur said. Turning, she counted the corpses. “Supposedly, every band, including that first one, had one member carried off. And one of our own is missing: Dron.”

Those who try to protect Kagur would be

better off protecting themselves.

One of the other hunters hurriedly checked Kagur’s body count with the aid of a jabbing finger. Another touched the beaten silver good-luck charm hanging around her neck.

“All right,” Borog growled, “maybe the same thing did kill the first party. At this point, what does it matter?”

“It doesn’t,” Kagur said. “What matters is picking up the trail.” Studying the ground, she prowled away from the corpses, and after a moment, her companions followed her lead.

She hoped it would be easy to find tracks in the mucky earth, and bent blades among the new grass, and in fact, it was only a short time before Eovath called out: “Here! The sign isn’t clear enough to tell what the killers are. But they came from the northeast and headed back that way, too.”

“Let’s see,” Borog said. He stalked to where Eovath was standing, squatted to study the sign, then grunted in a way that suggested he agreed with the giant’s reading.

“Let’s move out,” Kagur said, striding closer to the other two.

“No,” Borog replied. “Red Rune Canyon is northeast.”

Kagur blinked. That particular fact had momentarily eluded her. And while she’d only heard rumors about strange deaths on the tundra since the start of summer, she’d listened to tales about Red Rune Canyon her whole life. Every Kellid knew the place was cursed.

But in the present circumstances, that didn’t matter. “We have to rescue Dron.”

“Dron’s dead,” said Zorek, a lanky Eagleclaw of about Kagur’s age. Blood had trickled out of his sleeve to stain the back of his hand. Several days previously, a ground sloth had clawed his forearm, and he picked at the scabby gash when no one was watching to slow the healing and make an impressive scar.

“You don’t know that,” Kagur said. “If the attackers wanted him dead, they could have killed him on the spot like they did everybody else. You don’t know they really came from Red Rune Canyon, either.”

“They could just be orc raiders out of the Hold of Belkzen,” Eovath rumbled.

Borog shook his head. “Smell the rot in the air. Our friends haven’t lain dead long enough to stink like that. That’s the smell of the unnatural things that killed them.”

Kagur scowled. “Maybe, but it doesn’t change anything. Dron still needs rescuing, and our dead need avenging.”

Borog took a breath. “Look around. There are fewer of us than there were of those who lost their lives already, and you, Zorek, and the giant are young and green. How do you expect to win where a stronger band of warriors already lost?”

“We can make a plan when we know more.”

“Here’s the plan,” Borog said. “We’ll return to our tribes, and the chiefs will decide what to do next. Maybe they’ll decide to hunt and fight the killers properly, and you can ask permission to join the war party.”

“By then, Dron will likely be dead or tortured.”

“But you’ll be alive, and Jorn Blacklion won’t start a feud with the Eagleclaws because I let his idiot daughter come to harm.”

“It’s not for you to decide what the ‘idiot daughter’ will do,” Kagur said. “You’re not my chief, and I’m going after Dron even if nobody else does.”

“No,” said Borog, “you aren’t.”

If his voice changed, his eyes shifted, or his hand gestured to give a signal, Kagur didn’t notice in a conscious way. But the rest of the hunters had drifted up behind her to listen to the conversation, and suddenly instinct screamed that they were reaching for her.

She tried to spring forward, but hands grabbed her forearms and held her back. She stamped on a foot and snapped her head backward into someone’s teeth and jaw. That loosened the grips restraining her, and she wrenched herself free and spun around.

Spreading out to flank her, her three assailants came after her. Backing away, she reflexively reached for her longsword, and they faltered, as well they might. Young as she was, she was skilled with a blade, and they knew it.

But, her anger notwithstanding, she knew drawing a weapon would be stupid. She didn’t want to kill folk from friendly tribes, especially when, as they saw it, they were only trying to stop her from coming to harm.

She hitched her foot, faking another step backward, and when they advanced, she threw herself at them. She punched Zorek in the solar plexus and made the breath whoosh out of him, but then her other two opponents grabbed her. One kicked her left foot out from underneath her, and they dumped her onto the ground.

Kagur thrashed but couldn’t break their holds. Panting, Zorek came up behind them with a length of rawhide in his hands.

A big blue hand caught him by the shoulder and flung him aside. Then Eovath bashed the other hunters away from her with two sweeps of his fist.

Grateful as she was for the help, Kagur winced. Eovath was stronger than any human, and he hadn’t held back.

Fortunately, her assailants weren’t seriously hurt, as they demonstrated by scrambling back to their feet. Unfortunately, they too deemed that the confrontation had escalated from a scuffle to a deadly serious fight, and they snatched for the weapons slung from their belts.

Eovath lunged, caught Zorek before he could ready his axe, and heaved him into the air by his throat and arm. The lanky Eagleclaw’s face turned red, and he made gurgling sounds.

Borog hefted a javelin. The upper edge of the leaf-shaped steel point glinted in the morning sunlight. “Let him go.”

“You might kill me,” Eovath said, his yellow eyes gleaming like the spear point, “but not fast enough to keep me from killing your kinsman. One shake snaps his spine. One squeeze crushes his windpipe.”

“No!” cried Kagur, leaping to her feet. “I mean, no to both of you! Borog, what’s the sense of killing us to keep us from risking our lives?”

