Haven 5 Blood Magic BOOK (3 page)

Brand was still back at Rabing Isle, and knew nothing of the fire. In the morning, Telyn knew she must go there and tell him the news. Before she left, however, she had decided to visit her father’s tannery to check the damage done. There were scorched walls, but for the most part the structure had escaped serious damage.

It was as she wandered the place, reliving memories of her childhood both pleasant and foul, that she found the thing in the vats. Her relatives had been debating about what to do about it. A lump of half-melted flesh clung to the side of the vat. Its curved white claws had dug into the wooden walls, keeping the limp form from splashing back into the brine.

Telyn, having always been a person of action, knelt and pulled out her dagger. It was the very blade the redcap of Rabing Castle had oiled and cared for throughout centuries past. She meant to thrust in the blade to make sure it was dead, but hesitated. Could this be the thing that had lit the fire? Was this perhaps a new enemy, a new threat to the Haven? Brand would be interested in such answers, as would the Riverton Council.

The head shifted slightly and one yellow eye regarded her. The troll fought to form gargling words.

Telyn almost drew back, such was her disgust to see it yet lived. Its legs were gone. It had only half its body intact.

“Why do you hesitate to strike?” the thing managed to ask her.

“I would know if you lit the fire. If your folk are our new enemy.”

The troll slowly managed to bare its teeth in a death’s-head mask. She recoiled from it, but only slightly, not wanting her on-looking relations to say she had quailed in the face of a helpless creature.

“Your enemy has escaped. He goes to find the bloodhound. He has the blood of the maid’s fae-child.”

“What maid? What enemy?”

“Mari of the Bowen clan. He has her.”

“Who does?”

“Piskin,” said the troll, and his head drifted down again.

Telyn sucked in her breath to hear that name. The very Wee One who had tried to wrest the Blue Jewel from Tomkin’s breast where he lie dying. The very one who had lost his hand to Tomkin’s sharp teeth. What new treachery could he be up to?

“Can we help you?”

The troll lifted its head again, with great effort. It made that terrible grin again.

“Catch him, and save the maid.”

Telyn was baffled that a troll, of all creatures, would care with his dying breath more for the life of a human maid than his own. She was also greatly intrigued. Already, she knew this story would have to be taken to Brand immediately.

“What of yourself? Can anything be done?”

“I can’t grow myself anew after the touch of acid. Strike, and let the vats finish their work. It will be a mercy.”

Telyn was moved. She, unlike most of her folk, had learned to appreciate creatures of different natures when they displayed noble traits.

“We will find the maid,” she told the troll, “and we will find Piskin.”

Seeing that he understood, she struck quickly and mercifully with her knife. Then she slashed away the white claws that still clung to the wooden sides of the great vat. The troll’s body slid away and bubbled, dissolving. Soon, he was no more.

None of her Fob relatives who had witnessed the exchange questioned her as she raced from the tannery to find Tomkin and Brand. Their eyes were wide and their mouths sagged open. After she had gone, they whispered among themselves that Telyn had always been a
different
sort as a young girl. Several claimed they had always seen her as one apart from the rest of the clan. Still, as Fobs, they had to admit she made them proud of their name.

Chapter Three

The Gnome King

Oberon journeyed to call upon Groth, King of the Gnomes. Traveling down through the Everdark to the gnome city undetected, however, was not easy. Not even for a wily old elf. But he knew some tricks, forgotten paths from long ago.

The gnomes, he knew, carefully guarded their territories in the Everdark. Their gates were not guarded by physical guardians, but rather warded to snare incorporeal intruders, and similarly trapped with deadly constructions built to slay the living. Oberon was a being that qualified as both types of intruder. His best course lay in penetration from an unexpected angle, and so it was he had chosen an entry point that was located
within
the boundaries of the gnome lands.

There existed entry points from the Twilight Lands into the Everdark, forgotten burial spots located deep below the crust of the world. These mounds were far, far below the surface. So deep, so ancient, so forgotten were these places that most of the Fae knew nothing of them. Even the elder things that dwelt beneath the great shifting plates of stone upon which the surface peoples lived, even they barely remembered these places. They were the burial grounds of kings and peoples so far gone in the past as to have been lost to the living memory of almost all beings.

But Oberon was among the oldest, the most ancient of living things that did not grow from the earth or squat motionless in a dark hole. He had lived when the Great Erm itself had been planted in the Twilight Lands, and he had witnessed the rising of Snowdon and the Black Mountains from the land. They had been merely sharp, black spires, like serrated stone dragon’s teeth poking up from the gums of the Earth, when he was young.

Thus he knew of secret ways into the Everdark, secret spots of infamous death. All faerie mounds were exactly that, of course. The mounds were invariably ancient mass graves of powerful peoples. These locations had suffered greatly; they were scraps of land that had borne silent witness to the rending of forgotten spirits as they moved from the state known as
life
into that known as
death
. The energies released as these great spirits made their final journeys had torn gaps between two worlds.

Such spots didn’t always exist upon the open surfaces of the world, the forests, plains and rocky mountaintops. At times, they existed at the bottom of dark oceans or even in a dank cavern, sealed beneath the earth in a sunless vault. Such timeless places were few, but they did exist. Some of the most powerful of all beings had passed on in these dismal spots, having been bound by chains far below the world of sun and light for thousands of lost centuries.

