A couple of hours before dawn, wrapped in thick fog, five hooded horsemen galloped out of the fortress gates. A lone farmer, striding towards the fields with his tools on his shoulder, shivered as they passed, mistaking them for ghosts.
Dorian savored the cold of early morning as a promise of things to come. He had not been able to sleep during the short night, so great had been his anxiety. Here they were, finally on their way to the Gray Tower of Zontar! Two weeks on horseback, if everything went smoothly. The rest of the Company would have to wait in Bezer, though Seras could hardly have been less enthusiastic about the idea. He had hoped to get rid of his unwelcome guests as soon as possible, but instead they were to remain. Dorian had been very persuasive: if Seras was truly grateful to the Company, this was his opportunity to prove it. The Captain, who considered himself a man of honor, had found himself with a dilemma: to accept Dorian’s conditions, or to lose face. He had chosen the first path, however unpleasant it seemed to him.
Dorian turned on his saddle, curious to see if his four companions shared his enthusiasm. Of Raduan, he had no doubt: they were twins in spirit. As for the other three, he had hand-picked each of them. Khorl, the colossus from the North, was sitting upright, unaffected by the wind: he had learned to ignore its cold grip since his youth, spent among the peaks of the Chain of Hamlet. Sybil, the young healer who rode beside him on her bay mare, looked almost like a child. But woe to any who treated her as such, as they would find themselves confounded by her keen intelligence. And Dorcas? His timeless eyes had seen every corner of the world, and his bow was famous among the Kingdom’s hunters. If he was old, he did not show it. Dorian, for his part, would trust his guidance with no hesitation at all.
They rode at full speed for ten days, always keen to cover as much ground as possible before sunset. They went through villages and isolated farms; they crossed fields, forded rivers, and tried to maintain a constant, steady speed. Few were the times they stopped, and then only to eat and sleep. They did not waste time in conversation during the day, but merely advanced in a straight line - whenever possible - to the Gray Tower.
On the tenth day, at sunset, the landscape began to change, with fewer outcrops of oak and chestnut trees to interrupt the flat expanse of the fields. In the growing darkness, guided by the rising moon and the light of the first stars, they happened upon the houses of a small village, where the muffled sounds of voices and laughter came to them. Through half-open window shutters on either side of the road, they glimpsed fireplaces and tables laid with frugality.
Dorian found himself envying the simple but satisfying life of the commoners. Not for the first time, he wished he was not a rootless man, a traveler spending his entire life on the road, always marching on toward an elusive goal. There had been a time when he too had had a family and a place he called home, blessed by the heat of a fire and the warmth of love... But that time was dead and gone. Now the Company was his only family, and the open sky his only roof.
They traversed the village in silence, not wishing to attract the attention of its inhabitants. They trotted in the faint starlight, entering one of the woods that dotted the region. Dorcas led the group without hesitation, relying on decades of experience as a hunter. They drew up their horses late into the night in a tiny clearing where they could hear the sound of running water. Tired by the long ride, they lit a fire, and after a modest meal of bread, cheese and nuts, they laid down under heavy blankets.
Raduan offered to do the first watch. He sat on a boulder at the edge of the clearing, as he filled the carved wooden pipe from which he was inseparable. He spent a couple of hours smoking silently under the starry sky, trying to identify the sounds of the night and to give forms and names to the soft moonlight shadows. He was happy with his way of life. The mission he shared with the other members of the Company, rather than being a weight, filled him with pride, and with the certainty that what he did for Abel, he also did for himself. His comrades in arms were like brothers and sisters to him, and he would follow them anywhere, even into the flames of hell.
But when the beautiful face of Kyra flashed before the eyes of his imagination, he flinched with pain. He remembered their last fight, and blushed with shame. Why on earth had it ended that way? Despite the difficulties of recent months, he had never ceased to consider her as an important part of his life. As, at the very least, a friend.
“And maybe something more...”
He blew out a puff of gray smoke.
He tried to think of anything else. Impossible. Her face kept coming back, a mirage among the night shadows. He endured it for as long as he could, then he woke Dorcas to take over his post. As he wrapped himself in a blanket, he thought he heard a hissing sound coming from the darkness among the trees, but his foggy mind took no notice. He dozed off.
It was dawn already when he awoke. The world was wrapped in a shroud of fog so thick as to hide the sun. It was difficult to distinguish anything through the milky air, even at only a few steps’ distance. His companions were already up: he could hear their voices, the crackle of a fire, and the sound of cups. Numb from the bitter cold, he wrapped the blanket over his shoulders and went to sit by the fire. Dorian gave him a warm tisane, which he sipped gratefully.
