“Have at us, then!” roared Snatcher, brandishing his mighty club. “Enough of these empty threats!”
“I’ll make you eat that pathetic stick!”
“Lovely,” said Amadorn, and unleashed a thunderbolt from the clear sky.
It was his favourite offensive spell, but the Druid very nearly paid for it with his life. The creature shimmer
ed like sunlight reflected off water as he raised his hand, casually deflecting the bolt of lightning back at its caster. Amadorn was no fool. He could protect himself from the effects of his own magic. But the bolt struck a boulder beside him and blasted it into a million fragments, and one of those fragments struck him above his left temple. The Druid’s legs crumpled.
At once the Trolls retreated, and the Men of Ramoth swung to the attack. Hunter, Snatcher
, and Akê-Akê leaped forward as one. Witch and Dryad assailed the dark creature with a succession of violent spells. Chaos erupted as a bevy of new creatures–shadow bears, salamanders, dense swarms of grimflies, giant crawling insects called Heskids, bats, giant snakes and scorpions, and eels from Mistral Bog–invaded the field of battle causing injury to friend and foe alike. Snatcher found himself caught up in the coils of a giant snake. The Faun was almost swallowed by a toad the size of a house. Their foe clearly did not intend to control his summonings. He laughed aloud as the ground opened to swallow half a dozen of his men, and seemed only to grow stronger the more magic was hurled about.
Zephyr too, having cast his spells of protection upon the fighters, arrayed himself against the crimson-eyed creature and brought the magic of his horn to bear. “
Cymaxis!” he neighed, creating flying reptiles out of thin air. “Hail! Brimstone!”
The Unicorn was powerful
. He enveloped a whole cohort of Men in a sheet of sulphurous flame, while hailstones the size of eggs pelted down upon their archers with deadly accuracy. Hunter went down with an arrow bristling between her ribs. Akê-Akê swatted bats with his mace around Kevin, who had fallen to the ground with blood streaming from a gash in his head. Zephyr cleared the bats with a flick of his horn. The Witch tried to retrieve her leg from a Heskid’s mouth, while the indefatigable Lurk wielded his club like a lumberjack felling trees.
And then Alliathiune unleashed her most potent weapon yet. With a great cry she subverted most of the magical creatures that had been summoned and bent them to her powerful will, which was to fly or leap, slither or run towards the dark creature
, and attack it with mindless abandon. In seconds it was enveloped in a maelstrom of claws, stingers, and teeth. There was a muffled explosion, a puff of smoke, a momentary respite before a dozen more creatures filled the spaces of those killed. The Dryad had taken control in the most dramatic fashion yet. She smiled grimly as she forced the creatures onward, burying their tormentor beneath a wave of bodies.
“Help the Witch!”
Zephyr whirled and froze the Heskid where it stood, unsummoned a couple of giant scorpions, cleared the air of smoke. There were dozens of Men left but they had clearly lost their stomach for the fray, and took to their heels as best they could. The groans of the wounded rose into the still evening air.
“What became of that creature?” asked the Unicorn.
“It vanished with the smoke,” said Alliathiune, mopping her brow with the back of her forearm. Denied a summoner’s strength and will, the creatures vanished in droves. “Where is Glimmering of Dawn?”
“Right behind you,” replied the Eagle. His beak and claws
dripped blood, and his feathers were torn in a dozen places. “Shall I determine whether the Men have indeed retreated?”
“If you are able, it would be a service indeed, noble Eagle.”
“What, by the Hills, is a Kraleon?”
Zephyr and Akê-Akê shared a glance. “No idea,” they chorused.
“A demon creature,” said Alliathiune. “That is all we need know. We should see to the Mancat.”
“And to the Drui
d,” the Faun put in. “It was a fearsome battle. See how the good outlander tends Amadorn? I do believe we are making progress.”
Kevin looked up to find a pair of
hazel eyes examining him as if the Dryad would wrest his secrets from him by main force. “Have we seen the last of that strange creature? I doubt it,” she said. “Why should it have sensed your magic from afar, good Kevin? Is that how it tracked us? He surely singled out a Human Wizard …”
Zephyr nodded curtly.