“I never threatened to kill you,” Borog replied without taking his eyes off Eovath. “Only the slave.”

She put her hand on her sword hilt. “Eovath is my brother, and if you hurt him, you’d better kill me.”

Borog’s jaw tightened. “Fine. Go. Your father must know what a stubborn fool you are. Maybe he won’t blame me.”

Eovath sneered and tossed Zorek away.

Once Kagur and the giant were on the trail and sure their erstwhile companions weren’t following, she asked, “What were you going to do if they called your bluff?”

The giant smiled a crooked smile. “What makes you think I was bluffing?”

“You wouldn’t really kill friends of the Blacklions.”

“They didn’t seem much like friends when they jumped you.”

Still, she doubted their father would have approved. But if Kagur and Eovath had offended the Eagleclaws, Jorn Blacklion would make amends with gracious words and gifts. Meanwhile, his daughter and foster son had a hunt to complete. She paused to inspect the ground before them, then pointed at the clearest track she’d found so far: the unmistakable impression of a boot.

Eovath nodded. “You were right. Dron isn’t dead. In fact, he’s fit enough for his captors to march him along.”

For a moment, Kagur was certain that was the way of it. Then she noticed additional tracks a couple paces farther along. “I hope so. But look here. The ‘captors’ were wearing boots, too.”

Eovath grunted. “Then maybe they are orc raiders, despite the putrid smell. Or Kellids turned bandit.”

Kagur looked up at him. “You sound disappointed.”

“Haven’t you ever been curious to see a ghost or a demon?”

“I suppose. Is that why you agreed we should come after Dron?”

“I agreed because no one should be dragged off into slavery.”

Kagur frowned. “You’re not a slave, despite what Borog said. No Blacklion thinks of you that way. Not anymore. Not for a long while.”

The frost giant shrugged his massive shoulders. “We should keep moving.”

They did, loping across windswept tundra and past ponds surrounded by patches of yellow-green moss and stunted diamond-leaf willows. When the trail led near ripe red bearberries, they gobbled some and picked more for later. Gray-white hawks with crimson beaks floated in the sky, and wild mammoths trumpeted in the west.

Animals grew scarcer, though, as the terrain became hillier and the trackers drew near to Red Rune Canyon. By the time the sun was sinking toward the western horizon, and the notch between two stony walls came into view, Eovath and Kagur were the only moving, breathing things in sight.

“It’s nearly dark,” Eovath said. “We could camp here and head in come morning.”

Kagur shook her head. “Let’s cover as much ground as we can.”

Unfortunately, that wasn’t a great deal more, for when, peering about for lurking orcs and other dangers, they prowled into the mouth of the canyon, they found it was already twilight inside. They had to stop not long thereafter lest they risk losing the trail.

They camped beside the creek that ran down the center of the gorge and supped on more bearberries and bison jerky. Kagur had swamp tealeaves in her pack as well, but it would be foolish to build a fire to brew a beverage. Someone or something might spot the light. So far, however, Red Rune Canyon had done nothing to justify its sinister reputation.

Later, when Eovath was on watch and sleep continued to evade her despite the day’s exertions, Kagur came to a decision. “It’s just orcs. Orcs bold and cunning enough to hole up where humans are afraid to go.”

“What about the rotten smell?” Eovath replied.

“How many clean orcs have you fought?”

“What about the first hunting party, slain without a mark on them?”

“I don’t know, but—”

Eovath suddenly peered farther down the canyon. “Something’s there.”

Chapter Two: Among the Dead

Tossing aside her blanket, Kagur sat up and looked where Eovath was gazing, but though she had keen eyes, he generally fared better in the dark. “I don’t see anything.”

Eovath stood up. “Neither do I, now. It was just a shadow, and it’s shuffled back around the next bend. But whatever it was, it had two arms and two legs and was bent over like it was hurt. Dron, maybe, if he escaped.”

“Or the bait in a trap.” Kagur smiled. “There’s one way to find out.”

Her longbow was of little use when she couldn’t see targets at a distance. She left it unstrung and leaning against the canyon wall and drew her longsword instead. The straight steel blade made a faint hissing sound as it cleared the pewter mouth of the scabbard.

Meanwhile, Eovath likewise forsook his pair of javelins in favor of his battleaxe. Jorn Blacklion had pulled the enormous double-bitted implement from the grip of a giant he’d slain in battle, and it fit the hands of his adopted son better than any little human weapon could.

“Ready?” Kagur whispered.

“Yes,” Eovath replied, and they advanced.

The night was as silent as it was dark. Kagur’s pulse beat in her neck.

She told herself she wasn’t nervous. She was a Blacklion warrior, well schooled in the use of the sword and tested in fights with orcs, wolves, and saber-toothed cats. Still, a ghost… or a demon…

She sneered her anxiety away. Her father had taught her that if something could hurt her, she could hurt it back. That only made sense, and it meant a warrior need never be afraid.

When she and Eovath stalked around the turn, it was only to behold another stretch of gorge that, as best she could judge with only starlight to see by, was as empty as the one behind her. But as she peered about, she caught a whiff of decay hanging in the chill night air.

“Smell that?” she whispered.

“Yes,” Eovath replied. “You were right. This is a trap.”

