by Ember Lane
They passed Reth-Reth, who completely ignored them, and continued on in the direction of the tumbled boulders. Merl held out the lantern. “What’s a cairn?” he asked Gloomy, but knew he’d get no answer from the dune dog.
“It’s a pile of stones set around a dead body,” the fairy told him.
Merl began looking for a coffin-sized pile of stone. They came to the rocky tumble the brook vanished into and walked along its edge. He now saw that the Farthing Firth didn’t occupy a hollow, but it was in a small valley that was blocked by the large pile of stone. He only had one problem with that deduction, and that was that there was nowhere for the stone to fall from. He began walking along it. Quaiyl and the mushroom trailed behind. They eventually came to its end and rounded it, continuing to hunt for the cairn.
“Maybe it’s on top of the stones,” Merl said absently.
“Maybe it is the stones,” the fairy replied.
“What?” Merl exclaimed, but then he took a few steps back and saw that the mound of rocks was, indeed, cairn-shaped, or shaped like he’d imagine one to be. Except it was at least thirty feet long and fifteen high and not the grave-sized pile he’d expected.
“Reth-Reth never said it was a human or a Firthinger. Could be an ogre grave,” the fairy told him.
Merl held the lamp up. “So, spider yarn, eh? Bound to be inside, but where’s the entrance?” He walked along its side until he came to a small archway set in the giant cairn. A little path led into it. “Why would you have a path leading into a grave?” Merl asked, but neither the fairy, Gloomy, Quaiyl, nor the mushroom answered. He held the lamp forward, noting the fairy shied away from the cairn’s shadows.
“Not exactly keen on going in there,” the fairy told him.
“Me either,” Merl muttered, but he then thought of the gold, thought of how useful it might become if Billy and him had to make their own way back to Morgan Mount, and he stepped forward anyway. The minute he passed some unseen line, a bright white line encircled the cairn. He crept into the cavern, stopping the minute its secrets were washed in the fairy’s blue glow.
A mass of interwoven silken strands cloaked a huge skeleton. The fairy’s blue lent the web-covered bones an iridescent sheen, making it look like the ogre was giving off a sapphire aura. “Creepy,” Merl hissed, and he began walking around it. “This must be the spider yarn. I suppose I just need a handful and I’m done.”
“Don’t you grab any,” the fairy said. “You don’t know what’s inside those bones.”
Merl, though, glanced around the cairn. It was deserted. No sound came from the bones, no smell, nothing. Under it, the river burbled away. The place was peaceful, even tranquil, much like the catacombs had been. Merl had been scared then, but now he knew better. The dead were dead, unless they were undead, of course. “It’s all as dead as the ogre,” Merl told her, and grabbed a handful of silk from the ogre’s mammoth ribcage. He turned to leave.
A familiar sound echoed around. It was the sound a bone saw makes when its chopping up a heifer, and yet a bone saw had no business being in an ogre’s cairn, straddling a burbling brook, in the middle of an enchanting forest, in the middle of a feudal country, in the middle of a zombay outbreak. Merl froze, realizing it wasn’t the sound of a bonesaw at all, but more the sound a grasshopper makes, or a pinchin’ beetle, or perhaps the sound a spider might make while crawling free from an ogre’s skeleton.
“Oh bugger,” he said, borrowing one of Billy’s favorite phrases.
“Oh bugger, indeed,” repeated the fairy.
Merl turned.
A three-foot-wide spider crawled from between the ogre’s bones. Merl made to raise his cleaver, but he’d left it back at the camp. He tried to inch behind Gloomy, but Gloomy had inched behind him. Quaiyl was his usual static self. The Origin clearly preferred a threat to actually be attacking before it did anything about it. Merl took a step backward and the spider skittered forward. It had hairy legs with knuckle-type joints and shining fangs that dripped poison as they primed. Half a dozen rage-filled eyes stared at Merl. Two of them belonged to the fairy.
“You had to do it, didn’t you? You had to grab the silk,” the fairy snarled.
The spider reared. Merl backed farther away. The spider’s front legs hit the floor and it hurtled toward Merl.
“Oh no!” said Merl as the spider closed.
