The Sigil Blade (40 page)
Wrongly assuming that once he made it to the tree line he might be safe, Edryd relaxed and slowed his pace as he entered the cover provided by the forest. It was a mistake. The draugr was now moving even more quickly as she entered the forest behind him. The trees were spaced too far a part to give her any significant trouble, and unlike him, she did not seem to tire.
Running again now, Edryd started to bend north, thinking of turning toward the coast where he knew there were areas of thicker vegetation. He gave up on this when he perceived that the draugr was moving at an angle that would intercept him well before he could reach any cover. Edryd took a moment to reflect on the envelopment which shrouded him, seeking confirmation that it remained in place. He had dealt it some permanent damage at some point. The Ældisir had picked up on the exposed aura and was tracking it directly. Any hope of escape was gone. She would only close the distance that separated them faster, if he did anything other than run in a straight line.
Edryd no longer held any hope that he could hide, and recognized that eventually he would have no choice but to turn and fight. He could imagine fighting the other draugr, the Huldra. There was something physical there to contend with. The Ældisir though, was ephemeral and without form. In his haste he had not taken his sword, but a weapon such as that could not harm a creature such as this. In order to fight her, Edryd needed to be able to shape.
A realization came that there might be a benefit to the damage he had done to his concealment. If it had weakened, perhaps the limitations it imposed had weakened as well. Edryd tried to touch the dark, and like every other time he had ever tried, he failed.
The Ældisir was drawing close now, and Edryd heard a whistling sound as a hail of thin pointed projectiles flew toward him from several different directions in the trees ahead of him. They were not real. Edryd could perceive that they were illusions conjured to manipulate and distract him, all except for one, coming from the opposite direction. Reacting to the illusory needles in the way in which the Ældisir apparently intended would have positioned Edryd directly into the path of the real one. Edryd flinched in spite of himself as he allowed the insubstantial objects to pass, without any effect, through his body. The dart that posed true danger flew past Edryd on his left, embedding its sharp point in the trunk of a large tree.
Beginning to comprehend what he was facing, Edryd’s desperation grew. The draugr might not have a physical form, but she carried and could manipulate physical objects. There was no way of knowing what poison that needle had been tipped with. Worse, Edryd could not trust his traditional senses. The Ældisir was manipulating some of what he saw and heard.
Edryd, under these difficulties, settled upon a dangerous solution. He would go to a place that he feared more than the creature pursuing him. It was the only plan in which he could envision any hope of success. Edryd took a path that led to the ruins deep in the forest.
Twice more he evaded the attempts to attack him with a combination of conjured illusions and actual steel projectiles. The foreboding presence of the construct towers worked at the edges of his mind, alternately pushing and pulling his focus in different directions, but there was a small comfort to be taken in the reactions he noticed in the Ældisir. She was troubled by the ruins and increasingly anxious to prevent her quarry from reaching them. She was no longer trying to distract Edryd. She was focused now only on reaching him as quickly as she could.
Accepting the absurdity of what it was he was trying to do, but feeling more confident that it was his only chance, Edryd summoned what little energy he had left to make the final frantic push for the borders of the long dead city. He wanted to collapse when he passed through the towering arches at the western edge of the ruins, but he forced himself to remain on his feet, walking in towards the center of the site.
The Ældisir hesitated at the edge of the ancient structures, before unleashing her abilities with an intensity that she had previously held back. Soldiers came charging out at Edryd from the shadowed entrances of the buildings nearest to him. Edryd ignored them and they faded away.
Confronted by the overwhelming presences of the constructs trapped within the towers at the heart of the city, and filled with a terror that was warning him to turn around and run, Edryd glanced over his shoulder. The Ældisir was somehow making these feelings stronger, and playing tricks with his mind.
Pushing through the fear, Edryd faced forward again. He found himself standing less than a foot away from a nearly seven foot tall creature. It was the Huldra warrior, the draugr who had chased him onto the causeway. He had fallen into a trap. Edryd fell to the ground and began to propel himself backwards. The draugr stepped forward, and Edryd tasted the decaying stench in the air that escaped through the masking odor of the salve that coated the creature’s skin. Edryd felt the draugr’s hatred, and experienced the depths of the pure animus under which it looked down now upon the only living son of a man who it hated far more deeply yet.
Edryd closed his eyes, emptying all of his senses except for his ability to perceive the dark, and looked at his enemy. There was something there, but it was not a draugr. It was an impotent shaped pattern that posed no physical threat. Edryd stood up. The illusory draugr remained a few feet in front of him. He could hear it rumbling in anger. When Edryd opened his eyes, the image of the creature was still there, but as he began to walk it retreated each time he advanced. As Edryd moved further from the Ældisir, the illusion began to seem less real. This was the art of Seiðr. He knew this from what he had read in the book that he had taken from Seoras. It was a form of shaping, and Edryd hoped that like shaping, it would be harder for her to maintain as the distance between them increased.
Edryd heard a chilling scream of frustration as the illusion disintegrated, a despairing noise that had seemed both real and audible, but he had to doubt his senses, given the specific brand of sorcery that this creature practiced. She was coming now, slowly, but she was coming. Edryd began to walk toward the towers in the middle of the city. He easily stayed ahead of the Ældisir, recovering some of his strength while moving forward at a comfortable pace.
Passing the ring of towers, Edryd walked to what he now knew was the center of the ceiling of the domed underground chamber. It was fully morning now, the sun having just cleared the mountainous peaks to the east. He took a seat on the top step of the stairs and waited. He was calm at first, until he realized that in this place, his perceptions were confused. He could still sense her approaching, but the harder he tried to accurately fix her location, the more disoriented he became. He had good reason to hope that this disrupting effect was even more of a problem for her.
