Darkness. Warm, enveloping darkness.
Kara nestled in it, dwelled in it, found it so comforting that for the longest time she had no desire to leave it. Yet, there camea point when something-an uneasy feeling, a sense of foreboding-made her turn, shift… and try to wake.
She also heard a voice.
"Kara! Lass! Where are you?"
The voice had a familiarity to it, one that slowly drew her up from oblivion. As she tried to awaken, Kara Nightshadow's own will aided in the task. This darkness, this nothingness, held her prisoner. The comfort it offered was a smothering one, an eternal sleep.
"Kara!"
It no longer even comforted. Now it scratched, crushed, felt more akin to a casket than a soft bed…
"Kara!"
The necromancer's eyes flew open.
She stood imprisoned in a tomb of wood, her limbs seemingly frozen.
Somewhere a hound barked. The necromancer blinked, trying to focus better. A few cracks of dim light shone through, just enough to enable her to better understand what had become of her. Wood tightly surrounded her on all sides, a hollow tree without major openings. Somehow, she had been placed here, sealed in here-to die?
A sense of claustrophobia nearly overwhelmed her. Kara struggled to move her arms, but could not. They had been pinned to her sides and wrapped by vegetation growing in the hollow tree. Worse, moss also covered her mouth, sealing her lips together. She tried to make a sound, but, muffled by both the moss and the thick trunk, Kara knew that no one outside would hear her.
More hounds barked, this time nearer. She fixed on a voice, Captain Jeronnan's voice, calling her name.
"Kara! Lass! Can you hear me?"
Her legs also could not move, likely for the same reasons as her arms. Physically, Kara had been left completely helpless.
The sense of claustrophobia grew. Although the necromancer had lived much of her short life in seclusion, she had always had freedom of movement, freedom of choice. Her ghoulish attackers had left her without either. Why they had not slain her outright, the desperate dark mage could not say, but if she did not soon escape, her demise would be just as certain… and in a far slower, grislier fashion.
And that thought, accompanied by her growing feeling that the tree trunk closed in on her from all sides, pushed Kara as none of her teachers had ever. She wanted to escape, to be free, to not suffer the slow tortures of starvation…
Bound as she was, with even her mouth sealed, no sophisticated spell could save her. Yet, raw emotion, so generally kept under control by the followers of Rathma, now bubbled up, demanded to overflow. Kara stared at the wood before her, seeing it as her nemesis, her own tomb.
She would not die this way, not through the dark magic of an undead sorcerer…
Not die this way…
The interior of the trunk grew hot, stifling. Sweat dripped over the necromancer. The vegetation seemed to tighten around her limbs.
Not die…
Her silver eyes flashed bright… brighter …
The tree exploded.
Fragments of wood flew in all directions, bombarding the nearby landscape. Somewhere, Kara heard men swear and dogs whine. She could do nothing for them, though, and, in truth, could do no more for herself. The necromancer fell forward, her arms and legs no longer hindered. The instinctive reaction to put her hands out to save herself kept Kara from striking the ground head first, but did not prevent the jolt whenher body hit from causing her to momentarily black out.
Vaguely she heard voices that seemed to draw near. A beast sniffed the ground near her head, its cold nose briefly rubbing against her ear. She heard a command, then felt strong but gentle hands touch her shoulders.
"Kara! What in the name of the Sea Witch happened to you, lass?"
"Jeron—" she managed to utter, the effort nearly doing her in again.
"Easy, lass! Here, you fool! Take the dogs' leashes! I'll see to her!"
"Aye, captain!"
Kara barely noticed the journey back to Gea Kul, save for one moment when the innkeeper, who carried her in his arms, swore at one of his companions for nearly letting the dogs trip him. She drifted into and out of consciousness, now and then recalling her short glimpses of the two undead. Something about them had greatly disturbed her, more than she would have imagined possible.
Even in her present state, it went through Kara's mind that they had been invisible to her senses, that they had played her, not the other way around. Necromancers manipulated the forces of life and death, not the other way around. Yet, the Vizjerei and his grinning companion had toyed with Kara as if she had been less than a firstyear novice. How? More to the point, why did they walk the world at all?
The answer had to deal with her earlier error in the tomb. Somehow, although her training had never covered such astounding occurrences, when she had left the phantasm alone, it had been able to seize full control of the body. Then, it must have summoned the companion it had known in life, the pair vanishing by magic before she returned.
A simple explanation, and yet not at all satisfactory. Kara missed something; she felt sure of it.
"Enchantress?"
The word echoed in her skull, drowning out her thoughts. She forced her eyelids open-which Kara had not even realized until now had been closed-and stared up at the concerned visage of Captain Hanos Jeronnan. "What…?"
"Easy, lass! You've gone two days without food and water! Not enough to do you any real harm, but still too much for your own good!"
Two days? She had been trapped in the tree for two days?
"When you vanished that night, I started a search right away, but not until morn came did I find this pouch near the side of the inn." He held up a small, leather pouch in which Kara stored some of the herbs necessary for her calling. Necromancer spells required other ingredients besides blood, although most outsiders never knew that.
Odd, though, that she should lose that pouch. It would have almost required her captors to spend precious time to tear it off, so securely had the young spellcaster generally kept it fastened. Of course, that made even less sense, since the only reason that they would bother to do that might be to actually leave a clue to her kidnapping, hardly something either ghoul would have done.
But, then, they had left her alive, if buried in the heart of a dead tree.
She felt so confused. Her irritation must have shown, for the innkeeper immediately sought to aid her. "What is it? Need more water? Blankets?"
"I'm…" Her words sounded more akin to the croaking of a frog-or too much like her more vocal assailant. Kara gratefully accepted water, then tried again. "I am allright, captain… and I thank you for your care. I will, of course, pay you—"
"I don't like foul language in my establishment, milady! There'll be no more talk of that!"
He truly was a curiosity to her. "Captain Jeronnan, most folk, especially westerners, would rather have left one of my kind to rot in that tree, much less put together a search party. Why do this?"
The huge man looked uncomfortable. "Always watch over my guests, lass."
Despite the aches throughout her body, she pushed herself up to a sitting position. Jeronnan had given her a room such as she could not have imagined in Gea Kul. Clean and comfortable, with no odor of fish, either. Truly a marvel. Yet, Kara did not let her pleasant surroundings deter her from her question. "Why do it, captain?"
"I had me a daughter once," he began with much reluctance. "And before you think it, she looked not a bit like you save in also being pretty." Jeronnan cleared his throat. "Her mother was higher born than me, but my naval successes let me rise to where we could wed. Terania was born to us, but her mother never lived much beyond carrying her." A daring tear emerged from the gruff man's eye, one the innkeeper quickly brushed out of existence. "For the next decade and more, I couldn't stand my life because it tore me away from the only one left to me. Finally, I resigned my commission when she was just beginning to blossom into a fair maiden and took her across the sea to a place I remembered being so beautiful. Bless her, Terania never complained, even seemed to thrive here."