Forest Kingdom Trilogy 3 - Down Among the Dead Men

ready. Constance shut the door behind them.
    Flint and the Dancer made their way up the stairs, moved cautiously out into the narrow passageway at the top, and looked about them, listening carefully. The torch light seemed to carry a lot farther now that it was out of the cellar, and the flickering flame showed an empty corridor stretching away before them. Flint frowned unhappily. The sounds were louder and closer now, but she still couldn’t work out what they were or where they were coming from. They were mostly soft scuffing noises, and they came from everywhere and nowhere, from ahead of them and behind them. The only thing Flint was sure of was that they weren’t natural sounds.
    “Could be rats,” said the Dancer quietly. “Rats in the walls.”
    “I’ve heard rats before,” said Flint. “This is different. Can you tell where the sounds are coming from?”
    “No.” The Dancer hefted his sword once. “But whatever it is, it’s getting closer.”
    Flint scowled and started down the passage. Shadows swayed around her, lunging menacingly forward when she shifted her hold on the torch. At first it hadn’t seemed as cold in the corridor as it had in the cellar, but that was beginning to change. The temperature was dropping rapidly. The whorls of hoarfrost patterning the walls were growing discernibly thicker, and a pale mist was forming on the still air. Flint stopped dead, and the Dancer stopped beside her. He looked at her inquiringly, but her mind was working furiously. Mist?
Inside
the fort? That wasn’t possible. That just wasn’t possible. Not this deep in the fort, so far away from the outside air… .
    The Beast is dreaming … dreaming about how the world was when it last walked the earth
.
    Flint thought about what the witch had said and shuddered suddenly. How long had the Beast slept, if all it remembered of the world was fog and ice and cold? Flint clutched her sword and shook her head determinedly She’d worry about the why of things later, when she had the time. Right now, all that mattered was finding out what was making the damned noises, and how dangerous it was. She gestured for the Dancer to stay put, and then walked slowly down the passage, listening carefully between each step. The noises were becoming clearer and louder, as though drawing steadily closer from somewhere indescribably faraway. There were sounds that might have been snarls or hisses or growls. They seemed to be coming from all around her, from the floor and the ceiling as much as the walls. Long strands of mist curled and twisted on the corridor air, growing thicker as they blended into a pearly haze. Flint realized she was getting too separated from the Dancer, and stopped where she was. She looked back and saw that the mist had thickened into fog behind her. The Dancer was only a dark shadow in the grayness, and the cellar door was lost to sight. Flint moved quickly back down the corridor to join the Dancer, and without exchanging a word they stood back to back, swords at the ready.
    “Those noises are getting louder,” said the Dancer evenly.
    “Yeah,” said Flint. “I don’t like this, Giles. It’s too … planned.”
    “So what do you think? A cautious retreat back to the cellar?”
    “Yeah. We’re too cut off here. And they’re too cut off down there. Let’s go.”
    They moved cautiously back down the corridor, searching the thickening gray haze for any sign of attack. The noises were becoming louder and more openly menacing, as though they didn’t need to hide their true nature anymore. Flint began to think she saw something moving in the mists. The Dancer stayed close to her as they drew near the cellar door. Whatever was in the corridor with them, neither of them wanted to turn their backs on it. Flint was glad the Dancer was there with her. His quiet presence was infinitely comforting. The mist suddenly thickened into an enveloping fog: a great milky white mass that seemed to glow with its own eerie light. Shadows moved in the fog, tall and thin and only vaguely human in shape. They faded in and out of visibility as they moved, and Flint couldn’t even be sure how many there were. She glanced at the Dancer, to make sure he saw them, too, and drew confidence from his grim smile and ready sword.
    The shadows were drawing steadily closer, but Flint didn’t dare back away any faster. They might think she was running from them. One of the shadows stepped suddenly out of the mists to face her,