“Come in, Vanxy,” she chuckled kindly. “Come see what’s become of Chelda Flar and the persistent little changeling girl we all thought had fallen to her death.”
The loud bang of the iron-bound door slamming shut told Thorn that Vanx had entered the chamber. He rushed to the latch, Poops growling and prancing frantically at his shoulder. The slide mechanism was higher than the little elf’s head, but he could reach it. Try as he might, though, it wouldn’t budge.
Poops suddenly whirled, his hackles springing to life along his back. The tone of his aggression went from frantic to savage. Thorn turned as well and saw a man-sized, leathery-winged, trollish beast. Its fanged ivory teeth and the bright pink of its flickering tongue contrasted wildly with its pitch-dark scales. The long shadow it cast on the curving wall, thrown from the next torch up the stairway, lent the feral creature a substantial amount of menace, but Thorn found he wasn’t afraid. Babd had already graced him once this night. It was clear he was meant to fight.
With little regard for his ruined arm, he stepped up besides Poops and drew forth the Glaive of Gladiolus.
The thing stepped down toward them, lowering its body into an anticipatory crouch. Casually it reached out one of its hands and dragged it along the stone wall. It licked its lips and flickered its tongue and made what might have been a smirking grin, or possibly a snarl. Then it dove at them.
“Babd be with us,” Thorn said under his breath as he stepped forward.
Poops took two powerful lunges up the stairs, then leapt to meet the monster mid-dive. His teeth missed the thing’s neck, but clamped down on a well-muscled shoulder. Filthy claws raked his fur deeply as the two half-spun and began tumbling down toward the elf. Thorn judged the roll, sidestepped to avoid gigging Poops by mistake, then sank his blade into the first scale-covered flesh he saw. There was a marrow-jarring jolt as the blade struck bone. When the momentum of the falling combatants threatened to tear the weapon from Thorn’s grip, he refused to let go and was yanked into the flailing tangle. The trio crashed violently into the wooden door, across the landing, and continued down the stairs in a limb-shattering cartwheel. When the knot of fur, skin and scales finally came to a halt, not one of the three was moving.
Chapter
Nineteen
My Molly said she loved me.
She said her heart was mine.
But I went I tried to go again,
she made me get back in line.
– Parydon Cobbles
“Have a look, Vanxy,” the Hoar Witch indicated the surface of the raised pool that dominated the cluttered chamber. The air was oily and had a moldy musk scent that was undercut by the faint stench of decay. Two torches added to the acrid mixture while throwing harsh yellow light in wavering pulses. The scene showing on the surface of the liquid was cloudy, but immediately recognizable. It stole Vanx’s attention.
Several of the Hoar Witch’s wolfen beasts were surrounding Chelda, who was on her back writhing and crying. Her neck and shoulder were covered in some dark, sticky-looking goo. A foot-tall bearded woman and a slightly taller gnomish girl looked to be tending the injury. The presence of the toothy beasts seemed to have unnerved them. They were now crouched and trembling against the fallen gargan woman’s side.
“Here,” the Hoar Witch dipped a finger in her drawstring bag and tossed it to Vanx. “Just a taste on your tongue and you’ll see it all so much more clearly.”
“What is it?” His contempt for her roiled his stomach. Only his worry for Chelda kept him from running her through with the sword he still held in his hand.
“Eyes and guts,” she cackled, probably at his distress. “Frog eyes, hawk eyes, fox livers, maybe even parts and pieces of a fairy or two. The taste is bad, but it does the trick.”
Vanx didn’t want to find out how the stuff tasted, but she had just dipped her own finger in and licked it, so he doubted it was poison.
Reluctantly he dipped his finger in the bag and touched it to his tongue.
She was right. The taste was so horrid that he gagged once from it. But also, as she said, the scene in her reflecting pool took on a surreal clarity. It was as if he was sitting in the trees himself watching Chelda from just a few dozen paces away.
The sound became clearer as well. What he’d thought was Chelda crying was actually her snarling and cursing. Vanx was glad to see that her spirit was still strong, and that her old sword was lying beside her on the gore-soaked turf. Its blade wasn’t alight, for the hilt wasn’t in her hand, but it was close enough that she could reach it if the attackers got any closer.
