Gideon swore.
"Estergraethe's sent us through both space and time," he said. "We're at the Lodge, but too late to prevent the druids from slaughtering these fighters."
"But not too late to prevent the fighters from slaughtering us," Viridia said.
The crows that had chased the fog dropped from the sky, mocking the bards in their eager anticipation of meat.
Chapter Thirteen
Blood Pastorale
The situation's impossible," Gideon said. "I don't want to seek shelter with the druids. Or face a hundred frothers."
"So, how do we make it possible?" Viridia answered.
"Hide," Ozrif said.
He gestured toward a tumble of boulders offering concealing nooks and crannies. They scrambled between the rocks, and from there watched the fog-maddened guards approach amid the vapors that engulfed them like the silk around a clutch of spider eggs.
"We all see it, don't we?" said Viridia.
"Perhaps repeated exposure makes us sensitive to it," Ozrif said. "Or perhaps it grows brazen."
"I think we'll have one chance to break the spell," Gideon said. "As they pass this way, I'll use Leothric's magical fan."
"And if that isn't enough?" Viridia said.
"As soon as I've used the fan, you and Ozrif had best employ your bardic talents to the fullest. Coax, cajole, scare them away from the lodge."
"It's possible the druids won't be as bloodthirsty as you imagine," Ozrif said. "We've seen no response from...Ah."
Gideon turned toward the strange fortress.
The druids had come.
Three aged, robed figures slowly ascended the path to set themselves against the approach of a small army. Somehow Gideon knew the odds were against the army.
The druid in the center was robed in gray to match the wild mane of her hair. Short of girth, she carried a crooked staff a head taller than herself. Something in her golden skin and fierce gaze recalled tales of distant islands; a necklace of sharks' teeth rattled around her neck. To her right walked a companion robed all in white, the cloth covered in golden silhouettes of beetles, bats, raccoons, ravens, snakes, starfish, and more—a treasure-house of wild creatures. This druid was a dark-skinned man of Garund, and in place of a staff he carried a unique spear worked with runes and sigils of many lands, gleaming with a silver tip. The third druid was an elven woman cloaked in unadorned black. Her ivory countenance seemed as severe as stone, and she bore nothing to aid her steps; rather, she clutched an iron dagger. As snowflakes fell upon her blade, she held it to her tongue.
Now the River Guard saw the druids. Jeers and screeches cut the air. Archers, their aim little marred by their insanity, fired upon the trio.
The druid in gray gestured, and a whistling wind disturbed the air, making snowflakes churn. As the arrows hit the barrier of wind they were buffeted upward, eventually falling to the ground or clattering against the stones. Whatever defense the druid had invoked, Gideon was grateful for the boulders' cover.
The volleys of arrows fell nearly as fast as the snow. The three druids still did not move.
The druid in gray raised her crooked staff and whispered something as if to herself; but the world heard and answered, and the day darkened. A vast black storm cloud rumbled into existence as if it had slipped unseen out of a crack in the sky. While it whirled over the whole area, its center was above the River Guard.
The druid in white sighed and likewise lifted his spear, croaking out mysterious words. In response, something vast and lumbering began to emerge from behind the rocks. Though still unseen, its motion made reverberations to rival the growing thunder of the cloud.
The druid in black smiled and raised her dagger, whispering a question. The answer came in the form of a raucous swaying within a nearby stand of trees, as a hulking, rocky shape lurched up from the earth and emerged into the light, flexing its limbs.
"Stop!" Gideon said, emerging from his hiding place before he'd thought the matter through. "They're being compelled! They don't deserve this!"
The druids seemed unsurprised by his appearance. "'Deserve' is irrelevant," said the one in gray.
Thunder exploded beneath the dark cloud, though there was no lightning. The guards halted. Some fell, and many cradled their heads, or else shook with sudden convulsions.
Gideon stood before the druid in gray. "I beg you, find another way!"
"What other way is there, Gideon Gull?"
