The Foundling (The Hidden Realm)

by A. Giannetti

  Anger at the dark king of the Goblins and resentment of his fate made his pale eyes gleam in the dark with a feral light. A red rage washed over him, banishing all thought for a moment, as the animal part of his nature became dominant. His thick, furred tail lashed his powerful flanks while his sharp, hook shaped claws sheathed and unsheathed themselves. Had any living thing appeared near him then, he would have torn it asunder without a thought and lapped its warm blood with his coarse red tongue.

  Slowly, the haze lifted from his mind and intelligence returned. As he waited for the Goblins to distance themselves in the forest, he continued to mull over his past. “‘Find any Elves who may have survived the destruction of Fimbria,’ he commanded me as if I alone was responsible for their escape.”

  “Only when you destroy them all, will I make you a man again and give you the immortality of the Urucs,’ he said to me before unjustly turning me out into the wilderness.” Drusus hissed softly for a moment like an angry cat at the injustice of it. Forced to obey the order of the Goblin king if he was to have any hope of regaining his lost humanity, Drusus had traveled far and wide across the Middle Realm. Many Men and Dwarves had become victims of his powers to mesmerize and command. Before killing his terrified, helpless victims, Drusus had questioned each of them closely, delighting in the fear and the pain he inflicted on them during his inquisitions. From the bits and pieces of information that he had wrung from his victims, he had learned that all the Elves who had survived the torching of their home- land had fled over the western sea except for two. Of these two, one, he knew for certain, was dead. He had followed the cold trail of the second Elf into the wilderness south of the Elvorix where his wood craft had finally failed him. He had lost her trail, but he had not abandoned the search except for the rare times when his malice and anger drove him to find men on whom he might vent his anger. Only the taste of warm, human blood cooled his rage at these times.

  More by accident than design, he had finally discovered the hidden home of the Elf who had eluded him, deep in the Abercius. He had spied on the inhabitants, for she was no longer alone, hoping to slay them one at a time, but their woodcraft equaled his own. They became aware of him, and then the hunter became the hunted as they pursued him through the forest, even into the treetops along the upper pathways which had always saved him from pursuit before. He snarled softly in fear and anger as he recalled their glittering eyes and gleaming weapons.

  It had taken all his skill to escape, and he had not dared to return alone. Instead, he had made the long journey north to Nefandus to seek help from the Goblin king. Traveling only under cover of darkness, for he hated the light of the sun and moon, he had journeyed through the wilds of Ancharia and across the bleak waste that was Fimbria until he finally reached the uninviting land of the Goblins. Despite his stealthy ways, he was captured long before he reached the gates of Ossarium, the dark fortress of Torquatus, and taken into the fortress in chains.

  Once he revealed his news, however, he was readily ad-mitted into the presence of the king who flattered him and had tender, bloody meats set before him to satisfy his hunger. Cunningly, Drusus had concealed the anger he felt against Torquatus, acting instead the part of a loyal servant. Humbly, he had asked for help and had received it. When he returned to the South, he was accompanied by a pack of lupins and a strong troop of Urucs, his spirits buoyed by the renewed promise of his manhood and the boon of immortality if he succeeded in ridding the Middle Realm of the last Elf.

  Traveling at night, for the Goblins also hated the light of the sun, he had swiftly led the troop of tall black clad Urucs to the hidden refuge in the Abercius. It was a strong place and well defended by magic, but Sarius, the captain of the troop and a powerful mage in his own right, had broken through the defenses, and the Urucs had destroyed two of the inhabitants at great cost to themselves. Drusus had slain the third, the female he had pursued for so many years, but a boy, whose existence he had not suspected before, had escaped him. Only Drusus had seen him flee, but Sarius had dared not question his word when he summoned the Urucs to begin a pursuit. The Goblin captain’s orders were clear. There must be no survivors, or all their lives were forfeit.

