Vanx wiped away her next tear for her and then fought back his own. The shock of Gallarael’s death hadn’t even had time to wear off, and now this. “There is bound to be another way, Chel,” Vanx reassured her. “You’ll not be trapped here forever.”
“No, after feeling all the goodness and love she felt for this place, that’s not what troubles me now.” She reached over and put a hand on Thorn’s back and patted the elf consolingly. “There probably is another way for me to get out, but until we figure it out, I can’t go up there and defend the Heart Tree. That is my pain.”
Thorn raised his head then and wiped his face on the sleeve of his silver-furred cloak. “If you really wish to defend the Heart Tree then you can, Lady Chelda.” His normally bright yellow eyes seemed cloudy and horribly sad. “The Shadowmane is considered part of the Underland.”
“Shadowmane?”
“You can tread on any ground that’s been touched by the Heart Tree’s shadow. That is its Shadowmane.”
“Take me there,” Chelda demanded. “Since I’ll not be able to go with you two to Rimehold, I’ll fight where I can.” She turned to face Vanx then. “It’s all the same battle. If the Hoar Witch gains the power of the Heart Tree, then you’ll never be able to kill her. Her rot will spread all across the world. Her beasts seem to fear my blade, and I can help Moonsy keep them from the tree.”
Vanx nodded, not really sure how Chelda understood all of this, or who Moonsy was. He was glad she wasn’t feeling hopeless and bitter. Maybe she and Thorn had a vision or something?
“We’re going to the nexus anyway,” Thorn said, as he regained his feet. “But we’ve still a good ways to go.” He wiped at his face again, the anguish slowly turning into determination. “We will soon come to Edric-Outs, a small village of mostly gnomes and sprites, but it is on the Tinker’s Way, so the passage beyond there is a lot bigger.” He squeezed Chelda’s hand.
“From there, Lady Chelda, you’ll no longer have to stoop.”
Only the reflexive skill, garnered from working with sometimes violently disagreeable animals, saved Darl from the sizzling crimson ray of energy that shattered the cabin door and sent its pieces hurling out onto the snowy ground. He and Gallarael had startled Xavian. The prepared mage nearly sent them to their deaths for it.
“What’s wrong with you?” Gallarael called from where she’d just dove out of harm’s way. “It’s me, Galra.”
“I don’t believe you,” Xavian called back. “You’re dead. Darl is dead too. Prove that you are not the witch’s beasts come to take us.”
“Someday you’ll do just fine with those suspicious old coots of my father’s Royal Order,” Gal told him. “It’s me, Xavian. Gallarael Martin Oakarm, the Princess of Parydon.”
“Tell me something the witch couldn’t know,” Xavian shot back.
“I just did.”
“You’re the Princess of Parydon?” Darl asked from the other side of the blasted entryway.
“Hush,” she hissed. “Like what, Xavian? I’m injured and tired. Where are Vanx and Poops? Where is Chelda?”
“Answer my question, and I’ll tell you the answers to yours.”
“Well hurry and ask it.”
Xavian must not have had a question ready, for it took him a few moments. “What is the name of Darbon’s first love?”
“Matty, damn you.” She cautiously braved her way to the door. Seeing that she didn’t get blasted, she moved closer.
“Where are Vanx and Chelda?” Gallarael hobbled over to the fire, her expression none too pleased.
Xavian’s face was pallid. “You are alive? They said you fell to the bottom of the canyon.” Then he looked at Darl. “They thought your roped was chewed through, that you also fell.”
“I felt Kegger’s warning tugs and secured myself. When the end of the pull line came snaking over and down, I crawled down to a ledge.” He paused to look at the mangled but healing wound that covered most of Kegger’s lower leg.
“I didn’t know what sort of beast was attacking up here so I cut a piece of the rope and hauled the lady, uh, the princess, up into a cave I found on my way down.”
“She was still alive?” Xavian asked, looking now at Gallarael, was toasting her bloody feet by the fire.
“You’re still alive?”
“No Xavian, I’m dead, just like you’re going to be if you don’t tell me where Vanx is.”
