Was our love so tenuous, so weak? Could you be so frail that the touch of a strange woman’s hand was enough to draw you from me? Is holding you like holding the air: You are here when I breathe, but gone as the breath leaves my body?
As dawn colored the eastern sky, her grief dimmed, only to be replaced by the cold fire of anger. She confronted the reality of Tristan’s betrayal, and she found she could not forgive him.
She did not see the aura that shimmered around her as she stood. Her body thrummed with power. The enchantment of the scrolls possessed her soul. Her flesh became the earth, her blood the water.
The fire of anger burned brightly in her soul as she stood before the window, looking eastward toward distant Myrloch Vale. There, awaiting their rescue, stood her druids. She no longer needed the help of a sword at her side, especially one held by so fickle a hand as that of her king. The power burned within her, and she stepped through the window, high above the courtyard, to go to the rescue of her clan.
With a puff of air, she was gone, her body disappearing even before it began to fall. A gust burst from Caer Corwell, racing eastward toward the vale as Robyn, druid of Gwynneth, became the wind.
Once again the vulture rose above Caer Corwell, this time soaring away from the sea. The bird’s bright eyes searched eastward, for the darkness upon the land that was its destination. For two days the bird flew, never tiring, until it passed above the reaches of desolation and blackness that marked its goal.
Genna, the druid—but also Kazgoroth, the minion of Bhaal—arrived at her master’s lair in the Darkwell. Her body shifted easily back to that of the druid, and she quietly informed her master that her task was done.
Tristan stormed back to his room. Robyn had not acknowledged his knock, and now all his shame, all his frustration, became anger directed at the woman who, he felt, had brought this upon him. He crashed through his door, ready to strike her or kick her. He would drive her from his castle!
But she was already gone.
He sat numbly upon his bed. The haze of drink had fallen from his brain, and now he thought about the woman. It didn’t strike him as odd that he had never seen her before. Even as prince, he had never traveled across all of Corwell. Yet she had seemed to know him. And the effect of her eyes, and her body, upon him had been like a powerful drug.
Slowly he convinced himself of a lie: that she had bewitched him somehow into betraying his beloved. His mind would not accept the reality, that the betrayal occurred because his own will was weak.
He thought of the celebration, still proceeding in the hall. As midnight approached, the revelry would be reaching its height. The bitter knowledge of his shame held him to his seat. He could not bear the looks that would fall upon him from his friends, his subjects. Daryth’s burning look of accusation as he had left the hall came unbidden into his mind’s eye.
The longer he sat and brooded, the blacker his mood became. He leaped to his feet and paced the length of the large bedroom, raging silently. He would make it up to Robyn, he vowed! He would go to Myrloch Vale and confront the evil there with the Sword of Cymrych Hugh! Then she would know the depths of his love for her.
Somehow this made his shame bearable. He walked from the room, passing slowly by Robyn’s door. Tempted to knock, instead he listened softly for a moment but heard nothing.
Then he went down the wide stairway and reentered the Great Hall. Tavish still played her lute, and most of those present sat quietly, enthralled by a ballad of young lovers.
Carefully the king returned to the head table.
The others turned as he sat. Pawldo quickly avoided his gaze, and he saw the look of disappointment, even anger, on Daryth’s face. More annoying to him was the leer of amusement with which Pontswain regarded him. Grunnarch the Red smiled pleasantly, apparently unaware of anything untoward.
The king looked boldly at his companions, but he felt the red blush of his shame rise into his face. Never mind. His friends would forgive him when he explained his plan of action. And Tristan cared very little what Pontswain thought.
Tavish returned to the table as Tristan leaned forward to speak to his friends gathered at the table. The Ffolk at the other tables paid no attention as they joined again in their own conversations. He saw no sign of the redheaded woman, and for this he felt great relief.
“In the morning, Robyn and I embark for Myrloch Vale. There we will confront this foul cleric and destroy him—and when we return, the celebration can truly begin!”