Merl scrambled backwards and stumbled over. Gloomy growled and yelped, but then lurched forward, snapping at the on-rushing beast and standing protectively over Merl. The spider and Gloomy clashed, and the dune dog’s defiance was short lived as he was bowled over by the spider’s momentum. They both flew over Merl in a blurred tumble. Merl spun around onto his knees. He jumped for the spider, who had Gloomy pinned to the floor. The spider’s fangs were bared and ready. Its strike fell toward the dune dog. Before it connected, Quaiyl attacked, but right as the construct grabbed at the spider, the mushroom shoved it out of the way and launched itself at the beast, sinking its fangs into the spider’s head. They punched through the beast’s chitin and speared straight into its bonce. A terrible sucking sound then filled the cairn as the mushroom sucked the spider’s innards into it. The creature deflated until it resembled a dried raisin; as it did, the mushroom shivered and doubled in size to Merl’s height. For just a moment, it seemed to size Merl up. Its fangs dripped clear liquid as it cocked its cap and shuffled away from the cairn.
A jumble of words invaded Merl’s mind again.
“Get the Ingredients quest updated.”
Merl now had two out of the three ingredients he needed to complete the quest, a lantern with a fairy in it, and a mushroom around his height that seemed somewhat hungrier than most mushrooms that had ever crossed his path.
“South-facing moss,” he muttered to himself.
“Grows on the trees to the north,” the fairy reminded him.
“Except I don’t know which way north is.”
His instinct told him that north was straight through the village. The river they traveled was taking them west. Judging by the sun, they’d camped on its northern bank, and he’d headed north over the hills to get to the village, so it was the best guess he had. He began marching through the village, Gloomy at his side, both Quaiyl and the mushroom behind, and the fairy in the lantern held just in front of him.
“What’s your name?” Merl asked the fairy.
“Elidier,” the fairy replied. “Elidier Lightsprite.”
“We do that,” Merl said absently, “with our second names, that is. Elidier, I like that. Have you been a light sprite all your life?”
Elidier fell quiet. She shrank to the bottom of the lantern. Her hand rested on her upturned forehead as if she had suddenly developed a headache. “Alas, Lightsprite is a name forced upon us. Once, we flew free with the glowbugs. Once, we lived high in the trees, deep in the grottos, and nested in sun-drenched vales, but now we’ve been forced into servitude by the Firthingers. We are light sprites now, and that is all.”
Merl checked his stride. He glanced over at the blacksmith, or supposed blacksmith, standing by his cold furnace. He glared at a group of half a dozen firthingers, all standing in a group nattering. Up in the forest’s canopy, others stared down from rope bridges, or out of tiny windows in the nest houses. Each, instead of looking mystical and wonderful, now took on a more sinister appearance as Merl remembered Reth-Reth’s anger-filled expression when he’d refused to follow her words. In that moment, he knew this magical race was capable of evil.
“You’re telling me the Firthinger’s have imprisoned you all?” Merl’s gaze swept around all the lanterns, all the forest’s paths, as the scale of the Firthinger’s dastardly deeds became apparent.
“All of us,” Elidier replied somberly, but a glance toward Merl hinted at something more.
Merl’s anger grew in spite of the shade of doubt. The thought of it all was too much for him. This idyllic-looking forest settlement was nothing better than a prison for all the fairies. He vo
wed to do something about it, but quite what he could do, he had no clue. He could hardly take on the village on his own.
“We shall complete the quest while I think,” Merl announced, and then he strode north and into the forest. As soon as he was a little way away from the village, it darkened, and only Elidier’s light offered him a path as it brushed the trees with silvery-blue. Moss covered all. Sporophytes rose like tiny bells from beds of glowing leaves.
“Can I?” Elidier asked.
“Can you what?” Merl lifted the lamp up.
She inched away from him, and then fell to her knees in the center of the lantern. “Can I fly free for a moment? I promise I’ll get straight back into the lantern as soon as you ask me, or if…”
Merl’s heart reached out to her. “Fly, fly free,” he said. “If any of the damnable Firthingers say anything, I’ll gut them. I’ll beat them. I’ll twist their heads off.” His sense of outrage was complete. Merl knew the fairy’s liberation was in his hands.
