Moon Dreams (The Jeremy Moon Trilogy Book 1)

by Brad Strickland

  “But,” Nul added, “Dark One still lives, down in Relas. Tremien think more and more he work through others. Think the Hag come under his dominion. Maybe others he not know yet.”

  But certainly Sebastian. The Dark One offered many rewards for those he would make his servants and his property. Sebastian, a young talent, first in the wizard schools of Vanislach in the pleasant parklands to the south and west of Whitehorn, was a man of little patience and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. All had expected him to rise rapidly to mage status, for his potential was great and his abilities already strong. That changed seven years ago.

  That was when Tremien first sensed an alteration in the magical field surrounding Thaumia. He did not know what had happened, only that it was powerful and that it boded ill. Later, he and the other magi determined that Sebastian had rashly attempted a conjuration spell beyond his age and control, and the spell had put his mind in touch with that of the Great Dark One.

  Yet the Dark One, perhaps still smarting over his losses in the great war, did not attempt to possess Sebastian or to warp his will; that surely would have been felt by Tremien. Instead, the sinister mage offered to teach Sebastian ways of increasing knowledge, special methods of capturing magic that only a very great and very ancient magician would know. Sebastian, eager as he was, accepted the offer. That was the seed; the mirrors were the fruit.

  “Pika-people not have mirrors,” Nul said. “Tricky things. Doubles always dangerous; maybe after you leave mirror, they stay inside there, thinking of evil.” But humans used mirrors, and Sebastian's mirrors became creations of wondrous magic. For one thing, they were means of communication, tied to Sebastian himself. By using the mirrors, Sebastian could speak with others and never alert Tremien or any mage of the fact; more, he could travel bodily and not be detected. But what was worse, the mirrors could be conduits of magic, taking it from one place, transferring it to another, so that the Great Dark One could, if he chose, send his power into another place, and all without Tremien's knowledge.

  Tremien believed, however, that the Great Dark One had sensed in Sebastian someone whom he could not control, and so could not possess, for Sebastian's natural talents were already highly developed and largely shaped by his teachers; though he was ambitious and vastly curious, Sebastian had nothing in him of the tyrant, no great will for evil.

  The Hag was another matter. How he did it Tremien did not know, but certain the old mage was that Sebastian visited the Hag, gave her a magic mirror, and that through the mirror the Great Dark One had even further corrupted that already evil mind, had made the Hag his tool and her country his stronghold. That, at last, was what brought Sebastian down; for first he was declared outlaw (his meeting with Melodia had come not long after that), and then he was captured, tried, and banished. So great was his power already that Tremien feared the event: the mirror he had given Melodia had forces about it that the magi detected but could not understand, save to know that in breaking it they risked killing Melodia, whose only crime had been an unwise love.

  The forces in the Hag's mirror they could only guess at, and those in the mirror that Sebastian had created in the Between they could only fear. Whatever the Hag's powers had been before the Great Dark One caught her in the mirror, they were bound to be greater and more evil now; whatever difficulty Nul and Kelada had had in approaching her country, it was certain to be more since the Hag knew that someone was interested in her and her doings.

  When Nul fell silent, Jeremy asked, “But what does the Great Dark One want from all this? Power over the whole world?”

  Nul shook his head. “Death over whole world. Darkness. And him alone to watch the stars and ache to eat them.”

  A sudden pressure on the soles of his feet, the dying of the light, and Jeremy found himself standing beside Nul in the tower room, no longer cold from the broken window, for that had been mended, but gray in the light from the two casements. “It worked,” Nul said. “We go back to Tremien now.”

  “Where will he be?”

  “Still in same place. No real time pass for him.”

  Jeremy shook his head. It would be hard to get used to this mode of travel, when each trip took what seemed to him to be nearly two hours but “really” took no time at all. He followed Nul down the stairs and back to the study. Tremien looked pleased but tempered his pleasure with a warning: “You are no longer fully immune, Jeremy, to magical assault. You must remember that at all times. Magic takes many forms, not all of them as obvious as a poker flying at your face. I will give you what warding spells I can, and will advise you on creating some of your own, but no spell in existence will take the place of a watchful mind and simple native caution.”

