by Eve Forward
“Yes,” put in Kaylana, bluntly. “But in this case, well done.”
“Of course, any minute I expect the little twerp to splat out of nowhere. I suggest we move,” added Valerie.
“Hey, give him a chance. He’s a pain, I’ll admit that,” said Sam, “but he is a pretty fair thief.”
“Enough that you trust his fat self not to land on your head with terminal velocity?” retorted Valerie.
“Well, I didn’t say that, did I?” replied Sam, following her and the others to a safe distance.
Arcie found himself in a small room, just about his size, and stopped to wonder a moment whether a fullsized human encountering this Test might not have a bit of trouble, then noticed a piece of ancient parchment on the floor, with thin spidery writing on it. He scooped it up, and read:
The object of this test is for you to steal the Citrine stone and escape. I’ve drawn you a map.
Therewith followed a tangle of lines, arrows, passageways, doors, circles, and crosses. It made Arcie’s eyebrows hurt just to look at it. He shook his head and started to pocket the note, then thought better of it and left it on the floor.
“Citrine stone, huhm?” he mused. “I wonder if that’s one of them magical treasures? Well, best start off then.”
It was the work of a moment to locate the secret door hidden in the panel before him and slip through.
He stepped out into a dim passageway and heard footsteps.
He ducked back into the shadows, hiding in the small recess of the doorway. The passageways he had come into were of dark granite, rough-hewn into tunnels and bolstered by wood supports-a welcome relief from the mossy dampness of the catacombs. Where he was, or what the nature was of where he was, assuming he was anywhere anyway, he didn’t bother to wonder about.
Two heavy squat creatures flapped past his hiding place, ugly brute-faced humanoids with tusks and battered leather armor. They carried pikes and rusty shields.
“Groinks!” thought the thief. He’d never actually seen any before; he’d thought they’d been extinct for some time. But he did recall his father telling him about them.
Strong, evil, vicious, keen sense of hearing and smell, but not terribly bright. As they passed, he reached out a careful hand and gently lifted a ring of jingling keys from the belt of one of them. The Groinks went on to the end of the passageway before one of them noticed the silence of his keyring.
The Groink turned around with a suspicious snort, but Arcie had already padded silently forward and was lurking in the shadows nearby, birchwood dagger in hand, hardly daring to breathe. A moment passed, then the Groink began retracing its steps, looking back and forth in the shadows and along the walls while the other stood by a small wooden door, belching to itself thoughtfully and picking its nose.
Arcie gave a mental sigh. He didn’t like having to do this, it really was sort of infringing on Sam’s territory, but the Groink was between him and that door. He shifted position slightly and threw the dagger with all his strength into the back of the Groink’s neck. His aim and strength were nowhere close to Sam’s, but at this range it was hard to miss. The Groink gurgled and fell over, and the one at the far end of the hall pricked up its hairy ears in suspicion.
“Assassinating someone that way’s a ‘permanent.’ Baris only knows how many he’s killed in other ways ... Speaking of which,” Arcie said, “I wonder whatever happened to Mizzamir?” Robin almost dropped the rabbit, but Arcie didn’t notice.
“I’m working on it, you deposit-stealing feeb,” retorted Sam. “Give it back, by the way.”
“Here, I paid ye. It’s not my fault if ye can’t look after yer money.”
“Be that way for now, but next time I need to buy something, I’ll get it from you if I have to turn you upside down and shake it out of you.”
“Hrmph. Such a rude attitude to yer employer. Last time I hire you,” Arcie grumped.
“And last time I take an assignment from you, welsher,” Sam retorted.
He lunged suddenly, and there was a soft crunching sound. Robin paled slightly. “Got another one, Arcie. I think this is enough. Let’s go find the others,” Sam said.
He looked over at Robin, who tried to smile. “You’re looking a little woozy there, minstrel,” Sam commented, handing him the rabbit. They found the rest of their party without difficulty, and after a tough but filling meal they rested on the outskirts of the ancient wood and pondered their next move.
“Well, Glina is certainly ‘magic’s heart,’ and Trois is the southernmost of the Six. We figured that out before. Does ‘oldest wood’ refer to Glina too?” Sam asked.
