“Get your coat,” she told Vanx firmly. “We’re going for a walk.”
“I don’t mean—”
“Go get your coat, Vanx.”
He nodded. Seeing the mixed look of anger and determination in her dark eyes reminded him of her mother, who’d been his lover for some time, back in Parydon.
Not long after, they were walking through the hard-packed street at a brisk clip. A heavily laden sled worked its way across their field of vision, up ahead on a cross street. The city lamps were still lit, but the streets were empty of people. Vanx guessed that the lamp snuffer was late on his rounds, or maybe everyone was just buttoned down early on this cold spring night.
Vanx had to trot just to keep up with her. He started to ask where they were going, when Gallarael suddenly turned into the mouth of a dark alley, yanking him after her. She peeled off Salma’s coat as if it were afire and threw it at Vanx, not to him, and by the time he fumbled his catch, she was nowhere to be seen.
Hesitant, he took a step deeper into the alley, and then he froze in his tracks. Two cherry red eyes blinked at him from the darkness.
“Do you think I need to fear the beasts of the Bitterpeaks now?” The curiously feminine voice was a gravelly hiss. It sounded nothing like Gallarael, but he knew it was her.
Suddenly, the eyes were gone, and Vanx felt his blood chill to a degree far colder than the air around him. Only a few times in his long life had he ever been this afraid, and at that moment he was too terrified to name any of them. He’d seen what Gallarael had done in her changeling form. She’d bested Matty, Trevin, Darbon, and half-a-dozen huge, green-skinned ogres. He thought about turning and running, but instead steeled himself for what was to come. If he trusted her, he had to show it here.
A claw slid gently down his cheek, the arm connected to it reaching from behind him. Reflexively, he whirled away and went into a defensive crouch.
“Even with your Zythian ears and those emerald eyes of yours, you didn’t sense me come upon you just then.”
“What are you doing, Gallarael?” The truth of her words unnerved him. He hadn’t sensed her at all.
“Call me Gal, Vanx,” she hissed sharply.
He could see her silhouette now. She was outlined by the lamplit lane behind her. The power of her sleek, voluptuous form was punctuated starkly by the fierce eyes that held him.
“Now, tell me of these dangers I might face if I go with you on your witch hunt.” She hissed out a sarcastic chuckle. “Tell me how I should go back to Parydon and play the pretty princess, Vanx.”
In a blur of motion, she ran halfway up the wall on her way toward him and flipped up into the darkness over his head. He felt her claws graze across his scalp and then heard the soft muffle of her feet landing directly behind him. The steamy cloud of her feral-smelling breath billowed out over his shoulder, and he felt the warmth of her words as she whispered in his ear. “I think you might need to rethink how you view me, Vanx.”
Her clawed touch lifted from his skin, and her next words came from deeper in the alley’s darkness.
“The creatures of the Lurr might be a little much for you and your companions.” Her hissing tone shifted back to her normal pleasant voice as she spoke. “You might need something like me to help protect the lot of you.”
Her emphasis on labeling herself as a thing didn’t escape Vanx, and all he could manage to force out of his mouth was a feeble, “Yes.”
From the shadows, Gallarael, as normal as can be, save for her short black hair, stepped out and took Salma’s coat from Vanx. After she put it on, she leaned up and kissed his cheek sweetly.
“I knew you’d understand,” she said and then led him back to the Iceberg Inn.
Halfway down the block, Vanx caught her shoulder. “Look, Gal.” He knew his expression was troubled, but he saw her now in a whole new light. This wasn’t a frail girl, but a savage creature.
“They have to know—the others, I mean,” he said. “They trust me. I can’t surprise them with some terrifying changeling out on the slide, or just decide to bring a frail young woman in on our plans, without making them fully aware of the situation.” Vanx forced a smile and shrugged. “Besides, what about Chelda’s affections?”
Gallarael laughed. “I will take care of Chelda.” The way she purred the words seductively left Vanx to wonder. “You can explain it to Xavian and the others however you like.”
“How will you take care of Chelda?”
