The Magehound

by Elaine Cunningham

  She came up for air, breathing in as deeply as she could and then diving deep. Her mother’s last words followed her into the water, and haunted her as she swam.

  “Forget me!”

  Tzigone came out of the memory trance suddenly, gasping and sobbing. It was Kiva who had taken her mother! Kiva who had chased her even then! She shrieked aloud, giving voice to the loss and fear and rage of a lifetime.

  “I will not forget,” she said as she fisted the tears from her eyes. “I never forgot you.”

  But she had forgotten. And suddenly she understood why. Her mother’s last words to her had been no mere farewell but a powerful enchantment. Apparently Tzigone’s magical resistance wasn’t absolute. Her mother, if no one else, could pierce it.

  But the spell was broken now, and memories came flooding back. For a long time Tzigone huddled in the tree, letting the images and sounds flow through her, savoring them all. There had been bad times, but they were hers. She lingered longest on her favorite memory—listening as Keturah sang into the night wind, and then waiting breathlessly too see what creatures came to the beautiful wizard’s call.

  After a time, Tzigone began to sing a dimly remembered tune, tentatively at first, then with growing conviction. The sound of her voice startled her. It was rich and true, full of magic but possessing its own beauty. Her mother’s voice, unpolished but unmistakable, poured from her throat.

  A sparkle of light appeared beside her, whirling in a tiny vortex that slowed as it gained color and substance. When it stopped, a tiny winged lad stepped out into the empty air. Wings beating, he darted closer and peered into her face with puzzlement.

  “Keturah? Where did all your hair go?”

  “Not Keturah,” she said softly, and suddenly she realized that she had no name to give him. Hope flared bright in her heart. Surely her oldest friend would know her true name! “I’m Keturah’s daughter. Do you remember me?”

  The tiny face lit up in a smile. “Child? Is that you?”

  A sinking suspicion crept into her mind. “Why do you call me ‘Child’?”

  “Why do you call me ‘Sprite’?” the creature riposted. “You couldn’t say my name, and I couldn’t say yours.”

  “What was my name?” Tzigone asked eagerly. “Say it as best you can!”

  The sprite shrugged. “If you don’t know it, why should you expect me to? Keturah said it wasn’t to be spoken, so I didn’t ask.’

  Disappointment surged through Tzigone, but she understood what her mother had done. Names had power, and knowledge of her true name could become a tool in the hands of those who sought her.

  She shook this off and moved on. “You came when I called,” she said to the sprite.

  The tiny lad shrugged again. “Had to.”

  Tzigone nodded thoughtfully. Apparently the redheaded jordain wasn’t as foolish as he seemed. This was why Kiva had been seeking her. And once her purpose was fulfilled, Kiva would no doubt cut her throat with the knife nearest at hand.

  Fury assailed her at the thought of all Kiva had cost her. “No more,” Tzigone whispered. “You won’t win this time.”

  “Win?’ Sprite looked at her quizzically. ‘You want to play?” He darted aside and conjured several tiny balls of light, which he began to juggle with uncanny dexterity.

  Tzigone snatched up the glowing toys and squashed them in her hand. “No magic,” she said firmly. “You wouldn’t like what it might attract.”

  The sprite flittered down to rest on the branch beside her and wrapped his wings around himself like a cloak. “Don’t like this place already. It’s cold here.”

  Tzigone’s eyes narrowed. The swamp was as hot as a bathhouse. She realized suddenly the danger she had put Sprite in by calling him to this place.

  “Go,” she urged. “Go as far from the swamp as you can. We will play soon.”

  The tiny lad shrugged and disappeared. Tzigone took a deep breath and stilled her mind. When she had achieved a measure of calm, she reached out with senses that had always been finely attuned to the presence of magic.

  She sensed a faint shadow of magic where Sprite had been; other than that, the swamp was oddly devoid of it. There was almost nothing, other than a soft, unfocused glow that rose from the camp.

