The elf leading them deferred to Thorn’s rank, and openly gawked in reverence at his dog-riding superior. This didn’t surprise Vanx, but Chelda seemed a little mystified by the idea of Thorn holding some sort of high position among his people.
The two elves conferred briefly, then Thorn dismissed the other with a salute. Vanx caught the eyes of a battle-ready pixie girl as she started to blush and look away, but stopped herself. She puffed up her chest and held out her chin in a show of courage. Vanx wondered how many battle berries the two-foot-tall warrioress had eaten, and if it was enough for her to keep her courage when she faced off with one of those wolfen monsters. Vanx gave her a firm, reassuring nod, even though he had a strong feeling that this ill-fortified group was marching off to its demise.
A short while later, the murmuring of many voices and the general clamor of a crowd could be heard ahead of them. Thorn caught the attention of two little sprite men who had been buzzing about and gave them some orders in their high-pitched language. They zipped off ahead and disappeared just as the clog of fairy folk threatened to block their way.
Beyond the jam of people trying to get into the nexus Vanx could see an enormous cavern open up. It was illuminated in a bright purple glow. Apparently though, after a few dozen paces, the floor fell away, for all Vanx could see beyond that were a few sets of shimmering wings here and there as they reflected the source of the radiant lavender light.
“Silence!” an eerie feminine voice, that was as much in Vanx’s head as it was outside of it, said in crisp, perfectly spoken Zythian. “Silence all! Open a path to me from the Tinker’s Way.”
“Did you hear that?” Chelda asked.
Poops twisted to look at Vanx and nearly tossed Thorn from his back. A warm, uncertain sense of puzzlement passed from the dog to him. This caused the fae folk ahead of them to turn and gasp.
“That was the Interpratarion,” Thorn said, while leaning forward to give Poops a reassuring scratch behind the ears. “The speaker’s words find their way to all, and in the language to which they are most receptive. Gnomish, Elven, Spritish, even common trade tongue, Zythian, and all canine variations. It’s a handy device at times like this.”
“Make way!” the voice called again. “He has returned! General Foxwise Posy-Thorn has returned with the queen’s champion.”
A cheer rose up then, and the people parted for Thorn and his two giant companions. Many calls of excitement rose through the din of the sad and angry fairy people, and more than a few encouraging battle cries rang out.
The air in the chamber had a strong, wholesome smell to it, like freshly tilled earth. Vanx glanced behind him and saw that the avenue of people was closing up as quickly as it was clearing ahead of them. When he turned back, he saw the most wondrous marvel of the Underland before him.
The cavern’s floor was shaped like a deep bowl and was packed with colorfully clad fairy folk of all sorts. Dangling from the roof were what Vanx thought first to be stalactites, but on closer inspection he saw that they were dangling roots. Some of them were thin and spidery and hung almost all the way to the floor, like climbing ropes; others were thicker and twisted around each other. These came all the way down, forming barrel-sized columns that rooted down through the rocky floor. There were seven of these root-formed columns, Vanx counted, and they were spaced in a roughly even circle around a raised dais in the center of the chamber they formed.
Other roots hung down and branched out, forming inverted candelabra shapes with clusters of glowing, fist-sized purple fruits, or maybe they were nuts. These radiated the bright lavender light that illuminated all but the center area inside of the perimeter of the seven root-formed columns. In some places the clusters of glowing vegetation were held together like giant bunches of grapes. The light under these was brighter and slightly whiter than the rest of the great nexus.
Centered inside the pillars, atop the dais, was a starkly empty ivory throne.
A few feet away from the empty seat, an orb the size of a human head was hovering and pulsing a deep shade of blue. Clustered around the orb were seven ancient-looking fae, all of whom were the human-child-size of the elves and pixies. Their expressions were dire, but they didn’t seem to have lost all hope. Vanx couldn’t tell which of them had wings, and the vibrant colors of distinction had been leached from the hair and beards of all but two of them.