“Girls don’t tell.” She grinned at his discomfort. “Being the emerald-eyed lady-killer you are, you should have learned that a long time ago.”
*
Later that night, Chelda’s terrified scream cut through the silence of the inn, waking all but the heaviest of sleepers. Poops cut loose with a peal of worrisome barking that Vanx thought sounded nothing like that of a puppy anymore.
Several loud expletives could be heard after that, then the slamming of a door. Vanx was glad that it was Chelda he heard cursing. At least Gallarael hadn’t sliced her up.
Vanx saw that Darbon was still an unconscious lump over in his disheveled bed and went about calming his excited dog with a soft song.
No sooner had Poops relaxed than a pounding at the door set the pup off again.
Vanx had to yell at the dog to get him to be quiet this time.
When he opened the door, Chelda burst in and nearly bowled him over. “What in all the seven hells is that horrible thing?” she asked. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
Despite his better judgment, and all the wisdom he’d garnered over fifty-three years of life, Vanx couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
Chapter Fourteen
They live out in the forest,
killing everything they can.
You’d be better to poke the High King’s eye
than cross a Highlake man-
A Highlake Mountain Man.
-- Mountain Man
Brody and Darbon were laughing the next morning, but they knew nothing of what had or hadn’t transpired between the two women the night before. They were laughing at the shiny black eye Vanx was sporting and speculating humorously on how we got it.
“A bedroom mule-kick from the lovely lady Masrak he’s been discreetly seeing,” Darbon ventured.
“So, you two cobble gobblers know about her?” Vanx asked, which only drew more laughter out of the two men.
“No, no,” Brody chimed in. “That big woman, the one that swoons when he sings the slow songs, it was her.” Brody fought to contain himself as he tried to finish. “She popped him in the eye when he wouldn’t go get her a ham loaf in the middle of the night.”
The truth was, Chelda had slugged him in the eye when he burst out laughing at her. The last thing he wanted was for these two jesters to find out about that, though. He’d never hear the end of it if they did.
“I can see by your scowl that you’re not enjoying this as much as we are,” Brody said. “If you’d just tell us the truth of it, then we could quit guessing and move on.”
Vanx started to make something up but thought better of it when he saw Chelda approaching the table.
He cringed inwardly. She was grinning now, too. She’d heard the question.
Vanx focused his eyes on a place at the back of the room and concentrated on it as he waited for the big huntress to give the guys the laugh they’d been waiting for.
“Tell us, Vanx,” she asked playfully, surprising him, “what did happen to your eye?”
Vanx wasn’t sure what to say. “I don’t want to talk about it, Chelda,” he managed, but then he turned and looked into her eyes.
“How was your night?” he asked smartly. He was glad to see the smile disappear from her face.
“Yeah,” said Brody. “Someone said that you were raising bloody hell and screaming last night. What happened?”
“She and Vanx were kind enough to help rid my room of a stray alley cat that got in,” Gallarael said as she approached the table with Salm
a. Both were carrying trays, one of sausage and fresh bread, the other of peeled blue winter plums. A carafe of yellow juice appeared on the table as well.
“I’ll get some mugs.” Salma let her hand brush Darbon’s cheek, then hurried off.
“How’d the bleedin’ stray get in your room?” Brody asked.
Vanx noticed the unease in Chelda’s expression when Gallarael sat down between him and Darbon. The huntress tried to hide it, and probably did from the others, but to Vanx it showed as plainly on her face as the black eye must have done on his.
Gallarael started in about how she left her window open for too long last night. “Obviously,” she shrugged, “the cat was just looking for a warm place to sleep and…”
Vanx let it all fade away. Her voice warbled into a drone, and the room’s warmth began to seep into his skin.
His night had gotten worse after Chelda had left. He’d slept fitfully. His dreams had been gruesomely vivid. He’d seen the Hoar Witch’s icy palace and had been trapped in the old, familiar forest that surrounded the place. It wasn’t really her forest, though. She’d taken it from Saint Elm.
