"We left the Forest Kingdom and headed south," Hawk started. "We wanted to start new lives, as new people. Free ourselves of the baggage of our past. And contrary to what you may have been told, Harald and I did not part amicably. Julia and I were determined to put ourselves well out of his vindictive reach."
"The King has always said you left with his blessing," said Chance.
"Like hell," said Fisher. "He wanted me as his wife, and he wanted Rupert dead so he wouldn't be any challenge to the Throne. We left him lying unconscious in a pile of horseshit in the stables."
"I didn't want the Throne," said Hawk. "But there were any number of people and factions who would have made me King if I'd stuck around. The Forest Castle just wasn't big enough for Harald and me; one of us would have had to kill the other, eventually. And I didn't want that. For all the anger and bitterness between us, he was still my brother, and we had fought side by side in the Demon War. He was a hero, in his way. So we left the Forest Land. After one last stop at the Dark Tower, to say good-bye to the High Warlock."
"I remember that," said Chappie's voice from floor level. "He prophesied that one day you would both return to the Forest Kingdom." The dog snorted loudly. "Hardly a difficult one, that. Unfinished business has a way of creeping up on you, evade it as you may."
"He gave us gifts," said Hawk. "He gave me my axe, to replace the sword I could no longer wield. I was a first-class swordsman in my time, even gave your father a run for his money, Chance, but all that changed when a demon clawed the eye right out of my head. You can't be much of a swordsman with damn-all depth perception. But axes don't depend on subtlety; all you need is a strong right arm and a certain amount of bloody-minded determination. And this axe has other attributes, too; it cuts through magical protections. Mostly."
"He gave me a gift, too," said Fisher. "I could have had a magical weapon as well, if I'd wanted. But I wielded one of the damned swords, the Infernal Devices, in the Demon War, and that was more than enough for me. I still remember the evil blade called Wolfsbane. It nearly ate my soul. So instead, I asked for a prophecy. I asked the High Warlock whether Rupert and I would always be together. And he said yes; until the day we died."
"I never knew that," said Hawk. "I never asked what you asked him; I figured that was your business. I'm touched. But I could have told you the same thing, if you'd asked."
Hawk and Fisher held hands across the tabletop, smiling into each other's eyes, and for a moment Chance caught a glimpse of Rupert and Julia, and their legendary love.
"The High Warlock told us we'd never see him again," said Hawk. "We'd already guessed that. He looked old and tired, and so frail, a gust of wind could have blown him away. Magic ate him up and spat him out, destroying him even as he'd used it to destroy his enemies. He probably could have saved himself even then, if he'd really wanted to. He could have regenerated himself one more time. But I think… he was allowing himself to die. Magic, Wild and High, was going out of the world, and he knew it. There was no room left for the kind of man he'd been. He'd had one last great adventure, and I think he wanted to go out on a high, while he was still remembered as a hero of the Demon War, rather than the bitter recluse he'd been before I found him. All his old friends, and all his old enemies, were dead and gone, and Julia and I were leaving, too. He was alone."
"He had me," said Chappie. "But he said it was well past time I struck out on my own. After all his animals had left, and he was dead, the Dark Tower sealed itself around him, the many windows disappearing one by one, and the Tower became his tomb. But then, it always was, wasn't it?"
"We took the unicorn Breeze back to his own kind," said Fisher. "Back to the herd he'd been taken from, so long ago. Rupert had promised him that. It took a while, but we found them in their hidden valley; and no, I'm not going to tell you where. The few people who knew, who captured Breeze, are all dead, and their knowledge died with them. Let it stay that way. Breeze is happy now, running free with the unicorns. That's all anyone needs to know."
Hawk looked down at Chappie, seeing how he stayed close to his companion, Chance, and he remembered how close he and Breeze had been.
"The hero always has a companion in his travels," Hawk said finally, smiling down at the upside down dog. "I had Breeze and you have Chappie."
