The old man looked away as the troll began thudding toward them. “I prefer to sleep with two eyes open.” He cast the werewolf a quick glance as it padded softly up beside Aurelius.
“Be careful of the wolf, elder. He is cunning, and he hates humans with unreasoning fury.”
Aurelius followed the old man’s gaze to the giant beast beside him. The wolf’s shoulders were nearly as high as his own, but once Gral was standing before them with a strange, furry animal carcass dangling by one horn from his fist, Aurelius was able to appreciate a new sense of scale. The troll was nearly the height of two men, and broader than four standing abreast.
The hulking monster hefted the carcass in both hands and tore. There came sickening
pop!
and a sound
like cloth being ripped apart. The troll tossed the ragged hindquarters of the beast at Gabrian’s feet, splattering his boots with dark flecks of blood. “That your half.” And with that, the giant turned and stomped away.
* * *
Gabrian whispered a spell over the bloody carcass at his feet, and Aurelius watched in disbelief as it ignited and cooked in sizzling blue flames before his eyes. The fur burned away and crumbled to ashes, while the skin browned and a delicious smell of roasting meat began wafting through the cave. The wolf began growling softly, and Aurelius peripherally noted drool dripping from its jaws. He made a note to get his meat before the werewolf slobbered all over it. Meanwhile, Gral had found a secluded corner and was eating his half of the kill raw with gruesome popping and ripping noises and juicy chewing.
Gabrian withdrew a long, thin knife from somewhere inside his voluminous robes and bent to slice off a hefty chunk of meat from the animal’s flank. Aurelius waited for the wizard to pass it along, but instead he began eating the meat and rather passed the knife. Aurelius took his turn, slicing off a smaller, more conservative piece. Before he fully remembered who was next in line, he turned to pass the knife along only to see the wolf pounce upon the remaining meat (which was nearly all of it) and begin devouring it with violent and indiscriminate gusto. The wolf tore a giant mouthful from the leg and came away with skin, tendons, and bone trailing out between its teeth.
Aurelius looked away with a suddenly churning stomach and winced as he listened to the crunching noises that followed. He sniffed his slice of meat warily. It smelled very gamey. His lips curled tremulously, but his stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten for more than half a day. He took a hesitant bite.
The flavor was spicy and musky, almost overwhelmingly so, but it was succulent and tender. Aurelius devoured his slice and found his mouth watering for more, but it only took one look at the ragged remains of their roasted whatever-it-was to silence that need. Entrails were beginning to show through the glistening bones as the werewolf went on gnawing meat from the carcass.
Feeling a sudden need for air, Aurelius strode over to the entrance of the cave. Here the air was colder, refreshing. He heaved a few deep breaths and found his stomach settling. If only he could tune out the crunching and tearing sounds echoing inside the cave. A distant howl split the air and some of the chewing sounds quieted. Aurelius turned to see the wolf’s ears pricked up with some morsel of meat frozen halfway in and halfway out of its mouth, but when the wolf saw him watching, it went back to eating.
“We must leave.”
Aurelius started at the sound, and turned to find Gabrian standing quietly beside him. His skin prickled and crawled as he realized that he hadn’t even heard the old man approaching.
Sneaky old man . . .
“Malgore is passing beyond my sight. His trail grows colder by the minute. He is being careful not to use magic now.”
“But is it safe out there?”
“No, yet we must leave all the same. Gral! Come.”
The bulk of the ripping and popping noises ceased with an irritated grunt, and Aurelius heard the giant’s thudding footsteps as it approached. A moment later the wolf stopped snarling and growling at his food and padded softly up beside them.
Gabrian pointed imperiously to the forest beyond the cave. “Make sure it is safe before we leave.”
Without a word, Gral stomped out into the open, the remainder of his kill trailing limply from one oversized hand. Aurelius watched the giant look both ways as he left the cave. Walking out a dozen steps, Gral spun in a slow circle. Apparently satisfied that it was safe, he turned to Gabrian and nodded.
They proceeded quietly from the cave, and the wizard led the way. They kept their footsteps quiet to avoid any more run-ins with leviathans, but Gral made no such effort, and his giant feet formed a steady backdrop of thudding, crunching, and crashing as they walked through the forest. Aurelius heard the troll resume noisily eating his kill as they ambled between the trees. They reached a low-hanging row of glittering icicles, and as Aurelius passed warily beneath their deadly points, he realized that the troll wouldn’t be able to do the same. He turned to watch as Gral casually brought up his forearm to block his face before walking straight into the ice. The icicles cracked loudly and rained down all around the troll, momentarily burying him in a heavy rain of ice. Gral emerged a second later tearing off another mouthful of meat with his jaws and none the worse for the hundreds of pounds of ice that had just rained down on his head. Gral saw Aurelius watching and flashed him a bloody grin.