Daryth’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but his face remained masked by a scowl. Pawldo nodded, and Tavish, who arrived at the table as he made his announcement, beamed.
“This time I’ll be there with you!” declared the bard. “There’ll be a song in this that’ll last for the ages, to be sure!”
“I, too, shall place my axe at your side!” declared Grunnarch solemnly, surprising the young king.
“Thank you, Grunnarch. But I cannot—will not—ask you to accompany us on this mission. We will fight a battle for Corwell’s heart, but it is a battle that must be waged by the Ffolk.” The Red King scowled, and Tristan wondered if he had offended his guest.
“There is a greater task you can perform, Grunnarch, if I can ask it of you,” he hastened to continue. “Can you go to your people and tell them of our peace? Tell them that the time of war between Ffolk and northman is over?”
“That is no task for a fighting king!”
“Perhaps not. But I ask you, can you do it? The enemies of our islands lie not just in the heartland of Gwynneth. The sahuagin who attacked our ships are ample proof of that. Carry the word of our alliance to your people, and we can unite in a common strength that will defeat all of our foes!”
Grunnarch looked skeptical but held his peace.
“I will need to leave the castle’s administration in your hands a little longer,” Tristan went on, turning to Randolph.
“I will come with you,” announced Daryth, though the black look remained on his face.
“Someone’ll have to keep you two alive,” grumbled Pawldo. “As usual, it might as well be me!”
Tristan felt a burst of relief as his two old comrades declared their intentions. He had not previously realized how much their support meant to him. The memory of his shame fell to the rear of his thoughts, now, as planning for the expedition accelerated. But then he noticed the Crown of the Isles, gleaming in its place at the center of the table, where he had placed it at the start of the banquet. Its purity seemed to mock him, its brightness causing a physical pain to his eyes. Impulsively he stood up.
“As long as the scourge of evil marks our island my kingship shall not truly begin!” he announced to the guests at large, noticing the sudden hush that fell across the room. “I shall leave the crown, the symbol of my past victories, here at Corwell, awaiting my triumphant return! Then, and only then, it shall be placed upon my brow in my own castle—and here, before you all, I shall take my place as High King of the Ffolk!”
A thunderous volley of applause exploded from the people, warming the king and seeming to wash his guilt away. That would truly be a grand event, he imagined, with Robyn at his side and evil vanquished from the land!
In the excitement, he failed to notice Tavish’s look of alarm following his announcement. She studied the crown with concern, then looked back to the king. She admired, and even loved him, but now she feared he was embarking on an act of folly.
Tristan sat again, and planning for the excursion continued. Tavish, he learned, had returned to Corwell upon the king’s powerful stallion, Avalon, from the stable at Kingsbay, where Tristan had left him months earlier. His spirits rose still further at the knowledge that this sturdy steed would carry him into the vale.
Finally the details had all been addressed. The revelers had left the hall. Virtually forgotten was his momentary dalliance with the redheaded woman. Perhaps it had all been a dream. Certainly it seemed logical that Robyn would have forgotten about it as well.
He had managed to convince himself of this as, at dawn, he climbed the stairs to the living quarters. Before retiring, he would tell Robyn of their plans. She would be delighted, he knew.
But again there was no answer, and a sick feeling of worry gripped him. In panic, he smashed the door with his shoulder and then kicked it aside with his boot. He stumbled into her room, looking frantically around. He saw her window standing open, with its airy view high above the courtyard, but the druid, together with her staff and scrolls, was gone.
The druid, in fact, currently relished a form of freedom she had never before imagined. As the wind, she gusted and eddied, sailed and then slowed. She felt a great expansiveness, freed from the cloak of flesh. Her senses probed everywhere, pulling in the touch and sight and smell of the world.