"I beg your pardon," the dog said immediately. "He doesn't have me; I have him. And a bloody nuisance he is, sometimes. I only stick around because God only knows what trouble he'd get into if I wasn't there." The dog rolled over onto his side, sniffed at the air, and was suddenly back up on his feet again. He padded over to a table and stared accusingly at the occupant. "You're never going to eat all that, are you? It's not good for you. Here, let me help you out." And the dog ate everything on the plate. The table's occupant watched him do it, looking like he might burst into tears at any moment. The dog licked the plate clean, and then swaggered back to sit beside Chance again. "You know, the food's terrible here. And such small portions."
Fisher couldn't keep from grinning as she looked at Chance and the dog. "How the hell did you two get together?"
"I took a thorn out of his paw, gave him a bowl of milk, and he's been with me ever since," said the dog. "Actually, we both got a little too close to the Darkwood, for reasons that seemed good at the time, and ending up fighting a bunch of demons together. We made a good team, so I let him hang out with me. Now tell me what happened to the dragon. He was always my favorite part of your legend. Was he really as big as they say?"
"Bigger," said Hawk. "Thirty feet long if he was an inch, and God alone knows how many tons in weight. He was the last of his kind, the last dragon in the world of men. Wild magic personified. He was already dying when he left the Castle with us. He hung on just long enough to reach his old cave in Dragonslair Mountain, and then he just laid down and waited for Lady Death to find him. He was very old, older than the Forest Kingdom itself, and he had suffered so very much in its defense. He'd flown to the top of the mountain; the rest of us had to get up there the hard way. By the time we arrived, he was fast asleep, surrounded by all his precious things. Watching him die was like watching all the wonder going out of the world. Afterward we set a fire in his cave, as he'd asked. He didn't want his dead body being plundered for the valuable hide and organs."
"I remember the fire," said Chance. "You could see it burning at the top of Dragonslair for days, like a great beacon in the night. What happened to his hoard? Was it tons of gold and silver and precious jewels, as everyone said?"
"It was butterflies," said Fisher. "He collected butterflies. He had dozens of cases of the things, all carefully mounted and labeled. I never did figure out how he caught them. I mean, I can't see a thirty-foot dragon chasing across the fields in hot pursuit, brandishing a bloody big butterfly net. Well, actually I can, but I very much prefer not to."
"He was good at sneaking up on things," said Hawk.
"He'd have to be," said Fisher. "Anyway, his butterflies burned with him."
"Dammit, isn't anybody you knew still alive?" asked the dog.
"Well, the goblins were fine when we left them," said Fisher. "Every bit their usual obnoxious selves. Are they still making a nuisance of themselves in the Forest?"
"Surprisingly enough, no," answered Chance. "The fate of the goblins is something of a mystery. They disappeared into the woods soon after you left, and no one's seen hide nor hair of them since. Their old home, the Tanglewood, never grew back. No one's sighted a goblin anywhere in the Forest Land for years, and mostly everyone's just rather relieved. I mean, they were…"
"Yes," said Hawk. "They were. But still they fought beside us in the last great siege of the Forest Castle, and not one of them broke or ran. I was always very proud of the appalling little creatures."
"Move it on," said the dog impatiently, "Or we'll be here all bloody night. Your companions are gone or dead, and you're traveling out of the Forest with a sackful of jewels you liberated from the Castle. What happened next?"
/> "The jewels didn't last long," said Fisher. "Rupert always did have a soft spot for a hard-luck story. He gave it all away, little by little, for this cause or that, trying to do good or just help people who needed it. A whole lot of it went to hiring an army of mercenaries. Not one of our better decisions. There was this Prince we met, who'd been thrown off his throne, and out of his own country, so that a bunch of bad guys could seize control and run things their way. As you can imagine, this struck something of a chord with us, so we put together an army of meres for hire, led them into battle, and put the Prince back on his throne. Only to discover that he was an even bigger bastard than the ones we'd overthrown for him."