Now the thing rumbling from behind lurched into sight. It was a snake, but no snake had any business being so huge. Tall as an Opparan house and long as a Taldan prince's procession, its mouth could have swallowed a bison without even unhinging its jaw. It rippled with green and black and yellow patterning upon its glinting scales, its body pulsing with muscle. It ignored the druids and the bards, slithering like a living flood toward the guards within the fog.
Ozrif, too, confronted the druids. "I can't believe that you, who wield such powerful magic, can't dispel these warriors' madness!"
The druid in white shrugged. "Can't is not an issue. This is simpler. Let the island be fed."
It seemed unaccountable that the vast rocky figure emerging from the trees could be more disturbing than the slithering monster, but in a way it was. At least the other thing was in some bizarre sense an animal. But even though the lurching composite of rock and dirt vaguely humanoid, it was far from natural. Deep down, Gideon realized, he was just a little animal who needed some rational order to his world. This violation of his assumptions terrified him. The land itself should not go hunting.
Betraying no eagerness, the creature thundered its way like an avalanche toward the River Guard.
"You're monsters!" Viridia told the druids.
"All things are monsters," said the druid in black.
The guards would be pulped. And yet they did not retreat, for nothing in the druids' assault had the effect of dispersing the unnatural fog. And the fog, like the druids, cared nothing for the lives advancing like pawns into this conflict.
Could this state of affairs really be an accident? Gideon wondered. Ozrif was right; surely a more subtle expression of power could end the threat and spare lives. Why didn't the druids choose to do so?
Now at last rain fell from the storm cloud, cutting through the snow—but it was no normal rain, for as it touched the guards, they shrieked in pain.
What other way is there, Gideon Gull?
"A test," Gideon snarled. "You're testing us, somehow. A sick, arrogant—"
"Are you looking for words that will end this?" asked the druid in gray, the dry mockery of her tone now evident.
"No."
He turned and ran forward through the curtain of winds, beyond the safety of the druids' influence.
Gideon could hear his friends calling his name, but he didn't look back. He didn't want them following. He couldn't be certain at what range Leothric's magical fan would be effective, but he was sure he needed to get closer.
How much closer would likely depend on Gideon's nerves. Not nerves of steel. Harp strings, more like. High-strung harp strings at that...
Amazingly, someone was still shooting arrows, and one landed right between his legs, nearly ending his line if not his life. Now, however, the storm transformed again, sending a half-dozen crimson lightning bolts into the midst of the doomed guards, and the bowshots ceased.
Gideon could not cease, however, even as he found himself on a path that would converge with the slithering monster on the one hand and the hulking rock-thing on the other. Closer, closer, ragged footfalls on snow...
He skidded to his knees, raised his arm, and swung the fan.
Wind roared between the paths of the monsters, into the face of the fog.
And the fog peeled and shredded, tore away in wraithlike ragged strips, and the front ranks of the River Guard had their pains redoubled by the freedom of their minds and the awareness of their doom.
"Run!" Gideon screamed, desperate to be heard over thunder
and monsters and wind. "Get away from here! They'll kill you all!"
Some did indeed try to run, even as the druid-summoned things commenced to devour and crush. But they'd never make it past the ranks behind them, still enveloped in a fog larger and more resilient than the one that had claimed Hawkslight.
Gideon charged forward once again, now in range of the huge serpent and the rocky monstrosity, but needing to reach the back ranks as he swung.
Again a concussion swept the air. The nearer guards stumbled. More of the fog ripped apart, coiling away in a manner that put Gideon in mind of a clutch of snakes.
But that wasn't all that came apart. The ancient fan of Osirion, pushed perhaps beyond the requirements of its long-lost makers, tore itself into a clump of tattered papyrus and wood.
Gideon tossed it aside, for he had his own troubles. He'd drawn the attention of the earthen horror, and it thundered near. Perversely, the mushrooms sprouting on its "head" reminded Gideon of a smiling face.
He couldn't think of a single spell that would help him. His dagger would be about as useful as a butter knife against a cliff. He stepped backward, slipping on the snow and falling hard. The thing advanced.
Yet there was a change in the air. Rain fell, and it was not the burning rain of before but a more wholesome variety that obscured vision and whipped around with sudden surges of wind. The fog was coming further undone, and the River Guard was in full rout now.