“Dron could still be here.” Kagur raised her voice: “Dron! It’s Eovath and Kagur! We came to help you!” The shout echoed away, the sound bouncing off the canyon walls.

In response, a dark form staggered away from the wall of the gorge. As Eovath had said, it was shaped like a person, hunched over, and had its back to the Blacklions. When Kagur squinted, she could just make out variations in the texture of it that might indicate the layered fur and leather garments of a Kellid hunter. She shifted her grip on the hilt of her sword, and she and Eovath headed for the shadow.

A second black shape plummeted down onto the giant’s back.

The dead were not meant to walk.

Clinging to the giant like a child riding his father’s shoulders, his assailant ripped at him, maybe with a dagger, maybe with something else. In the darkness, Kagur couldn’t tell.

She sprang forward to cut at the attacker, but Eovath reeled around and inadvertently shielded the thing clinging to his back with his own towering body. He dropped his axe to clank on stones on the canyon floor, reached back over his shoulder, and yanked his foe from his perch, smashing it down onto the ground with a bellow.

Kagur’s belly tightened in loathing, not because the creature was hideous—although it was—but because she suspected it had once been human. It still had the general form of a man and wore a man’s garments. But it was so withered and shriveled that by rights, it should have had no strength at all, and its nails and teeth alike had grown long and jagged-sharp. The dark, slanted eyes in its pale face were featureless, without differentiated whites, irises, or pupils, and its ears were pointed. The carrion stench Kagur had smelled at the site of the massacre and at intervals along the trail emanated from its body.

To her surprise, the creature wrenched itself free of Eovath’s grip and started to roll to its feet. She lashed out, cutting through the side of its neck until steel grated against spine. It flopped back down onto the ground, thrashed, and then lay still.

Eovath was swaying, and blood from his claw wounds stained his tunic. “How badly are you hurt?” Kagur asked him.

Nearly pitching forward in the process, he stooped and fumbled for his battleaxe. “Behind you!” he croaked.

She whirled. More shadows were rearing up from the creek. She hadn’t realized it was deep enough to hide something the size of a man, but it evidently was.

The things rushed her. So did their comrade farther up the gorge, the lure that she and Eovath had hoped was Dron.

Hoping to surprise them, she charged the gaunt, pale things splashing out of the water. One surprised her instead by throwing a dagger, but she saw the gleam of metal just in time to twitch aside. The blade spun past her.

A creature sprang at her with outstretched claws, and she cut at its head and sliced half its face away. It fell, but as she pivoted to meet the next one, it started to stand back up.

No living man or beast could have shaken off the effects of a wound like that. She realized that if she and Eovath hadn’t found ghosts, they’d at least come close. For the foes rushing at her were almost certainly some manner of undead, perhaps the skulking, corpse-eating brutes called ghouls.

She cut into the next one’s chest, and it snarled and lunged, driving her sword deeper into itself in its frenzy to reach her. She tried to jump back and yank the blade free, but the ghoul was quick and prevented her from opening up the distance. Its clawed fingers grabbed her leather-clad forearm, and it leaned forward and opened its fanged jaws wide.

Using her off hand, she snatched a dirk from her belt and drove it into the middle of the living dead man’s forehead. The creature collapsed with her longsword still embedded in its torso.

She yanked the sword free and cut in a single motion, barely in time to hold back another onrushing ghoul, this one discernibly female by virtue of its bouncing, withered breasts and swinging amber necklace. Without pausing, Kagur turned and slashed again at the one with half a face, which had by now regained its feet. It recoiled, and the attack fell short.

Kagur had always imagined the walking dead to be slow and clumsy, but the ghouls were nimble and inhumanly resilient. As she struck repeatedly, whirling and dodging all the while in an effort to keep her foes from surrounding and swarming over her as a group, she came to the uncomfortable realization that they might well overwhelm her.

Particularly if she had to go on fighting alone. Somehow, despite the incessant pressure exerted by the ghouls and the need to respond to the threat after threat, she managed to cast about and spot Eovath in the darkness.

His head bowed, the giant was down on one knee. Plainly not dead, thank Gorum! But why wasn’t he fighting? Had the first ghoul wounded him that severely?

Suddenly, Kagur glimpsed a shadow, a ghoul apparently seeking easier prey than she was proving to be, darting in on the giant’s flank. She couldn’t have reached it in time even if she hadn’t had her own foes blocking the way. She could only gasp in a breath and shout, “Look out!”

The frost giant lifted his head, cast about, and swatted the ghoul away with the back of his hand. As it fell and rolled back to its feet, he groped to reclaim his axe.

At the same moment, a charging ghoul forced Kagur to refocus on her own situation. She slashed the clawed white fingers from her assailant’s hand and crippled one leg with a cut to the knee. When it fell headlong, she scrambled right over the top of it and cut at the undead brute behind it. The stroke ripped open the ghoul’s neck, but that only made it bare its fangs and gather itself to spring.

Eovath fared better. Looming up behind the ghoul, he chopped down at the top of its skull and split the creature all the way down to the breastbone.

Freeing the battleaxe and dumping the ghoul’s remains to the ground with a flick of his wrists, he panted, “Don’t let them scratch you! It steals your strength!”

“I wasn’t… planning on it.” Kagur feinted high and cut low, but her target sprang aside from the true attack. “Let’s fight back to back!”

