That Frigid Fargin Witch (The Legend of Vanx Malic)

by M. R. Mathias

  “When will we go into this rotted root cave?” Vanx asked.

  His tone made it plain that he didn’t want to linger any longer than necessary. The battle berries still had him eager to get on with it.

  “All too soon,” Thorn reassured him as he urged Poops to stand and then climbed onto the dog’s back. “Now come on. Let’s get something to eat and fill our skins. I have to find some more battle berries and eat at least a bushel of them, or you’ll never get me into that foul passage.”

  Chapter

  Twelve

  Cold words cut like a knife,

  right through my heart they steal my life.

  They tear my heart open wide,

  until there’s nothing left inside.

  – A Zythian bard’s song

  Gallarael’s first instinct was to pause and consider the wrongness of the valley that spread out below her before she rushed down into it, but that wasn’t an option. Behind her came Darl on his ramma mount and behind them, the other ramma followed. Right on its tail was another of the freakish wolfen creatures. This one was covered in grey-blue scales, with a head that looked to be part horse, part viper. Swooping out of the sky was a vicious creature of talons and feathers. It was as big as a man and it might have been wolfen, too, but Gallarael’s eyes couldn’t hold it long enough to tell.

  “Into the trees!” she yelled, and barely beat Darl’s ramma in a headlong charge down a semi-steep grade right into the Lurr forest.

  What had given her pause about the valley was that it was green. It was rich with spring growth in the middle of a range of frigid mountains. A hazy, irregular dome hovered over the basin and even though snow fell all around and onto that invisible barrier, it didn’t build up, or allow anything to pass through it.

  There was also the glittering crystal tower that jutted up through the treetops at the base of the valley’s crook. The valley eventually opened up into the convergence of a flat, silver expanse of water and more sharp, snow-covered mountains.

  There was a sizeable clearing in the forest. Centered in this glade was a giant elm tree which towered over the others, matching the crystal tower in height. Before they encountered the canopy, Gallarael had marked that location as her intended destination and tried to lead Darl that way. It only occurred to her then, when she ducked and darted her way below the low-hanging branches and the open terrain between them, that the gargan was no longer behind her.

  She stopped her momentum and spun back to search for him. It took her a moment, because she had come so much farther down into the valley than he had. Now it was as if the trunks of spruce, cedar, elm and oak sought to block her view, but she eventually found him and was off to his aid without a thought.

  Darl sat on his terrified ramma mount, his left arm tugging down on…what? A rope? No. It was the lead lines to her ramma. She looked up to see part of it dangling from the limbs above.

  “Let it go,” she called out.

  She saw plainly the blue-tinted wolfen as it darted through the darker greens and browns of the off-seasoned forest. It was heading toward Darl, and gaining speed to make a leap at him.

  “Your beast!” Darl yelled back. He hauled mightily down on the line and Gallarael saw the claws that were clutching her ramma when a shower of leaves and feathers came down around him.

  A sound that was a cross between an eagle’s cry and a mountain cat’s roar filled the forest.

  “Cut it loose!” Gallarael screamed, but her voice was drowned out.

  She realized then she had no weapons. A bow would’ve been ideal, for she could at least have slowed the charging wolfen with an arrow. The winged thing wasn’t letting go of her ramma and Darl still hadn’t let go of its line. As much strength as her changeling ability gave her, she could do nothing from where she was, so she leaned into a quadrupedal lope and ran with all the strength her condition afforded her.

  The grey-blue wolfen was but a streak through the trees now and it was closing on Darl with uncanny speed.

  Gallarael pushed her limbs to the limits, trying to beat the creature to him, but she knew she couldn’t. Even as she closed to leaping distance, the scale-covered beast was in midair. Its slavering viper fangs were bared and all its substantial weight was coming behind it. She had to slow her charge, for if she pounced now she would get Darl as well.

