Haven Magic (38 page)

“What do we do?” Telyn hissed.

“The wisp wouldn’t have led us here without a reason. One or more of our companions have got to be here.”

Grabbing him, Telyn pointed to a fluttering object near one of the great mounds. It was a staff of hickory with three ribbons fluttering from it, two green and one white. One of the green ribbons was torn and partially missing.

“Our parlay symbol. If they live, they are here,” she hissed. “We must rescue them somehow.”

“I agree,” whispered Brand. Despite the seriousness of the situation he found that it was pleasant to whisper into her ear. He enjoyed the opportunity for his lips to touch her skin. “But if they are nothing but bones in a stewpot,” —he shuddered at the thought— “I don’t wish to join them.”

Nodding, Telyn rose up. “Wait here, I have an idea,” she said, and headed off to the right. Brand half-reached to restrain her, but as usual her thoughts and actions were one and she was already in motion. He watched her closely from concealment until she disappeared from sight behind one of the mounds.

He sighed quietly, wondering if he would need to wield the axe again. The axe was suddenly alive in his knapsack, and almost caused him to cry out, thinking a merling was pawing him. It had shifted its weight of its own accord, as he had seen it do upon Gudrin’s back. It made his skin crawl to think of it. It was unnatural and beyond his experience. Such a thing would have sent him off screaming a month ago, but now it seemed only odd and discomforting. He reflected upon the breaking of the Pact and the great changes it had wrought upon his world.

His thoughts were broken by a burbling sound followed by a splash. He craned his neck around the tree trunk. Telyn was a master of stealth, but she had perhaps met her match with the merlings. They had come upon her from behind, showing only their bulbous eyes above the surface of their placid pond. Lurching up out of the water with croaking sounds of dubious meaning, they stalked her. Telyn was in the middle of investigating one of the mounds, looking and listening for signs of captive humans. She turned to run, but found herself cut off.

Brand rose up and reached for the axe. Again it shifted its weight, as if eager to be out of the dark knapsack. He hesitated, wondering if he could control it this time. He drew in a breath to call to Telyn. Perhaps if he could distract the merlings, she could yet escape. He watched as she reached first for her bow, then realizing they were too close, drew her knife instead. The approaching merlings paused, hissing. It was not their way to face an armed human in daylight. They themselves clutched tridents and weighted cords from which dozens of sharp, barbed hooks dangled. These cords they slowly began to whirl over their heads. Used like a whip, they could bring a human down, tearing up an ankle or forearm in the process.

Brand ran now, but the merlings hadn’t noticed him yet, so intent were they on stalking Telyn. They advanced slowly, allowing time for reinforcements to slither up from the pond. Telyn backed to the end of the spit of land she was on and looked with desperation to the water on both sides.

Brand felt her fear. “No! Not the water! Keep to the land!” he cried out.

The merlings whirled to look at him. Telyn took this moment to slash at one of them. It’s arm oozed and it croaked in dismay. The pack of them retreated one step, then two.

More of them rose up from the pond and Brand saw he had no choice but to wield the axe once more. They were not going to give her up without a fight. With a silent pray to the River to guide him, he reached back over his shoulder. He had no need to grope for the axehandle. It slapped itself into his hand.

Ecstasy coursed through him. It began in his fingertips, ran up the palm of his hand and forearm, then seemed to linger a moment in his bicep before racing hotly into his head. His head filled with the coppery scent of hot blood.

He ripped Ambros from the pack, not bothering with the flaps. The blades slid through the leather with ease and sang as they blazed into the gray light of the morning. Brand charged at the merlings, his face split wide with a toothy grin. Most of them fled into the safe waters of their pond, slipping into the muck and filth that meant home and safety to them. Two sought to stand before him. The first swung its weighted cord laced with gleaming hooks. Ambros slipped forward and severed the cord first, then the neck of its wielder. The creature’s head and the weighted end of the cord both flew out to splash into the murky waters of the pond. The second merling fared no better and fell into the mud clutching its spilled vitals.