Once they did, things seemed less frantic. Kagur had instants when she could consider tactics, not simply react, and her sword struck home more often. She had little doubt that behind her, Eovath’s axe was chopping and smashing to similar murderous effect.

“Blacklion!” she shouted. “Blacklion!” Then her brother took up the battle cry as well, their twin roars reverberating off the canyon walls.

After several more exchanges, and another ghoul sprawled maimed and motionless in the sand and stones on the canyon floor, it became clear the undead were attacking less relentlessly than before. It seemed likely they would soon retreat, and, grinning, Kagur resolved to give chase when they did. She wanted to slaughter all the filthy things.

Then, however, two whistled notes, the first short and the second sustained, shrilled down from the sky. Whereupon the ghouls did fall back, but plainly not of their own choosing.

A signal! Judging that locating the ghouls’ hitherto unsuspected leader was more important than cutting the creatures down from behind, Kagur held her position. Struggling to control her breathing, sweat stinging in her eyes, she peered upward.

Leathery wings flapped, and a shape swooped down from on high. For a moment, Kagur couldn’t make out anything to distinguish it from a gigantic bat. Once it lit on an outcropping partway up one of the walls, however, it was easier to distinguish other features. Though tufted with bristles, its body was mostly hairless and scaly like a snake’s, and it had arms as well as wings. Its legs were as long as a man’s but bent backward like a goat’s and ended in feet with three splayed toes.

“Well,” Kagur panted, “you wanted to see a demon.” She had little doubt they were seeing one now. The thing certainly looked demonic.

“I didn’t ask for a flying one.” Moving slowly, Eovath stooped and picked up a stone. Giants were notorious for their ability to throw rocks, and unless the demon descended to the canyon floor, they would have no other way of striking at it.

Although maybe they wouldn’t need to, for the fiend appeared to be paying them little heed. Instead, it raked its gaze over its followers, the ones still whole—or mostly so—that had gathered beneath its perch, as well as the crippled ones struggling to crawl in the same direction, and the inert forms Kagur and Eovath had dispatched outright.

When it had glared its fill, it bared its needle fangs and hissed. “Disobedient!”

Most of the ghouls cringed, but one glowered back. “Hungry!” it growled. “Starving!”

The demon sprang from its perch. The defiant ghoul tried to dodge out from underneath, but it was far too slow. The fiend slammed down on top of it, smashed it to the ground, and, stooping, beheaded it with two sweeps of the dagger-long talons on the fingertips of its oversized hands.

Kagur watched to see if the other ghouls would protest the fate of their fellow. But even if they felt any such impulse, their master had them too thoroughly cowed.

The fiend then pivoted and glared squarely at Kagur and her foster brother for the first time. Eovath immediately flung the rock. The missile caught the demon just above its batlike snout, but despite the force with which the giant had hurled it, the stone glanced away without doing any apparent harm. Ignoring the attack, the creature locked eyes with Kagur.

Her vision shifted. Though Kagur could see that the demon was still crouching over the headless ghoul, part of her suddenly had the feeling that it was springing at her. Or perhaps she was plummeting toward it, falling sideways in defiance of nature, into eyes that yawned like pits to swallow her. Cold pain shot through her, and her heart stuttered in her chest.

Chapter Three: Divide and Conquer

Kagur’s legs turned soft as dough. She collapsed to her knees, banging one on a stone. Eovath dropped beside her, and the ghouls raised a hissing snarl to see the foes who’d humbled them brought low.

But by the ever-thirsty blade of the Lord in Iron, Kagur refused to be helpless. With a rasping snarl of her own, she pushed chill and weakness—well, the greater part of them, anyway—out of her body by sheer dint of will.

Which was good as far as it went, but instinct told her the improvement would be fleeting if she kept looking at the demon’s batlike face. Somehow, it was the fiend’s gaze that had debilitated her, and with that still linking them, she sensed the creature focusing its mind for a second assault.

With a fierce twist of her neck, she broke eye contact. She scrambled back to her feet even as Eovath did the same. The demon hadn’t succeeded in slaying or crippling him, either. Poised to launch themselves forward, the ghouls balked at their prey’s sudden recovery.

Kagur laughed. Her brother spat.

With a scream, the demon clenched its fist with such vehemence that the long claws surely stabbed into its flesh.

Kagur felt as if the air was thickening and sliding around her. She tried to spring clear of what must be some sort of supernatural attack, but she was too slow. Her limbs froze, locked in place as if her whole body were encased in ice. She couldn’t even make herself bellow in rage as the demon, wings lashing the air, swept down from its perch toward them. Eovath swung his axe, but the demon jinked nimbly out of range, then curved back to sink its filthy talons into the meat of Kagur’s shoulders.

Again, Kagur tried to shout something—anything—but still her jaws betrayed her, leaving her to silently suffer the pain of the intruding claws as they lifted her off the ground and up into the night sky. Below her, Eovath roared curses, and in her mind Kagur matched them.

Yet now she had bigger problems. As the ground retreated beneath her, she felt a sudden surge of mingled rage and fear. Once the creature had lifted her high enough, it need only drop her to kill her. And in her current paralyzed condition, she wouldn’t even be able to resist, just fall as placidly as a dropped stone until the impact splattered her across the rocks of the canyon floor.

