Foxwise: (A Legend of Vanx Malic Short Story) (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 0)

by M. R. Mathias

  The Legend of Vanx Malic

  The Legend of Foxwise Posy-Thorn

  Copyright 2013 by Michael Robb Mathias Jr.

  All Rights Reserved

  Author’s note about the timeline of this story:

  This tale starts at about the same time as

  The Legend of Vanx Malic Book Two - Dragon Isle does.

  It can be read at any time during the series, but will serve readers best

  if they read it before they read Book Four, which is due for release Jan. 9, 2014.

  This story is not part of the main Vanx Malic tale, but the character Foxwise Posy-Thorn is destined to become relevant, if he can survive this ordeal.

  Thank you and enjoy, M. R. Mathias

  One

  General Foxwise Posy-Thorn, “Thorn” to his friends, had never been as nervous as he was now, standing before Queen Corydalis and her council of elders in the nexus. She was beautiful, and her huge, lavender eyes sparkled with the same fractal sheen as her glassine wings. The cherry blossom scent of her breath and the vibrating tingle of the Heart Tree’s magic had him shivering.

  Thorn was the elven delegate of the pixie queen’s court, as well as the leader of her Honor Guard, and General of Defenses. He was around the queen often and somewhat used to all the pomp and ceremony, but the way this evening had unfolded, he knew he was about to be given a task of great importance. The glorious pixie queen had called him and two other elves into the field generated by the root clusters of the Heart Tree. Inside the shimmering energy of the nexus, they could speak without the scores of sprites, brownies, gnomes and skorks milling around in the great central cavern hearing them. Thorn was trying to read her expression, but he found his nervousness wouldn’t allow him the concentration he needed. Then she started speaking, her musical voice full of great sadness and dire warning.

  “Thorn, Bristle and Barb, of all my ranks, you are my most loyal, my fiercest, and my sharpest of wit.” She nodded at strawberry-haired Thorn; his lieutenant, stubble-headed Bristle; and the girlish, blue-haired spellcaster, Barb, who could tell you something about everything.

  “You need not know why, other than this: the Heart Tree and the future of the Lurr Forest fae is at stake. The three of you must cross the Ice Falls and travel to a lake near where men dwell. There you will find Three Tower Island.”

  Thorn tried to concentrate, but the silky, metallic flow of the pixie queen’s hair threatened his ability to listen. Apparently she noticed this, for she placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed him so hard that it hurt.

  “Under the towers there is a series of hidden tunnels and rooms. You must find them and follow them to Falriggin’s hidey-hole. There should be a small chest there with an assortment of valuable coins, gems, and artifacts.”

  “What do we need with those?” Bristle asked.

  Thorn made to command the insubordinate elf, but the pixie queen smiled at the ornery oaf and dispelled the tension.

  “We don’t want those things, Bristle,” she said as she looked deep into Thorn’s eyes. “We want Falriggin’s shard. It is a milky crystal about the size and shape of a carrot. Dire times are coming and there is naught we can do but cast forth a beckoning, and hope that a champion answers the call.”

  “I will be your champion,” Thorn said proudly.

  Barb chuckled and earned a sneer from Thorn, but he didn’t say a word. She was of the same rank as he, but of a different order. He would speak with her in private, though, that was certain.

  “You are my champion, Thorn. That is why you will take this, and lead these two to Three Tower Island to retrieve the shard.”

  She handed him a cloth-wrapped bundle that he immediately understood to be a sword. It was the Glaive of Gladiolus, also known as Witch Bane, he saw when he let the wrapping fall away. He quickly buckled it around his waist and stood that much taller when he was done.

  “Pardon, my queen, but why are you sending three and the Glaive?” Barb asked with deep intelligence twinkling in her bright blue eyes. Thorn only sensed the slightest bit of jealousy from her. “Sounds like a simple task. Are there wards, or guardians, watching over our prize?”

  “Falriggin was as tricky as they come. He sent us missives dozens of years ago, when he was still alive.” Elva Toyon, the eldest member of the Troika Sven, answered. The other six members of the council were cringing along the inner edge of the nexus, for they’d seen the pixie queen’s look as she was spoken over.