They walked on in the hazy gloom for what seemed like hours. The subtle illumination of the forest seemed to change from one tree to the next, as though each had been individually decorated. On some trees, lichen grew in only a luminous, pulsating blue. On others, furry moss splashed a fuzzy green glow on everything. The colors combined in places, seeming to alternate at random. One set of trees might be blue and green and the next red and blue. Some glowed steadily, while others flashed or pulsated in a steady rhythm. The icicles caught and refracted the light until they sparkled, but for all the eerie radiance, not a single beam of clean, white sunlight penetrated the forest canopy. Had day broken? How much time had passed since they’d entered the forest? It was impossible to know.
Aurelius looked up and saw nothing but a dizzying blur of red, green, and blue glinting darkly off the ice-covered branches. He wondered if the sun would even be able to penetrate the canopy. Rolling up his furry coat sleeve, Aurelius checked his forearm gauntlet for the time. According to his clock, it was 7:00 in the morning, and the sun should have already risen. But the blinking icon in the corner of the display told him that GPS and data sync were offline—no surprise there—so he had no way of knowing, but he certainly felt as though he’d been up the whole night.
“It is yet the middle of the night, elder.”
Aurelius frowned. “Reading my thoughts again? I thought I told you to quit that.”
“You were suspiciously silent. I had to know what you were thinking, lest you try to knock me out with a fallen tree branch.”
Aurelius huffed and drew alongside the wizard. “I doubt I could find one small enough to swing. How did these trees get so tall anyway? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“That is a secret only the elves can reveal.”
“Elves?”
“Fairies if you prefer.”
Aurelius almost laughed. The word obviously had a different meaning in this time. “Let’s stick with Elves. Who are they?”
“Harbingers of doom.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific, Wrinkles.”
“They destroyed your people, the elders.”
Aurelius did a double take. “What?”
“No living being remembers exactly what happened, but their guilt is buried deep inside the Elvish libraries. Yet not even they will read their histories, for fear that they will destroy themselves with too much knowledge.”
Aurelius shook his head, struggling to catch up. “Destroy themselves with too much knowledge?”
“It is a long, complicated story, elder, but the relic we seek was created by the Elves, some time far in the future. The Elves believe that they used it to travel to your world in search of knowledge. They chose to forget everything they learned soon after they had learned it, but not before writing it all down in books. Thousands of books. In this way they ensured that no one person ever accumulated enough knowledge to undo his or her reason for travelling to the past.”
Aurelius’s head began to throb where he’d hit it inside the cave. “I don’t understand.”
Gabrian sighed. “It’s simple, elder. For example, if you traveled back in time to save someone’s life, and you succeeded, then in the future where you came from that person would still be alive and you would have never felt the need to go back and save them, which means that you never did. The instant that you accomplish yours goals in the past, you disappear from it as though you had never been there, and all memories of the experience likewise vanish.”
All we know for certain is that it wasn’t long after the Elves travelled back in time to your world before the elders met their end.”
“It could have been a coincidence. . . .”
“Then you are great believer in coincidence.”
“Wait a minute, Wrinkles. I thought you just said you can’t accomplish anything in the past, because if you did you’d disappear?”
“No, I said you cannot undo your reason for travelling to the past or you will return to the future as though you had never left. Whatever you do in the past it must be entirely unrelated to what brought you there. Accidents are quite possible.”
“And what about me? What about the future?”
Gabrian sent him a grave look. “That
you
may certainly change, so be careful what you do here, elder. Your presence in this time is unnatural and dangerous.” The old man looked away, and Aurelius felt a chill wind cut through his coat. He cinched the belt tighter about his waist and he shivered quietly. Suddenly he felt eyes on him, watching from the trees. He spun around to look, but there was nothing there. He hadn’t felt that wind since Dagheim, and here in the middle of the forest it was strange. He thought for a moment it was because they were almost out of the trees, but another hour of walking disabused him of that notion. Then finally, the horizon began to lighten and the trees parted to reveal a snowy clearing, glistening icy blue in the moonlight.
The werewolf drew alongside them in a few quick bounds and slowed just long enough to send a meaningful look Aurelius’s way. “
Be careful of the old one. He smells strange.”
Aurelius frowned, feeling another chill that had nothing to do with the wind. He looked on with a frown as the wolf bounded out and into the snow. The beast stopped a few dozen paces into the clearing to stand high upon a snowy knoll, its fur rippling in the wind and catching stray silver highlights from the moon.
Suddenly, it threw its head back, arched its body, and let out a sonorous howl.
Aurelius shivered. The sooner he got back to the safety of his ship, the happier he would be.
