Forgery of the Phoenix

by Michael Angel

  “I must express exhilaration with this morning’s development!” Galen declared, when I’d finished speaking. “This is a chance to complete a task of observation and research never done before by any wizard. Surely, a mark of fortune shines on us.”

  “Certainly, there is some kind of mark upon us,” Liam agreed, as he watched me move several of my supply containers into their crushproof spots inside the case. He leaned in and nudged a specific package with his nose. It was a tattered looking silvery roll. “Hopefully, not that one.”

  “I do not believe that I recognize the item,” Galen said. He scratched his head, perplexed.

  “‘Tis a most maddening substance,” Shaw informed him. “Dayna calls it ‘duck tape’, though it is beyond a griffin’s ken how it could be made out of ducks.”

  The wizard poked at the roll. “Perhaps the ducks are crushed into a paste, and then wound about the center spool?”

  “Mayhap. However, ‘twas a tricky substance to remove from one’s feathers.”

  “Tricky doesn’t quite describe it.” Liam shuddered as he added, “It took a week for my fur to grow back after I finally scraped the last of the ducks off!”

  “It’s duct tape,” I corrected them, then sighed. “But I’m sorry about your fur and feathers. For what it’s worth...it was for a good cause.”

  “‘Twas indeed,” Shaw agreed with a chuckle. “But I for one am relieved that thou hast decided on our accompanying you. Should combat be joined, rest easy knowing that we shall each fight for you, even if our deaths are assured!”

  Liam gave the griffin a sour look. “Assured death or not, I’m interested in any new race of creatures that has its homeland near the borders of the fayleene. I can’t help but be concerned that someone or something will try and move into the forest while my people wait elsewhere for the forest to regrow to its former splendor.”

  “That’s probably a legitimate concern,” I admitted. “Maybe we could swing by the woods and make sure it’s still vacant.”

  “Most certainly we shall visit the Fayleene Woods,” Galen stated. “I can only transport us to places that I have seen, or know in some amount of detail. The closest point to the Vale of the Seraphine is none other than the Sacred Grove itself. Based on Korr’s own words, we must start there and then head west into the mountains.”

  “Then we’d best start right away. I only have until nightfall to stay with you, then I need to leave all of you for at least twenty-four hours before I return.”

  Galen shot a wizardly eye of disapproval at me. “On the eve of a potentially hazardous expedition? That speaks of ill-placed priorities. Surely there can be nothing more important than this mission, for it may impact on all that we–”

  “There’s more going on back in Los Angeles that none of you know about yet,” I said quickly, as I looked around at each of my friends in turn. “Yesterday morning, someone tried to assassinate Deputy Chief Robert McClatchy.”

  Liam looked at me quizzically as I closed the case and stuck it inside my newly purchased backpack. “That’s the fellow who’s been a burr against your skin for a while. And the one that Destry used his mind altering magic on.”

  “That’s the one. And there’s something even more disturbing going on. I can’t explain how the assassination was attempted unless magic was involved.”

  Galen inhaled sharply. “Another world hopping warlock, like Magnus?”

  “I don’t know yet.” I looked back up at my chalkboard. The categories I’d put up on the board since setting out to rescue Albess Thea remained maddeningly untouched. “I have to find out more, and soon.”

  “So, you think that whoever attacked McClatchy...”

  “Yes. This could be the mysterious ‘him’ that keeps eluding our grasp. And more than anything else, I want to take this man down.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Winters in Pike County bit cold and hard. Hard enough so that when I was twelve, I remember helping my Dad knock down icicles from the aluminum-plated porch awning. The ice daggers had been as pure as crystal, and as thick around as my wrist. On especially frigid days, I wouldn’t dare venture outside without thermal underwear under my snow gear.

  My friends and I arrived in a stomach-churning, ozone-scented bang smack in the middle of the Fayleene Woods. Within seconds, I wished dearly for a pair of those thermal leggings. My Andeluvian sweater, doublet, and cloak getup held up halfway decently. But the hiking boot and denim combo below my waist wasn’t cutting it. A bitterly cold wind howled around us, twisting like a knife along my legs.