“It troubles me that the outlander has not revealed the full extent of his powers. He’s a danger to us all. We will speak anon, good Kevin. You must reveal your secret identity.”
Kevin made a grunt of disgust. “Ask away, noble one-horn. Ask away.”
* * * *
Negotiations with the gatekeepers proved swift and painless. Entry was agreed at a paltry price–due, the Witch muttered drolly,
to an earnest desire not to join the dead and dying down there on the field of battle, and a Trollish awe of magic. Best let Amberthurn deal with the travellers!
It was a grateful party that slowly straggled up the first ascent into the Pass of Old Bones, for they had been sore tested in the fray. The Witch
limped along, her right leg and calf heavily bruised. Hunter, struck by a poisoned arrow, lay pale and still in the Lurk’s great arms. Amadorn’s left eye was swollen shut. Zephyr carried his effects, for the Druid needed both hands on his staff to keep from falling. Alliathiune pasted a disgusting concoction of herbs and the sap of a gratha tree onto Kevin’s scrapes and bruises, but she smiled and praised his stoicism as he stiffened under the stinging application.
“
Well done,” she said.
Kevin
muttered, “I was useless back there, just useless!”
“There’ll be a n
ext time–or do you intend to flatten an entire mountain, o Mighty High Wizard?” replied the little Dryad.
He
was too out of breath to respond to her baiting. At least he was not the only one looking puffed by the gradient!
“Water?”
“Thanks, Akê-Akê.” Kevin tilted the flask and let coolness slide down his throat. “Gracious, that feels good!”
“You have no idea,” rumbled the Lurk, pausing beside them. “We swamp-dwellers feel the lack of moisture acutely. My hide is cracked and chafed by this climate
, and my membranes are drying out. But Zephyr says that we should gain the entrance to Amberthurn’s lair before darktime–and there is a stream where we may bathe.”
“Will you survive this journey?”
Oblivious to the Faun’s teasing, the Lurk replied, “One of my race has been known to survive two seasons without water–but that was in the cool fastness of the Forest, not on a bleak mountainside like this.”
“At least it has stopped raining. I can’t abide the rain.”
Akê-Akê groaned like a mating elk. “I swear by the Oracle of
Yanjimkê
, whom Fauns consider nearest to the Gods of all creatures–”
“Who is a contemptible charlatan, a peddler of lies,” the Dryad interrupted.
“–if you disregard the unbelievers in our midst, good outlander … I swear that I shall make you swallow this mace–sideways–if you dare to voice so much as the tiniest gripe about anything, anything at all, for the next ten seasons!”
Kevin
gulped.
“
True
seeing is an art, not an apothecary medicating the emotional needs of the gullible,” Alliathiune pontificated, not yet finished with the Faun. “The real Oracle of Yanjimkê was a holy creature who returned her goodness to the Forest’s root and sod a thousand seasons ago. You speak of a tradition–”
“He was a Faun!”
“
She
was a renegade Dryad, a traitor to her people!”
“What perversion of history have you been reading, you green skinned Gremlin?” sneered Akê-Akê.
“Gremlins are real?”
They both ignored
Kevin. “Conjuror of decaying worms!”
“And you’re
a … a whimsical whippersnapper!”
“Demon-lover!”
“Interfering, Sälïph-stealing parasite!”
“Oh!” Alliathiune’s face turned white with fury. “You take that back, you treacherous Faun, or I’ll root you to the ground where you stand!”
Akê-Akê’s fingers curled like meat hooks. “Just you try it and I’ll unleash the darkest terrors of your imagination upon you before you can blink!”
“Silence!” snapped Zephyr, knocking them apart with his telekinesis before any harm ensued. “Must you persist in juvenile baiting and name-calling?”
“He called me a parasite!”
“Technically, Dryads have a symbiotic relationship with the Forest and not a parasitic one,”
Kevin put in, mildly. “There is mutual benefit–the Forest feeds its Dryads and Dryads nurture and protect the Forest. In a way, Dryads embody the living spirit of the Forest.”