Aurelius cast a quick look over his shoulder to make sure nothing was following them out of the forest. The gloomy wall of ice-covered trees loomed over them like something from another planet, or a nightmare, reaching out with gnarled branches for hands and icy tentacles for claws. Yet the only creatures which had followed them from the forest's nightmarish depths were Gral the troll and an enormous, nameless black wolf. Did he even have a name?
Aurelius wasn't sure. He drew alongside the beast and began playing with words in his head, trying to find the best way to ask without giving offense.
“You could not pronounce my name if you tried, human, but the name given me by my human mother was Reven.”
Aurelius blinked in shock. “You can read my thoughts, too?”
“Yes.”
“Is
nothing
sacred?”
“What do you mean?”
“We humans value our privacy.”
“Yes, another strange thing about you.”
“It isn’t the same for your kind?”
“No. We share all of our thoughts and feelings. I felt an echo of the searing pain that Gregerr felt when you killed him with your sorcery.”
Aurelius frowned. “
Greggair?
”
He heard an angry snarl from Reven.
“The gray wolf you killed with your weapon,” Gabrian supplied, coming up beside them.
Aurelius saw a grisly flash of wolf’s smoking, blackened head in his mind’s eye, and he felt sick. “He was a friend of yours?”
“A brother.”
Aurelius grimaced. “Hey, I didn’t know. I’m sorry. He was about to kill me; I only acted in self-defense.”
“Were that not the case I would have eaten you by now. There is no honor in serving one who has none.”
“Wait, you attacked us. You mean if I had attacked, I would have no honor? You’re effectively saying that you and your pack have no honor, because you attacked
us
, and without provocation.” Aurelius caught a wide-eyed look of horror from Gabrian. The old man gave his head a quick shake, as if to say,
don’t go there.
But it was too late. Reven whirled to face Aurelius, his teeth bared and snarling. He snapped his jaws bare inches from Aurelius, and he flinched.
“Do I clothe myself in the skins of your people?”
“I . . .”
Reven abruptly turned and stalked away.
“That wasn’t wise, elder.”
Aurelius grimaced. “Yeah. I can see that.”
* * *
There in the distance lay the gleaming, angular form of Aurelius’s pride and joy, the
Halcyon Courier
. The ship was long and roughly triangular with a pair of angular, swept back wings arcing out from the sides. Bubble-shaped turrets hung inside each wing, able to fire both above and below the ship in 360 degrees. It was painted a dark steel blue with white trim, though the paint was chipped and blackened in places from his recent battle with the ISS.
A pair of small, dark shadows were moving slowly around his ship, poking at it with sticks. Aurelius gritted his teeth in time to every bang of steel against the hardened duralloy hull.
“They’re stabbing my ship with spears!” Aurelius hissed and rose halfway out of their hiding place behind a clump of jagged black rocks.
Gabrian pushed him back down with surprising force. “Wait! Gral?”
“Yes?” the troll boomed softly.
“Take care of them.”
“As the master commands.”
Gral vaulted over the rocks and raced out across the snowy plains between them and the ship with long, eager strides. His feet were punching through the icy top layer of the snow with every step. He was churning up a blizzard as he ran. Gral had gone empty-handed to face the two spearmen, but Aurelius doubted if the giant would need any weapons to face them.
“What’s he going to do?” Aurelius asked.
Gabrian gave him a bland look, as if he were stupid for asking. “He’s going to kill them, of course.”
“What?!” Before Gabrian could stop him, Aurelius ran out after the troll. By now the two men in the distance had spotted Gral and were shouting to one another in urgent tones. They’d formed a two man phalanx with both their spears and shields pointed out toward the troll in a united front, but Gral hadn’t even slowed.
“Wait! Don’t kill them!” Aurelius called.
Gral was just seconds from reaching the men when he registered Aurelius’s command and slowed his headlong rush to cast a confused look over his shoulder. In that instant one of the men took advantage of the distraction to throw his spear, and it struck Gral in the arm. He roared furiously. The spearhead buried itself halfway in Gral’s bulging triceps, but compared to how thick his arm was, it was little more than a scratch. Aurelius watched as Gral tore the spear out of his arm and snapped it like a pencil. He spun to face the two men, spreading his arms and fists wide. He roared again, and this time he seemed to swell to twice his size as he flexed every muscle in his enormous frame. Veins and tendons stood out like cables on the monster’s grayish skin.
