Warden (Book 2: Lure of the Lamia) (2 page)

“Your human sight will return,” Samara said. “It has been taken from you temporarily in order to allow you to better learn how to commune with the Greenlife.”

“Commune with the…you mean talk with the forest?”

Samara laughed. “Not exactly. Humans don’t possess the necessary sensory capabilities for that type of awareness and communication. But I will teach you what I can, as fast as I can.”

“Then let’s get started.”

Chapter 3

Samara spent the next hour teaching Errol how to use the forest as his eyes and extensions of his other senses. The forest greenery could recognize when animals passed near them by sensing their body heat. Leaves vibrated due to the sounds, echoes, and footsteps made by forest denizens. Grass and shrubs gauged the size and weight of travelers by virtue of how they were stepped and trod upon. In short, there were a thousand little ways that the Greenlife (as Samara called it) could collectively “see” what was going on around it.

The trick, from Errol’s point of view, was really learning how to get that information from the plant life. The key, apparently, was the nauseating fluid the marvo had squirted into his mouth; combined with Samara’s spell, it heightened his consciousness in odd ways such that he could sense the same things that the plants around him could.

In essence, the plant life around him hummed, giving off a subtle droning that he recognized as a form of communication. It put pictures in his head, making him aware of what the forest was observing. Errol was enraptured. He had never seen the world in this way before – had not known it was possible.
As a result, even without his eyesight, he was aware of his surroundings and could walk – albeit timidly at first – without fear of tripping or running into something. According to Samara, this was an aspect of the forest talking to him – making him aware of his environs.

In a similar vein, Samara showed Errol how – by focusing his thoughts – he could “speak” to the plants. This was less direct than Errol initially thought, since communicating with the Greenlife was less about words and more about images, concepts, and feelings. For instance, in asking whether it had rained recently, he had to project an image of rain, time passing via thoughts of the rising and setting of the sun – as well as the nourishment it provided – and more.

Unfortunately, in the time they had, he learned only to ask questions that required yes-or-no responses. “No” answers caused a uniquely sour taste to arise in his mouth, along with images in his mind of the bitternut seeds he had hated as a child. On the other hand, “Yes” responses resulted him tasting a deliciously sweet nectar, accompanied by a mental picture of honeysuckle. Any type of response that was more in-depth than this was simply too complicated for Errol to decipher. Still, he progressed enough that Samara was willing to give him a passing grade.

“You can commune with the Greenlife now,” she said. “Although your skill at doing so is that of one of our babes.”

“Feel free to send one of them in to the basilisk, then,” Errol said, suddenly miffed at her attitude, “and I’ll just go home.”

“I meant no disrespect. I only intended to express that not everything that is conveyed to you by the forest – and vice versa – may be properly understood.”

“Whatever. Let’s just get this over with.”

With that, Errol began marching towards the cavern entrance with Mobley beside him.

Frankly speaking, he couldn’t believe he was doing this. He was about to blindly – literally – enter a cave and hunt for one of the deadliest monsters in the Badlands. Upon reflection, the fact that he could no longer see in the conventional manner suddenly struck him as a great idea. If nothing else, he wouldn’t have to worry about inadvertently locking eyes with the creature.

When he reached the cavern entrance, he dropped down to the ground and carefully traced an immobilization ward on the ground with his warding wand. He’d never done it before without being able to see, but he was confident that the ward was properly etched. Then he spoke the activation phrase and felt the ward flare briefly, accompanied by Mobley’s barking. Now, at least, if the basilisk tried to leave the cave before they found it, it wouldn’t be able to get far. Errol then stood up, took a deep breath, and entered the cave.

*****

For Errol, the lack of light inside the cave was no different from the bright day outside, visually. However, the temperature was noticeably cooler. In anticipation of this, he had brought
the amarok hide with him, and he placed it around his shoulders for warmth. The thick pelt was incredibly rugged, and he’d only been able to skin the beast with one of his Wendigo blades. It had not yet been properly cured, but it would serve to shield him from the chill of the cave.

All around him, he felt the plant life – moss on rocks and walls, mushrooms protruding up from the ground, the luminescent lichen wherever it could find a toehold. Their presence was a buzzing in his head, a constant hum that gave him a rough image of the cave that he was in. Moreover, he found that if he paid close attention, he could distinguish between the details being provided by each type of greenery.

From the information being relayed to him, the cave was fairly sizeable – about fifty feet in length as well as width. Impressive stalagmites equivalent to Errol’s six-foot height protruded up from the ground in several areas, with matching stalactites above. In addition, about a half-dozen jagged clefts in the walls led to interconnected chambers.

Before going too far into the interior of the cave, Errol paused to confer further with the plants. Basically, before he took another step, he wanted to know if the basilisk was in this part of the cave. He interpreted the plants’ response as
“
No.” That meant that the monster had gone through one of the connecting tunnels and was in one of the conjoined caverns.

Errol then moved to investigate the connecting passageways as swiftly and silently as possible, with Mobley whining softly beside him. The dog clearly did not want to be here, and Errol completely sympathized with him. The sooner they could finish this, the better.

A few minutes later, Errol stood near the entrance of the last tunnel, frowning. He had inspected all of the connecting tunnels, and there were only about two of them that
he
could possibly –
possibly
– get through. Based on his estimate of the basilisk’s size, there was no way it could have gotten through any of them to one of the connecting caverns. Had he missed something?

A few feet away from the entrance of the last tunnel was a stalagmite that was home to a patch of the glowing lichen. Errol approached it and tried to formulate a question, ask if the basilisk had passed this way recently. The answer was in the negative, bringing a bitter taste to Errol’s mouth.