For a long day and through the following night she blew, caring little for the passing of time. Fatigue was a thing unimaginable. The moors rolled past, and she dallied and swirled in the foothills below the highlands. She paused at a tiny cantrev, and even the woodsmoke of breakfast fires tickled her nostrils with a delightful odor.
The white ribbon of Corwell Road meandered below her as she swirled toward the center of Gwynneth Island. Finally she judged the time had come to turn northward, toward Myrloch Vale.
The power of the scroll possessed her completely. The words—runes, actually—had been vibrant with power. Now that magic, sanctified by the gods in a time long past, became Robyn’s tool. She used it with skill and vigor, becoming a new element in pursuit of her goal.
She hurled herself at the highlands, storming up a vale, roaring through a narrow defile. Now Robyn was a wind of storm, gathering strength as she rose into the chill, barren reaches.
The forested hills of Corwell still glowed green, as the fir trees cloaking them retained their foliage even against the approach of winter. She sensed little wildlife, as the deer and badger and rabbit had all migrated to the lower reaches for the cold season.
As she rose higher, the trees gave way to rocky, barren slopes. Great patches of snow lay in drifts along many of the ridges. Deep ravines fell into chasms, and then valleys that trailed to the warm, green country behind. She did not sense the waning of her enchantment, but the spell had begun to lose its potency. Though mighty, it could last for but a limited time.
Snowflakes pranced around her as she crested the great ridge, the summit that separated the human realms of Corwell from the wilderness of Myrloch Vale.
And here the storm broke into chaos.
Robyn crashed into a barrier of evil so potent, so pervasive, that her soaring momentum vanished into nothingness. Where the land behind her had been clean and healthful, full of nature’s vitality, she recoiled now, faced with a vision of death, decay, and corruption. The devastation began at the crest and trailed into the vastness of Myrloch Vale.
Even Myrloch itself, a great lake of crystalline azure in Robyn’s mind, had succumbed to the rot. Visible in the distance to the north, it was now dark and dull, the water seeming more a stretch of brackish swamp than a vast loch. The forests around it now sprawled lifeless, barren skeletons of trees rising forlornly from blackened ground.
The magic that had carried her thus far vanished in the face of a far stronger and more immediate power. In the flash of that instant, Robyn’s body became flesh. She crashed among the rocks at the crest of the highest peak and lay there stunned, shivering, and bleeding.
But the worst injury had been inflicted upon her soul. The desecration of so vast an area, and the totality of the destruction, tore at every fiber of her faith. How could she cope with power such as this?
Dimly she realized that her arm lay behind her, twisted at an unnatural angle by jagged rocks. She shifted slightly, and pain knifed through her shoulder.
The immediacy of her suffering brought her attention back to her own predicament. She sat up, wincing in pain, and knew that her arm was broken, probably in several places. Her lips and mouth were swollen and bleeding. She spat, and several chips of teeth fell onto the rocks.
As she looked up, the expanse of the vale again came before her vision, and she moaned with despair. The cold wind, an inanimate thing now, pulled at her torn robe, sucking the heat from her exposed skin. Now flakes of snow swirled around her, stinging the scraped skin along her face and cheeks.
Mother, I have failed you, she thought in despair. She did not know if she spoke to her spiritual mother—the goddess, mother of all the isles—or to her true mother, the druid she had never known. It didn’t matter, really.
I shall die on this rock. My anger has sent me on a fool’s quest, but must the punishment be so harsh?
Slowly the pain disappeared from most of her body, though her arm and shoulder continued to throb. Was the chill numbing her senses, or had the pain indeed eased?
She twisted again among the rocks, trying to avoid a root she felt jabbing into her back, and then her mind began to work. There could be no root where there were no plants. The plainly wooden surface annoying her must be something else.
Biting her lip to keep from crying out, she turned to see her staff pinned between two rocks. Awkwardly, with her good hand she pulled it out and laid it across her lap. She had no strength to call for its magic, but its mere presence comforted her nonetheless.