The two men quavered uncertainly before their gigantic foe. To their credit, they held their ground. The man who’d thrown his spear drew a long sword from his side and broke formation with his comrade to circle the troll warily. Gral angled after him, and the remaining spearman took that moment of inattention to thrust for Gral’s ribs. Gral caught the movement in his peripheral vision and grabbed the spear just after its gleaming point. With a mighty heave he wrenched the weapon out of the man’s hand, yanking him off his feet. The man’s face smashed into the icy snow, and Gral turned the spear on the advancing swordsman. The swordsman cast a quick look to his fallen comrade, his eyes wide and terrified, and Gral seized that small window of opportunity.
Aurelius watched the troll rearing back to throw the spear. “Stop!” he screamed.
But this time Gral wasn’t listening. His arm shot forward, snapping straight in an instant, and the spear whistled for a split second before slamming into the swordsman’s chest with a mighty
clank! O
f steel against steel. The spear passed straight through the man’s body and went skidding along the icy snow behind him. Blood gushed blackly from a dark hole in the man’s chest. His mouth hung open in a soundless scream and his sword clattered from lifeless fingers as he fell.
The other man was just stumbling to his feet, blood streaming from his nose. He drew his sword, and Aurelius watched in slow-motion horror as Gral stomped up to him, batted the sword aside with his bare forearm, and grabbed the man by his neck in one enormous fist. Gral lifted the man half a dozen feet above the ground and then squeezed. There came a sickening crunch and then the troll tossed the man’s limp body aside with a contemptuous snarl.
Thud.
A small cloud of snow resulted from the impact.
Gabrian walked up beside Aurelius and placed a hand on his shoulder. Aurelius flinched away and rounded on the old man.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“It was the only way.”
“No! It wasn’t the only way! You could have knocked them out.”
“Do you
really
suppose that a
troll
is capable of such subtle means?”
“I said
you
could have.”
“With magic?”
Aurelius smirked. “What else? I wouldn’t want you to get your hands dirty.”
Gabrian met his expression with a scowl. “I need all of my strength to find Malgore. I told you once already, elder: there is far too much at stake for me to risk it over a petty distinction between right and wrong.” Gabrian brushed past him and started for the ship. Reven padded softly after him, and Gral stood already waiting for them by the boarding ramp. Aurelius gaped in disbelief for a handful of seconds before hurrying after the old man.
“A petty distinction?” Aurelius demanded. “You call cold-blooded murder a petty distinction? That seems pretty damn clear-cut to me.” Gabrian offered no reply. “Answer me!” Aurelius yelled.
The old man replied in a cool voice. “They were able to defend themselves. They had weapons. This is war, not a children’s game that you can play and afford to lose.
Better luck next time; no hard feelings; I’m sorry I killed you; maybe next time you can kill me?
”
Gabrian rounded on him, his blue eyes blazing with fury. “None of that, elder! Choose your side, but trouble me no more with your foolishness or I will turn you into a puppet who will obey me without this tiresome bickering.”
Aurelius ground his teeth as he bottled his own furious indignation.
“What will it be, elder?”
“What’s so damned important about this relic, anyway? So what if Malgore has it? You told me no one can change the past, so how can he possibly do any harm?”
“Don’t be naïve. There is always a way. Besides, you want to get back to your time, don’t you? Yes, of course you do. Now come on, you are wasting time, and we have none to lose.”
Aurelius stalked after the old man and up to the
Halcyon Courier
. He had half a mind to fly up into space and toss the old man out the airlock.
Let’s see him use magic to survive that!
But something told him that Gral wouldn’t take kindly to his master suffering explosive decompression, and Aurelius didn’t think being ripped apart limb by limb by a troll would be a very pleasant death either.
* * *
Aurelius stood before the open airlock doors, his gaze skipping between Gral, the narrow portal to his ship, and back again.
“He’s not going to fit,” Gabrian said.
“Really? That hadn’t occurred to me.”
“Spare me your wit, boy.”
“Don’t you mean
elder?
”
Gabrian met his gaze with impatient fury. “Have you a solution to this problem or not?”
Aurelius scowled and looked the troll up and down thoughtfully. “Well, he’ll fit through the cargo bay doors, but he’ll have to stay there in the cargo bay, because the rest of the ship is far too small for him.”
“Make it happen.”
“Wait here, Gral,” Aurelius said as he, Gabrian, and Reven squeezed into the airlock. Aurelius led the way through the gleaming corridors. The lights came on automatically as sensors detected movement. He reached the inside cargo bay doors and waved his hand across the door scanner. The doors swished open to reveal a yawning space, filled only partially with a scattering of crates that were bolted to the deck. The ceiling was tall enough to accommodate two trolls standing on each other’s shoulders.
“This will do, elder,” Gabrian said, looking around.
“We should just leave the blood-thirsty monster,” Aurelius said as he stomped through the cargo bay to the outer doors. “I don’t trust him.”
“He will serve me without question and without complaint, which is more than I can say for you.”