Into Lands Forbidden (The Elfmaid Trilogy Book 2)

by Warren Thomas

  Duchess Natasha's eyes widened at the pronouncement, seeing the truth in it. She signaled for two castle troopers to carry Alexandra inside.

  "We must hurry," Natasha said as Alexandra was taken away. "Since Dame Alexandra is momentarily indisposed, I pray you will take her place and assist us with your magic."

  "Of course, wench," Maeve said, oblivious to Natasha's wince at being addressed so. "I will find them with my magic. Prepare your soldiers."

  "I have orders to take them directly to High Mage Rebecca," Dame Falen said. "I suggest you accompany us to Dahlys, then you and the High Mage can decide what to do afterwards."

  Maeve sent the Amazon knight a venomous smile.

  "And I suggest, Captain, that you follow my orders to the letter. Else I'll be forced to do things to you and yours that none of us will like."

  "I suggest we recapture the prisoners first, then worry about who has rights to them afterwards," Duchess Natasha said, then turned to signal her household troops. "We will mount up, sorceress, while you do whatever conjuring necessary to locate Danica and Cat."

  "Very good, my Lady," Maeve said. "Have something of the prisoners brought to me at once. Even the straw they laid in will suffice."

  She started to center herself for the difficult task of magically locating Danica and Cat. She needed to conjure a demon to assist her. It was impossible for even High Mages to locate a person who was moving, especially moving swiftly. Danica being a druigh caste elf didn't help, whether she knew any magic or not. Elves were all but invisible to sorcery locating spells.

  Maeve stepped into the castle's entrance hall, took a piece of chalk from a pouch, and began drawing her pentacle on the polished tile floor. Dame Agatha, keeping a wary eye on her, started to object, then thought better of it. Maeve ignored her, needing all her concentration to chant the entrapping wards that would keep the demon away from her throat. Dealing with demons was not her favorite activity.

  The pentacle was soon completed, protective spells and all. Without hesitation, Maeve knelt beside it and started her conjuring. With Danica and Cat racing away from her, she needed to move swiftly. The demon's powers also decreased with distance.

  A soldier brought up the remnants of Danica's and Cat's discarded shirts. Maeve's eyes flashed with joy at the flecks of crusted blood on both, and had to use much needed time to slow her excited heartbeat to a reasonable rate. Danica's fate was her own concern. With a brutal discipline learned in Ayesha's pitiless hands, Maeve returned to her conjuring.

  The demon arrived amid a chorus of shrill threats and curses. He stood a good eight feet tall, with long spindly legs and two sets of boneless, tentaclelike arms, with a chitin-sheathed body covered with black bristles. His eyes glinted as black as those of a spider.

  After the usual round of threats and counter-threats, Maeve got down to business.

  "I am looking for two escaped prisoners, demon. These rags are the remnants of their shirts. They even have some of their blood on them. Tell me where they are, and what direction they are headed."

  The demon hissed through ebon teeth as he used his magic to probe her mind.

  "Not only are you short and uglier than a three day dead toad, but you are just as brain dead! Even I cannot locate an elf, human scum. Return me to my own realm, before I devour your diseased liver and take your homely head as a trophy!"

  Face burning, fists clenched, Maeve shook with suppressed rage as she struggled to come up with the words to express her anger. The demon was too powerful for her to truly punish with her current wards in place, and he knew it. She barely had the necessary power and skill to summon and hold the hell-spawned bastard. Still, she had little choice in the matter, since he was the most powerful demon she could conjure that might have a chance at helping her.

  "Sorceress? Do you have any information for us yet," Duchess Natasha said. She was just inside the door, obviously too frightened of the demon to come any closer. "Both Dame Falen's Puma Troop and my own household guard are prepared to ride at your word."

  "Yes. It will be but a moment," Maeve said through clenched teeth. Turning back to the demon. "Tell us where the big dark one is, demon. She is no elf."

  "And if I don't?"

  Maeve's smile was unsettling, even for the demon.

