by Awert, Wolf
Nill took a deep breath, stepped forwards and let out a loud, echoing shout. The bird’s head shot up. By the elements, it’s huge, Nill thought as the roc spread its freakish giant wings.
Give me, Nill thought at the Roc, but he made it feel less like a command and more like an endearing plea.
The roc was disquieted and screeched again. Nill felt a blade plunge through him, splitting him in half from head to groin. He was ice-cold and for a heartbeat he could not move. It took much of his strength to resist the screech’s power.
The roc peered down from its plateau and Nill saw clearly that it was confused. Prey and language had been mixed up. Yes, I can speak, but I’m not your prey, he thought back at it.
Other place. Thing stays. Nill was unsure whether the beast understood.
The bird seemed to be laughing. It was not taking him seriously.
Nill decided to take a different route. He sent out an image of feathers, crumpling and burning.
Threaten me? Nill received a picture of a high king, a gleaming sword in his hands, a throne carved of stone behind him.
Nill sent more gleaming swords right back.
Magic break! There was armor there, deflecting every blow.
If this isn’t working, I need to try something else. Nill could feel the pride and strength in this predator all too well. He stopped communicating through thoughts and laughed at the top of his lungs up at the Roc.
Mock? Talk end!
The roc threw itself from its eyrie and shot towards Nill, its legs outstretched to grasp him – then Nill saw to his horror that long, sharp sickles were extending out of the stubby feet. They would slice him like cheese. Just like Bucyngaphos, he thought and a tremor went through his body as the talons’ gleam brought back unwelcome memories of his first encounter with the Demon Lord. Fear and panic reduced him to a helpless child in that moment.
Pull yourself together! Nill screamed internally. “Air light, roc heavy,” he began to mutter. A light wind pushed the giant bird from behind. “Air light, roc heavy!” he repeated. The roc slowed its descent with a wild flapping of its wings and tail. Nill chose that precise moment to send a bolt of lightning at it from the skies. As the roc had boasted, the magic did no harm to it, but its sheer physical force, along with the wind and air, knocked the huge body down. Its talons sank deep into the stone as its wings slammed onto the ground with a sound far heavier than its graceful flight would have suggested.
Surprise was the first thing Nill registered from the bird, followed by admiration, and then contempt.
The roc ran at him. Nill was taken by surprise; not only was it even bigger than it had looked at a distance, but also as fast on the ground as it had been in the air. Even if it had lost the advantage of flight, its wings still flapped and gave the short legs the boost they needed to reach such speed. It was Nill’s natural agility that saved him – just before the roc reached him, he leapt aside and raised his staff to block a blow from the wings.
Wing broken, never fly again! Nill threatened.
The roc retracted its wings.
Not end, it gave back.
And it screeched again. The freezing steel sliced through Nill once more.
Stand. Still. The roc was taking command again.
But what the roc could not account for was Nill’s teaching; his mentor had been Archmage of Thoughts, and Nill had learned a thing or two from him. He felt the magic in the roc’s orders, surrounding his mind like a vice. But instead of fighting it, he obeyed, stood still and then ignored that it had ever existed in the first place. Nill formed a new thought.
Stand! No run! Nill shot at the bird, accompanied by the image of rumpled and torn feathers.
The roc screeched again, and Nill shouted against it. Each tried to stop the other from moving. The roc’s grip grew stronger and Nill could hardly move. But it had only disabled his body, not his mind. Nill screamed in thoughtspeak, sending each command with a threatening picture. Burning feathers, broken wings, snapped beaks, and fire, over and over again. Fire seemed to intimidate the roc most.
The stones around them gave their silent screams back, a magically distorted echo. Nill asked them for aid. He put all his will into his head, opened his mouth and roared into the silence of nature. Primal screams and thoughtspeak. The roc was momentarily bemused and Nill took the chance to dispel the magic that had grasped him. In control of his body again, he turned and shouted in a different direction. His voice came back four times, raining down on the roc like a volley.
Stay. No run.
How get here? The Roc asked.