“Welcome home, General Posy-Thorn,” the oldest of the group said with her right hand palming the pulsing Interpratarion.
Her words found Vanx’s ears in his native Zythian tongue, just as it had earlier. “And welcome, mighty Emerald Eyes. Your arrival has been eagerly hoped for, and we beg of you to hear our need.”
“Tell them to take me to the Shadowmane, Thorn,” Chelda said.
“There is no time for this.”
The group was almost down to the circle of root columns when Chelda drew out her sword and brandished the bright blue glowing blade. A wave of gasps rippled around the nexus.
“There is your real champion,” Vanx said, as they stepped into the slightly radiant purple field. The voices of the crowd faded slightly and a warm tingling sensation enveloped him. He was in the nexus.
Chapter Ten
There is a place so gloomy,
so dark and oh so cold.
Down in those depths a monster dwells,
the dungeons of Rimehold.
– Frosted Soul
“We are being peaced,” Darl said in hushed tones as he, Gallarael, and Xavian worked their way up a relatively steep grade toward the last ridge that separated them from Saint Elm’s Deep. The midafternoon sky was a whirl of steel and ash. They had lost a day already to the heavy snowfall and low visibility, and it was still snowing light, dusty flakes. The wind had picked up, too. Darl stopped his ramma and was squinting under a stiff-armed salute at something not far away from him.
“What?” Xavian asked rather loudly. “We’re being what?”
“Peaced. Paced.” Darl strained the accent out of his words. “Followed, tracked, stalked.” He urged his ramma back into its slow, steady pace before Xavian could ask another question.
“By what?” Gallarael eased her ramma up. The natural switchback ledge they were ascending was wide enough for them to ride two abreast, but Gallarael had no intention of taking another tumble. She worked her reins to keep her ramma’s head right to the tail of Xavian’s mount. The fall from here wasn’t even close to sheer, but it was fairly steep, and where the hearty pines and furs weren’t grasping the mountainside, there were all sorts of upthrusts and outcroppings of icy, snow-covered rock. She would have had more confidence if she were on foot and in her more dexterous form. As she waited to hear Darl’s answer to her question, she contemplated the consequences of having to suddenly shapeshift if they were attacked. It occurred to her then that there was no real need to wait on whatever was out there to come to them.
“A peer of welves, I think,” Darl told them. “They’re not coming closer. They’re just keeping peace.”
“Watching us?” Xavian asked, trying to mask his fear with contempt.
“Leading us, more like,” Darl replied under his breath.
“Here!” a raspy voice hissed right into Darl’s ear, startling both him and his ramma mount. “Take them.”
Gallarael, in her dark-skinned, ember-eyed beast form, hissed. She was offering the reins of her terrified ramma to him. “I’ll meet you at the ridge.”
“Be careful, Gal,” Xavian urged.
“Be ready, mage,” she returned.
She then tore off her fur coat, threw it to Xavian and scrabbled on all fours off into the blustery wind.
Darl kept the procession moving while speaking soothing words to the rammas. It was clear that what he was saying was as much for his own sake as it was for the animals.
After the animals had somewhat calmed, Darl tied the lead line from Gallarael’s mount to his saddle and pulled his bow from over his shoulder to string it up.
/> “If trouble breaks out,” said Darl. “Don’t you catch me afire, mage.”
“What?” Xavian asked nervously.
“Don’t… Bah! Nevermind.”
Gallarael spotted the two creatures padding along the slope just as soon as her eyes shifted. One was dark of fur and slightly larger than the other, nearly invisible, white-furred creature. Both of them were of a size comparable to the timber wolves Gallarael had seen roaming the forests of her youth. These were nothing like the wolf monster Kegger had described to them.
The wind was coming up the grade so it was unlikely that they would be able to smell her or the others; nor could she catch the beast’s scent, and she was certain that her sense of smell was just as keen as theirs. She could use this to her advantage, but she would have to stay above them.