“Watch,” the Hoar Witch said, and as if she and Vanx had leapt into flight, the scene in the pool shimmered and drew closer to them. Vanx noticed that she was grasping tightly to the crystal dangling at her throat. He remembered the Zythian hawkers of his homeland had mounted crystals in their finger rings to help them control the birds. He figured that she had just commanded whatever winged creature, whose eyes they were seeing through, to leap from its perch and glide closer to Chelda.
Beyond where his gargan friend lay, he saw battle raging. Tiny arrows streaked by and the clashing and clanking of heated aggression sounded plainly. The squeaking calls of embattled fae, and gibbering, snarling animal calls came to his ears.
It was hard to say if it was day or night in the Shadowmane. The creature whose eyes they were seeing through took it all in as if it were dusk or dawn. Vanx could see the world in a similar fashion, in full darkness, so he could tell that it wasn’t broad daylight, for no distinct shadows were cast. Since he’d been underground so long, he had no idea.
At the peripheral edge of the image, smaller branches and tufts of heart-shaped leaves came crashing and swirling to the ground. The Heart Tree was being mauled, and by the amount of carnage spread about, it didn’t appear that the fairy folk would be able to do much other than slow the process with their lives.
Vanx was certain he could get his blade around quickly enough to remove Aserica Rime’s ugly head, but he didn’t want to sacrifice his friends by acting hastily. He could see that the wolfen beasts were not attacking Chelda, but they were itching to kill. The salivating hunger, the blood-lusting look of a feeding frenzy about to commence, showed plainly in their feral eyes. Vanx was sure that only Aserica Rime’s controlling power stood between them and their meal.
“You said something about Galla... Uh, the changeling girl?” Vanx corrected himself, and did his best to mask the anger that was burning inside him. It was all he could do to hold onto the slight tendril of hope that Gallarael was still alive somewhere, and only an eggshell-thin layer of restraint was keeping him from losing all control and attacking.
She must have sensed something.
“Let us have a look at the other one, shall we?”
She spoke quickly and with menace.
Outside the iron-bound witchwood door, the muffled sound of Poops’ aggression, then a heavy, bone-jarring crash jolted both Vanx and the Hoar Witch to the edge of defensive intensity. The sound sent the fires of Vanx’s emotion into an ember-fountaining rage. Only now, the image showing on the pool was of Princess Gallarael in her changeling form, gliding stiffly on her back across a sea of writhing rats. She was so rigid that Vanx had to assume the rigor mortis of death had long set in.
“She’s dead, then?” he asked.
“She’s very alive, only she is spellbound.”
Aserica’s glee faltered substantially when she saw a slimy tadpole-looking creature riding proudly on Gallarael’s chest as his rats shouldered her.
“The problem is, Pwca’s got her and I’ll have to free the little devil from my service to get her back.”
Vanx was boiling over now. He had no way of knowing if the Hoar Witch was lying to him or not. Gallarael looked to be dead and stiff, and she very well could be. Furthermore, he could feel that Poops was barely conscious and feeling a great, searing pain, in long strips, across his underbelly. And now the disgusting little turd of a thing r
iding atop Gallarael was grinning triumphantly up at them and exuding a thick, nauseating aura that threatened to loosen Vanx’s bowels.
“At the moment, killing me would be the most foolish thing, Vanxy,” said the Hoar Witch, stealing the thought from his brain.
Vanx glared at her and back at Gallarael’s image in the pool.
Worry for the immediate pain of his closest companion overtook his anger and he turned and strode toward the door.
“Go tend your familiar, young warlock,” Aserica Rime spoke as if it was a command, and then the door opened before him.
“I know you came to kill me, but even so, I will make a deal with a devil for the changeling’s life. I still hold hers and the barbarian’s fate in my hands. You’d be wise to keep yourself and that elf in check, lest I let my wolfen breed tear them apart.”
And all the while the rest of your horde is tearing the Heart Tree apart.
