“I mean, thanks for saving my life, Rose...”
“Oh go on!” she said as they slowed to a walk. “You lush. Don't kid me anymore Lukus. You really do love her don't you?”
Lukus studied the reins in his hands for a very long time. “So, you think those locusts were an illusion?”
“You're not going to tell me, are you?”
“I'm not the one who's sixteen, Rose.”
“You're right. You just seem older every once in a while, when we're scared clean out of our wigs.”
“So what about the locusts, Rose?”
“Did you see their faces?”
“When?”
“Well then you didn't,” she said, “or you wouldn't ask when. Right before we charged out, each one of them hovering outside had Spitemorta's face. All we did was go out and they vanished. With her face, they had to have been an illusion, so I pulled you out. So if they were an illusion, we still had to be in the Valley of Illusions. Had to be. But tell me first, just to be sure: from where we left the Crystal Caves the first time, all the way to where we went in to the Crystal Caves the second time, did you ever once turn around in the road?”
“Not that I know of...”
“Damn! Don't you know?”
“Well how in all of Niarg could I? I mean it seemed like we went absolutely straight, right enough, but after sinking into the earth...”
“I don't even want to think about this, Lukus.”
“Well don't. Let's assume for now that we went straight down the road, just as it did seem to me at the time. If we did, that meant that earlier today, when we came upon the Singing Waters and Crystal Caves for the first time, they were shams because when we saw the locusts afterwards, they were illusions, so we were still in the Valley of Illusions.”
“Good!” said Rose heaving a wide-eyed sigh of relief. “And that explains why the songs in the first cave didn't sweep us off our feet. So, since the second Singing Waters were terrifyingly beguiling, they must have been the real ones.” She stopped short to study him.
“What Rose? Will you please just come out with it and quit staring at me like that?”
“I'm so happy that I didn't lose you to the Pitmaster back there, Lukus. This whole thing is my fault, and if anything happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do. I'm beginning to agree that maybe we should have stayed in Niarg.”
“Well so am I, Rose,” he said with a look that bore a steely-eyed determination. “This quest is truly important to you. You'll never be comfortable with who and what you are until you complete it, so complete it we will. Mark my word.”
Chapter 33
The sun slipped behind the trees in the west while Rose and Lukus rode through a broad grassland. It would have served as a hurried place to camp anywhere they chose to stop, but they wanted to press on, on the vain chance that they might find an inn. When the stars had nearly all come out and the full moon had just risen above the hills in the east, Rose leant forward in her saddle and pointed to lights twinkling far ahead. “That looks like it could be your inn, Lukus. You never know, we just might get a hot meal and a real bed one last time.”
“Fat chance that it's anything but some isolated farmstead, Rose, but thanks for trying,” he said. “Just exactly what do you mean by 'one last time?' Do you fancy that we won’t survive the Chokewoods? Because I don’t care what any stupid old tales have to say, I have every intention of going home afterwards to tell about it.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more about getting home, Lukus. I meant one last time before Chokewoods. I truly doubt that there will be any inns at all.”
“Hey, that's no farm up ahead. There are a whole slew of lights. Look! That's got to be some sort of village. How would there be a village out here?”
“I have no idea at all, Lukus. No wait. Maybe I have. Of course. We must be crossing Goll's one route to the Orin Ocean. Yea. It goes from Goll proper, right along the south border of the Enchanted Land to Gollsport on the coast, but I have absolutely no idea about this settlement.”
“I hope it's not an illusion.”
“Oh come on Lukus!”
“Well how do you know we've seen the real Crystal Caves?”
“I just do.”
They fell silent, watching the lights approach. Before long, they found themselves amongst the first houses of a village about half the size of Sweetpea. Suddenly, a hound ran across the road, chased by an angry young man throwing rocks. Starfire shied and sidestepped.
“See?” said Rose.
“See what?”
“Starfire. That was a real dog.”
“Look! 'The Sea and Fairy' has to be some kind of inn,” said Lukus as he cantered off toward a rambling, three storey plank and timber house. He was around back at the stable before Rose could catch him.
