That Frigid Fargin Witch (The Legend of Vanx Malic) (6 page)

“What is it, Chel?” Vanx nudged her. “What’s going on?”

Chelda blinked a few times, then turned to face him. Thorn was folded over to the floor in some sort of bow. He had his face in his hands, and was crying like a babe.

“You didn’t feel that?” Chelda seemed amazed. “You didn’t hear her?”

“I heard her, but I felt nothing.” Vanx crouched down beside her. Poops nudged her with his muzzle in a comforting manner and accepted it when she began scratching his ears.

“I think she’s dead,” Chelda wiped the tear away. “I’m sure of it. The pixie queen, I mean. She sent her life force into an elven warrior. I felt it. I felt it all. We have to kill the Hoar Witch. She is vile.” Chelda’s face looked stricken, but oddly calm and accepting. “She is attacking the Heart Tree in force this moment, and I am trapped down here in this empty Underland. The queen will never be able to undo what’s been done to me.”

Vanx wiped away her next tear for her and then fought back his own. The shock of Gallarael’s death hadn’t even had time to wear off, and now this. “There is bound to be another way, Chel,” Vanx reassured her. “You’ll not be trapped here forever.”

“No, after feeling all the goodness and love she felt for this place, that’s not what troubles me now.” She reached over and put a hand on Thorn’s back and patted the elf consolingly. “There probably is another way for me to get out, but until we figure it out, I can’t go up there and defend the Heart Tree. That is my pain.”

Thorn raised his head then and wiped his face on the sleeve of his silver-furred cloak. “If you really wish to defend the Heart Tree then you can, Lady Chelda.” His normally bright yellow eyes seemed cloudy and horribly sad. “The Shadowmane is considered part of the Underland.”

“Shadowmane?”

“You can tread on any ground that’s been touched by the Heart Tree’s shadow. That is its Shadowmane.”

“Take me there,” Chelda demanded. “Since I’ll not be able to go with you two to Rimehold, I’ll fight where I can.” She turned to face Vanx then. “It’s all the same battle. If the Hoar Witch gains the power of the Heart Tree, then you’ll never be able to kill her. Her rot will spread all across the world. Her beasts seem to fear my blade, and I can help Moonsy keep them from the tree.”

Vanx nodded, not really sure how Chelda understood all of this, or who Moonsy was. He was glad she wasn’t feeling hopeless and bitter. Maybe she and Thorn had a vision or something?

“We’re going to the nexus anyway,” Thorn said, as he regained his feet. “But we’ve still a good ways to go.” He wiped at his face again, the anguish slowly turning into determination. “We will soon come to Edric-Outs, a small village of mostly gnomes and sprites, but it is on the Tinker’s Way, so the passage beyond there is a lot bigger.” He squeezed Chelda’s hand.

“From there, Lady Chelda, you’ll no longer have to stoop.”

Only the reflexive skill, garnered from working with sometimes violently disagreeable animals, saved Darl from the sizzling crimson ray of energy that shattered the cabin door and sent its pieces hurling out onto the snowy ground. He and Gallarael had startled Xavian. The prepared mage nearly sent them to their deaths for it.

“What’s wrong with you?” Gallarael called from where she’d just dove out of harm’s way. “It’s me, Galra.”

“I don’t believe you,” Xavian called back. “You’re dead. Darl is dead too. Prove that you are not the witch’s beasts come to take us.”

“Someday you’ll do just fine with those suspicious old coots of my father’s Royal Order,” Gal told him. “It’s me, Xavian. Gallarael Martin Oakarm, the Princess of Parydon.”

“Tell me something the witch couldn’t know,” Xavian shot back.

“I just did.”

“You’re the Princess of Parydon?” Darl asked from the other side of the blasted entryway.

“Hush,” she hissed. “Like what, Xavian? I’m injured and tired. Where are Vanx and Poops? Where is Chelda?”

“Answer my question, and I’ll tell you the answers to yours.”

“Well hurry and ask it.”

Xavian must not have had a question ready, for it took him a few moments. “What is the name of Darbon’s first love?”