Elidier flew free, and Merl marveled at the beauty and grace of her flight as she swirled and dove, glided then rose. Her light played a merry show over the forest’s floor, trunks, and canopy.
“Oh, Merl,” she swooned, “you can’t know what it means to be free.”
Merl beamed from ear to ear. “And free you shall be, forever and ever.” He launched her lamp far into the forest. “From now on, you never have to return to your lamp.”
Elidier flew close to Merl, hovering by his ear. “And in return for your protection, I shall show you where the south-facing moss is.” She leant forward and kissed his cheek before flying away, leaving a trail of silver sparkles in her wake.
The fairy flew deeper into the forest, and Merl followed. He ran through the undergrowth, forging forward to keep up with her. Gloomy Joe panted by his side, and Quaiyl loped along showing no effort at all. The mushroom sprang through the forest as it easily kept up. Elidier stopped, hovering a few feet above the forest floor. Merl skidded to a halt aside her when she pointed to a close by tree. “There!” Elidier proclaimed.
Bright white lines lit up a patch of the tree trunk. Sure enough, it surrounded great clumps of moss clinging to the trees like huge, green scales. Merl reached out and grabbed a handful, popping it into his pocket.
Once more, the jumble of words invaded Merl’s mind.
“GET THE INGREDIENTS quest updated. Seek out Half-Half Biley and give him the ingredients so that he might heal Relf-Relf.”
Merl looked around. Elidier’s light shone around them in an azure bell. “I want to free you and your people,” Merl announced, his chin held high.
Elidier sagged a little, as if the spark had left her, and her light dimmed. “If only it was possible, but we are bound to the Firthingers. Our service is both a debt and a price.”
“A debt to who?”
“To the Firthingers, who else? We provide them their light, and in return they protect us from the Troll of Craggy Bluff Cave. Except…”
“Except what?”
“Except I can no longer serve them, so I’m as good as dead.”
“Why?” Merl asked. He was becoming confused. It was bad enough having the quest, let alone all of this.
“You threw my lantern away. I have nowhere to hide when the troll comes,” Elidier frowned. “I should have told you, but I wanted to be free.”
Merl felt the weight of responsibility bear down on him again. What had been a simple quest had become a matter of life and death. He wanted to dart back to the riverbank, to fetch Frank and Desmelda and Billy, but he knew it was his mess and his mess alone to deal with. He scanned his little army.
He had Gloomy Joe—specialty, ripping throats.
He had Quaiyl—specialty, twisting heads.
He had Mushroom—specialty, deadly fang drain.
24
Half-Half Biley looked Merl up and down.
“Can I help you?”
Merl reached into his pockets for the wicken mushrooms, the spider yarn, and the south-facing moss, but at the last moment stopped. “You have my gold?”
Merl felt bullish. He had his path forward. As soon as he had his gold, he was going to buy a weapon at the blacksmith, if they had one, and then he was going to defeat the Troll of Craggy Bluff Cave. He was going to set the fairies free, and he was going to do it without the help of the others.
“Not me,” said Half-Half. “It doesn’t work like that.”
Relf-Relf laid on a stone slab. He groaned every now and then, but didn’t look particularly ill; in fact he did look peculiarly like a bored blacksmith. Merl wondered if he wasn’t faking his sickness. He knew all about that because Billy Muckspreader used to do it when he wanted to get out of muck spreading and spend the day with Merl up in the Six Pasture Valley.
Relf-Relf propped himself up onto his elbow. “What’s the fairy doing out of her lantern?” He spat on the floor. “Bad portent, that. The troll’ll come if the fairies fly free. She likes to crunch’n’munch. You know the bargain we forged, Half-Half.”
“Shut it, Relf-Relf, and lay back down,” Half-Half Biley growled. “You’re ill, damnit, and I’m well aware of my duties, but I’m also aware that we have an adventurer among us, an’ tales tell us they don’ follow the rules.”
“Don’t feel too ill. What’s with the mushroom?” Relf-Relf laid back down and sighed. “They should follow tha’ rules. Rules is rules fer a reason.”
“Shut it, Relf-Relf, shut it.” Half-Half put his hand on Relf-Relf’s brow and frowned. He cleared his throat and composed. “Your timing is fortunate, adventurer. The boy’s health is fading fast. Do you have the wicken mushrooms, the spider yarn, and the south-facing moss?”