At the same time, he began to detect an odd pressure building in his mind. Unexpectedly, he began to feel closed in, almost as if he couldn’t breathe. Was this some kind of panic attack? Beside him, Mobley whined softly, then barked into the darkness ahead of them.

“Quiet!” Errol hissed for the umpteenth time, making the dog whimper. Oddly enough, Mobley suddenly went silent mid-whine, for which Errol was exceptionally grateful. Then, as the odd sensation in his mind began fading, he felt the dog flop against his leg.

Alarmed, Errol reached down; Mobley wasn’t cold or stiff, but he also wasn’t moving. Both his own instincts and the plant life around him told him that the dog was dead. It had just keeled over for no rea–

The basilisk!
Errol went tense all over as he suddenly realized what had happened. The Greenlife was wrong. The damn thing was in the cave with them!

Errol’s thoughts flew by at a furious pace. The lichen must have provided enough light for Mobley to have seen the monster. The dog had been facing forward, which meant that…

Errol practically leaped backwards, instinctively drawing his dagger and wand. At the same time, he heard a terrifying smack, like a fist being struck against the palm of one’s hand, which he recognized as the sound of powerful jaws snapping shut in the place where his head was a moment ago. (He also realized with a start what the pressure was that he’d felt in his head: the mushrooms, trampled under the weight of the basilisk, trying to communicate with him.)

Immediately following the creature’s attempt to take his head off, Errol felt something wet land lightly on his wrist – some type of spittle from the monster. Pain immediately flared up as the saliva started to fry his skin like acid. Muscle memory made him automatically wipe his hand against his pants, which likewise began to simmer against his leg.

There was a sound of heavy, sharp claws scrabbling against the cavern floor, moving in his direction. Groaning in pain and stumbling backwards, Errol pointed his wand and mumbled out a word of power. Instantly, the wand fired a powerful spark of light at the basilisk, and a moment later Errol heard the satisfying sound of splatter as it made contact.

The monster howled in pain, a long, undulating wail that echoed so deafeningly in the cave that the reverberations caused one of the stalactites to fall down with a thunderous crash.

Suddenly, Errol’s mouth, throat, and lungs felt like they were on fire. Moreover, every exposed part of skin felt like as if it were being bitten by ants, stabbed with a knife, and stung by a scorpion at the same time. He collapsed to the ground in agony, losing his dagger and barely hanging on to his wand. He retched uncontrollably, stomach heaving all of its contents onto the ground in front of him.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized what had happened. When the basilisk had screamed, its foul breath had spewed out, and Errol had inadvertently not just been exposed to it, but had actually breathed it in. At the same time, he realized that he wasn’t the only victim of the fumes, as the buzzing of the greenery in his head diminished considerably – a sure indication that the monster’s breath (or possibly blood from the wound caused by the spark) had choked the life out of the nearby plants.

The sound of claws on rocks brought Errol back to himself once more. Still too weak to rise, he scuttled backwards like a four-legged crab until the cavern wall checked his movement. He was about to scamper along the side of that wall when a powerful set of jaws closed on his shoulder.

Oddly enough, the creature’s teeth didn’t slice into his flesh as Errol expected. The amarok hide, tougher than any normal pelt, kept the basilisk’s fangs from getting any penetration. Still, the pressure of the monster’s jaws on his shoulder was incredible, and it was all Errol could do not to scream. In addition, saliva dripped from its jaws onto the hide, singeing the fur and sending the unappetizing smell of burning hair into the atmosphere.

This close to its maw, Errol had no desire to breathe in any more of its breath. Thus, he had been holding his breath ever since the monster had locked onto his shoulder. However, although this action protected his mouth and throat, his exposed skin remained under assault from the monster’s exhalations. Errol felt the skin on his face start to pucker and peel. Also his eyes, even if he wasn’t blind, had swollen shut and would have been useless to him anyway.

Errol’s mind raced through his available options at record speed. This close, he didn’t dare fire another spark at the basilisk and risk getting splashed with its acid-like blood. His dagger was still lying somewhere on the floor of the cave, but he couldn’t have stabbed the creature anyway without drawing blood.

In desperation, he stuck the tip of the wand under the creature’s jaw and concentrated. The end of the wand began to glow with a red light, becoming warm. Warmer. Then hot. Hotter. The basilisk began mewling in pain.

With any other creature in this position, Errol would have expected to be shaken like the favorite bone of a convulsive dog. But with its neck bones fused together, shaking by the basilisk was out of the question. However, the monster did the next best thing.

It swung to the side with a speed that almost made Errol dizzy, and then released its grip on his shoulder while still in motion. Errol went flying.

He slammed into a stalagmite with a bone-jarring smack, the breath he’d been holding suddenly knocked out of him. He slid to the ground in excruciating pain, certain that at least one bone – if not more – was broken. The basilisk howled again, causing another stalactite to come crashing down mere feet from where Errol lay.

Errol heard the monster’s claws on the rocky floor and tried to rise, but his strength failed him. He lay down on his back, breathing heavily, aware that this fight was not likely to end in his favor; his opponent simply had too great an arsenal, and this entire episode would soon be over.

Surprisingly, the basilisk – apparently convinced that Errol was no longer a threat – seemed to be taking its time in coming towards him. Errol, however, was in no mood to be toyed with, like a mouse cornered by a cat. If this was the end of the road for him, he wanted it to be a quick journey, and he’d do it himself if he had to.

Miraculously, he had managed to hang on to his wand throughout this entire ordeal. He smiled, thinking that his brother Tom would have been proud. A Warden’s wand was almost like another appendage, and any Warden worth his salt would lose his arm before he let go of his wand under any circumstances.

Thus it was, with that thought in mind, that he raised his arm and pointed his wand at the cavern ceiling, and fired the most powerful spark he could form.