"Right," said Hawk. "Our first clue came when he had us both arrested, dragged off in chains, and thrown into the dungeons. Where we met a very interesting class of people, most of whom had very interesting stories to tell us about just why the Prince had been chucked out in the first place. We escaped from the dungeons, took to the hills with our own mercenaries snapping at our heels, and used most of what was left of our money to fund a popular uprising that threw the Prince out of power again. He was beheaded this time, and a distant cousin took power, saying all the right things… but at the end of the day there were a lot of dead people, a country devastated by civil war, and not a lot of real change to show for it all. We stayed out of politics after that."
"With most of the jewels gone, we didn't have much choice," said Fisher. "I don't think we're meant to have money."
"We used what was left to buy passage on a ship sailing down the coastline to the Southern Kingdoms," said Hawk. "The Revenge wasn't exactly a luxury ship, and the crew were one step up from pirates, but we didn't have a lot of choice. There aren't many ships or crews brave or foolhardy enough to risk the long journey down the coastline, past the Deadlands."
"What are they like?" asked Chance, leaning forward eagerly. "The Deadlands, I mean. There's hardly any real information about them, even in the great libraries at St. Jude's."
"What are they like?" Hawk repeated. "Hell on earth. Centuries ago, or at least so long ago that no one now can say when with any certainty, two wizards fought a duel. The last great clash of Wild Magic in the world of men. The wizards' names and motivations are lost to us, but their battle destroyed thousands of miles of territory, leaving it horribly transfigured. Whole countries and their populations were wiped out, their very names lost to history and legend. To enter the Deadlands even now is to die, slowly and horribly.
"We only ever saw the edges of it, from a distance, but that was more than enough to shake us. The land… it's never still, never settled. Mountains rise up and then fall again, great cracks open and close, and tides move slowly across the disturbed earth. Awful things live there, bigger than houses, howling and screaming in voices loud as thunder. Life still somehow survives in the Deadlands, but it is altered and transformed by terrible unseen energies. It's not life as we would recognize it."
"There were things in the sea, too," said Fisher, frowning as she remembered things she'd put a lot of effort into forgetting. "Just swimming in the dark waters by the coastline had been enough to change the life there in harsh, unnatural ways. The crew of the Revenge might have been pirates once, but we had good cause to be grateful for their swordsmanship when things came crawling up the sides of the ship at dead of night. They were pale as corpses because their skin never saw the sun, and they had no eyes because they had no need of them in the dark depths of the sea. They had spikes on their spines and mouths stuffed with jagged teeth. They moved as silently as ghosts and fought like demons, but they screamed like men when they died."
"There was a kraken half the size of the ship," said Hawk. "Red as a rose, with long barbed tentacles that wrapped around the bow of the Revenge and tried to drag it under. And once we saw a serpent, huge and magnificent, three times the length of the ship. It swam in circles around us for over an hour, raising its great feathered horsehead high into the air to look down on us small things. It was every color of the rainbow, and it looked at us with eyes that knew every secret in the sea…"
"Most ships that make the long voyage down the coastline never reach their destination," said Fisher. "The Deadlands have a long reach."
"Anyway," said Hawk, "eventually we ended up here, in Haven, pretty much broke and with nowhere else to go. So we looked around, thought we could do some good here, or at least make a difference, so we settled down as city Guards. We thought we were needed."
Fisher sniffed loudly at that, but had nothing else to add.
"How did you find us?" Hawk asked. "I thought we'd covered our tracks pretty well."
"It wasn't easy," said Chance. "Not least because you don't look at all like your official portraits. When I first saw you, back in the Devil's Hook, I barely recognized you."
"Hold everything," said Fisher. "There are official portraits of us? Where?"
"In the great Hall of the Forest Castle," said Chance. "Huge things, almost nine feet tall, painted by the most fashionable portrait artists in the North. No expense was spared for the two legendary heroes of the long night. There are statues, too. Lots of them, all over the Forest Land. Some of the peasants even leave offerings before them, even though that's officially discouraged."
"Oh, I'll bet," said Hawk.
