That Frigid Fargin Witch (The Legend of Vanx Malic) (9 page)

Centered inside the pillars, atop the dais, was a starkly empty ivory throne.

A few feet away from the empty seat, an orb the size of a human head was hovering and pulsing a deep shade of blue. Clustered around the orb were seven ancient-looking fae, all of whom were the human-child-size of the elves and pixies. Their expressions were dire, but they didn’t seem to have lost all hope. Vanx couldn’t tell which of them had wings, and the vibrant colors of distinction had been leached from the hair and beards of all but two of them.

“Welcome home, General Posy-Thorn,” the oldest of the group said with her right hand palming the pulsing Interpratarion.

Her words found Vanx’s ears in his native Zythian tongue, just as it had earlier. “And welcome, mighty Emerald Eyes. Your arrival has been eagerly hoped for, and we beg of you to hear our need.”

“Tell them to take me to the Shadowmane, Thorn,” Chelda said.

“There is no time for this.”

The group was almost down to the circle of root columns when Chelda drew out her sword and brandished the bright blue glowing blade. A wave of gasps rippled around the nexus.

“There is your real champion,” Vanx said, as they stepped into the slightly radiant purple field. The voices of the crowd faded slightly and a warm tingling sensation enveloped him. He was in the nexus.

Chapter
Ten
Chapter
Ten

There is a place so gloomy,

so dark and oh so cold.

Down in those depths a monster dwells,

the dungeons of Rimehold.

– Frosted Soul

“W
e are being peaced,” Darl said in hushed tones as he, Gallarael, and Xavian worked their way up a relatively steep grade toward the last ridge that separated them from Saint Elm’s Deep. The midafternoon sky was a whirl of steel and ash. They had lost a day already to the heavy snowfall and low visibility, and it was still snowing light, dusty flakes. The wind had picked up, too. Darl stopped his ramma and was squinting under a stiff-armed salute at something not far away from him.

“What?” Xavian asked rather loudly. “We’re being what?”

“Peaced. Paced.” Darl strained the accent out of his words. “Followed, tracked, stalked.” He urged his ramma back into its slow, steady pace before Xavian could ask another question.

“By what?” Gallarael eased her ramma up. The natural switchback ledge they were ascending was wide enough for them to ride two abreast, but Gallarael had no intention of taking another tumble. She worked her reins to keep her ramma’s head right to the tail of Xavian’s mount. The fall from here wasn’t even close to sheer, but it was fairly steep, and where the hearty pines and furs weren’t grasping the mountainside, there were all sorts of upthrusts and outcroppings of icy, snow-covered rock. She would have had more confidence if she were on foot and in her more dexterous form. As she waited to hear Darl’s answer to her question, she contemplated the consequences of having to suddenly shapeshift if they were attacked. It occurred to her then that there was no real need to wait on whatever was out there to come to them.

“A peer of welves, I think,” Darl told them. “They’re not coming closer. They’re just keeping peace.”

“Watching us?” Xavian asked, trying to mask his fear with contempt.

“Leading us, more like,” Darl replied under his breath.

“Here!” a raspy voice hissed right into Darl’s ear, startling both him and his ramma mount. “Take them.”

Gallarael, in her dark-skinned, ember-eyed beast form, hissed. She was offering the reins of her terrified ramma to him. “I’ll meet you at the ridge.”

“Be careful, Gal,” Xavian urged.

“Be ready, mage,” she returned.

She then tore off her fur coat, threw it to Xavian and scrabbled on all fours off into the blustery wind.

Darl kept the procession moving while speaking soothing words to the rammas. It was clear that what he was saying was as much for his own sake as it was for the animals.

After the animals had somewhat calmed, Darl tied the lead line from Gallarael’s mount to his saddle and pulled his bow from over his shoulder to string it up.

“If trouble breaks out,” said Darl. “Don’t you catch me afire, mage.”

“What?” Xavian asked nervously.

“Don’t… Bah! Nevermind.”

Gallarael spotted the two creatures padding along the slope just as soon as her eyes shifted. One was dark of fur and slightly larger than the other, nearly invisible, white-furred creature. Both of them were of a size comparable to the timber wolves Gallarael had seen roaming the forests of her youth. These were nothing like the wolf monster Kegger had described to them.

The wind was coming up the grade so it was unlikely that they would be able to smell her or the others; nor could she catch the beast’s scent, and she was certain that her sense of smell was just as keen as theirs. She could use this to her advantage, but she would have to stay above them.

Gallarael clawed and loped like some feral quadrupedal creature, right up the mountainside. She ducked limbs and darted over the tricky terrain as if she had lived there forever. After a bit she paused and watched. It was hard to say, for the fluttering snow made the visibility bad, but it appeared that she had made a clean break away from the others. Neither of the wolfen seemed to be paying any attention to anything other than Darl and Xavian moving slowly along a few hundred feet below their position.

Gallarael gauged Darl’s intended path, which was fairly obvious because of the limited possibilities available, and she saw what Darl had seen earlier.

The wolfen beasts were moving to block the group from taking a quicker, more direct route, one that would take them up a steep but manageable ravine. Darl would be forced to either try to fight the creatures on the treacherous mountainside or switch back and come up through a longer, gentler series of rocky flats. But why force them onto the easier of the trails, Gallarael wondered, unless something was waiting for them along that route?