“We are more than halfway” said the commander “We should arrive at the Tower within a week. With a little luck, we will meet Zontar on the same day.”
Raduan nodded with a smile. He had heard several stories about the Sage, and if even only half of them were true, he must be an extraordinary man. Nobody else could give them the information they so desperately needed. And if the Valley of the Moon did indeed exist, he would know how to get there.
After breakfast, Raduan prepared to continue the journey. From the smiling faces around him, he realized that their awakening had been as good as his. He sensed a change, the advent of a new course in proceedings. When they resumed their march, he felt refreshed in body and soul.
“A sign that we will have a good day” he thought - forgetting that even the best of omens may prove false.
They moved slowly through the trees, along a path opened by loggers, stuck in a fog so dense and persistent that it seemed spawned by magic. Restricting the limits of their vision, the mist covered everything in a veil of dreamlike unreality, as if all sorts of fantastical creatures were dancing just beyond sight, only to fade away when they approached.
Raduan shivered, but not from the cold. It was becoming unnerving to tread that path. Khorl’s eyes, as he walked at his side, darted from side to side constantly. And to think the giant knew not a little about fog!
While crossing a clearing, a curtain of silence descended abruptly over them. It seemed as if the surrounding trees were holding their breath. Their restlessness turned into outright fear, and they reached for their weapons. Dorian ordered a halt and began to listen.
A long time passed until a sound penetrated the muffled barrier, but when it finally came, it was blood-curdling: the cry of a child, a shrill scream at first, then a quiet, despairing sobbing.
After moments of uncertainty, Dorian resolved to find out its cause. It took him just a glance to communicate his decision to the others. Sybil and Dorcas were to act as rear guard, and stay with the horses. Raduan and Khorl would follow him, so they dismounted and proceeded on foot. It was hard to walk through the mist, guided only by those wails. It stirred ugly images in their minds. They advanced cautiously over the wet grass for several long minutes, until they came across a dirt road. The cries seemed to come from nearby. They carried on, treading cautiously, keeping to the edge of the road.
Raduan ran into a scarecrow that burst out of the fog with its gnarled arms outstretched and a devilish grin carved into its pumpkin head. The warrior almost screamed, his nerves frayed. All his previous serenity had left him.
When the sloping roof of a barn emerged from the fog before them, they realized the road was leading to a farm. The air was filled with the bellows of cows and the clucking of
chickens. The child’s sobs were now joined by the moans of a woman. Increasingly tense, the three men approached the house. The door was open.
Dorian ventured to call:
“Anybody here?”
There was no response, but the sobs ceased suddenly.
The three looked at each other, unsure what to do. When the commander motioned to move forward, Khorl entered the dark hallway. The other two followed him in silence, their weapons drawn. The worn wooden floor creaked under their weight as the dense fog flew down the hallway through the open door, twisting around their ankles like tentacles. Shortly, the corridor opened into a large room with walls of reddish wood.
A young woman lay curled in a corner, behind an overturned table. She was cradling a small child with a terrified look. When the three men peered into the room, the woman raised her head and stared at them with pleading eyes, full of horror. She moved her lips, but no sound came out. Trembling violently, she pointed to the other end of the room.
The warriors turned their gazes to where the fog opened like a curtain, revealing little by little a hellish scene. A man’s upper body was lying on the ground, his arms opened in a cross. His eyes were empty of expression. A trickle of blood dripped from his purple lips over a face as white as marble.
Then, like the corolla of an unlikely dark flower, a giant reptile’s head materialized around the man’s shape, as black as pitch and crossed by blood-red streaks. It held the half eaten corpse between the jaws, swallowing it slowly. The rest of its scaly body lay in black and crimson coils limply on the floor.
Dorian was horrified by the cruelty emanating from those slit eyes.
“It cannot be!” he cried, retreating into a defensive position.
The snake’s head shot up like a spring, throwing aside its human meal. Its coils twisted with lightning speed, and a tail as thick as a tree trunk lashed against Dorian’s legs, throwing him against a shelf. The warrior raised himself on one elbow, stunned, frantically searching for the sword that had slipped from his hand.
