by GJ Kelly
“Why is it here at all?” Elayeen grimaced. “It makes no sense that the Graken-rider would seek to prevent our travelling northeast. It cannot possibly know we left our supplies out there.”
“Oh that’s true…” Meeya blinked.
“Then why raise such a barrier at all? If not to bar our passage, then whose?”
“An excellent question, Valin, and one which I cannot answer. There is nothing in that direction except Fallowmead, far off. Sudshear lies south of east, not north.”
“Perhaps the weed was not sown for us at all. Few if any in Arrun would recognise it, nor know until it was too late the danger it represents. Not unless wizard Allazar’s book has found its way this far south since we departed Tarn.”
“No, there is no sense in this. The crop has been sown before us. If it were intended to stop aid from Sudshear reaching Fallowmead, it is far too late, and in entirely the wrong place. It should be running west to east to block any force from the southern capital advancing north.”
“It cannot have grown so quickly,” Meeya insisted. “We only saw the Graken late this afternoon. It cannot have grown so quickly!”
The butterflies swarming in Elayeen’s stomach seemed suddenly to settle a little. “I think Meemee is correct. I think this barrier came up behind us, as we advanced upon the Goth-lord, to protect him from pursuit. It could have been sown days ago, and grown slowly. I cannot recall anything in wizard Allazar’s book attributing rapid growth to this dangerous weed. All I recall is that it may be rendered harmless by cutting off the bulbous heads, and that ordinary fire serves only to spread its spores. If it were possible for them to grow from seed to adult weed in a matter of hours, I am sure Allazar would have made mention of it.”
“I certainly didn’t use my eldeneyes to study the ground for dark seeds,” Meeya announced. “Did you, Vali?”
“No, I did not.”
“Dwarfspit,” Elayeen mumbled. “We have eyes yet do not use them.”
“And the Graken-rider, miThalin?”
“Valin?”
“Why should the Graken-rider have passed this way? If the Flagellweed were sown some time ago to protect the Goth-lord’s rear, why then did we see the Graken-rider patrolling this barrier earlier today?”
Elayeen shrugged, and adjusted her cloak. “Perhaps to see if we were entangled within it. As you said, if we had not travelled at so gentle a pace, we might well have found ourselves here when the Graken passed overhead.”
Valin seemed unconvinced, but said nothing.
“The line stretches far, according to my Sight,” Meeya sighed, standing in the stirrups and casting a gaze to the left and right. “I can’t see the ends. Do we go around? The sun is setting.”
Elayeen chewed her lip and pondered the question, then stood in her stirrups and swung her own gaze; the line did indeed extend a long way, being lost from view nearer than the horizons around them thanks to the undulating terrain. She sat back down, and heaved a sigh of frustration.
“No. No, we’ll go back to the last stream we crossed and rest there. There is time yet to gather up enough kindling for a fire before nightfall. Valin, we’ll need a fire-pit though, I don’t want open flames this close to where we know the Graken-rider passed so recently.”
“Isst, miThalin.”
“And tomorrow?” Meeya asked, turning her horse back the way they had come.
“Tomorrow we’ll turn due south,” Elayeen sniffed. “We have no idea how far the Flagellweed extends, or what other barriers the enemy has raised. It’s not worth the risk, to us or to the horses.”
“Leeny? Are you sure?”
Elayeen nodded, and turned her horse. “It’s just a doublet, Meemee,” she lied, softly, “Valin was right, maybe Rider Maeve can have another made for me later, when G’wain is back.”
“Yes,” Meeya smiled weakly, seeing the pain of the loss Elayeen felt. “Besides, it probably wouldn’t fit you now, nor later after the Merionell.”
Elayeen sniffed again. “You’re not helping, Meeya.”
“Sorry.”
oOo
34. Seeds
On the morning of the 23rd they turned as Elayeen had instructed, due south. The night had been a quiet one, Elayeen silently lamenting the loss of the Red and Gold she’d worn in battle beside Gawain. It had been hard stifling her emotions in the night; she’d been desperate to keep from allowing the ache for him to uncork her tears, lest Valin or Meeya see the heaving of her shoulders she knew would betray her silent sobs. She had so very little of him now that she could touch or hold in her hands. Only the braid he had tied in her hair, tucked safely in a pocket in her tunic.