"Ha!" called an Andoren voice. "Run, Taldans, run! Let the steel of Andoran protect you!"
"Commander Hannison is insane!" said a voice beside him.
"They're all insane, Ozrif," said another, "all the Andorens. Come on, Gideon, move!"
Gideon let Viridia help him up, and together the Shadow School students backed away from the creature of elemental earth. Soon it lost interest and turned back toward the greater concentration of humans.
But the Guard was fleeing fast. Though dozens lay dead, the majority of the warriors were escaping. Some had the presence of mind to protect their comrades' retreat, and with this handful stood the Eagle Knights, along with Corvine and a few of Riposte's crew.
"We can't abandon them," Gideon said.
"I knew you'd say that," Viridia said. "But let's get out from between these monsters."
"I suggest we flank the snake," said Ozrif. "It at least might be a natural creature. If you squint. We're more likely to find a weak point."
They circled the monstrosity, which took considerable time and breath. By the time they came around the other side, it was making lunges against the ragtag gang that opposed it.
"We have to distract it." Gideon commenced drawing imaginary swirling, spiraling patterns in the air, muttering words to his hypnotic spell.
The beast ignored him.
"Hey!" he yelled, throwing a rock.
The beast turned toward him.
"Hi," he said. It had extremely large, sharp fangs, and quite a deep gullet. The sight was rather hypnotic in its own right—
"Gideon!" yelled Corvine. "Run, you fool!"
"Ah!" Gideon managed, even as Viridia dragged him sideways. Ozrif had a different idea.
"A little juggling enhancer." Ozrif drew a dagger. "I've yet to try it in combat..."
Meanwhile Corvine gestured toward the snake, mimicking Leothric's favorite spell. There was an explosion of sound, and the monster jerked its head around in her and Merrigail's direction.
Ozrif murmured to his dagger, juggled it once, caught it, and threw.
It bounced off the beast's scales, yet rather than fall to the earth, it flew back toward Ozrif like a boomerang.
However, this was not the only thing headed for Ozrif. The monster lurched anew toward the juggler, presenting its magnificent fangs.
"No!" Viridia yelled and ran toward Ozrif. Gideon, for his part, saw the earthen monstrosity nearing Corvine and shouted a warning, running hopelessly in her direction.
The snake's fangs, each as large as a two-handed sword, plunged down upon Ozrif—
And swung away. Like a dog hearing a whistle inaudible to humans, the thing appeared to recognize a signal. Rumbling and hissing, it began writhing its way back through the boulder-strewn landscape southward and into the woods beyond.
The rock-thing likewise ceased its attack, though rather than depart it simply collapsed upon the ground, becoming a pile of boulders and soil.
The dark cloud dispersed overhead, and the rain and wind ceased. Snow fell almost shyly in the aftermath.
Gideon ran up to Corvine and embraced her. "Glad you could make it," he said.
"Well. It wouldn't do for you to hog all the material."
They shivered there in each other's arms. Gideon had heard that surviving a brush with death was an ecstatic feeling, but he'd cause to question that now. Perhaps when a mouse fought another mouse, it was so. Today these mice had survived owls, and there was no joy in it, only the receding darkness of raw terror.
Or so it was for him. Merrigail seemed less affected. "It seems I've been deprived of a good fight."
"We caught up as quickly as we could," said Adebeyo. "Some of us insisted on joining the knights." He nodded toward four of Riposte's crew: the northlander Asta, the grim elven warrior Tyndron, the black-garbed sailor Dymphna, and the jovial half-orc Crallak.
"We're obliged to you all," said a Taldan in officer's livery, blinking through the snowflakes. "Though I wish more of us had escaped this...madness. That fog—"
"An evil force," Gideon said. "It's sent many to their destruction."
The Taldan nodded.
Ozrif and Corvine began casting what healing they could for the Guard, though this was akin to offering a thirsty man a thimble of water. Luckily there were other healers among them.
"If I may make a suggestion, Lieutenant," Merrigail said, "I'd leave the vicinity of the Wildwood Lodge immediately. There are Taldan representatives with me, and we'll speak to the druids."
