Oberon’s expression darkened further. “Hob, I ask you: what would it take to have the goblins march with the elves again?”
A very long finger tapped thoughtfully at a lumpy chin. “A boon, perhaps?”
“What boon?”
“A great boon,” said Hob, and here, finally, his eyes alit with greed.
The expression almost brought a shudder to Oberon, one who never felt an emotion such as disgust. He had seen too much in his impossibly long lifespan. But, imagining what Hob may have in mind brought him disgust, and the sensation did lay there, unbidden and raw upon his mind.
“I say again, what boon?”
Hob’s voice lowered to a whisper. “I don’t know yet,” he said, sounding almost dreamy. “But I will think of something. Let me assure you.”
Oberon blinked. He almost drew his dagger and slashed Hob’s leering face. Better to chance it all and live or die now, than to suffer some future ignominy at the hands of this monster. An unstated boon. A future debt of uncertain magnitude. Almost nothing could be requested that was greater in measure for one of the Fae.
He thought of attacking Hob, of trying his luck right now. With Osang, he could march without Hob’s legions at his back. But he held himself in check. He might fail, and he wanted an army more than he wanted a Jewel of the second rank. Besides, he had other enemies he hated far more than Hob, his fair-weather friend.
“Be forewarned,” said Old Hob, “gone are the days when my folk will gleefully die as fodder on the front lines while your people nibble delicacies and watch from a safe hill at twilight. Your troops must be at the front line. We will strike only when the enemy is engaged.”
Oberon hesitated. Indecision was unfamiliar to him, a being who had lived all his life on instinct and impulse. He hated his uncertainty. “But, you will strike? When the time is clear? When the moment is ripe?”
“Yes, indeed. It is the goblin way.”
Oberon nodded. He made his decision. The agreement was made and sworn to. The old alliance between goblin and elf was reforged, under far more onerous conditions for the elves.
As they were about to part, Oberon passed on a final warning to his renewed ally.
“Hob, be assured. If your armies do not materialize, if they fail to fight with us, know this: the memories of elves are very long indeed. You will never know the moment, but your end will come. And it will not be pleasant. If I do not regain Lavatis, and the failure is attributable to you, I will have Osang as consolation.”
Hob nodded indulgently, as if a naughty child had threatened his matronly grandmother. “And be forewarned as well, Lord Oberon,” he said. “This threat of yours will be remembered when I have completed my task, and have come to collect my well-earned boon.”
As Hob floated silently away from him, Oberon was left alone upon the hill of a dead Queen. He shuddered once, then breathed deeply and struck out on a new path.
There were others yet to be gathered.
* * *
Darkness neared by the time Piskin finished dragging Mari to a lonesome spot in the Deepwood. She was puffing for real by then, and feeling truly ill. She thought that if his plan was simply to slay her and leave her body where none would discover the crime, this was an excellent spot for it. She wondered as well if the baby would really come if they kept walking at such a pace.
“There’s no one here to take care of me or otherwise,” said Mari. “I’d expected an Inn or a woodsman’s outpost at least.”
Piskin flashed her a smile. “No one here? Don’t be so sure!”
He pushed through another hanging thicket of brush and a clearing opened ahead of them. There was a structure of sorts, but it was dark and in ruins. In the half-light of the dying day as seen from the floor of the Deepwood, she squinted and realized it was a ruin of toppled stones. Fallen blocks of bluish stone circled the spot, and it was raised somewhat upon the earth. Grass had grown up over much of it, but the forest itself seemed to be in retreat. The trees leaned in overhead hungrily, but did not approach the stones with their trunks.
“What is this place? I don’t see any lights.”
Piskin chuckled. “You will see them, rest assured. As the sun sinks, they will pop out here and float about.”
“Wisps?” asked Mari in alarm. “You’ve brought me to a haunt of the Fae, then?”
“Indeed I have. Out in the wilds of the Deepwood, it is only they who might help such an unlikely pair as us.”
