A darting flash of brownish gray fur caught her eyes as something low to the ground passed a shaft of moonlight that had somehow pierced the high canopy. It wasn’t the thing she’d heard chasing her, for it was far too small. This was coyote-sized, a startled fox, or an oversized leaper. But even as she told herself those things, she knew it wasn’t true.
Another heavy crush of deadfall let her know her pursuer was still behind her. She turned back to look over her shoulder and caught a not-so-distant flash of ember eyes, high off the ground. A piercing howl erupted from somewhere close and it was soon echoed by some other haunting lupine voices. When she turned back, she found that the sparkly turquoise glow she had been following was gone.
A moment of wild panic flooded her as another wolfish creature, this one darker and the size of a larger timber wolf, cut across her field of vision. The creature showed no fear whatsoever and moved with the ferocious grace of a predator hunting with a pack.
Another of the wolfen cut across her path. This one came close enough to force her to angle off to the right. This part of the forest was fairly level and the lowest tree branches were well overhead. Only the huge, exposed trunk roots and the occasional patch of shrub or deadfall provided an obstacle. As she made the decision to find a place to turn and fight, she half wished there were low branches so she might squirrel up a tree.
Her heart hammered in her chest now, for she had seen at least four separate wolves besides the larger one that was behind her. She was certain she’d heard a few more than that out among the blackened shadows. She couldn’t possibly hope to survive, but she found a steely resolve and decided to spin and meet the biggest of them head-on. She was just about to do it when she saw a distant swath of blue light flare up ahead and to her left.
A cacophony of snarls and cackling and a deep, throaty reptilian roar came from that direction as well. The blue light flared again, and it was enough to illuminate a rock as it came hurling down over her head. She saw movement in the trees, and more oddly, the whole forest floor before her seemed to roil and shift under the crazily shifting blue glow.
She saw an elven form then, but it was partially devoured and seemingly being pulled under the churning ground. Another hurled object flew past her face and splattered against a tree beside her as she darted past.
A wolf hit her then, hard and from the side, with enough force to send her long stepping and sprawling into the writhing gray mass of the forest floor. Something wet splattered across her back and a deep, savage growl drowned out the rest of the noise.
A huge set of jaws clamped down on her lower leg. She pulled her face out of the leafy earth and tried to rise, but couldn’t. It was only then that she realized she and her attacker both were being swarmed by thousands upon thousands of beady-eyed rats.
That it could even speak was amazing in itself. That it was alive at all was beyond belief. The tormented pleas for death had finally gotten to Vanx. There was no way that he could ignore such a horrid request. He tried to resist the urge to seek out its source, but he knew that the voice would haunt him for hundreds of years if he didn’t at least try to oblige.
If it had been human once, it was no longer so. Bloated like a long-submerged corpse, the cocooned body seeped and oozed an awful-smelling yellow-green pus from several places. The pale, pumpkin-sized head dangled limply; its facial features were stretched and distorted by the massive swelling and the skin was pale, almost translucent. Green and purple veins pulsed erratically beneath the thing’s cheeks and forehead.
Suspended just a few feet above the muck-stained cavern floor, the cocoon was incorporated into the anchor strands of a vast, upward-expanding web. When a slight, lipless seam opened in the head, and a loud, desperate voice resumed its call, Vanx knew that this was the origin of the howling plea.
Poops barked and backed a few paces at the creature’s sudden yell, and “Please kill me,” choked into a frantic, “Who’s there? If you can hear me, kill me. Hurry, please.”
Poops’ fearful growling and barking reflected Vanx’s emotions perfectly.
What might have once been an eye split open, revealing a milky orb and a teardrop trickle of yellow-green pus.
“Hurry, before it returns. Please,” the thing begged.
“The Glaive?” Vanx asked Thorn.
Thorn shook his head no.
“Do it and let’s be gone,” Thorn said as he scanned the huge, web-filled cavern above them.