Hesitantly he told them, and as he did, he fed them stew from the pot he and Kegger had been nursing. Vanx had left some healing herbs he’d gathered from the forest, and had killed several rabbits and a small doe before they’d gone. They threw the herbs in the pot.
He told them of the elf, Thorn, and the wolfen attack; Kegger joined in the telling for a little while, but only to validate what Xavian said. The parts about the waist-tall, pointy-eared man with strawberry hair came out sounding far-fetched. Kegger’s assurances that it was all true, quelled any doubts that Darl might have held. Gallarael would have believed anything they told her. In her lifetime she’d survived the Wildwood, while full of fang-flower venom. She’d seen wolf-riding Kobals, and huge, angry, green-skinned ogres through her poisoned haze. She’d even seen a dragon. So the idea of elves and wild creatures didn’t surprise her all that much.
When Xavian was done with the telling, Darl rummaged through Kegger’s bag and came back with a drawstring sack. He hung it just outside the blasted door of the cabin and then went about stretching a flapped blanket over the hole. Before he was finished, a skittish ramma came in from the woods and started sniffing at Darl’s sack. A short while later a few more came, but that was it. Most likely, the witch’s wolfen beasts had gotten hold of the others.
When Gallarael announced that in the morning she was going after Vanx and Chelda, Xavian nodded that he would go with her. Darl objected, because Kegger was in no condition to travel, but the big gargan ranger, using a tree branch for a crutch, made his way to the room’s table board, where he sat stiff-legged. He insisted that he could take care of himself there in the cabin. All he needed was for them to hunt some more meat. He figured that in a day or two he would be well enough to move around, set snares and start feeding himself.
Darl agreed that he would lead the others into the Lurr and wait for them at its fringes. He would do this, but only if they hunted Kegger an ample amount of food before they left. He pointed out that having three rammas to ride would make up the extra day it would take them to hunt, and reluctantly Gallarael agreed, because a day of rest would go a long way toward easing the pain in her broken feet.
Chapter Seven
Off beside the river
far away from everything
the fishes keep me company
while I close my eyes and dream.
– Parydon Cobbles
The air in the Underland tunnel grew so warm that Vanx and Chelda were forced to shed their coats. Vanx removed Poops’ vest, too. He then carefully rolled up the coats and stored them in the pack he was carrying. Thorn pulled his arms from the sleeves of his silver coat, and then fastened them around his neck. His coat had become a cloak that he could keep swept behind him as he continued on. The Underland air also took on a quality of which both Vanx and Poops grew particularly aware. It wasn’t horrible, but it was no pleasant smell either. It reminded Vanx of the Kanga barns of his youth, or the haulkatten stables in Dyntalla. It was an earthy, animal stink: the smell of livestock.
There was a sweeter quality to the smell as they went farther in, and Poops was growing anxious to explore the source of this odd combination of scents. Vanx had the feeling that they would soon come upon some long-rotted carcass or another equally gruesome sight.
The smell grew stronger as they continued and Chelda’s gargan nose finally picked it up. At the time she was crouched over and following Thorn closely.
“Bah, elf.” She made a scrunched up face and exhaled loudly as if she were trying to blow the smell away from her nose with her puckered mouth. “Did
you fart? It smells like ass and cookies. What did you eat?”
Vanx couldn’t help but laugh.
Thorn, however, spun around and made a face that registered somewhere between offended shock and disbelief. “’Tis no flatulence you smell,” he said with very little fire behind his words. “Nor is it cookies.”
His face was ashen, and tears were rolling down his cheeks. His normally bright yellow eyes were dim and red-rimmed. A string of clear snot was smeared from his little nose across his cheek. He looked like a heartbroken child.
He was a pitiful sight, and seeing him leached the mirth right out of Vanx’s laugh. He was taking the pixie queen’s death badly.
Chelda pulled the sorrow-stricken elf into a fierce, motherly hug.
“What is it, then?” Vanx asked. He needed to distract his own grief, lest it sneak up and overwhelm him. Up until now he’d forced thoughts of Gallarael from his heart and mind, but Thorn’s grief was proving to be contagious.
