Voyage of the Fox Rider

by Dennis L McKiernan

  “Averte!” hissed Aylis, and the great jagged bolt crashed into stone, barely missing the slot, shattering white light stabbing inward through the opening, deafening thunder whelming in on the heels of the glare, hammering into Jinnarin and Farrix and slamming them sideways against the rock wall of the slit, stunning them.

  Ears ringing, Aravan stepped toward Aylis but she shook her head and waved him back. He reached out to aid the Pysks, who even then were beginning to stir, but once again Aylis waved him back, not daring to risk anything which might distract her father in the slightest. And so Aravan stepped hindwards, back to where Rux whined and cowered, and the Elf squatted down and soothed the fox.

  Her own ears ringing, Jinnarin shook her head trying to recover, while behind her Farrix stirred. Through swimming eyes she looked up at Alamar, the eld Mage shuddering in the agony of maintaining such a potent spell, given the meager limits of his astral fire, which even now was draining swiftly, the of his life nearly spent.

  Yet his glowing icon stood straight, and laughed at Durlok, the likeness afar enraged. “Is THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO?” boomed out Alamar’s figure.

  “BAH!” sneered Durlok’s image. “I COULD SQUASH YOU AS EASILY AS I COULD AN INSECT, ALAMAR. YET I HAVE NO TIME FOR THIS NONSENSE. I MUST CONSERVE MY ENERGIES FOR THEY ARE NEEDED TO DELIVER MY GRAND WEDDING GIFT TO ALL OF YOUR ILK, ALAMAR, BUT AFTERWARDS, IF YOU YET LIVE…”

  Of a sudden, Durlok’s simulacrum vanished. In the twilight Jinnarin could see that the black galley oars again took up a beat, but this time one side backed water as the other side pulled forward, and the sails were shifted about as the galley turned away. And something white was cast over the side as Durlok surrendered the field.

  “His victim,” gritted Farrix.

  And in the chamber behind, Alamar hoarsely whispered, “Dele,” his image vanishing even as the aged Mage collapsed in Aylis’s arms, and weeping, she lowered his frail form to the stone.

  CHAPTER 34

  Plumes

  Spring, 1E9575

  [The Present]

  Alamar!” cried Jinnarin, leaping down from the lookout slot. “Alamar!”

  The Mage lay on the stone floor, reedy air rattling in and out of his thin chest, and he looked as if he had aged decades, his hair now sparse, the flesh on his face like translucent parchment mottled with brown spots. On her knees, Aylis wept at his side, and Aravan knelt down and put his ear to Alamar’s breast and after a moment said, “Thready.”

  “We’ve got to get him to Rwn,” gritted Aylis, “to Vadaria. His is almost gone. It was too much, this spell of his. It was too much.…”

  Opposite Aylis and Aravan, Farrix stood next to Jinnarin, his arm about her, the distressed Pysks powerless to aid. Rux stopped his agitated pacing and came and nosed his way between the two, seeking comfort.

  Aravan raised up from the elder. “Jinnarin, find Jatu, Bokar. Tell them what has passed. Tell the armsmaster we need a healer for Alamar and a litter to bear him to the quay. Have Jatu and the Men ready the boats. We are leaving as soon as it is safe.”

  Jinnarin nodded, glad of something to do, and she shook the tears from her eyes and leapt upon Rux and sped away.

  Aravan turned to Farrix. “Keep watch on the black galley. I would not have Durlok turn back and catch us unaware.”

  As Koban and Relk set the litter down on the quay, Alamar’s eyes fluttered then opened, and he tried to raise up but failed. Jamie leaned down. “Here now, Mage Alamar, you shouldn’t be wanting to get—”

  Alamar reached up and grasped him by the shirt, and with surprising strength pulled Jamie to him and murmured something, his quavering voice nearly lost in the echoing surge shsshing in the cavern. Alamar lapsed back into unconsciousness.

  Bokar squatted beside the litter. “What did he say?”

  “Burn the papers, Armsmaster. He said to burn the papers.”

  Bokar knelt and even though he did not know whether Alamar could hear him, he spoke to the elder: “Even now, Mage Alamar, Jatu is setting the fire. The documents will be burned.”