A grim weight was suddenly pressing down on his shoulders. If he killed the Hoar Witch and let Chelda and possibly Gallarael both die, then most likely the Hoar Witch’s beasts would abandon the greater destruction of the tree. Even if they didn’t, he could possibly use the crystal she wore to command them away. The uncertainty made the risk too great to accept. But the cold fact was that if he were sure it would guarantee the continued existence of an entire valley full of fairy life, he wouldn’t hesitate to give up the lives of the two women he cared deeply for.
It was a chilling revelation and in his heart and a darker aspect of his existence began to manifest itself. He and the fae were long-lived, but Gallarael and Chelda were mortal. Their fleeting lives were but a flash in the stream of existence. Of course he should be willing to trade them for the lives of hundreds of fae folk. Knowing this allowed a mantle of blackened resolve to settle over him. Only then did the course of action he needed to take become clear to him.
He turned and went back to kill her, but a faint, suggestive presence from deep within his heart stopped him before he took two steps.
“You’d sacrifice me?” The question wasn’t asked in clear words, but with thoughts formed of panicky animalistic simplicity.
“I am a part of you, yet I am a mortal creature even shorter-lived than the humans. Would you leave me down here to bleed to death while you discount your own ability and abandon all hope?”
The voice he heard speaking in his head was his own, but he knew it was Poops sending those suggestive thoughts to him. Or was the dog just evoking his own thoughts?
Without further hesitation, he charged down to his familiar with a singular purpose consuming his heart and mind.
He had almost stepped into the realm of darkness. He’d almost killed two of his closest friends and left a growing part of himself to die in a pool of blood and guts on a cold, stone floor.
Twice over, this day, he owed his life to Sir Poopsalot.
His assessment of his situation wasn’t far from the reality of it. Poops’ belly was open wide and though his intestines weren’t spread across the floor, they were bulging out of the long, bloody, clawed furrows along his belly. He doubted he could save him. The damage was just too bad.
Thorn was unconscious and sprawled in a horrific tangle of some scaly thing’s guts, but the Glaive of Gladiolus was still clutched in his white-knuckled grip. Something about the scene grabbed hold of Vanx’s mind, but it was long after he had cradled his four-legged friend’s head in his lap and gone into a fit of sobbing that it manifested into realization.
The damage to the black-scaled creature was impossible. Three steps farther down the stairway, a chunk of bloody gristle and long, stringy tissue connected to a pair of leathery wings. Formless puddles of scaly hide lay around an uncovered torso of raw, pink-glazed musculature. It was as if the creature had been blasted apart. Understanding of what he was actually seeing filled Vanx with hope. He laid Poops’ head back and forced Thorn’s clinched fingers off the hilt of the Glaive.
Vanx said a quick prayer to the Goddess for strength, for if this didn’t work he would have to spend every bit of his remaining energy to heal as many of Poops’ wounds as possible. Afterward he’d be spell-spent and useless for days.
Gently, he prodded Poops with the sharp tip of the Glaive. At once his heart sank, but then he was rewarded with a thunderous jolt that caused him to drop the dagger-sized weapon and nearly stumble down the stairs. When he recovered himself, he was pleased to see his familiar licking curiously at the long, well-closed scars that ran along his underside. The feeling of love and relief that washed over Vanx through the link he and Poops shared was almost enough to make him forget that the lives of both Chelda and Gallarael still hung in the balance. He just had to find a way to keep it from tipping out of control. He wanted to save his two mortal friends, but rid the world of the Hoar Witch and salvage as much of the Saint Elm’s Deep as possible.
The only question was how.
Another jolt from the Glaive as it punctured Thorn’s skin didn’t come as such a surprise, but the wild-eyed look the elf gave him as he sat up and peeled away the ropes of entrails that draped him was almost comedic. Vanx couldn’t find enough mirth to laugh, though.
“Why didn’t it rend apart that crazy cow-man down in the cavern?” the elf asked after Vanx explained what had happened.
“Because the minotaur wasn’t witchborn. It was real.” He’d known that as soon as he had figured out what had happened to the black-scaled beast whose separate parts were strung all about the stairway.
