I thought I would share something a little bit larger than an excerpt; one of the early chapters. Now, keep in mind while this is a full sample chapter, it is still an unedited draft and is likely to change before publication.
Three hunters take turns grumbling as they navigate a sheltered wood. Sethlan, an elf, guides them. Behind him Christaan De Rein, of the Princeps Inspectorem, alternates between counting shadows and insulting the cut of Higgin’s frock.
“Two,” Rein says. “Weren’t you a tailor?”
Their trespass echoes in the heart of the arboreal forest. Boots crush nut and stick, snapping along at a dreadful pace. However, the fault of the noise mostly lays between Artisan and his apprentice.
“One, “Higgins says, ignoring the implied insult.
More than a week has passed since they set out to find the girl Niena, the holder of the Evercharm. At first the tracks were easy enough to find, but this has changed. Gone are the fields and farms. Now, the land is wilder; avoiding thickets and tangles of thorn and brush has become predominant.
We’ve passed her, I know we have, I – movement in the corner of Rein’s eye causes him to smack his shoulder into a tree. The Artisan curses and brushes off his sleeve. “I still say two…”
A flutter in a bush trains his eye away, this time ahead and to the right. Even the Elf sees it, as his attention flickers in the briefest of motions.
“No wait,” Rein continues, breathlessly. “Three.”
The banter forces Sethlan to slow, ending his momentum by grasping a branch with his right hand. And as he looks upon Rein and his assistant, the former can’t help but to stumble to a halt. For the elf’s features are once more focused, and sharp, like a dagger being unsheathed.
“They are more than just shadows. The Udur track us,” the elf says. “At least four of them.”
That would mean they are being directed. The Inspector, Christaan De Rein, coughs as Higgins joins him.
“We must strike now and disperse them,” Rein barks.
“No.” Higgins voice is hoarse with sudden strain. “Have you already forgotten what happened the last time?
“Of course not, we were victorious. And now we must attack,” Rein says. “What use are we to the girl otherwise?”
“Victorious? Those were ghouls. The Udur are foul, and like rats, but only in one way,” Higgins hisses. “When you see one, expect there to be more.”
“You would gainsay me in front of the elf?”
Higgins reaches out and lays a shaking hand upon his master’s chest. “You don’t know them as I do. They are beings of the other, and the danger they show you is a deceit; it is not always what they are, but what they bring with them.”
Away from them both, the elf’s stance widens, and he dips his head as if listening to birds chirping at one another. But while master and apprentice argue, a different warning falls to them on a gust.
“Just the wind filling a hollow,” Rein says.
Higgins shakes his head. “Sethlan, didn’t you spot a stream and a waterfall earlier?”
“At the foot of the mountain range. Beyond a field of scree,” he answers, peering over their heads. “West, by southwest. Not far.”
A wail cuts through the dense lanes around them. With boot and arm, Rein, bewildered, is urged forward by his assistant. And Sethlan reacts like a weapon directed, and he pushes them, eyes alighting upon hidden paths even as his feet land. Above, the canopy thickens.
Rein gasps, trying to keep up. “What’s this,” he yells. “What are we running for?”
It is Sethlan who answers. “The Udur stir the dead of men.”
“We need that stream. Running water, guarded by a mountain as old as creation,” Higgins says. “They will be hesitant to pass.”
The Udur keep pace, and their forms seem to leap as shadows at the edges of their peripheral vision. Alongside their brief appearances rides a thick dread that hangs over every crunch of twig. At the edge of a storm cleared path, nature further retreats from their approach in both sight and sound.
The bird song flies away. The buzz of insects’ burrows into leaf and petal. The life of the forest holds its breath in watchful concern. During this time, the Inspector’s thoughts turn inwards.
Has the veil thinned so, that the Teamor can personally direct their hounds? He stops and scans the forest left, then right, slowing his pace more and more each time. Or have the Teamor chosen another representative?
“One of us has to keep up with the elf, sir,” Higgin whispers, drawing equal to him.
“Why are they still following us?” Rein’s voice barely rises over the whisper of leaf against leaf and the rustle of branches. “They have no- “then he hushes. Those are not forest sounds.
Klere… They are chanting. But I…I killed Chancy. What-”
“Everyone, halt.” Higgins commands. He then stops mid climb between the bough of a low oak, and another tree. “Quickly Sir,” he says. “Do all spells here work the same as back home?”
“I…The worlds of Hearth, Fairhome and Earth all have a shared-”
“I don’t need a bloody history lesson,” Higgins says. “Do they work?”
“Yes,” Rein says. “Curatorium derivative of Gaelic, though. I would not suggest French.”
“I wouldn’t ever try French, anything. You, elf. Come closer.”
A wild light dances between his assistant’s watery eyes. Just as he was resurrected; a desperate, clutching visage. Full of madness. The Inspector slides a foot back, then another, until Higgins yells “quickly now,” jabbing his way with the makeshift wand.
His assistant’s gestures are precise. Deft, and mesmerizing, for such a stocky man. Rein’s disbelief slowly turns into admiration, like twisted strains of grass unraveling.
“Suad na mair.” Higgins evokes, drawing out the last word, the morte of the enchantment.
A chill wind touches Rein’s arms. The spell is uncouth. Ancient, eldritch, and his thoughts roll over Higgin’s strange pronunciation – the words almost seep into his bone. But what frightens the Inspector more, is fading of the land around. As if the vegetation had been washed, and beaten against a rock, and in doing so drained of all life.
The striking smell of rotting leaves wafts in. Then the first Udur appear.
“There,” Rein says. “Two, three-”
Four. Five. Ten. They emerge out of the backdrop of trees with form. No longer amorphous, long appendages bend and twist at painful angles. And in the middle where their torso should be, strange beaks move, framed by tears and holes in the flesh surrounding, terrible pits that could be eyes, bright as coals and touched with a sickly sheen. Their appearance to the three has the effect of throwing a hound into a clearing with rabbits.