Another unnatural thing caught her eye, and she gasped with relief as she saw the ivory tube containing the Scrolls of Arcanus. The container lay below her feet, in a shadowy crack beneath an overhanging boulder. With relief, she confirmed that she had carried her talismans with her.
The accoutrements of faith brought hope back once again. Perhaps she would not die here. It would take more than a few bruises to break the will of a druid of the vale!
She closed her eyes and slowly, carefully, rehearsed the words to a simple spell. She was weak, and her mouth was wounded. She could not take a chance on misstating the incantation.
“Matro, karelius doniti … arum!”
She whispered the words to her spell, and the healing magic spread through her shoulder, into the length of her arm. She felt the torn muscles mend, and even sensed the bonding as the shattered ends of bone fused again into one. For precious seconds, the curing spell tingled within her.
But then the magic faded, dying away in a last flutter of healing. She grew weak and dizzy, finally slumping against her rocky seat. For a moment, her world went black, and then she awakened with a start. She moved her arm experimentally, and pain again lanced through her shoulder, but it was more bearable now, and the arm answered the commands of her brain in its movement, however begrudgingly.
The healing spell of a druid was not potent, but it did help. And after a brief period of prayer, she could use it again. Closing her eyes and forcing herself to ignore her pain, Robyn relaxed. The familiar sensation of peace came over her, and she called upon the mother to restore her spell to her.
She awaited the smooth flow of power that would be the answer to her prayer, but there was nothing. Again, and a third time, she prayed for her spell, but she could get no response from her goddess. A chill sensation of fright and loneliness closed about her, and she found it impossible to concentrate any longer on prayer. Grim and afraid, she tried to move.
She found that she could stand up and did so. Carefully lifting the scrolls, she looked for a pouch or pocket in which to place them. Settling for her apron, Robyn carefully wrapped the tube in cloth, binding it against her back. She found that she had on the garments she wore at the time of her casting—robe, apron, belt and boots—along with her staff and scrolls.
But nothing else. She had neither flint to spark a fire nor dagger to strike it on. Her clothing was woefully inadequate to face a chill night, even one not spent atop a craggy, snowswept peak.
She turned, once, to look at the rolling foothills to the south, falling away to the green moors of central Corwell. The sun still beamed there, dancing among white clouds to illuminate a low hill or small copse of brilliant oak,
blazing with the colors of late autumn.
But overhead roiled heavier, more ominous clouds. The snow became thicker by the minute and soon began to gather in the cracks among the broken rocks. The clouds lay like a leaden quilt across the breadth of the vale, casting the huge valley in a pall of shadow. Though the snow seemed to be falling only among the highest mountains, Robyn could see no sign of encouragement or comfort in the entire brooding vista.
Struck by a thought, she looked in the scroll tube for the parchment of wind mastery, but it was not there. She was not surprised, for she knew that a druidic spell written upon a scroll would vanish as soon as it was cast. She suspected that the clerical spells worked the same.
But there were other ways to travel, and many of them did not require her to walk down the side of this mountain. Once she had flown from Gwynneth to Callidyrr in the body of a hawk, and she could certainly cross a narrow band of foothills in the same form.
She closed her eyes, calling the birdlike image into her mind, preparing for the familiar shifting of her form. And then a blinding pain flashed behind her eyes and she sat heavily upon the jagged rocks. Reaching to either side, she balanced herself upon her hands—not wings, as she had expected—and opened her eyes. The same weakness that had caused her to faint after casting the healing spell drained her muscles of strength and caused her head to spin.
For an awful moment, she felt a horrible surge of panic rising in her stomach. What had happened to her powers? She shook her head, banishing the fear, and sought a logical explanation. It must be fatigue, she told herself—the weakness caused by her wounds and her lack of sleep. Certainly it would pass.
Resolutely she started toward the north on foot. Holding her staff in her right hand as an aid to balance among the treacherous rocks, she started down the long shoulder of the mountain.
Darkwell Page 7