  But it was not the magic of the silencing spell. This was someone’s personal mark, a “feel” that was unique to one individual. Someone in that camp possessed magic, and most likely was not aware of it. But Kiva had known. A magehound knew who possessed magic and who did not Most likely the elf had brought someone into the swamp as bait for the laraken. Perhaps Matteo. Kiva thought she could do anything without reprisal.

  “I don’t think so,” Tzigone said softly as she scrambled down the tree, more determined than she’d ever been. The memories that flooded her had reminded her how difficult her survival had been. Survival was a rare accomplishment But it was time to do more than just survive.

  She crept deeper into the swamp, prompted by fury and by the determination that Kiva would destroy no more lives.

  As she reached up to pull aside a curtain of vines that twisted between two trees, colors spilled onto her hand, a stray bit of rainbow where there should be none. She stopped and spun to her right. Not more than five paces away stood a glassy, ghostly form.

  But the spirit did not move, and after a moment Tzigone realized that it wasn’t a ghost—at least, not a ghost in any conventional sense.

  Beside an ancient swamp oak stood a translucent statue of a beautiful female, far too lovely to be human. The slender hand disappeared into the trunk of a thick tree, and the frozen face was upturned with the hopeful expression of one who expects sanctuary. This, Tzigone realized, had been a dryad. She took a deep breath and plunged on.

  As Tzigone walked, she saw other glassy forms of creatures suddenly drained of magic, and therefore of life. There were more dryads, and among the leaves, she saw the tiny fallen bodies of sprites and pixies, many of them nothing but shards. She saw a single faun frozen in midcaper and more elves than she’d seen in all her travels through Halruaa.

  She’d seen one of these crystal shadows before and had thought that only elves could suffer this fate. But the lie was all around her. All magical creatures fell to the mystery of the swamp. No wonder wizards seldom emerged from Akhlaur!

  A voice in her head sounded, part warning and part taunt. This could be you.

  Tzigone blinked away the phantom image of her own glassy shadow and plunged deeper into the swamp.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Matteo and Andris walked side by side, talking softly of all they had done since they’d parted and of the task that lay before them. Try as he might, Matteo hadn’t been able to convince Andris to flee the swamp. He couldn’t walk away and let his friend fight alone.

  But his decision to stay went deeper still. Matteo had been raised with a firm sense of his own destiny. That had been sorely shaken. Lacking a vision of his own, he accepted the one shining in his friend’s eyes. He would fight the laraken for Andris, not for Kiva. And when the battle was done, he would find a way to deal with the magehound.

  An undulating cry howled through the forest, a terrible sound that was both deep, bone-shaking growl and raptor’s shriek. Distant but powerful, it reminded Matteo of the winds that blew off the Bay of Taertal before the onset of a monsoon.

  Matteo and Andris unsheathed their daggers instinctively, moving in perfect unison.

  “It is still some way off,” Andris said softly.

  Matteo nodded. As he put away the daggers, an annoying little whine sounded just above his head. Instinctively he swatted at it, then realized his mistake and dropped to the ground, shouting for the other men to do the same.

  A dark, whirring cloud swept down on them, moving in deadly formation. The cloud dived sharply, and then at the last moment swerved in a rising arc to keep from crashing into the ground.

  “A stirge swarm?” muttered Andris. “What next?”

  Angry and cheated
, the swarm of mosquitolike creatures broke formation and began to whir around in small circles as they selected their prey.

  Matteo groped for the thong that bound the four-foot pike to his back. He tugged it free and surged to his feet, thrusting at the stirge that swooped toward him.

  The enormous insect slid wetly down the slender blade, its slide aided by the blood it had stolen from some hapless forest dweller. The stirge stopped only when it struck the pike’s cross guard. Its long mosquitolike snout still stabbed and probed, even as it twitched in its death throes.

  Matteo ducked and thrust and stabbed again and again, until the skewered bodies of giant mosquitoes filled half his pike and slowed his movements. He tossed the weapon aside and pulled his daggers, slashing at any of the creatures that came near.