“She’s got Chelda,” Vanx said. “And, as we speak, the Heart Tree is being torn limb from limb, but I think I have an idea.”
A few moments later, Vanx led them all back up to the Hoar Witch’s lookout. A deep and confident masculine voice cut off as they stepped into the room.
“It’s too much, Puck,” the Hoar Witch snapped at the little flipper limbed devil that had been speaking. The thing radiated evil as it stood there dripping on the rim of her pool. “Keep the wench. What is she to me?” Aserica asked. “I’ll just save the last deed you own me for a few hundred years and let you think about it.”
A growl that could have come from a mammoth rumbled from the little thing. It’s deep voice grated when it replied.
“You won’t live forever, witch. The dark one has tolerated you too long already.”
The devil turned its head toward Vanx and its wide mouth split into an annoying grin. Both Poops and Thorn took a step back.
“You may be right, Aserica,” the slimy creature continued. “Let’s hold off on that last bargain, for if this young warlock manages to have his way, I will be free of you and still have the girl. He is the one who wants her so. I can see it in his eyes. You don’t even know who she is. If I can’t have my freedom, and the Tokaton for her, I’ll keep her and wait you out. She’s even more valuable than that old gem is.”
Pwca’s grin wavered, and his tiny, pinhead eyes seemed to reach into Vanx’s skull and command his complete focus on the image his next words evoked.
“She could easily be used to fantastic effect.”
Vanx saw in his mind’s eye the entire Parydonian host marching behind Gallarael’s father and his powerful order of wizards. King Oakarm would most likely end up submitting to the devil’s will to save Gallarael, but only after he ground his army away in an unwinnable battle.
The slimy little devil couldn’t be allowed such an opportunity.
Vanx understood that Pwca was only fueling his desire to kill Aserica Rime, but now he knew that if he did, he would have to make a deal with the devil to save Gallarael, and that sort of consorting with the powers of the dark was exactly what his Goddess had warned him about. When he glanced at the confused—and now raging—Hoar Witch, the little tadpole devil made a mock imitation of the Hoar Witch’s cackle, plopped into the pool and was gone.
Chapter
Twenty
On an old barrel keg,
in the shade I sat.
With my pint of watered ale,
and that skinny old cat.
– Parydon Cobbles
The fact that the Hoar Witch hadn’t made her deal with Pwca put a damper on Vanx’s simple plan. He’d hoped to get both Chelda and Gallarael together, and under the guard of the wolfen pack before he made his move. He didn’t want to deal with the devil at all, but it seemed he wouldn’t have a choice. His signal for Thorn and Poops to act had been set already and he could imagine no way to immediately change the plan.
As if she was reading his mind, the Hoar Witch indicated one of the two oval, beveled mirrors that hung on the wall adjacent to each other. The faintest trace of a dockside scene appeared deep in one of them, but it was the other one she was pointing at now. “That mirror will let you see the possible futures that await this land if Pwca gets control of the Tokaton.”
He still didn’t know if she knew who Gallarael was, and he gave her nothing but a jaw-clenched glare of fury and unease. Reluctantly, he moved to stand before the mirror. The Hoar Witch spoke a few words of witchy portent and made a quick gesture with her hand. Vanx was close enough to kill her, but once again the images she set to life captured his attention. A whirl of blurred motion assaulted his senses, but it all played out in his mind at a comprehensible pace.
Pwca took the fist-sized gem, which Vanx assumed was the Tokaton, and hurried back into the upper planes of hell with it. From there he worked all sorts of evil mischief, but that wasn’t what Aserica Rime wanted him to see. Ships came to Oryndyn loaded, not with precious wood and trade items, but with platoons of Trigon soldiers, all bearing blue-glowing, spell-forged blades. They cut through the good folk of the frozen city like scythes through wheat, and then split off into smaller groups to run down the Skmoe clans and gargan trading caravans. More ships came, and soon they were turning their aggressive affections to Parydon and eventually Zyth.
That Frigid Fargin Witch (The Legend of Vanx Malic) Page 12