  “I think Southern California has finally thinned my Illinois blood,” I half-joked, as I tried to keep my teeth from chattering. “Wow. I didn’t expect this kind of climate.”

  “Aye, ‘tis more than a bit chill,” Shaw agreed. “I feel it through mine own feathers.”

  “I regret to say that I did not come properly clothed for such a locale either,” Galen chimed in. The wizard shifted from hoof-to-hoof, rubbing his arms to keep warm. “I have been to these woods before in winter, and it was never quite this cold, nor as blustery.”

  “That’s because the woods were intact, and shielded by the Protector’s magic,” Liam said. With a note of surprise, he added, “Are you three really having issues? Because this temperature really doesn’t bother me.”

  “Then thou art at least half reindeer,” Shaw groused. “The aerie gets its fair share of cold. We griffins would normally retire to a nest to let it blow through.”

  “I’m going to have to expend some of my magic, or some of us might end up with frost-nipped fingers, toes, or wings,” Galen said. The wizard stretched out his arms, palms up, and chanted a single phrase. “Ia gá teása!”

  Instantly, the wind chill factor got cut down to a quarter of what it had been. I wouldn’t exactly say that I felt warm, but that searing sensation of bitter cold vanished. My legs, as well as my earlobes, were instantly grateful.

  Shaw flexed his wings. “Again, I am grateful for thy magic, Wizard.”

  Galen smiled. “It is pleasant to feel useful again outside of a laboratory. Only take care not to wander too far afield. The magic expended only extends this zone of calm for a dozen yards beyond the span of my arms, if that far.”

  “I’m not going hiking anywhere without you three,” I said, as I breathed into my hands to warm them back up. I looked around soberly as feeling crept back into them. Unfortunately, the surroundings weren’t exactly heartening.

  As a matter of fact, the Sacred Grove of the Fayleene was a downright depressing sight.

  The midmorning sun struggled to cut through a scudding cloud cover. The weak light gave everything a less-than-cheery cast of slate gray. The remains of the great trees that had arched their branches to form the Sacred Grove’s green roof now jutted up from white drifts like blackened stumps of rotting teeth.

  Clumps of underbrush formed frosty hillocks. The branches on the smaller trees were bowed down under the weight of the recent snowfall. Off to the right, greasy-looking pools of ice were all that remained of a little stream. The sad state of the place gave me a twinge of familiarity inside that made me shiver from more than just the low temperature.

  Liam walked a few steps away from the group, his hooves easily crunching through the snow. His eyes weren’t blank, but they were fixed and set in hard concentration. I’d seen my fayleene friend like this before, when he was focusing his powers or using them to locate something at a distance.

  Galen opened his mouth to ask him a question, but I put a finger up to gently shush him. Shaw gave me a curious look, then simply half-shrugged, as if to say ‘who knows what the deer folk are up to?’ Meanwhile, Liam’s antlers began to give off the same soft, magical glow I’d seen when he cast his own type of fey magic.

  The Fayleene Protector lowered his head. Using his antlers, he swept his head back-and-forth, sweeping the snow aside until he’d exposed bare earth. He placed his forehoof on one of the bare spots as the glow about his ant
lers intensified, spreading back to encompass his whole body.

  Then, a smile blossomed on his charming deer face.

  The glow faded away as his eyes returned to normal. He rejoined us and spoke in a soft but happy tone.

  “The life essence of these woods yet exists within the eldest trees here. It lies deep underground, resting and recuperating. But so long as nothing else disturbs the forest, it shall blossom in the spring like never before. Five, ten years’ worth of growth shall be completed in a single season.”

  I couldn’t help but feel his enthusiasm. “That’s really good news, Liam. Maybe you and the rest of the fayleene could return in only a few short years.”

  He nodded. “Yes, and that news would be more than ‘really good’. Part of the reason I began training doe and stag alike as my new corps of Rangers was to restore morale. My people have, as a whole, been downcast since our move to the Grove of the Willows.”