He didn’t understand, when he’d left her in Tarn. He didn’t understand because she hadn’t told him, and she hadn’t told him because the world needed him to destroy the threat of the Orb of Arristanas, in Calhaneth. And because some long-dead she-wizard had commanded her not to speak of it to anyone. But in the small dark hours of the night, with nothing to cling to but a cloak and a blanket reeking of horse, what did she care for ancient bitch-wizards, or for prophecies, or some tenuous hope that something good might come of all this suffering. You can’t love a prophecy, you can’t hold a hope in your arms, and there is no warmth to be found in the embrace of Eldengaze. She missed him, it was as simple as that.
Meeya and Valin had known Elayeen long enough to understand from but a glance that nothing was needed from them this day but silence, and the reassurance of their presence. So they rode quietly south, frak for breakfast and breezes for company, sometimes at the canter, sometimes at the trot, and often walking so that the horses could enjoy the whispering grasses that grew tall between gorse and thorn here in the Southshearings of Arrun.
It was the middle of the afternoon on the 24th, and still travelling due south at a leisurely pace, they reined in, and tensed. The land was generally tilting downhill towards the far-distant vast river valley through which the mighty Sudenstem flowed, but still there were undulations and small hills dotted here and there, some capped by trees. To their left, one such hill rose gently, wild goats dotted about its slopes and birds flitting here and there through the boughs on its summit. Ahead of them, though, ground made boggy by springs emerging from some fault in the land stretched across their path.
But it was not the obvious soft and muddy ground which had brought them to a dead halt. It was the sight of dead goats, and, seen with eldeneyes which first had scanned the hill for darkness, countless tiny black balls which seemed to lie just beneath the surface of the mire.
“What are they, do you think, Aknid?” Meeya whispered.
“No, there are far too many, and they are too small. Look, they extend like the Flagellweed, a long way. To the east, and to the west.”
“Slightly more angled towards the northwest, miThalin,” Valin agreed. “And they do not appear to be moving, nor to have moved. At the cliffs, the ground was pockmarked where the Aknid had vacated their burrows to move to new positions.”
“Something killed those goats.” Meeya announced. “There’s nothing dark up on the hill, or in the ground on its slopes. Except live goats. I’ll ride up and survey the surroundings?”
“We all shall, Meemee, I’ll not have you venturing up there alone, not with darkness scattered in the surrounds.”
Up the slope they rode, then, though the hill was hardly more than a pimple compared with the steep and towering Croptop in Mornland. The summit gave them perhaps eighty feet advantage over their former position, and revealed little save for the extent of the dark-seeded ground, which ran in a line almost east-west, but for perhaps ten degrees of a compass needle.
“The Graken-rider has been busy,” Valin sighed. “This line of dark plantings would seem to have protected the Goth-lord’s left flank during his flight west across Arrun.”
“We are not too far south of the stream where we stopped the Goth, by my reckoning,” Elayeen drew out her map, though it contained so little detail it was har
dly of use save for marking their progress by dead-reckoning.
“The River Goth-halt,” Meeya grimaced. “I don’t think you’ll find it on there, Leeny.”
“No, nor much of anything else,” she agreed. “The hills of Dun Meven in Callodon are to the west. The River Sudenstem to the south, and Sudshear on the coast to the east. Apart from larger settlements along the river up from the marshes near the twin mouths of the Sudenstem, and perhaps a fishing village on each side of Lake Arrunmere and the trading-post there, there is nothing.”
“There is our destination, where the last riders have made their home. Perhaps the Graken-rider knows of them, and laid this line to prevent their hunting for the Goth-lord.”
“And there are the ninety-five,” Meeya pointed to the map. “Isn’t that place where Kern said he intended to go?”
“Where?”
“There,” Meeya leaned from her saddle and jabbed a grimy fingernail to the left of the lake.