Merl emptied his pockets. “There you go, but I want my gold.”
“GET THE INGREDIENTS quest updated. Return to Reth-Reth Reyley and collect your reward.”
Merl spun on his heels and left, crossing the village. The stripe and dot were glowing bright again above Reth-Reth Reyley’s head. He approached her and she bowed.
“Greetings adventurer. Thanks to you my son is healed and on the mend. He wants to gift you a boon himself. You’ll find him at the blacksmith. Here is your reward.”
The now familiar voice sounded in his head. Jumbled words appeared in his mind.
“Reth-Reth has given you six gold coins. You have been rewarded with fifty experience points.”
Merl had no idea what an experience point was, and so he had no use for them. He did want the coins, though, and searched his pockets for them, yet he had nothing but lint and some soggy residue from the wicken mushrooms. He looked at Gloomy, Quaiyl, and Mushroom in the hope they’d explain. Elidier was fluttering up in the trees. She swooped and settled on a lantern and began chatting with another fairy.
“The gold?” Merl asked of Reth-Reth.
“Greetings, adventurer—” she began to repeat. Her voice betrayed her boredom.
“Never mind,” Merl snapped, and he headed off towards the blacksmith.
Relf-Relf looked fine, almost like he hadn’t been ill at all. He sat in a chair by the cold forge, whittling away at a stick. Merl had been into Morgan Mount’s blacksmith’s plenty of times. It was a hot, horrible place, and the fiery coals always burned his eyes with their blinding heat. It stank of sweat, hot iron, embers, and coals. This was nothing like that blacksmith. Relf-Relf looked up.
“Greetings, adventurer. I believe I have you to thank for saving my life. Half-Half’s potion worked wonders on me. I know my mother gifted you six gold, but I would like to gift you something far more precious. What is your weapon of choice?”
“A cleaver,” Merl replied.
“Alas,” Relf-Relf sighed. “I have no cleavers, but I do have this.” An ax appeared in Relf-Relf’s upturned hands, laid across them like it was a precious boon. “Take this ax, and may it make you strong and mighty.”
The ax was like none that Merl had seen before. An ax, as far as he was concerned, had a wooden handle
and an iron head. It had a sharp side, and a blunt side, and that was that. This one was nothing short of beautiful. It had a silver shaft with a two-handled grip separated by an inlaid, blood-red firestone. Above the twin handles, the axe’s shaft was twisted like a fancy balustrade until it flattened to a magnificent head, shaped like a bird’s plumage. Firestones radiated from its blade’s edge like a stunning plumage, and the axe-head’s rear tapered to three curved points and gave it the impression the axe was whipping through the air.
It was the most beautiful thing Merl had ever seen, and as he took it from Relf-Relf’s hand, the now familiar voice sounded in his ears.
“Firestone Axe. Seven point six kilos. One hundred and forty-eight to one hundred and seventy-six damage. Heavy swing—slashing damage—three hundred and eight to six hundred and twenty-five, thirty-three action required. Fire attack—fire damage—two hundred and forty-two to three hundred and twelve, seventeen action required. Bonus: Critical chance plus six percent. Slashing damage plus forty two percent.”
“Bloody hell,” Merl said. Although he had no idea what any of it meant, it sounded pretty darn impressive.
Relf-Relf scratched his mop of unruly hair. “Look, I’m honestly not sure if it’s good or bad. All I know is it’s the only thing we have left. The real blacksmith died an age ago and left it cooling. It then vanished into his stock and was only accessible when you came along. You might as well take it. We haven’t seen an adventurer around here in generations, and it isn’t like anyone around here could afford it. It’s, like, loads of gold to buy. Have it, you seem like a nice fella. ‘Sides, you’ll need all tha’ help you can get, now you’ve released the fairy n’ all.”
“What do you mean?”
Elidier swooped down. She hovered right in front of Relf-Relf, saying nothing, just glaring at the Firthinger.
“Nothin’,” Relf-Relf said, backing away. Then turned, hurdled a dwarf wall that surrounded the blacksmith and scrambling up a rope ladder and into a nest hut.