  “No!” she found herself screaming, as she flashed past the collision and spun to position herself to tear the beast off of her companion. She heard the ramma keen in terror and saw a kaleidoscope of scale and fur. Darl was rolled around where she could see the anguish in his face; then she was splattered by a misty spray of bright scarlet blood.

  By the luck of the gods, Darl was pulling so hard on the lead lines to Gallarael’s ramma that when the leather strap finally snapped and gave way, he went toppling backward on his own mount. He avoided the claws and fangs of the wolf beast, but that was where his luck ended. His ramma was knocked sideways and splayed open by the sheer momentum of the attack.

  Darl’s left leg was caught in the stirrup. Before he even hit the ground he was violently jerked around. His left ankle twisted to an impossible angle when he landed. Along his spine he felt a horrible crunch, as if he had landed on a pile of deadfall. He hadn’t even seen the creature that had nearly ripped his torso from his body, but he felt its strength as it yanked and shook the ramma with which he was still tangled.

  Then Gallarael was there.

  Darl tried to throw the dagger he held in his right hand up at the winged creature above them, but he couldn’t move. Luckily, it was trying to get up out of the high branches into which it had gotten tangled. It was still clutching the limp, bloody ramma in its talons.

  Gallarael didn’t see Darl lying in the brambles. All she saw was glistening red muscle, fresh blood, and a mess of entrails and gore. Her rage sent her tearing into the wolfen.

  She raked it along the side and found that its scales kept her from digging deep but didn’t keep her nails from penetrating, so she spun and jabbed, ducked and lunged and stabbed some more. When the beast got hold of her shoulder, she rolled free of it, breaking off one of its teeth and leaving it stuck in her uncannily durable skin. It didn’t matter, though, because in the span of five heartbeats her arms and face were covered in sticky life’s blood and fingernail-sized grey-blue scales.

  Only after a savage, primal roar escaped her body did she notice Darl lying there, still in one piece. The rise and fall of his chest gave her hope, but his right arm was poised like a statue and his leg was twisted, in a way which spoke of breaks below the surface of the skin.

  She used what was left of her coat to wipe the blood and scales from her face. Her elk hide pants were torn down the side on one thigh, but she welcomed the air that found her sweltering skin. As carefully as she could, she untangled Darl’s leg, laid it straight, and rolled him on his side. His bow was still intact but the gut string had snapped. Several of the arrows in the quiver he carried were broken and useless, but the majority of them were still good.

  Darl moaned then and straightened his arm. A spray of spittle erupted though clenched teeth as the bone ground like gravel in his elbow joint. When he opened his eyes and saw Gallarael’s feral red gaze hovering over him, he screamed.

  “Hush,” she hissed. “You’ll draw them to us.” But it was too late. The winged beast had betrayed their location to the witchwood trees and others, and they were all closing in.

  “Help me,” a voice spoke from the side near another waist-high bramble. Gallarael looked up and saw Xavian standing there. He had a pained expression on his face and tears flowed freely down his cheeks. She rose and started toward him, but his face contorted and his eyes told her no.

  “Run,” he said.

  But then he convulsed as the whole section of forest came alive. She was nearly shocked stupid when she saw him, his lower half in the maw of a living tree, while the rest of him was wrapped snuggly in limb and branch.

  Gallarael ducked a
swinging limb and dove toward where Darl still lay. Roughly, she picked the gargan up and shouldered him, then she started down into the forest. Behind her the witchwood, with Xavian’s upper half hanging out of its maw, moved halfheartedly to catch her.

  Gallarael ran until her legs were rubbery and lathered with a foamy, horse-like sweat. She would have kept running but Darl began insisting that she let him down. He tried to walk and could, if gingerly.

  “My arm is broken,” he said. “The ankle’s only been twisted.”

  They hobbled along at Darl’s snail pace and Darl used his skill to their advantage. Twice he had Gallarael lead a false trail away. Finally, when he could go no more, Darl collapsed into a heap of exhaustion.