Its grip grew ever weaker.
Nill sent out Ambrosimas’ likeness.
Who is?
Nill attempted to explain, which was not easy in a language designed without Ringwall’s oddities in mind.
Suddenly the grip was back, vice-like on his body.
I’m an idiot, Nill cursed himself. I fell for the oldest trick in the world. He distracted me and then attacked. The roc is a bird, but not a normal animal. Nill finally understood what made the roc stand out as a mythical being.
He called back his defenses almost completely. Fluttering feathers, dancing in the wind, then silence.
The bird began to move. Slowly, this time, with the arrogance of a victor, but it did not relinquish its grasp.
Nill squeaked like a mouse and made himself small.
Once the roc was only a few steps away, Nill struck. He threw out the image of a wall of flames and sent with it a shock of Earth magic that flung rubble and small stones into the roc’s eyes. The bird was knocked backwards. It had managed to close its eyes in time, and it was not the fire that knocked it back, but the fright. Two can play at that game, Nill thought savagely.
Stay. No fly.
Nill made the air heavy and conjured up the sight of a boulder hovering above the roc. The bird crumpled. Nill broke the weakened spell that had paralyzed him and returned it back to his opponent, constraining its aura.
Stay, no think!
The proud hunter ducked, its eyes filled with loathing.
Stop. Go!
Nill loosened the ties binding the roc and freed it. It was a show of power and confidence – you may leave. He stood tall before the crumpled beast and looked down on it. Friend, he amended.
The roc turned around and left. It had retracted its talons and clambered up a long stone ramp. It needed a certain height beneath it to lift off. Friend was shattered in the cold mountain air, and a blast of hatred came back to Nill, as solid as the rocks around them.
Nill breathed deeply. The roc was the hunter of the three mythical beasts. It stood for strength and power, for steadiness, unchanging. The Phoenix was the opposite; its flames signified death and rebirth, constant change, unpredictable. The third mythical beast was no bird. It had existed long before birds came into being. The dragon was the beast of time, of the past, of wisdom. Incredible, Nill thought. Humans can actually communicate with the roc. A faint regret nested in his mind. Why did they have to fight? He would rather have befriended the roc.
Well, I wanted his supper.
Nill climbed up to the almost-lifeless body. It was still alive, but what sort of creature was it? Nill laid a hand on the still beating heart, his eyes on the sky; a surprise attack, a last attempt by the roc was certainly not what he wanted.
Fly! Go!
Nill put as much permission into the words as he could, combined with warmth (not heat) and friendship. But he knew that the roc was now his enemy, no matter how hard he tried to befriend it. The quiet sadness grew overwhelming.
*
Ringwall’s eyes and ears had lost all trace of Nill. The wild hunters had reached Encid and from there found the oasis. They did not take the time to grant the guardian a fitting burial; they left him as the king’s dustriders had. They had followed Nill as quickly as they could through the mountains, but had drawn to a halt just before reaching the Borderlands. The magic there was too terrible to imagine. Th
eir report to the magon was yet another dark sign of the uncertain future ahead of them. The High Council was losing control.
Murmon-Som’s shadow-riders, however, had followed the magic. They had left the Other World and had appeared out of nowhere on the battlefield where Nill had broken Amargreisfing’s spell. Their horses flew more than galloped, and the sun had hardly moved when they arrived at the Borderlands beyond the Fire Kingdom. As creatures of the Other World, the flames were hardly a threat to them, but they could not break through the magic of Fire, nor could they enter the Other World from here. Howling like a pack of whipped dogs they returned to Ringwall. But their coming and going was secret. Their words were meant only for Murmon-Som’s ears.
And so the only hunters left were the king’s dustriders and Ringwall’s search party. Should their quarry ever return to the Fire Kingdom from which it had fled in some mysterious way, these men were lying in wait for it. But Nill remained hidden.