“Well,” she said, as a stable boy ran up to them, “At least the service here is on its toes and the inn seems in good repair. And I smell an absolutely heavenly aroma.”
Lukus handed the unicorns' reins to the stable boy, and whisked Rose to the entrance of the inn so quickly that she was inside and seated at a small table in the hostelry’s roomy dining room before she managed to say another word.
“You must be right about the route to Gollsport,” he said. “Look 'ee at those sailors. My! It sure smells good.”
“Have you found out the name of this place yet?”
“I told you on the way in, Rose: Sea and Fairy.”
“No, no. This village, this crossroads,” she said. She hailed a passing waitress. “Oh say? Could you please tell me the name of this village?”
“Fairy Valley Junction, mistress,” she said, as she rested her tray of dirty dishes on the corner of the table. “Begging your pardon, but I've got this. I'll be back directly to see to you ones.”
Their food tasted as good as it smelt. They ate ravenously and then went directly to their room, where both of them fell asleep at once.
After a breakfast of buns and porridge and some directions from the waitress, they lost no time getting underway to the Chokewoods. The unicorns were well-rested and frisky, but Rose and Lukus were somber and introspective as they set out in the early morning light, across the gently rolling grasslands south of Fairy Valley Junction, listening to the tinkling of larks overhead.
“Lukus,” said Rose, breaking the silence, “I’m scared.”
Lukus was pole-axed. She was never frightened by anything. “Well I’m scared, too,” he stammered. “But look 'ee, all those old tales are just old tales. So...”
“I know all about that, Lukus,” she said, looking incredulous. “That isn’t what I'm worried about.”
“It isn’t? Well of course it isn’t. I'm sorry. I forgot. You're about to find out...”
“What if I really am the daughter to that evil witch, Lukus? What will I do? I don’t know how to be anyone but who I have been up to now, but if I am Ugleeuh’s daughter, then what I am now is as real as things in the Valley of Illusions. What will that make me?”
“Rose, as I have said before, it makes you my sister. Now, you hold your tongue until you've heard me out,” he said in a strange, stern tone which startled her. “You are not Ugleeuh’s daughter. No way. But somehow you've let one of those pinheaded court haughties, convince you otherwise.”
Rose drew a breath.
“I said shut up and listen,” he snapped. “As far as I am concerned, you are Princess Rose of Niarg, daughter of King Hebraun and Queen Minuet of Niarg, sister to Prince Lukus, also of Niarg, granddaughter to the great and prestigious wizard, Razzmorten. And lastly and certainly least, niece, dear, I said niece to the exiled and evil sorceress, Ugleeuh. And if I'm entirely wrong and Ugleeuh gave birth to you, she did not raise you. Mother and Father raised you, and you grew up with me. Let's see you deny that...”
“Rose! I didn’t mean to make you cry. Please don’t do that, all right? I’m really sorry.”
“You didn’t say anything wrong, Lukus,” she said as
she wiped away tears with the back of her hand. “You're being furious for me. I'm so touched that you feel that way about me, even if I might not be your sister. And now I feel really bad for all of the times I was less than nice to you or thought what a pest you were and even wished you had been a girl so I could have had a sister.”
“You really wished I was a girl instead of a boy? he said with a wide eyed gasp.
Rose nodded tearfully over her hanky.
“That’s great!” he yipped. “Now I don’t have to feel guilty any more for wishing you were a boy so I could have a brother.”
“You did not!” she said, jerking up her head with fierce eyes.
“Oh yes I di-id, oh dearest great big ol' sister.”
Mystique shook her head so hard that her ears flapped.
Starfire snorted.
It was growing fully light. Rose saw that the Cyclops Plateaus had vanished altogether behind them, and that the flat grassland was turning into rolling, grassy hills which became woods away in the distance. “Do you reckon that's our first glimpse of the Chokewoods, Lukus?”