Vanx’s orb of light only penetrated the lacy gloom so far. There was no telling what was hiding up there in the shadows, and Thorn clearly didn’t want to find out.
“To heal that could only bring it more pain.”
“Please,” the voice started, but the ring of Vanx’s steel as it flew from its scabbard cut it off. With a swing, and a drop to his knee, Vanx sheered the upside down head from the rest of the cocoon. The sweet, cloying stench of infected meat filled the area as a river of lumpy gray gore poured from the stump. Then suddenly the whole structure of the web lurched, and lurched again.
“By Babd, it’s coming,” Thorn warned.
The Glaive of Gladiolus came out of its shoulder sheath, but Thorn pointed it toward one of the several tunnels leading away.
A harsh, clicking sound came from above them and the webbing shook and vibrated again as the huge scorpion-tailed spider beast scurried down into view. The thing appeared to be horribly angry over what they had done to its sustenance— angry enough to brave Vanx’s magical light to attack them.
Vanx, who’d eaten a fresh handful of battle berries when they’d rested, gave an uncertain grunt of dissatisfaction at the elf’s choice to flee, but he followed Poops, who was right on the elf’s striding heels.
Vanx was nearing the opening when Poops exploded into a red hot state of excited fury that lit Vanx’s battle lust into a raging inferno. He was forced to stop his headlong rush because the dog was now backing noisily out of the passage, while over his shoulder Vanx saw that the strange arachnoidal beast was still closing on them.
Vanx held his sword in his right hand, and in his left was the orb of magical light. He barely managed to redirect the nasty finger-long stinger with his blade as it came down at him. The defensive move forced him to dive and roll. He had just enough time to see a hulking, fully armed minotaur, as it backed Thorn completely out of the caveway with two swiftly whirling blades.
Vanx was suddenly engaged again with the darting stinger, and that took all the concentration he could muster to avoid.
Poops glanced once at the massive Insectoid, then back at the bovine foe that was bearing down on Thorn. The dog made a decision and darted into the cavern as Clytun the minotaur stepped out from the opening.
Thorn, who had already sunk the Glaive of Gladiolus’s tip deeply into a gap in the minotaur’s lower leg plating, was disheartened. The magical blade hadn’t discharged its healing power to rend apart the cow-man like it was supposed to, and now the crazy dog had fled down the tunnel. Thorn didn’t give up, though; he rolled and spun, and even though he took a nasty glancing blow that rendered his left arm limp and bleeding freely, he continued to fight the giant, armored monster.
Vanx wasn’t faring any better. He had managed to slice into the scorpion tail behind the stinger, but not deeply. Then, as he stepped to dodge its viper attack, he found one of his feet being wrapped, by what?
He looked down to see that what originally appeared to be spider legs, were more like the tentacles of an octerror, with tiny gripping cups. One of these had wrapped his leg completely now. He was falling backward, his legs pulled from under him. His breath left his lungs when his body slapped into the wall, and as he gasped to get precious air back into them, he saw the stinger coming down at his chest. He had dropped his sword when he impacted, and he knew he couldn’t throw up his arms in defense against that vile, venom-dripping spike. In a final effort to save himself, he called out to Sir Poopsalot through their link, but to his great shock and surprise, his familiar
had shut him out, or worse.
Chapter Seventeen
Her kiss was like a candle flame,
and it burned him when she touched him.
When two days passed and it still burned,
he knew she’d gave him something.
– A sailor’s song
Chelda watched a little blue-green sprite as it landed on Captain Moonseed’s shoulder and spoke urgently into her ear.
The new surge of fairy troops from below had helped drive the troublesome rats from the Shadowmane, but the huge, thick-skinned beast the fae called Skryker was still there trying to tear the tree apart.
Skryker absolutely hated the touch of Chelda’s blue blade and was just agile enough to avoid it most of the time. The two of them were circling around the Heart Tree now, keeping it between them, while they gathered their breath for another clash. Under the blue light, the once lush, green sward was now a thick, muddy expanse of blackened gore. Scores of rats and dozens of fairy folk had been killed or trampled.