Akê-Akê sniggered, but Alliathiune gasped as though she had been kicked in the gut and a stormy mixture of emotions flashed across her face–gratitude, anger, wonder
… what did it all mean? Had he inadvertently touched upon something important? She had clammed up tighter than the vault of the Bank of England. He eyed her askance. Alliathiune was biting her lip and had a twig snarled in her hair halfway down. Untidiness was one of Kevin’s pet peeves. He had to stifle an urge to pluck it out, for he knew from experience how volatile she could be. That would be just begging for a slap. The Dryad was still steamed about Akê-Akê’s comment, he could tell, and the Faun huffed as though he intended to pursue the issue. How they set each other off–stubborn as asses, the pair of them!
He told them so, in exactly those words.
Then Kevin stamped off in search of a bite to eat.
* * * *
Zephyr said, “Who will deal with the treacherous Dragon-Magus?”
Kevin
looked up from his tome, which he had propped against a convenient stone because of its weight. The Unicorn appeared to be addressing Amadorn, Alliathiune, and the Witch, but a glance across the pond where they had paused for the darktime found the Lurk’s luminous, attentive eyes just visible above the still surface, beside an overhanging thicket of ferns. It beggared belief how a creature of his bulk could hide so effectively in little more than two feet of freezing mountain water. On the bank where a willow tree’s fronds hung like a curtain about to be dipped into the water, the Faun’s cloven hooves turned over a stone as he shifted his weight about.
Alliathiune held an injured sparrow in
her hands, singing a healing Dryadsong softly to it. Did the Dryad never stop caring for the Forest creatures? She was forever patching up lizards, healing voles, mending a falcon’s broken wing, and singing to trees. Mister Jenkins was just too wrapped up in his own doings–too stuck in his personal swamp of despond, as the Lurk had put it.
“Count me out,” said Akê-Akê, with a visible shudder. “
The Dragon-kind have long exploited those who were once my people. A thousand seasons is insufficient to compass the breadth of our mutual hatred. The Dragon would sooner have me grace his dinner table than exchange words!” He brandished his mace at a fissure from which smoke issued–their path for the morning. “But do not think me afraid to brave his lair.”
“Good Faun, we do not question your bravery, proven at the Bridge of Storms, Shi
lliabär, and again this lighttime,” said the Unicorn. “But consider that we inquire of a Dragon-Magus who is perhaps one of Feynard’s most powerful living creatures, directions to a magical artefact–the Magisoul–whose very mention must flood his heart with greedy desire. For we know that the heart of every Dragon seeks power, in comparison to which the pretty baubles and troves of gold so fondly recounted by storytellers are but dust and ashes.”
“Aye, well said,” Amadorn grunted. “Have you met this Amberthurn before, noble
Unicorn?”
“Once, briefly, as part of a larger delegation of Unicorns,” Zephyr admitted. “I doubt he would remember me.”
“I see. If cunning is required, then by the Circle of Seven Druids, I declare my preference for the Witch. Shrewder companions have we not.”
The Head Witch said, “Are you calling me sly and conniving, good Druid?”
“In the best possible way. Are those not basic qualities of every Witch?”
“Humph.”
“Would any of our number disagree?”
“Nay.” “Not I.” “Indeed not.”
“I thought you did not trust Witches, good Druid?” she pressed.
“Trust, my fine Witch, hardly enters the equation. If it were an issue of trust, I would choose our noble-hearted lord of the airy spaces above all others. If I sought knowledge, I would plumb the Unicorn’s extensive learning.
Were I to face the Dark Apprentice once more–may he fester forever in Shäyol’s foetid armpit–” a grim smile touched his lips “–I would implore the outlander to stand at my side. And if I wanted to leave a Dragon’s lair without having furnished his dinner table, I would choose me a Witch.”
“I shall consider that a compliment.”
“As long as the witless outlander were not drunk,” muttered Kevin.