“Yea. What do we do when we get there?” he said. “It's only a little after noon, so setting up camp would make for a long evening. Or, we could go on in as far as we can before we have to hole up for the night, but it’s your call, Rose.”
“Well,” she said, shading her eyes. “It looks as though we’ll be at the edge of the woods by noon.”
By noon, the edge of the woods was indeed springing up out of the low hills to greet them. The grass gave way to a dense, hopeless tumble of brambles and briars, braced up by a thick scattering of gnarled thorn trees. The road narrowed to a deer path which plunged into this thicket, forcing them to ride single file into the brooding forest. A matted tangle of vines leaped from the huddling haws and locust trees to enshroud the first rank of tall trees with a smothering mantle which grudgingly allowed a mere doorway for the path. They had to lie flat on their saddles in order to go in.
Under the tall trees, the woods seemed like a great musty cathedral of the damned. Faint currents of air moved about like resigned sighs, as unidentifiable sounds echoed in the distance, like somber utterances down the far corridors of a catacomb. Rose shuddered as she studied the limbless tortured-looking trunks of the trees surrounding them, trees which looked as if they were in endless agony, aware of their own twisted and grotesque poses. She looked up at the canopy of branches far overhead, and saw that the treetops were so close together that shafts of sunlight were narrow and very few.
“I sure don’t like this place much, Lukus. I wonder how long we’re going to have to wander around in here before we find Ugleeuh?”
“I hope she knows somebody new has invaded her territory and will come to see who, and then we won’t have to spend forever scouring this place.”
“How would she know someone's come in here?”
“She's a witch isn’t she?” he said. “She'd surely have the powers to, don't you reckon?”
“Why don't we look for a stream? It might give us just about everything we need in here, maybe even a cave to sleep in.”
“One we see from the path, or do we try getting lost while we hunt for one?”
“From the path of course, dearest Too Big for Your Breeches.”
“Right good plan, Rose. Meanwhile, I've already seen a number of gooseberry bushes and some nice plump rabbits, right when we were back in the briars, two deer just now, several squirrels 'way up overhead and puffballs and jelly ear mushrooms, and a whole slew of different grouse and quail, but that was back at the edge, again.”
“You're making me hungry, Lukus, stop it.” she said, turning to him with a grin. What she managed to show him though, was a frozen face of wide-eyed alarm when she saw beyond him what was pacing them.
Stark alarm was not the face Lukus expected from her. He turned about and was stunned to see that they were being paced by a ground blanketing flock of brilliant vermilion creatures the size of house cats, effortlessly springing along on powerful legs, balancing with long, stiff arrowheaded tails. He shuddered at their gnashing white teeth and their huge yellow eyes. “I thought you said we weren’t going to the Pit of Doom, Rose!” he shouted.
“Ride Lukus!” she wailed.
As the unicorns charged through the echoing woods, a large buck deer leaped across their path and fell with a belching snort as the swarm of demons covered him with a boiling chatter. Mystique and Starfire reared in terror.
Never had they seen their unicorns run so hard nor so far without let-up. Down the sides of hogbacks and up the lengths of hollows they flew, until their insides turned to a jelly of shaken soreness. At last the path crossed a broad creek. As they splashed into it, Mystique and Starfire slowed to a walk for the first time.
“This is our chance, Lukus. We’ll follow this stream to hide our scent.”
“This is certainly a welcome change Rose, but you do realize that we'll be striking out in a different direction than we've been traveling?”
“At this point I want to wake up alive, Lukus. Surely we can follow a stream backwards if we must. I haven't seen any of them for quite a bit, have you?”
“And what have we gone, a good league?”
“Maybe we'd best be cautious and find a suitable campsite soon. I don’t want there to be any chance that we get trapped out in the open with another pack of those little red nightmares.”
“Don’t worry, Rose. We’re bound to find shelter somewhere along this stream.”
“Hear that Lukus? Could it be rushing water?”
“Sometimes there are caves behind waterfalls, Rose. I’ll bet those stunted demons would never get to us if we had a shelter like that.”