Yet as the demon sailed over the ridge of the canyon’s wall and down into a defile on the other side, she felt a brief flare of hope. If it was descending, then perhaps it meant to set her down safely—no doubt to better enjoy the pleasure of killing her slowly.

Inwardly, Kagur smiled. All she asked was that the demon’s plans force it to release its spell over her before killing her. Then she’d show it what a warrior of the Blacklions was made of.

Yet though the demon did deposit her on the ground, in a section of twisting gorge little different than the one from which it had extracted her, it didn’t land as well. Instead, it released her from her magical bonds as soon as her feet touched the soil, then flapped back up out of reach.

Quick as a hunting cat, Kagur drew her sword and threw, sending it lancing up into the sky after the creature. Yet the fiend only laughed a grating laugh and rose higher, wings snapping, and the sword passed harmlessly beneath its trailing claws. Within moments, the beast had disappeared back over the canyon wall.

Kagur had no idea why the creature hadn’t killed her, but she assumed it had removed her from the battlefield so Eovath would have to fight alone. She ran, retrieved her sword, and then peered about, seeking an opening that would allow her to pass through the wall at ground level.

There wasn’t any. There was no way back except to climb.

So this is the ghouls’ master.

She did so, without hesitation, finding handholds and ledges to aid her ascent. But despite her resolve, she was no experienced mountaineer, and the darkness further slowed her progress. It immediately became obvious she’d never reach her brother in time to help him.

Still, panting, fingers aching, denying herself all but the briefest of rests, she struggled upward. Dawn found her atop the wall.

She peered down the other side and made out a scattering of ghoul bodies. But Eovath was nowhere to be seen—not from the ridge, and not when she completed a laborious descent.

Her jaw clenched as fury welled up inside her—an admittedly familiar sensation. But it was different, too, because this time she was angry with herself.

Borog had warned her and Eovath not to enter Red Rune Canyon, but she’d been certain she knew better. And here was the result of that brash overconfidence: her brother was lost. It made her want to scream, or pummel her own body.

She took a long, deep breath instead. Now was not the time for self-recrimination. She had to rescue Eovath before the demon had a chance to do whatever it intended to do to him.

She stooped beside the creek, scooped frigid water in her cupped hands, and slurped away the raw, parched feeling in her throat. Then she strode to retrieve her bow and quiver. Her path took her near one of the fallen ghouls, and the emaciated, gray-white thing startled her by hissing.

She drew her sword to kill it, then reconsidered. Last night, a ghoul had spoken. Maybe she could persuade this one to speak to her now.

As she approached it, she saw it was the same ghoul whose fingers she’d sliced off and whose leg she’d crippled. Then she caught her breath as she noticed the blue and green beadwork adorning its deerskin tunic and the two copper rings in the lobe of its pointed ear.

The undead thing was Dron—or what was left of him. Fighting him in the dark, Kagur hadn’t realized, but it was so.

Which meant there’d never been any hope of saving him. The realization brought another pang of self-disgust.

Pushing it out of her mind, she pointed her sword at the creature on the ground. “Do you know me?”

Squinting against the morning light even though little of it had as yet reached the floor of the canyon, Dron bared his fangs.

“Talk,” Kagur persisted. “I know you can. Or I’ll hurt you.”

“Know you,” the ghoul rasped. “Cut fingers. Cut knee.”

“Yes. But do you remember me from before that? From before you… changed?”

The ghoul hesitated. “Kagur.”

“That’s right, and you’re Dron. We hunted together. Tell me what happened to you.”

Dron hesitated. “Can’t. Master not like.”

The living Dron had been loquacious and clever. Repelled by the undead version’s ugly form and noxious reek, Kagur nonetheless felt a twinge of pity at his broken speech. His transformation had seemingly damaged his mind as well as warping his body.

But compassion wouldn’t get her what she needed, so she set it aside and jabbed at the raw, spongy stumps of Dron’s severed fingers with the point of her longsword. The ghoul hissed, snatched the maimed hand back, and covered it with his good one.

“‘Master’ isn’t here,” Kagur said. “The demon abandoned you because you were crippled and of no further use to it. I am here, and I swear by Gorum I’ll keep cutting pieces off you until you answer my questions.”

Dron hesitated. Then: “Killers come. Demon eyes kill some hunters. Make me… this. Other ghouls kill the rest. For meat.” The undead creature lowered his eyes. “Not want eat. But did.”

Kagur frowned. “So… every time there’s an attack, the demon turns one victim into a ghoul. That’s why there’s always a body missing. But what’s the point? What does the demon want with ghouls?”

Dron shook his head, apparently to indicate he didn’t actually know. But he did have an opinion: “Little demon. Wants be big demon.”

In other words, to be a leader like Kagur’s father, or one of the Mammoth Lords who presided over the followings. To command a following, or even a single tribe, one needed followers.

East of the tundra was the Worldwound, a land teeming with demons. People said it was the wrongness of that place seeping through the earth that tainted Red Rune Canyon. Maybe “Master” hailed from the Worldwound and meant to return one day at the head of a war band of undead warriors.

Kagur caught her breath as a ghastly possibility occurred to her. “What about Eovath, then? Is he gone because the demon changed him into a ghoul? You were here watching. Tell me!”