  The men fought furiously, and soon they were joined by unlikely allies—the stirges themselves. Desperate for food, some of the giant insects fell upon their fallen kin and thrust their swordlike snouts into their rounded bellies. Macabre little tunes, the stirge song hummed by the feeding monsters, filled the air as the creatures drank the twice-stolen blood.

  Their traitorous behavior disgusted Matteo. He fell upon the cannibals, slashing and stabbing until the stirge song faded into silence and the bodies lay thick upon the ground.

  Andris waded over to him through the grim carpet “Big swarm. Even so, they had to be desperate to attack an armed band.”

  Matteo nodded. He stooped by one of the men, a young jordain he recognized but whose name he had never known. The man had been bitten two or three times. He was as pale as a man drained by vampires. A pike lay nearby, heavy with skewered stirges. Another stirge lay dead beside him, leaking ichor from a gaping hole in its head where the snout had been. This protruded from the man’s chest. He had torn it away when he ripped the giant insect from him, but not quickly enough. Blood had bubbled from the top of the tube, but the flow was stilled now.

  Andris stooped and gently closed the man’s eyes. He rose and motioned for the others to follow. The ground grew soft beneath their feet, and soon bog gave way to shallow water. They waded through it, moving into the deep shadows of moss-draped trees.

  Matteo bumped against someone and stopped suddenly, instinctively putting out his hand to steady whomever he’d jostled. He felt a deathly chill and snatched his hand back. Squinting in the faint light, he made out the glassy shadow of an elf. Behind the crystalline form was another elf, and as his eyes adjusted, he made out several more. Matteo would have thought them to be clever statues but for the incredible cold within.

  “I’m beginning to see why Tzigone warned you away from the swamp,” he told Andris, shaking his head in awe. “By all the gods that ever were! This laraken is no ordinary monster.”

  “Since when did monsters become ordinary?” Andris said with an attempt at lightness. But his eyes were pained as he took in the ghostly shadows. “Let’s keep moving.”

  The swamp water grew steadily deeper, the shallows unexpected giving way to sudden dangerous drops and deep pools. As they skirted one such pool, Matteo thought he saw the crenellations of a vast sunken tower, but he couldn’t fathom a valley deep enough to swallow such a thing.

  As he studied the towerlike shape, the water stirred. Before he could draw breath to shout a warning, a figure rose suddenly from the water, and of the water.

  Shaped more like a giant bear than a human, its form was dark and brackish, and small fierce fish schooled frantically within the watery body.

  Matteo shouted an alert and pointed to the magical creature. “Water elemental!”

  For a moment the fighters paused. Such creatures were fought with spells and weapons of magic, and they had none.

  Andris pulled a small bottle from his bag and shouted a command. Matteo quickly lit a torch and waited until Andris and several others had tossed the contents of their bottles into the fetid water.

  He dropped the torch, and the swamp gas exploded into a ring of bright flame, which quickly engulfed the water elemental. With a roar like that of an angry sea, the creature fought to beat through the flames. Its body began to dissolve with a searing hiss. Clouds of steam billowed upward. Finally the creature could take no more and disappeared back into the pool.

  Matteo and Andris regarded each other somberly. “A powerful wizard could summon an elemental, but no such person could survive here for long. Yet there is much magic here,” Matteo observed.

  “The water elemental was a creature of the plane of water,” Andris responded, seeing Matteo’s reasoning. “The gate must be near.”

  “And likely the laraken as well. Without Tzigone to draw it away, we will have to destroy it here,” Matteo reasoned. “Then Kiva can close the gate—if that is indeed her intention.”

  Andris gave him an odd look. “We should split the men into two ranks. If we spread out, we may be able to flank the laraken with an all-out attack. You take the second troop.”

  They scattered into the swamp, creeping through the shallows and slipping through openings in the vines. The water became less fetid as they went, until it was as pure and clear as a mountain stream. One of the men bent to dip up some water in his cupped hands. Mattis gave him a quick jab with the blunt end of his pick, then shook his head sternly.

  It was a moment’s distraction, no more. Matteo didn’t see the enormous green-black hands that slid through the curtain of vines several paces before him. But his attention snapped back when a loud ripping sound shook the swamp and echoed through him like lightning and thunder combined.