  "We both know what little I am truly capable of doing to you at the moment, demon. However, I am more than capable of simply leaving you entrapped here. So if you want to return home, and not spend the next ten years trapped in the pentacle, I would tell us quickly."

  The demon hesitated only a bare second. "The human female named Cat is riding down the main road. Southeast. I suggest you hurry, for she is riding quite fast on a mount able to maintain that pace for some time to come."

  "Your help is greatly appreciated, demon," she said, smiling. "I pray it is true, for I placed a trailer spell on this summons. If you are lying to me, I'll conjure you right back here and take my vengeance on you."

  When the demon only hissed at her, she drew the rune in the air that sent him away. Rising to her feet, she turned to face Natasha.

  "My Lady, I will need a mount."

  "One has already been saddled for you, Sorceress Maeve."

  "Excellent. Then let us go."

  Maeve followed Duchess Natasha out to the waiting horses and soldiers. She went with mixed emotions. On the one hand, she desperately wanted — needed — to please Ayesha by capturing and returning Danica, but by doing so, she would betray an even greater trust. She would betray the only man she had ever loved. She would be an accomplice to his murder in some unholy rite.

  Chapter 7

  "Which way?" Carl said, scowling off into the perpetual darkness.

  The quiet stillness of the swamp unnerved him. Carl spent many a night in more swamps than his simple mind could count, but never had he been in a place so deathly quiet. Totally void of life. The only sound other than their labored breathing was the water lapping at the forest of dead trees. No splashes in the distance, no calls of night birds, no droning of insects. Nothing. Just the unsettling quiet and a rancid stench of rotting vegetation.

  Talar brushed at swamp scum on his clothes, seemingly oblivious to their problem. Only minutes earlier he had pronounced them in deep trouble, now it appeared that all he wanted to do was preen. Carl had an urge to seize him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him, but feared he might cause Danic's body some damage.

  "If this is a magical realm, then the direction we head may not matter. And if not..." Talar said, shrugging.

  "Do you have any ideas on how we'll get back to Allaria?"

  "Unfortunately, we must find a portal. And that will undoubtedly be well-guarded by the locals, if one exists at all," he said, grim-faced. Looking about once more, "Truth be known, I'm not sure I want to meet any inhabitants of this plain of existence."

  "On that, we agree, wizard," Carl said.

  "We might as well start walking. Come morning, I'll climb up a tree and look around."

  Grunting agreement, Carl strode off. Talar followed in his wake. In the dark, and without the stars to guide them, Carl felt worse than lost. They walked for untold hours, finding nothing more than a bare handful of tiny islets. Nothing living was found. Several times, though, they heard the distant howling of what they assumed were hunting pack beasts. Demons, in Carl's fertile mind, would make sounds just like that. He tightened his grip on the long sword.

  Talar continued to chant spells, great and small, in an effort to figure out why his magic wasn't working. If he could find even one spell that worked, it could give him clues to what rules of magic applied in this hellish realm. Yet nothing he tried met with success, not even the relatively simple act of creating fire.

  Nearing the limits of their strength, they stopped at the next islet. Sitting with their backs against a dead tree and tiny brackish waves lapping at their heels, they stared off into the darkness. The sun should have risen hours ago. Indeed, Carl's legs and sides felt as if day and n
ight should have come and gone several times.

  "We're lost," Carl said.

  "No, we're going in the right direction," Talar said, staring off intently to their right. "I can feel the dread building subconsciously. Just looking that way gives me chills at times."

  "That it does," Carl agreed. He had been feeling it for hours, but thought it just a result of their situation. "Now what do you suppose it means?"

  "There's something evil there, probably waiting for us."

  "You're trying to cheer me up?" Carl chuckled, his mirth forced.

  A high-pitched howl ripped through the night, loud in its closeness. It was answered by another, then another. All sounded close and to their right. The direction they were headed before stopping to rest.

  Rising to his feet, his weariness momentarily forgotten, Talar started to climb up into the tree.

  "I think it would be a good time to have a look at what's ahead of us," he said. Carl agreed.