  Gallarael slid down the trunk of a nearby tree to watch over him. She was exhausted, too. She had never been in her changeling form this long. The old wizard Quasar had warned her that prolonged exposure to this other self might cause more permanent changes to occur in her body. At the moment she couldn’t afford to care. She needed the keener senses and added protection her strange skin gave her. She had to find Vanx and help him. He had braved ogre clubs, and slave chains, and even the den of the great dragon Pyra when she was poisoned. She would do no less for him.

  It startled her when Darl shook her awake some time later.

  “Shhh.”

  “Listen.”

  It was dark and very little moonlight filtered down through the lush green canopy.

  She heard them, though. Over the cicadas and the buzzing insects there were heavy wingbeats and the padding sounds of four-legged creatures. It sounded as if they were searching, but hadn’t yet found their prey. She heard something else too, a grumbled murmuring, but it faded as the searchers neared.

  “Can you run?” she mouthed.

  Darl nodded with a tight look on his face.

  “I can smell where they are,” Gallarael rasped. “Follow me and we will sneak away.”

  Darl nodded. It was a far better prospect than running. Even creeping lightly hurt him. Each step he took jarred his shattered arm.

  They made it a good hundred yards away from their previous position and were about to switch from a crawling crouch to an upright walk when the horrible sound of the roaring knotholes erupted just a dozen paces behind Darl. From there it was a mad dash.

  Darl only made it a few steps before a rough bark-covered lash wrapped his ankle and tripped him.

  When Gallarael realized that Darl wasn’t behind her this time, she turned to see him dangling upside down over the wide-open knothole of a witchwood tree.

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  There are many ways to skin a cat,

  or so the saying’s said.

  But it takes a witch to kill a witch,

  or at least to keep one dead.

  – Frosted Soul

  Chelda hadn’t known what to expect when she was led up a winding tunnel by a pair of pixie men clad in garish plate mail. There were smudges of brownish-red blood dried on the pixies’ armor, and they were carrying silvery swords that would have seemed like table dirks, at best, in her hands. Her escorts didn’t say much about what waited above, other than to tell her that the Shadowmane extended beyond the protective ring of lasher vine shrubs and blood thorns, but not by much.

  “The presence of your spell-forged steel will be a great boon against the larger foes. But you will have to mind your footing ‘round the brownies and gnomes. They are quick with their needles but most are untrained. They fight in packs and you could crush them three at a time with one misstep.”

  “Then warn them to stay clear of me,” Chelda snorted, “for I will be cleaving meat and bone, not poking pinholes.”

  “I like her,” the other pixie warrior chuckled, and they continued up in silence.

  The lift stopped and they stepped into a short passage that ended in a stone arc similar to the one they had entered in the fairy mound. This arch was sizably bigger and the stonework was of a far higher quality, with leafy, eye-blurring magic symbols carved all around the opening. The opening itself was an opaque sheen of sparkling quicksilver and when the first pixie walked through, it was as if he were walking into a liquid wall and disappearing as he went.

  “It’s alright,” said the other pixie, noticing the look on her face. “Just remember, if the way is not open, you have to go around the Heart Tree five times to your right as you face the trunk, for it to reveal itself.”

  He went through then, and with a great sigh of resignation, Chelda followed.

  An explosive sensation greeted her. The tunnel had been silent and dim. She hadn’t expected such an abrupt change. Her eyes were suddenly filled with dazzling sights and more shades of green than she thought possible. Her ears, however, were filled with the shouts, screams and clanging of battle. There was a gibbering, high-pitched cackle; deep, rumbling snarls; and the plinking thrum of tiny bows. There was also the heat. It hit her like a wet blanket and forced her to shrug out of her coat, leaving her upper half clad in naught but a thin undershirt and a padded vest.