“Harks Hearth?”
“I recall Kern mentioning the place,” Valin agreed. “Major Tyrane said it was an important storehouse.”
“I hardly think the Graken-rider would go to such lengths to prevent Kern of ‘Yorn venturing all the way into Arrun. This ‘Harks Hearth’ is a long way from where we stand.”
“Unless the map is wrong, or our reckoning,” Meeya suggested diplomatically. “We have been travelling fast, to begin with. Then slow. We may be further southwest than we think?”
Elayeen blinked. “It’s possible we are, but not so close to Harks Hearth in Callodon for Kern to have been a threat to the Goth.”
“There are others of the ninety-five in Arrun and Callodon, some who said they might patrol long range, looking for signs of darkness.”
Elayeen blinked again, and then waved a hand at the expanse of plantings hidden beneath the surface of the land to the west and east.
“All that, to prevent one Ranger hunting down the Goth? Who was this Goth-lord to need such protection, Morloch himself?”
Meeya shrugged. “Someone important, obviously.”
Again Elayeen blinked. But she could not deny the evidence of her eldeneyes. The Graken-rider had seeded Flagellweed to the northeast behind the path of the Goth’s flight west. And had seeded this southern line too, with something dark and deadly…
“We’ll go down, and take a closer look at those things. Perhaps one of the dead goats can tell us what danger lurks beneath the surface between us and the Sudenstem.”
Down on the low ground they dismounted some twenty yards from the nearest of the carcasses scattering the area, and with eldeneyes to reassure them that the way ahead was clear, they approached the dead goat with great caution.
“There is the cause of its demise,” Valin announced, pointing with the tip of his drawn sword at the shattered lower foreleg. “It bled to death, the hoof and foreleg ripped asunder.”
“By what?”
Valin shrugged, and they eased forward again, cautiously.
“By that, I suspect,” Valin pointed to a dark-stained patch of ground, and the grisly remains there.
“Be careful, Vali, there’s something dark close to the remains beneath the soil.”
“Isst, miheth,” Valin sighed, and flicked his eldeneyed gaze at his wife.
He inched forward, prodding the ground ahead of him carefully with his sword. Nothing happened.
“Stand ready,” he announced, and then mumbled “Though ready for what I do not know.”
Elayeen and Meeya stood poised, weapons readied.
Valin prodded the ground directly over the bulbous black shape they could see lurking below the surface. Nothing happened.
He prodded harder, and suddenly a very black and very sharp spike burst from the bulb, lancing up through the soil to strike the steel of Valin’s blade, leaving it ringing in his astonished hand. The Spikebulb in its entirety popped from the ground with the recoil of its loosing, and the three elves watched aghast as the bulb pulsed and contracted, rolling this way and that, the spike slowly expanding, until suddenly the spike burst open like some grotesque flower blossoming.
Valin jumped back, his face mirroring the disgust they all felt.
“Now we know what ripped open the goat’s hoof and leg. It must have run a few paces, impaled, before the thing burst, and then managed to stagger that small distance further before collapsing and bleeding to death.”
“What is it?” Meeya grimaced.
“I know not,” Elayeen admitted. “Some kind of trap-plant, of Morloch’s making. One thing is certain. We cannot risk an attempt at crossing this line.”
“How can they seed such evil, Leeny? So indiscriminately? Anything and anyone might step on such a thing! It’s disgusting. Horrible.”
“Yes,” Elayeen sheathed her sword, adding archly, “They rather make the pit-traps at Fallowmead look distinctly civilised by comparison, do they not?”
Meeya said nothing, but favoured her friend with a pointed stare.
“We’ll turn west, and go around the end of this line. We need to quicken our pace, too. The last riders must learn of this hidden threat, and of the Flagellweed. Warnings must be given. Spring approaches rapidly, and if the good people of the Southshearings should venture out this way, there will be tragedy.”
They were still travelling slightly north of west at sunset, and had to make do with frak to quiet their grumbling stomachs. The weather snapped cold, though the winds and rain did not return to blight their comfort, but still there was little point in going to the effort of digging a fire-pit and gathering kindling for heat. They simply sat closer together, drew cloaks and blankets tighter, and wondered aloud at the Spikebulbs, and the Flagellweed.