Dron shook his head. “Giant strong. Not change yet.” He smirked as though enjoying Kagur’s distress. “But Master make him weak. Ghouls drag him off. Master will change him.”

Him and me, Kagur realized. That was why the demon hadn’t just dropped her from on high. Eovath and she had both impressed it with their prowess, and it meant to add them both to the ranks of its followers to replace the undead they’d destroyed.

She swallowed. “No. That won’t happen because I won’t let it. Now, you ghouls ambushed Eovath and me without Master’s permission. Why was that?”

“Told you. Hungry. Too many ghouls, not enough meat.”

“Hm.” She took stock and decided she was nearly out of questions. “Where is Master holding Eovath prisoner?”

“Cave. Probably.”

“You’re going to take me there.” It ought to be quicker and surer than trying to track the other ghouls, especially since, by all accounts, the blighted land called Red Rune Canyon was actually a confusing tangle of several interconnecting gorges.

Dron flinched. “No! Tell you the way!”

“And then what could I do about it if it turned out you told me wrong? I need you with me so I can kill you if you try to betray me.”

“Can’t walk!”

“I can fix that.”

Kagur trotted back around the bend, slung her bow and quiver over her shoulders, but left her pack where it sat lest it slow her down. She then planted her foot atop the head of one of Eovath’s javelins and pulled up on the shaft until the steel point snapped away from it.

When she returned to Dron, she tossed him the length of seasoned ash. “Your crutch,” she said.

Fangs bared, the ghoul struggled up with the aid of the prop. “Can’t do this!”

“You can,” Kagur said, “or I’ll finish you off here and now.”

Hobbling, the ghoul turned and led her toward the deeper recesses of the canyon. Alternately watching him for signs of treachery and scanning her surroundings from other dangers, Kagur unbuckled her belt pouch by touch, fished out the last few half-squashed bearberries, and popped them into her mouth.

Chapter Four: The Master's Table

As more and more sunlight reached the canyon floor, Dron made a steadily increasing effort to keep to the shade. Sometimes, even though raising his maimed hand made his face twist with pain, he used it to shield his eyes.

“I take it,” Kagur said, “that ghouls generally hole up during the day.”

Dron grunted.

“Does that mean all your fellows will be resting in the same cave where the demon is holding Eovath?”

The ghoul hesitated, as though pondering whether he dared lie or might gain any benefit from doing so. At length, he said, “No. Slaves not rest where Master rests. Might touch Master’s things. Might eat Master’s prisoner.”

If that was true—and to Kagur’s ears, it sounded true—it might be a bit of good fortune. Maybe she could at least make her way to Eovath without fighting any more living corpses.

That was assuming the demon wasn’t leading its minions against her at this very moment, but she doubted such was the case. The fiend had taken Eovath first because it deemed a frost giant the greater prize. At the moment, it probably wanted to concentrate on turning him undead, not hunting down the human who remained at liberty. It would assume tonight was time enough for that.

Scowling, Kagur vowed to prove that this time, it was the demon that was underestimating its foe.

As the morning wore on, she and Dron began to encounter the unnatural features that figured in campfire tales of Red Rune Canyon. Patches of the walls had turned the hue of blood or obsidian black. In some places, the discolorations had cracked open, and bubbling crimson sludge oozed forth like pus from infected wounds, stinking of sulfur.

At another spot, the creek took on a rusty hue, and the vague suggestion of anguished faces formed and dissolved in the flow. Glimpsing them made Kagur’s skin crawl, yet she felt an urge to go on peering, a sense that if she could only make them out clearly, she’d learn something she urgently needed to know.

But she also realized that fascination was irrational and the result of some malign influence. She jerked her head up and spotted a pallid something moving partway up the left wall.

A ghoul perched on a ledge with an outcropping above it for shade, an upward jut of stone at the edge of the drop providing cover like a parapet. Kagur could only see the top of it, and wouldn’t have been able to discern anything at all if it hadn’t straightened up to blow the curling ram’s horn bugle it was raising to its lips.

She snatched an arrow from her quiver, drew, and loosed all in an instant. There was no time to aim properly. Luck was with her, though, and the shaft still punched into the ghoul’s head. The creature lost its grip on the ram’s horn and flopped back out of sight. The trumpet fell banging and bouncing down the wall.

Kagur waited a moment to see if the ghoul would reappear. When it didn’t, she pivoted and aimed a second arrow at Dron’s face. Her guide flinched.

“You said,” Kagur gritted, “ghouls hide in their lairs when the sun is up. You didn’t say there would still be lookouts posted along the way.”

“Not know! New! Watching for you!”

Kagur took a breath and let it out slowly. “Maybe. Anyway, you and I are going to keep an eye out for any more of them. You want to spot them before they spot us. Because—”

“If they give signal, you kill me!” Dron snarled. “Understand!”

As it turned out, they didn’t come across another sentry. Maybe the one watcher had been a casual afterthought. Perhaps the demon assumed the tangled layout of the gorges would be enough to keep Kagur wandering lost and confused until nightfall. As it might have, had she not pressed a guide into service.

The sun had passed its zenith when said guide halted and waved his maimed hand at the spot ahead where the gorge they were following forked into two. “Go right. See cave.”

“We’ll see it together.”

