When I lifted myself for a refill, the witch’s scornful voice surprised me, “What’s this foul smell?”
I turned around to see her standing in the middle of the cave with a bundle in her left hand.
Surely the duck’s burnt scent had faded by now, I thought.
“You mean the delicious soup I just finished with the aid of your spices?” I was a little scared by her sudden arrival, instinctively pointing towards the big box of pretty containers.
“Oh, damnation! I always said I’d get rid of that old box, it’s been spoiled for years. Haven’t you noticed the grubs thick as nails inside?” She moved to the box to check it one more time. “Look, this one has even made a moth out of it! And died, desiccated for months.”
I dropped the bowl and the spoon I was licking and went closer to see.
“No, I didn’t use that one! I saw it was off, I used these two and that one there. They looked good enough to be used!” I tried to argue.
“Well, I wouldn’t count on it. Nevertheless, I’m famished.”
It was only when our hunger was satisfied and we’d finished cleaning the table, that Ghaeloden returned.
“So you’re back!” he said as he landed and positioned his snout at the entrance of the cave.
“You had any doubts?” Naghnatë replied mockingly, though she did not lift her sight from the bundle she was intent on unwrapping. “And I brought the herbs I needed to help Lorian walk again!”
The unwrapped cloth revealed a handful of wide, curious plants with furry stems and spiked-shaped leaves that permeated the cave with a metallic, stinging odour, similar to the dragon scent.
Although it was a dried bunch, I thought I glimpsed some of the spikes move up and down as if alive. And I was right. Just after they were unveiled, in the dim light of the fireplace, the pale-yellow dead-skin of the plant started turning a vivid shade of green. The mingled branches and leaves regained their strength from their flattened state and moved as if awoken by the morning’s sun. Except there was no sun inside the cave and they had been clean cut from their roots for sky knew how long.
“Drakholia!” Ghaeloden sounded equally surprised.
“In the flesh and well alive, master Ghaeloden! I knew you might sense it!” the witch replied.
“What is a Drakholia?” I asked marvelled, while stepping a bit closer to see the moving leaves.
“It’s a very rare plant, Lorian. And a very obstinate one to grow or collect. If I told you how much it took me to finally understand how I should gather it, you wouldn’t believe me. This is what I sent Nuuk to collect and I can confirm he picked it. I had to shift to another, more distant place to get this one!”
“So he really is in trouble,” I added, against all hope that he had shifted to his home in Grora.
“I knew it!” Ghaeloden let out a deep exhale.
“You were both right! I don’t see any other reason for him not to come back once collecting the plant and I very much doubt he would take it to Felduror as a prize, as much as it might be worth, it is still a mere plant compared to his endless well of powers,” Naghnatë admitted.
She appeared abashed. I thought it could have been because of a sense of guilt. She set some water to boil on the stove, and readied everything to make a mixture.
She placed two mugs on the table, one half filled with cold water and one empty. She then lifted one of the stems up and carefully plucked all of its moving-leaves and put them in the empty mug. She squeezed the leafless stem on the table with the blade of the knife and put it into the mug with cold water. Once the water was boiling, she poured it over the leaves inside the empty mug while whispering incomprehensible words.
The scent seemed to have faded a bit, or perhaps I was getting accustomed to it, though the water in both mugs had turned a dark crimson-red, similar to the coagulated thick blood that I often saw about the butcher’s shop.
“This is for you, master Lorian.” She took a third, empty mug in which poured the hot brew and the cold water, prudently making sure that the mix was equally balanced. “Bottoms up!”
I took it and looked at it for a quite some time. Its strong odour was starting to bother me less, even if the weird colour was not at all inviting. More so, as one of the leaves still moved its small spikes and spread trails of different shades of oily-reds. I tried to let Naghnatë see my uneasiness, yet her serious face only made me regret I tried to convince her. I spurred myself and took a long sigh before gulping it all down in a long draw.