  Talar moved up to the higher limbs. The tree's bark was long gone, the wood beneath now covered with a thin layer of slippery scum. He climbed until he estimated the higher branches too thin to hold his weight, then looked around. He couldn't see more than a hundred paces in any direction, except for one thing.

  "Well? What do you see, wizard?"

  "There is something big ahead. I can't make out what it is, though. But it's giving off a dim light," he called down, still straining his eyes at the distant blur of light. "My guess is it's some sort of fortress, or maybe just a rock formation."

  "Either way, it would seem to be our destination," Carl said, looking off into the darkness, nervously chewing on his long mustaches.

  Talar climbed down, then followed Carl back into the warm water. With the growing sense of dread, Carl was able to zero in on what he privately began thinking of as the Citadel of Doom. Part of him hoped it was just a rock formation, but the other part wanted it very much to be a fortress of some sort. That would indicate life, however ghoulish it might be. Anything was better than the near lifelessness they’d met so far. Well…almost anything.

  Besides, a brisk fight would feel good.

  After less than an hour, they had the first nagging feelings of being watched. Soon, noises, not unlike that of legs wadding through water, could be heard all around. The closer they got to their destination, the more frequent the eerie howling came. It was closer, too. As if packs of demon wolves were circling ever closer.

  Carl began wishing he still had his great battle-axe. Fighting off wolves, or demons, was butcher's work. Though a long sword would be too long and heavy for the average warrior to wield any better than an axe, Carl was a man of great size and strength. He could handle the long heavy blade with far more deftness than most, including Danic, would give him credit for. Indeed, Carl could wield his long sword with a skill few swordsmen could match.

  "Be wary, wizard," Carl whispered. Pausing, he peered intensely into the gloom. "Smell that strange fishy odor?"

  "Now that you mention it..." he said in a hushed tone, as he started to slowly suck in huge breaths through his nose. "Smells like dead fish."

  "Yes it does. I figure we are either nearing a feeding spot for the howlers, or we're smelling their stinking hides."

  As if to answer him, a piercing howl screeched above them. Carl looked up, startled, bringing his glinting blade up. An apish creature leaped from an overhead branch, impaling itself on the long sword. The mottled gray and green creature screamed in pain once, then tried to claw out Carl's eyes before it died. Revolted by the hideous face of the dead native, and repulsed by the feel of its slimy, fish-scaled hide, Carl quickly dropped the tip of his blade and pushed it off with his foot.

  "Ugly bugger," he said. A horrible fishy smell assaulted his nose, "And stink..."

  "Keep an eye out for more," Talar said, squatting over the fallen creature and lifting its head out of the water.

  At first sight it looked to be a scaly ape. But under more careful scrutiny, he saw that it was far more fish than primate. It was even cold-blooded. The creature was covered by a protective slime similar to that found on fish, with a hard bony fishlike mouth and large round eyes without lids. After seeing that, he was surprised it was an air breather. But long-toed webbed feet and hands indicated it must spend a great deal of time in the water. The arms were overlong and the legs short, like an ape's. In the limited light, its black eyes appeared to be all pupil. Perfect for hunting in everlasting darkness.

  "Never seen the likes of him before," Talar said at length. He used his belt knife to pull the fishlike mouth open wide. The fangs on both top and bottom were easily an inch long. "Definitely a meat eater. Doesn't seem to have any teeth for chewing."

  "Bloody great, so his friends will be gobbling us down fast," Carl growled. "What a bloody great consolation."

  "It is of some consolation, barbarian," he said, standing. "At least we know they aren't demons. Demons can't be killed, at least not by anything so mundane as steel and sinew."

  "I've fought and killed demons with my blade," Carl said.

  "No," Talar said. "You thought they were demons, but you probably fought otherworld creatures."

  Leaving the howler sinking into the murky waters, they continued on in silence. The howling continued to circle, growing closer every minute. Both men sloshed along with both swords and daggers presented to the surrounding gloom. Within minutes they began spotting scampering howlers just at the edge of their visibility. Most ran about naked, with a bare handful wearing grimy scraps of clothing. Those scraps gave the appearance of being trophies.

  "There must be hundreds of the slimy monsters," Carl said.