  A dinghy was maneuvered to the steps of the quay, and the litter was borne down to it. Alamar was lifted into the boat and made comfortable on the bedding that had been laid for him. Burak, one of the Dwarven warriors, clambered into the boat with Alamar. Burak would watch over the eld Mage and administer whatever herbal medicines might help from those they had brought along. Though not a chirurgeon, Burak—along with three others in the warband—was nevertheless trained in the arts of treating warrior’s wounds and sicknesses in the field, and as the most experienced, he was the one who accompanied Alamar into the boat.

  As the Dwarven rowers followed and arranged themselves in the craft, a piercing whistle from the passage behind sounded above the waves, and after long moments, Jatu and Farrix and Jinnarin came out from the darkness of the corridor, both Pysks mounted upon Rux.

  Aravan looked at Jatu. “They burn, Captain,” said the black Man. “Durlok’s writings burn.”

  Farrix and Jinnarin had been standing watch at the lookout post, and as Farrix dismounted he turned to the Elf. “The black galley is now gone over the horizon. It is safe to leave.”

  Swiftly they entered their boats, Farrix going with Jinnarin and Rux, and soon the dinghies came out through the channel from the understone lagoon and into the nighttime air, a spangle of southern stars glittering in the skies above, a thin crescent of a quarter Moon hanging low in the west.

  Silks were raised in the southwesterly breeze, and the flat-bottomed craft sailed across deep, black waters, heading due west along the southern ramparts of the high stone island looming off to the starboard side. A mile they went and then a league, the black waters clear of hindrance, but at last they came to the wall of weed dropping into the depths below. Oars were then set in their locks and used to press forward, and out into the hulk-laden waters of the clutching swirl they went.

  “I wish we had our turtle,” murmured Jinnarin as the Dwarves stroked over the undulant swells.

  “Turtle?” Farrix turned his questioning gaze upon her.

  “It towed us here.”

  “A turtle?”

  “It was a big one, a giant, you might say. It pulled all the boats.”

  “Ha!” barked Farrix. “It would have to be. But tell me, my love, just how did you come about this—this monstrous turtle?”

  “The Children of the Sea brought it with them, though they called it a—a, oh, I can’t say it, but something like tok’th’tick’rix. Regardless, it was a giant turtle.”

  Now Farrix’s eyes flew wide. “Children of the Sea! You met some Children of the Sea? Oh, Jinnarin, this is a tale I’ve got to hear. In fact, tell me everything, everything that happened since last I saw you.”

  “All right, Farrix. My story first, but then yours. I mean, you’ve given us quite a chase you know, and we’ve been over half the world trying to find you. I’d like to know just how you managed to get into the mess where we discovered you at last, and how Durlok figures into all of it, and what he’s up to, and—”

  Smiling, Farrix touched a finger to her lips to stop her rush of words. “You haven’t changed a bit, my sweet, and I love you for it. As to Durlok”—his face fell flat and his eyes grew grim—“we will speak of that later, after you’ve told me your tale.”

  Jinnarin nodded and took a deep breath: “Where shall I start? Wait, I know—as I’ve been told, begin at the beginning.” She paused a moment, gathering her thoughts, and then her words came softly: “Well, after I got your note, the one you sent by Rhu, I didn’t start to worry until I began having these dreams. And then I went to see Alamar…Alamar the Mage.…”

  And as the line of dinghies struggled westward through grasping weed and past ships ancient and waterlogged and trapped in the Great Swirl, in the bottom of a boat the two Pysks leaned back against a sleeping fox…and Jinnarin told Farrix her tale.

  Dawn found the dinghies sailing west, tacking against the
wind, the shallow-draft, flat-bottomed boats skimming barely above the weed. Occasionally the tiny flotilla would encounter stretches where the Dwarves needed to row, but for the most part they evaded the clutch of the Great Swirl, though now and again the person at the helm would lift the steering oar clear and rid it of green sea moss. Dawn also found Farrix and Jinnarin asleep in each other’s arms in the bottom of one of the crafts, though when Jamie stepped across Rux and the fox shifted about, it brought both Pysks awake.

  Jamie relieved Lork at the helm, and sighted on the other craft. Aravan’s boat was in the lead, all others following in file—Bokar’s boat was second in line, then Aylis’s, Alamar’s coming after, with Jinnarin and Farrix’s boat following, then Kelek’s, and last of all, Jatu’s.

  As Relk broke out rations for the morning meal, Farrix glanced at the rising sun. “Are we sailing by dead reckoning?” he asked Jamie.