  “When will we go?” Jeremy asked.

  “As soon as possible. You must equip yourselves, and I wish to confer with Barach about the magical difficulties you may encounter. While you are on the way I will call together the sorcerers and magi of Cronbrach, and we will do what we can to occupy the attention of the Great Dark One. But there is more to think of than magic, and I will have many other things to consider before you leave.”

  One of them proved to be arms. Captain Fallon would not join the expedition, for he was getting old and stiff in the joints, but he had some presents for Jeremy. “Take this,” he said, handing Jeremy a bulky something carefully wrapped in soft cloth. Jeremy unwrapped it to find a crossbow, heavier than the one he had trained with, and a quiver of black-shafted bolts. The wood gleamed with age and loving care, though the footstrap was new and stiff. Fallon looked as if he were about to weep. “Used it myself,” he muttered, “back when I was younger than you. Fought the invaders to a standstill, we did, even without magic, on the downs east of Fennian's Ford. Always meant for my son to have it. Well, well, he's a builder of houses, not a soldier, and maybe he'll live the longer for it and be the happier. But you take care of it, you hear? And bring it back whole to me.”

  “I will,” Jeremy said. “And thank you.”

  Fallon wiped his nose with his fingers. “Another five years and I'd have made a real bowman out of you,” he muttered. “Still, you're not too bad with a bolt. Never mind the speed, now. Speed don't enter into it with a crossbowman. A longbow archer will shoot ten arrows for your three, but that's no matter. What you have to worry about is accuracy. If two longbow arrows hit true to three of yours, you're still ahead in the game, understand?”

  Jeremy nodded. He had been hearing the same thing every day for weeks now. Fallon also had a sword for him, broad and short, like the blunted one Jeremy had trained with for hours until his arms felt as if they were about to fall out of their sockets. No sentiment went with the sword, but a handsome belt and scabbard did. Tremien's quartermaster, a taciturn woman named Bial, rounded out Jeremy's military equipment with a light, close-fitting helmet, studded leather gauntlets, and a coat of mail. He expected to stagger under its weight, but to his surprise found it no heavier than a thick wool coat, and even more flexible. “Magic, what d'ye expect?” Bial had asked sourly at his expression of surprise.

  Jeremy considered himself ready to go, but still Tremien tarried. First the old mage cast a series of spells over Jeremy, all designed to give the younger man some arcane protection. Then Tremien and Barach were closeted fast all day. Nul told Jeremy that their military guard had been chosen: six young men of the palace force, all of them well-skilled and each, to one degree or another, talented in military magic. Still they were not ready; backpacks had to be prepared, and rations to go in them.

  Melodia looked singularly out of place in her own armor, another helmet and coat of mail like Jeremy's. The steel rode incongruously over her softness, and the distress in her eyes all but broke Jeremy's heart. “I bring life, not death,” she wailed. “Look at me.”

  “Stay, then,” Jeremy said. “You shouldn't even think of going away.”

  “No. I do not know why, but I must see this through. I must.”

  Nul, who wore his own mail under a leather
tunic, was in the courtyard, busy at work with his short sword (even shorter than Jeremy's) and a small, whizzing grindstone. “Put edge back on it,” he grunted, running his thumb critically over the sword. “Then put pika-magic in it, stronger than before.” He stepped back and whished the blade through the air, back and forth. “Let damn swamp-hoppers come now. I show them!”

  Jeremy asked a question he had saved with dread: “Do you think Kelada will be all right?”

  “Don't know. Think so. She smart, tough. Hag not know what to do with her; think Hag be little afraid to hurt her, for a while at least. Sometimes hard to deal with those who have little magic.”

  “Why?”

  Nul grinned his ear-to-ear grin, and his orange eyes flashed. “Have someone who looks like she has no magic. Yes or no? Only two kinds of people like that. One is kind that has no magic. Other is the kind that has much magic. Hag not sure, she not in a hurry to make Kelada desperate. Think she be all right for a while.”