The Ældisir stopped at the edge of the encircling monoliths, sensing that something was wrong here, and recognizing that she had been led to this spot. A turbulent wind began to churn in the air where the draugr stood, making the outlines of a female figure briefly visible amidst thickening clouds of dust. The wind died down more suddenly than it had begun and the fragments of dust and earth settled back to the ground revealing a woman. A woman Edryd recognize as his mother.
The wind had been real, a touch of showmanship by the draugr. The woman was not, she was an image awakened in his mind by means of Seiðr. Edryd understood now why she seemed familiar. It was more than the fact that she was appearing to him in the form of his mother. It was because she had done so before, when she had cut him free aboard the smugglers ship. This Ældisir had followed after him obsessively for years, observing his every move. Upon learning what she was, Edryd had escaped her unwanted warding only with Aelsian’s help.
“I want to help you, Aisen,” she said.
“I don’t want your help,” Edryd replied, looking away, unable to bear her presence.
“I am not here to hurt you,” she said, sounding wounded and still speaking in his mother’s voice. This was anything but comforting. She could hardly have chosen anything to say that would have unsettled him any worse or that he would have believed any less. This woman was death. Not merely some apparition, but death itself, walking among the living and corrupting and destroying all of the things that she touched.
She came no closer for the moment, either unable or unwilling to cross the boundary marked by the circle of towers. “Stay away from me,” Edryd warned dumbly, having nothing with which to threaten her. The command seemed to provoke instead of deter. The Ældisir forced her way past the imaginary line between the two towers nearest to her, and as she did this the image in his mind disappeared. The Ældisir struggled to take form once again. When it did coalesce in a series of halting stages, Edryd could still recognize the face of his mother, but it was weaker, less substantial, and it more closely resembled the almost forgotten memory in his mind that the draugr was drawing from.
Edryd remembered the light that Seoras had summoned in the chamber. The image of his mother was like that. The Ældisir was having difficulties with her art, and Edryd could dare to hope, had become a little less dangerous. She advanced silently, and as she did she continued to become more solid, more vital and real. She might have been struggling, but she was not wholly weakened. He could not afford to let her get close. Edryd descended the stairs.
“Stop!” she commanded in the voice of his mother, affecting an expression of genuine concern for an endangered child. “What you are doing is dangerous.”
Edryd ignored her warnings and the voice faded from his mind as he descended further down the steps into the darkness. He had opened himself to the dark, and guiding himself by the positions of the towers and the memory of previous trips into this orphic expanse, he made it to the bottom safely. Avoiding the pitted basin on his way to the far edge of the chamber, he settled in with his back against one of the carved panels on the wall and waited for the Ældisir. She came, descending each step slowly. She didn’t seem to know where he was, and she could no longer make him see any illusions, but he could now see her with clarity. In the perfect darkness that existed in the depths of this place, she was somehow darker still, a female form whose edges were sharp and clearly defined.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, the Ældisir turned and looked for him. He could see no features on her form, but he could discern dimension, and the outline of her shape, and so he knew that she was staring at him. Edryd didn’t know what a being such as this, an immortal returned, had to fear, but he could easily discern that she was frightened. Edryd shifted his perspective, seeing himself now as if from a few feet away. This is why he had come here, in hopes that he could be freed from the confinement of the warping of the dark that enveloped him.
He had expected to see a widening in the cracks in his concealing shroud, disrupted by the influence of the construct towers. What he saw instead was nothing of the sort. There were no angry red fissures and there was no darkness—there was no shroud at all. In its place was a pure white aura, intensely agitated by flowing lines of energies directed at him from the four functioning towers. He understood now why the Ældisir appeared so dark. His aura was permeating everything and filled the air itself, but it could not touch the draugr. Its light flowed around her, incompatible with what she was. He could appreciate why she seemed so frightened, and now that he understood it as well, she was not half so terrified or frightened as he was himself.
On previous occasions, Edryd had felt an overwhelming pressure while in this place. This had been an internal effect, triggered by an interaction with the construct towers, which had been contained and held in check by the presence of the shroud. Without the shroud in place, there was no pressure. Making the supposition then that if he tried now, he would be able to shape, Edryd also recalled the premonition that if he were to try to do so in this place that it would destroy him. He had a sense that he stood now on a precipice risking unimaginable disaster. Edryd began to walk towards the Ældisir. She remained frozen where she stood, whether in fear, or stubbornly blocking his path, Edryd could not tell.
Eventually he could go no further without forcing his way past her. Edryd took another step, and that is when he saw the object she held between the fingers in her right hand. She raised her arm, preparing to push the dart into his flesh, but Edryd caught her wrist. The Ældisir screamed in pain and agony. What he had caught hold of was nothing with any true substance, and he was not holding onto it with his actual hand. He had broken through the darkened shell that held the soul of this creature, and it was his own aura that held her fast.
He would have let go then if he could. In something very much like the bond he had forged with Seoras, he could see into the Ælidisir’s soul, and could feel her torment. He could feel the accumulated pain of years spent anchored to this world, trapped in a death that would allow her neither the simple joy of life nor the promise of transcending to the next existence. Most of all he could feel the pain of what she knew was about to happen.
Edryd tried to shut it out but he had already been pressed into a forced accord with the soul of this undead creature. He could find himself, with difficulty, but when he did he saw that the pure blackness which held her was now expanding to engulf him as well. This is what she feared most. It had happened before. It would crush the life out of whatever she touched, leaving tattered screaming traces behind imprisoned alongside her. It was easy now to understand why draugar avoided contact with living things. Edryd had gained insight into what it was that was happening, but there was nothing to be learned from the Ældisir that suggested any means by which he could prevent it.