Gallarael clawed and loped like some feral quadrupedal creature, right up the mountainside. She ducked limbs and darted over the tricky terrain as if she had lived there forever. After a bit she paused and watched. It was hard to say, for the fluttering snow made the visibility bad, but it appeared that she had made a clean break away from the others. Neither of the wolfen seemed to be paying any attention to anything other than Darl and Xavian moving slowly along a few hundred feet below their position.
Gallarael gauged Darl’s intended path, which was fairly obvious because of the limited possibilities available, and she saw what Darl had seen earlier.
The wolfen beasts were moving to block the group from taking a quicker, more direct route, one that would take them up a steep but manageable ravine. Darl would be forced to either try to fight the creatures on the treacherous mountainside or switch back and come up through a longer, gentler series of rocky flats. But why force them onto the easier of the trails, Gallarael wondered, unless something was waiting for them along that route?
She decided that it would be far better to let Darl and Xavian start onto the flatter steps of rock before she made any sort of aggressive move. She would have to do it before they went too far, though, and then warn them of the trap that lay that way.
The idea was to take out the two creatures that were herding them and for all of them to make haste up the steeper path, thus avoiding altogether, whatever surprise was waiting.
She wished that she knew the horn signals the rim riders used, for she would have loved to be able to convey her plan to Darl and Xavian, or at least warn them. The last thing she wanted was for them to go racing up the stepped slabs into the trap when she attacked. She decided that if wishes were that easy to come by she would have married Trevin and taken her mother’s place as the Duchess of Highlake. As it was, Trevin was dead by her own feral claws, and she would have to settle for calling out a warning just as she set upon the wolves.
Luckily Darl was perceptive enough to avoid going into the trap, but it was Xavian, or more correctly the ramma underneath him, that caused her plan to go awry.
The white-furred wolfen sniffed and paused for a heartbeat while eyeing the party from across the slope. Its pack mate bristled its fur and stepped out from the trees with a low, menacing growl. This was supposed to scare the group back up and away from the wind-worn cut for which they were headed.
The wolfen beast did startle the two men and the rammas, but not in the way it intended to.
In simultaneous precision, an arrow thrummed from Darl’s bow and a hot, crimson beam shot across the span between men and wolf. Xavian’s magic hissed and popped as it evaporated the snowflakes that touched it and it hit its mark true.
There was a yelp and a great gout of steam and flames. Ice was liquefied and the creature was partially scorched. The air filled with an acrid stench, and the nearly furless wolf keened out in pain and terror as it leapt to roll in a drift of cool snow. Then it was fleeing, each of its ground-eating strides grinding Darl’s arrow through its vitals that much more.
The white wolf charged out to attack them then, but Gallarael came streaking down out of nowhere, half tumbling, half charging, and tore into the surprised beast.
Xavian’s burst of magical energy caused his ramma to bolt up the stepped slabs of rock away from the scene. It was all he could do to hang on and keep from being tumbled or thrown backward off the creature. Darl, with a loud command, and a firm yank on his lead line, kept his mount in check, but the riderless ramma tethered to his saddle tried to yank and twist itself free.
“Don’t…!” Gallarael screamed over the savage snarling of the beast with which she was tangled. “Don’t go that way–” Slavery jaws were in her face then, and her words were cut off.
Darl understood. He’d already figured the ambush lay in the way the wolves tried to force them to go, but now he was torn between helping Gallarael or chasing down Xavian and his frightened mount.
Gallarael was capable and the mage was heading into an ambush, so he made his decision. He cut loose the riderless ramma and charged his mount up the stepped slope after Xavian. The other ramma, not realizing it was cut loose, ran tight beside them. He didn’t have to go far. No sooner had he gotten himself moving in the right direction did the impossible happen before his eyes.
A tree, a gnarled, leafless, oakish-looking thing, darted out of the forest, right into Xavian’s path. It had a trunk as big around as the belly of a drinking man and limbs that writhed and reached twenty feet up into the air.
Instantly, appendages with grasping branch fingers enveloped the screaming young mage. Xavian was yanked off of his ramma. The ramma was wrapped and crumpled into a bloody pulp of mangled bone and gore.