  The pixie queen forced a smile over her scowl and touched her chin. “His last message said that only my most loyal, my fiercest, and my most intelligent warriors could retrieve it, and only after he passed on. He knew we would need it, and he didn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands, and now I wish I’d acted sooner, for there is no time to waste. If you’ll place your hands in mine, I will see you off from the Shadowmane at once.”

  Thorn held his breath. He hated it when the queen escorted them up to the Overland. Afterward his skin always felt flaky and crawly. There was a stair and door with an active portal that worked just fine. As it was, he took Barb’s hand and then the pixie queen’s. Bristle joined the circle, and there was a brief but intense feeling of being swarmed by buzzing bees. They appeared in an oval clearing surrounded by a ten-foot-tall bramble shrub that was so prickly and dense that even the smallest birds avoided it for fear of impaling themselves on the thorns.

  As he expected, his skin felt as if it were peeling, but he kept his face solemn. Barb didn’t seem to be affected at all, yet Bristle was scratching at his neck as if there was a red ant crawling on him.

  At one end of the turf-covered oval was the towering Heart Tree. It’s lowest branches were ten feet higher than the top of the wall. It was lush and thick with green, heart-shaped leaves, save for one branch that was dead. Fluttering sprite medikas zipped about and tended the branch, but it was clear to all that it would have to be cut.

  The tree was sick, Thorn understood. The Hoar Witch had poisoned it or some such madness, he wasn’t sure, but it was done. Only the fabled emerald-eyed champion of lore could take her power from her and save it. Queen Corydalis needed Falriggin’s shard to cast a beckoning to him.

  “We won’t fail you, my queen,” Thorn told her as they neared the passage that would take them through the bramble wall to true Overland.

  “I know you won’t, General Posy-Thorn.” She smiled a smile that threatened to turn his knees to water. “Be careful, but make haste. Barb, Bristle, I expect you to follow his orders. Now go and bring us back the shard.”

  Two

  Three days and a few hundred miles had passed since they’d left the Shadowmane. Now the group was skirting well around the gargan city of Great Vale.

  “...I’d bet I’m waist high to a man at least,” said Bristle as they tramped along through the snow. “How tall can they be?”

  “Not as tall as a gargan, but almost.” This came from Barb, who always spoke knowingly. She was tiny, with a shapely form, and her voice was thick and husky. Though Thorn would have never said it aloud, he thought quite highly of her and her lineage.

  “Not quite to the waist of a man, I tell ya. You could run ‘tween a gargan’s legs and not touch his dangles, I say.”

  She turned to Thorn as they moved along the edge of a line of cedar and spruce. She brushed her long, blue bangs back. “What ‘bout ya, Thorn? You ever seen a human up close?”

  “I seen a dead one once.” Thorn gave them both a hard look. “We killed him when he started pissin’ in the mushroom gro
ve.”

  “Killed him good,” Bristle nodded. “I remember.”

  “Killed him for pissing?” Barb asked incredulous. “Really?”

  Thorn was saved from answering when they came around a bend and the land fell away from them in a slow, sloping roll of snow-covered, rock-pocked magnificence. The lake was out there, too, a blue glassine sheen at the bottom of the massive valley. There was an island in the lake and on the island were the remains of three old towers. One was mostly crumbled and one was leaning and missing part of its top. The other stood straight, but Thorn thought he could see gaps in the mortar from where they were.

  “Humans.” Barb pointed at a thin trail of smoke rising from a group of buildings on the far side of the lake.

  “How do we get to the island?” asked Bristle. “I don’t see any boats on this side.”

  “First we have to get to the lake,” Thorn said. Bristle had brought up a good question, but they needed rest before they crossed over, and they were still half a day from the lakeshore. “We can row a log over if it comes to that, but if we get down to the water before nightfall we might be able to find something better.”

  “Good thinking,” Barb said.

  They didn’t find much when they finally made it to the bank. It was more of a fracturing ice shelf than a shore, and there was nothing to aid them except a single log about the size of a gargan’s leg.