“Matty, damn you.” She cautiously braved her way to the door. Seeing that she didn’t get blasted, she moved closer.

“Where are Vanx and Chelda?” Gallarael hobbled over to the fire, her expression none too pleased.

Xavian’s face was pallid. “You are alive? They said you fell to the bottom of the canyon.” Then he looked at Darl. “They thought your roped was chewed through, that you also fell.”

“I felt Kegger’s warning tugs and secured myself. When the end of the pull line came snaking over and down, I crawled down to a ledge.” He paused to look at the mangled but healing wound that covered most of Kegger’s lower leg.

“I didn’t know what sort of beast was attacking up here so I cut a piece of the rope and hauled the lady, uh, the princess, up into a cave I found on my way down.”

“She was still alive?” Xavian asked, looking now at Gallarael, was toasting her bloody feet by the fire.

“You’re still alive?”

“No Xavian, I’m dead, just like you’re going to be if you don’t tell me where Vanx is.”

Hesitantly he told them, and as he did, he fed them stew from the pot he and Kegger had been nursing. Vanx had left some healing herbs he’d gathered from the forest, and had killed several rabbits and a small doe before they’d gone. They threw the herbs in the pot.

He told them of the elf, Thorn, and the wolfen attack; Kegger joined in the telling for a little while, but only to validate what Xavian said. The parts about the waist-tall, pointy-eared man with strawberry hair came out sounding far-fetched. Kegger’s assurances that it was all true, quelled any doubts that Darl might have held. Gallarael would have believed anything they told her. In her lifetime she’d survived the Wildwood, while full of fang-flower venom. She’d seen wolf-riding Kobals, and huge, angry, green-skinned ogres through her poisoned haze. She’d even seen a dragon. So the idea of elves and wild creatures didn’t surprise her all that much.

When Xavian was done with the telling, Darl rummaged through Kegger’s bag and came back with a drawstring sack. He hung it just outside the blasted door of the cabin and then went about stretching a flapped blanket over the hole. Before he was finished, a skittish ramma came in from the woods and started sniffing at Darl’s sack. A short while later a few more came, but that was it. Most likely, the witch’s wolfen beasts had gotten hold of the others.

When Gallarael announced that in the morning she was going after Vanx and Chelda, Xavian nodded that he would go with her. Darl objected, because Kegger was in no condition to travel, but the big gargan ranger, using a tree branch for a crutch, made his way to the room’s table board, where he sat stiff-legged. He insisted that he could take care of himself there in the cabin. All he needed was for them to hunt some more meat. He figured that in a day or two he would be well enough to move around, set snares and start feeding himself.

Darl agreed that he would lead the others into the Lurr and wait for them at its fringes. He would do this, but only if they hunted Kegger an ample amount of food before they left. He pointed out that having three rammas to ride would make up the extra day it would take them to hunt, and reluctantly Gallarael agreed, because a day of rest would go a long way toward easing the pain in her broken feet.

Chapter
Seven
Chapter
Seven

Off beside the river

far away from everything

the fishes keep me company

while I close my eyes and dream.

– Parydon Cobbles

T
he air in the Underland tunnel grew so warm that Vanx and Chelda were forced to shed their coats. Vanx removed Poops’ vest, too. He then carefully rolled up the coats and stored them in the pack he was carrying. Thorn pulled his arms from the sleeves of his silver coat, and then fastened them around his neck. His coat had become a cloak that he could keep swept behind him as he continued on. The Underland air also took on a quality of which both Vanx and Poops grew particularly aware. It wasn’t horrible, but it was no pleasant smell either. It reminded Vanx of the Kanga barns of his youth, or the haulkatten stables in Dyntalla. It was an earthy, animal stink: the smell of livestock.

There was a sweeter quality to the smell as they went farther in, and Poops was growing anxious to explore the source of this odd combination of scents. Vanx had the feeling that they would soon come upon some long-rotted carcass or another equally gruesome sight.

The smell grew stronger as they continued and Chelda’s gargan nose finally picked it up. At the time she was crouched over and following Thorn closely.