“Master say, ‘Kill,’ I kill. He say, I do—no matter what.”

Kagur frowned. She was reluctant to dispense with Dron’s assistance. But she also saw the sense in not taking him any farther if the demon could compel him to attack her even against his will. Maimed he might be, but he still had fangs and claws.

And if it was time to do without him, should she kill him? A ghoul was unnatural and the enemy of all that truly lived. Every such creature deserved destruction simply for being what it was, and even had it been otherwise, now that Dron was crippled, it might actually be merciful to grant him a fast and painless death.

But she couldn’t. Blacklions dealt honorably, even with the undead. “Go, then.” If it turned out he’d led her falsely, it would be easy enough to run him down.

She waited while Dron hobbled a little way back down the defile. Then she took a long breath and laid another arrow on her bow. She crept forward and peered around a slimy black-and red-striped outcropping into the right branch of the fork.

As Dron had promised, a cave mouth opened onto the stones and sand of the canyon floor and the creek flowing down the center. Unfortunately, another ghoul lookout, the female with the dangling amber necklace, squatted just inside the entrance. Squinting, the creature had a hood pulled up to shield its head from the sun, but appeared morose and uncomfortable anyway.

The demon must use the table to help it transform prisoners.

Kagur stepped out into the open, drew her arrow to her ear, and let it fly. At the same time, the ghoul spotted her and opened its fanged mouth to shout.

The hurtling arrow plunged into the ghoul’s chest. Its cry silenced before it began, the living corpse flopped backward and lay motionless.

Kagur peered about to see if the creature’s demise had gone undetected. Seemingly so. She prowled onward to the opening. There she exchanged her bow for her longsword, then skulked into the cave.

It wasn’t entirely dark inside. Not at first, anyway. The daylight coming in the entryway shined for a dozen strides before the passage doglegged, and not far beyond that point, greenish luminescence flickered from an opening in the left wall.

Stalking onward, Kagur found the opening led to a side chamber that evidently contained the demon’s treasures—or at least a sparse but exotic collection of possessions. A golden quill scratched letters in red on a parchment that somehow unwound more and more of itself without ever reaching an end or making a great pile of used paper. In a sluggishly moving painting, a bloody man and woman locked in a carnal embrace gnawed off and devoured pieces of one another’s flesh. The green light danced from an egg-sized gem wreathed in emerald flame and reflected from an oval looking glass floating in midair.

But there was no sign of Eovath. Kagur would have to venture deeper into the cave to find him.

She took a breath, steeling herself to do so. Then a notion came to her, and she turned back to contemplate the mirror anew.

Like any proper Kellid, she distrusted sorcery even when human beings rather than demons were the casters. And a looking glass that hovered in the air was about as plainly enchanted as any article could be. There was no telling what touching it might do. Yet if the demon tried to use its horrible, debilitating gaze on her again, it might just come in handy.

Gingerly, she took hold of the mirror’s golden frame and tugged. It moved it easily. When she tucked it under her arm, it made no effort to drift upward or pull away, acting no different from an ordinary object. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Then Eovath’s deep voice bellowed, and metal rattled and clashed.

Kagur nearly succumbed to the urge to race in the direction of the sound. But stealth and caution might still serve her brother better, and so she managed to hold herself to a fast stride rather than a sprint.

The light failed as she stalked deeper, until she was groping her way through utter darkness. But fortunately, that was only for a few steps. Then she rounded a bend, and a trace of new light tinged the murk up ahead.

At its end, the passage widened out into another chamber. As she crept up to peek inside, metal clattered once again.

The light in the chamber shined from a scattering of glowing stones and glinted on an upright gray metal slab and the coils of chain that bound Eovath against it. Projections clasping the sides of his head kept him looking straight forward, and little hooks at the ends of thin, bent arms held his golden eyes wide open. At the top of the apparatus, a leering molded face sneered out above the giant’s own.

Eovath writhed and struggled against his bonds, producing more rattling and clashing, and the chains shifted and tightened like living things to hold him in place. The metal face clenched its jaw with effort.

The bat demon watched until even Eovath, for all his enormous strength and endurance, had to leave off straining and catch his breath. Then, its clawed feet clicking on the floor, it advanced on him, probably to try again to change him.

Kagur stepped out into the open. “Stop!” she snapped.

The demon hissed and lurched around. Kagur looked straight into its crimson eyes, as though she’d learned nothing from their previous encounter, and felt the power the Abyssal creature had raised to corrupt Eovath stab at her instead. With a surge of triumph, she jerked the looking glass up in front of her face.

Nothing happened.

She was still struggling to make sense of that fact when clawed hands grabbed the mirror frame and ripped it from her grasp. Manifestly unharmed by what she’d imagined to be a masterful ploy, the demon spun the mirror behind it and released it to float.

“That’s mine!” the creature snarled, and lashed out at her with its claws.

Kagur dodged aside and whipped out her longsword. When the demon snatched for her again, she cut at its scaly forearm.

She connected solidly, and her blade should have sliced deep and left the limb dangling maimed and useless. But as she pulled the weapon back, she saw it had only nicked the demon. The fiend laughed at her consternation.

Maybe her father had been mistaken. Maybe there were some things that could hurt her and which she couldn’t hurt back—at least, not enough to matter.

No! There had to be a way, and she was going to find it.