  The Man laughed. “Nay, Master Farrix. Cap’n Aravan, although he doesn’t use an astrolabe, he doesn’t need one. He’s an Elf, you see, and the best pilot of all. Dead reckoning? Not as long as he can see the Sun or the stars.”

  “Oh look!” cried Jinnarin, gripping Farrix’s hand. “Alamar: he’s sitting up!”

  In the boat ahead, the eld Mage sat in the bow, facing backwards. Wind blew through the wisps of his white hair, and his frail hands desperately gripped the wales.

  He was pale, drawn.

  He was ancient.

  Jinnarin turned to Farrix, tears welling in her eyes.

  Jamie looked into the boat ahead. “Cor, what a change! Why, when I first clapped eyes on Mage Alamar, I’d have said he was an old Man of seventy or thereabouts. But now he looks to be in his doddering nineties.”

  Jinnarin peered up at Jamie. “Oh, Jamie, he is not a Man, but a Mage instead, and as such he is much older than ninety. In fact, from what I’ve gleaned, he is thousands of years old. But Mages can spend their youth and then gain it back again.”

  “How so, Lady Jinnarin?”

  “If they cast no spells, Jamie, they do not age, ever. But when they do a casting, it drains youth and energy—the greater the spell, the greater the drain. And Alamar cast a very great spell to fool Durlok, and it nearly cost Alamar his life.”

  “Durlok casts spells and he does not age,” muttered Farrix.

  “That is because he is a Black Mage and steals the youth of others. Alamar told me that the astral fire can be leeched from those in great emotional distress. Like bloodsucking lamias, Black Mages do this, living off the youth of others, hence spending none of their own.”

  Farrix slowly nodded. “I knew that Durlok used the agony of others to power his spells, but I did not know that by doing so he preserved his own youth.”

  “Hm,” mused Jamie, then asked, “but then how do Mages regain their youth?”

  “Alamar says they must rest a long while. Cast no spells. He also says that on Mithgar, this takes ages, but on the Mage world of Vadaria, it goes much more swiftly.” Jinnarin’s gaze sought out frail Alamar in the boat ahead. “Oh don’t you see, Farrix, that is why we must return to Rwn—for on that isle is the only known crossing to Vadaria, and Alamar needs desperately to go home.”

  Throughout the morning the boats sailed west among trapped drowned hulks, the chill wind shifting about, growing warmer as it swung from the southwest to the west and then on around until at last it blew straight from the north, straight from the high northern Sun.

  “Ha!” crowed Jamie. “That’s the last of the tacking if the wind’ll just hold abeam.”

  “But not the last of the rowing,” growled Tolar, the warrior shipping out his oar and nodding ahead where Dwarves in Aravan’s boat now rowed across weed.

  As the Dwarven rowers pulled oars, Farrix shaded his eyes and looked at one of the derelicts a mile or so to the north. “I say, Jinnarin, what d’you think might be on these ships? What cargoes? What curiously wrought artifacts? What things of mystery and wonder?”

  Jinnarin shuddered, her mind returning to the night when they had seen a hulk glowing with green witchfire. “I don’t know, love, and I don’t believe that I want to know. I do know, though, that some of these drowned relics cause Aravan’s amulet to grow freezing cold.”

  “Meaning…?”

  “Meaning that something perilous lurks thereon.”

  “Perilous?” Farrix glanced at her, then swung his gaze back to the distant hulk. “Witches, liches, lamia and the like?”

  Jinnarin shook her head. “I don’t know, love. Just perilous.”

  Farrix sighed. “Well, still I would like to know what these ships bear. One of these days, perhaps I’ll—”

  “Oh, Farrix, it’s your curiosity that got us in this fix to begin with. Besides, from the looks of Durlok’s treasury, it seems as if he might have already plundered the victims of the Great Swirl.”

  A grim aspect swept over Farrix’s face. “Yes, love. He indeed used the Swirl to ensnare victims, though it was the people he wanted and not the cargo.”

  Jinnarin cocked her head to one side and looked at her mate. After a moment she said, “Well, Farrix, it seems as if all this is leading to your tale. I know you don’t want to relive the bad memories, but I think you must. We need to know what Durlok is up to so that the Mages of Rwn can block him, stop him cold before he does something vile.”