“I rather think it is more specific than that,” answered Kaylana. “And I think I know what it means. In the memories of the young man you captured on the riverbank was a prominent vision of an important time in his life, his recent initiation into the Verdant Company. This ceremony took place in the woods, before a huge tree like none I have ever seen. Its bark was rust-colored and shaggy, and yet its leaves were like those of a conifer. It was so tall it seemed as though it could not exist, and wide enough at the base that five horses could have ridden through it. It must surely be the oldest tree in the woods, if not the world.”
“Sounds like it would be important enough to merit the attention of gods,” agreed Arcie. Kaylana nodded.
“From what I learned from that Verdant, it is where the Elven King who once ruled Trois gave the Crown of Oak to the Hero Fen-Alaran, charging that he and his descendants should rule the land forever, when the Elves had vanished from the world. It is a place of great importance. The Elves named the tree the Fa’halee.”
“That translates roughly into ‘blood guardsman,’”
Valerie commented.
Robin listened intently. He wondered what they were talking about. Were the villains planning to cut down the tree? It would be a terrible act, but such things were not beyond these people. But why?
He was still wondering when he fell asleep, the others slumbering peacefully around him, except for the dark and silent knight, who kept watch, his hand resting on his great black sword.
About nine o’clock that evening, they wandered through the forest searching for the Fa’halee. The forest seemed oddly peaceful at night, Sam noticed. There were the occasional faint noises of animals, but the alert, intense goodness of the day was dispelled in the cool of night, as many of the noble creatures of the wood settled down to slumber. Fireflies startled the group at first, but the insects did nothing more than contribute to the unearthly beauty of the night forest. Tiny moths glimmered momentarily in the light of the fireflies, or stopped to land upon the dimly luminescent fungi that sprang in fairy shapes from fallen log and mosscover. The ferns whispered amongst themselves ‘as the party’s mounts walked past, and Arcie thought more than once he spotted strange tiny faces watching him from the cover of leaf or tree hollow. Overhead, the leaves riffled in the night breeze, making the too-bright stars flash and the moonlight dance in streaks through the branches and splash in rippling puddles across the forest floor.
As they moved through the thickest part of the woods, ducking to avoid low, moss-covered branches and easing their mounts around tangles of bramble, they entered a tiny clearing in which there appeared at first to be both fireflies and large toadstools growing in abundance. They were in the midst of them before they suddenly realized that the glowing points of light were not fireflies, but lights shining from tiny windows cut into the sides of the milking-stool-sized mushrooms. Little crooked chimneys emerged from the red and white tops of the strange fungus, and Arcie shivered with inexplicable emotion when he saw that in some of the tiny windows were hung tidy spotted curtains. The others looked about in surprise, stopping their horses to avoid crushing any of the tiny houses.
“Oh, no ...” groaned Sam in dread as he looked about him. “I don’t like this... let’s get out-”
“Eeeek!” squealed a little voice by Damazcus’s hooves. “Humans!”
His horse snorted and stepped back in dismay ... and Kaylana winced as its hind hoof tore a large hunk out of a mushroom house with a crunkling sound, like someone biting into a hollow watermelon.
“Hey!” piped another voice from the house angrily.
“That’s not a very nifty thing to do!”
In a matter of instants the clearing swarmed with tiny figures that came boiling out of the little houses and ran around in panic. There were yells, cries of
“Humans!”
“Humans in the Village!”
“Horses!”
“Get Daddy Nifty!” and
“My house!” The figures all seemed to be identical, Sam noticed; they were perhaps six or seven inches tall, built rather like tiny dwarves, but unbearded. They looked like any of the pictures he had seen of the semimythical “wee folk” of magical forests, more on the order of gnomes or leprechauns than fairies. Some of them were wearing tiny nightshirts, but many wore simple clothing of breeches and shirt for the males, skirt and bodice for the females, and each head was covered by either a loose white cap, or a tall conical hat in some bright color. The horses, upset at suddenly finding all available footing covered with a swirling sea of unpleasant soft squashy objects, refused to move.