But it was difficult even to think in the midst of this combat. The demon was strong and tricky, and pressed her relentlessly. In addition to contending with its claw slashes, she had to remember to avoid its gaze, and to stay alert for the slithering, thickening sensation that meant it was trying to seize hold of her with magic.

Even so, she managed to wound it two more times. But those gashes were nearly as shallow as the first, and they stopped bleeding in a matter of moments.

She retreated, and her back foot fetched up against a wall. The demon lunged, claws raking downward, and she wrenched herself out of the way—but not quite far enough. A sting of pain and a spreading wetness told her that the fiend’s talons had cut her across the shoulder blade.

She didn’t think the slashes were deep, but couldn’t stop fighting to check. She could only come back on guard in the increasingly forlorn hope of finally cutting deep enough for it to do some good.

Or perhaps not. She belatedly realized that not all the noise in the cavern came from her battle with the demon. Still chained to the table, Eovath was throwing himself against his bonds again and again in an effort to break free.

A glance was enough to tell her that his efforts were still unavailing. But maybe she could change that.

She faked a sidestep to the demon’s right, then charged forward on its left, the trick carrying her past the fiend’s talons. It still slapped her with a beat of its wing, but not hard enough to knock her off her feet. She raised her sword high, leaped into the air, and cut at the face at the top of the restraining rack with all her strength.

The metal visage split, and the glinting gray mouth screamed. The lengths of chain whipped and flailed.

At Kagur’s back, the demon gave a screeching hiss, and she spun around to face it once again.

It attacked as savagely as before, nearly rending her twice in as many seconds. Then a huge battleaxe whirled at its flank. As she’d hoped, hurting the chain-thing had enabled Eovath to free himself and recover his weapon, and now he was joining the fight.

The demon dodged, and a blow meant to smash into its torso merely tore a wing instead. Worse, Kagur judged that despite her brother’s might, the resulting rip was smaller than it should have been—like the gashes cut by her sword, they somehow weren’t enough to truly hurt the demon, and would probably heal in a matter of moments. It might be that even she and Eovath fighting together couldn’t dispatch the demon in their usual fashion.

But maybe there was a different way to kill it.

Kagur waited for a moment when Eovath attacked hard and obliged the demon to focus on him. Then she darted to the floating mirror and shattered it with her sword. The bat creature pivoted toward the crash and screeched at the destruction.

“Run to the other chamber!” Kagur shouted. “Break everything!”

Without hesitation, Eovath whirled and dashed out into the tunnel.

Kagur’s immediate objective was simply to get everybody moving toward the mouth of the cave, and she expected the demon to chase Eovath in the normal way. Instead, the creature paused for an instant—then vanished.

She had a bad feeling about that. As she sprinted after Eovath, she called out, “Don’t break things! Just get out!”

When she passed the entrance to the green-lit treasure room, the demon was inside. It had somehow blinked from its former location to its current one, and now it goggled at her, surprised that she and the giant were racing right on by without even trying to make good on her threat.

Eovath lunged out into the sunlight, and Kagur scrambled out after him. Then, bursting into view as suddenly as it had disappeared previously, the demon was before them, crouched and ready.

Kagur darted around Eovath and cut the demon across the ribs. The giant bellowed and buried his axe in the creature’s torso, and the bat thing stumbled backward. Judging by appearances, it had finally suffered real pain and shock from a wound.

“Into the creek!” Kagur gasped.

Charging, using the axe still embedded in its body like a handle, the giant bulled the demon backward. The creature snatched and scrabbled but failed either to deter its foe or detach itself from the weapon before Eovath shoved it down into the water.

“Hold its head under!” Kagur said.

Eovath dropped on top of the demon and wrapped his massive arms around it, forcing its face below the surface. Kagur ran up beside the other two combatants and, despite the risk of accidentally hitting her brother, stabbed the bat creature repeatedly.

She no longer had any expectation that the resulting wounds would kill it. But the punishment might keep it too distracted to use any of its foul magic. And in a simple wrestling match, nothing could beat a frost giant.

One and two at a time, ghouls started peering from their hiding places, from burrows like shallow graves in the sandy ground and shadowy depressions in the canyon walls. They might hate the daylight, but the commotion had roused them even so. Kagur wracked her brain for a strategy that would allow her and Eovath to contend with them and their master at the same time.

But then Eovath wheezed, “I think we got it.”

He straightened up, gripped the demon by the neck, and hoisted it high, displaying it to the ghouls. The fiend dangled limply as a rag doll, and its many wounds weren’t puckering shut anymore.

“You see?” Eovath croaked to the ghouls. “The demon’s dead!”

The ghouls exchanged glances. Then they started retreating back into their holes and dark recesses. Maybe they feared to fight folk formidable enough to kill their maker. Kagur supposed it was even possible they were grateful for their liberation.

In any case, their withdrawal allowed her to take a closer look at Eovath, and she caught her breath to see how many times the demon had clawed him as it struggled to break free. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“I will be.” Eovath dumped the demon corpse beside the water. “Thanks to my cunning sister.”

“Who shouldn’t have insisted on coming here in the first place. I’m sorry. I’ll heed my elders and be cautious from here on.”

He grinned. “Truly?”

She felt a smile tugging at her own lips. “Well, maybe.”