Some of the trees there weren’t trees at all. Dark blackthorns and gnarled iron oaks pursued him as he ran from some dark beast. His bare feet were torn and bloodied as he fled blindly through the old ashes, maples and elms that his grandfather used to tend. As he went, he came upon his companions one by one.
Darbon had been bloody and screaming, caught in a tangle of vines that were slowly stretching him apart like some legendary Harthgarian torture device.
Gallarael, golden-haired and clothed in the dress of a true princess, was only halfway so. The other half was sleek and black, and the whole of her was also ensnared in vines, only the limbs of her entanglement had punctured her in a dozen places with venom-dripping thorns that left puckering sores and angry red streaks.
Chelda was dangling limply from a thin, willow-branch noose, her face purple, and her lolling tongue dark and swollen.
Brody’s upper half was hanging out of a dark, gnawing knothole. His arms were flailing and his hands scrabbling for purchase to no avail. He looked up at Vanx, then down at his ravaged fingertips. His expression was the epitome of desperation. “Don’t let them get you, Vanx,” he warned just before his eyes rolled all the way up into his head. “They’re coming for you, and once they get you, you can never escape.”
When Vanx looked back over his shoulder, it was Trevin Lispan’s body being devoured by the tree, not Brody’s. There’d been more: a huge, horned mutation roaming a thorny, flower-covered hedge, and a slithering, white-scaled serpentine creature that never quite revealed itself. All of them knew he was coming, and each of them lusted to fill him with their terrible fear before devouring him.
Vanx had woken in a cold sweat, to Poops’s worried whining. The dog had pulled him out of his nightmare, and Vanx found that he had never been more thankful for a single act in his life. He held Poops close and let go of the dream. Then he felt a warm tingling creep up his spine.
It was from Poops. Somehow, they had formed a familial link. He remembered Xavian commenting on it the evening before. He tried to clear his head so that he could contemplate that, instead of the horrors of his sleep. He finally managed it, but underlying all of this madness, or maybe overshadowing it, was the undeniable urge to be on his way.
The feeling was becoming insistent. There was an almost painful desire to locate its source. He felt like a drunkard craving wine, or a gambler being drawn to the dice game in the corner. He knew it was useless to resist any longer. The feeling was taking control of him, and he knew that he couldn’t keep ignoring it, even if he wanted to. He had to leave soon.
“Where is Endell?” Vanx asked the table at the first break in the conversation he had been tuning out.
“He’s no good to you now, Vanx,” Darbon said. “He’s lost in the hard drink again. Last night, he took his share and got a cheap room down by the docks near Hammerhead and Hornets. He paid for two full years’ rent up front.”
“He’ll drink the rest of his money away by next winter,” Salma said, as she squeezed into Darbon’s lap.
“By midsummer or sooner, I’d wager.” Brody shook his head in disgust. “Who is going to ride with us into the foothills and bring back the haulkats?”
“What about Skog?” asked Vanx, but no one had seen the strange half-breed since yesterday evening.
They had all agreed, in an earlier conversation, that riding haulkattens to the foothills wasn’t such a bad idea, after all, but they had planned on having Endell and a helper along on that first leg of the journey. That way, someone could bring the haulkats back to Orendyn. Chelda had assured them that her people didn’t want them in trade, or to care for them while they trekked deeper into the mountains.
“I can do it,” said Darbon.
“No.” Vanx’s voice cut over Salma’s quick protest. “Not a chance, Dar. You’ve got responsibilities here. You have a life to build.”
Darbon shrugged, and Salma turned into him, pressing her breasts against his side while she kissed his cheek. She seemed very pleased that he brooked no argument over the matter. Darbon returned her affection with a squeeze, but looked hard at Vanx. “Why are you having me a shrew coat made, if I’m not going?”
“That’s mine now,” Gallarael’s girlish, sing-song voice rang out. “I’m going with Vanx. You are a bit bigger than me, but I think there are times I might need the extra room inside my coat.” She gave Chelda a meaningful look.
“Now wait a moment,” Brody started in.