The squeaking of the creatures was getting on Kaylana’s nerves. She gripped her staff, and yelled, “shut up, by Rowan!”
There was a universal squeak of terror from the tiny creatures, then the swirling aimless running stopped as a slightly deeper squeaky voice piped up from the crowd.
The creatures turned to face one of their number, a member with a white beard. The little fellow climbed up on a table and cheerfully addressed the crowd.
“Yes indeedy, let’s not have all this running around, shall we? That’s not very nifty, you know. Let’s talk to the nifty humans! Talking is a very nifty thing. It is by talking that we make friends!”
“Hey yeah! Nifty! What a nifty idea!” chorused the little gnomes, and immediately began talking to each other and the group animatedly and incomprehensibly.
“Gnomes,” muttered Valerie in disgust. “Gnifty Gnomes.”
Blackmail was looking down. A cluster of tiny Gnomes was piping up at him and trying to sit on his horse’s hooves, but kept sliding off.
“One at a time, my Gnifty Gnomes!” clarified their bearded leader in a loud voice. The inane chatter stopped, and they all looked expectantly at him. He cleared his throat, and addressed the renegades in a cheerful voice.
“My goodness! Humans and a centaur! It certainly is nifty of you to come and visit us! We don’t get many nifty visitors these days! But now you’re here, and we’ll have a big nifty party!”
“Yeaayyyy!” chorused the Gnomes.
“We’ll have nifty music, we’ll do the Nifty Dance, we can eat Niftyberry pie and Niftymuffins and drink Niftyapple juice...”
“Yay! Niftyparty with the humans!” cried the gnomes.
They fetched firefly lanterns and festive paper and began stringing them from house to house. From somewhere a bouncy cheerful tune piped up. The decorating Gnomes began to sing merrily.
Valerie and Kaylana exchanged pained glances and kicked their mounts again. Nightshade gurgled in throaty nausea. Arcie was petrified by a female Gnome, who had managed to scramble up his pony’s loose reins and was sitting on the animal’s neck and batting her impossibly long eyelashes at him.
“Gee, you’re pretty nifty for a human,” she squeaked.
“Nifty hat! Wanna dance?”
“Uhg, no thanks,” stammered Arcie, and after a quick check to see who was watching, swatted her off her perch.
She sailed through the air with a squeal but landed safely in a tiny pond.
“You look like you’ve seen some un-nifty times, humans,” piped up the bearded Gnome again. “But that’s all right! We’ll get you new clothes, all nifty and bright and happy, and we’ll be your nifty friends, and pretty soon you’ll be nifty just like us!” He beamed at the stricken party, which abruptly clapped panicked heels to its mounts’ flanks. Except for Blackmail, of course, who rode out of the clearing with greatest dignity, even in his disgust, his warhorse’s huge hooves completely annihilating several mushroom houses. The renegades raced out of the clearing, little cries echoing behind them of, “Hey! Come back, nifty humans! We haven’t even had the nifty party games yet! There’s pin the tail on the Nifty and bobbing for Niftyfruits ...” The terrible, sickly music followed, ringing in their ears.
Sam halted a few feet away from the clearing, staring at a huge half-rotted dead tree. Blackmail, on his horse, stomped up to him and stopped. They looked at each other. They looked at the tree. Then, with a gesture, Blackmail dismounted, pushed Sam on his horse aside, and unslung the massive black sword. He hefted it, then swung with mighty force at the trunk, cleaving it off its base.
It creaked and fell, slow and unstoppable, crashing down with a thunderous noise upon the village. The disgusting piping of music stopped. With a satisfied nod, the two men headed off on their horses into the night forest.
In the nighttime camp of Sir Fenwick and the Verdant Company, Fenwick’s friend and officer, the journeyman wizard named Towser, was running.
He ran across the camp, his green coat-robes flapping, leaped over a couple of dozing Verdants, and charged up to Fenwick, who was sitting and taking the burrs out of a Feyhound’s fur. They had traveled all day, but no sign of the villains’ trail yet. Fenwick looked up as Towser stopped.
