A Touch of Night
Garin wearily shouldered his pack as he followed the older men up the hill.
He'd barely slept a wink the night before. Howls had sounded somewhere in the forest — coyotes, probably, but he'd imagined them to be a pack of wolves, circling and hunting them. Worse still, when twigs and leaves had rustled in the dark, he'd opened his eyes and thought he'd glimpsed the shapes of men. How long he'd stared wide-eyed into the darkness after that, he couldn't say.
But it was the thoughts of what lay ahead in the Ruins of Erlodan that sent the deepest shivers through him.
Garin shook his head as he huffed behind the men. Young he might be, but they set a grueling pace, and he found himself hard-pressed to keep up. But he'd be damned if he let himself fall behind in a place like this.
Yuldor himself had cursed the derelict castle and broken apart the stones, and if Bran's story was to be believed, the Night's evil lingered there still. By visiting such a place, the Puppeteer could seize Garin for his own to make him dance to his malevolent designs.
He forced a grin. As if he believed such childish tales.
Garin had visited no more villages than he could count, but he knew a thing or two about devils. Monsters wandered down into the East Marsh from the Fringes — he'd even seen one or two himself: a runty harpy, a four-foot-tall, womanish bird who screeched at them until a hunter put it down; and a crag boar, nine feet long with tusks that could gore three men each at a thrust. The boar had taken much longer to kill.
There were monsters, and now he'd seen there was magic. But Garin wasn't so naive as to believe devils and demons existed, plotting their domination of the Westreach from their fortresses deep within the mountainous East.
"Keep up, Garin!"
At Bran's call, he looked up and found he'd fallen behind. Clenching his jaw, he pushed his leaden legs faster.
The men had stopped by the time he caught up, standing just above a treeless crest. Taking the last switchback, Garin turned the corner and stopped in his tracks, breathing heavily as he stared above him.
Erlodan's castle was in ruins, but it was undeniably a castle, and far grander than anything he'd ever seen. He'd considered the inn in one of the neighboring villages tall at three stories high, but even the shortest of the ruined, black walls reached four times the inn's height. The citadel was as large as all of Hunt's Hollow — larger, maybe. Garin couldn't imagine the wealth one must possess to fund building such a thing. More coins than had ever passed through his hometown, he knew that much, or any of the towns he'd been to.
He found Bran looking over at him from the corner of his eye. "Grand, isn't it?"
Garin found his jaw hanging open and snapped it shut. "Doesn't blow me away," he said casually.
Bran grinned, but the smile seemed strained. "Listen, Garin. Aelyn and I are going to enter the ruins, but I think you should stay here. You'll be safer."
It shamed him to admit, but a shiver of fear went through him at the thought of staying there alone. "You don't have to worry about me," he said quickly. "I won't be a bother. I just want to see more of the ruins you've told me so much about."
On Bran's other side, Aelyn's mouth tightened.
Bran glanced at the mage, then sighed. "I suppose we'll be able to keep an eye on you this way. Very well. But no falling behind."
Garin nodded. "I'll keep up."
"If that's settled," Aelyn said impatiently. He pulled out something from beneath his collar, and Garin peered closer. It glinted faintly in the morning light, dull gray metal that had never seen polish, and scrawled along its face were red lines in shapes like a script. The lines seemed strangely familiar, though Garin was sure he'd never seen the symbols before. He found Aelyn's gaze intently on him and quickly looked away.
"What's that?" he asked, not meeting the mage's eyes.
It was Bran who answered. "A glyph ward. Our friend here was kind enough to provide us all protection from the East's corruption. Or… wait, there's only one."
The mage's expression grew sourer still. "I'm the only one who would be of any real danger if I were turned. The Named has no use for mere men like you two."
Bran clutched a hand to his chest. "Ah! Is there any wound so dire as insignificance to a man's pride?"
Garin smiled, but it was a weak, limp thing, like a fish pulled from a river already dead.
"The Named?" he asked, as much to distract himself as out of curiosity.
"What the elves call our devil friend," Bran said, dropping his maudlin act. "Whose name, by the way, you shouldn't say here."
"You mean Yul—"
Garin found his arm in Aelyn's hard grip. "Silence!" he hissed. "Or do you wish to bring him down upon us?"
Stunned, he stared back at the mage. "Could saying his name do that?"
Bran moved forward and extricated him from the elf's grasp. "Mind your binding, Aelyn. No harm to the youth, or you'll experience it in equal measures."
The elf hissed, then turned and stalked away.
Bran nodded after him. "Come on, then. We'd best stick close to him. No matter what the puffed up cock thinks, the Prince of Devils has a use for anyone who wanders into his grasp. Best not take any chances."
Head spinning, Garin found he could do nothing but nod.
As they passed under yet another broken archway, Bran pretended to watch his footing and glanced back at Garin. As promised, the youth was sticking close to his and the mage's heels. He put a brave face on, but from his wide eyes and slightly parted mouth, Bran knew that the Ruins of Erlodan had worked its cold fingers far under his skin.
And little wonder why. Bran felt it himself: how the shadows clung like cobwebs when they passed through them; how every precariously positioned boulder seemed poised to crush them; how eyes seemed to watch them from under collapsed floors and walls, then disappear the moment he turned toward them.
Something lingered in these ruins, that was clear enough. And Bran had been around the Night's corruption enough times to know it for what it was.
He leaned close to Aelyn beside him. "What exactly am I supposed to be looking for?"
"All out of clever quips, are you?" the elf mocked him. "No more knowing smiles tucked away? Perhaps this place has you frightened as well as the boy."
"If it doesn't scare you, I can't think what does."
Aelyn gave him a thin smile and said nothing.
"But since you didn't answer my question, I'm guessing you don't know yourself."
The mage was silent a moment longer. "Perhaps not. But you and I both know we'll recognize it when we find it."
"How, precisely? A foul, sulfuric stench? Our enemies are unsavory, but I imagine they still bathe." Bran paused as if thinking for a moment. "Though I can't exactly picture those bastards in a bath."
"Must you always play the fool?"
"You say that as if I have a choice."
Bran, who had kept his gaze warily about them despite his easy manner, turned back to check on Garin.
And found no one behind them.