At first it felt a bit like nettle tea, only much stronger. An instant reaction followed, my body strained. The bitterness of the concoction was making my throat feel swollen, compelling me to find my way to some fresh water as I put both of my hands around my neck.
“No you don’t!” Naghnatë slapped my hand before I reached the empty mug, plainly reading my intention.
My eyes bulged. I could not draw as much air as I would’ve liked; not from the nose, not from the mouth. Once again, I tried to voice my concern, alas, the sour taste made my voice dwindle before it came out. It reminded me greatly of the unripe dogwood cherries, which made my tongue and cheeks feel dry and itchy while my face would fashion the most foolish of pouts. Only that now it was tenfold worse.
It felt like an endless moment before the mixture started to lose its bitter taste and take the swollen sensation from my throat to the stomach. Though, as it reached my belly the discomfort subdued. I stopped with my hands over my knees, finally able to take in the air that I craved.
“Now you can drink this!” The witch handed me a mug full of fresh water which I drank in a blink.
I asked if I could have more and when she nodded, I walked quickly towards the water-bucket. I drank a couple more mugsful and it was then I realised I walked with no pain in my knee.
“I told you it would work!” Naghnatë’s laugh anticipated my reaction.
“Will it last?” I asked.
“Well if you hit it hard it will break again, obviously! It’s a far better mending than the twist-fix I exercised previously on your kneecap. This herb will strengthen your weak ligaments and muscles and with care and exercise,” she emphasised the last word as if telling me what my next steps should be, and I duly noted, “you should be able to recover.”
“Magnificent! Thank you, Naghnatë!” I hugged her tightly.
My instinctive sign of gratitude was received with and awkward reaction on her end. She protectively dithered as if I had tried to stab her and gently pushed me away.
“I am glad it worked!” She dodged my glare and started chewing on a small moving-leaf, wrapping the remaining herbs.
“If ready, then shall we go?” the dragon asked impatiently.
“I do feel ready!” I shouted enthusiastically, dashing to check my things.
Pulling my coat over my shoulders I tried to tidy the bed in which I slept for far too long.
“Oh, don’t bother with that,” Naghnatë said when she noticed what I was trying to do, “step aside please!”
With a gesture of her hand and a whisper, the bed, table, stools, stove, mugs, cutlery and everything we had used vanished. Dirt and dust appeared out of nowhere and filled every crevice and corner of the cave, making it look like it had not been visited in a long time.
I found myself smiling childishly at the sight of magic happening and I convinced myself it would take me years to get accustomed to.
“So do we shift to the citadel or closer to it?” I asked, hoping that truly I was ready to face another weak landing and intestinal turmoil.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Besides, it’s less than a day’s walk from here. All we have to do is cross the snowy fields and find the green forest that surrounds the outer walls and we’re there,” she replied.
I did not know how to feel; upset for having slept that close to the threat for a few days already, or elated that we didn’t have to shift.
“Do you think that Felduror would leave anything to cha
nce and allow anyone approach his citadel?” Her comment was a direct response to the plain confusion on my face.
“And all this time we’ve been under his nose?” I was befuddled.
“There’s no better place to hide than in plain sight!” The dragon sounded amused.
“It had taken me years to find my way back to the citadel. These routes are untravelled and can be treacherous for anyone that hasn’t lived around these lands. If there’s one thing I have to acknowledge about Felduror’s skills, it is that he has managed to fool everyone. He protects his secrets as well as he protects the secrecy surrounding the citadel. There is a reason no one believes in Drakhahouls and magic anymore and that is because nobody is allowed in or out. The rest is just speculation, or my stories, which no one seems to believe.” Naghnatë’s voice had turned to a whisper.
“Imagine what he’d have King Belrug-the-Black do to me if he found out I’ve conspired with his arch-enemy!” Ghaeloden snarled, though not too displeased, as if mentioning his duplicity only hurt the wizard’s pride.
“All done!” Naghnatë finished what she had started in making the cave secure, and moved to the entrance.