“Slow down, old friend! What is it?” he asked, standing.
“Sir!” exclaimed Towser. “Young Arnold, sir, the warrior. He was gathering firewood with the others and banged his head on a limb!”
“Why is that so worrisome?” interrupted Fenwick.
“Have one of the healers see to him; surely a bump on the head can’t be so serious?”
“It’s not that, sir!” Towser explained frantically. “The bump knocked out some kind of mind lock he’d had on him. He saw them, sir! They’re going the opposite way!” The next evening they skirted around the lights of Glinabar, stopping only a moment on a high hill to admire the city. The city, built with Elven influence and that of humans who could not bear to harm the rich ancient trees of the forest, was fascinating. Straddling the Silverwend River, it was a metropolis that sprawled both up and out, weaving around the great trees, as well as ascending up their immense trunks so buildings and streets continued up among the branches, over swaying bridges and great arches of wood and stone. All was elegantly crafted and, in the dim night, lit up like a Yuletide tree with shining lights strung along the bridges and streets to keep travelers from falling. The houses, shops, and inns twinkled like tiny suns, and the faint smells of food and soft drifts of music and revelry could be heard.
“It’s beautiful,” sighed Robin.
“Roast venison,” whimpered Arcie, sniffing the air.
“Can’t we...”
“No,” sighed Sam. “This isn’t Dous, Arcie, where people like you and I were the first to settle and the last to leave. This is real Good territory, heroes aplenty. We walk in there, me and Blackmail and Valerie all looking like the villains from a historical play, and we’ll be like mice in a den of cats.”
“It would be nice to just slip in there and set a few things ablaze,” said Valerie wistfully. “I bet all that dry wood would go up like a-”
“Save the world first, my fellows, and you can come back to enjoy it later,” interrupted Kaylana. “We must not waste so much time. Valerie, can you send Nightshade up to scout? The Fa’halee must stand out among the other trees, and we must know which way to go from here.”
With bad grace Valerie sent the raven winging into the air. A few minutes later it returned, and the two conversed.
Valerie looked up, then, and pointed northeast.
“That way. Half a night’s ride, as the crow flies.”
“We’re not flying like a crow, though,” grumbled Arcie, as they set off again, the lights of Glinabar
becoming lost in the trees behind them.
It was a lot farther than half a night’s ride by horseback and through unknown terrain. They did not reach their destination that night. When they camped at dawn, they did not know that miles away, a very put-out Sir Fenwick was urging men and horses and hounds to ride like the wind. No one, especially no villains, could be allowed to pull a stunt like that on him and survive. This was more than just heroism... this was a matter of pride.
Fenwick fumed as he led the way, bent low over his blood-bay stallion’s neck, the thunder and belling of riders and hounds behind him.
Cool dusk fell, and the villains moved on hurriedly through the thick woods. The ground was uneven here, and the horses stumbled often. Robin volunteered once again to lead, after the crack of hoof on stone had made him wince too often, and with his combined sapience and knowledge of horse-travel managed to pick out the best path over the jutting rocks and twisting roots.
“He’s pretty good at getting about in a forest,” Sam commented quietly to Arcie. The stout thief, who had been noticing the same thing, nodded thoughtfully to himself.
“Sam,” he muttered softly, “You know, about these Test things...”
Valerie sent Nightshade wheeling up into the sky every so often to help guide their progress. The deeper shadows of near midnight had just turned when they burst out of the thick woods into a small clearing, and the object of their search lay before them.
In the center of a circular clearing, perhaps thirty paces wide, stood a monolith that could only be the Fa’halee. A vast trunk, wider than the span of the arms of ten men, loomed up from a knotwork of ponderous roots. The bark, shaggy and dusty, glowered like old dried blood in the moonlight. The tree went up and up and up, branches and limbs garbed in brushlike clusters of flat needles unlike any leaves they had ever seen ... they tilted their heads back almost in unison to follow the height, Arcie unable to see the top until his head smacked into the cantie of his saddle. It seemed as though the tiny distant summit must stab the moon itself. Kaylana was the first to recover.
“Well, this is it, obviously. Now we must locate the Test.”