  Farrix clenched his hands in frustration. “But that’s just it, Jinnarin—I don’t know what Durlok is up to! Ah, but that it is something vile…well, it goes without saying. But just what it is, I don’t bloody know! Burn me, I haven’t a clue!”

  “Well, love,” said Jinnarin, “I don’t know whether or not I can help, but why don’t you tell me your tale and then we shall see. As Alamar says, begin at the beginning, which in this case I believe is when you and Rhu left our home in Darda Glain.”

  Farrix nodded and took up a portion of a crue biscuit and bit off a mouthful, feeding the rest to Rux. He sat and reflectively chewed, gathering his scattered thoughts. At last he took a drink of water, washing all down.

  Turning to Jinnarin, he said, “It was still winter when Rhu and I set out to track down the plumes.…”

  “Love, I’m off to follow the flumes, to see just where they are going.”

  Farrix looked at Jinnarin, noting the touch of sadness that came into her eye. Even so she did not argue with his decision to chase this will-o’-the-wisp of spectral light, but instead she stepped forward and hugged and kissed him. His heart felt somewhat heavy, though not extraordinarily so…for he and Jinnarin had been mates for several millennia, and she seemed resigned to his “whims.”

  With a whistle, Farrix mounted up on Rhu, and off through the forest of Darda Glain they headed northeasterly, the black-footed red fox padding across the snow. And Farrix looked back to see his loved one standing before the hollow tree where they lived, and he waved good-bye then turned and urged Rhu into that ground-eating trot which would carry them miles before nightfall.

  North and east they fared among the winter-barren trees of Darda Glain, Farrix heading inland to skirt around an arm of ocean barring the way directly east. Surrounded on three sides by water, Darda Glain was a hoary old forest, forty or so miles across from east to west, and fifty from north to south. It occupied the whole of an outjut of land protruding into the sea, there along the southern bound of Rwn, where it was sustained by misty rains of summer and swirling snows of winter which blew in from the Weston Ocean to fall upon the rich loamy soil. Closed to all but the Hidden Ones, Farrix and Jinnarin dwelled near the center, though now and again they moved to the margins to stand their turn at ward. But now Farrix rode away from the heart of the woods, driven on a mission of his own, and once again ‘twas not Duty who summoned but Curiosity instead, her silent call luring him across the ancient island of Rwn.

  Rwn itself was roughly circular, spanning nearly a hundred and fifty miles in any direction—give or take an arm of the ocean or peninsula thrust out into the sea. Some fifty miles in
land all way ‘round, the island rose up into a central region rough with craggy tors and steep hills and stony mounts. In the north lay coastal plains, scrubbed raw by northern winds, the grassy expanse sparsely dotted here and there with wind-twisted trees and small coppices of pine, and only a handful of people dwelled upon the plains. To the east and south and west, the margins of the isle were more hospitable, though just as sparsely populated—with the exception of Darda Glain in the south, where dwelt the Hidden Ones, and the Kairn peninsula to the west, where lay the City of Bells on the far western edge of rolling farmlands running to the east, running all the way to the old defensive rampart of the Kairn Wall some twenty-five miles from the town.

  And it was on this isle in the woods of Darda Glain on the southern marge of Rwn that a Pysk rode a fox, heading north and east, drawn onward by a falling sky.

  Over the next two days they fared, heading ever northeastward, but at last they emerged from Darda Glain along the shores of Lac Rwn. Ice extended out from the shoreline, though the center was clear. Clear as well was the river flowing out from the southern end of the lake and down toward the sea. Disappointed that they couldn’t cross the wide race, Farrix turned northerly, intending to ‘round the top of the lake where they could then head east. And so for the next two days they skirted along the western shores of Lac Rwn, the body of water some fifteen miles long, though much longer by the route Rhu scurried. As they came to the tributaries running down from the tors of Rwn, they went upstream to find crossings, sometimes skittering over ice, at other times faring upon logs fallen across the tumbling waters, and once or twice swimming in the frigid rush—Farrix building a fire to warm and dry them when they reached the opposite side.

  On the fifth day in the middle of a snowstorm they finally turned eastward, having come to the northern extent of Lac Rwn, and they wove through foothills, angling somewhat south whenever they could, for Farrix was aiming for a headland that lay one hundred miles or so due east of Darda Glain. And five days later, nine days after setting out, at last they came to that distant peninsula overlooking the Weston Ocean along the southeastern margin of the isle.