Whispering woods by Clayton Emery

Author:Clayton Emery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy

CHAPTER 12

The magic horse blazed across the sky like a comet.

Body and face were gray as a slate tombstone. Feet were white hot and spilled yellow flame. Flaming mane and tail trailed out behind like a burning paper kite.

It had risen from the other wizard's bonfire as if launched from a catapult. Now it arced across the sky, painful to watch with eye-smarting brilliance, paddling its hooves above the treetops. They drummed on the ears and air, though they touched nothing. Nostrils snorted fire and snuffled gouts of black smoke.

Was it alive or dead? Gull wondered. Was it even a horse? "Riding the night mare" was what a mother called bad dreams, yet never had Gull imagined that a real demon haunted the dark hours.

Then there was no time for supposing, for the flaming monster dived straight at Towser's ruptured wagons.

"Greensleeves!" yelled the woodcutter.

He clutched Lily around the waist, kicked the horse toward camp. But the flesh-and-blood animal balked, either at the fire or the brassy alien smell of the phantom horse. After three tries to force it forward, Gull gave up, slid from the saddle, and dragged Lily stumbling along.

"Come on!" But what he expected to do in camp he couldn't guess. He'd even tossed his axe away, was completely weaponless. The most he could hope was to grab Greensleeves and run like hell.

Whistling from the sky, like a hawk upon chickens, the nightmare swooped in a tight circle over the tumbled wagon train. The camp was clearly illuminated by its light. Gull saw women and bodyguards cringe. Even brash Kem and Chad curled into balls and covered their heads, like children afraid of a parent's wrath.

All of them, within the wagons and without, screamed for dear life.

Terror, Gull thought. The thing spreads terror. It causes bad dreams you can't wake from.

Without realizing it, he slowed, as if fear were a plunging tide to wade.

Concentrating, he almost fell as Lily suddenly gasped and yanked his hand. They were still hundreds of feet from camp. "What-"

Then he saw. By the flickering light of the nightmare, he discovered twisted shapes littering the forest floor at their feet.

The Zombies of Scathe, Lily had called them.

They lay like reaped corn stalks, every which way. Facedown, heads back, on top of one another. Threescore or more, unmoving except for fistfuls of writhing maggots.

Their rotten, bloated stink was almost palpable, like a fist in the face. Gull caught his nose and backed up. Gasping, gagging, he and the dancing girl stumbled wide around.

Despite the horror, Gull found the scene familiar. People sprawled like jackstraws. As in White Ridge.

Villagers, including his parents and siblings, had fallen near the end of the wizards' duel. A mysterious weakness, unseen, unheard, only felt, had leached the strength from their bodies. Gull himself had collapsed. Only the hale and hearty survived. Young, old, weak died. Many others had never recovered their strength, had lain unconscious until they expired, wilted like cut flowers.

And if that weakness spell-if this was it-felled zombies here, then the same wizard must have cast it in White Ridge.

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