At the same time, Khorl and Raduan jumped forward and sank their blades into the oblong head of the snake. Axe and sword scraped harmlessly over the scale-covered surface, and then slid towards the ground. The two warriors stumbled, unbalanced. A violent tail whip threw Raduan to the ground, emptying his lungs. The creature rose and then fell again, inflicting a terrible razor wound in Khorl’s chest with its fangs. The man collapsed with a crash, his mail-shirt smeared with blood.
Brought around by the woman’s screams, Dorian recovered in time to realise the threat to his companions. He hurled anything that came to hand against the snake to get its attention. The creature’s jaws, hit by the rain of objects, opened in something close to a mocking smile. Dorian was stunned. Was that vile creature making fun of him?
But when an oil lamp crashed near it, and the flames flashed to lick the dark bulk of its coils, the snake drew back with a hiss. Raduan took the opportunity to roll over. He picked up the leg from a broken chair and lit its end from the nearest flame. In imitation, Dorian made up rudimentary torch for himself and walked towards the snake. From the corner of his eye, he noted that Khorl, still lying on the ground, showed no signs of life.
As they converged one step at a time, Dorian and Raduan pushed the monstrous creature into a corner. It was terrified by the flames, and it channeled its anger against them into quick dashes, in a vain attempt to intimidate them with its size. When there was no room for retreat, Raduan pressed its flesh with the firebrand. There was a sizzling sound. The monster hissed like a giant bellows, and rose upwards until it hit the ceiling.
When it opened its mouth, the two fangs retracted, leaving in their place two dark holes.
“To the ground!” cried Dorian, pushing Raduan aside.
A gush of yellowish liquid spurted from the creature’s mouth, hitting the ground where the two men had been standing. The area soaked by the liquid began to corrode and steam. Raduan saw that a squirt of the foul substance had caused a blaze when it hit the fire. In less than a second, he turned to the serpent - which was ready to attack with a new surge of acid - and threw the torch into its wide open jaws.
As soon as the fire came into contact with the liquid, there was a scorching flash, and a wall of flames enveloped the creature’s body. In spasms of pain, the reptile folded on itself, twisting and whipping blindly with its tail. The two men retreated, dragging the senseless body of Khorl with them. On the other side of the room, the woman and the child screamed in panic. The nightmare lasted for a few long minutes: the snake was consumed before their eyes in a macabre dance, like a papier-mâché dragon at the festivals of solstice. Then, with a final hiss, it fell to the ground, its coils all but destroyed by the flames.
Raduan and Dorian approached the beast, watching it with revulsion. When he saw that the life hadn’t yet left the heaving reptile’s body, Dorian recovered his sword. He stuck it in its skull, and put an end once and for all to its miserable existence.
Only then he turned a forced smile to Raduan.
“Are you still in one piece?”
“I think so...” said Raduan, with a blank look “I have never seen such a thing in my life... It shouldn’t even exist...”
“I agree” Dorian shuddered. “And those eyes! I may be wrong, but I saw malice in there: true malice, not just the fury of an ordinary beast!”
A groan came from behind the overturned table.
“Khorl!” cried Dorian, back to the present.
They reached their companion lying on the ground, and they knelt at his side. His mail-shirt caught their eyes: it was torn and bloodstained.
“Luckily, it protected the vital organs” said Raduan, gently feeling the warrior’s wounded body “He has broken ribs, though. He will probably lose consciousness again, but he can make it if we act quickly! Where the hell are Sybil and Dorcas?”
“Run to them” said Dorian “There is no time to lose!”
Raduan ran towards the door, but stopped at the sight of the woman crouched in the corner with her child, both in tears, both too scared to breathe.
“I will take it from here” said Dorian.
He settled the wounded Khorl, who had passed out again, and covered him with his cloak. Then he approached the woman: she had a beautiful face, dark and strong, but overwhelmed by terror. He crouched beside her and put his hand on the child’s head: the little boy was still crying in his mother’s stiff embrace. He stroked his shaggy hair for a few moments, without saying anything. The woman’s gaze, fixed and lifeless like that of a statue, came to life little by little. She shook herself, relaxed her grip on her son, then hid her tear-streaked face in her hands.
“It is over” Dorian whispered, holding her gently.
She sobbed, accompanied by the child’s weeping.
“You have been very brave” continued the warrior “You saved your son’s life.”
“No” she murmured, in shock “No!”
“Be quiet, try not to think about it” said Dorian “You must regain your composure.”
He took her by the hand, compelling her to rise slowly, with the baby in her arms. While he supported her, he made sure that she didn’t look behind her as there lay the corpse of the disfigured man who had once been her husband. He pushed the girl down the hall and led her into another room. He made her lie on a bed with her child, speaking words of comfort. The girl continued weeping and calling her husband’s name.
