He breathed deeply the night air. Not that his opinions mattered much these days with the High Lord. Holiday was still angry with him for attempting to trap the black unicorn and harness its powers some months back. Holiday had never been able to accept the fact that fairy power belonged only to fairy creatures because they, alone, understood its use.
He shook his head. Ben Holiday had been good for Landover, but he still had much to learn.
There was a small disturbance off to his left, and it brought him about. Onlookers to the dancing of the children had moved rapidly aside as a pair of his marsh sentries stalked out of the gloom of the lowlands mist with a singularly frightening creature between them. Hardened veterans, their grainy wood faces as fixed as stone, the wood nymphs nevertheless kept a fair amount of distance between themselves and their charge. The River Master’s guards started to close about him instantly, but he quickly waved them back. It would serve no purpose to show fear. He stood his ground and let the creature approach.
The creature was called a shadow wight. It was a form of elemental whose physical self had been ravaged at some point in its existence for an unspeakable deed or misuse so that, while it did not die, all that remained of it was its spirit. That poor life was consigned to an eternity of non-being. It could sustain itself only within shadows and dark spots, never within light. It had been denied its body and so had no real presence. What presence it possessed it was forced to construct from the debris of its haunts and the remains of its victims. A succubus, it stole life from others so that it, in turn, could survive, thieving and robbing from the lost and dying as a scavenger would. There were few of these horrors left in the valley now, most having perished with the passing of the ages.
This one, the River Master thought darkly, was particularly loathsome.
The shadow wight came to him on spindly, warped legs that might have belonged to an aged troll. Its arms were the limbs of some animal; its body was human. It possessed gnome hands and feet, a human child’s fingers, and a face that was a mix of ravaged parts.
It bore in one hand an old woven sack.
It smiled, and its mouth seemed to twist in a silent scream. “Lord River Master,” it said, its voice an echo of empty caverns. It bowed crookedly.
“It came to us without being brought,” one of the sentries informed the River Master pointedly.
The Lord of the lake country people nodded. “Why have you come?” he asked the wight.
The shadow wight straightened unsteadily. Light passed through its misshapen body at the ragged joining of its bones. “To offer a gift—and to ask one.”
“You found your way in; find your way out again.” The River Master’s face was as hard as stone. “Life will be my gift to you; ridding yourself from my presence will be your gift to me.”
“Death would be a better gift,” the shadow wight whispered, and its empty eyes reflected the distant candlelight. It turned to where the children still danced, wetting its lips with its tongue. “Look at me, Lord River Master. What creature that lived in all the worlds of all the times that are or ever were is more pathetic than I?”
The River Master did not respond, waiting. The wight’s empty gaze shifted again. “I will tell you a story and ask that you listen, nothing more. A few quick moments that might be of interest, Lord River Master. Will you hear me?”
The River Master almost said no. He was so repulsed by the creature that he had barely been able to tolerate its presence this long. Then something caused him to relent. “Speak,” he commanded wearily.
“Two years now have I lived within the crawl spaces and dark spots of the castle of Rhyndweir,” the shadow wight said, edging a step closer, its voice so low that only the River Master could hear. “I lived on the wretches the Lord of that castle cast into its keep and on those poor creatures who strayed too far from the light. I watched and learned much. Then, this past night gone, a ruined troll brought to Rhyndweir’s Lord a treasure to sell, a treasure of such wondrous possibilities that it surpassed anything I had ever seen! The Lord of Rhyndweir took the treasure from the troll and had him killed. I, in turn, took it from the Lord of Rhyndweir.”