She decided that it would be far better to let Darl and Xavian start onto the flatter steps of rock before she made any sort of aggressive move. She would have to do it before they went too far, though, and then warn them of the trap that lay that way.

The idea was to take out the two creatures that were herding them and for all of them to make haste up the steeper path, thus avoiding altogether, whatever surprise was waiting.

She wished that she knew the horn signals the rim riders used, for she would have loved to be able to convey her plan to Darl and Xavian, or at least warn them. The last thing she wanted was for them to go racing up the stepped slabs into the trap when she attacked. She decided that if wishes were that easy to come by she would have married Trevin and taken her mother’s place as the Duchess of Highlake. As it was, Trevin was dead by her own feral claws, and she would have to settle for calling out a warning just as she set upon the wolves.

Luckily Darl was perceptive enough to avoid going into the trap, but it was Xavian, or more correctly the ramma underneath him, that caused her plan to go awry.

The white-furred wolfen sniffed and paused for a heartbeat while eyeing the party from across the slope. Its pack mate bristled its fur and stepped out from the trees with a low, menacing growl. This was supposed to scare the group back up and away from the wind-worn cut for which they were headed.

The wolfen beast did startle the two men and the rammas, but not in the way it intended to.

In simultaneous precision, an arrow thrummed from Darl’s bow and a hot, crimson beam shot across the span between men and wolf. Xavian’s magic hissed and popped as it evaporated the snowflakes that touched it and it hit its mark true.

There was a yelp and a great gout of steam and flames. Ice was liquefied and the creature was partially scorched. The air filled with an acrid stench, and the nearly furless wolf keened out in pain and terror as it leapt to roll in a drift of cool snow. Then it was fleeing, each of its ground-eating strides grinding Darl’s arrow through its vitals that much more.

The white wolf charged out to attack them then, but Gallarael came streaking down out of nowhere, half tumbling, half charging, and tore into the surprised beast.

Xavian’s burst of magical energy caused his ramma to bolt up the stepped slabs of rock away from the scene. It was all he could do to hang on and keep from being tumbled or thrown backward off the creature. Darl, with a loud command, and a firm yank on his lead line, kept his mount in check, but the riderless ramma tethered to his saddle tried to yank and twist itself free.

“Don’t…!” Gallarael screamed over the savage snarling of the beast with which she was tangled. “Don’t go that way–” Slavery jaws were in her face then, and her words were cut off.

Darl understood. He’d already figured the ambush lay in the way the wolves tried to force them to go, but now he was torn between helping Gallarael or chasing down Xavian and his frightened mount.

Gallarael was capable and the mage was heading into an ambush, so he made his decision. He cut loose the riderless ramma and charged his mount up the stepped slope after Xavian. The other ramma, not realizing it was cut loose, ran tight beside them. He didn’t have to go far. No sooner had he gotten himself moving in the right direction did the impossible happen before his eyes.

A tree, a gnarled, leafless, oakish-looking thing, darted out of the forest, right into Xavian’s path. It had a trunk as big around as the belly of a drinking man and limbs that writhed and reached twenty feet up into the air.

Instantly, appendages with grasping branch fingers enveloped the screaming young mage. Xavian was yanked off of his ramma. The ramma was wrapped and crumpled into a bloody pulp of mangled bone and gore.

A knothole maw, a few feet above the ground, roared in defiant rage. The sound nearly loosened Darl’s bowels.

Darl didn’t have to rein in his mount. It was already trying to turn back the other way, but he worked to keep the riderless ramma close. Before he was completely turned away from the tree-beast and the shrieking wizard, he saw it rush back among the snow-laden firs and pines, on long trunk legs with root-clawed feet. There was an explosion of snow from a jarred pine tree’s limbs and the fading, choking sound of Xavian’s terror, and then Darl was being carried away at a breakneck pace.

He felt a wave of cowardice come over him, but he knew in his heart that there wasn’t anything he could have done for the mage. It all happened too fast. Sure, he could have loosed an arrow or two, but he knew it wouldn’t have harmed such a monstrosity.

He had never been as terrified, and he doubted he would ever sleep again for visions of that dark, knothole mouth, with its jagged, almond-colored teeth. And that gut-shaking roar was something he would never be able to forget.

He saw Gallarael. She stood like an obsidian statue, amidst a gruesome mess of bloody fur and entrails. Dangling in her left hand was the wolfen creature’s head, and her right arm was slick and dripping crimson gore up to the elbow.

Her eyes were fixed beyond where Darl was now trying to get the two ramma under control. She was staring at the distant stain that had once been Xavian’s mount. She had seen the tree that took her friend, and though she had every intention of avenging his death, she didn’t want Darl, or herself, to be the next victim of whatever else waited up that stepped stone path.

She didn’t bother to change back to her natural self, nor did she mount the ramma Darl offered.

“Let’s move,” she hissed, and loped past the gargan, up into the steeper cut, not bothering to see if he was following or not.

Chapter
Eleven
Chapter
Eleven

The evil horde was many,

the heroes left were hurt.

Then the king drew Ornspike

and put the demon in the dirt.

– The Ballad of Ornspike

“S
he’s gone up there to defend your realm and you would deny her freedom from this place?” Vanx’s question was asked with more than a little vehemence dripping from his tongue and an even more aggressive expression on his face. From his side, Poops growled and the fur stood up on his back. The seven elder elves and pixies of the council known as Troika Sven cowered back from him.