Mari balked. Piskin tugged with more strength than she would have given him credit for having in his tiny body, but she, being more than twice his height, held firm. She stared, wide-eyed. In her own beloved Haven woods, of course, she had entreated with Puck. But she had never been to a true fairy mound. Certainly, there was the one out on the common in Riverton, but that was different. She’d seen it, but never dared walk near.
This spot of power, this connection between her world and the world of Twilight was different. It was unknown, wild. All the terrible legends she’d heard all her life, they struck through to her now and froze her mind. Banshees, ghosts, floating things on gossamer wings both beautiful and terrible to behold. Her breath came in shallow gasps, and her eyes were white circles.
“Girl, don’t freeze on me now!” said Piskin. “Where did you think you might meet Puck or his kind? At a smithy, perhaps? In one of your apple orchards, or strolling down a lane in Frogmorton?”
She looked at him, but barely heard his words. For behind him, in the half-lit scene of huge tumbled blue stones, the first wisp had popped out. It was a pink-white one, a glimmering, floating fireball. It was so strange, so lovely, Mari forgot to breathe at all for several seconds.
“They come!” said Piskin, tugging at her hand. He grunted with the effort, like a man trying to force his mule to market. “We must circle around them, and entreat with them as they appear.”
Finally, Mari took her first, stumbling half-step forward. Two more wisps had appeared. Somehow, although they were silent, the beauty of them, the intense alien vision they formed, weakened her resolve. She stepped forward as if in a dream.
Slowly, with Piskin squeezing her hand painfully, she walked around the circle of fallen stones. She knew not what it was that she circled. It could have been an ancient tomb, or a shrine upon which a thousand maidens had been sacrificed. She did know that it was a terrible place and a place full of wonder, all at the same time. A magical spot, where her world connected with another.
They kept walking, and more wisps kept appearing. They approached the unlikely pair now. Three green sisters linked hands and danced in the air around her head, giggling. The sounds of their voices were too tiny to separate into words, but she could hear their mirth.
Tears streamed down her face, tears of joy and rapture. She smiled hugely through it all. She was overwhelmed. Puck had been one thing, but he had been only a single member of the Fae, a single piping elf. Now, without any kind of ward, she was cast into the middle of the Shining Folk, and they floated around her, caressing her hair and touching her stomach curiously. Their every touch left behind a hot, pink spot upon her skin. Their every caress made it harder to think.
And so they walked around the stones, widdershins. The moon appeared in the sky as they finished the first circuit, where none had been before.
Three times more around, then five.
The grass beneath her feet turned silver. The moon had swollen and now shone with an unnatural brightness. Soon, seven circuits had been made.
Some small part of her knew that she was lost. She had stepped too far down their shining path. She could not step away, even if her mind had allowed it. To do so was to be lost between worlds, to be left wandering a void forever. She was in the power of the wisps, and she could only hope and pray for luck and mercy.
Chapter Eight
The Search
On the morning of the second day, they found the abandoned boat along the western shore of the river.
“Heave west
!” shouted Brand. Corbin, who manned the tiller, guided them to the shore. Soon they investigated the stolen boat.
“It doesn’t look good,” said Corbin, looking at the slashed lines. “Someone has cut down the sails.”
Brand walked around the craft, eyeing the muddy shore with a frown. “I see evidence of merlings here. Quite a number of them.”
The others looked on in silent concern. If merlings had found a solitary pregnant girl and a half-crippled Wee One out here, they might have been easily overwhelmed.
“I’m not sure it was merlings, Brand,” said Telyn. She knelt at the edge of the craft. “The tracks are beneath the boat as well as around it. Perhaps they just come here to fish.”
Brand’s axe twitched with impatience. He echoed its mood, shaking his head. He stood with his hands on his hips, but already he felt the itch to reach up and draw Ambros. Merlings were foul things—things that needed slaying.
“Let’s not make excuses for them,” he told the others. “Someone cut those sails down and dragged them from the boat. Perhaps here, or out in the water. We can’t know which, without finding bodies.”
“Do you think then..?” Telyn asked, her voice trailing off. She looked at him in sad concern.