The fae had forced the fight back out into the forest, but a few had remained in the Shadowmane and were working in teams in concert with Chelda and Skryker’s slow revolutions, to drag those wounded out of the way and back into the Underland.
Those who were beyond help were quickly and mercifully dispatched. First Captain Moonseed was performing this duty herself, which spoke volumes of her sense of duty. Most commanders would have passed such a gruesome task onto a subordinate.
She let Lieutenant Barflower, the wounded leader of a sprite troop called the Glittering Hornets, take care of the tinier beings, but only because her blade was too big to dispatch them cleanly.
So it was when the little glittering sprite came spiraling in and found Captain Moonseed’s ear.
The captain listened intently, then found Chelda and hurried over to her. The big turtle-headed monster, Skryker, was warily keeping the tree between it and the bright blue sword, but it could rage into another attack at any moment. Moonsy spoke quickly and purposefully, knowing that the respite might end in a split second.
“There is a beastling called Gallarael. Do you know such a person?”
Chelda’s shoulders fell, but she waggled the blue blade at her foe.
“She fell from the cliffs and died when the serpent set upon us.”
Chelda assumed that some fairy patrol had found the body after Vanx had told them where to look. It didn’t register that the captain had asked her if she knew Gallarael.
Chelda’s response was all the confirmation that Streak needed. The little finger-sized man began chirping and squeaking anxiously into the captain’s ear.
“Keep Skryker busy!” Moonsy gave the redundant order and charged off to give other orders while rounding up every healthy elf and pixie she spotted.
Chelda thought she heard Gallarael’s name spoken, but her attention was soon redirected back to the long-bodied, grey-skinned monster as it lunged at the tree, feigned its attack there, and at the last moment came around it to lash at her with a three-clawed paw.
Skryker had apparently thought her lapse in movement and her slack-jawed expression meant she was worn out and had let down her guard. He was only half right.
Chelda had let down her guard, but she was far from exhausted. Her recent snack of adrenalseed loaf and battle berries had her muscles humming. Now that she had air back in her lungs, she was ready for more.
Her lapse of focus resulted in a gashed bicep and a hard tumble. She recovered well enough, though, and darted in to give the big, awkwardly moving creature a jab in the inner foreleg with her searing blade.
Skryker roared out but didn’t retreat this time. His mother was in his head now. The Hoar Witch was urging him from afar; her giddy cackling gave him strength, and her fetid presence gave him the courage he needed to brave the touch of that painful sword.
Chelda spun and tried to roll under the thing’s body so she could test those softer-looking shell plates underneath, but Skryker rose up on his hind legs so that her upthrust met only air. When he came back down, he reached with his large forelimbs for the trunk of the Heart Tree, but fell short. As his long, heavy upper limbs came crashing down, they sheared limbs and branches with large, crackling pops. Several of the falling limbs came down on Chelda as she was rolling to her feet at the base of the Heart Tree. Skryker saw this, and his next pouncing leap was directly where she had been smashed by the falling debris.
By all rights Chelda knew she should have been crushed, or skewered, or both. The downward-facing limb that stopped the heavy branch from crushing her body had speared the bloody earth between her arm and her ribs. It scraped some flesh away, but it stopped the main bulk a few feet off the ground above her.
Wincing at the pull of her skin from the bark, she rolled away just as Skryker’s foreclaws came crashing down into the whole mess.
In a whirling move that she’d seen Ramaton Tytak use during Vanx’s battle for passage into the gargan lands, she dropped and spun on a knee and made a deep, hacking chop into Skryker’s lower leg. Unlike the Rammaton, she didn’t pull the blade in at the last moment.
To her great surprise the momentum of her swing sent the sword deeply into Skryker’s gristly ankle joint. When he jerked away, the wound geysered forth thick, black blood. Part of the appendage hung at an awkward angle with what little muscle and tendon remained attached.