  “I hope you're right,” Jeremy said as Nul leaned back into his work, making sparks fly from the grindstone to dance and skitter in the hard-packed dirt of the courtyard.

  Alone, ready to go but fearing to go, Jeremy wandered the palace. Few spoke to him, for he had kept to himself during the long days of his training, but the chaplain had some kind words: “Good is rarely unmixed in this world, Jeremy, and evil seldom wholly dark. Yet the Hag and the Dark One are evil and workers of evil, beyond doubt, and in this battle you will stand on the side of the good. Let that thought be strong with your strength, and that comfort be warm in your distress, and know that our blessings go with you wherever you fare. I do not know if the God of your universe and that of ours is the same, but in my heart I feel there is but one God, and that one is the creator of all universes and is the source of all good. To that God my prayers for your safety and success will go, and to that God's care I will commend you.”

  Jeremy thanked him and—something he had not done in many years—himself said a little prayer then. Whether or not it reached the ears of any deity he did not know, but it heartened him a bit and helped him through the long day of waiting and through the sleepless night that followed it.

  At last, well before dawn, all was ready, and the travelers assembled in the Great Hall. Only when Jeremy saw weeping women embracing their sons and husbands, the soldiers who would accompany them to the Hag's country, did he fully realize that the expedition meant as much (and perhaps more) to others as it did to him. The young men, for their part, looked indistinguishable from Jeremy: armored, wearing swords at their belts, and (four of them) bows at their backs, they remained quiet and solemn. One of them, perhaps a little older than the rest, was the dark-haired Captain Gareth; he at least gave Jeremy a smile and a wink. He was the only other traveler equipped with a crossbow.

  The floor of the Great Hall had been cleared, and on it traced in lines of glowing gold a huge circle, and within the circle a star. Jeremy, Nul, Barach (who alone wore no armor but a dark-green hooded cloak, and who carried no weapon but a chin-high walking staff), Melodia, and their guard of soldiers all stood within the circle, and indeed within the heart of the star.

  A high-backed wooden chair, almost thronelike, had been brought out for Tremien. He sat with head bowed as the group assembled, and when he looked up his eyes held compassion for them as well as determination. “You go forth,” he said, “to meet evil. You carry with you the strength of good. May it serve you well! Our thoughts will be bent toward you, and our hopes will go with you. Be resolute, be strong, and return to us whole and victorious.”

  The chaplain stepped forth then with a short prayer of blessing; next, to the audible sobs of some clustered around the edges of the room, Tremien began his incantation.

  Almost before he knew it, Jeremy found himself again encased in the luminous, swirling bubble of the transportation spell. Only then did he realize he had been holding his breath. He exhaled and gasped for air.

  Captain Gareth grinned at him. “Well,” he said, “we're on our way.”

  Chapter 10

  “I used to know this country,” Gareth said. “No more.”

  “Hag has killed it,” grunted Nul.

  Jeremy, standing behind him, had to agree. The party stood on the summit of a low hill, a misty rain in their faces, and looked to the west. The hills rolled away and down, each hill bare or stippled with the black trunks of a few dead trees. Here and there tussocks of wiry grass thrust out of the soil, but most of these looked dead or dying. Between the hills lay sluggish, turbid streams of mud-colored water. An oppressive smell of stagnation and decay hung heavy in the air, and the rain was cold against their skin. Barach, his staff in hand, shook his head, his eyes sad beneath their great tufted brows. “Vengeance and death,” he sighed. “So it ever is with those who walk the dark paths. They seek power, and they make a desert. They seek more life for themselves, and make of their country a charnel house.”

  They had materialized three hours earlier under the eaves of a great forest, Arkhedden. Behind them trees of ten-foot girth or better grew thick enough to cast the ground beneath in perpetual twilight; at first they stood under the protection of smaller and more widely scattered trees. Interspersed were huge old stumps, some of them still whole, most splintering into decay and oblivion, telling the story of foresters who harvested the wood long ago. Here, too, the rain came, whispering into the small, light-green spring leaves high overhead, dripping softly to the leafmold underfoot, but the canopy prevented the clammy touch from soaking the travelers.