“It’s Edric-Outs, the brownie village,” Thorn sobbed and sniffled from Chelda’s bosom. The elf took a deep breath and tried to gather himself before continuing.
“There is a mold and mushroom plantation terraced out there. That’s what you smell. The sprites help tend it. There is a trickle stream, too.” He took another deep breath and wiped his nose on his coattail. “We’re not too far.”
A short while later, the passage narrowed and shrank. Vanx and Chelda had to take off their packs and push them ahead of themselves as they crawled on their hands and knees. Thorn assured them that it was only for a short distance. He called it a bear stop, and then went on to tell them how an old bear once wandered around the fairy mound five times and accidentally found his way in. The great bear had caused quite a stir and had to be put down with poison, but not before it destroyed Edric-Outs and a nearby honey hive, and settled into a cave home, displacing an entire clan of Fauchan.
“Fauchan are real, then?” Vanx grunted the question from behind Chelda and Poops as he crawled along. “I thought it impossible.”
“They are real, I assure you,” replied Thorn, who was still standing upright, and not having to stoop his head. “And it’s as ugly of a thing as you ever saw, what with only one arm, one leg, and one eye.”
“How much farther?” Chelda grumbled the question.
“We are here,” Thorn reassured her. “Just ahead now, can’t you smell the psilocybin sweet lichen?”
Vanx smelled it and felt a slight breeze working around Chelda and Poops. There was a faint blue-green glow coming from up ahead.
“Chelda, would you get hold of Sir Poopsalot as soon as you emerge?” Vanx asked. “I don’t want them thinking a bear cub has gotten in.”
“I’ll get him,” she said. “Taking off his shrew fur was a good idea, or he’d look just like one.”
From up ahead the sound of chirping birds and tinkling water filtered back to Vanx, but as he moved closer to the blue-green opening, the high-pitched twittering sound resolved itself into several tiny voices.
Thorn spoke in a commanding tone, but Vanx couldn’t make out his words. The confinement of the narrow shaft and the sweat pouring from his scalp was disturbing his concentration.
As soon as Chelda eased out ahead of him and grabbed Poops, Vanx felt a stronger wash of cool air sweep over him, a welcome relief. He took his time those last few feet and let the airflow dry some of the dampness and perspiration that had soaked his clothes.
Just before his head pushed out of the tunnel, he heard a collective gasp of chirping voices and more than one moan of worry and fear. Chelda had stood and he figured that the brownies and sprites were reacting to her height.
When Vanx finally emerged, he understood better the awe of the fae. The brownies were squat, thick, and only half as tall as Thorn at best. Chelda towered over them like a Goddess. If she had been so inclined, she could have squashed them flat with her huge feet.
The sprites were tiny, bird-like figures, not much bigger than a finger. They hovered and zipped about crazily, on brilliant butterfly wings in myriad designs and color combinations. One came in low and stopped to hover just inches from Vanx’s face. It was a young boy no bigger than a pinky toe, with doubled, glassine wings, like those of a dragonfly. When he looked into Vanx’s emerald eyes, his curiously fearful expression exploded. “Tsim,” the tiny boy chirped, and zipped away. “Tsim. It’s him.”
Most of the other expressions Vanx spotted weren’t so hopeful, especially those of the rabbit-sized brownie men who were huddling behind Thorn. They were trying to be polite, yet doing everything they could to keep the elf between them and Sir Poopsalot. They kept looking from Poops, up to Chelda, to Vanx, and back to Thorn.
Poops was up and quivering with curious energy. He wasn’t trying to defy the gentle grasp Chelda had on the leather strap harness he still wore, but it was plain he wanted to go sniff them. Vanx sent out a mental command for the dog to sit still and calm down. To his great surprise Poops sat, then looked at him and whined out his plea. Even more amazing was that the little things fluttering all about the cavern felt it when Vanx used the familiar link between the two.
As he stood, Vanx remembered the white gold trinket at his neck was glowing cherry. But when he looked around he forgot about it because the wonder of the cavern they were in suddenly revealed itself. Scores of terraced step-rows, each about half the height of a normal human stair, and three times as deep, spread up and away. The flat of each riser was covered by a bed of some spongy turquoise moss or mold. From this stuff sprouted all shapes of mushroom caps from tall, phallic-looking spikes to stubby oversized toadstools. These were as brilliantly colored and patterned as the wings of the tiny sprites that tended them and he paused to wonder if that wasn’t some sort of intended natural design in order to help the little buzzers hide.