  Sarius had set the two surviving lupins on the child’s track, and he and the four Urucs who had survived the battle followed, reluctantly abandoning the warm bodies of their enemies and any plunder they might have found inside the home. Running swiftly behind the lupins, Drusus and the Goblins followed the boy south, never quite catching up to either him or the lupins that pursued him. With an uncanny skill for one so young, he had broken his trail by wading in water and taking to the trees. It had taken every ounce of woodcraft the lupins possessed to follow him.

  Driven by an intense desire to be in on the kill, Drusus had also eventually outstripped the Goblins and had managed to arrive at the scene of the fight between Balbus and the lupins well ahead of them. As the first drops of rain began to fall, his sensitive nose had told him immediately that, despite the bloody evidence on the ground, the boy was alive and in the company of a Hesperian who was known to Drusus, for he had crossed Balbus’s track in the forest before, and had once followed it as far as the boundary hedge which separated Balbus’s farm from the forest. The unexpected storm forced him to take refuge for a time in a shallow cave. Not bothering to wait for the Goblins, he had arrived at the farm after the storm broke, but the sun had forced him into hiding before he could force his way into the farmhouse.

  Without bothering to summon his Goblin allies, he had returned tonight to kill the boy, a pleasure he did not mean to share with anyone. When the Urucs unexpectedly appeared under the very tree that was his hiding place, he had hovered over them anxiously, like an evil shadow, until they departed.

  “Good riddance to them,” thought Drusus to himself when he was at last satisfied that there was no chance the Goblins would return. He glided over the ground on silent paws to the place where Rufius’s dark blood still stained the brown leaves which covered the ground under the trees. With a broad, rough, pink tongue, he tasted some of the fresh blood that had pooled on the leaves, and his eyes glittered in the starlight with a hard, cold light.

  The blood only whetted his thirst for more, but more would soon be forthcoming. The sun had interrupted him yesterday, but now the whole night stretched out before him; he would not be denied again. Tonight, Elven blood would wash away all the suffering he had endured these many years. “I, alone, will have the pleasure of killing him and drinking his blood,” thought Drusus to himself, fairly shivering with pleasure at the thought. “When I return to Nefandus with the head of the last Elf in the Middle Realm, Torquatus will be forced to return me to my old shape as he promised so long ago. With my old powers restored and the immortality of the Urucs to keep death at bay, I may, in time, challenge Torquatus himself and revenge myself for all the suffering he has inflicted upon me,” he thought craftily to himself.

  Standing on his hind legs, he eagerly lifted the gate latch with his short, powerful fingers. After opening the gate, he dropped once more onto all fours. On wide, silent paws, Drusus stole quietly up the track leading to the farmhouse, his pale, cold eyes gleaming in the darkness with reflected starlight. When he neared the farmhouse, some faint sound that he made was borne on the still night air to alert Carbo, or perhaps it was some sixth sense which roused the dog from sleep, for he lifted up his head and pricked up his sharp ears.

  Drusus began to circle the farmhouse on all fours, a shadowy, unnatural figure in the darkness. From his face, there was a gleam now and then of pale light from his cold eyes. When he stopped and snuffled the ground softly, like a hound on a scent, the sound carried to Carbo, and the long hairs bristled up on the back of his neck, but as yet, he made no sound.

  Outside the farmhouse, Drusus stopped and crouched on his haunches, a baffled look on his face and his twisted mind full of confusion. This was the house he had tried to break into yesterday, but his sensitive nose told him the boy was no long
er here. From inside the farmhouse, he caught only the scent of the old man and that of a younger Hesperian. Drusus also scented the dog and knew that it was awake and aware of his presence, but he did not care about that.

  A fit of rage swept through him at being denied his prey, rage that could only be quenched by blood, but he wasted no time in trying to break into the house tonight. From his last visit here the night before, he knew that its defenses were strong. Instead, he sent a silent call into the house, putting all the strength of his will and the intensity of his rage behind it.