  As she glanced around the glade-like oval of open ground surrounding the Heart Tree, she wished she had some plated gauntlets and thicker, knee-high boots. The battle berries were still working on her, though, so she started out toward a bearish monstrosity that was getting the better of a trio of pike-wielding elves. From overhead and behind her an arrow streaked down into the creature’s shoulder. It reared up and one of the elves darted in, stabbing deeply into its belly. Chelda looked back as she drew her ancient sword. Craning her head, she saw that the Heart Tree towered above the rest of the forest. Among the branches were elven archers, pixies, fairies and sprites; they were fluttering and buzzing around it, some with arms full of arrows and sling stones and others with bows and slings of their own. From the base of the tree’s massive trunk there were twenty paces of open ground in any direction, and it was sparsely littered with the bodies of the dead. A few were creatures of scale and fur, but most were tiny, jewel-winged fairies and sprites, or child-sized corpses still clad in brightly enameled armor.

  At the edge of the clearing was a thirty-foot-high fortification of growth: trees, shrubs and thorny vines all woven together to form a wall around the area. It was at the barrier, and presumably beyond it, where most of the fighting was taking place.

  Chelda heard a savage growl and a high-pitched yell, and she spun around to see that the bear-beast had gotten its teeth into the elf who had stabbed it. It shook him violently and crunched his chest as it kept the other elves at bay with a huge claw.

  The battle lust filled Chelda then, and she was off, her bright blade glowing the same color as the sky.

  The thing never saw her coming, and her enchanted steel cleaved down through its thick skull, splitting through half of its snout. The other elves screamed out in surprised horror when the blood and flecks of gray matter went splattering across them.

  Chelda kicked an elf out of harm’s away just as a long, thin-clawed arm, covered in yellowish gray scales, shot out of the bramble to snatch him.

  Chelda brought the blade down as if she were chopping wood with an ax. But the unseen creature withdrew its limb just ahead of her sword.

  “Duck,” she heard a thin voice call out.

  She turned to see who was yelling at whom and slightly dropped down as she stepped back from the forest wall. She saw the elf she’d booted pointing just above her head and realized the warning was for her. It was too late to comply when something hard, yet squishy, hit her in the temple and sent an explosion of pain and bright, blinding liquid across the backside of her head. Then she knew she was looking up at sky and the worried face of a blueberry-haired female the size of a doll.

  “You have to watch out for them rot melon singing trollamonks,” the gnomish medika chided sharply. Her plum-sized head and wild blue hair, along with her luminous amber eyes, gave her an alien look that sent a shiver down Chelda’s spine. “They get high up in the trees and throw them
terrible witch-made fruits right at you.”

  Chelda blinked and felt a raw, stinging sensation across her cheek and forehead. Her skin was burning as if it had been dashed with boiling hot molasses. She reached to touch it, but the gnomish girl stopped her. “Don’t touch the salve,” she chirped. “Let it be. Just be more careful.” And with that the little gnome was gone.

  Chelda rose up just in time to see Gloryvine Moonseed. Chelda recognized her from the pixie queen’s dying vision. The brave elven warrior stepped into the archway that led back into the Underland. Her bright yellow armor had been covered in gore. She didn’t look pleased to be going into the arch and Chelda suddenly hoped that the brave little fighter hadn’t been injured.

  With that thought, Chelda sat up and picked up her sword, and charged toward a brown-and-green-striped wolfen who had just managed to get into the clearing.

  The creature’s back was lined with several parallel slices where the thorny undergrowth had sought to contain it. Shifting its orange eyes, it searched for something to crush or claw, but gave no sign that the wounds were painful.

  The beast faltered for a beat when it saw Chelda’s size and the bright blue flash of her weapon, but it didn’t flee. Instead it dodged to the side of her first stroke and proceeded to dart in and sink its teeth just above her knee. The beast jerked once, ripping skin and muscle, and then it darted away before her sword came down in a two-handed overhead stab.

  Chelda ignored the pain. The rush of the battle berries helped. This time when she went in, she swung clumsily and left some leg open just like before. When the beast went in for the trap, her other foot caught it full in the gut and lifted it off of the grass in a lung-emptying “Oomph.”