  They decided to use the log and keep going. It was cloudy, but the moon was full and its pale yellow glow found its way through. The water was freezing cold, but Barb promised a hot fire when they arrived on the island, so no one complained.

  They were halfway across the glass-smooth lake when they saw something circling in the sky. They knew what it was immediately. It was Sloffin, one of the Hoar Witch’s foul beasts, and now it was diving right at them. Part griffon, part mountain cat, and covered in slick gray scales, Sloffin was hard to see in the blustery mountains, but down here he was far more visible. It didn’t matter, though. All it meant at the moment was that they could see Sloffin diving at them. There was nothing they could do. They were floating on a log in the middle of a lake.

  “Just dive under the water when it’s on us,” said Thorn. “We can swim while it circles back and eventually we will get over.”

  “Yes,” Barb agreed, as she slipped off the log so that it was under her arm and she was mostly in the water.

  “I’ve got it,” Bristle said, and Thorn saw that he had drawn his bow. “Dive away now.”

  Thorn had no reason to doubt Bristle’s deadly accuracy, but what happened next churned the meager food right out of his guts.

  Bristle clamped his legs on the log and steadied his aim, then just as Sloffin was on them, he made to loose his arrow. The gut bowstring stretched because it was wet. The arrow flew like a windblown twig. Then a reptilian claw crushed Bristle’s body to a pulp as it snatched up both him and the log and banked back toward the mountains.

  “Oh no!” Barb sobbed. “It squaw—squaw-- squashed him.”

  Thorn was suddenly aware of the importance of their quest again.

  “Swim,” he said, as he did the same.

  When they finally reached the shore, they barely had enough strength left to drag themselves off of the icy cold beach and into the shrubs.

  Three

  Being elves, they needed no light to see, but Barb made a bit of arcane fire to help warm and dry them. Under a thick-leaved sticker bush, Thorn felt fairly well protected. He had no idea what sort of predators inhabited the island, but he doubted any of them would prickle their mug to get at them where they were. He was having a hard time wrapping his mind around the fact that Bristle was dead. He’d been a good elf, and had a wife and daughter back in the Underland.

  “Look,” Barb pointed up into the sky. Her magical fire vanished with a static pop.

  Thorn saw Sloffin up there circling. The malformed griffin beast circled again and again, but eventually moved out of view.

  They took turns sleeping until the sun pinkened the sky, then they started exploring the island. It wasn’t pleasant for either of them. They’d both respected Bristle and missed him dearly. Their hearts were heavy, but they closed in on the towers in a safe and methodical fashion. The climate was another thing. They were used to the Heart Tree’s perpetual spring. The cold quickly began taking its toll on what little energy they’d restored with their rest.

  “Let’s go down here,” Barb pointed at a snow-slicked stairway that led down from the rubble of the tumbled tower.

  “We can at least get warm and have a sit while we prepare. I’ve a flask of battle-berry juice, and another of rum.”

  “I’ll sip the juice. I was thinking the whole tower would be where the wizard kept his valuables,” Thorn replied, but didn’t hesitate to follow Barb as she crept into the rubble and down the stone stairs.

  “Queen Corydalis said that we would find the shard in the complex of passages that connect the towers underneath.”

  Thorn followed her with his hand on the hilt of his sword. They didn’t need light to see by, but Barb cast forth a small, glowing orb and sent it ahead of them. They were grateful for it.

  As Barb stepped onto a lower floor, Thorn saw a large shape dive at her from the shadows. The old, magic blade he was carrying came clear of its scabbard and went slicing down between his companion and her would-be attacker. He felt the slightest bit of resistance when it met flesh, but it only slowed a fraction as it clove through the wolfish thing.

  There was no jolt of powerful magic when the blade impacted, so Thorn knew this was no witchborn beast. It didn’t matter what it was now, anyway, for it was in two pieces and bleeding out on the dingy, half-rotted planks.

  Barb moved away and made her light flare more brightly. To Thorn’s surprise there was nothing on the floor. Had the creature he’d just slain been an illusion? Or did it disappear after it died?