Ringwall’s mage of Wood had begun her search for Nill at the foot of the Mistmountains, and from there her people slowly made their way through Woodhold to the Waterways. They took their time, avoided the deep forest and held to the old path that ran between the Oas and the lands of Woodhold’s Keeper. To the Wood sorcerer’s eyes, the mages were as good as invisible, but they could not avoid the Oas’ keen gaze.
The Water troop had crossed straight through the Oas’ domain and marched through the great swamp. Here, where it was no longer land, but not quite water, where the last remnants of solid earth met the salt of the sea, a quirk of nature had broken the otherwise closed ring of the Borderlands around Pentamuria. Nowhere else in Pentamuria was the magic of the Borderlands as weak as in the morass where the sea touched the Five Kingdoms. The foul smell of the swamp had been blown away by the fresh sea air; the air smelled lively and the water was in constant motion.
But the mages feared the sea quite as much as the Borderlands. The thought that the capricious water meant the road to endlessness was more than most of them could bear. Yet they hesitated for not a moment to follow the orders the council had given them and pushed further towards Metal World along the coast.
Galvan had taken the most direct road to Fugman’s Refuge, the capital of Metal World. He traveled slowly; his route took him through the Murkmoor, also called the Poisoned Heather. In spite of its fearsome name which caused many a wanderer to add days to his journey to travel around it, the landscape was of an alien beauty. Metal and Wood had entered into a rare unity here. Veilbloom and cragwort bathed the ground in hues of blue, and hard, pointy grass poked through the sand everywhere. The few trees that lived here – headed by the plaguebirch, whose bark cracked open every year and bled black sap, and the characteristically gnarled hunchback pine – did not seem to take affront to the energy of Metal that was present. Animals were rarer still. Flies drank the plaguebirch sap, and some rodents found the hunchback pine’s cones edible. Game was nowhere to be found here, but Galvan’s prey was not destined to be roasting over an open fire.
The last party began its search on the border between the Fire Kingdom and Earthland, without straying too far from Ringwall. The troubles between the two kingdoms had reached an apex, but the mages trusted in Ringwall’s authority to see them safely through. From Earthland their search, too, took them towards Metal World, resulting in all their pincers slowly closing in on their prey without any of them realizing it.
Morb-au-Morhg alone, with the twin witches Binja and Rinja in tow, circled around Ringwall as though he did not know where to turn.
*
Nill knew nothing of what was going on in the world as he clambered through the mountains. How could he? Even among the greatest of the mages there was a mere handful who could read and interpret the shift in magical patterns. Nill, conversely, did not even know where he was, and he was generally not interested in finding out. All his attention belonged to the creature he had saved from the roc. Its face was human, no doubt about it. A little roughly-hewn, perhaps, as if a sculptor had sought more of a challenge than working with chisels and reached for the nearest ax instead. Its nose was prominent, but not so much as to remind Nill of the fearsome beak he had recently encountered; it was rounder and softer. The brows and jaw looked massive and mighty, with broad strong bones beneath the skin. Its eyes were quite sunken, protected at the moment by heavy eyelids. An inflexible leather cap covered the skull, reaching all the way down to the neck. Its chest was rather wider than his own, rising and sinking again with steady breaths. The leather armor did not hide the powerful muscles beneath. It was made of large cut scales, layered densely, as good a protection from a slash from above as plate. Every scale was connected to the one beneath it with a leather strap, making an upward thrust difficult. It was crafted to ensure safety while not sacrificing mobility.
Right now, however, it was slashed in several places and blood stained the leather.
You must be a tough one, Nill thought to himself, and his doubtful gaze crossed the feet and hands of the creature. But if you are, then you’re certainly not of a race I’ve ever seen. Big, strong hands matched the broad chest and the powerful arms, but the fingers were unusually slender and tapered to their tips, like a young girl’s. There were barely any fingernails.
The creature began to twitch and turn fitfully. It took Nill great effort to keep a hold of the strong, heavy body. Nill’s left hand was still on its heart, his right on its brow. He attempted to drain the venom or magic, whichever it was, of the roc from the body. Poisons were a disturbance in the elements. Nill could handle those, but closing the bleeding gashes was a different matter entirely. Nill wished he could mend torn muscles like Tiriwi had done for Brolok.