  “The lore of the griffins speaks to a similar thing,” Shaw concurred. “When they left their place in the far south, they too suffered a loss of purpose and lack of joy. They did not rejoice again until they founded the aerie where I was hatched.”

  “And our own histories speak similarly about the wanderings of both centaur and human,” Galen said, addressing Liam sympathetically. My ears perked as something the wizard said caught my attention, but I let it go for now. “Yet our mission for today must be fulfilled. Without sun or enchanted iron to guide me, I am lost. Might you be able to point us in the direction of the Vale of the Seraphine?”

  Liam nodded. He gestured with a toss of his head off to the left. “Westward we must travel. I know the pathways into the uplands well. Follow me.”

  For the next hour and change we slogged on in the direction of the setting sun, as the phoenix indicated. Liam scouted ahead, his stag body effortlessly bounding over the snow. He had us deviate from our westward path only when we had to avoid especially deep drifts.

  Shaw took point for the rest of us, gleefully bulldozing his way through the snowbanks with his broad chest or slashes of his talons when frozen underbrush popped up. I trudged along in the griffin warrior’s wake, gamely shouldering my backpack. Galen brought up the rear, his eyes alert and roving the skyline for any sort of trouble.

  The centaur’s height and those same alert eyes ended up spotting the first strange thing we encountered. It wasn’t exactly trouble, but it did raise the hairs on the back of my neck. We’d drawn close to the western edge of the Fayleene Woods, and the mountains stood tall and gray before us when Galen called a halt.

  “Dayna,” he said, “I espy something distinctly peculiar about the forest that lies off to the right.”

  I stood on my tiptoes, but couldn’t make out anything. “In what way is it peculiar?”

  He squinted. “It looks freshly burned.”

  Liam frowned darkly. He crossed to our right with a couple of cervine leaps, leading us in the new, northerly direction. In another quarter hour of hiking, we drew close. Immediately, I picked up a trace in the air of something sharp, something dangerous and familiar.

  “I scent something strange,” Shaw said, as he shook snow off his stout eagle beak.

  I nodded. “So do I. It’s sulfur. We might have a dragon on our hands.”

  Shaw grumbled a curse, while Galen reflexively made a protective sign with his hands. Ahead of us, Liam made another bound to get over a particularly high drift of snow. For a moment all we saw were the uppermost tips of his antlers.

  His voice sounded concerned, and a little angry.

  “No. Not dragons. Something else.” He paused, and then added, “The last drift is only a yard at its widest. Push through it and join me.”

  Shaw set to it with griffin determination, burrowing through like a lion-colored snowplow. Galen and I followed, stepping through the resulting gap and into a long, straight gap in the forest. Each of my companions looked around, puzzled at what we’d stumbled across.

  The clearing, if that’s what it could be called, resembled a long, narrow box. A layer of broken and charred wood lined the edges. Within the clearing, the surface vegetation and soil had been scraped away as if it had been strip-mined. The match-like smell hung in the air, stinging the nose and leaving a foul taste in the mouth.

  Galen propped his forehooves on an especially thick fallen log at the edge and peered further on to the north. “Interesting. I see three more of these ‘cuts’ up ahead.”

  “Didst thou sense this happening?” Shaw asked Liam.

  The Protector shook his head. “No. As I said back at the Sacred Grove, the life force here is dormant. Deep below ground. And yet this troubles me. This was not the work of a dragon.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because Sirrahon only burned trees. He did not eat them, especially not down to the earth itself.”

  “You’ve got a point.” I tapped the ground with my boot. Frozen solid. And yet, it was as polished clean as if a construction worker had run a bulldozer’s blade right on through. “Could this be the work of the newly-risen phoenix?”

  “My thoughts run that way. The drifts we’ve been pushing through are only a day or two old. And yet these ‘cuts’ have not been snowed over. They’re very recent events, like the wakening of our phoenix friend. I can’t say that I’m looking forward to having them as neighbors.”

