Lisha raised a warning hand and Orgos fanned right. She nodded to me, and I, cautiously, moved left, unsure of what I was doing, certain that the snapping twigs under my feet would bring those crimson-cloaked monsters screaming out of the rain.
We inched forward and the light changed subtly. Somewhere up ahead there was a break in the trees. A few more yards and we saw it: a clearing like a great hole in the forest. In the center was a circle of rough-hewn stones, each a little larger than a man. I hesitated. The place felt odd—dangerous—and not just because the raiders were here. I peered round a great oak into the clearing. In the middle was another rock, different from the others, pale and lustrous so that it seemed to glow slightly in the odd light of the storm.
The raiders entered the circle, several of them crouching by the coffins they had carried. They were opening them.
I turned to stare at Lisha, consumed with certainty that something bad was going on, something strange that I didn’t want to see or be a part of, something that would make all that talk of magic swords look like very small potatoes indeed. I could barely see her through the gathering darkness and lashing rain. She caught my gaze and pointed. She wanted me to get closer to the stones. I swallowed hard and chose the biggest.
The raiders were busy with their coffins, so none of them was looking my way. There was a flash of lightning, followed by a lengthy roar of thunder. It was now or never. I scampered through the wet bracken and flattened myself as quietly as I could against one of the great half-sculpted stones.
The raiders opened the coffins and lifted out a pair of corpses, both dressed in scarlet and bronze. These they dragged over to a pair of the standing stones only a few yards to my left, and propped them up in sitting positions. I stayed low and watched as the raiders gathered in a tight circle around that central milky boulder.
And then I had an idea.
Moving as quickly as I could, I slid over to the next stone, paused, then moved to the next, and the next. In a matter of seconds I was hiding by one of the great monoliths against which a dead raider lay. I didn’t think about Lisha or Orgos, or pleasing the party, or risking my life. I just had an idea and I was suddenly overwhelmed by what I can only describe, albeit inadequately, as curiosity. There was something I needed to know, and the presence of the raiders wasn’t going to stop me from finding out.
It wasn’t like they were going to see me anyway. It was dark, and the rain was coming down in sheets, and the wind was howling, and they were all wearing those closed helms with tiny eye slits and standing in a little huddle thirty yards away with their backs to me. I could just look quickly and then get away. Just a peep. Two seconds. Tops.
I scrambled round the stone and stared at the dead raider’s bronze face. The stone between his eyes was just like the others I had seen, and it had the opaline pallor of the rock in the center of the circle. I thought I heard voices from the raiders and glanced over my shoulder. Their voices rose in unison and sounded rhythmic: a chant.
Whatever they were going to do with this raider corpse, it would involve that crystal in his helm. I was sure of it. It was set right into the metal, so I couldn’t pry it out. Instead, I fumbled at the chin strap and tugged the helm off. The raider’s eyes were open but sightless, and there was blood on his chin, but otherwise he looked quite ordinary and quite dead.
I bolted, stepping quickly back round the standing stone and crouching, feeling my chest heave and my pulse race. Real evidence, at last. The mystery of the raiders was inextricably bound to the crystals in their helms. That was why the only raider corpse we had seen before today was one that had been beheaded and taken by those ritualists in Ironwall. The stone in the helm had power, the way Orgos’s sword had power, though what it did, I wasn’t sure.
Then the chanting from the center of the darkened circle rose suddenly above the storm