A knothole maw, a few feet above the ground, roared in defiant rage. The sound nearly loosened Darl’s bowels.
Darl didn’t have to rein in his mount. It was already trying to turn back the other way, but he worked to keep the riderless ramma close. Before he was completely turned away from the tree-beast and the shrieking wizard, he saw it rush back among the snow-laden firs and pines, on long trunk legs with root-clawed feet. There was an explosion of snow from a jarred pine tree’s limbs and the fading, choking sound of Xavian’s terror, and then Darl was being carried away at a breakneck pace.
He felt a wave of cowardice come over him, but he knew in his heart that there wasn’t anything he could have done for the mage. It all happened too fast. Sure, he could have loosed an arrow or two, but he knew it wouldn’t have harmed such a monstrosity.
He had never been as terrified, and he doubted he would ever sleep again for visions of that dark, knothole mouth, with its jagged, almond-colored teeth. And that gut-shaking roar was something he would never be able to forget.
He saw Gallarael. She stood like an obsidian statue, amidst a gruesome mess of bloody fur and entrails. Dangling in her left hand was the wolfen creature’s head, and her right arm was slick and dripping crimson gore up to the elbow.
Her eyes were fixed beyond where Darl was now trying to get the two ramma under control. She was staring at the distant stain that had once been Xavian’s mount. She had seen the tree that took her friend, and though she had every intention of avenging his death, she didn’t want Darl, or herself, to be the next victim of whatever else waited up that stepped stone path.
She didn’t bother to change back to her natural self, nor did she mount the ramma Darl offered.
“Let’s move,” she hissed, and loped past the gargan, up into the steeper cut, not bothering to see if he was following or not.
Chapter Eleven
The evil horde was many,
the heroes left were hurt.
Then the king drew Ornspike
and put the demon in the dirt.
– The Ballad of Ornspike
“She’s gone up there to defend your realm and you would deny her freedom from this place?” Vanx’s question was asked with more than a little vehemence dripping from his tongue and an even more aggressive expression on his face. From his side, Poops growled and the fur stood up on his back. The seven elder elves and pixies of the council known as Troika Sven cowered back fro
m him.
It was Thorn who bravely moved between the towering half Zythian and the others.
“Vanx, they are not saying they won’t release Chelda from her entrapment here. They are saying that they can’t.” Thorn held out a hand toward his big friend and motioned him to back away. “The battle berries have your blood up. The Troika Sven is not your enemy. None of us here are.”
Vanx realized the truth if it. He was scaring the fairy folk and he immediately stepped back. He had been aggravated ever since Chelda was escorted up to the Shadowmane. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because she was fighting now and he wasn’t. Maybe it was because he had a strong feeling he would never see her alive again.
One of the seven councilors, a stooped and matronly old elven woman, who Vanx guessed to be at least a thousand years old, stepped to Thorn’s side. “I am Elva Toyon, the eldest of the Troika, and it’s true. Never have I heard of any but a queen being able to release a mortal from the Underland. It is something that has rarely happened. The last time was so long ago that I was but a silly girl and Queen Corydalis wouldn’t take the throne for another two hundred years. I doubt she even knew how to release your brave friend from the enchantment.” Elva Toyon bowed apologetically and several of the other members of the council bowed as well.
The idea that he might never see Chelda again, would never see Gallarael again, came to him. “Chelda Flar, a mere mortal gargan, is the golden-hearted champion the pixie queen called out for. I am but a bringer of death. I go to rid the world of the vile Hoar Witch and it is for vengeance that I do this.”
He realized his teeth were gnashed together and that the battle berries were indeed fueling his emotion. Then his attention was diverted by a flare of light out in the crowd. Vanx saw a hobbling old pixie man who had to use both a cane and his frayed old wings to keep himself upright. The tip of his beard drug along the floor. When he approached the nexus, a young elf hurried from the crowd to help the feeble old man up into it.
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