  The ten had walked west at a good march, the trees becoming sparser as they went on until for a time they passed over grassland, last year's brown growth beginning to give way to new green blades. Here the trees were still more scattered and mostly evergreen, and the land began to break into low hills. As they walked, Nul explained to Jeremy that they were somewhat to the south of the Arkhedden Forest Road, an ancient roadway that passed through the northern extremity of the old forest before crossing the hills, then the Mere River, and finally climbing to the Hyspar Pass in the Wolmas Mountains before turning to the north, eventually to the fishing town of Langrola, the Ap River, and beyond to the Lofarlan Shore and the Northwest Sea. “We have to turn north soon,” Nul had said. “Try to get as close to Meres as we can along Dinsfaer Hills, then turn west to find Illsmere. But hard going.”

  Now they stood among the Dinsfaer Hills, the chain that made up the eastern boundary of the low valley of the Meres, and Jeremy could understand the difficulty. Stripped of growth as they were, the hills looked soggy and slippery, with the sodden land at their feet as treacherous as a quicksand bog. Yet this was their path and their best hope, for the rocky eastern face of the Wolmas Mountains provided a much more rugged terrain, and the Mere River valley was all but swamp.

  “Let's be off,” Gareth said in a voice not cheerful exactly but at least one not ready to give in to doubt so early in the game. He led them down the hillside, then found a way that put them on the shoulder of one of the sluggish streams—really just runoff from weeks of rain, Jeremy decided—and they squished their way to the north. No one talked much in the persistent drizzle, and the day wore on as they trudged along. Presently the land sloped up a little more, and they climbed a ridge that turned out to be the embankment of a broad road running east and west and cutting directly across their path.

  There they rested for a few minutes, and as they settled down on the broad shoulder of the road, the rain ceased for a while. Overhead, low gray clouds swagged dark and ragged, but here and there a hole in them lightened to silver, and once or twice they even glimpsed blue sky and, far off, the slanting rays of sunbeams broke through, like ramps leading up to heaven. Gareth decided they might as well eat while in camp. “I wish we could make a fire, and have something hot,” he said. “Plenty of deadwood about for one, but all this rain has soaked it to the core.”

  “I think,” Melodia said, “I can remedy that, if you'll collect the wood
.”

  Gareth sent two of the soldiers down the embankment to a hillside, where they picked up a couple of armloads of fallen branches. The captain was right, for when they brought the wood back, it was slimy and black from weeks of rain. Pieces of bark clung to their arms after they dropped the wood, and it was a most unpromising pyre.

  But Gareth didn't question Melodia. He snapped the smaller branches across his knee—many were so wet that they merely bent like green shoots—and Nul broke out a little hatchet to chop short lengths of thicker wood. “Really wet,” he grunted to Jeremy, holding up a freshly cut stick. The cut end was just as dark as the outside, and it oozed water.

  Soon Garth had built a rim of stones and within it had laid out the wood for the fire. “Now, Lady,” he said with a grin, “if you have magic, use it. Though I have never heard of magic that could burn water!”

  Melodia took from her pack the tinderbox. Barach's eyebrows rose in interest, and he leaned forward with the air of an interested professional. “It isn't my own magic, Captain Gareth, but that of an elemental.” With flint and steel she quickly struck fire to a pinch of tinder. No sooner had the flame appeared than it coalesced into the minute form of Smokharin. In a few words Melodia explained what they needed, and Smokharin agreed to try.

  She spread more tinder, and in the form of flame Smokharin leaped into the midst of the soaking wood. The smaller branches steamed and whistled for a few moments; then flame, blue and weak at first, but growing brighter and stronger each second, began to gnaw away at the kindling. Before long the ends of the larger logs hissed and bubbled as the water was driven out, and within a few minutes the party warmed itself before a good blaze that burned almost without smoke.