  Inside the stout walls of the farmhouse, Balbus awoke, roused from sleep by an insistent command to open his door. When the fog of sleep cleared, Balbus found he was already sitting up, and beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he struggled to resist the silent command which assaulted his mind. Carbo whined and paced helplessly by the bedside as he saw Balbus’s distress. The command grew in strength, stoked to a greater intensity than the last time by Drusus’ rage and frustration. Balbus felt a great fear wash over him at the thought of what waited for him outside. He knew that tonight he would open the door, not the shutters on the window.

  Outside the farmhouse, triumph flooded through Drusus as he felt Balbus’s will to resist crumble. In a few moments, the door would open. He would enter the farmhouse, then, and tear the inhabitants to bloody pieces. Drusus leaped expectantly toward the door and then stopped in confusion. A barrier to his will had suddenly sprung up inside the farmhouse. He found that he could no longer reach the mind of Balbus or any of the other inhabitants. Snarling softly in frustration, Drusus probed the barrier, looking for a weakness, but it was like a wall of smooth stone. He could neither breach it nor get any hold upon it. Hissing and spitting in anger, he reluctantly gave up his attempt to force his will on the inhabitants of the house.

  Without any real hope of success, he tested his weight against the door. The wood creaked in protest but did not give way. Still searching for some sign or scent of the boy he wanted so badly, Drusus nosed about for a time. Finally, he gave that up, too. Reluctantly, he returned to the edge of the forest, climbing back into the tree he had occupied before. The fires of his rage still smoldered, but over the long years, he had learned patience. A few more days of waiting would make no difference. He would watch and wait for another opportunity. The Elf had been here once. He might appear here again.

  Inside the loft of the farmhouse, sensing that the danger was past, Elerian slipped his small hand from Balbus’s broad, weathered right hand. Tonight, Carbo’s uneasy whine had instantly roused him from sleep, for he had not been lost in any unnatural slumber like the night before. He had seen immediately that Balbus was acting strangely, and speeding silently across the wooden floor of the loft in his bare feet, he had gripped Balbus’s left hand in his own small right hand.

  From the moment that Elerian’s hand had touched his own, Balbus had felt the compulsion to open the front door vanish. He had clung to Elerian’s hand like a drowning man who grasps a rock which suddenly and unexpectedly rears itself up in the midst of a raging river, watching as Elerian’s eyes gleamed in the darkness, lit with a hidden power as he struggled to deflect the will of the creature that waited out in the night.

  After releasing Balbus’s hand, Elerian returned to his bed, acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Carbo settled down once more on his rug in front of the fire, for his ears told him that Drusus had returned to the forest.

  Hardly able to believe that he had escaped a second attack from the venetor, Balbus wiped the sweat from his brow with the right sleeve of his nightshirt, and rising quietly from his bed, descended the stairs from the loft. Making his way to the kitchen, he opened the mage lamp on the table. Pouring himself a glass of mead by its yellow light, he downed the strong drink in two gulps.

  “It is fortunate that Elerian retained his powers,” thought Balbus to himself as the heat of the drink ran through his veins and steadied his nerves. “Tonight there is no doubt that I would have opened the door for the creature. Why has it returned again?” he wondered. “Is it possible that the creature is bound up in the fate of Elerian as Tullius suspected? Two visits in two nights seems more than chance to me.”

  No answer came to his questions, and Balbus eventually returned to the loft and lay down, but sleep eluded him. In his mind’s eye, he saw the cold, glittering eyes of the venetor each time he closed his heavy eyelids, and at any moment, he expected to feel another command to open his front door to the terrible creature. At the first hint of dawn through the cracks in the shutters, Balbus rose from his bed. At once, Carbo began to whine and pace restlessly about the room. Elerian came awake instantly in his bed by the fireplace, passing from sleep to full alertness like a wild thing. No hint of drowsiness dimmed his bright eyes as he stared questioningly at Balbus.

  “Go back to sleep,” said Balbus reassuringly. “It is early yet.”