“Yea. Except we're only camping for one night. We haven't found Ugleeuh yet. I'm sorry I've drug you into this. I want you to know that I'll take full responsibility for your coming with me when Mother and Father want to know whose bright idea this quest was.”
“What? Mother and Father know me too well. In fact, I'd say from the evidence left behind, that they already have a fair idea of why we left and how I managed to blackmail you.”
“Evidence? What evidence?”
“Well, I left a bed roll in my doorway that I used while waiting to catch you escaping, for one. I had to hurry. I left out things in the kitchen because of trying to keep up with you, too. And the biggest one, Rose, was your fever pitch running around beforehand, asking questions about you and dear old Auntie Witch. A moron could figure it out. Come on.”
Rose looked dejected.
“Why on earth are you so upset by the notion of Mother and Father figuring us out?”
“Oh Lukus, it’s not that. It’s just that if they know what we're up to and where we are, they probably haven’t stopped us because I really am Ugleeuh’s daughter.”
Lukus threw his hands up in exasperation.
“I don’t understand why you are getting upset with me, Lukus.”
“Well then listen to what I'm really saying before you go off in some crazy direction, Rose. Just because Mother and Father can figure out why we left, doesn’t mean they have any idea about where. For all they know, we went to the ocean to sort things out. They would know I tagged along, but Chokewood? Just because they haven’t found us doesn’t mean they aren’t looking.”
“You're making sense I suppose. But wait. What about Grandfather? Mother and Father would have him use his crystal ball to scry for us, Lukus.”
“Yes. But even that takes time, Rose, unless he knows exactly where we are. And I’m not certain if he can even scry magic places at all. Besides, he was to leave for the Dark Continent the morning after we left. Remember? And he may even have gone before we did.”
“Well no, actually. But I was rather caught up in my own affairs at the time, so I suppose I missed all of that.”
“Look 'ee yonder!” said Lukus suddenly. “If we can squeeze the unicorns through that space behind that rock, I think we may have just found our
shelter.”
“Let’s go see.”
There was a massive chunk of granite at the mouth of the cave, but they managed to squeeze the unicorns through by dismounting and carrying their panniers and saddles.
Their shelter turned out to be no more than a large recess in the bluff, about eight feet high and thirty feet deep. Its floor was well worn and smooth from many previous dwellers, with no sign of anyone having used it for a very long time. He looked up to see an expression on Rose's face which looked like grattitude for his being there with her.
They led their unicorns out to graze. They squatted by the stream with shrill frogs on either side of them, as they refilled their water skins, and then sat quietly, watching their unicorns browse in the woods. Thrushes practiced metallic scales hither and yon across the creek bottom, then fell silent. A boisterous wren spoke up nearby for a final statement of the day in the waning light. Far off in the timber, an early owl boomed.
“Well I guess I’ll try to sleep now, Rose, if you're sure you want the first watch.”
“Sleep well Lukus,” she said, after fixing a place to sit beside the big rock. “I'll go until the moon's over those trees, up there. If it clouds over, I'll just have to do my best.”
Lukus set about bedding down Starfire and Mystique in the shelter, leaving Rose to her thoughts and to the uncertainties of the Chokewoods. She woke him to report that her watch had been utterly uneventful. She was so sleepy by this time that she fell asleep at once, not even noticing the hardness or the dankness of the earth beneath her. He yawned and stumbled out into the damp night.
When he woke Rose at the first light, Lukus saw that she had remained in the same position the whole time and remarked that she was going to be good and stiff until she had moved around a bit. She grunted, rubbing her eyes as she stumbled outside. When she returned she found he had everything packed and ready to go onto the unicorns, as soon as they were outside the narrow entryway.
Soon they were well down the creek bottom, munching on dried figs in the growing daylight. Lukus made a face as he bit into a fig. “I'm already tired of these rations. Hey Rose! Do you reckon that we might stop in time to forage for supper this evening? You know, get a rabbit and maybe some mushrooms and greens to go with it?”
Heart of the Staff - Complete Series Page 33