The mossy stuff was the source of the blue-green illumination. The terraced rows extended forty or fifty yards alongside the path before ending against a rough-hewn wall. The path itself ran through the cavern and kept on going through an arch that was similarly shaped, but a little larger than the one they’d come through in the fairy mound. Along the pathway’s edge, and along the lower terrace steps, there were small, rectangular, hut-like dwellings that had dark, moss-covered roofs. Through coin-sized window holes, Vanx saw several faces peeking out curiously. He noticed that either the majority of these folks were hiding, or they were away somewhere, because there were far too many dwellings to house the meager number of little folk he’d seen so far.
A young brownie girl, her silken beard looking like a tuft of golden dandelion fluff under a tired smile and bright blue eyes, shyly approached. She gave Thorn a covered basket. Thorn peeked inside the little offering and smiled through his gloom, before thanking her kindly. He spoke some more to the brownie men in a language that was more musical whistling and chirping than it was words. A few of the buzzy sprites literally chimed in comments, and then finally Thorn gave a sad, slow, nod that was followed by a long, reverent silence.
The pinky-toe-sized boy returned to buzz and dart about Vanx’s head and did so until he had Vanx’s full attention. Vanx squinted and narrowed his gaze to focus on the boy, and he stopped in a relatively still hover. He was offering something to Vanx, something the size of a pea that was a dark purple color and so heavy that the sprite seemed to be struggling to hold onto it.
Seeing the strain on the little sprite’s face, Vanx opened his palm so the little guy could lay down his burden and rest his wings for a moment. A dozen other tiny, winged folk were cautiously flitting about Vanx’s heartleaf medallion.
Glancing at Chelda, Vanx saw that she was being offered not one but two of the bead-like objects. Then the miniature boy dropped the thing into Vanx’s palm and began putting his hand to his mouth as if he were eating.
Vanx nodded his understanding and ate the thing. It was a berry of some sort. It tasted both sweet and sour and was full of far more flavor than seemed possible. Almost i
mmediately he felt an exhilarating rush course through his body, all the sadness and sorrow of Gallarael’s death, and the guilt he felt for getting Chelda imprisoned in the Underland, was suddenly washed away. Another sprite, a larger one who looked to be an adolescent girl, shooed the boy away and dropped three more berries into Vanx’s palm. No sooner did he put them in his mouth than another sprite came.
“Mmm,” Chelda said.
Poops yipped and snapped out as a berry fell from the grasp of an overburdened sprite. The dog caught the tiny fruit from the air and munched it. He began yipping and barking at the swarming sprites then, and they began dropping berries on purpose.
“Enough!” Thorn scolded the sprites. “Enough I say. You’ll have them addicted.” Then to Vanx and Chelda, “Don’t eat too many of these or you’ll go mad.”
“But they are so good,” said Chelda. “So much flavor.”
Thorn nodded and made a silly grin. “If your constitution is anything like the last human who ate too many of them then you’ll be blowing chunks out of both ends before too long, and we’ve got no time for it. I’ve just learned the call to arms went out only moments after Queen Corydalis sent us her dying wish. Only those too old, or too young, to fight are staying behind; everyone else is converging at the nexus to make war.”
Vanx shooed a pair of young sprites away from Poops, who had now eaten a dozen of the berries. Vanx had eaten a few of them too and was feeling as strong and confident as he ever had.
“Let’s be off then,” he offered. “They’ll want to include mighty Chelda and her trigon blade in their planning.”
“I feel like I could take on all of that witch’s beasts by myself,” said Chelda. “Let’s go before the feeling wears off.”
“Oh, it’s not likely to wear off soon,” said Thorn as he started them back along the path. “You’ll feel invincible for several days. Most of the fae are meek and peaceful. Without the battle berries they’d never be able to muster the courage to go to war against the Hoar Witch’s horde.”
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