It was at one of these lost locations, in a dank, dripping vault of stone, that Oberon stepped into existence. The vault was a cavern that existed beneath the seafloor an underground sea of inky-black brine. Filled with crystalline formations and puddles of water, the pocket-like cavern had never filled with seawater. The Everdark clung oppressively all around, and although his vision, like that of the Dead themselves, did not require light to see, he noticed shadows residing here that even his eyes could not penetrate. He felt a chill, as spirits so old they had forgotten their own names and purposes regarded him in dull surprise. Before they could gather their lost wits enough to take action, he trotted swiftly out of the vault, using the only exit available, and slid down a chute into a pool of liquid as still as glass.

Blind things with transparent membranes for skin took notice of him, and rotated sensory stalks in his direction. Disgusting and alien though they might be, Oberon felt relief at their scrutiny. As bizarre and otherworldly as these creatures were, they were at least alive and sensate. And so he trotted quickly, but without fear, amongst them. A few slashes from his impossibly sharp blade removed their reaching claws and snapping mandibles. They croaked in pain and disappointment and he left them behind in the dark.

Exiting into a passage of circular formation that wound upward, he knew now he traveled an ancient path burned by a finger of magma. Ash crunched beneath his rapid step, and dust puffed up to irritate his fine-featured, boyish face.

Through a labyrinth of such passages and vaults he traveled until reaching the home of the gnomes, an area of cold hard stone. The gnomes, he knew, preferred to dwell in areas of stable stone. They avoided lava areas, which like a home built upon any shoreline, must eventually be consumed by the natural forces that existed in close proximity to it. Their underground villages and shrines were always found among the most ancient and stable of geological structures. Their lives were long and slow and consisted often of centuries of immobile pondering. They had no patience with interruptions such as serious earthquakes, lava floods or inquisitive folk from other places.

He passed by many gnomes, frozen giants of black stone with obsidian eyes that were an even darker, purer black. Most of them were lost in thought, pondering something unknowable for races of flesh and bone. They seemed to take no note of his passage, but Oberon knew this was an illusion. All of them saw him, and all of them would eventually take action to pursue the intruder. How long it might take them to move was impossible to judge. It might be a minute, an hour or a decade. But they would all awaken, each and every one, and they would seek to slay him in their multitudes.

He made haste once he was within their sleeping city. He needed to travel to the king, to Groth’s chambers. He must awaken the gnome leader and parlay with him before he was overrun by angry gnomes.

Groth was different, Oberon knew. Being a King among the gnomes, he was not allowed to fall into thought and freeze, as so many of his people preferred to do. He was charged with the duty of maintaining vigilance throughout the ages of his reign. Like a man never allowed to sleep, however, it made him cranky and difficult to deal with—difficult, even for a gnome.

In the great spherical chamber of perfectly carven stone that served the gnomes as a royal suite, he found Groth. The other paced, as he had no doubt done for centuries, back and forth across the bottom of the sphere. The stone here was very ancient and very hard granite, but still a path had been worn, cut nearly a foot deep into the floor.

Oberon stood at the entrance, a circle of space opening into the sphere. He stood there, silently, until he was noticed. He had breached every imaginable protocol in coming here this way, so it could do no harm to become respectful at the very last.

 After perhaps a minute more of pacing, Groth stopped. He did not turn his head. He did not utter a syllable. Oberon stood as stock-still and silent as the king. He knew he had been noticed, and that Oberon was deciding how to deal with him. It was best not to add further rudeness or insult at this critical moment.

“Lord Oberon,” said Groth at last. He sounded like a being roused from sleep.

Perhaps, thought Oberon, that was exactly what he was.

“King Groth.”

“You surprise me. You insult me.”

“I meant no insult.”

“You embarrass me, then.”

Oberon said nothing to that.

“How came you here to my inner court? You must have come through my guards and my wards and my deadliest traps as though they meant nothing to you. Why do you slip here, to my royal chambers like an assassin? If you are here to slay me, know that you have also ended your own very-long life.”

“I have not come here to slay you. I am here to parlay.”

“We have established protocols for such things. An emissary should have come to my gates. He should have waited there, upon bent knee and with bent neck, until such a moment as my guardsmen awoke to his presence. Then matters would proceed with proper decorum.”

“You are right, great king,” said Oberon, performing a flawless sweeping bow. Behind him, he was aware the first of the gnomes had appeared. Anger showed in the manner they ground together their huge stone fingers. They had been most rudely awakened from their thoughts, like ruminating old men dashed with cold water. They raged at his scoffing of their rules and customs. They wished nothing more than to grab him and tear his flesh apart into wet strips. They held back, waiting only out of politeness to their king, who was conversing with this tricksy intruder.

“You are right, and I apologize profusely for my rudeness,” continued Oberon. “I performed this unpardonable act in the interest of expediting our conversation. To follow proper procedure might have delayed our discussion by a year, perhaps longer.”

Groth was pacing again. He strode more quickly than before, and a tiny cloud of dust followed his heavy, crunching tread. Oberon sensed more angry gnomes gathering behind him. The corridors and hallways were filling with them. But still they made no move upon him, and he made no motion indicating he recognized their presence.

“I will allow you your life in this instance,” said Groth, speaking with slow reluctance. “But you must exit my city and kneel at the entrance properly until I have finished my long-thought and come to you.”

“Great king, why might I have come here like this today?”

“You question me? You seek to pose Fae riddles in my royal chamber? You refuse to obey my commands in the very seat of gnome power? Have you so little regard for us?” The huge gnome, as he spoke his list of angry questions, stepped for the first time out of his worn rut in the granite floor. He took several heavy steps toward Oberon as he spoke. Each step accentuated one of his questions with the resounding clunk of stone striking stone.

“I meant no insult.”

“We have taken insult, regardless. The Shining Folk are no longer a great people. You are the same as the rest of the lesser races. You have no Jewel. You have no magic. You should not take liberties with us.”