  As Elerian snuggled back into his warm covers, Balbus went downstairs and lifted the bar on the door. Cautiously, he unlocked the door and opened it to let Carbo out; but instead of going through the open doorway, Carbo gently took Balbus’s right hand between his teeth and began tugging him out the door.

  “All right Carbo,” said Balbus with a smile. “Let me get my walking stick first, and I will go with you. Sometimes I wish you could talk. It would save both of us a great deal of time.”

  Carbo let go of Balbus’s hand and waited patiently for him to take his walking stick down from the peg by the door. As an afterthought, Balbus also thrust his knife through his belt. When Balbus followed Carbo out the door, he saw the marks of padded feet in the grass by the door, and guessed that the venetor had stood there as it attempted to call him out of his house.

  “Was it after me or the boy?” he wondered again.

  Carbo seemed to have no interest in the tracks, for he led Balbus straight to the tall gate that led through the boundary hedge. The gate was already open, and Carbo sprang through the gap in the hedge and walked about under the overhanging branches of the trees, nose to the ground as he investigated the scents on the ground. Balbus warily walked over to Carbo, wondering if the venetor was still about, but Drusus had vanished with the rising sun to seek some dark shelter in the forest.

  Balbus examined the ground Carbo was sniffing and saw at once that the leaves under the trees had been scuffed and compressed by a number of booted feet. In the center of the disturbed area, a great deal of blood stained the leaves. Balbus stared thoughtfully at the blood and the tracks. It seemed that the venetor was not his only visitor last night. He suspected that the owners of those tracks had been watching his house through the gap in the hedge. It was not difficult to guess what they had been looking for.

  “Do the owners of those boots know I have Elerian or did they come here by chance?” wondered Balbus in a sudden panic. “Do I dare wait and find out? What if they are Goblins as Tullius suspects?”

  An unreasoning fear urged him to take Elerian and run as far and fast as he might, but gradually, Balbus’s common sense reasserted itself. The owners of the boots had not come up to the house so it was reasonable to assume that they did not know Elerian was hiding there. “Perhaps,” Balbus thought to himself, “the disguise Tullius gave the boy has thrown them off the track. Better to stand firm and wait, I think. If I bolt and run now, they will suspect something is wrong and follow me.”

  He inspected the blood on the leaves again and wondered where it had come from. Was it possible that two of the watchers had gotten into an argument involving knives? “Perhaps they will finish each other off and solve all my problems for me,” thought Balbus hopefully to himself. He followed the boundary hedge to the right of the gate, looking for more tracks. The hedge described a gradual arc first to the north and then west as it skirted the border of Balbus’s fields. It finally ended at the edge of a sharp drop of more than a hundred feet. There were no other signs of any intruders, and with Carbo trailing along behind him, Balbus ret
urned to the gate once more. He searched for a short distance along the hedge to the south, but neither he nor Carbo found anything to concern them.

  Balbus returned to the gate for a second time. He stared into the forest for a long moment before going back through the gate. Carbo would have detected any strangers near the farm immediately, so he did not think he was being watched now. “More than likely, Elerian and I are safe enough while the sun is high in the sky,” Balbus thought to himself. “All of my unwelcome visitors seem to prefer the cover of darkness. Will they return again tonight when night falls?” he wondered uneasily to himself as he walked back toward his house.

  SARIUS IS DECEIVED

  After leaving Balbus’s farm, Sarius led his band through the forest, walking downhill along the same faint path Balbus often took when he wished to reach the lowland forests. Almost as woods crafty as Elves and able to see into the darkest shadows, the Urucs slipped silently through the trees, walking in single file as Sarius led them unerringly toward the place where they had last heard the lupins howl. If Calerus, who was last in line, felt the burden of the body he carried, it did not show in his stride, for he moved along as easily as the rest.

  They entered the Abercius, and when he judged they had traveled far enough, Sarius stopped. He was, had he only known it, not far from the place where Balbus had battled the two lupins. Turning to his small band, he said, “Search the forest for any sign of the lupins or the Elf but take care, for we are within the borders of the Wild Wood.”