The masked witches

From a closer distance, Vandar could see that she was one of the womanlike creatures known as hags. She was more humanlooking than some, no taller than he was. And before undeath had claimed her, mottling her leathery hide with decay and kindling a sickly amber glow in her eyes, she could possibly have passed for human as long as she kept her twisted hands with their long talons hidden inside her mantle.

He charged her, and she screamed again. The noise stung his face and chest like a barrage of pebbles, but it didn t addle him. His fury armored him against it.

Unfortunately, shrieking wasn t her only trick. The hag thrust out her hand at him, and a freezing wind howled and shoved him from the side. Caught in the vortex that had sprung up around her, snow swirled up from the ground.

Thrown off balance, Vandar fell. Instinct warned him that he mustn t stay where he d dropped, so, impeded by the snow, he flung himself to the side. Thunder boomed, and a dazzling flash lit up the notch in the mountain, robbing him of his night vision. A hint of the lightning he d just dodged stung him through the ground.

Prompted by instinct again, he heaved himself to his feet and cut at a shadow. The curved sword sheared into solidity. At the same instant, something snagged in his vest of boiled leather. The hag s claws ripped away the protection and scored his flesh beneath.

Vandar ripped the scimitar out of the place where it had lodged and cut at the murky form before him. But the hag was too close for him to use the unfamiliar blade to best effect. Even the strength of a berserker couldn t make it bite deeply. Meanwhile, the creature scrabbled at him, tearing his armor to shreds.

He cut low, trying for a knee, and felt a jolt as the scimitar met flesh and bone. The hag s raking, ripping assault abated, but surely not because she was trying to escape. The undead were fearless. She must be trying to circle around behind him, Vandar thought, or open up some distance between them to facilitate the use of her magic.

Battered by the howling wind and squinting, he turned and sought her. As he did, a measure of his sight returned, enough to spot her a few paces away. She was favoring the leg he d cut and had a horizontal gash across her belly. Her cowl had slipped backward off her head, and her long white hair lashed and streamed in the whirlwind like her ragged garments. A glimmering flickered inside her gnarled fingers, intermittently revealing the shadows of her bones, like streaks of infection in her flesh.

With a bellow, Vandar threw himself at her, and she sprang to meet him. He cut at her neck, and an instant later, she drove the talons of both hands into his chest.

Something crackled. A sensation of fire along his nerves made him jerk like a man suffering a seizure. Then the hag s claws slipped out of his pectorals, and she collapsed. When she hit the ground, her head, nearly severed by the scimitar, tore away completely from her neck. The yellow gleam in her eyes went out, and the u

With all three of Vandar s foes destroyed, the berserker fury drained away. He felt weak and shaky, and the sudden throb of pain in his blistered, bleeding chest and bruised hands made the sick feeling worse. Panting, he flopped down to sit in the snow.

He heard stone cracking and crunching. He twisted his head and looked around.

It was the first time he d taken a close look at the menhir. Strings of small, jagged-looking runes extended from the top of the granite shaft to the bottom. Though he couldn t read them, Vandar recognized the writing of the Raumvirans, who d lived throughout those lands in ancient times and had left ruins and monuments to prove it.

Though a wooden staff should have been incapable of breaking granite, the hag had succeeded in effacing some of the symbols, and even with her body lying headless on the ground, her work continued. More patches of stone chipped away, seemingly of their own accord. Hairline cracks snaked out from the disappearing runes, and the entire menhir shivered.

It s like an egg hatching, Vandar whispered. He couldn t explain exactly how he knew that, but he did just as he sensed that whatever was about to emerge would make even an undead hag seem like a trivial a

Still trembling, he dragged himself to his feet and poised himself to go berserk a second time. It would be a strain to do it again so soon, particularly when he was wounded. But he didn t see that he had a choice.

Yhelbruna was advancing on the stone, although not in a straight line. Her path weaved from side to side and even doubled back at certain points, as though the footprints she left in the snow were themselves a form of writing. She swept her bluewood wand up and down and side to side as she chanted rhymes in a tone that reminded Vandar of someone snapping commands at an unruly dog.

The menhir shuddered harder. More of the sigils crumbled. Though he was no mystic, and unversed in any mysteries save those of his own lodge, Vandar suddenly felt the elation of another mind. The psychic intrusion was so powerful that, for a moment, he shared the emotion, even as he also discerned that as soon as the thing in the stone achieved its release, it intended to kill him and Yhelbruna, too.

Yhelbruna sang words in a different rhythm. Her voice reminded Vandar of a bugle blowing on a battlefield. She pressed her hands to the sides of her face.

The hathran s leather mask burned like the sun. The radiance it shed lit up everything in front of her, but seemed to fall most intensely on the disintegrating menhir.

Its cracks closed, and new stone formed to seal over the broken places. Glyphs rewrote themselves.

The alien exultation that had intruded in Vandar s mind gave way to rage and determination. The creature in the shaft made a supreme effort, and for a moment, a huge and shadowy form, with horns curling upward from its two reptilian heads and several tentacles writhing from each shoulder in place of arms, loomed above the standing stone. Then, in a paroxysm of hate and frustration, it disappeared. To his relief, Vandar s link to its psyche vanished with it.

Yhelbruna flopped down in the snow. He hurried toward her and saw that her mask was gone, perhaps fading from existence once she had used up every bit of magic stored within it.

Her heart-shaped face was youthful, with smooth skin and apple cheeks. It was more girlish and less queenly than he could have imagined, with a largish nose and a hint of humor at the corners of the wide mouth.

He kneeled beside her. Are you all right? he asked.

Just tired, she said, smiling. Now you ve seen my face, and, under the circumstances, there s no sacrilege in it. But you won t tell anyone what you saw.

He wondered how she knew he d hoped to see her unmasked.

I swear I won t, by the totem of my lodge, he replied. But can you tell me what just happened? What was that thing?

Ah, Yhelbruna said. The Raumvirans who once lived in these mountains were enemies to the Nars, and the Nar wizards were masters at summoning devils and demons to do their bidding. They sent such fiends to trouble the High Country, and the Raumathari mages coped by erecting traps like this one. A spirit that wandered too near was pulled inside.

And held, said Vandar. Until something set it free.

Exactly, replied the hathran. We Wychlaran inspect and maintain the stones every year. That s enough to counter the effects of simple weathering and the like. But obviously, it can t prevent tampering.

By filthy Thayan hands, Vandar said.

I would assume, Yhelbruna replied.

Curse it, he said. It s not even an act of war, because we re not at war right now. It s just evil. Setting a demon loose to wander around and hurt anyone unlucky enough to run into it.