“Probably yes, the girl is slain. But I’ll not leave the matter to chance. Frogmorton is only another dozen miles upstream. If there are merlings about, and we all know this wild section of the Berrywine crawls with them, I’ll wager they’ve got a village nearby.”
Corbin nodded thoughtfully. “They would be in the marshlands on this side, the wilder of the two shores.”
The others reluctantly agreed with Brand’s logic and they continued on, following the western shore and probing for any sign of bodies, merlings or other evidence.
By midday they had found the telltale signs: a rivulet, a channel cunningly hidden but noticeable to the trained eye. It was an artificial channel that connected to the river, and took water away into the Deepwood. Covered over with brambles and fallen logs, it did not appear to be anything unnatural, but Brand knew it for what it was. The channel fed a merling village somewhere amongst the brooding trees.
He reached up and took out his axe. Slowly, a grim smile spread over his face. He thought that some of his companions were speaking, possibly even to him, but he did not heed them. They could follow or not, as they liked. He cared little. In truth, it felt good to have the axe in his hand again. It had been so long. Too long.
He followed the hidden channel to where it opened and broadened in the forest, scooped out no doubt by a hundred flippered hands. He marched, chuckling to himself. These foolish creatures attempted to hide from him, from the sharp eye of justice, but it wasn’t to be their day. Today, the clear light of justice would triumph!
A thousand steps farther into the thickening woods led him to the merling village. He thought to hear behind him others of his party, struggling with thickets of thorns that had left a dozen bleeding scratches on his exposed skin. He paid the scratches no heed. The tiny wounds did not hold him back for a second. The hooked, finger-like growths could not make him pause in his quest. The whipping thorns barely made him blink to protect his wide, staring eyes.
The merlings were thus taken by surprise. Their lookout, a slovenly fellow who napped along the banks of the hidden channel he was charged with maintaining, gave a single croak of dismay when Brand’s boots appeared in front of his bulbous eyes.
Brand only gave him time enough to glance upward. The bulging eyes popped and took in the axe, the wild stare, the floating nimbus of hair, the bleeding red lines that traced the madman’s face like smears of paint. Then Brand swept the lookout’s head from his lumpy shoulders and that was the end of it.
The village, in the manner of all merling villages, was half-submerged in a shallow artificial pond of still water. A few fat merlings, lazy with the easy start of a spring day, swam amongst their raised hummock-like lodges of mud and sticks.
Brand punted the lookout’s head into the midst of the pond, where it splashed down with a tinkling explosion of water. Two dozen pairs of bulbous eyes surfaced and stared at the sinking head, and at the madman who stood at the far edge of their pond.
From there, things went from bad to worse for the merlings. The warriors, a party of perhaps ten, formed into a bunch and approached, hurling bolas and flinging stones. Brand deflected these off-handedly, waiting for them to get close. When they did, he commanded Ambros to flash and it did so, eagerly.
The merling warparty, ragged to begin with, fell back in shock, eyes blinded, wet skins burnt. Brand struck among them and they fell. The survivors splashed, croaking, into their pond and huddled inside their lodges.
Brand gave chase. He strode to the nearest of the lodges and lifted the axe, ready to slash it open.
A hand grasped his wrist from behind.
It was a close thing. His cousin had dared too much. Brand whirled, and for a moment he didn’t see Corbin. Instead, he saw the biggest, squattest merling of all time. A champion of their foul race, a bullfrog amongst peepers.
Brand’s hand, still held by the wrist, dropped the axe and his other hand snatched it from the air before it could splash down into the pond. The massive merling that had dared grab his wrist was croaking something at him, he didn’t know what, but had no doubt the words were foul curses.
He drew back Ambros with his off hand, and was gratified to see the shock and fear grow on the huge merling’s face. He would behead this monster too, and make an ugly trophy of it.
It was Telyn’s voice that broke through his fever. The axe, uplifted, never came down. He froze there, blinking, and came to his senses.
He saw them all now, standing there staring at him with wide eyes.