"But of course, since neither of you were available to sit for your portraits, the artists had to work from people's descriptions, and their memories," said Chance. "So not surprisingly, the end results were rather… idealized. To be honest, about the only things they got right were your hair colors. Still, I never expected the likenesses to be that good. I'd seen the official portrait of my father, the Champion, and I knew that couldn't be accurate. No one could have that many muscles on their upper torso and still stand upright.
"You covered your trail pretty thoroughly, but luckily I didn't have to follow that. I had a magical gem from the Old Armory, the Crimson Pursuant, that was designed specifically to track down and recognize members of the Forest Royalty. It brought me right here, to you. Would you like to see it?"
"Yes, I think I would," said Hawk. "Not least because I never knew such a thing existed."
Chance took a small leather pouch from his belt, pulled it open, and spilled out onto his palm a small polished ruby. It lay on his palm like a drop of blood. It seemed perfectly unremarkable, until Hawk leaned forward for a better look, whereupon the ruby blazed with an inner fire, pulsing like a heartbeat. Chance closed his hand around the ruby and dropped it back into the pouch. Hawk looked quickly around him, but everyone else in the tavern was ostentatiously minding their own business.
"King Harald left instructions in his will," said Chance, putting the leather pouch away, "that in the event of his death, this gem was to be taken from the Armory, and used to track you down, or your heir, so that the Forest line could continue if anything happened to Prince Stephen."
"He could have tracked us down at any time," said Fisher. "He just chose not to."
"He should have sent you sooner," said Hawk, almost glaring at Chance. "When he first realized he was in danger. Then we might have got back in time to save him."
"He would rather have died than beg us for help," said Fisher. "But he knew his duty, to his Kingdom and his son. He knew Rupert would have to return, to avenge his killer's death."
"He would have done the same for me," said Hawk. "How long have you been looking for us, King's Questor?"
"Oh, almost a week now," said Chance.
Hawk and Fisher stared at him incredulously. "A week?" said Hawk. "It took us months to get this far south!"
"Well, yes," said Chance. "But you took the long way, down the coastline. I came through the Rift. You have heard of the Rift, haven't you?"
Hawk and Fisher looked at each other. "Just rumors." said Hawk slowly. "We're pretty cut off from the mainstream down here. Tell us about the Rift."
"It's the greatest wonder of the modern age!" said Chance. "A sorcerous gateway, an ope
ning in space itself that has linked the north with the south for the first time in centuries. You step through the Rift in the north, and step out of the Rift in the south. Simple as that. And vice versa, of course. The Deadlands are no longer a barrier between north and south. All kinds of trade and other interactions have been going on for years now."
"We never knew," said Hawk. "We could have gone home anytime."
"If we'd had a reason to," said Fisher. "Who created this… Rift?"
"The Magus," answered Chance. "The High Warlock's successor at Forest Castle. A sorcerer of great and subtle powers. He came to Harald's Court to announce the High Warlock's death, and proclaim himself the Warlock's chosen successor."
"I could have told them that was a lie," said Chappie from under the table. "And I did, later. But no one ever listens to me." „
"Not now, Chappie," said Chance.
"See what I mean?"
"The Magus proved his worth and his power by opening the Rift," said Chance. "Though it took him nearly a year to set the spell up. After that, he was the darling of the Court. Officially, the Magus has sworn fealty to King Harald and his line, but unofficially he's never closed his door to anyone. If you can afford it, or if you've got something or someone he wants, you too can have the Magus perform a wonder on your behalf. He never worked openly against the King, but no one was ever too extreme or too unpopular to be denied the Magus' ear. Still, the Rift was everything he promised it would be, and more. Trade and other influences have transformed the Forest Kingdom almost beyond recognition in the last ten years."
"What's the Magus like?" asked Fisher, frowning.
"Spooky," said Chance.
"Too bloody right," agreed the dog on the floor. "Makes my fur stand up on end every time he's anywhere near. Do you have any idea how painful that is? And he smells wrong."
"Let's put the Magus to one side, just for the moment," said Hawk. "Tell me about Harald. What happened to him after we left and he became King?"
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