“Bah, elf.” She made a scrunched up face and exhaled loudly as if she were trying to blow the smell away from her nose with her puckered mouth. “Did you fart? It smells like ass and cookies. What did you eat?”

Vanx couldn’t help but laugh.

Thorn, however, spun around and made a face that registered somewhere between offended shock and disbelief. “’Tis no flatulence you smell,” he said with very little fire behind his words. “Nor is it cookies.”

His face was ashen, and tears were rolling down his cheeks. His normally bright yellow eyes were dim and red-rimmed. A string of clear snot was smeared from his little nose across his cheek. He looked like a heartbroken child.

He was a pitiful sight, and seeing him leached the mirth right out of Vanx’s laugh. He was taking the pixie queen’s death badly.

Chelda pulled the sorrow-stricken elf into a fierce, motherly hug.

“What is it, then?” Vanx asked. He needed to distract his own grief, lest it sneak up and overwhelm him. Up until now he’d forced thoughts of Gallarael from his heart and mind, but Thorn’s grief was proving to be contagious.

“It’s Edric-Outs, the brownie village,” Thorn sobbed and sniffled from Chelda’s bosom. The elf took a deep breath and tried to gather himself before continuing.

“There is a mold and mushroom plantation terraced out there. That’s what you smell. The sprites help tend it. There is a trickle stream, too.” He took another deep breath and wiped his nose on his coattail. “We’re not too far.”

A short while later, the passage narrowed and shrank. Vanx and Chelda had to take off their packs and push them ahead of themselves as they crawled on their hands and knees. Thorn assured them that it was only for a short distance. He called it a bear stop, and then went on to tell them how an old bear once wandered around the fairy mound five times and accidentally found his way in. The great bear had caused quite a stir and had to be put down with poison, but not before it destroyed Edric-Outs and a nearby honey hive, and settled into a cave home, displacing an entire clan of Fauchan.

“Fauchan are real, then?” Vanx grunted the question from behind Chelda and Poops as he crawled along. “I thought it impossible.”

“They are real, I assure you,” replied Thorn, who was still standing upright, and not having to stoop his head. “And it’s as ugly of a thing as you ever saw, what with only one arm, one leg, and one eye.”

“How much farther?” Chelda grumbled the question.

“We are here,” Thorn reassured her. “Just ahead now, can’t you smell the psilocybin sweet lichen?”

Vanx smelled it and felt a slight breeze working around Chelda and Poops. There was a faint blue-green glow coming from up ahead.

“Chelda, would you get hold of Sir Poopsalot as soon as you emerge?” Vanx asked. “I don’t want them thinking a bear cub has gotten in.”

“I’ll get him,” she said. “Taking off his shrew fur was a good idea, or he’d look just like one.”

From up ahead the sound of chirping birds and tinkling water filtered back to Vanx, but as he moved closer to the blue-green opening, the high-pitched twittering sound resolved itself into several tiny voices.

Thorn spoke in a commanding tone, but Vanx couldn’t make out his words. The confinement of the narrow shaft and the sweat pouring from his scalp was disturbing his concentration.

As soon as Chelda eased out ahead of him and grabbed Poops, Vanx felt a stronger wash of cool air sweep over him, a welcome relief. He took his time those last few feet and let the airflow dry some of the dampness and perspiration that had soaked his clothes.

Just before his head pushed out of the tunnel, he heard a collective gasp of chirping voices and more than one moan of worry and fear. Chelda had stood and he figured that the brownies and sprites were reacting to her height.

When Vanx finally emerged, he understood better the awe of the fae. The brownies were squat, thick, and only half as tall as Thorn at best. Chelda towered over them like a Goddess. If she had been so inclined, she could have squashed them flat with her huge feet.

The sprites were tiny, bird-like figures, not much bigger than a finger. They hovered and zipped about crazily, on brilliant butterfly wings in myriad designs and color combinations. One came in low and stopped to hover just inches from Vanx’s face. It was a young boy no bigger than a pinky toe, with doubled, glassine wings, like those of a dragonfly. When he looked into Vanx’s emerald eyes, his curiously fearful expression exploded. “Tsim,” the tiny boy chirped, and zipped away. “Tsim. It’s him.”