“Master Ghaeloden,” she continued as we stepped outside, “you will travel ahead of us. I assume you have your own plan and ways to convince the wizard of your ignorance of Nuuk’s plans. I’m confident he will not put your loyalty in doubt when it comes to your word against the imp’s. That shall give us some time to make it there, Lorian. We can only hope for the little creature’s fate!”
Ghaeloden took to the skies and the witch, with another hand gesture and a whisper, made the boulder-door recompose from the many broken fragments. When her spell was done, the cave was freshly sealed and obscured.
We were ready to approach Arkhanthï.
After hours of arduous walking across the snow-covered plains, where we made no apparent progress and had to shield our eyes from the blinding whiteness, we reached an unexpected patch of thick fog. Its welcome, a thin layer of moisture that covered us from head to toe, a sensation, which after the cold we suffered in the plains, felt like a punch to the stomach.
My teeth were chattering noisily and if Naghnatë felt any cold she did not let it be perceived. Her attentive eyes were fixed straight ahead and her body seemed to have curved just a little more; similar to a stealthy cat before a lethal leap. The noisy wind, that accompanied us before the wall of fog, had subdued until it became a slender whistle.
We swiftly entered deeper into the thick blanket of fog, which swallowed us entirely after just a few steps. On a hand-span’s distance nothing could be recognised. It felt like we were walking on a boundless cloud of a darker-grey shade, a cold cloud for that matter. I hurried my steps to reach Naghnatë, fretful that the few steps that divided us were still too many.
“Silence now!” She stopped and whispered.
I hate being lost! A far too-recent memory of a sensation that I wholly disliked claimed my attentiveness.
Moments later, after a series of slow, muted steps, the ground started to feel more solid. It definitely wasn’t snow anymore. The realisation made my head turn towards my feet, which, to my utmost surprise, I could not see. A dizzying sensation, glancing at the fog that was reaching my stomach, the belt being the last thing I could make out.
Concentrating on looking down, I did not hear the witch stop, and I bumped into her shoulder, getting a mean, silent expression in reply. I apologised with my eyes, knowing that words would only add to her annoyance. Her posture denoted she was trying to listen for something to our right, yet I could not hear a thing. Nor could I see.
“We’re not far!” The witch’s whisper sounded muffled by the fog.
A few moments later I understood what she had been listening for; the subtle murmur of a river. Its pleasant sounds quickly started delineating its shape towards our right side not far from where we stood.
She turned to me and smiled and before I even asked where we were, tall, ghostly shapes of trees with their sinuous branches bursting with leaves and fruits came into view, surrounding us with their portentous presence. We had reached a forest, a far-stranger forest than the ones I knew. More than us passing it, the blanket of fog seemed to quickly withdraw at our backs, leaving in its place a vibrant, rich scale of greens with just a few smudges of brown and orange. A sight for my sore eyes.
I found myself staring at a tall, thick canopy that almost completely blocked the sun’s rays, except for a few cuts here and there. The white expanse of deep snow had vanished, faded somewhere in the dense blanket of fog, leaving the floor of the forest decorated with a variety of soft moss and lichens which dampened my legs up to my calves. Inch by inch and foot by foot, the hard, dark bark of the ancient giant-oaks became more visible. In some cases, the trees were as thick as houses and as tall as hills, a breath-taking revelation which made my head spin and my neck hurt as I tried to look around. Their body was transformed by the myriad of soft, dwarf plants.
On the floor, rocks could only be distinguished by their shapes and almost none brandished deadly sharp corners anymore, since the soft covering of moss rendered them innocuous, submerged green-sculptures. Sporadic roots of different dimensions would unearth themselves outwards, undulating in their turgid glory like frozen snakes, making the horizon seem like a place of battle where all the silent weapons had been carelessly abandoned and covered by the moist ground. The healthy layer of moss, that displayed the same variegated array of vibrant greens, felt pleasant to my sore and damp feet, and produced squelchy sounds as I stepped from root to rock and rock to root. The air in the thick woodland was not cold at all, feeling like an affectionate caress that escorted us with warm, fresh air. The thought made me wonder how such a green forest was able to survive so late in the year, and especially so close to the vast expanse of snow.