Corbin looked very pale, as if he were indeed a giant merling about to be gigged. Telyn was there as well, her pretty mouth circled in a desperate ‘O’. Whatever she had shouted, he didn’t recall the words. Tomkin had his Blue Jewel was out. He stood unhelpfully atop the slumped body of a merling warrior. His stance indicated he had at least considered calling the Rainbow.
Would he have really marched the Rainbow against me? Brand asked himself.
“I… I’m sorry,” said Brand, lowering the axe. He put it away, feeling stunned. The instant it had returned in his pack, his face and hands were on fire from a dozen stinging scratches. His legs ached from their swift march through the trees, and his face burned with embarrassment. “I’ve not let myself go like that for a long time,” he said.
“Was it fun?” asked Tomkin, putting away the Blue Jewel. He eyed Brand with a mix of mocking leer and curiosity.
Brand ignored him.
“That was a bad one, Brand,” said Telyn, coming to him and dabbing at his cuts.
“Are the merlings… Are they guilty? Did anyone see the girl’s body?” asked Brand. He had a sudden, haunted feeling. Had he slain more innocents? If anyone could call a merling innocent… But they were, he told himself firmly, unless proven otherwise.
Corbin looked around thoughtfully at the corpses. “I don’t know, Brand. I hope we aren’t just a pack of vicious marauders. I—I killed one as well. I thought they must have done something. You seemed so sure.”
Brand looked at his cousin, and felt further shame. Corbin’s sword was out, it was steeped in brackish blood. His fine blue cloak, the sign of his office in the Riverton Constabulary and of which Brand knew he was quite proud, was now stained and tattered. Brand splashed around in widening circles. The girl’s body had to be here somewhere.
A few bulbous eyes gazed at him fearfully from the far side of the pond. Others crept inside their lodges and amongst the trees. Was the slaughter over? He could see the question in their alien eyes.
“Nothing?” demanded Brand. “No one sees anything? These creatures were just minding their own business when I charged into their homes and chopped them to bits?”
Tomkin hooted then, and they sloshed over to him. He pointed down at one of the
bodies. A cord wrapped around its midsection. It was from a River Folk boat. As people who spent much of their lives on the waters, they knew the look, feel and thickness of it.
“This is Haven rope. It’s from the abandoned boat, most likely,” said Corbin, examining Tomkin’s find.
“Proof?” asked Brand.
“It’s not proof,” said Corbin, still examining the rope. “But merlings are all guilty of something, Brand. Don’t feel too bad about giving them a beating. Perhaps you’ve saved the life of other locals who they will now fear to attack.”
“We can’t be sure they did anything, Brand,” said Telyn hurriedly.
He felt a pang of guilt, hearing the worry in her voice. Did she honestly think he might go berserk again and finish off the rest of the village? “Don’t worry, I’m not about to draw the axe again on such thin evidence. Most likely, it is from the boat. But that doesn’t mean they drowned the girl. Tomkin, can you talk to these folk?”
Tomkin shrugged. “After a fashion.”
“I say the rest of us withdraw. We’ll wait for Tomkin to treat with them. He didn’t slay any them, and he’s not human. Maybe they can tell us where the girl went.”
“Or mayhaps they can form a quick lie, hoping to save themselves,” chuckled Tomkin. He put up a thin-boned hand patting at the air to stop their complaints. “Worry not, I’ll do it. I just don’t think much of our chances. These frogs will say anything after a good trouncing. Anything that will send us far from their village.”
They did as Brand suggested, and after a half-hour of nursing their hurts in the woods and brooding, Tomkin returned to them.
“They are unhappy, and claim innocence.”
“Big surprise,” said Corbin, huffing. “I could have given you that answer on the instant.” Like Jak, Corbin never believed merlings were innocent in any sense, Brand knew. They had killed too many of the River Folk over the years to be forgiven by most humans.
Brand’s own parents had died that way, with the skulking, cold, wet hands of merlings at their throats. He wondered if, deep down, that hate for them had boiled up and helped the axe get full control of his actions. He didn’t like to think he was capable of a bloodlusting fury without good cause, but the evidence was clear.
Haven 5 Blood Magic BOOK Page 7