  And then the laraken appeared, darting through the opening in the thick jungle vegetation.

  “Mother of Mystra!” whispered Matteo.

  The monster was more than twice the size of a man and hideous beyond description. Eels writhed about its huge skull like snakes on a medusa’s head. Ears more pointed than an elf’s rose on either side of a demonic face. Long, needle-sharp fangs dripped with luminous green. The laraken’s massive back was hunched, giving it a furtive appearance. But there was nothing tentative about its movements. It came on with swift, darting jolts, zigzagging like a startled lizard.

  Not startled, Matteo realized. Hunting. But what the laraken needed, none of them had.

  Andris gestured for the first attack. Ten of his men nocked arrows and let fly, sending them whistling about the creature’s head. The laraken swatted them aside as it might dismiss a mildly annoying swarm of gnats. The archers kept the arrows coming to distract the laraken’s attention. Ten more men darted in, their long pikes jabbing at the creature’s body. Again and again they struck, but none of the blades could pierce the thick greenish hide.

  The laraken lifted an enormous clawed foot and stamped at one of the annoying spears. The weapon shattered and the laraken’s foot bore the spear wielder to the ground. The creature shifted its weight onto that foot, crushing the man with a terrible wet, popping sound. Its other foot, dexterous as a monkey’s hand, darted out and snatched up another fighter. The monster kicked out, sending the man flying toward a deep pool. Immediately the water began to roil as the jungle fish swarmed and fed. Andris called the surviving pikesmen into retreat as the laraken threw back its head and sniffed the air with a loud, grating snuffle. Its head snapped toward Andris, and it let out a shriek of triumph.

  It came steadily on, swatting aside the pikesmen and archers as it advanced on Andris. Its gaunt form began to fill as it moved.

  Matteo motioned to the men with him flank the creature. As he ran toward the laraken, he realized that his friend was turning pale. No, not pale—translucent! He could see the outlines of the trees behind Andris taking shape through his friend’s form.

  Understanding jolted him. Kiva had spoken truth the day she took Andris from the Jordaini College. He did possess a certain innate magic, if only that sleeping in his elf blood. But that was dangerous enough, and Kiva knew it well. She sacrificed Andris to the laraken, using his battle skills for as long as they lasted.

  Frant
ically Matteo nocked an arrow and let fly, shouting for his men to do likewise. The laraken ignored the tiny missiles. They threw their spears and pikes, but the weapons bounced off the tough hide.

  Matteo redoubled his pace and sprinted over the crushed foliage that lay in the laraken’s wake. He leaped onto the creature’s prehensile tail and ran up its back, using the bumps of its spine as footholds. He hooked the fingers of his right hand over the protruding shoulder blade. With his left hand, he pulled a dagger and stabbed again and again.

  He might as well have been a stirge attaching a stone tower. Not even this attack drew the laraken’s attention away from his friend.

  The monster was closing fast. Andris pulled out his sword and lofted it, prepared to face the monster. He jolted as his eyes fell upon his translucent fist.

  Matteo hoisted himself up to peer over the laraken’s shoulder. “Flee, Andris! Kiva has betrayed you,” he shouted desperately.

  Andris met his eyes and shook his head, but he didn’t deny the truth of Matteo’s words. How could he, when he was all but transparent?

  Not far away, in the tallest tree she could find, a grim-faced Tzigone watched the battle.

  “Fools,” muttered Tzigone, using the old term that was strangely close to the word jordain. “Damned if those idiots weren’t well named.”

  Wrath strengthened her resolve. She began to sing, calling to the laraken in a voice that echoed through the swamp and set the crystalline ghosts around her vibrating in sympathy. An eery keening filled the swamp, as if the voices of the dead joined the song in harmony. Tzigone kept on, singing in a voice that was full and rich and sure.

  The laraken turned, uncertain. It began to move toward the compelling song, paying no more attention to the human on its back and the humans that pelted it with weapons than if they’d been mildly irritating flies.