It has to be magic!
As I measured my theory, the witch stopped me with a hand on my chest and hushed me to be quiet with a finger on her lips. She then pointed at a thicket ahead of us, merely ten feet away from where we stood.
At first, I was perplexed until I saw small flickers of light appear all over the shrub. They were pairs of small eyes. Colourful dots that blinked arbitrarily in agreement and that could easily be mistaken as fireflies. Red, green, blue, purple and yellow pairs of blinking eyes were focusing on every movement that we made. I slowly lifted my hand around and that caught their attention, forcing them to chase my circular movements as if enchanted by my waving fingers.
“What are those?” I asked without taking my eyes from the scintillating dance.
“In our tongue, they are Dinkhalï! A very distant relative of the Drakhahouls, and they can be quite annoying! So I suggest we better let them be and avoid getting too close.”
“Are they dangerous?” They certainly didn’t look menacing.
“They have often been mistaken for dragons by those that have never seen a real Drakhahoul. They are almost innocuous and very loud. Some of them produce a very strange type of venom, non-lethal, quite powerful for making healing powders for a peculiar type of wound. Sadly, they do not give it away freely. What they gladly give instead is a spitting welcome and a piercing hiss!”
Something told me that she had first-hand experience in dealing with the curious creatures, but I was still reluctant to follow her as she started to move towards the left. It was only because I disliked her reprimands, that I removed myself from the spot. Careful not to hit my head on a big, contorted root that arched from the ground taller than ourselves, I lowered my head and, as I turned sideways, I caught a glimpse of one of the creature’s tail out of the corner of my eye. It was of a turquoise shade with yellow-reddish dots speckled around. It was more like a stiff lizard’s tail than the flexible tail of a snake, but I was unable to make out more, as it quickly returned inside the safety of its shrub.
So colourful!
Having avoided the Dinkhalï, we ended up on a steep hill from which we could see th
e river underneath us, eating slowly into the foot of the hill. At that point its waters formed a fast bending knot, a hushing serpentine that continued to the right and then to the left and back to the right again in an accelerated fashion given the narrow passage the hills allowed. I prayed that the witch did not have the nerve to make us cross the fast moving water right there, it was perilously steep and friable. Luckily, she had only stopped to look around before continuing.
Unlike the warm, dry forests I was accustomed to, life here manifested differently and I could barely recognise any of the plants I saw. Plants with multi-coloured leaves that produced dots of every colour; yellow green, burning-crimson, teal and bright purple. Plants with leaves as wide as my arms could spread; plants that descended from the trees for feet in long, thick vines, sinuously plunging from tall branches to the ground like green snakes. Some of the trees had elongated-shaped fruits big as buckets. All around us, there were plants I couldn’t have imagined, the most peculiar of which, a plant that displayed stamens as thick as my fingers and a giant bell-shaped flower. It was most vividly coloured in shades of yellow, orange and red, with a bit of purple and white to the top and blue dots, speckled all over.
There was not a square foot around that did not harbour an animal of some sort, and I was sure that many more were watching our every move, unseen. The most common and amusing were the odd coloured frogs. Their dimensions differed from the smallest ones, big as fingernails, to the largest and ugliest ones that would require serious strength to lift. They were blinking their bulged, colourful eyes and croaked at me if they were large, or jumped away if they were small, whenever I tried to take a closer look. Their prey, if prey that could be called, were the many different types of insects, harboured safely by the big flowers or awkward looking plants in exchange for a wide distribution of their pollen. Some of those insects were vicious and aggressive and in some cases their whirring was disturbingly and worrying loud. If those long needles, attached to fist-sized bodies, were the typical flies of the forest, I didn’t dare think what a typical spider would look like.
Winterhorn (Tokens Of Benevolence Book 1) Page 32