"My captain will explain what he can, and assist you how he may," said Adebeyo.
"I concur," the Taldan lieutenant said. "I don't like these druids...Where are they?"
The druids in gray, black, and white had vanished, as had the vast serpent-thing, and any trace of their power save the remnants of the rock-thing. And the corpses.
"Bastards," Gideon said. "They won't even face us?"
"They have a sense of theater," Ozrif said as he returned to Viridia's side. "I'll give them that." Viridia leaned against Ozrif, looking pained.
"I'll give them a lot more, when I have the chance," Corvine said, rejoining them as well.
"Remember what you've seen," Merrigail cautioned, "and the danger we're in simply by being here."
Even so, it was perhaps another half-hour before they took their leave of the River Guard. Viridia needed to rest, not because she'd suffered direct injury, but because she'd pulled a muscle in her leg while running to Ozrif's side. The juggler was mortified, and busied himself with massaging her foot. For Viridia, this seemed to take some of the sting out the event.
This did mean that Gideon and Corvine had more work to do, for they could not stand aside while the Taldans saw to their dead. Even shocked by the druids' display of power, the guards didn't wish to abandon their comrades to Arenway's scavengers. But Gideon urged them not to bury the fallen but to bear them away in litters. With scores of people working, it was possible to construct the litters in a reasonable span, even when Merrigail cautioned them to use only fallen branches.
Gideon expected a new assault, either from the fog or the island itself, at any time. He was pleasantly surprised when the Taldans commenced their return without incident. As he and his companions walked—or limped—toward the druids' stronghold, he threw suspicious glances upon the wreckage of the earthen monster, whose mushrooms quivered in the breeze.
By now the snowfall had ceased and the sky had cleared, as if Arenway denied the violence of recent events. As the group descended the road's eastern slope, no one waited for
them at the Lodge's entrance.
"A warning?" Corvine said. "A dare?"
"We have no choice but to enter," Gideon said. "We've been tested, I'm sure, and are still being tested."
They stepped inside. A rough-hewn chamber lay beyond the archway, lit by veins of glowing crystal within the rock.
No druids awaited them. Instead, staring up with unnervingly aware gazes were a raccoon, a frog, a gecko, and a sparrow. Less clearly aware, but waiting along with the others, were a grasshopper, a spider, and a centipede.
"Well," said Gideon. "Hello."
The sparrow darted up to one of Gideon's boots, pecked at it, then flitted to one of Corvine's boots and pecked there, too. Then it fluttered to one of seven passages leading into the dark.
"Seven paths," said Ozrif. "Seven animals. Well, I'm willing to go where this sparrow leads."
As he stepped forward, the raccoon tapped Ozrif's toes, patted Viridia's leg, and gestured toward a different passage.
"Seven animals," Viridia said, "seven passages, but fourteen of us. We're being split up."
"I don't like this," Merrigail said. "How could the druids have arranged just the right number of tunnels?" Even as she spoke, the grasshopper flew to her shoulder. "Eh?" she said, and it flew onto her comrade Kester's head. From there it flew into the darkness of a third tunnel. "There's a method to it," Merrigail said. "The pairs make sense."
"An eagle would've made more sense," muttered Kester.
Two more knights were paired by the centipede, and the last knight, along with the taciturn sailor Dymphna, was selected by the frog. Tyndron and Crallak were chosen by the gecko, and the spider picked Asta and Adebeyo.
"I think we've little choice but to accept the druids' hospitality," Adebeyo said.
"I hate hospitality," said Ozrif. "I much prefer contracts. With a contract, you know where you stand. With hospitality, you might find you're now obliged to send yearly gifts, or fight a duel, or marry the host's daughter."
"Let's be about it," Adebeyo said. "But let's not tarry, either. The captain's waiting for us."
Gideon took Corvine's hand. She nodded, and they followed the sparrow into a tunnel that switchbacked up and up. Light from the threads of crystal gave way to sunlight from small fissures in the rock. They emerged upon a wicker stairway winding its way up one of the great redwood trees beside the vast rock, and they could see no end to it. Far below they saw waves in the inlet next to the cliff.
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