“If we had waited until the wizard Allazar’s book had been copied, we might know more about those things,” Elayeen sighed. “Though knowing what they are called and knowing how to destroy them are two completely different things.”
“There are so many of them,” Meeya complained. “How can there be so many of them?”
Valin shrugged. “How many seeds in a sack?”
“How big are the seeds, Vali?”
“I do not know. You spent much time in the gardens near the fountain in summer, did you not see any seed sown there?”
“No.”
Valin shrugged again. “Some seeds are tiny. The watermeal floating in the ponds in the Gardens of Mirith are tiny in their own right, their seed smaller still. Imagine the Graken-rider carrying a sack of salt on the back of his beast, scattering it as the creature glided low, every grain of salt a seed. If every seed took root and became a Flagellweed or one of those plant-traps, and then produced seeds of its own…”
“Nothing in the wizard Allazar’s writings that I saw suggested that the creatures of the Pangoricon could multiply,” Elayeen stated flatly. “They must be created by dark magic, else such things as the Flagellweed and Aknid would have proliferated down through the ages.”
“Let us hope so, miThalin.”
“I do not like the word ‘hope’ as much as I once did. I think I have heard it too often in the weeks since leaving Tarn.”
There was a brief pause, and then Meeya poked her face out from the hood of her cloak. “How do you know about watermeal seeds?”
“Reesen and I needed an excuse to follow you both into the gardens when the groundskeepers became suspicious. When we were challenged, Reesen feigned an interest in botany.”
“Are you serious, Vali?”
Valin shrugged. “We were young. Lectures by an enthusiastic old gardener seemed a small price to pay at the time.”
Meeya beamed.
“Though had I known then, what I know now…”
“…You might have kept the teeth you’re about to lose, miheth.”
“Ah.”
“I wonder how much aquamire is needed for the creation of a single seed of Flagellweed, or one of those trap-plants,” Elayeen mused.
“Why?”
“We don
’t know how much they have, or how many dark wizards there are. We have seen the Goth and the Graken-rider, that is all. And the Graken-rider seemed weak, at the river Goth-halt. His shield was grey, remember? And the dark wizard took back the aquamire he had used to make the Aknid.”
“Does it matter?”
“It does. Imagine all the arable land south of the Teeth seeded with such foul creations. Spring is coming, it is the season for planting and the plough…” Elayeen’s stomach suddenly sank.
“What is it, Leeny?”
“What if this is Morloch’s vengeance for his defeat at Far-gor? What if he planned only to deliver the Goth-lord and aquamire to these eastern lands, here to sow a crop of vengeance in the form of such foul creations as we have seen? If the Meggen were the Goth’s bodyguard, and Fallowmead their target only to silence the villagers and prevent word of his arrival reaching Brock of Callodon or Hellin of Juria, or Eryk of Threlland?”
“I do not like the phrase ‘what if’, Leeny, and never really have.”
“But it makes sense, I am certain it does. If their ship had landed in Norist Bay in Mornland, with the Meggen to establish a foothold there for the Goth-lord to do his work with aquamire brought out from the west…”
“By boat?”
“Yes.”
“All the way from Goria?”
“Yes.”
“But why, Leeny? Why, when the Goth-lord could simply have flown on the back of a Graken clear across the Jarn Gap and commenced his foul deeds in some secluded spot in Callodon?”
“And risked being seen by someone on the ground, and thence hunted to extinction?”
“Bah.”
“Bah?”
“Yes, Leeny, bah, for any number of reasons, not the least of which is, one, you’re not Thal-Gawain, and two, Morloch’s Graken-rider who attacked Tarn could simply have flown unseen around northern Threlland, landed on the Three Beacons, and spread his foul seeds all over Mornland from there, and no-one any the wiser.”
Elayeen was astonished, and fell silent, blinking in the darkness and sifting through Meeya’s words looking for weaknesses in her argument.