“Ahh, Kak.”
“Suaad na mair.” Higgin’s shouts, casting the spell over his shoulder.
“What have you done?” Rein cries. Around them distinct shapes seethe, closing in like tongs.
“I have reversed a spell.” Higgins answers. “It was made by the dead, to touch the living.”
“Good god. You mean then the living…”
Their gazes lock briefly.
“Run you fools,” Sethlan screams.
Twigs break in rapid staccato underneath Rein’s boots as he runs. Boulders blurred and gray, pass by in his periphery. Saplings. Great oaks – fuzzy, almost amorphous, barely feel real as he grips them for purchase. Up and over. Sometimes, under and through. Only the Udur appear real, glances at them stolen here, and there.
As the forest thins, broken by the debris of ancient landslides, the chant of the Udur returns. First as hoary whispers, nipping at his heels. Then, thundering in the canopy. Encircling. And there is worse, Rein can make out the words now. Spells of binding. Spells of terror.
“They have us,” Rein yells. “They have us.”
Pale things wiggle out of the ground. Left. Right. Ahead. The Inspector stomps one with the heel of his boot, realizing just as the sickening crack hits his ears, that they are arms. Everywhere at once and as if in response there is a piercing wail.
Higgins runs ahead, taking the course the elf must have pathed. But the sight of his body is dwindling. Behind spindle legged shapes of the Udur move through the forest in unnatural gates. Gaining with each heartbeat.
Up a hill covered in loose stone. Up, past a fire-thinned band of trees. Over a log. Around a shattered stump. The whispers now feel so close as to disturb the hair on Rein’s neck. And he, unable to muster himself, swings around at the top of a boulder. A ray of light touches his outstretched hands as he rears to make a desperate fight.
“Giath sporad,” Rein barks. The shield spell explodes from his outstretched hands then shudders with the weight of an Udur. As I thought. The Inspector smiles, but briefly, just as a blade appears from behind and strikes one of the clutching hands away, then plunges deep into one of the attacking Udur. Sethlan has come.
“Keep going, to the foot of the mountain,” Higgin yells.
The elf twists his dagger free, spinning left with the momentum. Dagger and sword before Rein’s eyes. Shrieks erupt left and right of him as his blades strike tendril and appendage alike among an encircling throng.
We can hurt them? Higgin’s spell, devil be damned. Rein scans the tangle of roots and weeds near his feet for something he can use. “Crecy’s Volley Higgins, Crecy’s Volley!”
A nearby branch proves usable, and as Rein raises it up for his own spell, the requested incantation thunders from Higgins to his left, and the result falls like rain, blanketing the field in arrows. Unreal howls wash over them from all around, and as Higgins lets loose another barrage, they are joined by the curses of the elf.
Rein rushes forward bringing Sethlan into the arc of his shield. A summoned arrow had slashed the elf’s sword arm, and the severed end of a tentacle wraps around his leg. His eyes lance the Inspector as he helps him to his feet.
“We can’t kill them,” Higgin says, entering the protective arc. “But this is going to make them bloody determined to kill us.”
On word the barrier shudders in reply from another press of the writhing mass. The same Udur the elf had struck down among them. And as Rein tries to see past the shimmering edges of his spell, he notices, one by one, the feathered shafts from the summoning disappear.
“Listen,” Sethlan says. “Can you not hear it?”
“Yes, they are howling like banshees,” Higgin says. “Rein? I think they are singing one of your Dutch lullabies.”
“No, fool,” the elf hisses. “The waterfall. The stream must be near.”
“Backup, backup,” Rein says. “I can’t see a –”
The Inspector smacks away a hand. Dark soil retches all near his feet while he back peddles up the foothill. “Krijg de tering, you bloody.”
Optyfussen!”
Another crash against the shield staggers the Inspector. Both elf and Higgins close around him, protectively. Together they press, Sethlan leading again. Every attack causes Rein to wince, and more of the dead underfoot drag themselves from their dark beds, no longer deterred by the weakening shield. Until some, even inside, have pulled their torso clear from the ground.
And the power of Higgin’s own spell, begins to fade. At first it is the sounds, the crunch of grass and weed underfoot no longer dulled. Then the smells. The touch of grime, the odor of rotting leaves fade. Finally, the visage around the shield returns to the undulating formless nature of smoke.
Rein’s foot is caught then, and he stumbles, his shield flickering with his loss of focus – losing touch, losing the ability to affect the horde. Higgins is immediately at his side, but all he can do is help the Inspector to crawl on. So, he does. One hand. One foot at a time. The smell of river muck and damp stone hits him. Rein licks his lips and struggles to his feet.
“Are they retreating?” the Inspector whispers.
Sethlan’s feet crash into the water near. “Not yet, look – “
A surge against the rear sends Rein sprawling into the stream. And like a crack in the dam breaking away, so too does the Udur’s hiss roll into a roar. The cries of his partners follow, with the sound of blades slicing air, and the casting of spells. Rein knows his shield is no more. He can feel the prick of its destruction everywhere. Like needles, upon needles.
His hands tremble as he tries to keep from drowning in the ankle-deep water’s flow. He crawls another foot. The clash of battle dies away.
“Solna nea, Oran cruchaid, an beath,” Higgin chants three times.
“Hellfire and damnation,” Rein coughs, spitting up water. Higgin’s spell sears away the whispers of the Udur behind him, leaving behind a terrible, terrible heat in its wake. The pain from this, and his own would send him back into the brackish waters. But something grasps him by the collar of his frock coat and drags him forward.
The shouts of Higgins, and Sethlan disintegrate as the sun sets.
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