Was its breathing growing steadier? Nill was not sure, but the eyelids flickered and he waited with bated breath for them to truly open. He felt a rising panic and tried to fight it back.
“You had a disagreement with a roc, my lord,” Nill said, more to say anything at all than because he expected to be understood.
The wrinkled face cracked into a wide grin. “Disagreement,” it repeated. The sound came from deep within its throat, but Nill had no difficulty in understanding it.
“What do we do now?” Nill asked. “I can’t carry you. You’re too heavy.”
The sunken, round eyes scanned the sky.
“The roc isn’t coming back,” Nill assured his charge.
The strange creature grabbed hold of Nill and pulled itself up, then put a hand to its mouth and gave a series of whistles. Nill had to turn away as the piercing sounds shot through his ears and hit his brain. He had never known anyone whistle so loudly.
“You could kill someone with that… or make them deaf for the rest of their days,” he muttered a little reproachfully.
“Wait,” the man croaked and coughed up bloody phlegm, then lay back down with a groan. The whistle appeared to have cost him what little strength he had regained since the attack. He slumped back and fell asleep. The breathing was ragged now, and Nill worried.
“What can we do but wait?” Nill asked the sleeping figure beside him as he watched the sinking sun with concern. He did not want to spend the night up here on the plateau. He was hungry, thirsty, and Ramsker was still gone. The fight with the roc had taken its toll on him. Nill stared at the sunset, captivated by the natural magic of light as it bathed every rock face in warm yellow, which slowly turned to pale red, and finally the sun disappeared. The rocks turned purple, but Nill no longer saw it. He had reached that state between sleeping and waking that he never really understood.
His unshakable shepherd’s senses woke him. Rocks, woods and winds always speak to each other; they never seem to run out of interesting conversations, and yet the game never pays any attention. But a single tiny crack, a rustle in the wrong place, can be louder than a fist knocking on a door. Nill’s eyes remained shut, but his senses were wide awake. His strange companion had moved too. He laid his arm, heavy and comforting, around Nill’s shoulder.
> “Time now,” he growled and pushed himself into a better position. Nill could feel the auras of the approaching creatures. He saw nothing; they were as dark as the night. He was astonished, therefore, to notice his companion gliding down the rock. Something was pulling at his legs and something else caught the heavy torso as it fell.
Come now, a voice said in Nill’s head.
Nill edged towards the cliff uncertainly. He felt around for small crags he could hold onto, but each time his leg met nothing but air. Climbing up here had been easy, but getting down in this darkness was an adventure he could happily have done without. The figures down there were losing patience. Nill felt a powerful arm around his waist and suddenly he was hanging in the air, then he was – none too gently – lowered to the ground. With a dull thud something landed next to him. These fellows seemed to have eyes like nightflyers. Nill heard the snapping of metal clasps, the rustle of leather on leather and quick, shallow breathing. The injured creature was evidently being tied to something. And then they were off: something grabbed Nill’s arm and he stumbled along through the darkness. With a muttered oath he conjured five flickering lights from his fingertips so that he might see at least a tiny bit of the area. The figure in front of him whirled around and slapped his fingers with a menacing growl. Two more slaps followed before Nill obeyed and dismissed the lights. He rubbed his fingers and stopped running.
I can’t run through a forest blind, he thought. If they’re in that much of a hurry and they don’t like light, they’ll have to go without me.
He had not had time to finish his thought when two powerful hands grabbed his legs. There was a jolt and he found himself sitting on one of the creature’s shoulders. It moved through the forest quickly and after the first few branches had hit him squarely in the face Nill raised his arms to protect it from further harm, but even this could not stop him from occasionally smacking into solid wood. It was only due to the strong grip on his legs that he did not fall down. He did not know how much time passed before he was finally thrown from his carrier’s shoulders. He slammed against a stone wall and felt a push in his back that sent him to the ground.