  "At least," Talar said, suddenly realizing that they weren't trying to hide anymore. Half a score were clearly visible clutching dripping rocks and cudgels of knotted wood. "I think they're about to attack."

  "Then we attack now!" Carl cried, charging at the nearest howlers. "Bandu, give me strength!"

  "Maag blast you, barbarian!"

  Talar moved to cover Carl's rear, and was engulfed by the same horde of slimy howlers that leapt on the barbarian. Carl bellowed, cursed, and flailed about to no avail. He could kill three in a single sweep of his great sword, but ten more took their place. All the while they screamed like Goblins.

  Carl was livid. Never had he been so frustrated in battle. True, he had met opponents with tactics such as the howlers, but even they understood edged steel and would eventually relent. The howlers seemed oblivious to his brutal bladework. No, butchery. He was butchering scores of the little monsters, and they continued to rush him in a mindless hysteria. Even his great strength proved unable to withstand the onslaught, and he went down under a mass of the howling creatures.

  Talar managed to hold the howlers at bay a bit longer than the brash Tyrian, but in the end the howlers swarmed over him and he was borne into the brackish waters. Both men were stripped of their weapons and had their wrists and ankles bound with thick strips of leather. Then the howlers lifted them high and screamed a long howl of triumph.

  "Dog loving wretches! I'll have vengeance!" Carl bellowed high in their grasp.

  Both men kicked and bucked to no avail. They were carried swiftly through the dark swamp toward the nearby fortress. Soon its ominous form began to materialize out of the heavy mists and gloom. It was an enormous castle of ebon stone. Spiky towers dissolved into the mists above, and armies of howlers paced restlessly about its perimeter.

  A great uproar rose about them as they passed through the reeking horde. The fishy smell was overpowering, making Carl nauseous. The constant screeching and gibbering of the howlers was rubbing his nerves raw.

  Talar, on the other hand, had gone into a semi-trance. He was conserving his strength and had discovered that only in a near coma could he block out the maddening cries of the howlers.

  They were carried through the great door, through countless narrow, twisting passages, and then finally down a spiraling staircase. Far below the castle
, they were thrown into a dank cell together. The fishy howlers stood in the doorway watching them as they struggled in their bonds. Their unblinking stare was nerve racking. Soon enough, though, Carl managed to work his wrists free.

  "Wait here, hu-mans," one of the creatures said, seemingly satisfied. "Later, the Goddess will decide your fates! Ha!"

  With that, the door was slammed shut and the lock thrown. Carl and Talar exchanged a wide-eyed look. The promise of meeting the creature's Goddess was not encouraging. Ayesha had evoked the Goddess Dirusa to create the portal. So it was safe to assume she was the Goddess mentioned.

  "Bloody great. Prisoners of the Goddess of Hate and Vengeance, and Torture, among other less than honorably things," Carl said darkly.

  "We're lost," Cat said, looking about at the thick hardwood forest with a frown.

  "Stop saying that," Danica said. "We're not lost."

  "Then where are we?"

  "How should I know?"

  Nodding, "We're lost."

  "We're heading south, to Dahlys," Danica argued. "And we're not lost. I can't know where we are if I've never been here before. So ease up on me. I'll get us to Dahlys, safe and sound."

  Cat rolled her eyes, "Now I know we're doomed."

  "We're safe enough," Danica said. With a self-satisfied look, "My idea to circle back north and around Celia threw them off our trail. Then by going up into the mountains for the last few days guaranteed our escape."

  "Right. Like we don't stand out," Cat said. "With your elven features and my dark skin, we'll never be able to pass ourselves off as Amazons."

  Shrugging, "So we won't try. Just act normal. I have found that people are pretty much the same in every land, so we'll act innocent and they won't suspect us of anything."

  They were heading roughly southeast down a narrow game trail. A good road paralleled them a hundred feet to their right. Occasionally they could hear horses and wagons, at which times they stopped and waited quietly. Traveling through the woods was much slower than the road, but riding down a well-traveled road this close to Celia was the last place they needed to be.