  “We must be cautious about our level of certainty,” Galen said. “I believe that more proof is needed before–”

  A distant boom echoed from the mountains. Centaur and griffin swung around to the west. Shaw bared his talons, while Galen’s hands glowed at the ready with magical fire.

  Liam chuckled. “Be at ease, both of you. What we’ve found is disturbing, but that boom is something that all fayleene are used to hearing throughout the winter.”

  “Used to or not, if thy foe makes noise, then I can engage and defeat it in combat,” Shaw declared.

  “I doubt it. What you heard came from the highest waterfall within the boundaries claimed by the fayleene.”

  Curious, I took off my pack and took out my binoculars. After a bit of fumbling with the focus knob, I finally got it dialed in. Just below the summit of the highest peak to the west, I spotted the wet gleam of water as it plunged off a sheer cliff. As I watched, a huge block of ice calved off one of the frozen banks and plummeted over the edge, vanishing into the mists below. I counted the seconds until the boom echoed through the forest a second time.

  “You’ve got an icefall there,” I said, and suddenly a dark thought struck me. “Liam, that place up there...is it where you went to…”

  He gave me a look that told me quite eloquently that he understood. “You remember right. It’s where I got some timely advice about my life. And the value in it.”

  That was one way to put it, I thought. It was where Liam had gone during the worst of his youth, as an unwanted outcast from the fayleene. The young princeling had stood there, contemplating suicide, before Albess Thea had gently steered him away.

  An idea came to me about that place. “Liam, would it be all right if we visited there?”

  “I don’t see why not. It is but a place to me now, like any other. And we must cross near there if we wish to go into the mountains.”

  I turned to Galen. “If I understand your ‘transport’ magic correctly, you need to have seen the location you’re travelling to in order cast the spell.”

  “Partly true, but not in the gold,” he replied. “I can also transport to places I have never been, if I use a magical marker, like your amulet. Or if I follow a spoor provided to me by another magical creature.”

  “Yes, yes,” I said impatiently, as I became sure that my plan would work. “But we’re going to spend all day getting to the top of that mountain up ahead if we climb it. What if you could see the summit with enough detail?”

  A delighted grin blossomed on Galen’s face as he accepted my binoculars, zeroing in on the clearing below the summit and next to the wa
terfall. He concentrated, and in a moment he waved for us to stand closer to him.

  Galen shouted a variant of his transport incantation. Instantly, the searing white of transportation wiped out the sharp smell of sulfur, replacing it with the bitter taste of ozone. It wasn’t a great swap. Neither was arriving in a dizzied, swaying mess at our destination. But even as I fell to my knees on a snowy patch of ground, I knew that we’d just saved some much-needed travel time.

  Up close, the tiny waterfall in the binocular’s view turned into a roaring, ice-choked torrent. Freezing mist drifted up from the water’s edge. Below us, the Fayleene Woods sprawled out under its snowy blanket. Off to the northeast, the mountains curved and then fell away, leaving a distant gap in their northern rampart.

  “That’s the Khaiber pass,” Galen said softly. “I’ve pored over that spot many a time in the library, for it marks the edge of the true wilderness on the King’s maps.”

  “And beyond it lies the Great Northern Forest,” I agreed. “The one Sirrahon burned before he vanished. I still think about that, when he might show up again. It chills me to the bone.”

  “Then I spy something that should warm thee,” Shaw said, and the gruffness in his tone made me immediately snap to attention. I followed the griffin’s gaze in the direction of our travel.

  The blazing form of a phoenix hung high in the western sky.

  Chapter Eighteen

  All I could do for a moment was stare at the phoenix’s glorious form. The fiery bird blazed with a brilliance that had been muted in Fitzwilliam’s throne room. It hung suspended high above, wings outstretched against the cerulean heavens.

  Shaw made a disapproving snort. “I know not what the Seraphine truly are. But they are unlike thy friends the owls. Nor are they like griffins.”