  “’Twas a door ward, is all,” Barb said as she gathered her composure. “’Twas put there to scare off scavengers and such.”

  “About scared a stain in my britches, is what it did,” Thorn said.

  “Here,” she cast a sizable blue blaze into existence. It appeared in its own fire bowl right there in the floor. “Pull up a stool and get warm. I will cast a few detecting spells and we can get on with it.”

  Just as soon as he was comfortable, Barb handed him the flask from which she had been sipping. He could tell by the smell that it was battle berries. Once he drank of the stuff he would be revived and eager to get into a scrap. He knew he would be warm, too, so he tilted the tin back and took two good swallows.

  The tower’s weather-rotted furnishings were all made to accommodate a human, or maybe a gargan. Thorn wasn’t sure which the wizard had been, but he was sure he felt small here. The tabletop on which Barb had placed her pack was really the seat of a bench, and the dusty wooden spoon he’d spied looked big enough to row a ship with.

  “Have you found anything?” he asked.

  He sat the flask within Barb’s reach and climbed over a fallen beam of tar-covered wood. He could see a perfectly straight line of shadow on the far wall, and after considering it, he was hoping he’d found a secret door or something similar.

  He stopped before a tilted wood divider panel. It was a small door, all right, but he doubted it had been any sort of hidden thing. It was probably just a cabinet. Thorn wasted no time wondering. He let the confident surge of the battle berries fill him, and he opened the door.

  “I sense a trap or two, is all,” Barb said over her shoulder just as a sharp, pain-filled jolt of energy zapped Thorn into a momentary stupor.

  “Tha—thanks for that,” he managed. He hoped she didn’t see his foible. As he eased away from the cabinet, he stopped. He saw a shining bit of something in the corner of the cubby and grabbed it. It was a piece of polished silver with a symbol carved on it. The symbol was a triangle over an ellipse, and seeing it made him drop the thing and move back over to Barb�
�s side.

  “What was that?” Barb asked as the trinket thunked on the floor.

  “A Trigon pendant,” Thorn said. He patted at his hair and adjusted his armor. He was sure it looked like a self-conscious gesture, but he was just trying to make sure he wasn’t on fire or something, because Barb was looking at him as if he had suddenly sprouted leaves.

  Barb giggled and Thorn followed her eyes. His chest and arms were splattered with a thin coat of yellow goo.

  “Falriggin studied the Trigon. By the way, you were just sprayed by Lectrius Aracnus. You should probably wipe that stuff off before it gets hard and ruins your gear.”

  “What? Lectris Arcanus?”

  “A shock-spider,” she shook her head and helped him clean the sticky stuff from his leather armor. “This isn’t our tower,” she spoke as she helped him. “I think you were right. The two ruined towers were damaged long before the old wizard died, so he probably lived and worked in the whole one. I don’t sense anything below us here, save for a cellar.”

  Thorn found the flask and took another long pull from it. He handed it to Barb, who only nipped at the stuff before putting it away and repacking her gear. A moment later she made their fire disappear and led them up and out into the cold again.

  They only made it twenty paces before Thorn stepped past and stopped her.

  “Look,” he pointed at some fresh tracks in the snow. “Dire rats.”

  “We must have scared them from their holes. They don’t usually brave the cold.”

  “They lead right to the entry of the whole tower,” Thorn said.

  “Maybe they’ll try and surprise us.”

  “Let’s go find out,” Thorn nodded his agreement. The battle berries had his blood up and he was ready. Obviously Barb was, too, for she was mouthing the words to a spell as she stalked ahead of him.

  Four

  Dire rats were dog-sized, but not very formidable, creatures. Thorn was aware that they could be a terrible foe if there were enough of them, though. Many a time he and his elves had been dispatched to get a rat out of one Underland tunnel or another. The tracks he and Barb were following were left by three of the vermin and Thorn was hoping they would get the chance to face them. He loved the feel of the Glaive of Gladiolus in his hands and the smell of fresh blood. He skipped ahead of Barb to open the door for her, but she caught his sleeve and stopped him.