As gently as possible, Dorian tried to find out what had really happened. He discovered from the girl’s confused and disconnected words that her husband had left at dawn, as usual, to take care of the animals. He had come back within moments, running, screaming and stumbling, chased by the creature. The serpent, wearing the mist like a cruel wedding train, had pulled him down from behind. She had been leant against a wall with her baby, too shocked to react. The snake had not even glanced at her. It had stayed in its corner, slowly devouring the poor man.
It fel
t wrong to force her to recall those terrible memories: Dorian lit a candle beside the bed and persuaded her to rest a little, if he stood guard. He promised he would not go far, then he went out into the hallway and closed the door behind him.
He needed to think about what had happened, to find a rational explanation to what seemed inconceivable to him. Although he was relatively used to the disturbing elements of the supernatural world, he had just faced something of which he had no experience. What was that reptile? A freak of nature of extraordinary size? Or just a common snake, grown out of proportion? Yet this to him seemed unlikely and did not justify in any way the feelings he had felt during the clash. It had been a duel to the death, against an intelligent enemy, ruthless and willing to do anything to achieve victory.
And no snake, as far as he knew, had such eyes, bright and glowing like embers.
“Such useless thoughts, Commander. You are a man of action, shhh, not a thinker. Leave these reflections to others, smarter than you!”
The voice, hissing and full of sarcasm, had come without warning. Dorian raised his head swiftly: there was someone at the window, looking into the corridor from outside the house, a disturbing looking man. A thin creature, with long, jointed limbs like those of an insect, and in spite of the fact that he was leaning forward he was still over seven feet tall. He wore flashy green clothes, frayed at the edges, and a curious multi-pointed hat, like that of a court jester.
“Hideous!” Dorian thought, staring at that oval face, at the greenish scaly skin. The two eyes were like cracks, too far apart from each other. The nose was small, almost imperceptible, and a wide mouth, with thin purple lips, showed toothless gums and a flickering forked tongue.
Shocked by his appearance, Dorian couldn’t take in every detail, but the overall vision unsettled him greatly. He stepped back and squeezed the hilt of his sword.
“Be quiet, shhh!” hissed the strange being “We are not going to hurt you. Not today, at least” he added, narrowing his reptilian eyes.
“Who the hell are you?” snapped the astonished warrior.
The other replied with a wheezing laugh, while staring hypnotically into his eyes.
“Bravo, Commander, you killed one of our snakelets! Well, shhh, we didn’t expect anything less from you!”
“I asked you who you are!” yelled Dorian.
He felt a deep unease growing inside: was this creature responsible for the earlier struggle? Was in fact the innocent family not the real target, but he himself, Dorian of the Wayfarer’s Company?
“Indeed” said the creature, as if answering to a question spoken aloud “We think you are quite interesting, Commander.” He pronounced the last word with sarcastic emphasis. “We have been watching you for a while, shhh! We must decide what to do with you.”
“...what to do with me?”
Dorian decided that he had heard enough.
He pulled the blade from its sheath and stepped forward. He would compel the creature to explain everything, with the use of force if necessary.
But between his fingers, instead of the solid hilt of his sword, he found himself grasping the smooth tail of a snake. He threw it away with a gasp of repulsion, feeling over his body in fear of other serpents.
“Shhh!” came to his ears the derisive whistling of the creature, amusedly watching him through the window, his body hunched forward to better enjoy the scene. “The little man wanted to threaten us, didn’t he? But there are still many things he has to learn, if he thinks he can touch us...”
He left the sentence hanging. Dorian, like a rodent paralyzed in front of a cobra, could not move a finger. The creature pursed his lips, revealing a double row of disgusting toothless gums, which ran from one side to the other of his flat, featureless face. His forked tongue darted, licking the air.
Then the grotesque caricature of a man drew back from the window, straightening his jointed body: upright, he was no less than nine feet tall. With an air of scorn, almost skipping, he backed away from the house. He didn’t make the slightest noise, though the ground was covered with leaves and twigs.
“If you really want to know” he said “they call us the Snakes Trainer. Our paths will cross again, shhh, I can feel it. Pray it does not happen too soon!”
Having uttered these words, he disappeared among the trees.
His yellowish eyes reappeared one last time in mid-air, briefly staring at him before dissolving in the mist.
IX - Zontar the Sage