The beast roared out in pain and rage and hobbled back away from Chelda and the Heart Tree. The paw was all but severed from its forelimb and he couldn’t put weight on it lest he push the stump into the ground. Skryker snapped his head down on his long turtle neck to keep Chelda at bay while he made his retreat out over the thorn wall and into the woods, but he couldn’t keep her from nearly ruining his other forelimb. As the freakish beast backed out of the Shadowmane, a heavy squishing thing smacked Chelda’s shoulder and sent hot, fizzing liquid splashing across her face.
Rot melon! She cursed herself for letting the retreating monster draw her back into range of the melon-hurling trollamonks. It was all she could do to stumble over to a group of medika huddled very near the gateway that lead into the Underland.
The rats forced the hulking great wolf hyena hybrid called Vrooch off of Gallarael. Had they not had the power of Pwca behind them, Vrooch would have been snapping them up and crunching them in his jaws to keep them from the meal he had just run down, but all of the Hoar Witch’s beasts were wary of the little devil. It wouldn’t do to anger him, for that would anger the Hoar Witch. It wounded his pride to let Gallarael’s leg go and leave her to the filthy vermin, especially since most of his pack was out in the woods, watching, waiting to seek vengeance for the pack mates she had killed.
Gallarael felt the rats scurrying all over her. She felt them scratching and biting at her thick, armored hide, but it didn’t hurt. They couldn’t seem to puncture it with their tiny claws and teeth. What hurt was her leg. The big, wolfen beast had gotten its fangs in good, and those first few violent shakes of his humongous head had twisted her knee joint and laid open the wounds. There the rats were going into a blood frenzy trying to get the rends in her changeling skin to open further. They were having a hard time of it, though, and Gallarael was lying face down fighting the pain while still heaving in the breath she’d exhausted from her flight. She could handle the needling little gnaws on her calf a few moments more, for she had no choice. She doubted she could run, but she was sure she could hobble and hop to a nearby tree.
“Yes, Vrooch,” the Hoar Witch cackled gleefully. She was leaning over her viewing pool clutching the crystal at her neck as if it were a lifeline. “Go to the Heart Tree, take your pack and overrun the barbarian bitch while she is down. Murkurl and his trollamonk goons will keep the changeling from fleeing until Pwca arrives.”
Her pack leader’s frustration wasn’t lost on her. “You and your mates can feed on the barbarian bitch, my child. She’s twice as big and far meatier than the changeling girl.”
Aserica studi
ed the heaving body under the writhing mass of Pwca’s rats. They couldn’t puncture her hide, and Aserica decided she had to know what the elemental composition of such a skin was. The leg could have been chugged down Vrooch’s gullet by now, but by the way the rats were thrashing and flinging around it, it was barely bleeding.
Movement at the edge of the pool’s vision gave her a moment of pause. That little elven bitch that the pixie queen had blessed was coming to save the changeling girl. This sent a tendril of fear snaking up Aserica Rime’s back, but her concern evaporated like a wisp of smoke when she saw Pwca and the rest of his tiny hoard bearing down on them.
For a frantic moment the Hoar Witch searched the table and shelves to find a device she could use to communicate with the little devil. He wasn’t one of her blood-bonded beasts, and the crystal was useless for talking to him, but she did use it to order her pack of trollamonks to go right to the Heart Tree and strip it bare of leaf and limb while Vrooch and his mates feasted on the gargan.
Finding her device, she called to Pwca, who quite unnervingly crawled from the back of his rat mount in the scene on the surface of her reflecting pool. He moved right to the edge of it, climbed up and stood there dripping before her.
“Bring the changeling girl to me, Pwca, before your squeakers devour her. I need her as whole as possible, not chewed to the bone.”
The Legend of Vanx Malic Books I-IV Bundle: To Kill a Witch Page 61