Chelda put her hand on his forearm firmly. “She is in.” Chelda’s voice was flat. “Just trust me on the matter for now.”
“But she’s, she’s…” Brody made an exaggerated gesture.
Just then, Xavian came into the inn. Like Brody, he had been living in Orendyn for a while before Vanx and Darbon had arrived. He’d chosen to stay at his old apartment instead of at the Iceberg with the others.
“Ahh, our esteemed practitioner of the arts arcane.” Brody gave a sarcastic bow.
“I like that.” Xavian smiled. He took an empty chair from one of the other tables and slid in next to Chelda. His old black leather skullcap had been replaced by a shiny one made of polished silver, or maybe from extremely fine steel. Vanx couldn’t tell. His long goatee and mustache looked to have been neatly trimmed since last evening. He sat an oilcloth sack on the table and slid its bulk over to Vanx.
“There is every book that has significant information on Rimeho—”
Chelda elbowed him before he could finish the word.
“I mean our destination,” the mage continued. “It’s not much, but—what happened to your eye?”
“A stray alley cat got him,” Brody said. “Right after it jumped up into Galra’s second floor window last night. It seems the three of them had a time of it up there. Half the inn was complaining about the yelling this morning.”
“We are half of the inn’s custom,” Chelda said. “I think there’s only one other guest. Now what do the books say, Xavian?”
Xavian looked a bit confused by the exchange. He eyed Gallarael then Vanx in turn and shrugged, as if to say it wasn’t his mess to worry about.
“There’s not much that will help us in there, other than an account taken by a priest of Nepton over a hundred years ago. It seems a man claimed to have survived the Lurr forest and did return to tell about it.”
“So much for never coming back out,” Gallarael said. “They said that about the Wildwood, too.”
“You slept through the Wildwood, Gal.” Darbon chuckled.
“How did he get out?” Brody asked Xavian.
“He claims that his torch’s fire kept the tree-beasts away from him, but he didn’t go it alone. Five others were never heard from again.” Xavian picked a sausage from one of the plates, bit off half of it, and gestured with the other half as he went on. “It’s all very cryptic. There are references to venomous thorns and
flesh-eating trees, all in a green forest hidden in a deep valley in the heart of the frozen mountains. And get this, Vanx: they called that forest Saint Elm’s Deep.”
Vanx saw Gallarael shudder at the mention of venomous thorns. He found himself angry. “If you’re going, then you can load your own pack,” he said. “I’m not going to pamper you.”
“Fine.” Gallarael’s voice was loud as she rose. “I’ll be about it, then. I can sense that we are leaving on the morrow. Would you at least bring Darbon’s coat for me when you pick up your own?” She didn’t wait for a response. She whirled and stalked up the stairs to her room.
“By the gods, Vanx, that was rude,” Brody said. “What am I missing here?”
He was looking at Vanx and expecting an explanation.
“Leave it, Bro,” said Chelda. “Like I said, I’ll explain it later. Vanx can enlighten Xavian of the situation as he sees fit. I’ll just say this: she’s a lot more formidable than she seems.”
“Who is going to bring the haulkats back?” Darbon asked.
“So, we are riding, then?” Xavian asked, clearly pleased by the prospect. “Is it decided?”
“Only until we get into gargan territory. From there, we’re sending the haulkats back.” Vanx was in no mood to argue anymore. He was ready to leave. “I will find us a couple of katten handlers and a sled man. We can stick to the caravan routes most of the way there, so it won’t be a problem.” He slid his chair back and gestured for Xavian to come with him. “Dar, would you put these texts up in our room? I’ll read them later.” Then to Brody, he said, “After Chelda explains Galra’s situation to you, would you see to purchasing the rest of the items on our list? Darbon will give you the coin and help get it loaded.” Vanx paused, looking at the books as Darbon grabbed them up. “And add a few bundles of good pitch torches to the tally, while you’re about it.”
“I assume Galra was correct, then?” Brody gave a curt nod of respect. It was clear that he liked it when things started getting a sense of order and purpose. “We’re leaving on the morrow?”
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