Ambros gleamed happily as it drank their small lives. These killings did not slake its thirst, however, but only brought its desire to a furious boil. Whooping, Brand felt detached from himself. Almost by itself, the axe swept gracefully at Telyn’s white neck. Brand turned the axe from slaying her with a deft twist, almost an afterthought, before he waded into the pond itself after the enemy. From his lips erupted an ancient battlesong, one he could not recall having heard before, in a tongue that was only remotely recognizable to him.

In the water, however, the slothful merlings became quick and graceful. They fled from him with rapid flips of their limbs. One even broke the surface and flew through the air in its haste to avoid him, like a salmon leaping from the cold water of the river. Left without enemies, Brand headed for the nearest of the lodges. Standing over it, he hewed out great chunks of the thick walls. Woven sticks and muck flew everywhere. Inside, females and their offspring squirmed in the unfamiliar sunlight. Two clutches of eggs were in evidence. One of the females that brooded over them didn’t flee. She hunkered over her eggs protectively. An odd growl emanated from her throat.

Brand paused for the first time. He raised the axe and it winked. The lightning-like flash of light blinded the merlings so that they cried out, shielding their eyes. The sight of these creatures, so many maggots swarming upon meat, filled him with disgust, but still he did not strike.

The stewpot.

Brand blinked in confusion.

Look at the stewpot. It was there that they cooked your friends.

Brand looked at the crude stewpot that sat in the middle of the torn-open lodge. It was empty, but he knew that in just such stewpots, many humans had ended their lives, often boiled alive and screaming. Still, the female held her ground, protecting her young, and hissed at him. Still, Brand did not strike.

It was here that they boiled your parents. Their skin sloughed from their bubbling flesh.

Brand made an odd sound. He lifted the axe for a killing blow. Then, without warming, something struck his wrists and the axe dropped from his grasp.

Treachery—-!
the word screamed in his mind as the axe fell.

“What’s wrong with you, Brand?” yelled Telyn in his ear. “They’re coming with catapults! They’ll pepper us with bolts from the safety of the pond! We must flee!”

Brand whirled on her. “You must not touch the axe!”

Telyn looked at him for a moment, then grabbed up the axe with her cloak, careful not to touch it with her bare hands. She ran with it toward the shore, splashing through the shallowest part of the pond.

“
THIEF!”
roared Brand, chasing her. He ignored the catapults that snapped and sang around him. Murder shown in his eyes.

He chased Telyn into the forest, quickly outdistancing the merlings on land. When he finally caught up with her, the madness had left him.

“I—” he panted, “I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay,” she gasped out, letting the axe drop to the wet ground. “I shouldn’t have run off by myself. By the River, the thing is heavy!”

Brand nodded. “It is heavy when it does not want to go with you, but as light as straw when you slay with it.” He looked at Telyn. “We could have been killed, you know.”

Telyn nodded. She chewed her lip and her eyes were wide with fright.

“I killed merlings.” he said in wonder. “It was almost like killing men. It was terribly easy, Telyn. Part of me—part of me enjoyed it.”

She just stared at him. Then he opened his arms, and they embraced, standing over the axe.

“I must learn to control it,” he whispered into her ear.

“Yes,” she said softly.

They both looked at the axe that lay at their feet. The mud of the marsh wouldn’t stick to the Jewel or the blade. As the River Folk watched, the muck seemed to turn to liquid and crawl from the surface of the gleaming blades. Brand wondered if it would eventually kill his friends…or even him.

* * *

Tomkin searched for days before he caught up with Dando again. He’d taken to questioning wisps, who had attended the party in the marsh. Wisps were notoriously gossipy and unreliable. They did not maliciously
lie
, but they definitely did
embellish
when pressed for details. They didn’t like to disappoint their questioners, and tended make things up, lost in the moment of excitement,
improving
a tale to the point of distortion.

After being led to foxholes in the dead of night, circles of stones at the bottom of waterfalls and lost Fae mounds in the Deepwood, he finally got a tip from a vermilion wisp. Grumbling and suspicious, he followed her to the foot of the Black Mountains. There, he realized she was flittering straight up a rocky cliff. That was all very well when one had wings, but the climb looked long indeed and it was barely two hours before dawn broke.

Tomkin hesitated there, staring up into the starry night after the reddish ball of color which was the wisp. She was oblivious to whether he still followed or not, so excited was she to have the attention of another of the Fae. The wisps considered themselves to be very low in status, and so accounted the Wee Folk as gentile and impressive, when to all others they were only sneer-worthy. The attitude was endearing, but consistent failures had embittered Tomkin. He sighed, staring upward after the wisp.

He considered abandoning the quest for the night, but then something caught his eye. Was that a flash up above? There it was again! A flicker of light from on high. Something way up, perhaps on the very mountaintop…on the roof of the world. The winds and feel of the night wasn’t right for a storm. There was no thunder. If this were lightning, then it was silent lightning. Taking in a great breath, he began the climb. Perhaps, when he got there, he would at least witness something of interest.

The climb was worse than he had imagined. When he finally reached the summit, he found a bald expanse of rock, black as pitch in the night. There was no moon riding overhead, and starlight was all he had to guide him as he walked over the mountaintop. The wisp had departed by then—her kind never had anything resembling patience. She had probably forgotten who she had led to this lonely place the moment he was out of sight, and had buzzed away to irritate another fool.

Tomkin kicked at loose pebbles and wandered the mountaintop. Then he saw it again—up close and brilliant. It was a flash of such intense blue that it appeared white. He squawked and called out: “Hullo?”

Silence met his call. He stepped forward cautiously. If it was some kind of elemental he met with, something invisible perhaps, which now hovered overhead, he had to be very circumspect.

Suddenly, like a jackrabbit bursting from cover when a hound comes too near, a figure bounded out of hiding and sprinted with great leaps toward the cliffs.

“Dando?” Tomkin cried after the retreating figure.

The other stopped and turned. He crouched upon a boulder and stared back at Tomkin.

“Who goes?” Dando called back.

“‘Tis I, Tomkin of the marshes.”

Dando warily leaned forward. He all but sniffed the air. He did not rush forward in welcome, which disappointed Tomkin. He had hoped at the very least to be greeted as an acquaintance. Could the other have forgotten their night of fun so quickly? Tomkin wondered what was it like to have so many friends you could forget one of them.

“Tomkin?” asked Dando. “The bumpkin from the marsh, you say? What do you want?”

Tomkin hesitated. He decided not to ask about more parties and pranks with his fellows. Somehow, if that was his purpose, he felt it would make him feel small in the eyes of the other.

“I have news.
Something
seeks thee.”

Dando laughed. The sound was sudden and bitter. “That I know bumpkin—better than I wish to!”

“Perhaps my efforts to find thee were a waste of time,” Tomkin said, becoming annoyed. “Good night.”

“No, no,” said Dando, hopping closer. He was off his boulder and quickly covered half the distance between them. “Speak, please.”

Tomkin huffed. “There is something—a dead-thing—that wishes to find you and two others. Its name is Voynod.”

Dando gave a sudden, sharp intake of breath. “The Dark Bard. Yes, I know he seeks me. I do not seek him, however.”

“Pity,” said Tomkin, turning to leave. He could see clearly there would be no party to be had tonight.

“Wait!” cried Dando. “What dealings have you had with this other? Does it follow? Are you in its service…or its debt?”

“Neither.”

“Then tell me your tale.”

Tomkin told him how he had met the Bard standing at the very spot of their party the day after they’d met. Dando seemed worried as the meeting was detailed.